Desicritics Author: Vivek Sharma

Shri RamChandra Kripalu Bhajman (Prayer by Tulsidas, With Translation And Notes)

Vivek Sharma — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 08:51:14 EST

Introduction (for the initiated, for foreigners, for skeptics and for believers)

Ramayana is the most important and influential epic ever written. The epic has defined the code of Indian customs and morality for at least twenty to twenty-five centuries, and by sheer numbers, been the book or saga that has affected, influenced, educated, enlightened over one-fifth of the humanity that has existed since it was written. While Illiad and Odessey claim a greater fame in the West, among ancient epics, only Mahabharata (which is longer, includes stories of the great battle between the cousins Pandavas and Kauravas, the whole history and genealogy of kings, people and beasts that existed in India or Bharatvarsha before its time, the life-story of Lord Krishna, with his romances, battles and finally also his conversation with Arjuna, in form of Bhagavad Gita: which rephrases the essence of classic Hindu-Vedic-Indic philosophy, and includes many more stories, discussions on nature of being, good and evil and so on), only Mahabharata comes close to Ramayana in grandeur and impact on the combined psyche and daily living of a large section of humanity.

While Valmiki wrote Ramayana originally in Sanskrit, almost every major poet of Indian subcontinent has rewritten, reinvented, translated, transcribed, memorized and rephrased the whole epic in the language closest to his age/time and his heart. Tulsidas brought out his version of Ramcharitmanas in sixteenth century in a language that can be thought of a bridge between Sanskrit and Hindi of present times, as well as between the khadi boli (spoken language) of his time and the divinity. The hymns from Tulsidas are imbibed into our culture to the extent that we cannot usually trace these back to his writing. The cultural identity, diversity and evolution of India, I believe, can be tracked by looking at the versions of Ramayana and by watching versions of Ramlila in different villages, towns, cities, streets spread not only in Indian subcontinent, but also in Eastern Asian countries like Cambodia.

Ramayana or the travels of Rama or the epic story of Ramchandra, the obedient son of King Dashratha, son-in-law of sage-king Janaka, the loving husband of Sita {incarnatation of Goddess Laxmi, who appeared out from earth (and not from womb)}, the glorious archer-warrior who destroyed all-powerful demon Ravana and his monstrous kith and kin, the protector of poor and downtrodden, who ate berries picked by untouchable Shabri, who brought Ahalya back into life, who killed Bali to make Sugreev the king of monkeys and then raised an army of monkeys to defeat powerful demons, the just king who did not even hesistate before exiling his own wife to uphold the law of the land, the eternal legend of the incarnation of Vishnu, MaryadaPurushottam: the one who respected and knew the bounds/limits of ethical/right conduct, and is the greatest or best among men... Even the description of Ramayana requires an epic to be written down. Some of the greatest Indian festivals are based on the story of Ramayana, and many names, pilgrimage centers, temples, fasts, rituals, and an endless source of karuna / piety and priti / love emerges from this one grand poem.

About the translation

In this post, I present a sincere and humble attempt at the translation of a prayer invoking Bhagwan Ram (and I will continue to work throughout my life to provide a better translation for my favorite poems, hymns and verses in Hindi and Sanskrit). Bhagwan is sometimes translated as lord, but the regard for a Lord is often due to fear or due to custom, and regard for Bhagwan Ram arises from the admiration of his deeds and virtues, as well as his spiritual, conceptual, physical and emotional beauty. Fear never features in admiration, dedication for Ram. While the person is submissive in prayer, the submission comes from the recognizition of something greater than one self, something grander than mere personality of the own self and of the diety. Hence old poets called themselves Das, or slave; but again slave is a tainted word, for slavery comes with forced subjugation and denial of basic rights to the slave... where 'das' is voluntarily curtailing his personal desires and demands to present himself or herself in the service of someone or something. Tulsidas, Surdas.. Kabirdas.. In Ramayana, Hanuman is presented as a perfect and appropriate example of being a seeker, a sage, a das, a disciple, a 'servant of greater man and cause', a believer, a doer, a warrior and his greatness lies in using his strength for the service of others. The Hanuman Chalisa again underlies this belief system, this thought process, this devotion. The essential lessons of Ramayana are piety scores over pride, sacrifice over selfishness, obedience over defiance, fidelity over lust, and the ways of just, even if besotted by setbacks and hardships, bring them joy, riches, victories and love in the end. As Tulsidas was one of the greatest or perhaps the greatest poet in Bhakti (unbridled devotion for 'beloved' God) tradition in medieval world, his verses approach divinity through unbounded affection, where every beautiful form is attributed to the Godhead, and the final goal of the worshipper is tocease being a separate entity.

In this translation, I have tried to use words that are closest in meaning to the original. But Indian Sansar is not Western World, as in the West, Man lives in the World as he is exiled from Eden, brought down by his following the advice of Eve and Snake. World in West is a region that man inhabits once, and his deeds here decide whether he will go to heaven or Dante's hell in the end, on a judgment day. Indian Sansar is a stage, where beings appear in different acts, each performance determines the role in next birth, and the woes of the world are left in the world: the being seeks to reach union with perfect being after which there is no need for further performances. Hindu Mann is not just mind, Indian/Hindu aatma is not just soul and Anand is not just bliss. Anand is state of perfect joy, the joy of child happy in its mothers arms is a partial manifestation of it, the joy of person who finds that his/her beloved loves him equally is a partial manifestation, joy of father whose son wins a medal or grand praise or prize, is a partial manifestation. In complete manifestation, anand is a joy without bounds, an end in itself, a manifestation of the unmanifest (God), unity with both nothingness and with everything... ultimate goal of man is Sat-Chit-Ananda (poorly translated as Truth-Beauty-Joy), another name for Bhagwan). The lack of proper words in English shows that Indian, Hindu, non-Western notions, beliefs, philosophy, lifestyle, religion, actions are best analyzed, understood, taught, transmitted, expressed and paraphrased in Indian, Hindi/ Sanskrit, language. Even there, the language can take us only so far...

Sanskrit (better to say Samskrit, for Sam is Good, Krit Made/Designed), as I have written in posts earlier, contains many words that carry contradictory connotations. The word kama means both love and lust, attachment of spirit as well as of flesh, and in poetry, the use of such words allows several levels of meaning. Since detached action, which can be identified as something done for its own sake, irrespective of what ultimate result is, is identified as a virtue, kama in both or any meaning can be undesirable. Yet according to Ved Vyas in Mahabharata, the Grihasta Ashram, or married state, is the best phase of life; grander thanthe Brahmacharya (abstinence before marriage) as well as Sanyasa (renouncing world, family at old age). The interplay between kama as a life-force as well as materialism and vairagya (abstinence) or tyaag (self-sacrifice) or selflessness as symbol of spirituality is a constant theme in novels like Banbhatta ki ataamkatha by Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Gunahon ka Devta by Dharamveer Bharati, Chitralekha, etc. The similes in the verse below abound in references to lotus. It must be remembered that lotus plays a central role in Hindu mythology: Laxmi sits on Lotus, Humanity is derived from lotus in some versions of mythology, and lotus, because it manages to remain clean in spite of growing in mud, always invokes beauty, purity, divinity. The verse evokes a richly decorated, fully-limbed, handsome physical image of Ram; but the symbolism is, as always, only to create a focus on the deity, on Rama. The last couplet reminds us that the ultimate being, the Godhead, the joy of Mann (Mind or that element in us that desires and hesitates, thinks and meditates), the joy of Muni (wise), of Shankara (of devout, of godly beings), and so on, is within our own heart... or we ask of Rama to reside within, and save us from fears and vices. The aatma, the soul, the self (that goes beyond ego, body, knowledge gained through senses) is where the mighty deity is requested to reside. Perhaps the prayer will be realized only when the self is ready to receive the one desired, and hence it is useful to invoke him through song and symbol...

Shri Ram Chandra Kripalu Bhaj Mann

(Listen to Lata sing the Bhajan on Youtube)

O (Mann) mind! Invoke the benign Shree Ramachandra,

the rescuer from the fears of the harsh sansar (world).

Whose eyes are blooming lotuses, face and hands lotus-like,

and feet are like lotus -- with the hue of crimson dawn.

His image exceeds myriad Kaamdevs (Cupids),

like a fresh, blue-hued cloud -- magnificent.

His amber-robes appear like lightening, pure,

captivating. Revere this groom of Janaka's daughter .

Sing hymns of the brother of destitute, Lord of the daylight,

the destroyer of the clan of Danu-Diti demons

The progeny of Raghu, limitless 'anand' (joy),

the moon to Kosala, sing hymns of Dasharatha's son.

His head bears the crown, ear pendants, tilak (mark) on forehead,

his adorned, shapely limbs are resplendent,

Arms extend to the knees, studded with bows-arrows,

who won battles against Khar-Dooshanam

Thus says Tulsidas, O joy of Shankara,

Shesh (Nag), (Mann) Mind and (Muni) Sages,

Reside in the lotus of my heart, O slayer

of the vices-troops of Kaama and the like.

