Posthumous Papers

THE COMEDY OF DYING

2010-09-28T21:09:00.001-07:00

The grand old man is dying. He is willing to die. He has had enough; seventy odd long years packed with weddings, funerals, births, famines, earth-quakes, wars abroad, in the family and in the country. Aren't these more than enough? He is willing, quite willing, even eager. Yes, he is dying to die. It is now some days since he has opened his eyes. He will not open them even to his wife's piteous entreaties.

His children, his grand children are by his bed-side. They have come rushing from practically the four corners of the world at the magic words, "He is sinking". They want to keep awake all night to smooth his pillow, to pour the last pious drops of Ganges water down his drying throat, to shed a tear or two at his death. Yet it seems they don't want him to die. A few more years of his precious life they plead to the powers above and below. At least one year more, they pray. They couldn't ask for a retrieve of less than a year, for then leave would be difficult and expenses impossible. Just a year more, they appeal to the God in his unhearing hearing. A bare twelve months, so that they might take him to Benaras in fulfillment of his oft-repeated and equally oft-unheeded wish. They plead the more devoutly, because they have heard the doctors say he can't live even one day.

Relatives are trickling in, to see him breathe his last! They are rather frank, they don't want the end to be delayed much longer; they cannot be expected to wait indefinitely. He must have the decency to wait till they come, and the gentlemanliness to die as soon as they have arrived. Gentlemen don't keep others waiting.

High time the old gentleman died. He knows it. He would not inconvenience anybody if he could help it. So perhaps, just to see whether everything is ready and everybody prepared, he opens his eyes. The gentlemen watchers at the bedside start, the ladies suppress their shrieks, the brahmins forgot their prayers, the oil lamp burning religiously and resignedly at his head suddenly blazes up and dies. And the dying gentleman (perfectly satisfied?) closes his eyes again.

Monstrous, unthinkable! So there is hope, which means that there is no hope of the old one saying his last, Good Night, Thank you. (Who will willingly say Good Night, the night being so dark, so lonely......?) Even the blood of his own blood and the flesh of his own flesh, who have spent sleepless days and nights by his bedside, forget their discretion for a moment and exclaim, 'How long, O Lord, how long!' All the wakeful days and nights taken to die will now be taken in the reverse process to live. Is there to be no end to their suffering? Some of his children are really angry and threaten to leave. Some others start drafting mentally, leave letters and medical certificates. His eldest boy, a sickly old man himself, adjourns to the neighbouring room to lie down for a while and rest. "Slow, very slow" he is murmuring. A nephew suddenly remembers that tea must be getting cold and, with other dry throats, moves to the dinning room. Another thinks it is time to take his bath and say his too long postponed prayers. One very loyal niece asks in all humility, asks if it is not wise to send for the doctor, now that there is a "change''. A few mere onlookers agree with gusto, inviting looks of annihilating contempt from true relatives. Still the doctor is sent for.

More and more of the near and dear ones are leaving his bedside. One or two remain only to yawn. A necessary, preliminary, surely, to going out to smoke.

The family doctor arriving finds the sick-room deserted and his patient dead.

THE BIG HUNT AND THE GREAT KILL

2010-09-26T20:14:00.000-07:00

Mosquitoes, it is said, go to bed in the morning. I am not sure they go to bed at all. If they do, they must, in the morning; for the nights, they spend carousing on warm human blood, mine and thine. We know that they get intoxicated with it and sing and dance like mad. Insatiable, they come down again and again, for another and another pull at us, poor human bottles. Often they see our now almost desperate hands descending like lightining but then they escape as neatly as, as, as mosquitoes, of course! Still occasionally they are content like good epicureans to die drinking. And then we foolishly exult over our unmerited triumph.

That other friend of ours, the bed bug has never to go to bed at all, never having had to leave it. They don't have to hunt or fish for their food either. Their food obligingly goes to them like mothers, and lies down with them, contentedly to be sucked dry. Still we, nursing mothers, call it treachery, name them the strangest, 'cruellest' bed fellows.

