The Dreamheron Diaries - স্বপ্নসারসের দিনলিপি

ON HINDU HOLY PATHS ....

2012-01-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

The story of Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi from the ancient Hindu lore goes thus: Yajnavalkya was a very wise sage – learned in the Vedic scriptures. Maitreyi was a young woman seeking timeless wisdom. She became both a beloved wife and a devoted disciple to Yajnavalkya.

They had a wonderful life together. When the husband was nearing the end of his life, he sat the wife down and told her that he was going to leave her a great deal of wealth.

The wife asked: "Will this wealth make me immortal?"

The husband answered: "No, wealth cannot make you immortal."

Then the wife, today revered as one of the wisest women of ancient India, asked her timeless question (in Sanskrit):

Yenaham namritah syam kim aham tena kuryam?

What shall I do with that which will not make me immortal?

From this simple question flows the following diagram:

Seeking timeless knowledge

BENGALI ADVENTURES

2011-05-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a new book on Bengali adventures in English:

More info.

Macchu Pichu Night

2010-10-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

The Red Room by Matisse

2010-10-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

IDYLLS by Sayan De

2010-08-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Here I present two works of art by my nephew Sayan De:

Bridges (watercolor) by Sayan De

Untitled (glass painting) by Sayan De

TALES FROM THE BUDDHIST LORE

2010-08-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus, I am starting up again – and hoping to keep it up.

In this post I will present a couple of pieces of artwork by my niece Sanchari De ("Pooja") – done when she was in her early teens.

BODHIDHARMA CROSSING THE YANGTZE

Bodhidharma floating on the Yangtze by Sanchari De (watercolor)
[Click on picture to enlarge]

Bodhidharma, a great Buddhist master, traveled from India across the forbidding Himalayas to revive Buddhism in China. It was a difficult journey with many obstacles, but somehow he managed it. In China he traveled here and there until he arrived in a village near Nanjing. There he saw a crowd had gathered round a Chinese Buddhist monk named Shengguan, who was preaching there. Bodhidharma joined the crowd. As the Chinese monk was expounding on various thoughts, Bodhidharma instinctively nodded his head in approval or disapproval. The monk saw this, and asked Bodhidharma haughtily why the latter was being so judgmental. Bodhidharma did not want to engage this vain monk in a debate, and quietly left. After this, someone from the crowd told Shengguan: "Don't you know that this is the great Indian monk Bodhidharma?!"

Shengguan felt most ashamed, and ran after Bodhidharma to apologize to the latter. But Bodhidharma was long gone. He soon arrived on the banks of the Yangtze. There he found that there was no way to get across the river – no ferryboats, no dinghies, no one in sight. He looked up and down the river bank, and presently saw an old, decrepit lady sitting close to the shore. She had a sheaf of reed piled up next to her. Bodhidharma approached her and said most kindly: "Esteemed Lady, is there something I can do for you?"

The woman smiled and said: "The proper question is what I can do for you."

Bodhidharma became confused. What could this decrepit woman do for him? As if to answer this thought, the woman took a single reed from the sheaf, and offered it to Bodhidharma: "You want to get across the river, and have no way of doing so. Here, take this reed; lay it on water and step on it. It will carry you safely across."

Bodhidharma did exactly as he was told, without any misgivings. As he laid the reed in water, it seemed to swell to a large log. Bodhidharma stood on it. It plowed through water like a swift boat, and delivered him to the other bank. As Bodhidharma stepped off the reed, it changed to a dragonfly, and flew back to the old lady.

Bodhidharma would go forth from here and do the Buddha's work with great distinction, and step right into history.

Now, the monk Shengguan had by now caught up with Bodhidharma. He was standing at a distance as he witnessed this whole phenomenon. He now came to the old lady, and without even speaking to her, took a reed. He floated it on water and stepped on it. Directly he did so, he fell in the river and nearly drowned. Seething with anger, he came to the old lady and said: "What is the meaning of all this?! I saw that you gave the other monk your magic reed. Why did my reed not work?"

The old lady answered: "That monk came to me, said kind words to me, and showed me respect. You, on the other hand, did not even bother to ask me if you could borrow one of my reeds. You simply stole one. You have not learned the Buddha's way of humility. It is you who should apologize to me."

Shengguan saw the light, and profusely apologized. He then left with his head lowered. But on an afterthought, he turned his head to have another look at the lady. She had disappeared. For she was none other than a Bodhisattva, an incarnate of the Buddha himself.

THE MONK AND THE BUDDHA STATUE

The statue of the Buddha carrying an old monk by Sanchari De (watercolor)
[Click on picture to enlarge]

This is also a story of the power of faith. A very old and frail Buddhist monk resolved to a carry a heavy stone statue of the Buddha a great distance through the woods, to install it in a far monastery. Naturally, it was an impossible task for him, but he did it anyway. The story goes that the monk dragged the statue by fits and starts – a few inches at a time. Then at night, when no one was looking, the statue carried the monk great distances.

"WHAT IS THE QUESTION?"

2007-12-27T15:03:00.000-08:00

We all know about the Dharma Bums of the sixties – men and women who opted for an alternative life of spiritual quest. Some of them traveled to India. It has been said in jest that they went to "clean their karma." Jest is fine, but I do not view these men and women with any derision. I respect their spirit unconditionally.

It seems that the goal of many of these quests was to find one holy man, one guru, who could give you a single thought of some type to become the guiding light of your life. If you went to the holy places like Varanasi or Hardwar and asked around, you would hear about many such gurus of many descriptions. One might live in an inaccessible forest. One might be completely in the state of nature. One might have taken a vow of silence. One may have chosen to remain standing for a year. And so on. So you decided to trek and visit the one that most caught your imagination.

