Mahadev Page 11

  ‘As family situations go, it seems to be about giving each other space and doing our thoughtful best for each other. Valmiki is subtle in this. He creates touching incidents and vivid scenes in which we may appreciate the nuances ourselves.’

  ‘How beautiful this country must have been once! How did it get so dirty and depressing when we had such idyllic landscapes?’ said the grandfather.

  ‘Wait till you see Bali. It is heartbreakingly like what India could have looked like without the dirt and disorder.’

  ‘I liked hearing about the cottage in Panchavati,’ said the grandfather. ‘It’s interesting how epic references turn up everywhere in real life. When I took my son to Ujjain, I told him we were going to the place where Krishna had gone to boarding school, at Rishi Sandipani’s gurukul. My son immediately remembered the story of Krishna and Sudama; and Sudama’s famous gift of poha to Krishna when he went to see him at Dwaraka. We were so surprised and pleased to find that poha is the most popular local snack in Ujjain. It was such a charming epic link.’

  ‘There’s a very nice Haryanvi song about Krishna and Sudama in which Krishna fondly reproaches Sudama for not coming to him sooner. It’s the most touching song I’ve heard in a long time,’ said the guru. ‘A schoolgirl from Haryana, a farmer’s daughter, made it very popular. I’m told that more than one crore people know this song.’

  ‘Do play it,’ said the grandfather, and the guru took out his phone and found the song on YouTube. They sat back to hear the sweet, hypnotic strains of Bataa mere yaar Sudama re (Tell me dear Sudama).

  ‘The child will love this,’ said the grandfather, ‘they all will. Kyun bhullya pyaar Sudama re—why did you forget my love, Sudama? That takes me to the heart of our faith.’

  ‘Moving, isn’t it? To think of Sri Krishna and Sudama in Dwaraka, and in gurukul out in the green Malwa Plateau. I like the Indian heartland for many reasons. On my visit to Ujjain, I found the roads and general cleanliness quite good except for a messy section at Ramghat on the holy river Kshipra, which had the usual detritus of plastic bags, dead flowers and mud. But the walls along the roads of Ujjain were beautifully painted with decorative motifs in terracotta on white. The charm of a small town with little traffic and many trees and parks instantly made me wistful for the “quality of life” that has gone missing from our now-toxic mahanagaris’.

  ‘Not surprisingly, the local Hindi is very good, too,’ said the grandfather. ‘I noticed that the menu-board of even a small roadside dhaba said ‘Do Nug’ in chaste Hindi for “two pieces” per plate of paranthas or toasted cheese sandwich, whereas a “jumbletown” like Dilli says “Do Piece” even when written in Devnagari.’

  ‘I liked the graceful, old-fashioned manners on the street,’ said the guru. ‘There is definitely a soft charm to the place. All you have to do is say “Namaste” to get smiles and help. In that sense, Madhya Pradesh is like the rest of India. The key to it is old-fashioned politeness—a Please, a Thank You and a smile along with a Namaste. Everybody knows exactly how to behave then and it can be very pleasant and civilized.’

  ‘How was your experience at the Mahakaleshwar temple?’ asked the grandfather.

  ‘Mixed,’ said the guru. ‘I went there in winter. I could walk in, warmly clad in jeans, right into the sanctum and nobody objected. Women in jeans walked in, too, without any trouble. I thought the bare-chested priests, hardened by the rigour of service, looked elegant in their red, yellow, gerua or purple cotton dhotis.’

  ‘The general arrangements were very nice and the staff and security personnel were very polite, especially at the lockers and the footwear counter. The Ramakrishna Mission has a nice little bookshop in the inner compound. I noticed that it also had books on Christianity and Islam comfortably displayed next to books on Hinduism.’

  ‘But right inside the sanctum, the way some men in uniform, and pilgrims from elsewhere in India, pushed and shoved in the queue was not nice at all. What an irony, really! Imagine pushing and shoving and making haste at any temple, that too at a temple that specifically celebrates Shiva as Eternity. Anyhow, thanks to CCTV, I could see the harati all the way along the queue. There was absolutely no need to hurry. Ultimately, it was watching the quiet sincerity of many other devotees that gave me a sense of darshan.’