Of course, we have reason to be distressed, and distraught. Our blood up we vow destruction and death for them, the first thing in the morning. Our bed-fellows hear our vows and with the wise lark, the mother of the young ones of the fable, laugh inwardly. 'When a man or a thing bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself or itself but when he or it laughs inwardly, it bodes no good for other people.' said Mark Twain. But nobody hears the laugh, and the rosy-fingered morn peeps in and our good bed-mates are safe. Who among us are resolute enough or vindictive enough to remember the night's resolutions or revolutions or revelations in the morning? We have not had the opportunity of sleeping over them either. With us fools, as with Macbeth, 'They should die, hereafter, tomorrow and tomorrow.' Or more philosophic than even that old murderer, we tell our-selves that when we kill bugs we are shedding our own innocent blood. We feed them and then we kill them. Why be destroyers and preservers at the same time?

But days of agony in our chairs, and nights of tossing anguish in our beds might at last make us spring out of bed shouting 'Today', woe to them indeed then!

It is a mighty chase now and a bloody hunt. Blood naturally will have blood. Boiling blood will not be content with anything less than buckets of it. The hue and cry raised, the mattress turned upside down, and the first blood drawn, it is a world war three, an allout war to the finish, even though it be a war of one against many, so many! Even in the thick of it is a hair-raising thing to see the things, the blood suckers in their thousands the Jungis Khan hordes scurrying in all directions. A single pair of hands aided by just one pair of eyes which have unfortunately only one sight between them, how can it deal with these crawling, Chinese millions, the hit and race cowards now on the run. Many escape. It is then that we find our hearts, our minds, even our bodies, on fire. There is a demon in us. The dirty scum that specialise in the stab in the back now get their due.
But even in their death they plague us. All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten our little hands even if our 'crime' be only the murder of a single villainous bug. Such stench never human nostrils have breathed. Murder even of foul enemies, is murder still and will stink. The whole room, the whole world, will stink' who knows how long

No not for that long. Not even for a week perhaps The pall-bearers are arriving, I mean the ants. Can man ever take part in or ever witness such an august and solemn funeral procession as follows. At the head and then at regular intervals are the bearers, holding the venerable dead shoulder high. In between, and for a long distance behind are the mourners, silent and sad. Moving up and down on either side of the procession are the junior officer busy-bodies apparently doing a lot because they have actually to do nothing. Where is the procession heading? When is the last post to be sounded? Who cares whether they are buried in ant-bellies or worm-bellies?

It is true some of these undertakers, in their zeal, carry away to their graves bodies that are still not quite dead. Much might, much must, be excused in a clean and disciplined race which in spite of occasional excesses, is easily the most efficient of the world's sanitary staff. Haste and sincerity, let us remember, can and will never be divorced. And sincerity covers a multitude of sins.

FOUNDATION – STONES

2010-09-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

For the last ten years, or more, I have been obliged, on my way to and from work, to pass and 're-pass' by a vast stone with inscriptions, dates, on which a magnificent Municipal Building or Town Hall was to have risen many years ago. That stone has obstinately refused to grow in spite of the affectionate attentions of boy and bird and beast. Remember it was laid by Hope. Nevertheless it remains so hopeless and helpless. How our Hopes come down in this wicked world! Yet perhaps the thing was not so useless: I have often seen an unfortunate man afflicted in the head delivering sermon after sermon from that not too elevated mount.

In another compound not so public are two or three stones in different stages of growth and still far from completion. They are going easy, having comparatively lighter burdens to bear than expected. The crows, in whose dictionary the word 'useless' finds no place, polish their beaks on them. One of these was laid by a great nationalist and another by a big white Sahib. When the Congress first came to power the nationalist stone showed some activity. But better times intervened and the other stone got its turn of luck, (Kind fate be thanked) for a short while. But now, with independence and a feeling of having arrived, both have ceased to trouble about growth and are now content to dream of 'what might have been.'

One foundation-stone in a remote village, meant to develop into a wonderful sanatorium, is now a gaily or-namented, vermilion-painted, bright and beaming, wonder-working idol. It cures more people than the hospital would have. And very cheap too, one cocoanut per cure on its lusty head. Buildings have come up around it, raised by the hand of piety and the greed of trade. Foundation-stone "well and truly laid", I say.

A friend, who I find some difficulty in disbelieving, tells me that a stone in his village, long deserted, has become so venerable with its mossy head and fading inscriptions that historians are being attracted by it. No wonder! Let no wise Pickwicks smile. Stones, especially heavy stones must attract, otherwise what will happen to Newton's law of gravity! My hope is that the Archaeological Department at least, being heavier, will be saved.