श्रीरामचन्द्र कृपालु भजु मन हरण भव भय दारुणं।
नवकंज-लोचन कंज-मुख कर-कंज पद-कंजारुणं॥१॥

कन्दर्प अगणित अमित छबि नवनील-नीरद सुन्दरं।
पट पीत मानहु तड़ित रुचि शुचि नौमि जनक सुतावरं॥२॥

भजु दीनबंधु दिनेश दानव-दैत्यवंश-निकंदनं।
रघुनंद आनँदकंद कोशलचंद दशरथ-नंदनं॥३॥

सिर मुकुट कुण्डल तिलक चारु उदारु अंग बिभूषणं।
आजानुभुज शर-चाप-धर संग्राम-जित-खरदूषणं॥४॥

इति वदति तुलसीदास शंकर-शेष-मुनि-मन-रंजनं।
मम हृदय-कंज निवास कुरु कामादि खलदल-गंजनं॥५॥

मनु जाहि राचेउ मिलिहि सो बरु सहज सुन्दर सांवरो
करुना निधान सुजान शील सनेहु जानत रावरो॥६॥

ऐहि भांति गौरि अशीश सुनि सिये सहित हिये हर्सि अली।
तुलसि भवानिहि पुजि पुनि पुनि मुदित मन मन्दिर चली।।७।।

जानि गौरि अनुकूल, सिय हिय हरसु न जाहि कहि।
मन्जुल मंगल मूल, बाम अंग फ़रकन लगे।।

Book Review: The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets

Vivek Sharma — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:02:14 EST

The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, edited by Jeet Thayil, includes an eclectic, exciting and incredible anthology of poems by seventy-two poets from India and Indian diaspora. These voices that span the last fifty-five years includes works by all the major poets, (more familiar names) of Indian English including Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar, Agha Shahid Ali, AK Ramanujan, Arvind Krishan Mehrotra, Adil Jussawala, Keki Daruwala, Jayanta Mahapatra, Kamla Das and R. Parthasarthy. The collection also includes many younger poets and and many upcoming voices including Vikram Seth, Jeet Thayil, Ravi Shankar, Meena Alexander, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Kazim Ali, Daljit Nagra, among others. The voices bring forth influences and feelings excavated, collected, cultivated, imported, ingrained or extracted from a rich and varied landscape of Indian heritage, culture, philosophy, religion and echoing the daily chaos and beauty of Indian existence. Diversity in temperament and tastes, rich colors and varied textures, aroma of spices, shingle of bangles, Hindu and sufi mysticism, Kamasutra or censored sexuality, chutnified or dignified English, free verse and sonnets, and a grand tour of modern and ancient world is served in this collection. Voices that are of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, Indians, Americans, Britishers, and World citizens versify such that each poem both represents the local, particular idioms, icons and ideas and transcends these in creating literature that is human, universal, eternal.

Adil Jussawalla, perhaps speaks for every Indian writer, who spend his lifetime pursuing poetry in a country, where there is little reward for bards writing in this 'phoren' language, and whose English poets, are yet to be welcomed in international circuits, where a bad translation from another language gets more audience, than original writing in English from a poet born in India/non-Western countries: "Bright sparks / on the international back-slapping circuit / are picking up prizes like static. // He's for the dark." Arundhati Subramaniam, in a poem titled "To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn't Find Me Identifiably Indian" provides a succinct portrayal of both Western prejudice about who they consider is Indian and what is not, and the frustration of an Indian writer seeking to speak in this language about his or her complex existence that is not bound by what textbook definition proclaims to be his or her territory or ideology. The anthology also includes essays by Jeet Thayil, Bruce King and Arvind Krishan Melhotra. These essays provide insight into the life and work of few of the famous poets as well as the state of/ regard for English poetry writing in India. Similarly there are poetic tributes to the likes of Nissim Ezekiel and Agha Shahid Ali by poets touched and transformed by their work, and other poems that stake claim on English as language of expression, exile, migration, longing, learning and spirituality .

"Considerthefemalebodyyourmost / Basictextanddontforgetitsslokas" suggests Rukmini Bhaya Nair, whereas "You are no plagiarist of dusk. / Nothing in the sky equals itself." writes Kazim Ali. At once, homage to a thirty century old tradition of Sanskrit verse form, shalokas, is made and in another poem, the limitlessness of possibilities is hinted at. The collection contains a large number of quotable lines, and startling sentences, each embedded in nicely sculpted lines and word images. Moreover, the collection includes works by poets who deserve way more attention than we have given them. Not many of us know of the poems by G. S. Sharat Chandra, who was once nominated for Pulitzer Prize. He writes: 'My good shoe has run away / with the tacks /of its slutty twin.' Similarly Agha Shahid Ali is quite unknown in India. He, like G. S. Sharat Chandra has a prize named after him (by University of Utah). Shahid was a Kashmiri-American poet, best known for his Ghazals in English. He was devoted to the cause, and taught many Americans that this form of verse is not merely about rhyming couplets, but about rendering a lament that stretches the personal grief, till it becomes an umbrella over everyone who reads the poems.The collection does not contain any of his Ghazals, but his accessibility and depth is reflected in these lines I often quote from 'Stationery', "The world is full of paper. / Write to me."

Works by Mamta Kalia, Leela Gandhi, Eunice de Souza, Kamla Das and others have an edge to them, a revolt against the Kaushalya-Sita-Sati-Savitri (ideal mother/housewife) image of Indian women, a celebration of contemporary movements in celebration of right and freedom of women. Eunice de Souza has lines like: " 'O Universal Lover / in a state of perpetual erection! / Let me too enter into / communion with the world / through thee.' " and others like: 'It pays to be a poet. / You don't have to pay prostitutes.' Leela says: "Our desire wanting we tried our love / and found it good enough without / this sex thing, this hip and lip thing. / Let other lovers sweat and grind, / our love's refined, raising virtues from necessity." In a poem titled Brat, Mamta Kalia, has a daughter say: "You, perhaps, were hardly proud / Of your creativity -- / Except for the comfort / That I looked like Papa / And not like the neighbour / Who shared our bathroom." While Vivek Narayanan celebrates the vamp from silver screen in "Three Elegies for Silk Smitha", Arun Kolatkar picks an "Ogress" from a poverty-striken street and describes her "has always been a kind / of an auxiliary mother, / semi-official nanny // and baby-bather-in-chief / to a whole chain of children / born to this street".

Reading the poems included in this collection helps us arrive at answers to our own quest in poetry, as well as in life. Jayanta Mahapatra, who is another pillar of Indian writing, usually keeps irony to minimum, but in a poem titled "The Quest" he says: "Even computers begin to understand our castes and prejudices. / The voluptuous figures of women in stone / only wish to save our feelings of love and freedom;" While Nagra and Ezekiel provide glimpses of Indian English, countless lines, similes, metaphors and allusions scattered throughout the book emphasize the "Indian" (in English).

Indian poets writing in English have had a few guiding lights in the subcontinent. The inimitable Nissim Ezekiel as a mentor, and the tireless P. Lal (Writers Workshop , Calcutta) as a publisher are two significant pillars. The anthology is a tribute to the lifelong struggles of these and other poets. Jeet has done a commendable job in compiling biographies, digging out unpublished and published poems from known and obscure sources and highlighting how poetry defies the artificial constraints and bounds of time, space, age, location and traditions. Philip Nikolayev, the editor of Fulcrum, who inspired the project, and everyone else who contributed to its completion deserve the gratitude of every Indian (especially of the poets). Other anthologies that deserve our gratitude include collections edited and/ or translated by AK Ramanujan and R. Parthasarthy.

I highly recommend this Bloodaxe anthology for its reach and range, and for a comprehensive and erudite introduction to Indian poetry in English. It includes most of the important poets born before 1975 (or as I jokingly tell myself, all poets older than me!), and provides exemplary poems about every imaginable theme and subject that poets and readers will remember and relish in years to come. I will close this review with another set of memorable lines from Ranjit Hoskote, who in a poem titled "Ghalib in the Winter of the Great Revolt" writes:

"The friend, with a spy at his shoulder, writes back: / When did you become a poet of adjectives / roosting in the rafters of a broken house? / Ghalib, the owl must hide in the tamarind for now, / but the genie of havoc will go on furlough soon. / You say your ink-well is empty, but your dry quill / still claws at the fibers of the heart."

Joy, Killjoy of Thesis, Antithesis: Waterless Urinals & Water Crisis

Vivek Sharma — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:00:32 EST

New 'waterless' urinals installed in some of the restrooms in MIT and Harvard proclaim that by installing these approximately 40,000 gallons of fresh water will be saved every year. If we say that India needs to install around 25 million urinals to prevent people from watering the roadside grass and trees, then by not installing those 25 million urinals, we are saving a trillion gallons of water every year.

If we account for the amount of irrigation water and organic manure that is provided by this roadside act of 'free giving', as well as account for cost of having old urinals constructed and buying new ones at a formidable price, as well as the cost of maintaining the buildings, and so on, we must have saved over 100 billion dollars in last two decades (10% of Indian GDP in 2008). This is the money that we have saved from going down the drain, if you wish.

If you knew Marcel Duschamp's work, and if you knew that such saving requires one to have the fountain of knowledge, you will know that by not having the 'fountain', we have shown a genius, that goes beyond the realm of conceptual art. I am often reminded of his art, as we were born on the same day, separated by space, time and thought process; while he calls that physical object a fountain, I am pleased to refer to its absence as 'fountain of life'.

I think everything in this world happens first as a farce, then as a tragedy. I can explain my arguments, but I think it is better to give the reader a whiff of the idea, and if they wish, they can read books and wikipedia to understand that I happily and angrily argue from the both sides. The rage for progress has brought us to this page, but by the time you will turn it, you will yearn for the absence of it. Or maybe not.

The per capita water consumption in United States (and many European nations) is at least twenty times higher than per capita water consumption in India. Water used for bathing is minimal if you get a bucket (15 -20 liters) on your turn, as opposed to a shower or bath-tub. Our ancestors preferred a dip in the holy rivers and holy lakes, and let me remind you, all Indian lakes, rivers, streams, rainfall, all water-bodies are sacrosanct. Since no man steps into a river twice, through a dip in the river at the dawn, our ancestors were led into a habit of cleanliness as well as a realization of evanescence of human existence. Returning to question of water consumption (the holy dip was necessary to cleanse my mind of extraneous thoughts), Indians consume less water, and if they stop aping the West, they would consume less water in coming centuries as well, and run a lower risk of undergoing the imminent water crisis. We know that water will be next oil, and even though finding water on the moon is a step in the right direction for India, formidable transportation costs will limit its availability only to politicians. Meanwhile, the common man, general public must learn to not forget their ways, and teach their kids the importance of holy rivers as well as the concept of "gagar mein sagar" (ocean in an earthen pot).

