South Asia Daily

Get over yourselves, you self-absorbed runts

'Butterflower'--Mayank Chhaya

Whether it is the flowers, insects, birds, rabbits, trees, squirrels, chipmunks, hawks or dogs, the marvel of how many parallel worlds unfold within a few steps of my own existence does not cease to amaze me.

Yesterday, I spent about five minutes just gaping at a colony of strikingly patterned black and golden yellow insects, whose entomological specifics I am clueless about, on a plant, whose botanical classification I am equally clueless about. From the looks of it the two adult looking insects had just given birth to about a dozen baby insects on a single leaf.

Barely five feet away a bunch of sparrows was meticulously picking out worms from somewhat unwieldy grass. That was within a few feet of a squirrel climbing up a maple tree with a nut it had picked up from somewhere even as a chipmunk was chirping short chips at my presence.

On a jasmine creeper nearby a tiny hummingbird was extracting juice from the flowers as a couple of butterflies—likely the Monarch—were flitting around in a flight that seemed to defy all laws of aerodynamics.

There were a couple of bunnies just sitting improbably still some distance away. Sensing some unseen danger, they suddenly scampered across the yard and hid under my deck. A couple of seconds later a hawk landed on the electric pole, having just missed its daily meal.

Just looking around my yard is a routine I maintain. The other day I photographed a Monarch butterfly mid-takeoff from a flower. In that brilliant transience the flower and the butterfly seemed to become one--butterflower as it were.

A neighbor's pooch from across the road was barking at me in a hilariously ambitious show of aggression. 

We are so consumed by anthropocentrism that we willfully disregard so many worlds throbbing around us all the time—all completely oblivious to what Donald Trump might tweet next or whose hand Narendra Modi might slap hard or which country’s economy might be tanking or who might be jerking off somewhere. (The last bit was gratuitous.)

The point is get over yourselves, you self-absorbed runts.

Today, I desire to live, Today, I am intent on dying

At the risk of stating the obvious, the obvious ought to be stated to mark the 96^th birth anniversary of the great lyricist Shailendra (August 30, 1926-December 14, 1966).

Although he wrote some of Hindi cinema’s most beloved songs in a career spanning about 17 years over 127 films from 1949, there is one line from the much-celebrated song from the movie ‘Guide’ (1965) that towers above all. I don’t think there has been any other song where the lyricist has so powerfully captured a woman’s exhilarating sense of freedom in a hidebound society as in “Kanto se khinch key eh aanchal.”

As I said, it is an obvious choice but has to be made for that one brilliant construct.

आज फिर जीने की तमन्ना है

आज फिर मरने का इरादा है

(Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai

Aaj phir marne ka irada hai)

Today, I desire to live

Today, I am intent on dying

These two irresistibly powerful and so contradictory emotions in a single line superbly depict the state of mind of Guide’s heroine Rosie (Waheeda Rehman) as she seeks to break away from the shackles of oppressive domesticity. It always takes a great poet to distill human emotions down to something so telling.

The list of Shailendra’s songs is long and rich but this line is arguably the pinnacle of his poetic imagination. Once again, I grant it is an obvious choice but that should hardly dilute its brilliance.

Another line that always pops in my mind is from ‘Patita’ (1953) in the song ‘Kisi ne apna bana ke mujh ko’. The line goes:

कोई सितारे लूटा रहा था

किसी ने दामन बिछा दिया

(Koi sitarey loota raha tha

Kisi ne daaman bichha diya)

Someone was squandering away the stars

Someone spread out the hem (to catch some)

The translation is a bit iffy because by Daaman, Shailendra may also have meant the plains as in the ground or foothills.

Should I be content with a 90 cent royalty or let out profanities?

 

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, when the ration card was a thing, one of the most frequently heard maxims was “Santoshi nar sada sukhi’ (A man content(ed) is always happy.) Bear in mind that this is from a time before gender sensitivity and correctness where the descriptor “man” subsumed all humans, particularly women. I have also heard the more inclusive “Santoshi loko sada sukhi” (Content(ed) people are always happy) from my mother Snehlata.

I was thinking about this approach to life this morning after receiving an alert from my bank that a royalty payment of—hold your breath—90 cents was being processed from Amazon. It is for my recently issued updated biography ‘The Dénouement: The 14th Dalai Lama's life of persistence.’ I can always invoke the “santoshi nar” in me and choose to be happy that I earned something—even if it is just a measly 90 cents. Or I can let out a series of profanities at the plight of an impecunious writer. It is a real struggle because cussing under my breath as well as above it is a default mode these days. It is an easy thing to do. But trying to be content is a million times harder, particularly towards the end of the month when wolves are snarling at the door.