All this is nobody's fault. It is this new democracy, this independence that many have fought for and died for, some like myself have merely lived for, that has accelerated so phenomenally this stonelaying (or brick-laying?) activity. No minister is allowed to leave home or office without laying a stone on the way. But no strutting cock or humble hen ever comes out of these stones. Our friends who are organizing these foundation laying ceremonies seem to labour under the impression that the fathers of these stones could be expected to be not entirely indifferent to the fortunes of the young ones they have laid; that a stone laid by an education minister immediately becomes the favourite of the education department and cannot but be 'granted' all prayers. But they must remember that love of children is not in direct but in inverse proportion to the number of them one is encumbered with. Let them re-read the chapters on the laws of diminishing love. Let them not complain that they asked for a school and got a stone, or that they begged on bended knees or a hospital and got a 'concrete' block!

If only our great men knew the ancient history of foundation-stone-laying they would have thought twice, and shuddered thrice, before approaching a stone. Our savage forefathers thought that no town, no bridge, in short, nothing that was meant to endure, could so endure unless a human being was sacrificed under it. Or to convert it into philosophical jargon, that nothing could endure that was not built on blood, on sacrifice, on sweat, on tears... The idea probably was that the person so sacrificed became a protecting spirit, the only true foundation for anything great. In those days people were not unwilling to die for their town, bridge, etc especially as they lived for ever after as Gods. When willing victims became scarce first strangers and then the mere shadows of people were substituted; the owners of the shadows died soon after. In some places even the measurement of the shadow of the person put under the stone was sufficient to fix the thing and secure his ghost for it. This murderous bloodstained business is what has developed into the innocent festivity of foundation-stone laying, with no harm to layer, to the 'layee' or the flock looking on in enthusiastic admiration and hope.

One thing remarkable about these foundation-stones is passing unnoticed, that they are no longer foundation stones. They are not content to do their selfless work under the ground unseen unhonoured. By the way, who is? I have seen foundation stones five, ten, even twenty feet above ground. I hope to see them well above the first floor shortly. An understandable principle this, that foundation stones are not to support but to be supported, nay, held aloft. Do you think, in these days of world wide publicity for everything, that a great stone laid by a great man would willingly bury itself under the earth, supporting huge edifices? (The foundation stones of our homes, our solid women, even they are not so content to remain). I won't start objecting till after these have become coping-stones or weather-cocks or revolving lights on roof-tops beckoning ships to 1 heir doom.

Occasionally a foundation-stone has the good fortune, in its own life-time, to see the building complete itself. Verify, very verily, does its heart rejoice then. It sees the well-dressed crowds gather again to witness another ceremony, the grand Opening ceremony. But often the opening is long before the structure is complete, before it has any doors or windows, except the one hastily provided for the occasion, to open. More often the opening is too long delayed, classes have been in full swing, the doors and windows have been opened and closed a thousand times by active little urchins, the building itself is being subjected to analysis and parsing, when the august personage arrives. Doors are closed again to be really opened with acclamations and heaven-shaking music.

This is of course inevitable and ought not to be too much lamented. Buildings must wait, like maids, though decaying, till the great man arrives. How else we are to honour, and be honoured by our great man? Institutions can be opened but once, and except in schools there is no 'reopening'. Within my knowledge, (I seem to know a little too much, don't I?) a few (very few, thank God) institutions have been opened more than once, first by a local grandee, and then suddenly an all-province figure swimming into view, by this new figure. Neither the local population, nor the proud edifice is known to have protested even slightly. Prize distributions in schools too are sometimes conducted twice in similar inevitable circumstances but without additional expense.

I understand the opening of buildings. But when they talk of opening bridges, I am horrified. Bridges built at enormous cost to cover up dangerous streams being 'opened again'! and men, women to drop down to take holy dips, their last! Do they sometimes ask people to open innocent little children's stomachs?

ARISTOCRATS

2010-05-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

Can aristocracy be wiped out? There are many enthusiastic people who think so. They have, of course, their very good reasons. With taxes beginning with birth and extending far beyond death and comprehending unselfishly buying, selling, and gifts, profession, income and expenditure, water, light, house, education, pilgrimage and what not, how and where could aristocracy live, much less survive? Yet it lives. And it might live for ever.

