ગમતાનો કરીએ ગુલાલ - गमतानो करीए गुलाल

ગમતું ગુંજે ન બાંધીએ, ગમતાનો કરીએ ગુલાલ

गमतुं गुंजे न बांधीए, गमतानो करीए गुलाल

gamtuM guMje na baaMdhIe, gamtaano karIe gulaal

ગમતું, गमतुं, gamtuM : What we like, What we care, What we are fond of, What we cherish, What we are pleased with, etc.

ગુંજે, गुंजे, guMje : a sort of pocket, a small pouch, any small and enclosed space, etc.

ન બાંધીએ, न बांधीए, na baaMdhIe : do not keep it secret, do not bind it to a small space, do not hide it, do not keep it a closed space, do not put it in a suffocating binding, etc.

ગમતાનો, गमतानो, gamtaano : That which we like, That which we care, That which we are fond of, That which we cherish, That which we are pleased with, etc.

કરીએ ગુલાલ, करीए गुलाल, karIe gulaal : Let us spread them like we spread and share fragrant colours during Holi, Let us spread and share them happily like we do during Holi, Let us share them with affection as we share joy during Holi, etc.

Let us not be the reason for slavery of goodness. Let us free them from our petty confinement and color the world in red-goodness, blue-goodness, green-goodness, etc. Let us bring the rainbow to our hearts.

Sharing is one of the fundamental attributes of inner compassion. To share something is to state that the partaker is as important as partaking. It is nothing to do with the thought of getting something in future. Nothing to do with it being an outcome of the past benefits accrued. To share is to live. It does not go into the future. Things that go to the future await death at the end. Sharing that comes at the end of series of convenient actions culminates in the deep pit of death. Inner compassion does not differentiate between sorrow and joy. It does not want to hold on. It does not want to give it away. It does want to share. To share is like standing beneath the falls. It washes away both sorrow and joy. When sorrow is shared, sorrow ceases to raise its head. When joy is shared, joy ceases to dance with crippled legs. Sharing puts sorrow and joy in their place; in their native state which is non-existent. When sorrow is removed, it brings happiness. When joy is erased, it brings fear. But.. But.. Sharing is an alchemist. A transformer. When sharing happens, though it removes sorrow and joy, it opens up path for the river to flow. The river of life. It opens up the flower. To prepare for the bloom. It brings dark clouds. To cool the dry earth. It mixes the color. To spread all over the Life. Not to share is to prepare ourselves for a destructive brisance. Not to share is stopping the flow of life. Not to share is dying with the mask of living. Making everything black so that eyes cannot see. No light for the soul to saunter. To share is the natural state of life. It is the only state of life. To share is to invoke the inner compassion outside.

Let us ...

ગમતાનો કરીએ ગુલાલ

गमतानो करीए गुलाल

gamtaano kariye gulaal

PS: Thanks Chetan - for bringing this Gujarati proverb to my attention; and for explaining patiently.

Shri. Dharampal

From wikipedia:

Dharampal, is a Gandhian thinker, historian and major philosopher from India. He authored The Beautiful Tree, and Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century, among other seminal works. He was born in January 1922 into a rich Vaish family of Kandhla, a small town in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh.

Among the established Indian historians, Dharampal has yet to find his place compared to the sheer significance of his contributions. His books are based painstakingly, and entirely, on colonial British documents of East India Company, and commissioned surveys, conducted in parts of India, before the annexation of India. His writings are abundantly rich in written references and references, to documents outlining the deliberate colonization agenda of British imperialism. He shows the determination of British civil servants in colonizing India as per set patterns, often referred by Gandhi as "divide and rule" rationale.

Dharampal effectively dispelled colonial myths and facile untruths about Bharat, the deliberate underplaying of civilizational achievements, and at bringing out the real strength, structure and working of the Indian society.

He passed away on October 24, 2006 at Sevagram (Gandhi’s ashram) near Wardha (Maharashtra).

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From the article written by D. P. Agarwal:

An encounter, which affected Dharampal greatly in this context, is best recounted here in his own words:

Around 1960, I was travelling from Gwalior to Delhi by a day train, a 6 or 7 hour journey in a 3rd class compartment when I met a group of people and I think in a way that meeting gave me a view of India, the larger India. The train was crowded. Some people however made a place for me. And there was this group of people, about twelve of them, some three or four women and seven or eight men. I asked them where they were coming from. They said that they had been on a pilgrimage, three months long, up to Rameshwaram, among other places. They came from two different villages north of Lucknow. They had various bundles of things and some earthen pots with them.

I asked, what did they have in those pots. They said that they had taken their own food from home. They had taken all the necessities for their food-atta, ghee, sugar - with them, and some amounts of these were still left over. The women didn't seem to mind much people trampling over them in the crowded compartment, but they did feel unhappy if someone touched their bundles and pots of food with their feet.

And then I said they must all be from one jati, from a single caste group. They said, 'No, no! We are not from one jati, we are from several jatis.' I said, how could that be? They said that there was no jati on a yatra-not on a pilgrimage. I didn't know that. I was around 38 years old, and like many others in this country who know little about the ways of the ordinary Indian-the peasants, artisans and other village folks.

And then I said, 'Did you go to Madras? Did you go to Bombay?' 'Yes! We passed through those places,' 'Did you see anything there?' 'No, we did not have any time!' It went on like that. I mentioned various important places of modern India. They had passed through most, but had not cared to visit any.

Then I said, 'You are going to Delhi now?' 'Yes!' 'You will stop in Delhi?' 'No, we only have to change trains there. We're going to Haridwar!' I said, 'This is the capital of free India. Won't you see it?' I meant it. I was not joking. They said, 'No! We don't have time. May be some other day. Not now. We have to go to Haridwar. And then we have to get back home.'

We talked perhaps 5 or 6 hours. At the end of it I began to wonder, who is going to look after this India?

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From Gurumurthy's article:

By meticulous research of the British sources over decades, Dharampal demolished the myth that India was backward educationally or economically when the British entered. Citing the Christian missionary William Adam’s report on indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar in 1835 and 1838, Dharampal established that at that time there were 100,000 schools in Bengal, one school for about 500 boys; that the indigenous medical system that included inoculation against small-pox.

Not many know of Dharampal or of his work because they have still not heard of the Indian past he had discovered.

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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 ...