Of Consciousness and Faith

I am an agnostic. I wish to redundantly clarify that I am not an atheist. The past weekend I was fortunate to behold some quaint art and architecture, reminiscent of sketches in the Amar Chitra Kathas, when I had the misfortune of visiting the ISKCON temple in Bangalore.

Even as my slippers felt the sack -- I did not get obtusely extravagant; I just left my slippers in a sack, with my friends' -- I felt my tummy growl rebelliously. I mean, I am not in the habit of polishing off slippers for breakfast,  literally or figuratively; my stomach simply did not feel right. It must have been the pizzas that I had gorged myself on in the morning, I reassured myself. We stepped into the temple.

People thronged in queues to see the various vignettes, effigies and other carvings of Krishna, the herdsman widely purported to be the eighth incarnation (avataar) of Vishnu (one of the Trinity) after Matsya (The Fish), Kurma (The Tortoise), Varaaha (The Wild Boar), Narasimha (The Man-Beast), Vaamana (The Short Brahmin), Parashurama (The Man with the Axe) and Rama. Yes, coming back to what I was saying, the crowds trickled into the sanctum to get a glimpse of the statue of Krishna, the herdsman with the flute. One could, if one wished, consecrate offerings to the Lord and have a special consecration ritual performed. For which one had to buy archana tickets. The tickets ranged from Rs. 10 to Rs. 50. If one bought a higher priced ticket, it appeared, one deserved a better and a more elaborate consecration ceremony!

Even as the crowds circumambulated the deity, bespectacled scholarly people stood by the path, by the tables, waiting to bring to the light of the masses and exhorting them to buy the various artefacts, simulacra and books that the ISKCON had brought out to perpetuate Krishna's glory worldwide. Fervent and affluent devotees bought effigies and photographs while the others sated their pious senses by staring at them in utmost reverence during the pradakshina (the circumambulation) and walked slowly, secretly hoping that they would be reciprocally noticed from up there for a proportionately long time.

A well run temple showcasing well the legends of Indian mythology, I thought. And then I let my mind abstractly wander unto the usual thoughts of one man exploiting another man’s faith in the supernatural. These thoughts ran through my mind inductively, as they often do at temples and other places run in the name of religion, taking almost a well-rehearsed course. But what I saw during my egress has not ceased to amaze me till this moment. The tortuous path led into a restaurant by name Prasadham (Prasadham, in Tamil, refers to the consecrated offerings, betokening God’s benedictions in his offering to the devotees, dealt out in token amounts to the devotees). The glutton that I am, my gaze was impelled by divine forces -- my bovine forces rather -- in the direction of pizzas and pastries. And consequently towards the labels and the price tags. The boards said: Prasadham: Pastry – Donation Rs. 20. I then gradually came to grips with the nuances. One would receive a pastry as the Lord’s prasadham if one doled out a donation of Rs. 20! A higher amount as a token donation would fetch one a commensurately higher token of benediction!

Beset with ideas that I was unable to stomach down an already wobbly tummy, I came out without having so much a nibble at the Prasadham, token of the Lord’s benediction! I felt apoplectic when I realised I had grown fully conscious -- conscious of Krishna, I mean. 

 
NB: My apologies if, at places, the intended sarcasm (if evident at all!) stirs anyone’s sentiments. Please allow me to clarify once again that I am an agnostic and I am not an atheist. Also, with reference to the above case, I have nothing against a restaurant doing good business inside a place of religious worship. In fact, that would, if anything, indicate the tolerance of the religion and goodwill. What I cannot take is people playing upon the faiths of other people. If these stunts (say, calling the sweetmeats Prasadham and writing ‘Donation’ on the price tag. Ok, that is a little flimsy for an example. But I'm sure it has its more serious counterparts.) are merely excuses for innovative creative thinking, I will tender my apologies right at this point. But it occurs to me that, to the millions of poor and uneducated masses that visit in all earnestness to pay homage, the stunt sometime ceases to remain merely that, a stunt. And, I have many a time had the misfortune of observing that, in almost every such endeavour, there seem to be undercurrents of exploitation of faith by the commercial elements; on various levels, I should add. In fact, the Indian tourism ministry would do well to take better care of and showcase better the exquisite art and sculptures that our history has given us; there is nothing wrong in hoping to extricate some revenue. My only point is that, in the process, the sentiments of the theist should not be played with. Comments of readers are welcome.

- posted by Dileepan @ 9:57:00 am

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Five Point Something

The past few days, I had been engaging myself with Chetan Bhagat's Five Point Someone. The book, captioned What not to do at IIT with the accent on 'not', is about the life of three friends all of whom choose to try and debunk the system, and finally end up with measly five point something CGPAs.