  ‘Yes, I can understand that. You mentioned the nagchampa earlier. That sounds like it could be either Shaiva or Vaishnava,’ said the grandfather.

  ‘Ah,’ said the guru, beaming. ‘Do you know what a great point you just made? It seems that every epithet of Shiva is interchangeable with every epithet of Vishnu, if you dig deep into the meaning. All but one. The name Narayana that we find most famously in Vishnu’s ashtakshari or eight-syllable mahamantra—Om Namo Narayanaya. And that, if you please, is exclusive to him not because of theology but because of a rule in Sanskrit grammar.’

  ‘Really? I never thought of Vaakvani Sarasvati as a . . . what do you call it? A grammar-nazi!’ laughed the grandfather.

  ‘Oh, she’s very strict,’ said the guru. ‘Now you’ve reminded me of the late Frits Staal.’

  ‘The Sanskritist?’ said the grandfather.

  ‘Yes, Frits Staal, the Dutch scholar. I have a clipping on him that I would like to read to you because it’s about devbhasha Sanskrit,’ said the guru, reaching out for his trusty cloth bag.

  Putting on his glasses, he began to read:

  ‘Frits Staal, 1930–2012, was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and South/South-East Asian Studies at the University of California. He studied at Amsterdam and Varanasi, and obtained his PhD from the University of Madras as a government of India scholar . . .’

  ‘And so Frits went to Madras in 1954, walking daily under a large black umbrella to learn Sanskrit from a pandit who taught little children. He discovered that “Sanskrit was much more alive in India than Classical Greek and even Latin in Europe”.’

  ‘Importantly, Frits met and was influenced by Professor V. Raghavan, member of the government of India Sanskrit Commission, consisting of the eight most renowned Sanskrit scholars of India. Their report recommended the three-language formula and the creation of the Central Institute of Indology.’

  ‘Frits said that he found Raghavan’s outlook “truly universal”, supporting not only Sanskrit but all classical languages. Quoting from an article he wrote in remembrance. “What I learned from Raghavan was that Panini and the classical languages paved the way for the artificial languages of modern science, for classical languages concentrate on the transmission of knowledge. Raghavan showed that there is no limit to the interplay between traditions and innovations within a civilization.”’

  ‘In 1975, Frits organized the twelve-day Vedic sacrifice Atiraatra-Agnicayana with the learned priests Cherumukku Vaidikan and Itti Ravi Nambudiri in Kerala. He was supported by prestigious foreign funders. Two monumental documentary volumes on Agni emerged as a result in 1983.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said the grandfather. ‘It makes me want to hear the Sri Rudram again on YouTube. This is my favourite verse:

  “namaste astu bhagavan

  vishveshvaraya mahadevaya tryambakaya

  tripurantakaya trikagni-kalaya kalagni rudraya

  nilakanthaya mrutyumjayaya sarveshvaraya

  sadashivaya shriman mahadevaya namah”

  O Lord, we salute You.

  Lord of the Universe, the greatest of all,

  With the three all-seeing, all-knowing eyes

  Who confers on us the ultimate knowledge and enlightenment,

  O Lord, who devours past, present and future like fire within himself.

  Blue-necked one, conqueror of death, Lord God of all,

  The Cause of everything, Great God, we salute You.

  ‘It makes my hair stand on end,’ said the guru.

  ‘But . . .’ said the grandfather, looking embarrassed, ‘I no longer know what to think of some scholars. I absolutely don’t condone virulence and violence against them. I feel smirched by that. Smirched! Howeve
r, I also have to admit that some interpretations get on my nerves.’

  ‘Nobody knows what to think any more, so you’re not alone,’ said the guru, holding out an old issue of Biblio magazine. ‘But look, we can cheer up with the nagchampa. Would you like to read aloud the part I’ve marked? It’s from an article about the book I’m reading on our sacred plants.’

  The grandfather took the magazine and began to read aloud:

  ‘“ . . . the punnaga or nagchampa (Alexandrian laurel/Calophyllum inophyllum L.), which is neither ‘Alexandrian’ nor ‘laurel’, a fact drily noted by the authors, is a hard wood best known today for prosaic uses like making railway sleepers and cabinets.”

  “It yields dark, viscous oil that smells and tastes unpleasant and is moreover poisonous. Its oil is used in making soap. But this stolid-sounding tree is otherwise crimson-leaved and makes a good shade tree for avenues.”