Ghada (घड़ा) (earthen pot) was one of the greatest discoveries ever made by human beings. To shape a container for water using a wooden wheel, a chakra, out of mother earth, requires a metaphorical, spiritual act that is both of scientific and engineering value to humanity. By replacing ghada with refrigerator, we have become more dependent on electricity than ever, and we eat more stale food than our ancestors were ever able to. The unhealthy way, the way of fridge, involves drinking water with ice, and by making extra effort to drink water at those inhuman temperatures, we are merely making power producing companies richer, cough syrup producing companies (that serve alcohol and sedatives to non-drinkers) richer. By not buying refrigerators, 50% of India, implying at least 100 million households, have saved another 100 billion dollars, if not more. Plus they have been drinking cool water, cooled by evaporative cooling, and they have been drinking water, conditioned by the mother earth herself.

Many, many years ago, before the time of Arundhati Roy and Medha Patekar, before engineers and scientists learned that dams cause irreversible damage to local flora, fauna and folklore, apart from displacing people like their cattle and other calamities, when the first dams were constructed in India, the farmers in Punjab refused to drink and use water from canals. Their argument was that the government is trying to dupe them by providing them "powerless water", as its shakti (शक्ति) (power) was extracted by government in form of electricity already. It took a lot of convincing: world bank grants, field trips by the scientists of green revolution era, multimillion dollar corporate sponsorship, NGO work, government subsidy, brainwashing and wallpaper campaigns to convince these farmers that canal water was 'good' and God-sent, high yield seeds that require more water for irrigation were good, that changing their water tables and water habits was "good". In past ten years, two million of those farmers have committed suicide, due to a water crisis that is affecting at least two hundred million farmers in India. The reason is that the 'rain gods' were not consulted before corporations that supply single-crop yielding seeds, were brought into the system, and 'low water use, low fertilizer' local varieties were discarded for providing the greatest profit to greatest number of people. Some people are still profiting, but our seedless, waterless farmers, must be wondering, why did everyone laugh at their grandparents who believed that by supplying them this canal water, the government is giving them 'powerless' water.

Will Manmohan Get An Economic Nobel?

Vivek Sharma — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:44:01 EDT

It is about time our Sardarji got it. Sardarji who is credited as father of optical fibers managed to dodge the Nobel by a whisker. I often look at that name on the wall of the Subway stop of Kendall Square/ MIT, and marvel at our inability to remember and recognise his name. But Manmohan Singh is a name that strikes a familiar chord in the West. Had there been no Manmohan Singh, we, Indians, could have been eating chai-pakoda, filter coffee-samosa, thumbs up and chaat in place of MacDonald's Burgers, Pizzas and KFC nuggets. The man who leads the greatest democratic nation in the world, (and emphasises the fact that India has more voters than the living and dead voters of the United States in the twenty-first century), the man who leads the most destitute crowd of voters into a capitalist, globalized economy, the man who has helped India become a keyboard thumping nation of 'code-monkeys' and 'phone-donkeys', making late-night forays into their stylised cubicle prisons from where they answer phone-calls with assumed Western accent / name, that man, his team, his party deserves some Western pat on the back. But maybe Sardarji will not get it for precisely these reasons and others that we will see in rest of my post.

Manmohan will not get it as he is overqualified as a politician. He is too gentle with words, too urbane and he lacks the element of drama so essential for getting credit for things. He does not offer to change the world, he has already done that to 1/5th of the world (or been largely responsible for guiding it through). He does not have a monstrous predecessor who ruled his country before him, he is neither fighting any wars nor spending great amount of public money on financing big banks that hand out million dollar bonuses. Manmohan does not have the charisma to carry a Nobel Prize into the front-page controversy anywhere except in Pakistan and in China. Both these countries are significant to the stability of the world, and who would want to enrage them by offering the prize to an Indian.

In fact, we Indians would be enraged if he got a Nobel, after all Gandhiji did not get one, after no writer after Tagore managed to get one, Bose (aka Bose-Einstein theory) got none, Bose (aka JC Bose) did not get one. We are happy this way; this Nobel is quite inconsistent with Eastern values, where we don't value individualism and temporary success as much as we value good karma, i.e. good action, and success which arises in form of good effects seen by coming rebirths and generations. Nobel prize in economics has been awarded in past to people who guided world economy into great recession of this decade: showing it is a transient award, given for predictions rather than results. It is given for things that look mathematically consistent (though all real life conditions are ignored), for things that help the richest country now remain the richest country with people carrying greatest amount of personal debt, which finances luxuries that requires largest per capita consumption of energy, causing oil companies to become rich by waging monopolistic campaigns in oil-field-carrying nations, causing first rate energy crisis which will follow. It is given to policies that create Banana republics, not to policies that provide cheap health care and education to masses. Exceptions are always there, and of course, if it were not the free flow of ideas that spawned this post, I would have believed and said the opposite to everything I said here so far. I don't verify facts and figures while writing such conundrums, and sometimes awards are given in similar vein, so maybe my approach to saying things here is not totally vague.

Maybe the Chinese Premier must be given the Nobel, for allowing Marxism to be reinterpreted in such a way that China has now more billionaire than any other country, that is if we forget to count the billionaires in United States. To redefine communism in this way took less than two centuries after the issuance of Communist Manifesto. I am sure Karl Marx is re-reading his theories and trying to understand what went wrong, that his brainchild Marxism is now interpreted in this way. Also the Maoists in India, who want a China-like communism in India, must be quite confused by the turn of events in China itself. Perhaps by shifting 70% wealth into the hands of 1% people (according to some unverifiable propaganda estimates), by reinventing the meaning and purpose of communist party, and keeping 1/5th of world population under control while they did it, the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese Premier have made an unprecedented economic breakthrough that deserves a nod of approval from the Nobel committee. Maybe Arvind Adiga or his character from White Tiger, are already rooting for the Chinese Premier. China already produces every toothbrush, shoe nail, nut, bucket, dinner plate, door handle, undergarment, comb, hairbrush, (maybe even flags of other nations), TV remote, table-lamp switch and imitation weapon (read Charlie Wilson's War for details) used by people in rest of the world. Such progress deserves a prize, more than our progress indicated by our Sardarji's facts and figures.

Who knows though, maybe Manmohan will get it anyhow. He might get it as the committee has never given a prize to a person of his community and its about time that the economic prowess of Punjabis was awarded. He might get it as they begin to comprehend that the growth rate on Indian GDP and inflation has defied most of the World Bank estimates in the past two decades. It will be a good idea to award him the prize and claim that International Monetary Fund, and the intellectual and economists are supportive of former professors even after their leaving practices and posts for offices of political intrigues and power-plays. It is no small matter however that when Chanakya, the famed economist of Mauryan empire from twenty-three centuries ago, was the prime minister, the Indian contribution to GDP of the world was a decent 33%. We are only off by the second digit in that figure, and 3% is not bad by any means. We had 1/3rd of world' population back then, and through middle ages, the GDP was decently high, provoking so many attacks on the nation. To safeguard ourselves from colonists, Mongols, Greeks, Huns, Islamic tyrants from beyond the Hindukush, to safeguard ourselves from a repetition of those bloody war, we as a nation decided to stop being so rich. But Manmohan wants to make India look rich, and he needs encouragement. He definitely needs encouragement. We could have been spending money on getting rid of insurgents everywhere, on borders, in bordering states, in Maoist-infested states. We could have been spending money on providing possible places for professors and researchers to make their grand discovering in India. We have avoided all these temptations, ensured that we export our talent, and we keep our farmers dependent on foreign seeds, so that our commitment to world economics is not questioned.

For this level of incongruity in practice and values, in poorman's pocket and rich man's mansion, in supposed technological advances that create only code-monkeys & phone-donkeys, for this level of dedication to profits of world's multinationals, for this level of focus on removing hunger by letting the hungry die, for removing insurgents by giving them the lands they ask for, for liberating India from licence-raj, where politicians made direct fortunes, and taking it into an era of economic liberalization where politicians still make money, and unknown forces get the profits, for all this chaos and trying to make sense of it, I recommend Manmohan for the Nobel prize of economics, and if that is not possible peace. The nomination process for 2010 will open up soon: start casting your votes in his favour folks!

Book Review: Delhi, A Novel by Khushwant Singh

Vivek Sharma — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:09:02 EDT

The novel Delhi penned by Khushwant Singh is a story that spans both the grandeur and squalor of the city that it seeks to uncover through a perverse romance.

A city that has witnessed at least seven rounds of complete destruction and reconstruction, Delhi, the capital of India, is a city of culture and calamity, of conceit and capability, of poets and pests, of politicians and saints. To capture the manifest and unmanifest faces of Delhi requires a canvas that delights and nauseates in equal measure. Perhaps Khushwant Singh knew of this aspect of his beloved city, when he created a bawdy, old, reprobate protagonist, in love with a hijra (enunch) whore, as the person seeking to describe his love-hate relationship with that whore and this city. While the principal narrator busies himself with unusual sexual acts with his half-man, half-woman partner Bhagmati, he also allows himself pleasures with foreign and native beauties, all leading him into another fold, another fleshy nook, to his conquests another tale. This romance fades to backdrop as the narrator discovers the legends that lurk in various streets, forts, abandoned palaces, embankments, towers, temples, mosques, gurudwaras, memorials, burial grounds and coffee houses of the city. The greatest delight in the novel, lies in reading about Timur, Mir Taqi, Nadir Shah, Hazrat Kaki, Nizamuddin, Bahadur Shah Zafar & Moghuls, Tuglaks, Lodhis, First War of Indian Independence (or The Sepoy Mutiny), emperors, temptresses, poets, saints, Sikhs who helped British win in 1857, bodies burning on banks of Yamuna, Englishmen, builders of New Delhi, Aurangzeb, neo-converts to Islam or Sikhism, Khusrau, assassins of Indira and mobs who rioted after partition and after Indira's assassination and Mahatma Gandhi. The most captivating details of this novel tell us about these innumerable people who lend their blood, their faith, their best and worst aspirations and actions to provide that special character, mystery, mystique to Delhi. The novel is an ode by a Delhi's son to his fascination with undying and relentless, razed and raging, crazed and craving, old and ageless, brutal and brave, buried and slaved, free and frayed, remorseless and mourning, Hindu, Islamic, Sikh and in equal measure sufi and atheist soul or spirit of Delhi. The narrative is at its best when Aurangzeb, Nadir Shah, Sikh fighter of 1857 war, Zafar, a refugee who wants to avenge deaths of his family members, or Mir Taqi Mir describe their lives and their times: for writing these pieces alone, Khushwant Singh deserves a permanent place in the literary tradition of India and the World.These characters, chosen from several generations of possibilities, speak with a honesty characteristic of Khushwant's writing: the wanton is as omnipresent as is the sacrosanct. There are many verses from major poets (including Mir and Zafar) that appear in translation. It was Mir who once said: "Dil ki basti bhi shehar dilli hai/ Jo bhi guzra usi ne loota." (Delhi alone is a city of love; all those that have passed through have looted it). While Ghalib is not mentioned outright as a narrator, his times are described quite well as he was contemporary of Zafar, and befittingly, the novel starts with an epigram from Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib: "I asked my soul: What is Delhi?/ She replied: The world is the body and Delhi its life." For anyone who has lived in India between 1970 and now, the name Khushwant Singh brings memories of his Santa-Banta jokes and his weekly column that appears in most newspapers, with a caricature of him sitting in a light bulb. In those columns as well as here, Khushwant always succeeds in telling us a good story, occasionally writing lines that are exquisite, occasionally saying things that are offensive to many or just seem like an injustice to the caliber that this grand old man of letters definitely has.