Once you came to the place of your would-be master, it was never clear that he would receive you or speak to you. You might be tested as to how sincere your quest was. But if you were past all these, and were in presence of the man, what did you do then? I understand that you remained silent and let the man take the lead. If he spoke, you listened. If he did not speak, you waited. But if you were truly in luck, an opportunity would present itself somehow for you to ask what you came to ask.

Now comes the important part. There was also an existing protocol for this process. I do not know how that protocol came about or how it got promulgated. But it was very much there. You did not just shoot off questions. You had the opportunity to ask one question. One question. You had better make that one shot count. So you had to formulate the question with great forethought and great cleverness, and then put it to the man. And hope for the best.

So what would you ask? I have heard two formulations of the question that could elicit the 'maximum' answer. One is: What is the way? And the other is: What is the journey? These are both well thought out questions. What do you think? Can you best this formulation? Probably not. Unless of course you wanted to be cute and asked:

What is the question?

THE COLOR GERUA

2007-12-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

We are mindful of the most familiar connotation of certain primary colors: Green is a positive and dynamic color, red is a cautionary and forbidding color, … etc. But what about compound colors? One color that fascinates me is what is called gerua: A color of renunciation which, in its various shades, is worn by Hindu and Buddhist monks. It is probably some combination of yellow, orange and red. In the English language, the color has variously been translated as orange, saffron and ocher. These may be right, considering that gerua is not a single shade, but a range of shades.

In India and some other countries, the color gerua is given a specific place in the society. Whoever wears gerua is viewed with respect. Whether it is the freshly-washed creaseless attire on a high Buddhist priest or the body rags on a vagrant or a long robe on a wandering minstrel, it is respected. In these places, just by donning a gerua robe, you become a different person in the eyes and the mind of the society. And the respect is a respect tinged with the recognition of a higher path. Such is the power of this color – a spiritual power, I like to think. It goes as deep as the very psyche of the Hindus and the Buddhists. Poets such as Rabindranath Tagore have romanticized the color.

In looking up the word recently, I came upon an interesting perspective on the color gerua from the holy men themselves. When saffron jumpsuits were planned for US prison inmates, someone protested. In response, the US Bureau of Prisons sent the following reply:

"Bureau chaplaincy staff have consulted the Buddhist monks at the Institute of Buddhist studies in Berkeley, California, and also with the Vedanta Society in Los Angeles, California. The Buddhist monks have never given any thought to the issue you raise. They expressed no concern nor did they see any negative relationship between inmates wearing saffron jump suits and the color of the robes used by them.

The Vedanta Society states that the Hindu religion does not refer to the color as saffron, but rather as gerua. A white robe is soaked in water and then mixed with pigment of the earth to obtain a color. This will depend upon what part of India you are in and the pigment of the earth in that location. This symbolizes humbleness and the servanthood aspect of the Hindu priest. They also stated the legend that this means was chosen by Buddha in 500 bc because it was, ironically, the same color as worn by the prisoners of those days.

Peter M. Charlson, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC, USA "

THE LAST LANGUAGE BARRIER

2007-08-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

The Bengali word udashin (and its various forms: udash, udashi, udashini) is one of the most image-conjuring words. As soon as I tell you "He is a man of udash-udash nature", you flittingly glimpse in your mind a serene man alone in a bucolic setting, sitting by a river, looking vacantly to the sky and thinking faraway thoughts – or not thinking at all. What is more, the word finds a more natural home in poetry than prose. If I ask you to cite from literature a sentence containing this word, you immediately start, in your mind, scanning the poems of Tagore.

So, what does the word mean? I have a small Bengali-to-English dictionary. It gives the following translations:

Udash: a. Indifferent; apathetic; disinterested; sad; gloomy; blowing at random (wind blowing at random); Be in a listless state of mind.

As technical translation, this will do. But it captures little of the image. And here is the interesting thing: Using more words, or different words does not help the translation. The word seems to me to be not translatable.

The same is true with the word abhisar (abhisarak, abhisarika) which the dictionary says is an "Appointment of lovers" ('Tryst' or 'Assignation' would be a little better). In the Bengali mind, the word creates the elaborate image of a desolate champa-scented garden under full moon, with an udash wind causing a faint stirring of the leaves, where an idealized male and an ethereal female with fragrant flowers in her hair bashfully approach each other. All of these that single word conjures up.

How did these elaborate images develop in the Bengali psyche? There is no good answer. I could try to be pedantic and come up with answers. But I prefer to leave the situation as it is. Let the mystery be! Let the scent of the abhisarika not be chemically analyzed!

There are other such words. Biraha is the next one that comes to mind. There are also image-conjuring words in the English language that are likewise not translatable to Bengali.

When a person of one culture starts to sense the imagery of such words in another culture is when he truly begins to understand the latter culture.

"YOU HAVE NOT ACHIEVED SYNCHRONIZATION"

2007-03-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

Our high school used to hold an annual science exhibition. It lasted for a few days, and a great many people came visiting. Every year that I was there, I had an entry. These were heady days. You forgot your daily routine, your meal time, your bed time, and immersed yourself into your project. For this particular year, I chose a long and very beautiful poem by Rabindranath Tagore on how the evening falls on earth in imperceptible stages, gently, languidly, sadly. I got a teacher with deep, sonorous voice read the poem into a tape recorder. Then I requisitioned a large classroom, emptied it and set it up so as to serve as a wraparound theater. I borrowed projectors, lighting aids and assorted other implements. The idea was to create a visual impression as well as a physical sense of the evening falling on earth and on you as you listened to the recitation. All the various effects were to work together to give you shivers. The project was named "Literary Circarama".