I first realised this awkward truth in a moderate sized T. B. Hospital. I had accompanied a friend who wanted to be X-rayed. We had to wait. It was a long and tiresome waiting. The patients were only slowly gathering near the X-ray rooms, from the wards, from outside. There was certainly equality there, they were all suffering from the same disease. Yet what variety in their entrances! Some came walking briskly in, rosy cheeked, plump. Many were weak and thin and pale. A few came in with difficulty and had to lie flat on their backs and pant with closed eyes. One or two came in wheeled chairs. There was neither doctor nor nurse as yet; and there was talking, some laughing, even good jokes from the apparently depressed. Then a stretcher arrived. The gathering was suddenly struck dumb. All those who could, stood up; those who could not, turned their heads or eyes most respectfully. A fair smiling nurse suddenly appeared from nowhere, went grave and helped to lower the stretcher. The doctor too walked in, respectful, almost obedient. Other doctors, nurses, were soon racing from other wards leaving even rich patients attended only by their illness. No king, arriving to visit a moffusil hospital was ever received with so much real respect. A stretcher is a throne, a more comfortable one, for there one could fully stretch one-self. Surrounding it is no mock courtesy, no reluctant bending of knees or necks. Perhaps, there is some flattery, trying to make the patient believe that his condition is not so bad as he feels it to be or it really is. Some hypocritical cheerfulness too might be there, put on to conceal and dispel the misery within doctor and patient. If at any time one has the misfortune to enter a hospital, one must enter it on a stretcher. Better to be adored by the world for a few minutes and die, than be contemptuously dismissed with a scrap of paper before one has so much as opened one's mouth about one's complaint. That, at least, is the out patient's mind. The inpatient is luckier. He can be occasionally impatient. The 'innermost-patient', he who has been to the operation theatre, the sanctum sanctorum of the hospital, can even dictate a little if he has the energy. Even where illness levels all, what orders, privileges, classes, gradations! Consider also, with what contempt even lords of illness can and do treat those who escape with a weak's confinement.

That reminds one that one has the same feelings when one visits a jail. With what feelings of awe the visitor approaches the cells in which the condemned are lodged! Even the most virtuous, the most self-righteous of men would bow their heads (and hearts) before these offerings to the stern deity of The Law. The Jailors, the warders, the (other) criminals are no exception to this. The condemned are verily the kings of the jail. The solitaries, the lifers, are the lords. How they sneer and scoff at the riff-raff, the birds of passage, the ones who are making a grand jail a mere lock-up. There is and can be no mixing between these classes. Even in a jail-riot these distinctions will, doubtless, be kept up. There are, perhaps, as many class distinctions in a jail as there are sections and sub-sections in the penal code.

Coming back from the hospital with my friend, by train, I was struck by the same distinctions. (I am talking of those who travel third. I have no complaint against the other class system, because that is going if not gone) The best places, and more are occupied by the long-distance passengers the ones to Delhi for instance. They sleep out-stretched in the seats and berths, while most of us do not have even standing space, The ticket examiner, who is commanding and gruff to us, dare not disturb the snoring lord. He would, rather, soothe his pillow. Even we, the suffering short-distance passengers, if we are well-bred, are respectful. There are, ofcourse, the ill-bred, the savages of travel, who respect none. They would sit, as if by accident, on a long - distance man's sleeping head. But these are treated like the animals they are, by every one in the compartment. Every one, it seems, is for these distinctions. May be, they are right. At least I thought so, that day.

SNUFF AGAINST SMOKE

2010-02-28T21:59:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-21T00:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-13T21:35:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-07T06:53:00.000-08:00

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.

INTEGRATION

2010-01-31T04:29:00.000-08:00

The problem of integration is nearly as old as man. Within the tribe it was, perhaps, more easily solved. The authority of the chief and his divinity ensured not merely implicit obedience but oneness of thought and feeling i.e. in modern phraseology, cultural and emotional integration.

When tribe met tribe problems arose. They were solved by the extermination of one of the two tribes or by its defeat and swift and complete integration with the winner's. It is true that there were not many vital cultural or emotional differences to be harmonized then.

When wandering tribes eventually settled down as agriculturists there were adjustments to be made, between the settling tribes, and also the hardy wandering ones often chose to attack and plunder the settled ones. Men fairly successfully achieved these and survived.

With the establishment of 'states' and the sooner or later following attempt, to establish hegemony, the problem of cultural integration, as we know it, began.