To be perfectly candid, I even started say “what the…” and stopped myself. This payment coupled with not yet credited payment of perhaps between $3 and $5 for the sale of a sheer wrap on VIDA based on my artwork should be enough motivation to try to be content. I am reasonably certain that sometime during the day today contentment will be devoured by disgust but at the time of writing this I am trying to be a “santoshi nar.” The only problem is Santosh is it is not yet a currency in which I can pay my rent, hospital bill, utilities, including the internet that lets me write and publish this drivel, groceries, blood pressure and migraine medicine. You must have noticed that the list has nothing that is even remotely pleasure-based.

I am going to conduct a social experiment when I go to Target or Walgreens in a day or so and tell the cashier “Do you accept Santosh?” Come to think of it, Santosh has a nice ring to it for a new currency to replace Bitcoin.

Remembering Jhaverchand Meghani and Firaq Gorakhpuri, two literary giants

Jhaverchand Meghani’s at his newspaper desk (Photo: www.jhaverchandmeghani.com)

I did not realize that two Indian literary giants, Jhaverchand Meghani and Raghupati Sahay Firaq Gorakhpuri were born on the same day and the same year. That was August 28, 1896. While Meghani, an icon of Gujarati literature, died on March 9, 1947, Firaq, a giant of Urdu poetry, lived much longer and passed away March 3, 1982.

Today happens to be the 123^rd birth anniversary of these two extraordinary figures of India’s rich literary and cultural heritage. I have written about both—about Meghani on August 28, 2016 and Firaq on June 13, 2013. It makes perfect sense to republish the two posts.

August 28, 2016

There are those who are more than the sum of their parts. The great Gujarati folklorist, poet, novelist, journalist, singer and thinker Jhaverchand Meghani (August 28, 1896-March 9, 1947), whose 120th birth anniversary falls today, was one of them.

Speaking of his parts, he wrote 14 novels, four plays, nine collections of poetry, 19 biographies, 11 short stories, 11 folk songs, 13 folk tales and 13 collections of folklore and literary criticisms. These add up to create a Gujarati cultural icon whom Gandhi described as “Krishna’s flute” and a “national poet laureate.” While he was creating all those works, he was also immersed in India’s campaign for independence. Sardar Patel called him a leading figure in India’s struggle for independence who spent his entire life in that pursuit.

Meghani led an enormously rich literary, cultural, political and social life that led him to the colossal figures of his time, including Rabindranath Tagore sometime in 1933 in Bombay. According to Meghani’s official website, the great painter Nandlal Bose had heard Meghani sing his own Gujarati folk songs and was enraptured. He persuaded Tagore to meet Meghani while in Bombay. Their meeting was an unqualified success with Tagore being spell-bound by Meghani’s literary and musical passion. The website quotes Tagore as saying, "Much as I wish to visit Gujarat again, I am afraid I won't be able to make it. Why not, then, you come over to Santiniketan ? We shall compare notes and publish jointly English translation of selected things. Do therefore come. But, yes, in winter --- not summer when the heat is scorching over there."

Meghani’s journalistic connection came in the form of his assignment as a columnist at the Janmbhoomi newspaper in 1934. As part of his passion to “raze the walls of discrimination” between the educated and the unlettered, Meghani’s column titled ‘Kalam ane Kitab’ (The Pen &the Book) encouraged readership outside the scholarly domain to get involved with literature.

When one thinks of Gujarati literary giants such as Meghani and scores of others one feels how skewed the reputation of the state has been because of its historically flourishing mercantile and entrepreneurial culture. There is a legion of non-Gujaratis who would never suspect the state of having any connection to a world-class literary tradition. Meghani and many like him would be happily counted among world-class litterateurs.

I have a collection of his novellas. This morning I chose a random short story titled ‘Shikar’ (The Hunt). It is a story about how a group of men are tasked with having to scare a leopard out of a forest into the open so that a local governor—presumably English—can then hunt it down. It is a simple story but Meghani tells it with such literary relish even though it barely stretching 2000 words. In describing a patch of an extraordinarily fertile land, he begins by saying, “Time must have used lightening as a plough here.”

