Mayank Chhaya Daily

Life unfolds better if you do not stand in its way

Life unfolds better if you do not stand in its way. Last evening while cooking I noticed from my kitchen window a boy chaperoned by a young woman coming into my verandah. Even as I was making a tandoori naan I had a sense that the boy was coming to my door. He was indeed.

I opened the main door and he seemed to be knocking the storm door gently as if asking me to let him in which I did. He was followed by what turned out to be his aunt. The two-year-old boy was very cheerful and confident. He went around my apartment as if he was very familiar with it. His aunt tried to stop him to which I said ‘Oh, let him have some fun.’ He looked around, smiled at me and left.

The young lady kept telling him that it was not his house but he was quite oblivious to it as children are wont to. It was such a refreshingly innocent little encounter for me. The boy had no particular plan. I had none either. A great but transient human contact was had by all.

For as long as I remember I have tried not to stand in the way of my life. As I get in on years and see the end of my life, I challenge it even less. Try it sometime. It will offer you some memorable experiences.

Mornings are my fiefdom

I have always felt a sense of ownership about early mornings. Having always been an early riser I regard mornings as my personal fief where any presence other than mine is a dilution of that magical beauty which only I ought to have access to. I want no human mediation between the seductions of Nature and I. Perhaps there is a deeper psychology at work here, but I want early mornings and everything that unfolds within the non-human realms at that time to be exclusively for my edification.

I am acutely aware of the epic conceit of what I am saying but I am saying it anyway because it feels good. Within the seductions of early mornings, I am captivated by the interplay between the visual and the poetic—the visual outside and the poetic within. Take for instance, my morning walk today. As the sun was rising with what seemed like its own tobacco filter, on seeing the long shadows of the trees, the following two verses were born immaculately. It was as if they were fully constructed before they came out. That happens with me very frequently and when that it happens, I let those verses come out unedited and unfiltered. I say unedited because I do not particularly like the second line of the first verse where shadows remind me of someone. That is rather trite poetically, but I have let that remain.

The verses were born instantly when I saw the trees cast early morning shadows under a yellow, tobacco light. (See the picture).  That is what I mean by the interplay between the visual and the poetic in my life.

यह लम्बे होते साये

यह गहरे होते साये

अक्सर दोनों मुझको

तुम्हारी याद दिलाये

 

सुबह लगती है मुझको

अपनी जागीरदारी

जहाँ बस मैं हूँ और

ओर कोई न आये

**

These lengthening shadows

These deepening shadows

They both remind me of you

 

Mornings are my fiefdom

Where only I exist

Untrammeled by any other

--Mayank Chhaya

Booker winner Geetanjali Shree, Literate World and I

The news of Geetanjali Shree becoming the first Indian author to win the International Booker Prize instantly triggered a memory about my tangential connection with her some 21 years ago. That was the time when my Fremont, California-based multimedia company and publishing house Literate World had just launched what was the world’s first multilingual literary web portal.

We began by offering news and trends in Hindi, Spanish and English literature, the world's three biggest languages then. The plan was to have a total of 15 top global languages and make Literate World the first and the only resource of its kind for global literature. The beginning was spectacular as within the first three months of the launch we began drawing in over a million unique visitors. Bear in mind this was in 2000 end and 2001 start, four years before YouTube came into being. I mention it because it was around 2005 after YouTube’s launch that the idea of an eyeball economy began to strike roots, the idea that visitors coming to one’s website were a potential lucrative asset.

To think that a multilingual literary web portal could attract a million-plus daily visitor without any hyper marketing was extraordinary. If I had managed to stay the course, I and my former colleagues would have been very rich. But that is another story.

The reason for this background is to explain how I came to be tangentially connected to Geetanjali Shree. The Hindi literary portal’s staff was mainly based in New Delhi. It included young professionals such as Rajesh Ranjan, Sangeeta and Neelima working under a sharp supervision by Preeti Verma from Fremont. The overall Delhi operation was overseen by the publisher KPR Nair whose strong network led to LW being launched by India’s then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh on December 24, 2001 at the India International Centre.

Soon enough we started enlisting leading Hindi writers such as the late Nirmal Verma, the late Kamleshwar and the late Rajendra Yadav. These were giants of Hindi literature and to get them interested in LW was quite a task. It was the exceptional hard work done by Rajesh, Sangeeta and Neelima that we managed to rope in these stellar names both as interview subjects as well occasional contributors. Among the relatively new but widely celebrated names then was that of Geetanjali Mishra. Sangeeta wrote a brief but excellent profile of hers for the LW website. (See above). 