It was with caste that, in India, a fairly successful kind of integration was achieved. "Out of the conflict and interaction of races arose the caste system. It was an attempt at social organization of different races, a rationalization of the facts as existed, at the time". "It was far from total integration. 'One out of many', 'unity through diversity', 'integration based on recognition of differences', was the basis of caste system. Even today this is, perhaps, one of the valid and workable foundations for integration, in nations and in a future United Nations State as well. It can be argued that this was not integration at all but a perpetuation of differences. But the caste system worked for thousands of years. All the later invaders of India accepted the position and became themselves a new caste. Indian religions too accepted it and soon caste system became one of its essential principles. Countries outside India had their own fairly strict caste system, but they called it by another name: class. Caste and class are both dead in theory, but continue in practice in politics, in marriage, and in the matter of employment. But it is on the way out, thanks to the work of Vivekananda, Gandhi, and in the south Shri Narayana Guru.

Total and complete integration, the achievement, of oneness, sameness, cultural and emotional, is what unrealistic and ignorant 'idealists' desire. 'All men to be equal' in thought, feeling, conduct, action, is not only unrealisable but undersirable. This would make machine made puppets of men. Men must differ, and agree to differ. Out of differences must arise a rich heterogeneous and truly worth-while unity. This alone would make a heaven of earth. The harmony of man, even the divinity of man, arises from the fact that he is made up of diverse and distinct types of cells, tissues, organs, capacities, thoughts, emotions, but all working in harmony to produce man, his body and soul.

This brings us to a topic that is most relevant for us: the problem of linguistic and cultural minorities. These have always been there, in border areas, in centres of trade and commerce, and to a certain extent in the capitals of states. There has seldom been a total merger, a complete giving up of identity of language, customs manners. The language of the area the minority has always accepted, learnt, respected. Individuals have often contributed to the enrichment of the literature, the scholarship of the area and the majority language. But this has been done without their giving up their own language which they continued to use at home and in their own group. This, I believe was true integration and integration that did not destroy the part in the interests of the whole. This I feel should be the ideal for the present and future as it was for the past. The same principle should hold good in the matter of customs, beliefs. Adaptations modifications, synthesis are inevitable and ought take place. Evolution and not revolution is the ideal.

There are many, among the highly 'educated' in English, and their understanding admirers and imitators, who believe in, and propagate, the theory that the universal acceptance of English as medium of administration and communication will make integration easy, quick and so spontaneous as to be a pleasure rather than a pain. Catering to the theories and aspirations of these people a large number of Nursery Schools have sprung up in which Indian boys and girls learn everything, through English rhymes and then in higher classes songs on English life. The result of this is that the boys and girls of these schools are ready to sail or to fly to England or America but are unfit for home and India. This type of education is, moreover creating a new caste, higher than the brahmin caste of the past. It is also making it virtually impossible for its victims to understand the mind and heart of the ordinary people of India. They do not have a language to communicate even with their parents. The gap between these and the Indian-language-educated is becoming wider and wider, unbridgeable. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of modern education: we have in India some who are already in America in spirit, and so are naturally discontented with their bodies that obstinately remain in India and equally naturally resent their Indian citizenship, their Indian blood, and their Indian jobs and relatives.

Some of us believe that India must remain India and Indians remain Indians India, ever young and ever old can remain vigorously India only if her children, ever young and ever old like her lavish their loving care and skill in nursing her varied and various, (though at heart one) cultures beliefs, languages. Let me quote in conclusion Gandhiji" I would not have a single Indian to forget, neglect or be ashamed of his mother-tongue or to feel that he or she cannot think or express the best thoughts in his or her own vernacular. It is a self demonstrated proposition that the youth of a nation cannot keep or establish a living contact with the masses unless their knowledge is received and assimilated through a medium understood by the people."

FIRST FRUITS OF FREEDOM

2010-01-16T10:43:00.000-08:00

Many years after independence there are people among us who say, ''We have not gained, we have lost.' There are braver people who proclaim, "we have been betrayed!'

And they are all honourable men. Our food problem remains; our housing shortage endures; cloth is as scarce as ever, and so is almost everything, though we are trying to make them plentiful at home and abroad with our strikes.

The labour and the wounds are vain, as things have been they remain. Foolish to ask, are they vain, do they remain? The tired waves of nationalism vainly breaking? seem to gain no inch, but examine the creeks and the inlets, there is certainly activity in these unobstrusive regions, and may be, some little progress.

Turn over the pages of any newspaper admiring the advertisements, Is there no change? True, still women dominate. They always do, don't they? They grin, they smoke, they meditate; but they are all in saris even though boosting soaps and snows and cigarettes from foreign lands. Consider what this means to the sari-trade and incidentally to the self-respect of our mothers, sisters, servants. Coats and pants have not vanished as completely as gowns, but how soothing it is to see the man in dhoti smoking away, though the smoking train missed him, never knowing or caring what it was missing.