The central note of the poem is a lone, sad bird flying across the landscape and across the poem and across your very being. And the refrain is that even though the world is darkening all around you and everything is being stilled around you – even the ocean waves, do not close those hopeful wings. Never close those dynamic wings.

Each year we had a distinguished guest visit the Exhibition. On this year it was the great Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose. Naturally, every exhibitor was all agog what comment he might make. This was to be the crowning glory for all your intense efforts. In my case he said: "You have not achieved synchronization."

To this day I wonder if I have achieved synchronization in any project in my life.

HOW IS THIS FOR A BOLLYWOOD MOVIE IDEA?

2007-03-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

Near the beginning of this story set in British India, on the rugged mountain highway at Vairengte in the Lushai Hills, Deputy Commissioner Shamsul Huda Khan looks out on the vast expanse of primitive jungle, and says to his childhood friend the Hindu monk: "… The jungle is very old – it is the first sentient life nature created. When you relate to it, you tap into the first life."

Deep in the tiger forest of the Sundarbans, the ancient Thug squats before the Temple of Chhin'nomosta, swaying back and forth in the fullness of a hashish-induced stupor. The British Secret Intelligence Service is closing in on him, but is ordered to terminate the investigation. The old India hands in the Regimental Saturday Club meet in a castle outside London. Little do they know that Section Yashika of the Japanese Navy Secret Services will have its own plan. All such events occurring at different times are on fateful paths that will all converge under the full disc of a jungle moon outside Aizawl. It will the night of nights. Blood will curdle.

Beyond all this and above all this are the watchful eyes of the goddess Kali, and the serene gaze of the Buddha Amida Nyorai. And always and everywhere there is the sweet, memory-wrenching, desire-thickening scent of champa.

Near the end of the story, Lt. Col. James E. Carruthers sits in his office in London and wonders why he did what he did in Aizawl in his official capacity – things that he would never do in the steel-and-concrete civilization where he now sits. "It was the jungle," he concludes, and feels absolved.

The full story (free) at: http://www.geocities.com/bibhasde/champakhargakatana.html

THE GREAT ENTREPRENEUR OF FATAK BAZAR

2006-12-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

Today when we hear the word entrepreneur, we think Silicon Valley; we think High Technology; we think Bill Gates. But of course there have been entrepreneurs of all types and all descriptions since the dawn of man. I speak of one here whose milieu was Silchar. The time was 1950s. The area of entrepreneurship: Food.

There was a tiny, shop-lined lane that led you from the bustling main road to the expansive Fatak Bazar. One day, people saw sitting on the pavement of this constricted lane a new vendor, with a new product.

First the product: It was a type of sweet. He displayed this in a typical wood-framed glass box such as was used by mobile vendor of snacks. The nuggets themselves looked like inch-long pieces of Mexican churros. They were probably made from dough of flour and cream-of-wheat, formed, fried and then dipped in sugar syrup. It was a tasty innovation no doubt, but what made it the talk-of-the-town was the vendor himself.

The man was rather nondescript, and wore ordinary street clothes. He called his fare Montu Mithai. Now, Montu is a rather silly nickname for a man, and Mithai is candy/sweet. So, an equivalent coinage of this in Texas or Louisiana might be Bubba Bites. However, we do not know if this man’s name was actually Montu. At any rate, the name Montu Mithai turned out to be a catchy coinage in itself. The man clearly had a good sense of words and sounds.

Then there were the elaborate verses to go with the vending activity. The man sat there and sang his disjointed, non-sequitur lyrics. As far as I can remember, they went something like this (the language was Sylheti):

Montu Mithai anna-ay chhoi.
Montu Mithai anna-ay chhoi.

Anna-ay chhoi.
Mon-e koi.
Rastat khaile-o chhoi.
Barit gele-o chhoi.
….
….

And thus he sang on as the product flew off the shelf:

Montu Mithai six to an anna.
Montu Mithai six to an anna.

One anna gets you six.
That’s in my mind the fix.
Eat while walking, it is six.
Take home, it is still six.
….
….

As the day grew and the morning rush to the Bazar of the fresh produce buyers waned, the vendor finally stood up. He put some padding on his head, and put his glass box on it. He would now walk the streets for a while, taking his wares home to home. But as he stood up, you noticed that round his ankles he was wearing strings of small bells – the kind Indian dancers wear. His springy steps thus made the accompanying instrumental music to his lyrics. But as he would walk, he would have to stretch out his verse:

Mono nai shukh.
Bakka pai-lai-lam ek dukh.

In my mind there’s no happiness.
And like wow, I just now got a pang of sadness.

And so he would continue with newer and newer verses. As you can see by now, the song had little to do with his fare anymore, but it had to do with him. And the more it was this way, the brisker business he did. Housewives would peep out of their doors and call out: “O Montu Mithai, come this way.”

The strange thing about this unusual entrepreneur was this: It was never clear that he was out to make money. It was as though he was completely engrossed in his particular mode of vending. When people stopped to buy, he mechanically served them and then took the money and gave them correct change – all without any dialogue. He did not break his rhythm.

And to this day I wonder if entrepreneurship is all about money, or how much of it is about money. I wonder if this is not a primary quality of entrepreneurship: Don’t break your rhythm.

THE MAN WHO LIVED INSIDE A STORY

2006-11-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

There was a destitute indigent person who occasionally turned up in our home in my childhood. We called him Uncle Brajendra, Brajendra-kaka. Actually, he was originally a cook at our house. Then he left. Then he continued to turn up once a few months or several months or a year, stay a few days and cook, as though he had never left. His cooking was very fine, so nobody objected. In those days it was common to see household help as family. Therefore children addressed them as uncle or aunt or elder brother or elder sister.

