Precise..nah...Approximation would do.... - Manu writes

Precise..nah...Approximation would do....

Really..???

Read on.....

I recently overheard a conversation that I will remember for a long time to come:

"Why should one strive for precision, when approximation could work just as well?", asked one.

"Well.. the context deicdes it all. If one wants to lead an ideal life, then perhaps, one could get close enough to it by doing good deeds, being compassionate and a myriad ways of leading life well. Here, approximation is good too. But if one is striving for Enlightenment... then there is no approximation. One is either enlightened or not; there is nothing in between"... - Thus spake my wise old man.

An Experiment in Honesty

From Raja Rao's preface to The Great Indian Way:

... The writing of this book has been an experiment in honesty. Facts of course are there, but facts are shrill. They have a way of saying more than they mean, and disbelievingly so. The silences and the symbols are omitted, and meaning taken out of breath and performance. Facts have to flow into event - there has to be rasa, flavour, to make facts melt into life. And the Indian experience is such a palimpsest, layer behind layer of tradition and myth and custom go to make such an existence: gesture is ritual, and each act a statement in terms of philosophy, superstition, historical or linguistic provincialism, caste originality, or merely a personal one, and yet it's all a whole, it's India. Thus to face honesty against an Indian event, an Indian life, one's expression has to be epic in style or to lie ...

... The Pauranic style, therefore, is the only style an Indian can use - fact against custom, history against time, (and I was going to say) geography against space, and it is these coordinates that have to change and make the life larger than it seems, and its small impurities and accidents and parts, must perforce be transmuted into equations where the mighty becomes normal, and the normal in its turn becoming myth. Prose and poetry thus flow into one another, the personal and the impersonal, making the drama altogether noble and simple ...

... The Purana is never true except against the background of Truth - that is where the essence of fact shines ...

... If I have written thus another life of Gandhi, it's because most of the biographies (whether American or French, Greek or English) are true generally to facts but not so to meaning. There are, however, biographies by Indians - the official and monumental one is an extravagant dictionary of dates and facts, and the more able and personal ones exhausting demonstration of the amalgam of human existence ...

... A biography of Gandhi it seemed to me had to be written as it were from the inside, desperately, faithfully. It's an ambitious task. Should one dare it - I have ...

Let us play Raja Rao

Raja Rao's introductions to his books are as fascinating as books themselves.

From Raja Rao's introduction to The meaning of India:

... I AM NO SCHOLAR. I am a "creative" writer. I love to play with ideas. It is like a chessgame with horses, elephants, chamberlains, and the Kings which might fight with one another. The game is not winning. It is for rasa - delight...

... I enjoy the juxtapostion of ideas. I play. The end, I have been taught, is not a question of success or defeat, but the abolition of contradiction, of duality - and of the peace it should bring to one. I play the game knowing I am the game. That, is the meaning of India...

...When this battle is over, you go, step by step, up the Himalayas, to Manasarovar. You are alone there. The sun shines on the high snows. The waters sizzle, but you can see and hear silence. The wonder is there is no listener. No. None...

...These essays were written for different occasions mostly from the last thirty years. I must be forgiven for repetitions, sometimes, especially of the Purusha Suktha, and sometimes, even of my personal interpretations (in foolishness or ignorance) of texts. In one case, of Nala and Damayanti, there is such a mixup of myths, I must be forgiven for this misdemeanour...

...It is just the game. Come, let us play, you and I...

Raja Rao's Ganga Ghat

When Raja Rao writes, words show different dimensions accompanied by a shift in meaning that may possibly lead a reader to go beyond them.

He writes To The Reader in On the Ganga Ghat:

These stories are so structured that the whole book should be read as one single novel. All persons and places are not true - but real. There is a glossary at the end for those who need any particular name or word explained. Yet, it must be said, why not just flow with the Ganges.

He also quotes Sri Atmananda Guru before that To The Reader.

What is that?

"Water Does Not Flow"

---------------------------------------

Raja Rao has written the following on the editor's copy of On the Ganga Ghat:

Hoping this book when read would be like a dip in the waters of Benares.

Arunachal Pradesh is in India?

Maybe. But the entire region of Arunachal Pradesh is claimed by China.

Recently, China has refused to grant a visa to an IAS officer from Arunachal Pradesh.

Reason?

Since he is from Arunachal Pradesh, he cannot be given a visa as he is a chinese citizen.

Can he apply for a chinese passport? Does he need an indian visa to visit Mumbai?

Do India have any foreign policy as a policy?

Or we have only "foreigner" policy?

I just hope no person from Arunachal Pradesh would have a wish to get a chinese visa during his life-time.

By the way, do chinese allow missionaries to function in their Zangnan?

The Writer and the Word

Excerpts from Raja Rao's talk, The writer and the word:

... Triple are the constituents of a book - the word, the author, the reader. The word which says what the author has to indicate, and the reader has to apprehend, seems to be the one element we seem to neglect, as if it were something we know so well that we may not investigate its nature, its function, its end. For the word, like every constituted thing, seems to have birth, a life-span, and a death ...

... It is just the same way that you feel you will live for ever, though your life span might be seventy or eighty years. The feel that you are everlasting demands that everything be everlasting. Hence the demand that the word be eternal. If man is eternal, so is the word ...

... he who says the word enunciates the word, and he who hears it has to have the eternal part awakened in him so that there could be right communication. If the transient speaks to the transient it becomes a cacophony. But if eternal, the unchanging, speaks to the unchanging, in me, in you, we have one language ...