To love and discover Delhi, one must learn to ignore its smell of piss and shit (New York these days has plenty of that), ignore its hostile, acerbic reception to guests and visitors, ignore its age, bitterness, immensity and obscenity. To read Khushwant Singh, one must learn to ignore the trivia and trivial, that comes packaged with the historical and memorable writing. The notoriety of the writer, in this case, must not stop us from savouring fantastic details about Mehrauli, Hauz Khas, Nizamuddin and Red Fort, among others. For example, do you know the name of five villages that Pandavas asked for after their exile? Do you know who built Hauz Khas? Do you know who saved the British army from total annihilation in Delhi and why? In equal measure, do you know how many types of farts are there and how they must be classified? Khushwant Singh quotes many lines from Saadi, including "O Sage ! the stomach is prison house of wind,/ the sagacious contain it not in captivity,/ if the wind torment thay belly, release it, fart;/ For the wind in the stomach is like a stone on the heart."With Kushwant Singh, even fart is art! After reading Train to Pakistan and Delhi, I have become increasingly convinced that Mr. Singh is our man for the future: he will be seen as the painter whose canvas is populated with the bylanes and backdoors that whisper realistic details about people and times, that most of his contemporary authors fail to touch or write about. He writes without bothering to explain things to non-Indians, so foreigners will need to work harder to read him, but since he writes about people, politics and religion, issues that are and will remain important to every inhabitant of Delhi, Punjab and India, his writings will redeem him in eyes of one and all. This man in the lightbulb, this lightbulb, who was born in 1915, has translated a lot of great poets from Punjabi and Urdu into English, has written about history of Sikhism and Ranjit Singh, and yes, he has also written about Sex and Scotch with unfailing enthusiasm. He has known every major Indian writer of twentieth century, and outlived most of them, to tell these tales, and when he speaks, we grandchildren can only wonder, how he knows all these details. If India is a land of unresolved contradictions and organized chaos at work, Delhi is befitting as its capital. The soil of Delhi boasts of sweat and blood of at least twenty six centuries, starting with Indraprasta, as mentioned in Mahabharata, (though earliest archeological remains are, I believe, from the sixth century BC), to the current city that has well over twenty million inhabitants. Khushwant Singh's novel is laced with details about history and monuments of Delhi that take the reader through the familiar names and lanes, providing meaning and mannerism to rocks, stones, bricks, and ghosts from a bygone era.The dead and alive live in harmony in this city, the palaces turn to wilderness and wilderness to townships in manner of few centuries. The dominant Gods change, the language and the tongues change, the spices and kitchens invent new flavors and aromas, and all that appears or disappears, stays as a memory or as song, in dust or in verse, through arts and crafts that traveled out of that time and place.

The temples were destroyed to create mosques, mosques razed to create ruins, ruins restored into housing colonies, housing colonies for refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tibet, Pandits from Kashmir. Roads raised over remains of slums, slums planted over public gardens, parks overgrown over unclaimed or reclaimed lands. In such a city, Khushwant Singh's characters receive their share of history by breathing the air that stinks of history and rage, that seduces with mango flavors and rum punches. In this history, they seek their own woes and pleasures. A city revealed, is a personality understood: it is the relationship with Delhi, that defines the character of a Delhiwallah, the protagonist of the novel, the writer as well as the reader who wanders through a fifteen hundred square kilometer landmass with a population density of ten thousand per square kilometer. Delhi air is packed with centuries of whispers; Khushwant packs many interesting ones into this novel. Read it for Mir, read it for Zafar, Nadir Shah, Timur, Khawaja, Mahatma, and for knowing about crazed Budh Singh, who dies a crazed death at the hands of mob in 1980s. Read the novel to gaze and grapple with the treacherous, bloody, voluptuous, insatiable, inexhaustible, adventurous, amorous, pompous, powerful, poetic, prosaic, potent & impotent, passive and purgative, lurid and lucrative avatars of Delhi, of Delhiwallahs, of Indians, of ourselves. Let me end this review by lines written by quoting a few poets. First Ghalib and Zauq, who said these verses around the same time; Ghalib:

"Hai ab is maamure mein, qaht-e-gham-e-ulfat 'Asad'/Hamne maana rahen Dilli mein, par khaayenge kya?"

(There is now in this town a famine of the grief of love, Asad/ We've agreed that we would remain in Delhi-- what will we eat?)

& Zauq:

"Kaun jaaye Zauq par, Dilli ki Galiyan chhod kar"

(Who would quit the lanes of Delhi, Zauq and suffer exile?).

But again, let us end with Mir,

"Dil va Dilli dono agar hai kharaab/ Par kuch lutf us ujde ghar mein bhi hain" ((Both heart and Delhi may have been worn out/ But some little pleasures still remain in this ruined house).

Art & Technology: A Decade After I Took That Humanities Course

Vivek Sharma — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:19:30 EDT

To mention Art and Technology in the same breath requires a shift in perspective, for these two streams of human creativity, appear to be quite distinct. A decade ago, as an undergraduate in Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, I opted for a humanities course, titled Art and Technology, taught by Prof. V. Sanil. A decade after the course, I am still fascinated by the aspects of art and technology that we discussed and discovered during a semester of music, movies, paintings, and handouts.

Once we realize that the story and beauty of literature, painting, poetry, architecture and dance is coupled to the technological evolution, we begin to see how truth and beauty are manifested through both art and technology. When we look at a Mercedes Benz or I-phone or the image of splash of a drop of milk or a special effect in say a 007 or Superman movie, a Disney or Pixar cartoon, we are marveling at confluence of these two streams. As an engineer, I spent the last decade in universities, studying polymer dynamics, iridescent beetles, chaos and chaotic mixing, pattern formation, and dynamics of complex fluids. I have continued to evolve as a poet and a writer, and my first collection of poems in English will be appear this year. My growth as a human being, my personality, has sipped from the cup of both art and technology. In this piece, I recall how a single course introduced me to themes that I find impossible to ignore now. When I met Prof. Sanil on my recent India trip, I began to rave on this course, how we talk about it all the time. Like a good professor is wont to do, he smiled, and assigned me an essay on "Art and Technology: A decade after that Humanities course".

As a nineteen year old, I had watched many movies, read a few books, attended rock concerts in and around Delhi, and I had studied at least as much science as one needs to get into IIT. The courses in humanities were required courses, and most of us picked those based on recommendations by seniors, or because our friends (or real or imaginary boyfriends/girlfriends) preferred one. I guess I was in Art and Technology course for similar reasons, helped by presence of three of my closest friends, and by the fact that we had enjoyed Prof. Sanil's course on Moral Literacy and Moral Choices. The course on ethics had introduced us to work of Aristotle, to utilitarianism and Hume, existentialism and Sartre, to Kant, to Amartya Sen's theories, and through the inevitable discussions on moral choices, it introduced us to our own perceptions and preferences.

Through the course, we learned to examine our own points of view and choices. It was as if, we became philosophers through a semester of handouts. In the last decade, I have found this knowledge handy in discussions of all kinds: social, political, cultural and technological. So in the next semester, when the professor first talked about things to be covered in Art and Technology, we wondered why we wanted to take a course that involved two weeks of watching movies, and listening to lectures about paintings or music. Art, it seemed to us, was a realm of fantasy, of senses, where taste and talent determine the appreciation and presentation of sights and sounds. We were determined to leave laws of physics outside the room when we entered a movie hall: Bollywood movies expect that from us anyway.

We use our ears (and invisible mind) to discern noise from music. When I first came to IIT, I found Rock music to be unbearable. It was nonsense and noise to me. Hindi movies had introduced me to songs based on Indian classical music, but my appreciation of Western Classical music was limited to associating it with the background score of Tom and Jerry and other cartoon series. My hostel room was next door to a friend's room whose 1000 W system blasted Metallica, U2, Guns and Roses, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin at every imaginable odd hour of the day. Another friend, who smoked anything and everything, (and was sometimes seen carrying a 'hukka' around the campus) swore by the names of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. Due to valiant attempts by these two and other friends, I developed a respect and taste for both forms of Western music. Yet, I never sat down to think why the Eastern and Western music was so different. So when Prof. Sanil asked us this question in class, we started saying a lot of things, hoping to hit the right answer somehow: this is a talent every engineer learns, and every manager excels in.

I still remember the discussion about role of harmony in Western music and predominance of melody in Indian classical, about differences in frequencies of basic notes in Indian and Western classical music, about the meanings of words 'raaga', 'symphony' and so on. I recall a handout that talked about how an Indian flute maker is typically an illiterate man, who goes to the jungle during a ritualized season, dries selected bamboo shoots, and pokes holes into the reed to make small or large flutes, that work marvelously.