Nothing more was known about this man – what he did, where he went when he was gone was anybody’s guess. But not because he was secretive! He told us children elaborate stories about high adventures in far places. These stories would begin on the day he last left our house, and end on the day he arrived this time. Not only that. The stories would continue some distance into his current sojourn, and restart sometime before it ended. Thus, he might show a slight scratch on his forearm where “the tiger”’ scraped him. And a day before he left, he might be seen meditating. Then he would say he was getting ready for his next caper involving matching wits with a great sadhu – a godman with mysterious powers. The next time he would come, it would indeed be the story of the sadhu. There was consistency and cross-referencing all around. Stories were pegged on facts known to us. If he had met a tiger-skin clad, cutlass-heaving fierce warrior in the jungles of Manipur, that warrior would turn out to have the first name of a Manipuri neighbor, and the last name of another Manipuri neighbor family. So we would think, this warrior must be real since he had an authentic Manipuri name. This occasional mental check on the part of the listener made the rest of the story believable. He hunted with the finest of fine weapons, a German rifle called ‘Manlicker Skinner’. Unbeknownst to him, we verified that there was indeed such a weapon, if not of that exact name. When he arrived with only a knapsack, we asked him where the rifle was. He would say he had left it at a gun shop to be cleaned and oiled. Then he would rub his right shoulder with his left hand and say: “It has such a kick”. He had a small shaving mirror in his knapsack, which, like everything else there, had a story. This was given him by the Zeminder of some fiefdom as a token of gratitude for solving some mystery.

So vivid were his narratives that you could not help believing that the man was just resting here between high adventures. When he visited for the very last time, he had gone stark raving mad. He stood in the courtyard circled by family dwellings, and narrated at the top of his voice very adult and lurid activities of his just-completed adventure, involving intimacy with women. All the neighborhood children gathered round. The adults moved in as soon as they heard. They told him, in a convincing way, not to return again, ever.

The last I remember of this great adventurer is that he was leaving, head lowered, still weeping and reeling from the beating he had received. I remember thinking: How could adults be so cruel?

THAT SUNDAY OF MY GRANDFATHER

2006-10-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes as you go through life, you experience or witness something that for some unknown reason becomes fixed in your memory. Much later, you gradually discover its significance. Everyone can look back on his or her life, and find examples.

My grandfather was ailing. One Sunday morning he felt a little better, and wanted to visit the Calcutta Botanical Gardens. Now, we lived in the suburbs of Calcutta, and this was not an easy visit. But with me going along, the family agreed. The Botanical Gardens were close to the famed Bengal Engineering College, from which Grandfather had graduated a very long time ago. So this would have been the familiar haunts of his youth.

We arrived in the Gardens, and I noticed a strange transformation in him. He became silent, and fortunately I got the sense to respect that. I fell back some and let him be by himself. He was going from place to place, stopping, staring, turning his head as though looking for someone. Sometimes he sat down, and stared, and turned his head. We came to the spreading old Banyan tree, and he stood among the trunk roots, leaning on his walking stick. We came near the river, and he sat down on the grass. He was lost in himself. Dating was not a prevalent custom in Grandfather’s youth. Otherwise I could imagine perhaps here is where he once sat with his first love – the one love that never goes anywhere except deeper and deeper in the recesses of memory.

Shortly after that, Grandfather died. Looking back, I think he needed to make this visit as a part of settling his affairs. He knew this was his last ailment. He wanted to have a tryst with his youth.

DARK MEANING IN WHITE SNOW

2006-10-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

Driving along the backroads of the Banff National Park one winter, I came upon a large flat snow-covered expanse. In it was a herd of moose. They all had a snow cover on their backs. Some were standing, some were sitting. I pulled up, turned off the engine, and resolved to watch this scene until the car would get too cold to bear.

There was complete silence except for an occasional grunt, followed minutes later by a response grunt. The air was perfectly, perfectly still – not a leaf stirred. Those creatures that were standing were poking their noses into the snow in slow motion, perhaps looking for some vegetation. Somehow, the whole scene now seemed to have some type of dark meaning. The snowy field, the white silence punctuated by the guttural grunts, the looming prehistoric-looking creatures with their pendant shag.

Then, one by one, everyone sat down on the ground. The grunts also stopped.

I thought to myself: What of the idea of a last silence in this winterscene of the dead?

IMAGINED REALITY

2006-09-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

My uncle Bijan was a deeply spiritual person who traveled to many holy places. He once spoke of an itinerant young American woman approaching him in a holy city (let us say Varanasi), and asking him questions about spiritual quest. This is perfectly understandable. Uncle Bijan would stand out in the crowd as a man of learning, and it would be natural for a foreigner seeking a knowledgeable English-speaking Indian to approach him. Unfortunately, I did not think to pursue the issue further with Uncle Bijan to find out what was actually discussed. So I try to imagine today what may have been said between him (B) and the American woman (A).

A: What is special about this place?

B: Look around you. You see a poor man with a satisfied glow of devotion on his face. A rich man bowing down low alongside the poor man in great humility. An ill man with a truly happy smile. Multiply these hundreds of thousands of times. What we have is a real and tangible beneficial effect on real and tangible human beings. There is no denying this. It is not anybody’s opinion – it is here for anyone to witness. Now, what is the cause of this tremendous effect?

A: The place is the cause?

