An Imperfect Drawing

This morning, as I settled down with my drawing paraphernalia, I had a thought in my mind. Why not, for a day, shun the idea of attaining perfection but draw simply aimlessly, for the fun of it, like a child does?

I decided to not use tools like pencils or charcoal that I am confident with and tried dabbling with watercolors today. To begin with, I simply mixed a couple of colors and kept brushing randomly like a child playing with his first set of color pencils. As the day progressed I drew water and sun, two of my most favorite elements in nature.  With no necessity to make my lines and strokes perfect I felt absolute fun splashing the colors on paper.

When I ended the ‘drawing’ I decided to name it 'Wilderness of Vrindavan'. An hour or so after I had left the paper to dry, I got this idea of adding the serpent and the Dancer to the view. And, here it is. What began as a simple act of fun ended up as an act of producing the image of that one person who epitomized love and bliss, both of which are essential ingredients to any art form!

As I grow further in art, this picture may not even appear in the list of my perfect artworks. But this shabby and ordinary picture will remain my favorite till the end, because it taught me the purpose of art - to love what one does, take pleasure from it, without worrying about perfection and acceptance from others. After all, what else is art, if not the expression of bliss and love that dwells deep inside one's heart?! :-)

Book Review – Shikhandi And Other Tales They Don’t Tell You, Devdutt Pattanaik

I was a kid when I first read about Shikhandi. It was the vernacular edition of the great Indian epic Mahabharata, translated by none other than Chakravarti Rajagopalachari - famously known as Rajaji - himself. Remaining fascinated by the adventures of Arjun and Karna, adoring the all-meaning acts of Krishna and reading through the scenes of the battle-field with the childhood curiosity, I paid little or no attention to the role of Shikhandi in the fall of that invincible patriarch of the Kuru clan, Bhishma.
 

As I grew up, the one character that stood alone in my mind was Krishna. With all his boyish charms, romantic adventures, mysterious mysticism, he remained rooted in my mind, along with his one true love, Radha. Yudhishtra, Arjun, Bhishma, Karna and Panchali, they all fell by the wayside. But recently I started coming across books that took to viewing the Mahabharata through the eyes of some of the lead protagonists and, at times, the antagonists. Having read a book that depicted the epic through the eyes of the pivotal Panchali and also having gone through a couple of poetry works that focused on her relationship with her various husbands, I felt a fascination to learn more about the individual characters. Shikhandi was the not even in the nooks of my mind.
 

But, the other day I came across this book in the bookshelves of one of the big retail chains in the city. It was love at first sight for me. The design of the cover itself was so intriguing. Here, Krishna stands holding the reins, controlling four powerful stallions that fiercely strain at the leash. Behind him stands that effeminate Shikhandi, wielding a bow shaped by his (or, is it ‘her’?) vengeance, waiting to fulfill his (or, again, is it ‘her’?) destiny by killing Bhishma. And, behind them all stands Arjun, one of the greatest archers that this land is said to have ever produced. Then there is this unmistakable presence of Hanuman, in the banner of the Pandava chariot.
 

Having heard about Devdutt Pattanaik occasionally and having seen many of his books in the store shelves often, I decided to pick up this book and learn more about the author as well as that crucial little cog in Mahabharata, Shikhandi. Well, it is not a disappointing experience.
 

This book, as it says in the title, is not just about Shikhandi. It deals with those characters, which the modern society labels as LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual & Transgender), that have been existing in this world for eons. The author begins by listing down instances of ‘queer’ sexual behavior and attitudes as noticed in various cultures and epics across the world. He moves across the Time and cultures to pick out examples. From the physical consummation between Leda and Zeus who was in the form of a swan, to a mighty Chinese emperor who cut his robe in order to not disturb his sleeping lover (a man), from the ancient Amazonian female warriors who severed one of their breasts to freely wield the bow, to the Egyptian male gods who forcibly raped their fellow junior gods, he plucks out instances from across the firmament of Time. 
 