On the other hand, in United States, a specialized company uses the most sophisticated machinery to design flutes made out of special alloys, and maintains precision in frequency, size and surface finish of holes, and sells one flute at a price that will be more than the price of all flutes an Indian flute maker sells in a lifetime. I learned about how Western musicians require "engineers" to tune their pianos, whereas just before a performance a tabla player tunes his table by hitting hammer and tightening few ropes, while a sitar player strums each chord and decides on the right one. The beauty of music, it turns out, can be recorded in terms of beauties of the notes that can be expressed a frequencies. Many physical laws are best understood by thinking of them in terms of harmonic motion, in terms of frequencies, and no wonder, CV Raman was fascinated by the physics of tabla and other musical instrumnets, for his own knowledge of "frequencies of electromagnetic waves" was crucial in his discovery of Raman effect. Next time you think about noise as an electrical engineer, or of vibrations as civil or mechanical engineer, remember a heart beat, a tap on tabla, the earthquake, and a note of Sitar are all vibrations of some kind.

While discussing music, we started talking about Rock music, about the origin of this form, why drums and guitars played a central role in evolution of sound. In past decade, I have had occasion to revisit these discussions. I visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and a museum dedicated to Bob Dylan and Hendrix in Seattle. I have read more and more about how certain musicians adopted technological advances to expand their repertoire of sounds. Dylan was heavily criticized for using an electric guitar, Pink Floyd for using light and sound for making eerie concerts and records, and Madonna for thinking the most about videos that could play on MTV.

When we begin to think about instruments, we begin to see that instruments exist in a culture; the instruments are made by artisans or technicians; instruments use wood, metal, alloy or plastic, invented by a certain age. When we begin to see the hand that shaped the tabla, when we discern that the pitch and frequency of a note we find aesthetically pleasing can be analyzed mathematically, do we loose our appreciation of melody, of sound, or music? Or do we begin to hear more than what a mere monkey would hear? How do we hear things? Isn't the sensation of music itself produced first by the banal strumming of cords (aha! from notes of a vibrating string) or from blowing air (through windpipes, creating disturbances with certain frequency and amplitude) and later isn't the appreciation itself through the chemical and electrical signals that are transported and analyzed in human auditory response system?

What are senses, and why do we sense things as beautiful, aesthetically pleasing? We began from very simple questions, and in the course, we soon reached the seemingly abstract questions: what is truth, and what is beauty? Are these abstractions? Prof. Sanil gave us another handout, this one from Chandrasekhar, the Nobel prize winning scientist most famous for his work on black holes and other 'physicsy' things. I have read several scientific texts and papers by Chandrasekhar, all written with exception clarity of concepts and dealing with challenging mathematics. Curiously enough, was interested in this question of truth and beauty, and talked about how these show up in both art and technology. Chandrasekhar is not an exception in seeking answers to these questions: as we read works by great scientists, poets and writers, we find this quest is an eternal quest. The faithful have shaped their Gods as an answer to this quest or as the means of pursuing the answer; the rational have framed theories and explanations and the creative have forged works of art that seek and show 'truth' and 'beauty'.

The quest for beauty in painting has a better documented history. It begins with the sketches made by the ancients in their caves. It evolves through the art that existed in temples and places of worship, in palaces, in folk designs. The Renaissance began when the man began to explore the possibilities of perspective, of attention to detail, of form and function. Leonardo da Vinci was like the procrastinators who abound in our midst: his paintings were incomplete, and his science was incomplete: yet what he sought was important enough, his methods were scientific enough for his time and his unfinished work was masterful enough, to survive as an inspiration to artists and scientists alike.

While I believe a handout from Prof. Sanil would delve of such things later, it seems strange to me that before we actually began discussing paintings in this course, my appreciation of artistry was limited by my ignorance. When the cave man looked at the sky, he saw bright objects; when Ancient Greeks and Indians saw them they found divinities, Ptolemy saw earth at the center of universe, Aryabhatta though of earth revolving around the sun, and we all know that Galileo and thereafter, the scientists used telescopes and other devices to learn more. It is the same sky, same objects, but the story of what we ‘see’ is also the story of human progress. In this case, technology changed how we perceived them. Yet, in his own way, Van Gogh, though a single painting on Starry Night, provided us with an image that we cannot forget. "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are" is quite a simple nursery rhyme but for a scientist and an artist, it carries connotations that require lifetimes worth of work. ‘Seeing is believing’, and yet what we really see is determined by the manifest forms of art and technology.

For example, a two dimensional image, a photo, gives us a map of human face. A video provides sound and mobility. Three-dimensional objectification comes next: both in art and science, the leap in imagination from two to three to four dimensions, represents a giant leap in our understanding of life, universe and everything. Coming back to paintings, if you look back at the history of art and science, the question of perspective, symmetry, curvature, patterns are questions that led us to new vistas of knowledge, both of scientific and aesthetic nature (both pleasures might co-exist, without our knowing so). Through the course, we discovered the impressionists, Van Gogh and Manet, the modernists, Picasso and Dali, the medieval giants: Rapheal, Leornardo da Vinci, Micheal Angelo. In years that followed, I have slaked my thirst for their work by visiting museums in Amsterdam and New York, by reading books like Moon and Sixpence by WS Maugham, through movies.

Of late, I have figured that we need more understanding of our own, i.e. Indian art and technology, for unless we do that, we cannot understand who we are. Argumentative Indian, a book of essays by Amartya Sen, provides contexts and examples for this understanding of Indian culture, language, technology, and music, and the role of this understanding in determining our identity. Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red retraces the history of Islamic art, where the artists in Istanbul make attempts to copy the old master of Herat, who were in turn influenced by Chinese miniature artists, and yet the Islamic artists establish a love-hate relationship with sixteenth century art of Europeans. As Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence acknowledges, Eastern art was a work of a team, any sculpture, any painting, was attributed to a team: in the Western world, individuals got the honor.

In the course, we had explored questions about how our knowledge of the artist influences our perception of his work, and if should be so. The questions of what is art and what is not, what is communal and what is personal, of who is an artist, and ‘art for arts sake’, of what is taboo and what is revolutionary, resonated in the class. These questions were asked in the same vein as questions about what is a fact, what is truth as opposed to perceived truth, what is knowledge? Be it Pamuk's novel or Einstein's biography, we find these questions intact.

The seeming distance between art and technology disappears when you read great works of literature. The description of architecture, and its history in The Hunchback of Notradame by Victor Hugo, the details about whale hunt and whale industry in Moby Dick by Melville, the thesis on art and science of paper making in Lost Illusions by Balzac, or description of vogue scientific knowledge in War and Peace by Tolstoy, is apt as scientific and artistic writing. The great German poet, Goethe wrote a treatise on color science, while Vladimir Nabokov (of Lolita fame) collected and cataloged butterflies all his life. Even with nineteenth century equipment, maestro scientists like Rayleigh and Plateau perceived laws of physics hardly perceptible to the human eye. Robert Hooke's Micrographia shows the level of his skill as a sketcher: after several buildings in London burned down, he provided sketches for builders, based on his own memory. The mathematician Lewis Carol created a wonderland for Alice, a doctor Chekhov turned in on good story after another to feed himself, while treating poor patients for free.

The influence of art on technology and vice versa, is apparent in naming of things: to call an allotrope of carbon as buckminsterfullerene acknowledges contribution of Buckminster Fuller to the designing of geodesic dome. High speed photography, including splashing droplets or images of sportsmen in action, required innovations from Harold Edgerton in MIT: a professor ended up transforming how everything that happens in a fraction of second is captured, observed and understood. His images are hung in galleries and museums and are printed in journals and textbooks of science.

Cinema is a grand medium for simultaneously showcasing the latest innovations in art and technology: in the class, when we watched Battleship Potemkin or Citizen Kane or Pather Panchali or Pyscho, we discussed some aspects of cinema that have ever reverberated in my thinking. What is a long shot, a close-up, the interplay of color and shadows, of what is captured in a frame and what is left out: if my love for cinema is like that of a protagonist from Cinema Paradiso, this course introduced me to a different level of appreciation. The questions we asked while looking at a painting, or while hearing a song, or while discussing relation of "art" and "audience" are all uncorked simultaneously before us in cinema. Perhaps the mixing of several arts and technologies, limits our appreciation of each individual ingredient, but when we pay little more attention, the mind picks out sight, sound, poetry, story, and emotion separately; and then as one.

The curious aspect of thinking about art and technology in the same room or together is that soon the spectrum of colors that fill our world, seems to come from a single streak of light. It becomes increasingly obvious that it is a drop of human intellect or mind or sensibility, that acts as the prism, which creates an explosion of colors. Or maybe not, maybe the rainbow exists, even if we don't know why it does? Why do we need to know how the rainbow forms, and why are we attracted to it? Are we seeing the same rainbow that our forefathers saw? But each rainbow we see is different from any rainbow that anyone else sees. But rainbow represents something. Is the rose a rose a rose? Eco's Name of the Rose leads us through labyrinths of such questions. Meanwhile the Hindi or Sanskrit word for rainbow is Indradhanush: again a bow, but of Rain God (rather than the English rain bow, we have rain god's bow in Hindi), whereas the French call it arc-enciel, or the colored arc and the Slovene word is mavrica, meaning a multicolored arch of color. In Slovene, mavrica is a feminine word as opposed to masculine Indradhanush. Most poets write about the blue sky, but humanity waited till late nineteenth century to find out why the sky is blue! While Lord Rayleigh was quite right about role of scattering in making the sky blue, he got the explanation for the color of sea wrong, and while Raman found the answer to this question, we know now that sky is not blue for all organisms, for perception of color itself depends upon biological optics.

It is, as if, what we see is not enough; there is more to it then we first notice. The Upanishads proclaim that sensory perception is lowest form of perception, and a yogi transcends this sensory perception, and of course, Gods transcend all knowledge and need for perception. We go through levels of perception, using sense (indri), reason (vivek), mind (buddhi) and aatam. So be it, the questions of what constitute truth and beauty, lead us to science, arts and religion, and the seeking makes us human beings who exist in a particular space-time. How do we become aware of our "space time", how do we become better beings, design better machines, create better art, and what does ‘better’ mean anyway?