  “Not nearly exciting enough? Wait, the punnaga is discovered to carry the salt tang of the wide oceans, the romance of the ancient seafaring race of the Tamils from the heady days of the Pallava kingdom and the Chola Empire. It was punnaga wood that was used to build their ships for trade, and once, a blue water navy for the conquest of a king of Sumatra who harassed Indian traders. The Indian force made its point and sailed back home, it did not loot or colonise the kingdom.”

  “This stout tree, besides carrying adventurous Indians over the waves, is also discovered to protect the shoreline along the Eastern Seaboard. It is under its wide and hospitable shade that the Parava fisherfolk ritually picnic on rice and fish curry and pray to its tree spirit for a good catch.”

  “These interesting affiliations to everyday life add to the lustre of the punnaga and we may read on to learn that the punnaga finds frequent mention in Valmiki’s Srimad Ramayanam, appearing in the Bala Kandam, in Kubera’s pleasure garden ‘Chaitraratha’, in the Kishkinda Kandam, and most poignantly as one of the decorative trees around the pretty cottage in Panchavati forest, the scene of Sita’s dreadful abduction.”

  “The punnaga is often to be found in the Mahabharata as well, notably as witness to Nala’s abandonment of Damayanti in the forest, and looking on at the sacred lake of Dvaitavana where Duryodhana comes to taunt the Pandavas in exile on the excuse of inspecting his herds and branding cattle.”

  “After these epic revelations, it is a pleasant drift through mythological time to the Matsya Purana, Vishnu Purana and to the holy of holies, the Srimad Bhagvatam, the biography of Sri Krishna, where the Purana says that the punnaga may be found on Trikuta Mountain, in SB 8:2.9-13.”

  “Tamil literature and Chola inscriptions further attest to the special position enjoyed by the punnaga.”

  “But we hit gold, as it were, when we come to an enduring Chennai landmark, the Kapalisvarar temple at Mylapore, for at this ancient landmark, the punnaga was and is the tree of trees.”

  “In the Shiva-Parvati lore of the Kapalisvarar temple, it is under a punnaga that Parvati undertook her worship of Shiva and was reunited with him after a separation. Similarly, the punnaga is central to the sacred legends of the Shaiva temples at Thanjavur, and at Tuticorin, famed for its pearl-fishers.”

  “Beguiled by these marvels, it is almost with affection that we finally discover that among its medicinal uses, the punnaga—always the punnaga now, or if you will, the nagchampa, but never the Alexandrian laurel—that is to say, the punnaga will also cure ulcers, relieve muscle and joint pain and even treat nervous disorders: in all, a most excellent tree to become acquainted with.”

  “So it goes, through the rest of the book, with some entries shorter and some much longer. Particularly recommended are the entries on the Tamarind, the Plantain and the Sal. The entry on the famous Soma of the Vedas contains the intriguing fact that ‘bhang’ is an epithet of Soma in the Rig Veda, so perhaps it was, after all, hemp or Cannabis sativa—‘a medicinal shrub grown on the foothills of the Himalayas and in Pakistan. This seems the most likely explanation for Soma’ note the authors. This entry is one of the most impressively researched and articulated.”’

  ‘Did you enjoy that?’ said the guru anxiously, in case his friend was tired.

  ‘Yes, I did, thank you. It’s a clear case of “Wherever you go, you find Mahadev”. And imagine Indian ships made of nagchampa wood sailing over the seas all the way to China via Sumatra. Also, the riddle of Soma is practically solved, I see. It could be what we always thought it was—Mahadev’s special drink, bhang.’

  ‘There’s a sting in the tail, though,’ said the guru, his dark grey eyes alight with amusement. ‘Read the last part, will you, after Soma?’

  ‘Oh?’ said his friend and took up the article:

  ‘“As to which the authors, as Indian researchers of experience, ‘own’ this cultural knowledge. Only its botanical formatting is of fairly recent Western origin. Therefore they may like to boldly replace inappropriate colonial labels like ‘Wooden Beggar Bead’ for the holy Rudraksha (Eleocarpus sphericus) in future editions and reconsider the need to reflexively cite a Western writer—‘Stutley 1985, 119’—for information like ‘The five divisions of the berry signify Shiva’s five faces’. The Western researcher would have obtained such information from an Indian in the first place. As Indian experts themselves, they do not need citations for such cultural basics.”’

