SNUFF AGAINST SMOKE

How fashions change! I mean, not how quickly, but how unreasonably. We were all snuff-takers once. Where are the world's snuff-takers now! Literally smoked out of existence, in spite of their valiant efforts to snuff out flame and smoke all at once. Sulking in the country where it is not without friends snuff has been threatening to stage a come-back; but it hasn't. In this madly galloping world of ours there are no come-backs, there can't be, and snuff knows it. But snuff has things to say against its triumphant detractors and must say it.

They say snuffing is dirty. Every snuffer, it is alleged, carries about him evidence compelling condemnation of the habit. His hand-kerchief, his shirt-front, his nose-front, the palm of his left hand and the fingers of his right, and (going nearer home) his bath towel, all prove the charge......but if only one is prepared to concede that snuff is dirt. It unfortunately isn't, atleast not more than smoke. What is smoke, my dear enemy? Ask any scientist if you don't happen to know. He will tell you that it is just finer particles of dirt, of the same dirt, dirt of dirty tobacco. And can you deny, you smoker, that you too carry about you evidence, inescapable evidence, of your being the devotee of dirt? Examine your once fair fingers, especially the ones that have been hugging cigarettes too much: study your lips, as you study your friends, and see how dark and dry they are, lips which were once so invitingly rosy and moist, lips that you ought to keep as a sacred trust for your partner, be or to be; inspect your clothes and observe in how many places they have smoked in imitation of your admirable self, leaving dark dirty holes behind; and then remember that all the harm you have done yourself is permanent, while a little water and soap can and do make us and ours as clean and fresh as ever.

We make ourselves, our clothes, our furniture, our rooms, dirty, we admit it for arguments sake; but you, you incurable smokers, contaminate the whole atmosphere. We don't send our snuff up other people's noses; you do, unconsciously, often consciously and mischievously sometimes. Have you ever practised toleration, a little consideration for the feelings, the noses, and the delicate lungs of your neighbours? You are lords, such sweet-smelling lords that the innocent, unsophisticated ones in our country hold their noses in your presence. And yet you don't learn. You won't learn. What is the result? Our Governments are stepping in. You can't now smoke in cinema houses; you have to ask your fellow-travellers' permission before you smoke in trains; you shall not smoke in buses; you dare not smoke near petrol-bunks; in short you cannot smoke wherever you badly want to. And you deserve it. For yours has been a policy of aggression, naked aggression against the peace-loving noses of the world. We would have taken your case to the Disunited Nations but we remember Kashmir and refrain. We don't want to remember Algeria because she is smoking all over...... Apart from us your enemies, what are your friends the Doctors telling you? A weak heart, don't smoke; a sluggish liver, don't smoke. An ulcer in the intestine, don't smoke; a touch of bronchitis, don't smoke; frequent colds, don't smoke. No snuff-taker has ever been so pestered by the people, Governments or doctors. Change, change quickly, friends, come back to us, the fatted calves are ready, we will stuff your nose with snuff.

If you are still hesitating we invite you to compare the effects. You fumigate (or incense?) the Gods within and, they and you become stupid and lethargic and go to sleep; you might call it a divine peace. You might even claim that smoking clears the mind. But we know that smoke can only cloud and darken; what you call peace, clarity, is only a settling of the soot...... And pray tell us, how can smoke ever illuminate except by ceasing to be itself? Now, see how snuff works. We put a little of our innocent looking explosive into our nostrils and just wait But what tense waiting (We don't have to ignite our stuff as you have to. See what a lot we save on matches alone. We would not have known what to do with all our money but for income-tax) We feel the quick fire running up our eyes fill, our whole being is supercharged, and then after a tremendous moment, with our whole body we burst. And the peace that follows is not of darkness and torpor but of purgation; our eyes are bright, our noses are clear, our lungs are clean, our minds are free, we see into the life of things. Only our hand-kerchiefs are dirty, but we have plenty of them to spare. But who has lungs or lung-space to spare! Come back to our fold, friends, we will help sweep your lung clean, with a simple pinch snuff.

Smoking, they say, promotes friendship. Borrow a cigarette and see. Cigars and cigarettes are so costly these days that they bolt rather than open hearts. But, even now, with snuff a mere anna (penny) will buy, one can enlist armies of friends and collect tons of love. At the preliminary raps on the snuff-box the eyes of the company open, nostrils enlarge. When the box is gently opened all Arabia breathes from it; the charmed friends begin to sniff like horses. As the box at last passes round and the fine powder ascends every eye is full of tears of joy and grateful love.