Though the book is passable as a light and fast read, it came as a slight disappointment to me. The book, much touted (by the author himself in a couple of places) to be an IIT book, appears to be more about the life about three friends; IIT and its culture is relegated to the hazier background of the canvas. The author is probably entitled to his take on student life, or, more specifically, his life at IIT; but to hype it by calling it an IIT book or what not to do at IIT is, I find, a little ludicrous. There would have been more titular relevance had it been sub-titled 'What not to do at college'. Showing a cold shoulder to acads, vodka, pot and grass, wooing a Professor's daughter, sneaking away with exam papers... surely not everyone in the IITs or BITS adopts them as their quotidian principles or necessities (Okay. BITS is a different case altogether! And there are not enough Professors in a University either; anyway not those who have wooable daughters.). I'm sure the author would have ended up just as hapless had he taken to all of that in some Maadha Engineering college! One would do well to read the book bargaining for merely the the college lives of three students; to consider the IIT backdrop to be an incidental. That way, I guess, one will chew on it in a haler spirit.

The book is interspersed with patches of the typical IIT-ish well-engineered wit and is a smooth and pacy read. And, to give the devil it's due, it made me a shade reminiscent about college. But on the whole, I will not gulp down my shaving cream if the peeved IITian rates the book some five point something.

- posted by Dileepan @ 6:56:00 pm

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One Last Time

When the cool invigorating winds of Bangalore struck me in the face this morning, I mused reminiscingly to myself that not much has changed. The cool salubrious morning, greetings of solicitous auto-drivers, rickety buses, Richmond circle -- the landmark which heralded my nearing of the office, the bus-stand where I philosophised sanctimoniously, raved, ranted and vented out my frustration and coughed out my clouded lungs and fogged heart to the Godmother and Elizabeth Taylor, Brigade road, MG Road, the Ulsoor Police Station, Cambridge Layout -- not much change at all, I mused. In the past one month. I mused and mused about this trifle and marvelled at how fleeting glimpses of immortality coalese into the tenebrous truth of the ephemeral.
 
The whole of today I have been wandering like a vagabond, excecrating at autos that sputter and smoke like the chimney, cursing the careening buses and maddening traffic, denouncing the meretricious pomposity of the place, fuming at the totally unprofessional and non-committal service in the shops, guffawing at the heavily made up pseudo-babes... enjoying myself once before leaving for the US. One last time...

- posted by Dileepan @ 3:22:00 am

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Buses and Bus Journeys

I could not conceal my delight and relief when, after six months of Bangalore, I heard the engines of Chennai’s MTC bus splutter and rev up in the Besant Nagar bus terminus.

Madras has one of the most thoroughly organised and efficient governmental public transport systems; after my experiences with public transport conveyances in a few other states like Bangalore, Delhi and Rajasthan, I will allow myself to say that. When I struggled with the public transport in Bangalore (the lack of it in quite a few areas), I realised what we had almost taken for granted in Madras. I realised that I had never nursed a serious misgiving towards the MTC service; of course, the occasional quibbles had always been there. In fact I had always liked the service.

Even as a seven year old boy, I had felt a vague attachment to the PTC buses. Why, the engine of the PTC bus, sounded pleasingly different from the other state buses; it had a rich and regal ring to it. (It was called PTC -- Pallavan Transport Corporation -- those days, named after one of the great dynasties of the legendary tripartite Tamil Nadu of the yore. The name has been changed to MTC -- Metropolitan Transport Corporation -- to remain in consonance with the sophistication in the way of life today; after all, everything in Chennai is professedly metropolitan these days.) Of all the buses that passed the RBI quarters, Besant Nagar, 47A and 21D were my personal favourites. The alphanumeric appellation of 47A sounded a combination worthy of a hero, and 21D, gargantuan. Had there been buses during Mahabharatha, I was pretty sure that 47A would have played Arjuna’s vehicle and 21D, Bheema’s flag-bearing conveyance. Always, my newest and favourite toy bus was always christened 47A. These buses, the very thought of them, transported me to another phantasmagoric world where I remained, fought great wars in buses, took villains to task and did great deeds. Until I was reprimanded and berated by my mother for not doing my homework.

The only other bus that ranks alongside in my sheet is the PTC is the school bus of my kindergarten days. When the final school bell rung, we tiny tots made a dash for the bus, satchels wildly swinging behind like slung pendulums. The bone of contention was the front seat, sitting upon which you would face the driver. A crowd gathered outside the door of the bus and clamoured for the door to open; we were too tiny to reach for the door handle. The conductor then appeared from inside the bus and thundered us into hushed silence. Much the same as rowdy mobs at political meetings; only, there the addressers clamour for seats! When the door opened, dots of tiny bipeds irrupted and made headlong dives for the front seat. Why would we want to scuffle so desperately for the front seats, even as the children that we were; the reader might be prompted to ask. The main allure was this: When, everyday, the bus came to the bridge across the Adayar River, the driver let the steering wheel go, stretched both his hands up skywards, peered through the windscreen with half-closed eyes and sung a throaty refrain. The incredible event was that the bus would cross the bridge exactly when the last line of the refrain was sung. And when the last line was sung, the hands were back on the wheel, eyes fully opened, and countenance sobered, we little spectators to the grand spectacle chuckled in furtive delight. The coincidence never failed on a single day to happen.