B: Yes, but there is more. Since the effect is there, the cause is there. If you believe that this place is genuinely holy, genuinely consecrated, then you readily understand the cause. But if you are a non-believer, you still see that the cause is there. You may then ascribe it to a human need to find a holy place, to find a place and simply call it holy. So is there a difference between the place being actually holy, and the place being believed to be holy?

A: The difference is that if it is all in the mind of man, then for me, an alien to this scene and an alien to the Hindu life experience, the beneficial effect may not come. So I am wanting to know what the absolute nature of this place is.

B: There is on one hand reasoned defiance, and there is on the other hand unquestioning surrender. Both are important. The point now is, Which one do you apply first? If you apply reason first, you do not get anywhere. The quest ends for you here. If you surrender yourself first to the overwhelming tide you see around you and let it cradle you and carry you some distance, then at least you are moving. A while later, stop and invoke reason again and you may well see things differently. The important thing is not to stagnate.

A: And what do you believe?

B: I think I can accept that this place is truly consecrated. Thousands of years of believing that the place is holy has actually made it holy. This soil, this water, this air – they have history. And it is that history that is good.

A: I think I am beginning to see. Thank you for showing me the way.

THE RAMPARTS OF THE FAIRYLAND LOOP

2006-09-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

The Fairyland Loop trail (do a Google image search) is one of my most memorable hikes. The hike takes a few hours, and should best be started before dawn. You should be down at the base of the amphitheaters when the sun comes up on you in the spectacular orange rock country. Also at this hour, you would be completely alone – without any sights or sounds or other signs of human presence. You look to the cliffs in the distance – arranged in rows to form your horizon – and see the magnificent structures: ramparts, castles, battlements, castle keeps, turrets, promenade terraces…. almost anything you can imagine in an ancient historical city draped over a mountain range. A city that ordained that everything shall be built of orange rock, and shall be staggered so no one obstructs another’s view. The only difference is that, having built the city, it is as though the city planner has let it crumble a little to give the ‘antique’ effect. Or as though Picasso has scratched over a distinct scene he had just drawn – to create some type of mystery.

Of course ramparts and castles were never made to mimic nature. Quite the contrary. If you appreciate the beauty of a monastery carved into a rocky mountain, you know that the beauty stems from the contrast between nature’s haphazard irregularity and man’s austere geometric forms. So how is it that these formations mimic man’s creation?

It is as though a billion years ago, a lonely Earth was anticipating the arrival of man, and wishfully predicting and building what he would build upon her.

WORDS AND TOUCH

2006-08-31T10:30:00.000-07:00

What do you say to a person who is dying? You might come to visit him, and by sheer force of habit say: “How are you?” Then you realize how inappropriate that was. Then you might say something else to repair the impropriety, and that might not come out right either. Then you become self-conscious, and then feel bad that instead of the person lying there, you are focusing on yourself. What do you say?

I have had occasion to think about this. I turn this issue around and ask: “If I lay dying but was still conscious, what would I like people to say to me?” Here, the answer is clear to me. Most of all, I would like them to not wear a long or morose face. I would like them to be smiling and companionable. I would not like them to discuss the weather as though I were not there. I would not like them to discuss my medical condition. I would like them to touch me and say anything, even awkwardly anything, that has the pronouns “I” and “you” in the sentence. If a child says: “That poetry book you gave me, I read it all the time” that would be wonderful. If an adult says: “You’ve meant so much to me…”, what more can one ask for? But then I wonder: What would I say to them?

In the Bengali language, it is most awkward to say “I love you” except between romantic lovers. For other purposes, there is no equivalent expression. So this sentiment is never expressed in words. How very sad! The last time I saw my father, when we both knew this could be the final visit, he sat next to me and touched me lightly, and said, quite out of context: “You are my favorite person.” To this day I wonder if he realized how much he gave me then, in that instant, with those few words, to sustain me the rest of my life.

Sometimes it is necessary to say a thing, no matter how awkward – to tell a person, in words and in touch, who he or she is to you.

THE VOWEL AND THE VERDURE

2006-08-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

The ancient Egyptians called the river Neelo. I like it so much better than The Nile, or Neel as we call it in India. The open vowel at the end – the refrain - is the flow of the river. So many river names in India end thus: Reba, Shipra, Vitasta, Kaveri…

The Nile divides the Sahara and the Arabian Desert. She pushes her water and nutrients as far as she can into the scorched sands. The result is the life-giving Fertile Margin. You can see it from the air: The river bordered by two thin verdant strips, beyond which the sands stretch as far as the eye can see. The width of the lush green margin is set by the competition between the river and the desert. But in the end it is really the sun that is doing everything. The sun is making the margin advance into the desert, and the sun is making the desert push back on it.

When I looked at the Arabian Desert, I thought of Lawrence of Arabia. When I looked at the Sahara, I thought of a lone Masai. And when I then looked at the river, I thought of Sandesh Dadu.

Sandesh Dadu was a very distant relative (Sandesh = Sweets; Dadu = Grandfather/Granduncle). He never married. He floated from occupation to occupation, place to place. Occasionally he showed up at our house, and stayed a few days. This was a time for great, almost festive joy for us children. I do not recall why. He did not tell great stories, or bring gifts. It was his mere presence. Whatever he said, we hung on his words. He pushed out joy from within himself. But then, practical considerations encroached. A guest had to move on. No one asked him to leave, but he knew he had to. He left. A refrain stayed (Dadu – that flowing vowel at the end…). May be he went and stayed with other relatives or may be he went back to his lonely room, wherever that was.

Sandesh Dadu’s first name was Arun, meaning, the Sun.