The first smoker was the first to be ducked; and he deserved to be. I am referring as you will have seen to Sir Walter Raleigh and his faithful servant. But that pail of water did not mend him. His expedition in search of gold on the success of which, you know, depended his life, ended in smoke. Which smoker would go digging when he could lounge fuming. But King James was no smoker, and sent Raleigh promptly to the gallows. Of course he was allowed to befog his poor head with smoke before he went to his dance at the end of the rope.

But ducking is the least of their contributions to the world's woes. They are the world's worst incendiaries. Cigarette-ends thrown carelessly (or deliberately) away are every year causing goods and buildings worth crores and crores of rupees to go up in smoke, no doubt enjoyable to them. More is destroyed by them in any century than by all the war-mongers of the period. Yet these, though guilty of arson think themselves the true gentlemen, and despise the poor snuffers who never did anybody any harm. Newman's definition was never true; more harm the better gentleman. But let me not be unjust to these smokers. They are good, but for them there would have been no Fire Insurance Companies. No smoke, no fire.

What in these civilized days is the human nose for? To snore, say some; to provide a safety-valve for the smoker who might otherwise burst, say others; to be the first to smell the atmosphere of one's own mouth, says a cynic; to act as a buffer for the face, says a friend with a prominent nose; to wear nose-rings says an ancient beauty, to give the face a right and a left side in the interests of symmetry, says an artist; to lead men and women by the nose, says demagogue, to poke one's nose in other peoples affairs, says isolationist. I prefer Coleridge's answer to the smoker, "you abuse snuff, perhaps it is the final cause of human nose." I have, however to protest against that word 'perhaps', though it denotes the caution, the tolerance, the humility, the philosophy, so characteristic of the true snuffer and so notoriously absent in the typical smoker.

ON THE ART OF RECOGNITION

In older days when people lived in tribes, every one was related to every one else. One approached strangers only to kill them or to carry them off as slaves or wives. Later, village life developed and still everyone knew everyone else. At both stages there was no question of not recognising people.

But now we are civilized and know practically nobody in the City in which we live. And we are not expected to know either. One should not know one's neighbour, nor try to know. That will be prying curiosity and worse than reprehensible.

If a stranger were to enter a village he would immediately face a barrage of questions, rather a series of barrages at] every step and from every one. He would have to answer all the questions found in application forms, full name (pet name also), father's name, place of birth, caste, present pay, etc. He would have to give in addition, the latest entries from the birth, death and marriage register of his family and place, submit a meteorological report for purposes of comparison, be prepared and eager to discuss details of the cost of living index, willing to open, though rather cautiously, a school for scandal, (colleges thereafter), and all the rest of it that would eventually secure him not only admission to the village, but invitations to every home and to every feast. But if a man were to meet another man in town, both develop suddenly and against all pathology, stiff necks, day and night blindnesses, physical and mental deafnesses, and repel each other with all the force of personal magnetism and electricity. That is civilisation.

These 'citizens', they see so many that they see none, they hear so much that they hear nothing. But they can and do see and recognize when they want. They know only too well that a man's success depends upon a mastery of the difficult art of recognition.

A nod for a stranger who seems to, or seems to want to recognise you; a look of sympathy for the familiar beggar by the roadside which saves you pies without making him lose his hopes of, and prayers for you; a twinkle in your eye for the girl whom you often see, just enough to keep her too in hopeless hope; a slight twitching of your lips in contempt or recognition of the notorious bore; a broad grin and a sweet showing of teeth to your enemy whom civilisation teaches you to treat as friend; more mere nods for your inferiors or for those who are not presently useful but might be; a refusal to see the ever so many who want to receive not give; a sudden seeing of the formerly unseen because you have suddenly remembered something you can receive from him without giving; a rushing onward to, a warm shaking of hands and bodies and pot-bellies, the face meanwhile contorted and twisted with beams upon beams of smiles, especially if you are expecting something from him; thus do you, you favourite of fortune, you bloated embodiment of the pure spirit of success, progress along the highroads of life. See on the other hand what happens to the man who is unable or unwilling to learn this art. He finds himself shaking hands with the bore who would not leave him for love or for money. He frowns at his enemy and buys more undying hatred. He throws a coin at a beggar as if he were a dog and wins his ill-will and loses his money. He embarasses his girl by recognising her too much in the company of her not too friendly friends or even sisters. He stares his inferiors, who are trying elaborately to win his smile out of countenance. He sees all those whom he should not see and has no time for his real friends. Thus blundering at every step he finds all the roads of life leading inevitably through wildernesses and precipices to the depths of social hell.

