The Unsaturated Reader

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  • ‘Prison Days and Other Poems’ by Agyeya

    ‘Prison Days and Other Poems’ by Agyeya

    Void of ornate pretensions, a collection of poems that lays bare the bleak truths of an earnest soul. S.H. Vatsyayan, better known as Agyeya, could enthuse readers of English as much as the inhabitants of the Hindi land — as is evident from the foreword Jawaharlal Nehru had written for the collection. The aforesaid is a modest attempt at English language poetry by a Hindi writer who claimed of no mastery, but which by all means can be acclaimed as a bilingual oner. 

    The clang of the shackles and the unrepressed wrath for the Empire are felt in the sundry lookouts of the section entitled ‘Prison Days’. Verses of the ‘Days When the Lotus Blooms’ are evanescent of the bereaved freedoms of the natives: These are the days when the lotus blooms/ In the foresaken garden near my home—/ Faraway./ Forsaken, yes,/ And faraway./ And behind me is the might of the whole empire,/ I am not forsaken./ Lotuses/ An expanse of limpidity/ Free spaces/ Five measured paces this way/ Five measured paces that way/ Prison. 

    Yet another titled ‘The Dispossessed’ spews whiffs of the bemusing vexations of the countrymen : But we are not the dispossessed;/ We are possessed of a fiend who knows no chains,/ Whom bars do not bind: 

    The one that blatantly arouses the virginal senses of the reader — or so this reader feels — is ‘The Breakers’  whose last three words scream of the aspirations that the hundreds of words imbued with raged emotions strewn on these pages struggle to effuse : Equality/ Fraternity/ Liberty? 

    Prison ordeals aside, another theme for which the poet proves his flair, is that phenomenon, or rather the philosophical entity, that binds souls in staunch yet flaccid threads, called love. These unfazed utterances, as expressed in one such poem ‘Afterward’ : When I saw/ The two bright red curves of your lips/ I knew all else can be forgotten— could’ve been for the person to whom the poet dedicates these lines. 

    Ruminative themes such as change, fate, beauty and so on, also find place in his poems. 

    Though by no measure the erudite poet of our blinkered imaginations, Agyeya is a writer whose verses speak to us through the numerous latitudes we cross in our lives, without our ever having to sit on a couch and wrap ourselves in his words. A confluence of the vernacular — in its sensibility — and the foreign — in its outlay, these mellow poems characterise our infrequent returns to the past and travails of the present, and in these unsullied aspects, it truly proves its mettle. 

  • ‘His Neighbour’s Wife’ by Ruskin Bond

    ‘His Neighbour’s Wife’ by Ruskin Bond

    A ‘handsome’, exquisite, middle-aged woman with a burly body—not the quintessential dame you would find these days. Bond enlivens the woman through his descriptions of her paan-tainted red lips amid the greasy bronze skin. The racy puffs at the hookah, no less.  

    While the narrator and his friend Arun, awaits the dinner, the latter takes the plunge into his marital life, the story of how he met that strangely attractive woman, Leela, his wife. 

    Though younger by five years, Arun made company with Leela, who at the time was subject to frequent desertions from her husband. As was apparent, this extroverted, ‘hard-drinking’ man cared little.  She had a son named Chandu, for whom the narrator took a fervid dislike owing to his unremarkable disposition, to speak nothing of the slurs and insults he would pass on. 

    Troubled at Arun’s venture into eternal bachelorship, Leela scoured for a suitable bride for some time, but to no avail. 

    The next shock blew in with the death of her husband which rendered her roofless with no option but to leave for her village near Agra. Yet she wasn’t done with the duty she had embarked on; a bride for her long-time friend. 

    Alas, at the time of her departure, Arun has these words tumbling out of his mouth, ‘Why don’t you marry me now?’

    It would suffice to say that the story only makes for a dulcet read, and doesn’t give anything new. A seemingly reserved tale which makes no pretensions. Nevertheless, it leaves the feeling that there could’ve been more to the story given the intricate lives of many such women of present times, in plain settings like these. 