  ‘And . . . ?’ said the guru, an eyebrow raised.

  ‘You’re a wicked person, Guruji,’ chuckled the grandfather. ‘I never noticed all these years. I had you labelled as mild and saintly. But speaking of Shiva is proving most instructive.’

  11

  Ganga

  ‘We say Hari bhakti but Shiva jnana,’ said the guru at the next story session. ‘That means “devotion to Vishnu and knowledge of Shiva”. This is not a narrow, literal definition. It’s a deep summary of their combined essence. We need them both on our personal journey through our human birth. Especially, we need the grace of Devi. I need a separate katha series for her, there’s so much to try and say. Our religion generously allows us to choose the aspect of God that we like most for our personal focus. But both Vishnu as the Gitacharya Krishna and Shiva as Adi Guru Dakshinamurthi tell us that life is a short, passing drama. The only path through it is love.’

  ‘When we define that love as “God love”, it does not mean love only for the image of God in a temple or in our puja corner. God is present in everything and everybody. So the message is, “Be loving to everybody”. How can we do that? For one, never initiate a quarrel or a cruelty. By all means defend yourself if someone attacks you. But let the matter be after that; don’t carry a grudge forever. Above all, give of yourself. Give in service, give in charity, give in affection and give with good manners. My grandmother used to say, “Kuch bhi bolo par meetha bolo”. Say anything you please, but say it “sweetly”, meaning politely, and in a nice tone. This is not “weakness”, it’s manners.’

  ‘Manners, manners, manners! Manners at home, manners on the street, manners at work. Phone manners, lift manners, road manners. Not overtaking from the left, not honking loudly and needlessly. Not driving fast in the wrong place, not endangering others or making them uncomfortable, not being intrusive—all these things are manners, and each time we show good manners and soft speech, our behaviour is like an offering to God. This is dhyana or meditation in real life. This dhyana leads us to jnana.’

  ‘Use a nice, egoless tone with the garbage collector who comes to your door. Use it with shop assistants, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, fruit and vegetable sellers, with everyone who provides you a service. Use it with elders, visitors and strangers. Use it lavishly at home and work. It softens everybody’s day. The good energy that they will get and automatically pass on from you will lift up the whole atmosphere and come back to you.’

  ‘Especially, when you give to beggars, hold your hands below theirs. Let their hands be above yours. Let them take your money from above, not receive it from below. This small but important change in your body
language is noted by God because it means that you are showing love. Sri Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, in Canto nine Verse twenty-six:

  “patram pushpam phalam toyam

  yo me bhaktya prayacchati

  tad aham bhakti-upahrtam

  asnami prayatatmanah”

  ‘“Just a leaf, a flower, a fruit or some water is enough for me. I accept it. But what I want is your love; what you offer is the vehicle that carries your love to me.” If we “offer” rather than “give” to the needy, it’s as though we’re making an offering to God. It is Hari bhakti.’

  ‘Sri Krishna himself takes us to Shiva in the Bhagavad Gita. He says, in Canto four Verse thirty-seven:

  “yathaidhamsi samiddho ’gnir

  bhasma-sat kurute ’rjuna

  jnanagnih sarva-karmani

  bhasma-sat kurute tatha”

  ‘“As the blazing fire turns firewood to ashes, Arjuna, so does the fire of knowledge burn to ashes all reactions to material activities.”’

  ‘To know and understand that life is short and not worth negative behaviour and to practise soft speech and behaviour instead is Shiva jnana. Shiva is the fountainhead of knowledge. When all is gone, only the ultimate essence is left—the moola tattvam—which is water. The world itself is mostly made of water. Our bodies, too, are mostly made of water.’

  ‘We literally put earth and water on our bodies with vibhuti and chandan to remind us of this truth.’

  ‘There is another kind of holy water that we drink, not through our mouth but through our ears. This sweet water for our souls is made of ragas. Ragas are a holy gift, for it was Shiva who invented speech, music, dance and philosophy and made Sarasvati their custodian. He created everything with the first syllable “Om”. Let me tell you about one very special raga, called Shankarabharanam.’