How do we win friends? By recognizing people. How do we loose them ? By not recognizing them, of course. We meet somebody in the train, in the race-course, in the theatre, in the blackmarket. If we choose to recognize him when we meet again friendship is born. The more often he is recognized the more intimate the friendship becomes. But if we pass by, from motives gentlemanly or otherwise, we have lost a friend and perhaps for ever. This is true of friendships made under even more auspicious circumstances. Even the best friendship cannot stand half a dozen non-recognitions. It might be that our friend is shortsighted (physically, I mean) or has many worries or is notoriously absent-minded, that wouldn't save him. (In fact no single physical defect is so ruinous to friendship as eyes placed in thick lens cases). More divorces result from defective recognition than from drunkenness, habitual cruelty or brutality or even denial of conjugal rights. Recognize a woman, her presence, her absence, her qualities, her demands on you, everything but her imperfections (beware of recognizing them too often, except as perfections) and even the worse marriage becomes a tremendous success.

Recognition is a weapon which judiciously used can gain one the friendship of perfect strangers. I know one who is a past-master of this art of science. He just pretends that he recognizes in the person before him (an utter stranger, of course) an intimate pal, goes to him with out stretched hands, wide open mouth, floodlighting eyes, unmindful of the other chap's astonished stare. When sufficiently near he stops suddenly, starts, expressess his surprise, tells him he is sorry, tells him how strikingly like some Pythias of his own he is, and then proceeds legitimately to ask him his name, his address and what not. He has won a new friend. This works most admirably, he has assured me, with men newly come to town. Thereafter it is a matter of recognizing him often enough, and he is bound with hoops of steel. True, this method does not work with some of the veterans of the city. For instance, one hungry morning recently he happened to accost a middle-aged gentleman. He began in Tamil, realising his mistake changed suddenely into Telugu, and then more astonished still into broken Malayalam, but his friend would recognise nothing but Luck-now Urdu and that was beyond his depths. His good friend brushed him away like an unwelcome buror cur and turned to enter the gates of Hotel C.

But these failures are few and far between in my friends disinterested campaign for friendship and more friendship. He has a slower but surer process, for the more intractable type, if only he could know them at sight. And he generally does know them. Every time he meets one of such type, by design or accident, he puts on a longing lingering and at the same time a little puzzled look, as if he recognises in him somebody whose name he just cannot remember, someone whom he certainly knows but cannot say where they met, some one whose soul atleast he has met in some previous birth, or antenatal existance. Even a man of stone does not fail to have his interest reciprocally roused after a few weeks of this subtle process, especially in view of the fact that man is not a soulless animal. The man of stone slowly brings himself to studying this strange staring creature and might so far forget his property as to make enquiries about it without ofcourse its knowledge. And then comes the next step. An attempt at a smile, an unconscious lifting of the hand in salutation, he might suddenly change, become more stony and stare, or the face might soften and develop cracks and smile. Even if he only stares to-day my friend knows that he cannot but smile to-morrow. And then, the rock is cracked, the ice is broken and the highroads are open to lasting intimacy.

Recognition is double-edged. It can destroy as well create. Very often the most ardent friendships are destroyed by an injudiciously employed smile of recognition. Your superior officer is engaged in conversations that are to lead to unearned income, if you but in and nod your recognition you will certainly get the sack and even the rope to tie it up securely. A friend's ladylove is flirting with arrival and accidental recognition of this will very probably transform the girl into a hissing serpent satisfied with nothing less than your blood. A friend is leaving a house trying under the 'benefit of the doubt' clause of our merciful laws. If you recognise him then you have lost him for ever. So, you see, as in the exercise of every other art, there is a time to do and a time to refrain from doing.

There are less desperate cases of this sort. Go to a General Hospital. Recognize one doctor and smile, you have immediately lost the services of all the other doctors. They scatter and avoid you like the plague, though you might only be a harmless cold. Speak a kind word even to the most homely nurse of the institution, all the other nurses are your enemies. Go to a Government Office and recognize some clerk, all the other clerks grumble and become, in their distress, more intimate with their files. Re-visit your old college and recognize one out of a bevy of old lecturers moving to the canteen, all the other lecturers will nurse a secret grievance against you. In all such cases it is not safe to recognize one individual; you have to recognize the lot, though it might mean in effect recognizing none. Let your smile embrace all, let your eyes flit with the precision of a stop-watch secondhand from face to face from bald head to bald head. Then, if you want anything, make sure of the man you want before descending from the general to the particular.