In fact, apart from Literate World carrying a profile of hers, she also wrote six pieces for us over a few weeks. So when I read the news of her winning the International Booker for the English translation of her novel ‘Tomb of Sand’, originally titled ‘Ret Samadhi’ and translated by Daisy Rockwell, I reached out to Rajesh to confirm that she indeed wrote for Literate World.

The only point I am making is that there was a time when one did something that was in a way an unprecedented online contribution to the world of global literature.

Buddh and the absence of beinghood

On Buddh Purnima I revisit a post which I have written several versions of many times before.

A couple of immediate thoughts come to my mind on  Gautam Buddh’s birthday today. He was born in 563 BCE around this time of year. The fact that he was born more than 500 years before the onset of the current era and its calendar, it is an approximate date. However, according to the Indian calendar, which is much older, it was on this full moon’s day that Siddharth or Gautam was born.

One is the very essence of what Buddha taught; the profoundly original idea that we are forever in the process of becoming and never become. This is the heart of Anitya or Anicca* or Impermanence. Attached to that is yet another profound idea that existence is a series of moments or Kshanika as it is called in Buddhism.

There is nothing like beinghood because we are in a constant state of flux from moment to moment, Kshanika to Kshanika.

I have frequently written about these themes.

The idea of Anitya or Anicca* or Impermanence has captured my imagination for as long as I remember. That it is at the core of Buddha’s philosophy is something I discovered only when I was 18 or 19. I have since reflected on it many times.

It is a spectacularly brilliant explanation of everything there is as long as you understand that everything there is, is there in that passing moment and hence it is really not there. The idea of Anitya can be deeply disturbing; especially because it removes what we like to call the essence. It can be deeply affecting for those stuck in the morass of corporeal certitudes about reality.

As part of my overall reading for the Dalai Lama biography ‘Man Monk Mystic’ I read many books. However, the one that has managed to make most impact is the 1916 edition of “Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism” by the extraordinary scholar of Indian culture and arts Ananda Coomaraswamy (22 August 1877 − 9 September 1947).

There is a lot to reflect over in this book first published in London by George G. Harrap & Company. For the purposes of this post, I would like to reproduce a brief passage about Anitya or Anicca. I must caution that it may sound rather abstruse at first but invest some thought in it and the idea will stand utterly illuminated. Of course, your comprehension will disappear as soon as you have attained it.

How essential in Buddhism is the doctrine of the eternal succession of causes appears from the fact it is often spoken as the gospel:

“I will teach you the Dhamma,” says Gautama, “That being present, this becomes; from the arising of that, this arises. That being absent, this does not become; from the cessation of that, this ceases.”

We read again that “Dhamma-analysis is knowledge concerning conditions.”

What he thought was designed to avoid the two extreme doctrines of realism and nihilism, the belief in phenomenal being and the belief that there is no phenomenal process at all. “Everything is: this, O Kaccana**, is one extreme view. Everything is not: this is the second extreme view. Avoiding both these extremes the Tathagata*** teaches the Norm by the Mean.” This doctrine of the Mean asserts that everything is a becoming, a flux without beginning (first cause) or end; there exists no static moment when this becoming attains to beinghood—no sooner can we conceive it by the attributes of name and form, it has transmigrated or changed to something else. In place of an individual, there exists a succession of instants of consciousness.

“Strictly speaking the life of a living being is exceedingly brief, lasting only while a thought lasts. Just a chariot wheel in rolling rolls only at one point of the tire, and in resting rests only at one point; in exactly the same way, the life of a living being lasts for the period of one thought. As soon as that thought has ceased, the living being is said to have ceased.

“As it has been said:

“The being of a past moment of thought has lived, but does not live, nor will it live.

“The being of a future moment of thought will live, but has not lived nor does it live.

“The being of the present moment of thought does live, but has not lived, nor will it live.”

As Coomaraswamy  points out, “We are deceived if we allow ourselves to believe that there is ever a pause in the flow of becoming, a resting place where positive existence is attained for even the briefest duration of time.”

Life as a series of moments always transmigrating is an astounding concept. Think about this assertion: “In place of an individual, there exists a succession of instants of consciousness.” It is poetic, profound and purely cerebral. Look at his explanation of moments which have passed, which are, and which are yet to be. It is so finely sliced. This is the mind of someone to whom everything stood fully explained.