  • Colonialist writings of Indian History

    When the Britons sought to secure their power in India, little did they know of the perils that would await them of administering a land worlds removed from the Victorian habitat. As Bengal and Bihar fell into the hands of the East India company, finding it tedious to administer so alien, so complex a culture, pandits and maulvis are were called upon to assist judges in administering laws specific to each religion. Manusmriti, the law-book of Manu, a word of authority in Hindu code, was translated in this spirit, under the title A Code of Gentoo Laws. Topping it all set out the tides of translations and researches, in earnest attempts to decipher the customs and ways of life of the people. An extended version of this frenzy resulted in the establishment of the Asiatic society of Bengal in 1784 by the well-known, good old William Jones. This man was the first to suggest the semblance between Sanskrit and other European languages (Latin and Greek). He also translated the classic Sanskrit play Abhijnanashakuntalam in 1789. The Bhagvadgita was translated by one Mr. Wilkins in 1785, who’s also one among the founding fathers of the society.

    Max Mueller, another prominent figure, pushed forth these attempts by commissioning, on a massive scale, translations of several Indian texts—of which he was also an editor—and published under Sacred Books of the East series. Mueller and the scholars, however made shrewd generalisations of Indian culture, spiritualism and ethos, which were on the whole unjustified. Belonging to the same bandwagon is V.A. Smith whose Early History of India was grounded on a skewed interpretation, imbued with wanton inferences; the characterisation of Indian polity as despotic, autocratic, inhabited by divergent groups with no political unity whatsoever; no civilisation; and so on and so forth. Understandably, given that these histories were constructed to quench the Imperialists’ ego and justifications for their rule, it was indubitably meant to be this way. However, this also drew negative connotations of Indian culture. It must be said that on certain fronts, the imperialists’ opinions hold true: for instance, the allegation that Indians lacked a sense of history, that particularly chronology was not much valued upon. But when one gauges the wounds inflicted and juxtaposes it with the professed positive aspects of their interpretations, a grim picture does it show indeed.

  • How the term ‘Hindu’ came into being

    In short, the term ‘Hindu’ derives its origin from the Sanskrit word ‘Sindhu’ that watered through the northwestern parts of the region and which now encapsulates the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. the northwest was the doorway to India for conquerors seeking to amass this land. When the foreigners chanced upon the inhabitants of this place who resided close to the banks of the Sindhu — or as it is know today, the Indus — they named the whole country after it; ‘India’ which resembles the Greek term for it.

    The syllable ‘s’ transmutes to ‘h’ in Persian (present-day Iranian) and so came the word ‘Hindu’ therefrom. Consequently, India was called ‘Al-Hind’ by Persians and Arabs. It may be of service to note here that the first Iranian inscriptions make reference to ‘Hindu’ as a district on the Indus. It neither alluded to a religion nor a community. It was only later in the 14th and 15th centuries that it came to denote the followers of a particular religion.

  • #ai1 – IH – Birth of a Civilisation

    The geological time scale is a reference system that classifies different strata (rock layers) of earth on the basis of the time during which they bestrode the land. The timescale is divided into aeons which are further subdivided into eras, periods and finally epochs. Now, an epoch is the time during which a series (or simply rock layers) is deposited. We currently live in the Holocene epoch– of the Quartenary period– which began around 11,700 years ago (approx. 9700 BCE). The humans who thrived during this period are generally referred to as ‘modern’ humans / homo sapiens. The other members of the Homo species namely Homo Habilis, Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis — our closest evolutionary cousins — went extinct by then.

    300,000 years back, modern humans began emerging in Africa. Roughly 70,000 years ago, their first ‘successful’ Out of Africa (OoA) migration took place; thus being entitled as the ancestors of today’s non-African population. 5000 years later, they reached India and thereafter leaving generations behind who would later mix with zagrosian agriculturists who had migrated from Iran. Together, they give birth to one of the most advanced civilisations of its age which took root by the basins of the Indus River — the Indus Valley Civilization (also called Harappan civilisation). The monsoon river Ghaggar-Hakra too fed the settlements.

  • How Islam came to India

    Islam came to India through a number of channels. To confine the onset of this religion in the subcontinent to merely invasions has become a habitual testimony yet the truth speaks otherwise.

    Giving a brief summary below of some of these “channels”
    First, as is expected, through invasions. Set off in the 8th century in Sind by Arabs. Next on the line are the Turks and Afghans, both of whom invaded the North-west in the 11th century and dominated northern India. Lastly, the Mughals in the 16th century.

    Secondly, commerce. Afghan and Turkish traders conducted transactions in Northern India and settled there.