KANYALIFEKA - A PLACE OF FIRE

2006-08-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

If I would design a village, I would drape it gently over a small green hill. The village would not be visible from a distance, only the treetops. Naturally, there would be two neighborhoods – the Sunup Slope and the Sundown Slope. At dawn the Sunup Slope would catch the sun’s crimson and dazzle, as though the hill were on fire. In the evening the Sundown Slope would shimmer in the red glow, as though the hill were on fire. In time the people in the two neighborhoods would develop different temperaments. If you visit, the Sunup types would greet you with effusive cheerfulness. The Sundown types would greet you in quiet joy. The night of the Full Moon, there would be community picnic in the hilltop park. From a distance, the hill would appear capped by a fiery glow – a soft one. Along the ridge a young lad from one slope would walk with a young girl from another slope – arms locked. They would talk of a future life together in the big bustling city. Whoever is from whichever slope, the joint dream is always the same. (Or is it?) And when they look in each other’s eyes, there is a tiny bit of flame there. Whoever is from whichever slope, it is always the same flame. (Or is it?)

Borrowing an African word I have read about, I would call this village Kanyalifeka – a place of fire.

THE MAD SADHU OF SILCHAR

2006-08-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

When I lived here, it was a storybook town set away in a quiet corner of a noisy India. It was more a cluster of unhurried villages - nested in the bend of the river the way you hold a baby in the crook of your arm. Life was elaborately slow. Your richly textured day had a predawn, a dawn, an early morning, a morning, a midmorning and so on – all distinct, all separately enjoyable. The cock crowed at predawn, the muezzin called at dawn and you bathed in early morning (School would start in late morning). You could bathe the regular away at home, or you could walk to a local pond and take a dip with many others there. You pleasurably rubbed mustard oil all over you sun-warmed body, then took the plunge.

My dominant memory of Silchar has spontaneously transformed to the memory of a very odd man there, then. Nobody knew his name. Everybody called him Luchipuri. It could mean a person who hailed from Luchipur, but I know of no such place. Or it could be a combination of Luchi and Puri – two kinds of Bengali bread. And we didn’t know where he lived or how he lived. He seemed to be a sadhu – a spiritual ascetic, a seeker. But he did not wear the customary ocher attire of a sadhu. Instead he wore a white sarong, and a long white collarless shirt. He had flowing white hair and beard. Though able-bodied, he carried a walking staff taller than he was. He held it Masai-like – parallel to his body. You saw him walking the streets of the town – never stopping, never talking to anyone, never actually arriving anywhere. Just always walking on. Children – cruel as children are – used to gather in throngs and heckle this ‘madman’ from behind, shouting: Luchipuri, khak thoo. (Luchipuri, Yuk! Yuk!). So occasionally he would suddenly turn and raise his staff as if to attack. On that, the children would hightail it. That was the fun. The adults would maintain a respectful distance from him. The only time I saw him actually arrive at any place was in the temple of Annapurna (Harvest Goddess) by the river. He sat in the lotus position before the deity, eyes closed, the staff lying on the floor next to him. There was a strange calm on his face – and on his beard the unsteady light from the votive oil-wick lamps flickered.

Nothing remains of Luchipuri today – not even a picture of him can be located. Another generation, and no one will know he existed. The temple lies in ruins. It now stands at a precarious angle on the slope of the river bank, about one-third way to the water’s edge. A new temple has been built on solid ground. Silchar today is definitely a regular town, moving at breakneck pace - noise and bustle and crowds and all. It is of no interest to me except as a memory. And of Luchipuri what remains is great puzzlement. The staff of Luchipuri the Madman intrigues me more than the lamp of Diogenes the Cynic.

THE RAIN IT RAINS

2006-08-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Of all places I’ve seen it rain, the Amazon jungle is like no other place. The rain comes suddenly. Quickly it drenches you. It is so dense and so torrent that nothing short of a roof can protect you. An umbrella will not. The canopy of a tree will not. Raingear will not. The water drenches your skin, then it drenches your flesh and bones. And the sound drenches you in a like way: the sound = the sound of the rain + the sound of the leaves + the sound of the rain tormenting the leaves. Now comes a warm chill, a shiver – even in the sultry heat. Your own body feels different to you. Then you begin to see: The jungle is no longer the jungle you saw; the rain is no more the rain you know. It is the jungle and the rain. It is something new. It is an amorphous expanse that has no name – it should not be given a name. You are no longer in the Amazon of Iquitos or Manaus. You are in the Amazon of the Jivaros and the Aymaras. You are in an aboriginal place, an absolutely original place – the mythplace that is the Amazon.

Then, just as suddenly – the rain stops. It all stops.

A WINTER WINDOW TO A SUMMER SUN

2006-08-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

A chill winter evening in Bengal, when I was a young boy in high school, I am hurrying back to my dorm, late for the evening prayer hour. Everyone else is there already. And the light has failed already. I have a heavy shawl wrapped around me, but even that was not doing the job. Now I come upon a most unlikely sight: A very old lady wearing nothing but a thin white widow’s rimless sari walking towards me, and shivering like a quaking aspen. These are restricted grounds, and no such person is expected to be here. When we are close, she asks me what kind of place this is, with so many buildings and things. She lives in the village some distance away, she says. Now it occurs to me, and I am not being charitable or anything, that the practical solution is for me to give her the shawl. I would be indoors in a minute, and would be in the warmth of the prayer hall. I am not going to get my shawl back, but I tell myself the approximate equivalent of “What the heck!”. I take it off of me and give it to her. That look of surprise I will never forget. In Bengal one doesn’t say Thank You. So she says nothing. We part company, with only these words from her: “Have a beautiful life, little boy.”