I am willing to assert that as a purely cerebral living goes, there has been nothing that has surpassed Buddha since Buddha with the possible exception of Albert Einstein. In the timeline that we understand, that would be some 2500 years. It is ironic that for someone who emphasized the idea of Anitya or Anicca or Impermanence above all else seems to have lasted quite a while.

I would strongly recommend Coomaraswamy’s outstanding book to anyone who is interested in, for want of a better word, the gospel of Buddhism. I have always found it odd that a philosophy of impermanence should be given a traditional structure. But that is a separate discussion.

* Words such as Anicca or Dhamma are the Pali language versions of Anitya and Dharma

** Kaccana is Pali for Katyayana who was a disciple of Buddha.

*** Tahtagata is how Buddha referred to himself. It is interpreted to mean many things but mostly it is “The one who has thus gone” or “The one who has thus come.”

What is time?

This morning the YouTube algorithm suggested to me this terrific video by the noted physicist Dr. Sean Carroll. It is dated August 7, 2018 and deals with themes which have occupied my mind for decades now. As I watched it, I came upon Dr. Carroll's bit about whether time is quantized into discrete packets rather than one smooth, seamless reality. That immediately triggered a memory in me of a post I had written on February 25,2017 and versions of that several times prior.

The question of whether time comes in discrete packets or indeed what is time has preoccupied minds of scientists and philosophers for millennia. I am not going to resolve the question in one post or....ever but it is stimulating to think about such themes. It is just as well that YouTube suggested this wonderful lecture by Dr. Carroll.

February 25,2017

It is time to return to the “Kshanvaad” or the philosophy of momentariness. At its center is the astonishingly ingenious concept of Gautam Buddha that the universe is momentary and does not exist between moments. I have written about this frequently being quite conscious how quantum-like existence stood revealed to Buddha.

I describe this philosophy in Hindi as:

क्षणों के मध्य में जो छुपा है

वही तो हमारा भ्रम है

हमारे अस्तित्व का

(Kshanon ke madhy mein jo chhupa hai

Wahi to hamara bhram hai

Hamare astitv ka)

What hides between moments

Is our illusion

Of our existence

--Mayank Chhaya

I am as interested in the philosophy of momentariness as I am in quantum physics because both in their own way deal with an unresolved realm at the Kshan/quantum level. It is not my case that there is any intellectual affinity between the two. One was conceived of by the staggering mind of Buddha over 2500 years ago while the other a collective result of the work done by Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg in the early 20th century.

I find Kshanvaad calming in a strange way. Swinging from moment to moment like on vines in a surreal jungle of time is exhilarating. A vast majority of us negotiates swinging on vines for quite a long duration; some of us miss and fall in the void of illusion that we call death.

If the universe and the experience of the universe, including our own individual existence, is nothing but forever flowing discrete moments, then what is all this frenzy about anything? This has been my default response to everything in life so far. Of course, there have been times in recent years when familial responsibilities trigger a baser level response but as a single self, I have no particular response to anything.

‘Kshanvaad’ is part of the overarching Buddhist idea of Anitya or Impermanence. Those who believe in the traditional God-Us dynamic, as in most religions of the world, feel rather unsettled by the idea of Impermanence/Momentariness and hence perpetual fluidity of existence, its origin, its meaning and its resolution. As in quantum physics, we never really catch the essence of our existence. I have never felt unsettled by this. I ride discrete moments of existence like a highly skilled surfer or a vine leaper.

Some day I will write about the difficulty in the idea of Kshanika as to whether those moments are separable from the unfolding event, life and the universe if you will. I suppose this is enough esoterica for a Saturday morning. For me though it just moments that keep passing leaving an afterglow that too fades.

A pink flower sticker on Zeenat Aman's thigh and my 45-year-old visual memory

Zeenat Aman in 'Chhaila Babu' , 1977.

As a nearly 16-year-old towards the end of 1977, I watched a movie called ‘Chhaila Babu’ in Ahmedabad. It starred Rajesh Khanna and Zeenat Aman. Forty five years later I watched the film again today in search of a visual memory that Zeenat Aman had left so sharply etched on my ragingly hormonal teenage mind—a flaming pink plastic flower sticker pasted on her upper right thigh.

Before I get into specifics, let me just point out that for no ostensible reason the YouTube algorithm suggested to me the movie today on my page. ‘Chhaila Babu’ was nowhere on my mind. It had not been on my mind since 1977. However, when I saw its icon on my YouTube page, there was a gushing surge of memories, at the top of which was Zeenat Aman’s upper right thigh and the pink plastic sticker on it.