    That covers only the northern parts. What about other regions, especially the south west which has a significant Muslim population and a distinct culture of its own?

    People hailing from Arabia and East Africa traded with those residing in the western coastline from as early as 8th century and eventually settled there by 9th century.1

    These intercultural alliances birthed the various religious groups of Islam, particular to its own geography, such as the Bohras, Khojas, Navayaths and Mapillas.

    Third, army recruitments. Mercenaries from the central Asia and especially East Africa, incidentally regions with a significant Muslim population, were recruited in the armies of Indian kings. Likewise, soldiers from India too were recruited to fight for Afghan and Turkish kings; a pertinent example being that of Mahmud of Ghazni, who had a Hindu general in his army named Tilak. Mahmud’s empire spanned as wide as to include Kashmir and Punjab.

    Now fourth, Sufis. The Sufis, most of whom hailed from central Asia and some from Persia, carried out religious missions in the subcontinent. Most held an eclectic outlook and were seldom orthodox, borrowing and interspersing with the local religions and traditions, and subsequently flowering into a syncretic form of Islam.

    An attempt has been made here to only recount the salient ways in which Islam reached the subcontinent. Indubitably, there ought to be other sources too, which has been omitted here with due regard to maintaining the brevity of the piece.

    Notes

    1. Trade was not an anomaly; as per records, Kerala is said to have had good trade relations with Rome as well during the zenith of the latter’s empire; all of which was made possible because of maritime trade via Arabian sea. Kerala is the state that has the longest coastline, the tidal waves billowing its rocky banks.

  • Manchester of India

    Manchester is a city situated in north west England, to the south of which lies river Mersey. Infamous for being at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution and consequently the first industrialised city in the world, Manchester was the hub for textile manufacturing, particularly cotton. This is also the reason why the city had been often dubbed “cottonopolis”.

    The city of Manchester is not without parallels, at least not in India. Sitting at the banks of the Sabarmati river, which lines through the state of Gujarat in North-west India is Ahmedabad. This city, the biggest in Gujarat is the hub of cotton textile industry in India. Moreover, the waters of Sabarmati have proven to be a boon for the thriving cotton warehouses in that it helps dye cotton threads. The semi-arid climate of the city too makes for everything necessary for the industries to flourish. The cotton manufactured herein are exported to the rest of the world, much akin to Manchester of England.

    For these reasons, Ahmedabad is fittingly called the ‘Manchester of India’.

  • Mahatma

    ‘Mahatma’ is a Sanskrit word which literally means ‘Great Soul’. Gandhi was so entitled by the Nobel prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1915.

    It must be said that this was indeed a befitting accreditation for Gandhi; for those terse and thoughtful words, and noble and unpretentious endeavours, couldn’t have sprung from a greater soul than his.

    Yet, he never basked in the honour of being bestowed with such a title. Many a times, he relinquished it for he believed that he was not deserving of a title so noble. Here are a few excerpts from his writings which illustrate this point.

    The only virtue I claim is truth and non-violence. I lay no claim to superhuman powers. I want none. I wear the same corruptible flesh that the weakest of my fellow beings wear and am liable to err as any. My services have many limitations, but God has up to now blessed them in spite of imperfections.

    The mahatma I leave to his fate. Though a non-co-operator I shall gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me a mahatma and to touch my feet. Where I can impose the law myself, at the ashram, the practice is criminal.

  • IH – The Beginnings

    A brief of India’s physical features

    A tangerine-hued semi-molten core, jacketed by a mantle and a crust. The smudged image that forms in one’s mind when asked of the cross-section of earth. Indeed, it’s a retreat to sixth grade geography lessons but nevertheless insignificant. For as we embark on this seemingly pallid journey gliding by the contours of the Indian subcontinent’s less-than-mundane past, it beckons that we run our eyes over the genesis of this landmass.

    Now, coming back to the point. Owing to currents that emanate from the aforesaid core, the crust fractures into plates which jostle against each other; in precise terms the geological process named tectonic shift.

    As one whole, the plates are called Pangea which consists of two parts– the Laurasia and Gondwanaland, India being a scrap of the latter. She slid north-eastwards through the Tethys sea, to finally lunge beneath the Eurasian plate, the push leading to the bulge of the Himalayas, ‘the youngest, largest and highest mountain range on earth.’ Note that these tenacious movements spanned millions of years.  