As a young man I am working in Clear Lake City. It is middle of summer and the pitch on the street is melting in the shimmering Texas heat. The sun is starkly bright. There appears in our institute an old and destitute man, and enters the air-conditioned building. An unlikely sight. At the reception he is asking for directions to a place a few miles away. I overhear. Obviously he does not have a vehicle, and there is no public transportation. I ask him how he is going to go there. He says: “I have come on foot, and I will go on foot.” Now I make a quick calculation: I could drop him off where he wants to go, and then have a lunch at my favorite place there, Long John Silver’s. Two birds in one stone – as it were. When I offer to drive him, he gets silently in the car and sits silently. He gets off. He doesn’t say Thank You or anything. Only: “Have a beautiful life, young man.”

No one has ever said that to me again. But then I am no longer a little boy or a young man.

THE EMPATH

2006-08-08T06:23:00.000-07:00

On the shores of Ithaca she waits. In full youth, her body taut with desire, she waits. She waits for her husband who has left behind her sweet whisperings and gone seeking great adventure on high seas – where ‘the deep moans round in many voices’. He has left her on the tame island and gone to fight great battles ‘far on the ringing plains of windy Troy’. Months turn, seasons turn, years turn. Youth begins to leave the body, age begins to take hold. Desire for his warmth turns slowly to only a desire for his presence. She wants to share with him what remains of her life. She waits.

A long time ago in some obscure place I read a short poem by an unknown poet. Or rather, poetess. I do not remember her name; I only remember that the poem left an impression on me. I have never been able to locate it again. The poem was called “Penelope”. The poetess is speaking to her. Its concluding lines, as best as I can recall, went something like this:

Do you sometimes wonder
If he does ever return again
Will there be time enough
For anything else but death?

THE NIGHT THE STARS SPOKE

2006-07-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

Who or what is a happy person? As life becomes more and more technology-driven, this question – seemingly expansive – comes more and more into focus.

Much of my student life was spent in dormitories. I had the opportunity to see a great many people during their entire cycle of daily life – not just 9-to-5, or Saturday evenings. I saw how they brushed their teeth, what kind of mood they were in when they got up in the morning, etc. So I formulate that question more tightly: Who is the person who retains pretty much the same composure as he goes through the whole day, the whole season, the whole life – in good times and bad? Most of us can be greatly jovial and display a happy-go-lucky attitude in public, but that is not a sustainable persona. There are times we are sad or angry or cranky or unpleasant.

I observed that the more even-keeled a person, the more disconnected is he from his immediate surroundings. He is not plugged in to the here-and-now. His mind is always plugged in to somewhere else. Something keeps him always just above the fray, from being flustered, from losing his composure.

But the happy man I now think of was not a fellow student. He was a teacher in High School - an idealistic dream-walker who was then perhaps in his late fifties. This being a residential school, we saw a great deal of our teachers – in and outside the classroom – days and evenings. He taught English language, and saw great beauty in it. He would read to you a paragraph from some classic book, and then go on about the beauty that it held. He needed to convey the beauty he sensed to you. He had then a sublime glow in his face. You could tell that he was truly happy that time. He and his wife led a very simple life on a teacher’s paltry income, in the village next to our school. They had no children. He sometimes took me to his home, and his wife – an unusually quiet and dignified woman – served us dinner. He was exactly the same person in home as he was in class – and when he went to do the daily grocery shopping in the village market, or rode in an overcrowded bus, or was in some distress. There was never another persona or another mood that ever surfaced. He was a kind, generous, amiable, smiling person – just very grateful to be traveling through life. Nothing ever eclipsed that.

One evening I was visiting him in his home, and was about to start on my way back to the dorm. It was a pitch-dark night, and the walk would take me through a newly harvested rice-field. The terrain there was uneven underfoot, unless you knew how to walk on the boundary trail dividing the lots. There were no lights of any kind. Nor did we have any flashlights. So he escorted me through the field (which he was familiar with) up to the paved, lighted road. Halfway in the field, he suddenly stopped and said, almost in an unfamiliar tone of voice: Look at the stars. You pay them no notice on moonlit nights. But tonight it is as though even they have some useful light to offer. It is as though they are pointing directly at you and saying emphatically – Look, we too have something to give you.

This was nothing memorable, but for some reason I have always remembered the night. Even as a grown person, having lost all contact with him, and now knowing that he must be gone, I still remember that night and those stars. Was he saying something about beauty? Or was there after all a sadness in him that never surfaced? Perhaps someday I will understand.

TAKE A REST IN THE BAOBAB FOREST

2006-07-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

The baobab, if you have heard or read about it or seen a TV program, will conjure up the vision of great, sparsely treed African flats. That’s where they are native. A baobab tree can be an entire ecosystem unto itself – with birds, animals, insects and even humans all relying on it one way or another.

Or at least that is the knowledge I had, until I came to the Northern Territory of Australia. I am driving from Katherine to Kununurra. A portion of this road runs through a baobab forest – not so much a dense ‘forest’ really, because the trees are spaced quite far apart, as though each has its own domain. These baobabs here are one evidence that the landmasses of Africa and Australia were once connected.

But driving through here gives me an entire new introduction to the baobab. Each single tree strikes a unique pose – a human stance. If you look at a tree a while, you can see a familiar pose: A soapbox orator in Hyde Park, making a point with hand gestures; an Inuit about to throw a lance at a seal; a whirling dervish with his hands positioned, ready to begin his move; an intent angler, exuding infinite patience; a profusely bearded Yukon panhandler, stooping towards the water; one half of a Tango duo, making the ‘dip’; and so on. And if a number of people were given pencil and paper, and asked each to write his own image of a given tree, the imaginings will be all different: Geisha greeting; Buddhist monk praying; Ballerina taking a bow.