Apart from, or rather within, the clothes, the bodies and the beaming faces are all Indian. That means, to descend as we must to economics, that foreign firms are now distributing among local artists a good deal of the money that they were spending wholly at home. It also means, ascending to the purer air of psychology, so much of free education in nationalism to our little kids who take their first lessons; from the pictures in newspapers.

Do not the signboards from housetops and shop-tops shout, 'as things have been they DO NOT remain.' Royal, imperial, Majestic, once words of power, have disappeared overnight and become, every one, national. The British Empire Hotels, how quickly they have become 'Swatantra Bharatha Bhavans'. Our own languages either non-existent or occupying shy corners on the signboards and name boards have now moved forward and occupy the centre of the stage with English servants attending at a respectful distance. Indian names ones Anglicized to suit the fashion have undergone rapid and proud reconversion. Varmas who had become Worms are glad to be Varmas again though they might wish to be Burmas when they go to Bengali! Foreign names, since become native, are now ashamed of their alien associations and are gladly accepting vernacularisation, D'Sas become Desais, Jeromes trick out as Jawahars.

These changes may not exactly be symbolic of a change within; but it is wise to remember that the skin can change the soul almost as surely as the soul can change skin, given time. A man can change his coat though it is not as easy as it looks; and a coat can change a man and it is not as difficult as it seems. Is this not the principle of the uniform, the ceremonial dress even of the Gandhi Cap? Can a man under a Mahatma's cap do mean things, can a policeman with a baton run away, can a criminal in a Cassock murder?

We have heard many laugh at the restoration of their real names to our old towns, our ancient states, our sacred rivers and mountains. In nothing had the rulers who have left us shown such contempt for their subjects and their country than in the way in which they twisted and tortured these sweet names, rich with a thousand associations, historical, religious and literary. We have now our Ganga, our Ayodhya, our Kanpur, back. A small thing, but significant if we love the beauty of words and names, their sense and purity.

The relative value of eastern and western manners too has changed. A 'namaste' is no longer inferior or vulgar. 'A Good Morning' with an English accent is not the sure passport it was to every office and every job. The parading of cigarette tins and the long enduring cheroots has ceased to be(or will soon be, we hope) chic. Cotton is now as respectable as foreign wool except perhaps at Christian weddings. A man's nearness to heaven is, as in ancient India, becoming inversely and not directly proportional to the number of TIES he has. People will no longer be judged by the shine of the shoes or polish of their buttons put by the shape of heads and their probable contents. One might be wisely humble without being condemned for not having push and guts. Now one does not have to pretend, to boast, to humbug,- these foreign ideals have followed the people who imported them.

Again the first language of our educational institutions has become the second, will soon be the third, and the second has become the first. A very minor change, a mere change in nomenclature at present, but psychologically and potentially how vital! Our Indian language pandits are no longer ashamed of themselves or of their names. English is humble, like THE ENGLISH, content to dream of the past shutting its eyes on the future. It is surrendering its chairs one by one to its vernacular superiors. Time was when no pandit could occupy a front seat in any gathering, but now he is on the platform, haranguing, inspiring the leaders of the future.

Has Independence done nothing ?

Did we ever hear, before Independence, our officers complaining of interference in their normal duties? Every interference was then an order, oral or written, and obeyed as such. Nay, no interference was necessary. They read the minds of their masters and found pleasure and promotion in catering even to their whims- But now with Independence they have become really independent, they brook no interference; they do their duty, according to their likes, or their dependants likes. Have we not gained much? At least have they not gained much?

Till that 15th of August 'Made in England', Incorporated in England Printed in England', 'Reviewed in England' even 'Returned from England' covered a multitude of sins. These last, local 'England-returneds', often talked of going 'home' when they periodically went back to Eng-and at Government expense to improve their accents and their complexions, but not their brains. For, out of the unwise cannot come wisdom even if subjected to periodical 'tempering' by alternate stays in the torrid and temperate zones, How often a mother, a father, an uncle, a father-in-law, in ordinary Indian cloths has been disowned by sons and nephews because they did not seem decent folk in a company of cigar-smoking, wine-bibbing, dancing dandies? And now! The half-naked Mahatma has not lived in vain, though 'official' maniacs are not wanting who would gladly undo his work. Our village gentlemen, no truer gentlemen in the world, need no longer be ashamed of themselves or their clothes even in the presence of President Prasad. No Indian will prefer now a European mate to the darker type that he is accustomed to at home and in his own mirror. Witness the hundreds of recent foreign scholars' who have returned safe.