All success depends upon this power of recognition. The inscrutable criminal lawyer emerges out of his den, stares vaguely and cruelly at all the supplicating repentant sinners, cannot recognise any, and then suddenly lights with a smile on the man whom his purse and he instinctively recognize. That means success and eventual elevation to the Bench, where he need see none, not even justice. Let him but once identify the wrong criminal, there is an end of his career. Those who can pay, desert him; those who cannot, flock to him; for they recognize him all right. So with doctors, officers, merchants. So even with States. The U. S. A. recognized Israel, of course, because Israel could pay, and Israel has won.

All knowledge is but recognition, said Plato; all wisdom all success too, says I.

LANGUAGE INTO LITERATURE

That gasping cry! What relief to the waiting! The baby is born, and it lives!

That cry betokens the birth of language too. If crying is not language, it is at least its raw material. The baby cries not with its vocal organs only, but with its whole body. Its body jerks, twists and bends, its legs and arms kick and slash, in crying. Here is the first expression of feeling, of pain or joy, who knows! It soon becomes, to be sure, an expression of desire, for food or for ease from pain.

In a few days new sounds are heard from the baby. These are apparently grunts of satisfaction, as they are usually heard after feeding or a warm bath.

The baby is now master of three kinds of sound patterns, the cry of hunger, the cry of pain and the gurgle of contentment.

The next stage is when it begins to 'reply' to the talk of father or mother. This reply is a kind of cooing or crooning. The baby is now become a sort of social being.

How delighted the mother is when she hears her young one make a sound like 'ma aa'. She is sure that the child has learnt to call her 'Mummy' or 'Amma' or 'Ma'. How lucky it is that in almost all languages the word for mother has this 'ma' sound as a basic element! When the 'b' 'k' 'I' sounds appear mothers can take them for 'cow', 'crow', 'milk.'

Within the first year the child produces practically all the sounds in all the languages of the world. It can, if required, now become Chinese or Peruvian or Congolese, in addition to being Dravidian or Aryan. Every baby is born a citizen of the world, whatever it might grow into.

The baby is born an assiduous student too. Each new sound that it learns of itself to make, it practises. This practising, by repetition, is most noticed after food. Not rest after food, but work, seems to be its motto. And it enjoys its work too. Happiness is as intimately connected with the activity of the vocal cords as un-happiness. With the baby the making of sounds is also a kind of play, a play it can play alone.

This play, this talking to oneself in delight, continues till it is about a year old. By then it has begun imitating words that it hears from elders.

Mother has been teaching baby to pronounce 'papa. About the eighth month it succeeds in imitating the sound but without knowing its meaning. Not much later, however, it starts pronouncing the word when it sees father. Meaningfully calling mother 'mammamma' follows. Curiously enough this is sometimes followed by calling both father and mother 'mamma.' Occasionally a new coinage 'mammappa' also is heard. Why separate or distinguish or discriminate where there is no difference in love!

Imitation of sounds heard, now extends to the sounds of cats, dogs, calves. This is about thirteen months after birth. One or two months later begins pointing at things as well as imitating sounds. Gesture language is gaining in importance. Internationalism again?

Even after twenty-four months the imitation and practising of new sounds continues. The repetition of new words delights it and makes it laugh. The little one names something and laughs as if it were a big joke. But alongwith this is invented a new joke, making meaningless sounds that look like words and then laughing. The child is the original inventor of nonsense literature. Lears and Carolls were only imitating them when they thought they were being pioneers.

Understanding one word leads to understanding two words and the consequent using of two words, two-word sentences. A sentence like 'papa go' (papa gone) is heard two or three months before the second birthday.

The little child, one finds, is afraid of using the word 'my'- It fears that if it calls its shirt my shirt it would become everybody's shirt. The safe thing to use is baby's shirt or later Nalin's (its name) shirt. And it plays for safety. The sense of property is strengthening. 'I' and 'mine' are everybody's and only 'baby's' 'Nalin's' is its. 'Mamma', 'papa' also become unsatisfactory. Nothing less than 'Nalin's papa' will do.