With the passage of time, the network of city buses has grown up along with me, as have the bus fares. During my two-month long summer internship program at Lucas TVS, my daily fortunes literally hinged on a couple of buses which sliced right through Madras from Besant Nagar to Padi. If I missed the 5:50 bus from the Besant Nagar terminus, I was sure to reach the place later than 7:15 AM, which was incidentally the stipulated time of arrival, and played the guilty recipient of cold stares and curses of a hundred other groggy-eyed employers, not to speak of the gurkha who wore his topee in the reverse. I day dream and am easy going during the day, but am more obdurate than the Dromedary camel when talks about dawn begin to drift in; I refuse to dream of losing a minute of my sleep at night. With some dogged perseverance, characteristic only of credit-card-offering callers from Citibank, I circumvented the problem. I caught this curious habit of resuming my sleep in the bus, no matter however cramped I was for space. Thus did I vehemently adhere to my early-morning principles of not giving one wink of my sleep to the day. Once, I was executing one of my routine morning siestas (forgive the oxymoron) when I was rudely woken up by a tipsy oldster who almost landed on my left foot when the bus braked and in the process almost spat on my boot all of the red paan he was chewing, early in the morning. After all the bleary-eyed care and intricacy I had employed at half past five in the morning to polish my shoes, I felt like expectorating some red blood on him. But, half shaken out of my sleep, all I managed was a weak muster in the vernacular, “Why, Sir, my foot, when you have all of the Indian roads to yourself?”

My experiences with the moffussil buses have been a little different though. But my experiences with paan haven’t. My friend and I were travelling from Pilani to Sadulpur in one of those crowded rickety state transport buses. We had managed to succeed in our dash for the seat next to the door -- the only seat that had been unoccupied -- and we were pretty ecstatic about it. At one of the stoppings, a lady and a wizened shrivelled old man got in. The lady stood in the crowded bus. The old man neared us and gesticulated to my friend, who was sitting nearer to the aisle, as if to move in a little. And my friend moved a little to find the old man encroaching on his right lap. His stunned reaction, at that point, tickled my ribs no end and I chuckled in kiddish delight. The journey did my spine little good. We were almost within three-quarter of a kilometer within Sadulpur. I recount that because even as I looked out of the window to check the milestone, I thought it must have been raining. When I saw blotches of red on my shirt, I concluded it wasn’t. Apparently, the old man had suffered from an uncontrollable urge to spit out his paan. And I had come into the trajectory! My friend chuckled, in sinisterly delight.

But I must tell you this: if I, in my first standard, had aspired to become anything in life, it was a bus conductor. There was something captivating in the manner that he disposed of tickets; my eyes were often attracted to the differently coloured bundles of tickets between his dextrous fingers and the unerring efficiency and ruthless speed with which he picked the correct tickets without as much a glance at the bundles. Why, Rajnikant, the Black Taj Mahal of Indian cinema, was a bus conductor. If one were a bus-conductor, one could, with aplomb, save one’s mother and younger sister from the machinations of any villain on the face of the earth.

In Bangalore, I saw quite a few lady conductors and felt very proud. I am waiting for the day when Chennai will also broaden its horizon to the good turn. Also, I remember writing -- ranting rather -- after being thrown out of a Bangalore bus after offering Rs. 100 in return for a three-rupee ticket! When I re-enacted it to the Chennai conductor, he reacted differently. I got, in return for a hundred, a ticket for four rupees, six one-rupee coins, ten two-rupee coins, five-rupee coins and notes – two apiece, and five ten rupee notes! I found the change -- I mean, in my fortunes -- too much to take.

Bangalore is a place, my friend quipped, where buses are driven like autos. For that matter, that is true of any vehicle, I added. It is quite common to see dangerously swerving and careening buses. I used to feel terrorised trying to cross the roads of the plateau with the ups and downs making it very difficult for one to judge the momentum of the vehicles.

Hence when I was back in Chennai, I could not conceal my delight and relief when I heard the engines of MTC buses whir and rev up. I was filled with memories.

- posted by Dileepan @ 10:34:00 am

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Different different new new Words!

Apparently the Oxford English Dictionary is including words of Indian origin in its latest edition. For the time being though, I think I will stick to English. :) The Hindu's write-up:


More Indian words in Oxford dictionary

NEW DELHI, JULY 4.

If you tell a stunningly beautiful girl that she has a `va-va-voom' figure, the chances are the damsel will give you a cold stare and mock at your sense of English.

But wait till July 7 when the newest edition of Concise Oxford English Dictionary is officially launched here. The lexicon includes this word which is actually a compliment to a beautiful girl.

`Va-va-voom' means the quality of being exciting, vigorous and sexually attractive and derives its genesis from the sound of a car engine being revved.

But what is likely to cockle many an Indian heart is that the Queen's English is now being profoundly influenced by Hindi words.

Award winning novels of the growing tribe of Indian and Diaspora writers, such as Salman Rushdie, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy have ensured that words of Indian origin become part of English.

Among the new Indian words that make an entry into the lexicon are `Bhagwan' (Indian God), `bhakti' (devotional worship directed to a supreme deity), `bhajan' (a devotional song), bhang (cannabis) and `adda' (informal conversation). — UNI

- posted by Dileepan @ 4:00:00 am

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