Rendezvous with Prof. P. Lal, the Bhisham Pitamah of Publishing Indian Writing in English

Vivek Sharma — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:59:20 EDT

I visited Kolkata and met the legendary poet, translator, writer, professor, publisher: P. Lal. For the poet who has known over half a century worth of writers, and has been a cornerstone of Indian writing in English, a meeting with a novice like me may not appear anything special. But it was a very special forty-five minutes for me, and my post is a testimonial about the meeting. To call him Bhisham Pitamah of Publishing Indian Writing in English is to recognize the role he has played in nurturing several generations of writers, and to pay tribute to his effort at translating every verse of Mahabharata.

P. Lal, or Prof Lal (as he is affectionately called) is a month away from starting his eighth decade. In the last fifty years, he has launched innumerable poets and writers, who have found their niche in the world of celebrity (or in many cases obscurity). Be it Agha Shahid Ali or Vikram Seth or Keki N Daruwala or Pritish Nandy or AK Ramanujan or Chitra Bannerjee Devakurni or Kamala Das, their story begins with Writers Workshop imprint. P. Lal runs a small publishing "room", from where book acceptances are issued, and where 500 copies of hand-bound books are shipped, each carrying exquisite calligraphy, which is the hallmark of WW & Prof. Lal. As a publisher, his enterprise has incredible 3500 titles already to his credit. As a translator, he has collected and translated nearly every verse of Mahabharata. The epic is much much longer and richer than Collected Works of Shakespeare or both Iliad and Odyssey and requires a wisdom of language and culture, spread over three thousand years and more. The Writers Workshop has survived so long by the personal funds and efforts of one man, who continues to inspire writers like me. Now before I talk about the meeting, let me repeat the story of how I got the Writers Workshop imprint. I hope many more will follow this route and stay thankful for the existence of WW.

I first wrote to Prof. Lal in December, 2008, asking him if I could send in a manuscript. The response was prompt "yes" and I sat down and compiled 63 poems into Saga of a Crumpled Piece of Paper. After sending in the manuscript, I was ready to wait for months, and yet the acceptance came within a few days. Then began the process of revisions on my part. In November 2005, I was fortunate to walk into the office of Thomas Lux, a poet in residence at Georgia Institute of Technology and in next three years, he taught me the importance of craftsmanship, skill, reading and revision. When my book was accepted, my Gurudev and friend, Thomas Lux, offered to write an introduction. In the MIT convocation this year, a speaker said that an intellectual and a scientist must possess traits of 'generosity' and 'curiosity ': Gurudev has taught me both with regards to poetry. Gurudev Lux showed generosity when I was a student, as well as in the introduction for my book (I christened him Gurudev, both because he is my mentor and because I could not follow the American practice of calling him Tom). Within a few months of submitting the revised manuscript, I had galley proofs with me, and the book will be ready by Fall this year.

While Prof. Lal and I exchanged emails, I was aware of the central role played by him (and Nissim Ezekiel) in nurturing Indian poets writing in English. For example in the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, (a comprehensive anthology representing 70 poets, edited by Jeet Thayil), there are several poets who have had Writers Workshop imprint for either their first book or for many of their books. Three Indian Poets: Nissim Ezekiel, Don Moraes and A. K. Ramanujan by Bruce King examines how Indian heritage and Western education create a new voice in English, and the anthology edited by Jeet Thayil introduces us to a broad spectrum of work in English, where a Western language carries Indian hues, smells, sounds and mystery. The contribution of Writers Workshop is not in how many books it sells, but in how it has cradled the voices that would have vanished without reaching us. Given the contributions made by Writers Workshop, Calcutta to Indian English, I feel it is an honor and a privilege to begin my career as writer here. When I decided to travel to India, I wrote to Prof Lal, asking him if I could come and meet him. He sent me a phone number, and I packed my bags in Himachal and traveled 2000 km more to meet him.

I was so excited about meeting him that I just landed up at his door. I was asked by the gatekeeper to return home, and told that Prof. Lal does not meet anyone without an appointment these days. I called Prof. Lal and learned that he was quite sick, was on a strict medical regime. He was getting blood transfusions done but he offered to meet me next evening. The next day, I showed up at his door half an hour before the appointed time, and entered the hallowed publishing "room", the grand library-like "office" of Prof. Lal. Since I am quite forgetful and I took no notes, I will paraphrase the essence of our conversation. (I shall not say what he said about my writing, he was quite generous, and I respect him for being patient and inspiring to youngsters like me). Fittingly we started to talk about Mahabharata.

Prof. Lal asked me if I knew of an English word that has two opposite meanings. I couldn't think of any, though he said 'cleave' has been used in context of being removed and sticking to something. Then he said in Sanskrit words can assume two different meanings quite easily. In the end of Mahabharata, Mahrishi Vyas asks that why can't man understand the path of 'arth', 'kaam', 'dharma' and 'moksha'? Prof. Lal asked me what these words meant. He explained "arth" has two meanings: first one is "essence" or "meaning" or "the fundamental understanding" (of self, and of world). But the alternate meaning is "money" or materialistic gain. We all pursue "arth", but usually the materialistic one. 'Kaam' can be associated with 'gandharva' or with 'kaamdeva', with 'love' or with 'lust', and most fail to go from 'lust' to 'love' or get trapped in cycle of 'lust'. Same for 'dharma' (often mistranslated as religion): it has a connotation which is 'spiritual', requires performance of duties and responsibilities that are harmonious with spirituality. Other meaning is "ritual", where the "show", the 'act' takes prominence. Of course, the great bane of us Hindus is that we forget the spiritual aspect, and over emphasize the ritual part. (In this context, the story of Nachiketa from Katha-Upanishad is quite telling: when the young son questions his father about the parting with worthless cows and animals, rather than giving alms of things dear to himself). The final goal of 'Moksha', also has two connotations: the first one of "detachment'' or "renunciation": freedom from "kaam" (lust), "krodh" (anger), "moh" (love or attachment), "lobh" (greed) and "irshya" (jealousy). It is a hard goal. The other one is of "escape", which is what many people take it to be. The translation from Sanskrit texts requires such subtle understanding, and hence is hard for people, especially foreigners and for students, to appreciate the "arth" or essence of complex, nuanced arguments.

Prof. Lal than told me another anecdote about how Yudhistar wanted to commit suicide after the battle of Mahabharata was over and he saw that the land was full of dead warriors and widespread destruction. Then being "dharmaputra" (Son of Dharma) he went to his foster father, Vidur, who represented Dharma itself (through his wisdom and deeds). Vidur asked Yudhisitar to first find out the similarity between "nadiya" (river), "stree" (female), 'taruvar' (tree) and "prithvi" (earth), and then make his decision. Yudhisitar came back, and said he understood. Prof. Lal asked me if I knew what the similarity was. River, earth, tree, and women, continue to provide even if they are abused, they carry on living even after destruction, they bring forth fruit and children and bear all the abuse with fortitude. To carry on in face of adversity and destruction is another facet of lesson imbibed in Mahabharata. I told him that I had heard about another anecdote about Yudhisitar visiting Bhisma to resolve these matters, and I had read Dinkar's verses about it. Prof. Lal smiled and said that is in Shanti Parva: the last part of Mahabharata, the section is finishing work on.

But the lessons in life and Mahabharata is always for the one who seeks an understanding. As Prof. Lal continued, he asked me why only Arjuna saw the "Viraat" Krishna (his grand form, with all times, all beings, all galaxies and universes, seen to be emerging from him and vanishing into him). The armies of Pandavas and Kauravas sat there, did not notice a thing. Yet Arjun went through a long deliberation as if, and this constitutes the Bhagavad Gita. 'Nar'-'Narayan', first is Nar (Man), then Narayana (God); first 'Jishna', then 'Krishna'. Why is Krishna only a charioteer, if he is the God, and why is Arjun in the doer, the driver, the decider seat? Why is Krishna, the all knowing God, not doing anything? Was Krishna just a voice in Arjun's head? Doesn't this mean that God watches as man does his actions? Why does Krishna advice Arjuna to kill Karna when Karna gets off his chariot to pull a wheel out of the mud? Why does Arjun commit this sin, why does he need to obey Krishna's advice? What is Krishna? The consciousness or mind or thinking that makes Yudhistar lie, say that Ashwathama has died and abet in the murder of Dhronacharya, his own teacher, his own Guru? Who is the doer? Who is the thinker? After all the arguments put forth in Gita, the pacifist Arjuna, says P. Lal, makes the wrong choice, and kills his own brethren. In heaven, when Yudhistar and Arjun get there, they see Duryodhana has a grander seat than them. When they ask why it is so, they learn, that they actually fought the war for profit, for their selfish desire to rule, and not because they were on the side of dharma (Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, in Rashmirathi and Kurushetra argues that once war begins, 'dharma' is impossible to follow, and so even if war has a just cause, every warrior ends up leaving his dharma). Prof. Lal smiled and said, there are lot of dilemmas and questions left open or raised in Mahabharata. It is a grand work, and if you get lost in it, there is no coming back. (I told him I want to do a translation some day as well). We talked about the versions he had used, about Gita Press Gorakhpur, who do a commendable job in making all the ancient texts available at a low cost. He also said, what I had seen, that the Gita press censors out any mention of meat eating (by Pandavas, for example) and of sexual matters (in highlighting which some Western translators take extraordinary pleasure in). He said, like many other versions, his interpretations will not be perfect, and he cannot hope to reach the perfect version: but he seeks a complete version.