He vividly describes the leopard, which is resting in the morning after a rich nightly hunt. “A long leopard is panting and resting in the hollow of a tree, its white stomach spread and puffing like a cushy mattress.” The leopard, of course, has to be driven out of its slumber without being harmed because the governor must not be denied the pleasure of having hunted it while it was alive. As the advance hunting party approaches the forest with much commotion, Meghani writes, “He (the leopard) does not respond to every noise but does occasionally bare its dagger-like teeth and shake his head as if mocking and saying ‘With which cow have you set up my engagement (In the sense of wedding) today?’”

The leopard is very hard to move away of its domain and out into the thinning forest line where the governor and his party is waiting ready to shoot. Eventually, a member of the advance hunting party has to skillfully shoot the beast into one of its legs. He limps out to be shot by the governor and others. As the animal emerges from the woods, Meghani has the governor say out triumphantly in English , “Yes! There..there’s the milk white stomach. Shoot.” They all do indiscriminately because there was no need to take a precise aim on a wounded leopard.

“Before the day-end at the edge of the forest ten motors (motorcars) kicked up clouds of dust. The dust settled back again into the lap of the earth. The sun went to the sun’s house…..” And then Meghani ends with a characteristic literary flourish about those last remaining men of the advance party: “The villagers carried the carcass of the dead day and returned to their village.”

Here is to the great Jhaverchand Meghani.

June 13, 2013

Raghupati Sahay Firaq Gorakhpuri

तुम मुखातिब भी हो,करीब भी हो

तुम को देखें के तुमसे बात करें

(Tum mukhatib bhi ho, karib bhi

Tum ko dekhen ke tum se baat karen)

(You are here and you are near

Should I gaze at you or should I talk?)

--Firaq Gorakhpuri

June 13, 2013

Raghupati Sahay ‘Firaq Gorakhpuri’ (August 28, 1895-March 3, 1982) has long been one of my favorite literary figures. Regarded as one of the most important names in Urdu poetry, literary criticism and language scholarship, Firaq, which means separation in Urdu, was one of those naturally charismatic people. A thinker of subtle but charming self-absorption, he was at equal ease teaching English literature (his professional calling) and creating and reciting his Urdu/Persian poetry.

It is a pity that there is a sparse audio-visual record of Firaq because he was such an effortlessly cinematic figure and could have lent himself to a terrific full-length documentary feature. I have seen few people who smoke cigarettes with such relish and yet such detachment at once.

There is a short documentary about him, which was made by India’s Films Division in 1971, available on YouTube. He was already 75 then. Born in 1896, he died in 1982 at 85. There are also a couple of other sessions from a different video about where he holds forth on how language often rises from much more intimate sources such as individual families. (See the video above). It has one of those rare stimulating conversations carried out by Firaq, unmindful of and unselfconscious about the presence of TV cameras. With his cigarette dangling he discusses finer points of language.

He makes a couple of striking points when he says,”Bhasha ka base illiteracy hai. (The base of language is illiteracy).Aur literature kehte hain brilliant illiteracy ko. (Literature is brilliant illiteracy).” He also says that brilliant literature should not be defined by the use of words that ordinary, perhaps even illiterate, people do not use.

“Great literature aur brilliant literature wahi hai ki itne bade bachche ko jo labz malum hai us se who Gita likh le,” ( Great literature and brilliant literature is one where the words that a child this small knows can use to write the Gita),” Firaq says.

He illustrates his point about the accessibility of great literature by giving the example of Charles Dickens and how his cleaning lady could enjoy his books in her free time. He says the great Hindi litterateurs Premchand and Surdas both had this facility.

I admit to not having read Firaq much but from whatever little one has read one can infer his intellectual depth. I say infer because Firaq was a great proponent of being able to infer when one is not well-versed with something.

The short Films Division documentary does an effective job of capturing the more compelling aspects of Firaq’s personality. Obviously gifted with a charming sense of humor and great skill as raconteur, Firaq’s presence at poetic conventions was a major draw. There are a couple of places in this documentary where Firaq opens his recitation with humor. In one he describes how a man falls inside a well. A poet happens to pass by and he too falls inside the well. Rather than looking for ways to rescue themselves, the poet declares that he would recite some verses from his poetry. The other funny incident that Firaq narrates is about a haunted house which no one wanted to buy. A poet, unable to find any home for himself, decides to buy it. He then drives the ghosts away by reciting his poetry.

There is so much to quote from Firaq’s great body of poetic works but for the purposes of this post I would like to cite just one throwaway line from this documentary.