In the field of sports there is not much reorientation, yet in the spirit, and outlook of sportsmen there is. We are not likely to go back, for some years at least, to our less expensive, less dangerous, but not less interesting village games. But till Independence there was a feeling, sedulously propagated by interested men at home and abroad, that the short-cut to Independence was cricket or tennis. It used to be said that one victory by an Indian side at Lords or the Oval, or a Wimbledon Championship meant more than a hundred Satyagraha movements. These champions of sport conveniently forgot that a world championship in wrestling, or the first place in Olympic hockey brought us no millimeter nearer freedom. How childishly simple freedom battles would have been if only what they believed or told was true, and how bloodless! We no longer hear such foolish talk. Now we play the game for the sake of the game not to please a master and win crumbs.

Till Independence we have no faith in our own standards. When an Englishman or one from the Continent praised us we felt good, when he condemned us we felt humble, guilty, repentant, eager to improve; or we screamed. We were eager for the foreigner's opinion even when they were worthless than nothing. (Of course there were worthy opinions, but so over-valued here) Our Vedas are good because a Max Muller praised them, our Ramayana is good because it has been translated into the Russian, our Sakuntala is good because Goethe praised it, (and conversely Goethe is good becaused he praised the Sakuntala), our Tagore is great because C. F. Andrews accepted him as master, our Mahatma is great because a Miss Mira Ben adored him. How anxious we were for these certificates from the West and how sparing in quality and quantity the ones we got. How often for a page of praise we got books like Mother India or Verdict on India. But now we get praise from every one and in plenty. We only smile superiorly and contemptuously when we hear it. Is this no gain?

THE FUTURE OF MAN

2010-01-09T06:05:00.000-08:00

Has man a future? Even the wisest cannot tell. He was but an ape just more than a million years ago. What might he be as many years hence? He was a worm some five hundred millions of years ago. Will he be alive and kicking after a lapse of that fabulous number of years from today? Will even the earth, his home, be safe from some astronomical catastrophe in that remote future?

The human intellect is baffled by these questions, but not the human imagination. Poets rush in where scientists fear to tread. And yet, perhaps, not completely in vain. For, in a sense, they help in building a bright new world, with their dreams.

Before the age of Darwin these dreamers were content with imagining little ideal islands or city states nestling in peace and comfort in a warring world. Plato's 'Republic', Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia' and Bacon's 'New Atlantis' are small model states visualised by great minds to serve as an inspiration for their contemporaries and as a prophecy of the future. But even their modest and humble prophecies are yet to be fulfilled. Plato's schemes of breeding the governors of the land by choosing their parents and his balanced state composed of four contented classes symbolised by gold, silver, copper and iron, have had only one appreciable effect. They have supplied other writers in the same line with hints and suggestions.

Pre-Darwinian prophets were as a rule more concerned with improvements in man's surroundings than with possible changes in man himself. Even when they deal with man, their thoughts just hovered dimly around possible changes in man's moral make-up. But Darwin released visionaries from their chains. When they recovered from their initial shock at his 'heresies' they realised what wonderful vistas were now open before them. They let their fancies roam thousands and millions of years into the future, building, pulling down, and rebuilding, as the mood took them.

Mr. H. G. Wells was one of the first to plunge into this exhilarating prospect. His Time Traveller travels in his 'Time Machine' forward through time and stops for a few days in the world for the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand and Seven Hundred and One A. D. Man has by this time differentiated into two distinct species. The upper world is inhabited by Eloi and the underworld by Morlocks. The former are the descendants of the happy capitalists and intellectuals of the present and the immediate future. The latter are the descendants of the present day workers who may in the immediate future have to live more and more underground. In the year 802,701 A. D. the Eloi are beautiful and graceful creatures but indescribably frail. Their flushed faces are like those of the more beautiful kind of consumptive. They have no hair on the face and there are no differences in costume, texture and bearing between the sexes. They eat nothing but fruits. There never could be people more indolent or more easily fatigued. They are on the intellectual level of five year old children. Even reading and writing they have forgotten. They are terribly afraid of darkness and night. Clearly they are on the wane. Their civilization had reached its zenith and then declined. 'After the battle had come quiet'...The Morlocks, on the other hand, are animals preferring darkness to light. Their eyes are luminous. They are ape-like and walk with their heads hanging down. They are blinded by light. They are carnivorous and carry away Eloi from the upper world for their dinners. The Eloi have become the fatted calves they see to the breeding of. But they are excellent workmen and know everything about machines.