Then came the question of what I planned to do in life. I said that I want to continue my life of a researcher and keep writing in spare time. We talked about how English is still a foreign language when Indian emotions need to be expressed. Prof. Lal said that Indians are pastoral, and are more straightforward than a typical Westerner: with faith in simpler ideals and idols. To say something in an understated way is English style, not Indian. Irony is not what an Indian poet must excel in, for irony falters in an Indian context, and reduces us writers to poor mimics of Western writers. To say what we feel, requires a greater effort in English; there has to be touch of reverence, there has to be pastoral simplicity. We need to go beyond the established norms of Western writing in English to do a proper justice to the thoughts, traditions, practices, and emotions of this subcontinent. Prof. Lal said he found English particularly inadequate in capturing the multilayered connotation of shalokas or cantos of Mahabharata. We talked about how most of the famous fiction writers from India, who write in English, are urban elites, somewhat disconnected from the rural India, as well as from poor and middle classes in cities and small towns. I hope to continue writing about this underrepresented section of India, for I grew up in small towns and spend a large part of my vacations in villages. We agreed that if I stayed on in United States, it will be hard for me to stay unaffected by the Western style and Western thought process and write honestly, without irony or suspicion about Indian themes. Yet we agreed, it is sometimes by staying away from our land and language that we begin to understand ourselves better. It is through poetry that we understand that which we might not know otherwise.

The fifty minutes I spent with Prof. Lal, each minute for a year of Writers Workshop, filled me with a satisfaction that one feels after visiting a temple he has only heard about. My personal story as a published poet is on its first page, and as I walked out of the "Writers Workshop", I knew that if and when I'll visit the more celebrated publishing houses in future, I'll never feel the reverence and gratitude I felt in presence of the grand old man of Indian Writing in English. I left thinking that it is easy for us to focus on our individual careers, but it requires a substantial will to carry on an enterprise like Prof. Lal has done for five decades. In a few minutes, I found a rickshaw and retreated into the crowded lanes of Kolkata.

Elections in India, 2009: Vote for Moderation and Maturity?

Vivek Sharma — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:57:03 EDT

Elections in India present outcomes which require an analysis encompassing divergent rationals that co-exist in our bouquet society.

Each state, each constituency decides in its own way. The reasons are emotional, historical, economic, caste-based, and rooted in aspirations as well as fascinations of voters. Hence cricketers, movie and TV-stars get elected, sons and granddaughters of erstwhile Rajahs win, political dynasties win and lose, and occasionally you find a maverick rookie like writer/diplomat Shashi Tharoor win.

I was not in India to vote this time, but I waited for the outcome. Here are my thoughts, random thoughts of a chaotic being, which show that I love and hate all the political parties. Yet, I am Indian, optimism never deserts me, and this election gives me hope.In this election, we see an economist, academician, soft-spoken, PhD, the erudite but restrained Manmohan Singh return to the Prime Minister's chair. The policies and practices of the Congress and its allies have their flaws, yet it is the ability to nurture men who have depth and substance, that allows this grand old party to stay in power at national and state level. With Manmohan at the helm, and Rahul's much publicized role in the 'victory' in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress party promises the next generation of reforms as well as next generation of leadership.While BJP provides mercurial leaders of its own, who boast of no dynasties or grand births, leaders like Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee outlive their productive years, before they find themselves as potential candidates for the country's most important post. I am amazed that they have not realized it yet that unless they have leaders who are well-established by the age of forty-five or so, groomed to lead the country before they cross the age of sixty-five or so, they will always appear to be led by old, power hungry leaders.

I have enormous respect for these leaders and yet I cannot understand what logic tells them that leading a nation like India must be trusted to an eighty-one year old. Age brings wisdom, but grand old age brings senility, or at least health problems, spiritual crisis and so on. In any case, India has far too few voters above the age of fifty, and I cannot see the justification for keeping middle-aged, mature and sensible leaders away from ministerial berth to accommodate people who used to be cult figures, much before many the voters were even born. If you had only read my satire on age based reservation, you'd know how skewed the age distribution in India is right now. The age of the leaders is a significant problem, it is only one of many problems that plagues BJP's pursuit for power.The most promising outcome of this election was the defeat of parties and leaders with a caste-based agenda. The so called saviors of a certain caste or religion put every effort of Indian democracy towards harmony and progress in danger. I really envision a moral code, enforced strictly, that prevents leaders from making pro- or anti- caste remarks.

If inciting people in name of religion violates the code of conduct, I see no reason why a castist remark be left out of the purview of this code of conduct. While the reservation of certain seats itself identifies the candidates as belonging to a certain community, everywhere else, the mention of caste must be made crime punishable by law. There must be no room for candidatures that rely on caste, color, creed, birth, and yet, it is easier said than done.
My liberal view tells me that we need not make any new rules, for in time, the farces, the fallacies, the fascists, will self-destruct. Yet, the danger posed by these forces is real and too imminent to be ignored.

The erection of statues and memorials of living leaders at the expense of state treasury must be dealt with strict penalties on the responsible party, no matter how ludicrous the leader looks in this enterprise, the joke must not be staged on public money.There are a few questions on which I do not agree with many of my friends and so called liberals. I think religion has a role in politics, and religion itself is not a demon. A personalized belief system protects the leader from various corrupting influences. A personalized belief system, like that of Mahatma Gandhi, when practiced properly, also serves as the lighthouse for the others.

Do we need to build temples at particular sites? I don't know, but we need to ask those interested to at least look after and care for the temples that already exist. I will trust their devotion more, if it is used in providing help where the need exists. Also, I want my Ram back, I want my Lord back. I want him clean of every stain the politicians have inflicted in his name. I also want to see Mathura cleaner, Nashik, Haridvar and Varanasi made into properly managed, maintained, cities of pilgrimage. The filth there shows that the corruption of our within has spread into every street and public place, even the places where Gods once lived.

Also, I believe that if in certain ways, Hindus or certain castes, exploit others, democracy allows minorities to exploit the rifts in the majority to their advantage as well. The Hindutva issue is not misplaced, some anger is justified, and need to be addressed. It is about time that equality of religion and caste in eyes of law provide neither discrimination nor reverse-discrimination to any sect, faith, group, community. Voters must see to it; in my ideal world, they will.If any party believes that locals are not able to find jobs, I want those parties to help in education and employment efforts. If any community thinks their language is being ignored, I want to see great literature emerge from the mouths or pens of those who know only to burn others and not the hate within.

If any leader makes his life's aim to get justice for his people, let him start by empowering his people with opportunities for education and enlightenment. If any party wants to distribute free televisions, sell rice that exceptionally low price, distribute funds to families of terrorists while not caring for the lives of army men or jawans, let the politicians of these parties sit out of elections. If a man has murdered, raped and killed, has a criminal background, let us not judge him too harshly, and allow him to stand in elections only after he has done twelve years of community work, and shown to himself, and society, that 'every sinner has a future, every saint has a past.' No shortcuts to redemption exist, and even if the voter faults once or twice, over democratic system has to be mature enough to keep the criminals and the corrupt at bay.

Did India or Bhaarat vote for moderation? Yes, but not everywhere. Did we vote for harmony and maturity in places where religious and caste agendas were defeated by progress bandwagon? Yes, not everywhere. Has Indian democracy matured? Not yet, not quite, but the journey, it seems has taught it a few lessons, and will teach it many more. We have a lot of issues to resolve, economic hardships, coupled with terrorism and Naxal movement, religious and regional rifts, compounded by the pervasive hydra of caste system.

Let us gather all forces together, hope next five years take us to a better socio-politico-economic situation. Let us applaud the peaceful completion of another election. Even though it is hard to know what everyone among the seven hundred million voters thought, lets assume that we saw the victory of moderation, maturity, progress, erudition and harmony.

Poetry: Why the Elephant Was Not Chosen the King

Vivek Sharma — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:58:04 EDT

When elections begin, I am often asked to sing,
the tale of why elephant wasn't chosen the king.

After dinos left the earth, the animals gathered together,
the jungle had decided to elect their leader.
The problems were moo many, and there were moo many voices,
and when it came to the king, there were boo many choices.

This is before humans, demons and demon-cracy existed,
before royalty was thought divine, or guillotine was invented,
sharing land, food, caves, was forever a problem,
and without a king, there seemed no solution.

The monkeys shook trees, wolves howled, birds roosted,
elephants shook the earth, cows mooed, jackals boasted,
an owl chaired the session, the crows spread rumors,
and cats, rats, dogs, hare, turtles, deer, lions talked in murmurs.

Finally the session began, owl asked for nominations, stated,
"There are things I know, and things I don't,
and there are things I don't want to know,
but before we begin, I must tell you how it is fated.

The king shall rule, by his will, and by his skill,
and take what belongs to him, no less, no more,
and have our respect, for who he is, as a beast,
and treat us as equals, no less, no more".

The pigs began to grunt, and showed intention to squeal.
Owl permitted it, and a boar then stood up on two feet,
and said, "A king cannot be a king, if he is equal to the others".
Owl hooted, "As king he is equal, more equal than the brothers."

Few hands went up, monkeys rose first up,
but were deemed too naughty, too childish for responsibility,
and since insects, birds were always fleeing from calamity,
rats were too small, cats too clean, dogs always licking others,

soon most of the animals were dismissed back their place,
and only the elephant and the lion were left in the race.
(There was no divine hand in this, no lotuses or roses thrown,
and no walkouts, boycotts occurred, for such things were unknown).

The elephant raised its trunk, and announced his intent,
and began his high pitched, arrogant rant,
"For years, we vegetarians, have been kept down by some,
we are in majority, we are kept on low ground by some.

We don't get full share of meals, our water bodies are attacked,
and we are always blamed for our overgrazing in hinterlands,
Elect me, I promise a turnaround, a leash on those carnivores,
see my stature, see my snout, my size, I will reinvent jungle mores."

The deer clapped, birds seemed unruffled, cows thought it boo-ring,
Wolves gnashed their teeth, cats, dogs, jackals found this talk alarming.
So when the lion rose with a roar, they felt the tremor within, and emerged an uproar,
and then the lion coughed, stretched and unstretched, and began his eloquent address:

"Friends, the elephant is strong, it lives as a throng, keeps its tribe together,
but when it comes to governance, we lions and tigers are better.
For elephant never forgets, is ever full of regrets, and is slow in many respects,
and we all know, an ant up its nose kills it, so its afraid of even little insects.

Elephant eats too much, never shares its meal, is never satisfied,
and believes its grand, but to prove it on land, wants always to be deified.
Must I mention the white elephant projects, caste/species based promises, false teeth?
You show it a bunch of bananas, or sugarcane farm, and see him sneak and steal.