... Therefore my argument is, unless you, the writer, could go back to the changeless in yourself, you could not truly communicate with the reader, if at that level the reader exists truly, then the question: who speaks to whom would not arise at all ...

... It is my conviction (basing myself on my Indian background) that you cannot really communicate unless you have no desire to really communicate ...

... Unless the author becomes an upasaka and enjoys himself in himself (which is Rasa) the eternality of the sound (Sabda) will not manifest itself, and so you cannot communicate either - so the word here becomes nothing but a cacophony ...

... The word indeed is eternal ...

... The word is but vibrant silence compounded into a momentary act. The act has to be like prayer if it should yield what you want it to yield. Even to say a flower, you must be able to say it in such a way that the force of the vocable, has the potency to create the flower. Unless the word becomes mantra no writer is a writer, and no reader a reader ...

... Thus we give sound back to silence and the seemingly divided remains undivided ...

Advertisements and Cricket telecast

If you had been one of those who were annoyed by advertisements, while watching cricket world cup matches, even during an over when captain was setting the field or bowler was viewing and concentrating, you have a friend in Steve Waugh.

Steve Waugh has recently said,

"...However, the custodians of the game in India must protect it against the over-commercialisation taking place on television. It is annoying, ridiculous and an insult to the game to see an advertisement being squeezed in just because the bowler has not reached the top of his run-up. The telecast in India is unwatchable, and since I was watching the game at a bar with a few others, I could see that I was not the only one put off by the advertisements. Youngsters are missing out on vital commentary, since most comments are cut off the minute an over is called, or when a wicket falls. These are not good signs for Indian cricket, and some body needs to protect the game from becoming devalued in this manner. Everybody must remember that the advertisers are there to promote the game, the game cannot be reduced to a vehicle that promotes the advertisers..."

Media Intrusion

About media intrusion during his son's wedding, Amitabh Bhachan says,

"...We kept it personal and private. By continuously writing about it, the media made it nauseatingly public. Not a single detail carried had any endorsement from either family. This is not media's wedding, it is my son's and it is my private affair. On the night of the wedding, Abhishek and Aishwarya wanted to seek my mother's blessings. They were chased and hounded and virtually made captive inside their car at the hospital premises (my mother is lying critically ill) and were unable to come out of it. They had to forego that moment and left without being able to take the blessings of my mother..."

The print and TV media normally discuss, in their columns and special programs, about every topics. Is there any serious discussion on the media-intrusion? Do they have any clarity on this issue of intrusion? Or is it only the scoop that takes the priority over everything else?

There is a nice cartoon here on media intrusion.

Chief Mentor apologizes

Reference: Previous post

Infosys Chief mentor Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy apologized.

Mr. Murthy said, “I apologize to those who may have been hurt by my comments on the instrumental version of the anthem played during President Kalam's visit.”

Further The Times of India reported,

The company said that the feeling was that foreigners would be more comfortable with the instrumental version, as they could then hum along as others sang the anthem.

But Deccan Herald reported,

… just as the “band” national anthem (played on keyboard) was played towards the end of the programme, President Kalam sang along with child-like enthusiasm while others barely moved their lips …

An apology, of typical political and diplomatic type, had come now. Is the matter over?

Any statement has two dimensions. One is the truthfulness of the statement and the other is its impact on others.

An apology would address the issue of the impact of a statement on others like hurting one’s sentiments, causing pain inadvertently, etc. It does not address the face value of it. It does not address the questions raised about attitudes behind the statement.

This blog would still like to believe Mr. Murthy would come out writing an article on this issue to initiate a discussion. Just think about the various themes of his articles.

At the same time, the political leaders of various parties would like to capitalize on this issue to settle old scores and vent their suppressed inabilities. I believe such things are detrimental to spirit of societal discussions. But if one uses power achieved in one domain to create leverage in other domains, one has to face the backlashes.

Chief Mentor speaks

Deccan Herald wrote,

... In other words, the (national) anthem, which should command the utmost respect from all true-blue Indians, did not get its due, from whoever was responsible ... Which made many wonder: Among the 5000 employees, most of them Indians, wasn't there a decent group of singers who could sing the anthem of the country without discomfiting its first citizen - President A P J Abdul Kalam? ...

Infosys Chief Mentor Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy told media later, "Indeed, we had arranged for five people to sing the anthem. But then we cancelled it as we have foreigners onboard here. They should not be embarrassed while we sing the anthem."

From Deccan Herald report,

Was it too much to pay due attention to the revered symbols of the nation just so that a small percentage of foreign trainees don't get fidgety?"

We are not going to analyse the dimension of patriotism here. One can endlessly debate who is more patriotic - the one who sings the anthem or the one who does something to improve the conditions of the people or the one who creates wealth and jobs for oneself and for others. We are not presently interested in such debates. But what is more striking here is an attitude behind citing the embarassment to foreigners in not allowing the employees to sing the anthem. The attitude that is an outcome of globalization. The attitude that perceives the development of nation as raw material only to a particular industry.

Mr. Murthy is used to air his opinions on anything and everything as the media are too willing to publish them. He writes about education, industry, development, language, roads, infra-structure, schools, colleges, etc. He has recently written an article on the debacle of Indian cricket team too. The quality of ideas he articulates through his articles is mostly anything but visionary. One cannot complain there. The most important thing is the urge to communicate for whatever reasons.

I just hope Mr. Murthy will write an article on this anthem issue. We can understand if he does not have time. I would then request our friends in media to talk to him and publish his views as "as told to someone".