I was reasonably sure that there were scenes in the movie I watched four and a half decades ago showing a pink flower sticker on the upper thigh of Zeenat Aman. I think I have made my point by repeating that bit about the pink flower sticker's placement. I am sure you get my drift. However, my point is only marginally about the obvious sexiness of that visual and mainly about how the human mind retains information via enduring visual references. Those references came an hour and sixteen minutes into the film as Aman performed a seductive oomph-laden dance. When that dance started, I knew I was about to be reintroduced to the pink flower sticker you know where.

On seeing that I was both elated and relieved that my mind had not falsified a memory or extrapolated it from somewhere else. Although I generally have a very strong visual retention over decades, mine is not by any measure an eidetic memory. I concede that remembering the visuals so precisely was partly a function of my hormonal teenage mind, but it is mainly about the way my brain stores information visually. It is not my case that I am unusual in that. I am sure it is true of a large number of people.   

For instance, I remember a pink flowery salwar kameez worn by a journalist friend when she walked into my newspaper office in 1984. She shall remain anonymous.

Separately, what a coming together this is of human memory and algorithms of the information age we live in.

You can be sure that I will paint this at some point soon. 

Does U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine constitute direct participation in war with Russia?

The following is by me for Indica News

 

By Mayank Chhaya

In an age where information is as much a weapon as it is an essential tool for daily life, does passing on crucial intelligence to one of the two sides in a war constitute direct participation?

The answer may be complicated and nuanced but it is certainly not an outright no. That is what makes the U.S. decision to arm Ukraine with very specific intelligence that has led to the killings of top Russian generals as well as even the sinking of Russia’s flagship missile cruiser Moskva problematic.

So far Washington has steadfastly stayed away from putting American military boots on the ground for two obvious reasons, one being that Ukraine is not member of the NATO and the other, more importantly, that doing so would escalate the conflict into a feared third world war.

However, heavy weaponry worth hundreds of millions of dollars has been provided by the U.S. apart from other military assistance. What is extraordinary, however, are the disclosures in two New York Times stories on two successive days on May 4 and 5. One said U.S. intelligence “is helping kill Russian generals” and the other “U.S. intelligence helped Ukraine strike Russian flagship.”

It would not be altogether inconceivable that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, reputedly increasingly isolated in Moscow, would call the U.S. action a direct military involvement with Ukraine. Although wars have been fought in history using proxy nations and their soldiers’ shoulders to fire the guns on, Washington’s specific intelligence sharing with Ukraine in an era where information is a weapon creates an uncharted territory.

“The administration has sought to keep much of the battlefield and maritime intelligence it is sharing with the Ukrainians secret out of fear it will be seen as an escalation and provoke President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia into a wider war. But in recent weeks, the United States has sped heavier weapons to Ukraine and requested an extraordinary $33 billion in additional military, economic and humanitarian aid from Congress, demonstrating how quickly American restraints on support for Ukraine are shifting,” said the Times story on May 5 by Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes.

It is obvious that Washington would have much rather kept its specific actionable intelligence sharing with Kyiv a secret. Now that it is out it is in the realm of how the world generally and Putin particularly interpret it. The U.S. has defended sharing intelligence with Ukraine. Russia’s response to the stories has not been specific so far but the disclosures surely will not be lost on Putin. Moscow has quite curiously countered saying the Moskva was not destroyed by missile strikes but a fire onboard the ship that triggered a munitions explosion sinking it. It is in Moscow’s public relations interest to spin thus as it is in the U.S./Ukraine’s interest to call it specific missile strikes.

It has been argued by many that one of the reasons why Ukraine has been so successful in significantly thwarting the Russian forces is because the intelligence provided by America. It is possible that the international community may soon begin to debate whether such intelligence sharing ought to be viewed active involvement. After all, the advent of unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones, has changed the traditional definition of war. With ever more smart robotic weapons underway, how long before something seemingly soft and undefinable as intelligence/information would be characterized as a weapon by countries?

Traditional notions of wars meaning infantry and tank-based confrontations with aerial strikes are being upended by the rise of technologically brilliant but potentially devastating remotely operated weapons, which are also highly effective intelligence gatherers, including military satellites.

It would be unreasonable to insist that specific, actionable intelligence sharing with one of the two sides in a war does not approach the definition of a direct participation. The shoulders may be Ukrainian, but many weapons and intelligence are American.