We are lions, we hunt our fill, and share our meals with jackals and vultures,
and when we kill, we cleanse the herds of their weakest members,
we take what belongs to us, we are our own masters on this earth, we're brave,
and when we are satisfied, we stay low, or we return to our quiet cave.

In intention you can never suspect us, we ensure the survival of fittest!
The balance of the world, food chains, populations depends on us.
In a jungle, the unity of your herds, your morality, begins with us,
As for a king, chose the being, who can make you way of life long lasting."

The lion sat down, and elephant held his ground, and animals began to talk,
"The elephants is tough, too big to ignore, and yet can he walk his talk?
In elephant's rule, will the rabbits and rats and deer and cows overrun the earth?
There will be too many of us, the jungle will be in throes, it will be just chaos...

The lion is bathed in blood, and has hunted our kind for so long,
and yet, when he in slumber, it seems, he can do us no wrong,
so stately in slumber, so elegant in its walk, so sleek in hunt,
and he knows how to take out the brothers, who are miscreants or defunct.

When lion stays around, young ones behave, old ones watch their own backs,
and wolves and dogs and bears and hyenas, always stay together as packs,
when lion holds his ground, we are discrete, we are God fearing, we're ourselves,
but in an elephant kingdom, we'd be overrun by their calves".

Jackals whispered, "and you know how elephants behave when they go 'mast',
a hungry lion can be satisfied, but an angry or 'mast 'elephant is quite worse",
Wolves howled in unison, "Lion! King! Lion! King!" and pigeons began cooing,
Dogs joined in, asses joined in, deer consented, hare jumped to feet, cows began mooing

The elephants held their noses up, and cried "foul play, foul play"
but on the day of that election, the lions took the day,
and to the crowd now in commotion, owl spoke to ease any tension,
"The results are clear, we need an overseer, an animal we all respect,

While elephant is huge, and has some popular views, its not a kingly thing,
And for the greatest benefit of all, for unity, and for a healthy co-living,
for the sake of progress, for making most happy and to prevent an uprising,
it becomes clear in this meeting, the elephant must not be the king".

Since that day the lions rule, and the jungle law is set,
"Your king must be the animal, you ever hold in respect.
While we live as God or natural selection devised us,
in the end, it is our leaders who define us".

"There are things that I know, and things I don't,
and there are things I don't want to know",
I repeat owl's words, as I loudly sing,
The raga of how or why elephant was not chosen the king.

Book Review: Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile

Vivek Sharma — Fri, 3 Apr 2009 10:03:23 EDT

Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile is an incredible yet true story of perhaps the largest and the most expensive covert operation in our immediate history. The major protagonist, Charlie Wilson is a six-feet-four-inch Texas Congressman. He gets involved in serial affairs with beauty queens and belly dancers, appears liberal on most issues, keeps the most handsome, personal staff in Washington, and drinks excessively, or rather nearly to his death and destruction. But Charlie is also the man who believes in underdogs, in anti-communist policies, in support of Israel on one hand and on the other, to build 'a billion dollar a year' funding for covert operation in Afghanistan, for the US sponsored jihad against the Soviets. The importance of this story must be measured in terms of the consequences that Charlie Wilson's War brought upon the world. The defeat and dissolution of USSR in late nineties, rise of Taleban and Al Qaeda leading to the September 11 attacks and ongoing Afghan and Iraq war in their aftermath, the twenty years of (spin-off) terrorism in Kashmir, all are the consequences of the Charlie Wilson's War.

While Charlie is the politician, the man on the ground, is an equally improbable character. Enter a second generation Greek-American, street-smart CIA operative, Gust Avrakotos. His language is infested with slurs. He is an outcaste of sorts in the ivy league dominated detective agency. Crile introduces him in a chapter titled "A rogue elephant in the agency woods". Gust's character was brewed in small town bar-fights and brawls. Gust has had his share of adventures and misadventures before he got involved as the operative that masterminded the ground operation in Charlie Wilson's War. While Charlie would run through Congressional committees to get the money sanctioned, and find Israeli or Egyptian or European or American arm dealers (or politicians) to get insane amounts of ammunition, Gust worked out how, what, where, when of the mission they both loved. The mission of killing the communists. In that mission, the jihadists, the Afghans with all their tribes and peculiarities, seemed the perfect warriors for the agency as well as the key actors in the game.

The novel, like the movie based on it, moves through landscapes that tell you something about each character. Like the young Charlie transports as many voters as possible to the voting booth in Texas, to ensure that the guy who shot his dog loses the case. Gust grows up in a small town, Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and then learns about the distastes and despair of men of different nationalities, basically when he just needs to figure out how to sell more cigarettes to bars frequented by Russians, Lebanese, Serbs, Poles, Greeks and so on. Charlie Wilson always gets into trouble, whether it is a case that made him famous as Cocaine Charlie (he got away due to lack of evidence), or a hit-and-run case, where he eventually was saved by his more than supportive staff. He has the gall to take a belly dancer to Egypt and have her perform for the minister there. He had one or the other pretty woman by his side, while he met 'the holy warriors who were destined to destroy the evil Russian empire'. Gust and other characters are developed in great detail, and if it were only a novel, I would perhaps say something about plot, writing style, sequence of events and so on. While this reads like a spy novel, with lots of sex bombs and lots of exploding bombs, Congressmen and Russian army, belly dancers and Mujahideen, billions of dollars and exotic locations, the mind-boggling thing is that Charlie Wilson's War is a line by line description of how our world was transformed. Not necessarily into a better place!

An old Indian adage says: "Behind every successful man, there is a woman". Charlie Wilson was seduced into the mission of fighting Russians and helping Afghans (termed as freedom fighters by Reagen) by the ever resourceful , glamorous, social lioness, Texas bombshell, Joanne Herring. Crile says,

"In the pivotal first years of jihad, she became the matchmaker and muse to Pakistan's Muslim fundamentalist, military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, as well as to the scandal prone Charlie Wilson".

Joanne brought together the key players, Charlie, Zia, Saudi princes, and so on, who later fought and financed the war, and yes, all this was happening behind the scenes. The most interesting bits in the novel are where it gets into details of how much money was used to finance these missions, how weapons were acquired by fair and unfair means, even donkeys that carried weapons in Afghanistan were imported at exorbitant price, and how many nations were involved in this mission.

To quote from the book:

"No insurgency had ever enjoyed such a range of support: a country (Pakistan) completely dedicated to providing it with sanctuary, training and arms, even sending its own soldiers along as advisers on military operations; a banker (Saudi Arabia) that provided hundreds of millions in funds with no strings attached; governments (Egypt and China) that served as arms suppliers; and the full backing of a superpower (the United States through CIA). All of that plus various kinds of support from different Muslim movements and governments, as well as intelligence services of England, France, Canada, Germany, Singapore, and other countries."

It is true that this support inflicted heavy losses on the Russian army and air force. It is true that Charlie Wilson's War was the grand punch which bought down the Soviet Empire. It is true that the mission remained covert in spirit and achieved its goals by using some of greatest resources (brainpower, muscle, technology, espionage). The grand warriors of that time, the Afghan freedom fighters, were even transported to American hospitals for treatment. What is curious and interesting, for it is most apparent throughout the story, is the fact that the extreme fervor of jihadis, their hate for people outside their tribe and culture, was ever staring in the face of the key operatives. If ends satisfy means, then Charlie Wilson's War was a justified, for it met its initial aim. But, but... things must come a full circle, and the story just doesn't end with Wilson's script.

The Russians left, but the tribal mistrust that has existed for centuries did not. The warriors were not disarmed, were not resettled, and to top it, a whole system of planning, organizing and manning armed struggle was created. Soon these jihadis were up in arms against each other, and Afghanistan continued to bleed. Many warriors were now sent to other missions. Kashmir and Panjab in India became hot beds of militancy, and the weaponry and savagery procured for fighting Russians destroyed the peace and sub-cultures there. Since Zia was the man incharge of covert operation, he was kept in power (that he had hung Bhutto, democratically elected leader, was forgiven) and the amount of money poured into Pakistan then, was what financed their nuclear arsenal, their army and their propensity to support jihadis against choosen enemies. Later and before, US supported such dictators to meet their ends in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Only a decade after the grand exit of Russian army, American armies were to enter Afghanistan to hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and Taleban, and fight against some of the very people US & CIA has trained and armed with their taxpayers money. It is said in India that whenever outsiders tried to rule the Afghans, they failed or they perished soon after, and this legend dates back up to the times of Alexander. The unsuspecting British army had a harsher experience in early nineteenth century. But of course, in this case, even the more immediate history is not discussed or remembered. It is not recalled that every exhibition of brutality by the jihadis that has hit headlines in the past decade was cheered when it was done against the Russians. Every tactic of using air force to bomb villages in Afghanistan was criticized by the US when the planes and pilots were Soviet. Sadly, only the characters have changed, the methods, motives and means have not, the telling effects on a country ravaged by war are very much there. Charlie Wilson's War is a reminder of not only how a war was won, but also of how the neo-enemy of United States was created out of a breed of men who wanted to fight and slaughter their enemies with bare hands.

In the Mahabharata, unarguably the greatest epic poem ever written, it becomes clear that in wars, there are no real winners. There is no moral war, for in a war, men and armies use any means possible to win. Even though the valor is real, there are heroic fights, exhibitions of skill and martial superiority, the only outcome a war warrants is the destruction of both parties. Charlie Wilson's War ends with an epilogue titled: "Unintended Consequences". Since we live in a world terrified of these unintended consequences, since we wish to understand how it all began, and how is it all carried out, we all must take time to read this book. While the movie gives a sampler of what the book portrays, the movie is not full of as many details or rather, it is impossible for anyone to assimilate this information so easily.

Yet, if it were not for the unintended consequences, and if it were not all real, Charlie Wilson's War makes for a 'fun' read. Once you start thinking about it, which you will, it turns into a horror. Since it is better to face the facts and fight our ghosts, I recommend this book to every thinker, politician, historian, American and human being living in our times.