From this is seen following a curious development. Everything must be somebody's. So 'brother's rain', 'father's moon' follow. But whose baby, father's or mother's? This presents a real difficulty. Some children are very clever, cleverer than diplomats. They claim they are 'Pama's'!

Adjectives, adverbs, question forms, more verb forms are increasingly used with the passing of months.

And then suddenly child bursts into literature. About the age three and a half when shown the bee winging from flower to flower Nalin coolly remarks, 'see it flies holding an umbrella'. This little poet reports seeing a piggie to father: pig come showing buttocks, there is a tail tied up there (like that on mother's head eh!). Looking up at the sky to see echo balloon he sees stars, and remarks, 'These stars, after a bath, and putting on fresh clothes, they are waiting to see the rocket!'

Developing fast, sure, into an Alexander Pope or a Collay Gibber!

LAUGHTER IN THE RAMAYANA

India's first poet, first in so many of the achievements of the poetic spirit, is perhaps greatest in his command of pathos. The Ramayana is in many places soaked in tears, tears that start with the shooting down of the innocent 'crouncha' bird. With that initial story our poet suggests not only that poetry is an overflow into song of powerful feeling, but also that the most powerful feeling of all is that of sorrow and pity, and that therefore the sweetest songs cannot but be those of saddest thought. It also suggests the connection between feeling and rhythmic expression: metre is but the expression of a rhythm set up within by an agitated heart.

But Valmiki's tears do not blind him to the laughter that is but their other side. He often smiles through his tears, though perhaps, not often enough. He feels in earnest, but his thinking mind tells him that it could have been so comic if it had been not so tragic. His humour is therefore generally though not invariably, the highest type of laughter, the smile of sympathy. It is the laughter of a laughing father at the inconsistencies, follies, of his children. And it is sometimes a laughter at himself and his class, the father laughing at himself with his children.

See the Maharshi laughing at the ascetic Rishyashringa (Balakanda 10th Sarga) whose Brahmacharya is built on simple exclusion from and entire ignorance of woman kind. With what delight the poor boy eats the new fruits (Modakas) that the Veshyas offer him! What an undreamt of bliss he feels in their joyful embraces! How agitated he is after their departure, and with what willingness he agrees to follow them to their 'Asrama'! It is a tragic subject, the break-up of a long tapasya, but treated smilingly. And the results of this tragedy are not at all tragic as Valmiki hastens to point out. It rained and the World was glad.

This story and its loving laughter became so popular that it re-appeared in the Mahabharata. Or could it have been the other way round?

Valmiki has another laugh, a laugh that is half pity at his own people in the Ayodhya Kanda. Rama is giving away endless gifts of money and jewels and cattle to Brahmins and dependants prior to his departure for the forest. It is a touching scene. Every one except Rama is in tears- Rama smiles at the Brahmins assembled. "Give to these" he says to Lakshmana, "Give to these lazy gourmands, lazy, still respected even by the great, precious stone in plenty", and Lakshmana gives. When the distribution is almost over an old poor Brahmin, yoked to a young wife suffering from poverty and too many children, and acting under her advice, arrives in torn clothes and asks for Rama's blessing. Rama with a smile on his lips tells him. "I give you not a mere thou and head of cattle. Throw your staff with all your might and as far as you can, all the cattle up to that limit are yours." Hastily winding his cloth round his waist, nervous, he, waving his staff, throws it with all his strength and it sends flying at top speed. He wins many thousands. Rama often ordering that they be taken to his home by his servants, embraces him and consoles him, "Pray don't be angry. It was only a joke." Rama regrets even the triumphant smile of the man who gives to the needy a hundred time more than they had the courage to beg for, Valmiki too seems to be half afraid of laughter, fears that laughter cannot be completely separated from malice or at least a sense of superiority. Hence perhaps the comparative rarity of laughter in his work.

When Valmiki laughs at Kaikeyi the laugh is not perhaps go innocent or pure. The moment Mandhara's specious arguments win approval, witness the change that comes over Kaikeyi. She suddenly "discovers that this hump-backed wretch is beautiful; as beautiful as a lotus that bends in the breeze; every part of her is lovely, and every ornament. Her gait as she walks before her mistress is now the gait of the swan ... Then comes another and more interesting discovery, that her intelligence resides in that hump as big as the have of a chariot wheel. With this arises the desire to decorate the hump with gold ornaments, she would even give it a coating with molten gold! And again a last reward. She would have other beautiful hump-backed ones to serve her. The moment a hump develops in Kaikeyi's mind all humps become beautiful as all wrong advice becomes right. Hundreds of years of psychological research, after Valmiki, still finds Valmiki well abreast.