    The Himalayas, running along the northern periphery is home to the highest fourteen peaks in the world, the most prominent one among them being the Mt. Everest (roughly 8.8 km). Parallel to the Great Himalayas are its less taller counterparts, the Middle Himalayas and Outer Himalayas. In the north-west we encounter troughs in the mountainscape, which marks the many passages to India – the Khyber Pass , the Bolan pass and the Gomal Pass.

    Though writers contest that the Himalayas bear a significant influence in the subcontinent, in all its sententious aspects, Basham opines that the point has been a tad too much overstated. No more than shaping the climate of the region should she be accredited for. That the Himalayas gave India an advantageous seclusion may seem geographically and even politically appealing yet the truth lies in that these ranges were cut through by travellers, traders and settlers of different sorts for many years. The guard hasn’t always been up.

    The precipitate of the moisture-laden clouds that drifts over and the melting snow of the Himalayas birthed the rivers Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra, rolling down to its foot and forth, sedimenting a broad strip of alluvium that would become one of the most fertile regions in the world, the Indo-Gangetic plain. Naturally, it was here that humans and their aspirations blossomed.

    The Indus springs in the Tibet near the Manasarovar lake, traverses along the north-west and sheds into the Arabian sea. The Ganga, alongside Yamuna, both of which rises from Himalayan glaciers (Gaumukh and Yamunotri respectively) wade together to finally wed at Allahabad and join its mate, the Brahmaputra, before gushing into the prodigious Bay of Bengal.

    Nestled between the Indus and the Northern plains is the Aravalli hills and to its left, the Thar desert.

  • “Crave not the pleasures of Paradise,” says Kabir

    “Crave not the pleasures of Paradise,” says Kabir

    Paradise. That symphonic destination humans have hankered for centuries. It makes them philanthropes. It makes them holier-than-thou. 

    It makes them sympathize the penurious, save the callous dough thrust at their warped ashet, inedible perhaps. 

    It makes them plonk that extra penny into the crevice of the gold-rimmed temple coffer; which sits before the deity, destined for the priest, brimming of course.  

    It turns them into devout sycophants.

    As for the obtuse casuists, some remain in their nutshells while some, in the garb of religion, become extremists. 

    To descend on Swarg Loka, tarry in its bountiful pleasures until next birth or; to reach the garden of Jannah, the “gardens of pleasure”—the prospects of which deliquesces many to the realms of piety— appears to be the ultimate pursuit of almost all, barring the atheists. This heavenly pursuit makes the world a better place alleges the blind optimist : “It turns them into Good Samaritans!”

    As the frothy waves gush through the meanders, so does it bring along the dross, the debris, the incongruous rocks; just like the offcuts of many good deeds in this world. No endeavor is ever so pristine in its motives. In the course of one’s journey towards the end, top or bottom, the naives are sometimes impelled from within to despise what doesn’t conform to their canons; this robbing them of all virtue that was left, if any. 

    The rationale behind this dystopian prolixity? It brings me to a 15th century poet who catechized the proponents of these ideas, succinctly razing all that was held banal. Kabir.

    It would be an injustice to merely regard him as a Bhakti poet, just like anybody else who would have traversed similar terrains during those times. For poetry aside, he is deserving of titles like philosopher ,social commentator and satirist.  Through his often inconspicuous and riddling rhetoric, adorned with the usage of upside-down language, Kabir exposes the sanctimonious attitudes of ardent religionists and their unfounded beliefs and rituals. A believer of ‘personal god’, he considered himself as ‘the child of Allah and Ram”. 

    In many of his verses, he disparagingly talks of Hinduism and Islam, their hollow obsessions and esoteric compositions. For instance, he passed snide remarks about Hindus’ and Muslims’ animal sacrificial rituals:

    ‘One slaughters goats, one slaughters cows, they squander their birth in isms’. 

    If we are to wade through Kabir’s poems denouncing Hindu and Islamic beliefs in detail, a mere assortment of words would not suffice. That is a topic of contention for another day. If we cloister it to a passage, I’m afraid it would take the form of a panegyric, unintentionally deluding the nuances of it. 

    Let’s go!