You ought to pull up, and stretch your legs. Driving correctly on the wrong side of the road requires great concentration. So relax. Take a walk among the trees. As you consider their poses, they will bring together in your mind many distant points of time and many diverse sights – colorful beads that you have collected and thrown haphazardly into a cut crystal bowl. Now it is as though someone has taken a needle and thread, and has begun to string the beads according to his whims, in his own chosen sequence. And that gets you thinking about a sequence in life – your sequence. Then you might spot a breach in your life as well – like drifting, once-connected landmasses. You are sad perhaps, or nostalgic. What was that breach? “Does imagination dwell the most/Upon a woman won or a woman lost?”? And then, suddenly, you begin to be aware of your own reflective stance that you have struck, there, at that moment. The baobabs consider you, imaginary pencil and paper in hand.

THE IDEA OF THE HIMALAYAS

2006-07-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

High on the desolate ice flats of the Himalayas, I imagine, there lives a yogi – an ascetic, a sadhu, a sannyasi. He lives in an ice cave, and thrives on some tubers he digs from beneath the ice. The ice is purity. The yogi is the genuine article – he has left the human society behind. He does not want anyone’s recognition or respect or attention. He has nothing to teach or preach or prove. What happens here is between him, and the land, and the sky. If he is in fact communing with the gods up here, nobody knows and so nobody questions and nobody doubts. Up here, nothing changes except the day, the season, the length of the yogi’s beard. So what else happens up here?

Someone, I imagine, is able to reach him one day and ask him that concise single question, designed to elicit the maximum response: What is the journey?

The man, I imagine, is initially irate at his space being invaded, but eventually relents to answer – so at least the questioner would leave. He answers:

There is a place of beginnings and there is a place of ends. The journey takes place between them. Between them there are places that are ongoing – like bustling caravanserais. When you are in an ongoing place, then your journey is not purely your own – it is also the journey of the place. If you are in the place of beginnings, then the journey is ahead of you. If you are in the place of ends, the journey is behind you. So the answer to your question is the question itself, if only you will slightly modify it: What is the pure journey?

ELEGANT GREETINGS

2006-07-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

In Afghanistan, when two men meet, they shake their right hands while each places the palm of his left hand flat against his chest. Alternatively, they shake their right hands, and then each places the palm of the same hand flat against his chest. In this way, what in the West is a mechanical act becomes a most beautiful gesture that says: I accept you in my heart.

In traditional Arabic, there is a very elaborate system of greeting, here described by the author Amitabh Ghosh (in his book Incendiary Circumstances, in the essay THE IMAM AND THE INDIAN) as he is meeting a village imam. The imam begins the sequence:

‘ “Welcome.”
“Welcome to you.”
“How are you?”
“How are you?”
“Have you brought blessings?”
“May God bless you.”
“Welcome.”
“Welcome to you.”
“You have brought light.”
“The light is yours.”
“How are you?”
“How are you?” ’

In rural Bengal, when someone takes leave, the following exchange takes place:

“Let me leave?”
“Not to leave.”

THE ISLET OF THE SCARLET IBIS

2006-06-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

There is an island. Or rather, there is a cluster of islands of which this one is special. With its tall, leafy trees packed densely, the island looks like a green mound risen out of the water. Or the back of a giant bird. This is what you see if you arrive there on a late afternoon, the sun still high but cool. You sit quietly on your boat. Patience now. Let the sun go down unhurriedly. Nothing should be rushed. Sit and reflect on your place in the universe, if you will.

Suddenly then, there appears to be a scarlet dot on the green mound. Is it real, or is it a reflection of your expectant mind? As you try to discern, there appear a few more dots. And then you see it! The whole dimming sky has filled up with scarlet dots, and they are all moving towards the mound. The scarlet ibises are coming home for the night.

Some fly straight in. Some come circling in. And then, once in a while, startling you, there comes a fast-flying squadron of them through a narrow passage between two nearby islands. Like a sudden gust of wind through a crevasse.

By sundown the green is completely supplanted. The whole mound has become solid, soft and faintly glistening scarlet. Everyone is home. The parents are home. The brood is home.

The islet of the scarlet ibis has become an ibis.

SUNDOWN ON FERNANDINA

2006-05-31T16:02:00.000-07:00

Spectacular sunsets are things you collect in your mind’s album. For most people – especially those that roam – that album quickly fills up, in space and in variety. Increasingly, any particular viewing no longer stands out. But this is not a bad thing in itself. When one wears a garland of fragrant flowers, can one remain discerning of each individual scent?

Fernandina is the westernmost, and the youngest island of the Galápagos archipelago. It is made of stark, rugged volcanic lava – an otherworldly scape. On it roams creatures out of the depths of time – iguanas clustering, sea turtles in the shallows, flightless cormorants framed on the horizon… At day’s end, after all the human eavesdroppers have left, and the sun begins to spread its red over the sky, what goes on in this very isolated, very non-anthropological world fascinates me considerably. What goes on here when no humans are looking? Something must be going on. Do the creatures converse on the day's events? Does a very old iguana at water's edge say to a sea turtle pup what would be the equivalent of "Look baby, what a beautiful sky!"? What goes on that has gone on each evening of evolution?

As you move away from the island and look at the sky over it - dotted now with only a few unhurried, circling birds sated from the feeding frenzies of a while ago - you get a sense again of looking at an alien world – not extraterrestrial this time, but extra-human. And in it a strange limitlessness – limitless because there is nothing in human experience or imagination that can put a frame around this view. Nor can the sea. Nor the sky.

I shall never forget Fernandina sunset, even though I never took a picture of it.