Is there any sympathy in this laughter? Perhaps there is. Valmiki seems to be telling Kaikeyi, "You are not yourself. Everything is upside down with you. You know not what you are doing or saying!"

There is some sympathy for Kaikeyi. But there is apparently none for Mandhara. Shathrughna, returning after the 'Sanchayana' ceremony of his father, is offered by the guards, Mandhara, the cause of it all, for exemplary treatment. As she appears what a contrast she is to the sorrowing children of Dasharatha. She is decked from head to foot in ornaments. She is smeared all over with sandal paste. She wears queenly robes and is surrounded by friends. Bound by gold girdles and other ornaments (all ornaments bind!) she shines forth like a monkey led forth in ropes. Valmiki is evidently unable any longer to contain his contempt and that glorious simile is its outlet. There is no more coming. Shathrughna drags the frightened shouting Mandhara on the ground, now by her hands, now by her legs, now by her hair. Her ornaments now lie scattered in the palace yard, once more beautiful because now once more in place. Here is no subdued smile. It is the loud laughter of triumph, of writer and reader, the Homeric laugh, the laughter of the savage when he has clubbed his enemy to pieces. This kind of laugh too is not perhaps without its place in character culture. It achieves a purgation of the dangerous in pulses accumulating even in the calmest hearts. Mandhara's cries purify the atmosphere in the palace, so it docs the atmosphere within us. "The sky is once again clear as in Sharath."

But the absence of sympathy for Mandhara is only apparent. By making this woman a hump-backed one Valmiki has suggested the cause of the crookedness within. The fates have been cruel to her and she could, not be expected to be straight in her responses and reactions.......And she has one virtue, she is loyal to her mistress. Perhaps she is only Kaikeyi's own evil nature projected outside herself in human form.

Valmiki does not seem to show much sympathy for Surpanakha either. He makes her fall headlong in love with Rama and hastens to point out the utter incongruousness of it. She is ugly, big bellied, squint-eyed, red-haired, terrible-voiced, old, notorious; and he lovely, long-eyed, thin-bellied, dark-haired, sweetvoiced, young, famous. And she not only loves but expects him to love her and prefer here to Seetha. See what she thinks of Seetha, "I am powerful, I go where I like, what could this Seetha do? She is deformed, she is ugly, she is not fit mate for you. Look at her belly! I shall eat this ill-formed creature and your brother too.”

Rama cannot help smiling. It is a long time since he has smiled like this. He would like to enjoy the joke a little longer, and in pure fun he tells her, "Lakshmana is unmarried, he is the one for you." Immediately she flies to him. Lakshmana joins in the joking, agrees that Seetha is old, ugly and thin-bellied and that Rama would gladly leave her and join the lovely Surpanakha. Seetha too must have joined in at least at this stage. Imagine the whole group laughing. If they restrain their laugh a little it must be out of fear of the Rakshasi.

Does Valmiki show any sympathy for this giantess? Perhaps he does. As a rakshasi she naturally finds beauty only in women like herself. After all beauty is what we are accustomed to. The wonder is that she finds Rama and Lakshmana beautiful; from her that is true homage as well as love. Anything moreover could be, and should be, excused in a rakshasi especially in the grip of passion.

Still it is so ridiculous, this woman who wants some young man immediately. She does not seem to care whether it is Rama or Lakshmana, to secure one she is prepared to eat up the other two. Valmiki does not forget to point out that she has no sense of humour. She is always in earnest, takes words at their face value; something could be forgiven her for this simplicity too.

In this scene what Valmiki probably wants to emphasise is the nearness of tragedy to comedy. How quickly and unexpectedly a mere joke proves the gateway to blood, mutilation, vengeance, war. Rama and Lakshmana are playing with fire. Rama realises but too late, that with, or at, the cruel and the bad, there should never be any laughter. The rest of the Ramayana is the dire result of his realising this too late.

Is Valmiki condemning all laughter in this scene, especially unsympathetic laughter?