“Zulmat ke seeney mein humdum

Main roz charagha karta hoon.”

(In the heart of darkness, my dear

I always spread light (His literal words are ‘I light lamps everyday’)

Firaq’s poetry was also defined by the influence of nature, something he said he was inspired to do by the likes of Wordsworth. There is a short discussion with students in this documentary about it.

Perhaps I am wrong but one no longer finds this level of erudition and this finesses and sophistication in articulation of great ideas that the literary giants such Prof. Sahay commanded with such lightness of touch. Pay attention to how he says what a civilization like India has had to balance for millennia before it acquired its greatness.

A presidential car that is at once in neutral, reverse and drive

I have been thinking hard about a visual that would accurately capture President Donald Trump’s behavior as a government leader as well as a human being. I came up with the one above. This is how he he runs his life and government. It is a car that is at once in neutral, reverse and drive. It is no surprise then that you hear such horrendously frictious noises all the time without really going anywhere specific.

He is a man who is constantly upstaging and upending himself when he is not consciously and unconsciously lying. There is a certain malignant fecundity to his imagination that is no longer possible to keep pace with for the world because he is himself not able to. Of all the absurd claims and assertions that he makes, the one that caught my attention happened yesterday during a G7 news conference. He said the first lady, Melania Trump had come to know North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. “The first lady has gotten to know Kim Jong-un and I think she’d agree with me, he is a man with a country that has tremendous potential,” he said.

Even without detailed fact-checking I knew that this was an epic fib because I did not recall offhand any occasion when Mrs. Trump had met the North Korean dictator. That Trump felt imperturbably comfortable claiming that is a testament to how irretrievably far he has gone into his own fantasy world. It was a measure of how absurd that claim was that the White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham was compelled to clarify it. She has been quoted as saying, “While the first lady hasn’t met him (Kim) the president feels like she’s gotten to know him too.”

Read the wording carefully. It says “…the president feels like she’s gotten to know him too.” I too get a whole lot of feelings on any given day. For instance, I feel like I have gotten to know the president so well that I can make whatever claims I want about him.

Svasaṃvitti, self-awareness, and I

MC by MC

Lately, I have been feeling too aware of myself. I mean I am always around viscerally, mentally and philosophically. Yesterday, for instance, as I was intently watching two butterflies and one humming bird go about their business with flowers I was so overcome with what the profoundly Buddhist view of svasaṃvitti, or “self-awareness” that I felt debilitated for a few moments.

As is my wont, to understand that strange experience I turned to two broadly contemporaneous seventh century scholars—the Buddhist Dharmakīrti and the orthodox Hindu Brahmanical Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (660 CE). I have written about both a few times some five years ago. The discourse becomes deeply esoteric touching on themes such as the “eternality” of language and what we know as śabda (or Shabd in modern usage). I occasionally return to one my favorite watering holes—Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), particularly its section about Kumārila and Dharmakīrti.

For me, reading that is somewhat akin to reading quantum mechanics—there are fleeting moments of lucid comprehension of what is being discussed struggling in the morass of utter incomprehension. For instance at one point the SEP speaks about śabda in these terms. I caution you that it gets rather abstruse.

“It is important to note, with respect to Kumārila's characteristically Mīmāṃsaka intuitions about language, that the word śabda—which often means “word,” as in the fifth of Jaimini's Mīmāṃsā Sūtras, where it is relations between śabda and referents (artha) that are said to be primordial—is essentially ambiguous between what Saussure distinguished as langue and parole. Thus, the same word can also refer generally to “sound”—that is, as Indian philosophers take it, to the propagation of acoustic disturbances in “space” (ākāśa), which describes the objects of the auditory sense faculty—and śabda can therefore be reasonably understood as referring either to language as such (Saussure's langue), or to particular, temporally describable occasions of linguistic utterance (Saussure's parole). Clearly, then, arguments for thinking that śabda is eternal will seem rather different depending on which of these senses one takes to be in play. Buddhists, especially insofar as they are typically apt to focus on particular occasions of use, find it obviously true that (as on one favored Buddhist example of a formally stated inference) “śabda is impermanent, because it is produced,” just like artifacts like jars (which we know to be both produced on particular occasions, and essentially impermanent); but this claim is less obviously compelling if instead one takes it that śabda denotes always already available conditions of the possibility of any particular utterance's counting as linguistic.”

