Sharing ...

J. Krishnamurti, in his first talk (17th November 1981) with students at Rajghat, Benares, discussed about sharing.

From that talk:

Krishnamurti: I think about five years ago I was walking along there, one of the villagers - he didn't know me, I didn't know him - gathered a few leaves and sticks and all that, set it on fire and put a pot with a little rice, an onion in it, two or three drops of oil and was cooking it. I watched him. I watched what he did, gathering leaves, gathering sticks, putting fire to them, and putting the pot with a little rice in it, oil, a large onion, and he cooked it. When it was properly cooked he looked at me and he said, 'Will you share this with me. Take a little'. I couldn't because he said, 'This is my whole meal for the day.' You understand what I am saying?

A student: Yes.

Krishnamurti: The whole meal for the day and he was willing to share that little bit of rice with me. You understand how generous that is, what an extraordinary feeling that he would like to give you something. He didn't know me. Have you got that feeling? Feeling of sharing something with another. Or do you want to keep it all to yourself?

Guru creates forehead's ruga!!!!

J. Krishnamurti has provoked many with his incisively challenging questions, and penetratively intriguing statements. Many were the responses. Many were the reactions. Approvals. Disapprovals. And judicious mix of both. Admiration. Disaffirmation. And imprudent mix of both. He has evoked all of those along with their various blends.

Did Raja Rao meet JK?

Raja Rao mentioned about JK in his On the Ganga Ghat, and in The Meaning of India where he described his meeting with Nehru. The Samvad article, available here, has something that is more forthright.

From Samvad article:

"The most moving sight in Banaras are the common people, going into the river to leave their commonness behind, to try to become something more than themselves. And then you see the train going across the river on the bridge. That sight is unforgettable."

My next question is, "Did you know J. Krishnamurti? He writes movingly about Banaras too."

"Yes, I (Raja Rao) met him on a number of occasions."

"What do you think of him?"

"I am not a prejudiced man. I have nothing against him. I valued him highly. He was a very fine being."

"But he said that there's no need for a guru."

"Well, that was the stupidest thing he ever said. He was trying to be oh so modern...."

Realizing the Belief ...

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

~John Louis von Neumann

Why is it not there in the Chessmaster?

Raja Rao's introductions and prefaces are as meaningful as his books. In fact, some are repeatedly published in many collections. For instance, consider his Kantapura piece. In certain sense!!, it is more popular than Kantapura.

This blog has been giving you the excerpts and snippets from Raja Rao writings once in a while. More regularly in recent times. Mogadalai calls that as love-in-fourth-stage!!

But Raja Rao's, first book in the trilogy, The Chessmaster and his moves does not have any introduction. I just wonder why.

An absolutely interesting absence indeed!!

Body in the Ganga - Ganga in the Body ....

Saraha wrote in the eighth century:

Here, within this body, is the Ganges and Jumna ... here are Prayaga and Banares - here the sun and moon. Here are the sacred places, here the pithas and upa-pithas. I have not seen a place of pilgrimage and an abode of bliss like my own body.

In Search of ... my bride

From Raja Rao’s (a sort of) introduction (this is reproduced in his The Meaning of India) to The Policeman and the Rose:

… These stories were written mainly in France, and at the time when Valéry and Gide dominated the literary universe. A south-Indian brahmin, nineteen, spoon-fed on English, with just enough Sanskrit to know I knew so little, with an indiscrete education in Kannada, my mother-tongue, the French literary scene overpowered me. If I wanted to write, the problem was, what should be the language of expression, an what my structural models – Sanskrit contained the vastest riches of any, both in terms of style and word-wealth, and the most natural to my needs, yet it was beyond my competence to use. To marry Sanskrit and Gide in Kannada, and go further, would have demanded an immense stretch of time, and I was despairingly impatient. French, only next to Sanskrit, seemed the language most befitting my demands, but then it’s like a harp (or vina); its delicacy needed an excellence of instinct and knowledge that seemed well-nigh terrifying. English remained the one language, with its great tradition (if only of Shakespeare) and its unexplored riches, capable of catalyzing my impulses, and giving them a near native sound and structure. “I will not write like the English,” I was to write in an introduction to Kanthapura, “I can only write as an Indian.” I will have to write my English, yet English after all – and how soon we forget this – is an Indo-Aryan tongue. Thus to stretch the English idiom to suit my needs seemed heroic enough for my urgentmost demands…. So why not Sanskritic (or if you will, Indian) English?

… Thus both in terms of language and of structure, I had to find my way, whatever the results. And I continued the adventure in lone desperation. I was now truly in search of – my bride…

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When I read the above, I wondered (and pondered) at his search of my bride. Raja Rao himself threw a light on it in one of his articles on – guess what - words.

The word is alive. It is alive in the sense in which a caterpillar, a starling,
a hippopotamus is, or like vriksha (tree), spanda (pulsation), ishvara (god)
are. The word has membranes. It is palpitant, breathful. The word has
self-existence. For each word has, first a noumenal, then a cosmological, and
finally, a phonemological reality.

Then he quotes a Sanskrit sloka:

Many a man who sees does not discover the word.

And many a man who hears does not hear it.

Yet for another it reveals itself like

A radiant bride to her husband.

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"

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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.