Valmiki smiles sweetly again in Sundarakanda. Ha-numan is having a look at Ravana's many wives, sleeping huddled up around him after the night's orgies. Some of these women in their sleep mistake their neighbour's faces for Ravana's and kiss them again and again; and these other women so excessively in love with Ravana are only happy at this. Most of these women were won in War, but some of these, Valmiki adds, had come of their own accord to find satisfaction for their mad passion. And still they are evidently not satisfied, they have to seek satisfaction, in sleep, among themselves. See what shrewd psychology we have here, thousands of years before Freud.

In the next scene we see these unsatisfied women again. One is sleeping, embracing her drum; another is asleep kissing her flute. Ravana is after all one, though Ravana, amongst so many.

We now come to another joke that proves almost as costly as Rama's. This time the joker is Ravana, his antagonist. Hanuman should not be killed being an ambassador. But he could be punished. Ravana's sense of humour prescribes an interesting punishment. (Ravana can laugh unlike his sister.) "Monkeys are proud of their tails, their loved ornaments. Set fire to his and let him go home with a burnt tail. Let the miserable mutilated one be seen and scoffed at by his friends, relatives." Then an afterthought. "Let him be taken round the city, let him be laughed at here first". This curious procession is soon in the streets. Men, women, children pour into the streets to boo, grin and make merry. The laugh is not all on one side. With that burning tail he has felled not a few of his guards and then thinking better of it, he calmed down; the fire is not burning him, and here moreover is an opportunity to see Lanka in day-light. He is not laughing, though mischievous ideas are sprouting within him. He is letting them laugh for a time. He will laugh best because he will laugh last.

There! The monkey has made a beautiful leap. He is now on the roof top. Now he can continue to laugh. The others too can continue to laugh, a monkey on a roof-top is interesting. But soon laughter turns to cries. He is setting fire to houses. He jumps nimbly from roof-top to roof-top and sets them all on fire. This living firebomb is setting that old London on fire. People are now running for their lives. Women with their children in their arms flee and fall crying. A small flame has become a wild fire, a joke an unspeakable tragedy.

But the readers continue to laugh with Hanuman and Valmiki. But is Valmiki laughing? Or is he pointing out once again how near neighbour laughter is to tears? Is he warning us once again of the dangers of that not-so innocent laugh?

Valmiki soon takes us to a less agreeable scene: Monkeys drunk. Here is low humour; still the picture is vivid. No one could do it better, "Some are singing, some stooping, some are dancing, some are laughing, some are falling, some are talking, some are babbling, some cry as they laugh. There is not one undrunk and not one who has not had enough; the madhu is dripping from some mouths, some drunk are throwing the wax at each other... They bend their enemies and show them their buttocks. After all they are monkeys and Valmiki the Maharshi does not seem to disapprove of this in the least. All his sympathies are on their side and yet he laughs.

There is plenty of savage laughter in the Yuddhakanda, the laughter of the victorious soldier at the downfall of his enemy; laughter at these blood-drinking rakshasas now themselves spitting blood. It is indeed a savage fight. A fight with trees and stones, with hands and teeth and nails. There are also scenes of fright and flight from the battle-field, jumping into the sea, disappearing in the forest. The monkeys too run away, too often.

But in the midst of all this bloody and terrible laughter Valmiki provides some innocent comedy too with a picture of the sleeping Kumbhakarna and the attempts to wake him. Ravana is returning from the field beaten and desperate and yet this brother of his is sound asleep in some vast underground shelter. He must be awakened, he is necessary. Ravana's messengers approaching the cave are taken aback by the snoring that proceeds from it. With an effort they enter. They see him lying like an ugly mountain. They heap mountains of food, huge jars of blood and wines, before this hell-mouthed monster. They put sandal-paste on him, and offer this snorer incense. They then roar like the angry clouds, they shout, they clap, they shake him, frightened birds take to their wings at this, but unable to fly fall to the ground. But Kumbakarna is undisturbed. Now they beat him with their heavy weapons but to no purpose. They dare not approach his nose, because though strong they might be sucked in.- They beat him again, whip him with all their might, they raise hell. All Lanka and all the surrounding forests are echoing with it. Still Kumbakarna is not awaking. They pluck his hair, they bite his ears, they pour hundreds of pots of water down those pot-like ears. They drive thousands of elephants over him, he just feels that he is touched. At last he wakes up but only been use of returning hunger- He takes a few deep breaths, they blow on them like the wind in the mountains. And he immediately falls on those food heaps. With eyes still half closed and turbid he surveys the people around.

Here is the humour of exaggeration, a humour of which a Mark Twain may be proud. Here is neither pity, much contempt, but pure fun. It is the child's laughter at the sight of an enormous snoring monster.