    Everyone keeps saying, 

    As if they knew where paradise is,

    But ask them what lies beyond 

    The street they live on, 

    They’ll give you a blank look.

    If paradise is where they’re heading, 

    Paradise is not where they’ll end up. 

    And what if the talk of paradise is just hearsay? 

    You better check out the place yourself.

    As for me, says Kabir, if you’re listening, 

    Good company’s all I seek.1

    The aforementioned is one among Kabir’s works which blatantly reveals his disapproval of the whole purported idea of paradise. It’s also a mockery of society. It underscores their credulity and inability to mull over any idea in depth. 

    In another set of verses, he deploys the allegory of a ferry that would apparently take him (and his peers perhaps), to their desired destination. In these lines, he inquires, in the guise of a ridicule, ‘Is there a paradise anyway?’ 

    I’m waiting for the ferry, 

    But where are we going, 

    And is there a paradise anyway?

    Besides, 

    What will I, 

    Who see you everywhere, 

    Do there?

    I’m okay where I am, says Kabir. 

    Spare me the trip.2

    Hell and heaven did not qualify as a dichotomy for Kabir as he was indifferent to both. In nâ main dharmî nahîn adharm3 he says,

    I am neither pious nor ungodly, I live neither by law nor by

    sense,

    I am neither a speaker nor hearer, I am neither a servant nor

    master, I am neither bond nor free,

    I am neither detached nor attached.

    I am far from none: I am near to none.

    I shall go neither to hell nor to heaven.

    I do all works; yet I am apart from all works.

    Few comprehend my meaning: he who can comprehend it, he sits

    unmoved.

    Kabîr seeks neither to establish nor to destroy.

    Taking a dig at the unlettered and gullible, in another clever usage of satire, he pillories his dear pandits.

    Pandit, do some research 

    and let me know 

    how to destroy transiency. 

    Money, religion, pleasure, salvation—

    which way do they stay, brother?

     North, South, East or West? 

    In heaven or the underworld? 

    If Gopal is everywhere, where is the hell? 

    Heaven and hell are for the ignorant,

    not for those who know Hari. 

    The fearful thing that everyone fears, 

    I don’t fear. 

    I’m not confused about sin and purity, 

    heaven and hell. 

    Kabir says, seekers, listen: 

    Wherever you are 

    is the entry point. 

    These lines are suffused with his intrepidity and clarity of thought. He is seldom ambiguous. He speaks his mind, and that too, to those worthy of such admonishments.

    Lastly, 

    ‘O Qazi, nothing is accomplished by mere talk 

    By fasting, passing the time with prayers and the creed will not achieve paradise;

    He who knows how can view the Ka’ba in his own body’

    As is evident, Kabir is jeering at the Qazi4, scoffing at his rendition of prayers five times a day and the month-long fasts he undertakes every year.

    Eulogies aside, one has to be cautious while credulously taking Kabir’s words as gospel since much of what we deem to have hailed from Kabir may not be his after all. Owing to the unavailability of authentic manuscripts that dates back to his period, credibility of the lines attributed to him remains elusive.  Nevertheless, his verses were passed onto each generation orally and scholars devoted to his works have extracted these and compiled them with astonishing dexterity.

    Today, some of Kabir’s verses remain inscribed on tattered pages of textbooks, soon to be erased from the minds of indolent highschoolers, thanks to the conundrum of impotent ideas she’s fed thereafter. Perhaps, considering the erratic times we live in, we need to hark back to these verses once in a while. One, so as to take refuge from the cloister of insanity we’ve been trapped in and two, more importantly, to forbid our gullible natures from being preyed on by the corrupt. 

    Moreover, injustice and intolerance pervading our times have forced us to rethink and scrutinize our own actions; actions to please somebody, some unknown. 

    For all we know, as Kabir put it,

    ‘What if the talk of paradise is just hearsay?’ And, ‘Is there a paradise anyway?’

    Notes

    [1] K., Mehrotra, A. K., & Doniger, W. (2011). Songs of Kabir. Adfo Books.

    [2] Ibid.

    [3] Retrieved from SONGS OF KABÎR – Translated by Rabindranath Tagore

    Full text available here.

    Audiobook.

    [4] Qazi is a Muslim judge who delivers decisions in accordance with the Shariah Law.

    More

    A notable work worth mentioning :

    The Bijak of Kabir by Linda Hess