Let us tear our eyes away from this picture of the suicide of the human intellect and the triumph of the human brute. There are others who believe that comfort balance and security need not necessarily lead to decay. Mr. Bernard Shaw is one of the foremost of them. His book 'Back to Methuselah' takes us onward from the days of Lilith, an imaginary ancestor of Adam and Eve to 'as far as thought can reach.' i.e. 31, 920 A. D. In that world, separated from us by thirty thousand years there are no babes. Boys and girls who look not less than seventeen or eighteen come out off big eggs, which are ceremonially opened before a temple. In two years of life inside the egg they pass through a development that costs us twenty years of stumbling immaturity. In five or six minutes they are perfectly reasonable and have finished their education. Strongest of all, they have no bowels. Humanity has been saved once and for all from hunger and the tyranny of the stomach. For four short years they spend their days making love, dancing, playing, painting, sculpturing, working in laboratories at dolls which they can endow with life, and heartily hating older people who despise these childish games. But as days pass they grow more and more thoughtful and finally leave their nursery round the temple of art for the groves and the hills, to think and think and be happy thinking. The hills and groves are peopled by He and She Ancients who walk about with their eyes shut and deep in thought. With their will they can transform themselves into whatever shape they like but they soon give up the exercise of this newfound power. Experiments with their body lead only to the conviction that the slavery of the body is irksome. They strive in vain for liberation from the flesh. Their wish is to become pure whirlpools of intelligence unencumbered by matter. They live for years and years trying to realise this real immortality. Death is caused only by accidents but these too they have not succeeded in abolishing.

Shaw's faith, as that of his ancients, is that this new world and progress have been made possible by the will to long life and improvement manifest from the first in human beings.

Evolution is to him no accident. In this he is a disciple of Lamarck. Lamarckianism is not scientifically defensible. "No one can by taking thought add one cubit into his stature", Anatole France dynamites this popular fallacy by making one of his character say "I often see children with strawberry marks, whose mothers say that they desired strawberries before their birth. I am waiting to see a baby marked with a pearl necklace."

Olaf Staphedon in 'Last Men and First Men' paints a different picture of the world to be and man's place in it. His imagination works many millions of years into the future. He first depicts the failure of an early experiment in human evolution which produced a great race with great brains and diminutive bodies, in whom the intellect is developed, as in the case of Shaw's Ancients, to the exclusion of the emotions. Evolution starts experimenting again and at last produces a race of human being 'who take nearly two thousand years to grow up, live two hundred thousand years and continue to Indulge in love art and even sport when fully adult although vastly more intelligent than ourselves."

Aldous Huxley's brilliant satirical imagination is more modest and the men and women who inhabit his 'Brave New World' live in the 26th century, or to be more exact 632 A. F. A. F. meaning either ' After Ford' or 'After Freud.' Ford is the God of the New World.

Ford is in his flivver

All's right with the world.

This world is controlled by Ten World Controllers. The administration is based on the twin ideals of Happiness and Stability. On the alter of Stability art and love have been sacrificed. Science is an enemy and every new invention is suppressed. Every one who has worked out any bit of real science is banished into one of the many small islands of the world. Passion is kept under strict control. Old age, sickness, sorrow, have died out and so has God. Children are mass produced in racks and racks of test-tubes in Hatchery and Conditioning centres. There are five classes of children. Alphas and Betas are the higher castes. Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons are lower caste menials doing mechanical work. Many of them are identical, one Gama ovum producing by the 'Bokanovsky process' up to ninety six identical twins to work ninety-six identical machines. The education of all the children begins in Neo Pavlovian conditioning rooms. "Everyone works for everyone else", "I love my caste and my uniform", "Everyone belongs to everyone else" are some of the lessons the children are taught in their sleep on the principle that 62,400 repetitions make one truth. Death still survives but every one is conditioned to think lightly of it.

But these are all insubstantial pageants 'built on airy nothings'. They do no more than point the way. We can-not know. We can only hope. Even our hopes are so different. Some of these dreams have been nightmares and some honey sweet or gorgeously grand. Science tells us only this, that in case man does not evolve other animals will take up the wondrous tale. Some scientists hold that the rat has as good a chance as any other.