In the Uttarakanda the laughter is mostly directed against, Ravana. Ravana flying in his newly won Pushpaka plane finds its movement arrested over a mountain. He is told Shankara is amusing himself with his wife and followers in that mountain. His eyes red with anger he descends from his plane and scoffs, "Who is this Shankara?" At the foot of the mountain he has another laugh at the monkey-faced Nandi. Determined to root out the offending mountain he puts his arms under it and shakes it. Everything in it shakes. Parvathi, shaking, takes refuge in the embrace of her Lord. What a beautiful picture in one line! Valmiki leaves us to imagine the smile on Shankara's lips, the dawning smile on Parvathi recovering from her fright in his embrace. Mahadeva with another smile presses slightly in fun one toe on the mountain. Poor Ravana's hands are suddenly caught firmly under the mountain. He shouts in rage, in vain. But not entirely in vain. With that world-shaking shout it is that he becomes Ravana, Lokaravana. And he grows proud of this name born of disgrace! Helpless, he conciliates Sankara with his prayers. He has to pray long, a thousand years with his arms under the mountain.

We have another huge laugh at Ravana in the hands of Bali. Proud, haughty Ravana, the war-monger, goes to Kishkindha seeking war with Bali. But Bali is not there. He is told to seek him on the shore of the South Sea. He immediately flies in that direction. He approaches the praying Bali from behind and is in a flash caught in his arm-pit by Bali who has not even turned his head. With Ravana hanging from his arm-pit, like a serpent from Garuda's claws, Bali jumps from sea to sea. After his prayers, at last he comes back to Kishkindha. Releasing him now Bali asks with a loud laugh, "Where from you are?"

We find in Valmiki, at least once, hysterical laughter, laughter that is the child of a sorrow too deep for tears.

Tara weeping over her dead husband lying on the ground wails, 'The earth is dearer to you, Lord of the earth, than I. You have left me, but even in death you embrace her". There is some jugglery with words too in her lament. This is the laughter of the soldier who on finding his hand blown off by a bomb begins to laugh.

There is also occasionally the humour of the grotesque, as in the descriptions of the Mandeha Rakshasas who hanging in different terrible shapes from mountain peaks fall into the water with sunrise, then heated by the sun slowly come up again to hang like balloons ! There are also creatures that can cover themselves up completely with their ears, or their lips, etc.

For an early writer there is comparatively little of purely verbal humour in Valmiki. He does not revel in puns like some of his own successors or like the much later Shakespeare. He is carried away, of course, by the wonder of words, their music and their meaning. He cannot occasionally help playing a little with his meaningful proper names. Homer too has been shown to have found mischievous delight in playing with the names and surnames of his characters. His Oddysseus is odd, a man of all 'odds'. 'His name originally came from a pun.'

There is also present in Valmiki, as again in Homer, the oft-repeated stock epithets suddenly proving ironical and humorous, Homer gives the Greeks his recurrent epithet "Great-hearted” even when they are behaving like cowards. Even when the dawn is late he calls it 'Early'. The like effects are produced by Valmiki when he calls people 'Nayakovidas' and 'Vakyavisharadas' even when they are actually behaving tactlessly or talking foolishly. What can we do but smile when Rakshasas and Rakshasis are called 'Kamaiupis' and 'Kamarupinis'! When Lakshmana is furious, Rama calls him 'soumya' and lets us smile though probably he does not, for it is a hint as well as a wish.

What are all these almost unnoticed verbal ironies and the always noticed dramatic ironies compared to the deep and wide cosmic irony permeating the poem! It is apparaently a story of losing a kingdom and winning it, of losing a wife and winning her back again, and of many other less important losses and gains. But survey the losses and gains with the impartial eyes of Fate. Rama wins his beloved, only to lose her, gets her back again only to reject her again, and again. Seetha insists on being taken to the forest to be always with Rama, but only to lose him almost for ever. With her cutting tongue she drives Lakshmana away from her side, but thereby serves not Rama but Ravana. And in the end, when Seetha gets her husband back and for the last time, she rejects him, in her turn, to go back to the Earth, her mother and ours. The kingdom that Rama succeeds in winning and expanding, he leaves to his descendants, divided, weak. Think of Kaikeyi, Tara, how gains become losses and losses gains! And think of that last sad procession to the other world that winds up all achievements as all defeats...... but we have to be Gods to laugh at all this.