As someone who makes a living using language and words, I was deeply struck by the idea that śabda is “acoustic disturbances in “space” (ākāśa).” It is weird that this should come up today since it was only the day before yesterday that I uploaded a short clip from documentary ‘Gandhi’s Song’ where the great Gujarati poet-philosopher Narsinh Mehta makes a reference to shabd (śabda) in one of his verses that I recite in it.

Coming back to becoming acutely aware of myself lately, it is not necessarily a pleasant or comfortable experience initially. It is challenging to become so aware of one’s corporeal and extra-corporeal self.  As of this morning that reflexive awareness has not subsided. That partly explains this rather scattered post.

Joys of oil pastels

I am just discovering that oil pastels are a very versatile medium. It is a personal peculiarity that the closer my fingers are to canvas or paper or whichever surface I am working on, the better my lines become. That push-back and friction between my hand and the surface help me produce better results than brushes do. Brushwork is a skill of a different kind that I succeed at only erratically.

In a span of 24 hours, I whipped up four oil pastels on paper. Unlike normal crayons or dry pastels, oil pastels produce contours and heights that are closer to oils. Rather than using their tips, I use oil pastels sideways after peeling off their paper wrapping. While dry pastels are excellent producing light on paper, oil pastels produce depths because chunks stick to the surface better.

I have done some pieces using all three—acrylic, dry pastels, and oil pastels. The results are rather interesting because all three absorb and reflect light uniquely and in the process give the works an unusual luster and sheen.

Here are the four oil pastels on paper.

My best-selling merchandise on VIDA

A cocoon wrap with a collage of my paintings on VIDA.

It would have been improbably joyous enough for me if only one woman occasionally draped herself with a cocoon wrap with a collage of my paintings printed on it. It turns out there are at least five somewhere in the world who have purchased the wrap in the picture via the online fashion label VIDA. In fact, this particular product happens to be my best-selling one on my VIDA store.

You might justifiably think that five is not a number worth mentioning in the “best-selling” category. I agree it is too small but remember I thought even one sale of anything of mine was one too many of. From that standpoint, five is a veritable blockbuster for me.

The collage that you see on the wrap was made by me on an impulse using a variety of my paintings. I had no expectation that it would be worth anything as merchandise. So far, courtesy of VIDA and its patrons, I have been proved wrong.

I have several products on my VIDA page, some of which have sold in ones and twos but the cocoon wrap remains the most selling piece. I generally avoid plugging my ware here but bear in mind that I have to do several things to just get by in life. In any case, it is not as if you pay me to read this blog.

From Financial Action Task Force to Parle G to Edgar Degas

 'Mademoiselle Bécat at the Café des Ambassadeurs' by Edgar Degas, 1885. 

My version

This morning, I first began writing about the news that the Asia-Pacific Group (APG), a regional affiliate of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), has placed the Pakistan on the "Enhanced Expedited Follow-Up List (Blacklist)" for its failure to meet its standards. I had referred to Pakistan’s FATF problems in my analysis for South Asia Monitor.  After the first few lines, I lost interest and then considered writing a post about the news that Parle Products, the makers of India’s most popular biscuits Parle G has announced that it is retrenching some 10,000 of its employees. I lost interest in that as well.

I did what I always do when I lose interest—visit Google Arts & Culture. I found a wonderful 1885 work titled 'Mademoiselle Bécat at the Café des Ambassadeurs' by Edgar Degas. That caught my eye and prompted me to do my own oil pastels on paper version. That should be all for today.

Peter Sellers, NYTimes and I

In my very occasional series ‘I said that first’, here is one. This morning The New York Times editorial had a familiar name in its headline—Peter Sellers? Where did I read Peter Sellers mentioned to make a point about Donald Trump? Oh yeah, it was here on this very blog yesterday.

This is how I started my post, “Yesterday, we were treated to Chance the Gardener caliber of non-sequiturs by President Donald Trump over Kashmir. In case you do not know who Chance the Gardener was, check out Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie ‘Being There.’”

The Times headline says, “Trump, Greenland, Denmark. Is This Real Life? Or a Peter Sellers movie?”

What’s the point of mentioning this? Well, to claim some cheap “I said that first” thrill. My context was, of course, about Trump’s wanting to mediate between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

When I saw the Peter Sellers reference in the headline, I thought the edit might refer to a particular movie but it does not. It merely keeps it confined to the headline presuming that its readers will catch on the pop culture reference instantly. I chose to elaborate it a bit and even gave the name of a particular film and a link to a trailer.