But the book mainly focuses on the characters from the Hindu mythology and Indian history of yore. Starting with Shikhandi, this book goes on to recount the tales about male gods who took the forms of women to protect or to destroy, the female gods that assumed fierce and masculine roles to destroy evil, male gods who took the form of midwives to attend to their devotees in times of need, and gods who mated with one another after one of them took the form of a female. As closely as our species are concerned, there are instances of female friends who didn’t want to get separated for the sake of marriage and who decided to live together forever, male friends who underwent a curse with one of them turning into a female and how they overcame the same by marrying between themselves, the great hero Arjun who was cursed to face loss of manliness for an year, and even a poet and a king who developed strong friendship and platonic love for one another without even getting to meet ever.
 

The book picks up such ‘queer’ and ‘unconventional’ behavior from across the width and breadth of our country and points them out to us, without taking sides. Yes. One appreciable aspect that I found about the book is that it doesn’t take sides. It neither takes a moral high ground by denouncing LGBT relationships as immoral, nor does it advocate for such relationships, by quoting them as a result of modernism and evolution. If anything, the book merely states the facts, raises a few vicarious questions from the viewpoint of the LGBT community and leaves the rest to us. We get to read about how such queer things have been happening in the past and how they are repeated now, but nowhere does the book pass any judgment whatsoever. That, I would say, is one of the strong points of this book.
 

Being a person who always felt squeamish to feel or talk about the LGBT trend, I opened this book with a bit of awkwardness clouding my mind, but when I closed it, I learnt that it is possible for anything and everything to exist in this vast Universe of ours. To quote, paraphrased, some sage whose words I came across a long time back, ‘Life is big. It is indeed very big. It is us humans that compartmentalize it and define as to what should be and should not be in it. But life is too big to be captured within definitions and to be found within bounds’.
 

Pick up the book. Worth reading once.

Ashok Krishna

Humanity Needs No Religion

The day had been a tough one. Officially I was burdened with travel, reports and the never ending stream of mails. Personally I was tired of having travelled half a thousand kilometers the previous night, and having to travel back the same distance in another hour’s time. Tired and drained, I entered the restaurant in front of the railway station, for a little bite before boarding the train.
 

As my food arrived and I started munching it with no interest whatsoever, a voice caught my attention. The voice came from behind, the voice of an old man enquiring the price of two idlis (rice cakes of South India) with the server. The server told him that they cost Rs.25. The old man came in front of me and sat at the vacant chair in my table. He pointed to my plate and asked me something. I could only make out the word ‘idlis’ from his question whereas the rest of it was drowned due to my not comprehending his language. I couldn’t place his question, partly because I couldn’t understand his language and partly because I was still ruminating through the day’s events.
 

As I was unable to make sense of his question, I signaled to the server and asked him to help me out with the old man’s question. The server came and spoke to the old man. It seemed that the old man wanted to have two idlis but had no money. Hence he was pointing to my plate and was asking me as to whether I could get two idlis for him. Before I could decide and respond to the server, the server asked me to wait and went to the manager at the cash counter. He pointed to our table and conveyed the old man’s request to the manager.
 

The manager gave a nod and the server brought two idlis in a moment. As the old man started emptying the contents of his plate, without leaving even a little sign of food in the plate, I sat there, watching him eat and thinking. What makes a man forego his dignity and raise his hands for alms in front of another? Think of it, it was no roadside eatery where anybody can straightaway walk in. And, our old gentleman was not looking any bit shabby either. Clad in a neatly washed dhoti, tied up as a ‘panchakascham’ and a white kurtha, with a towel to go by, you wouldn’t think of him as someone who would beg another person for food. I sat there contemplating the thin line that a person has to cross, before losing one’s personal dignity and deciding to beg another person for alms.
 

I decided to pay for the old man’s food nevertheless. Morally, I felt it to be my duty to pay for his food, since it was me that he approached for food. I told the server to bring my bill and add the old gentleman’s food bill on mine. But it seemed the manager had declined to do so. I paid for my food alone and went to the cash counter. I told the manager that I would pay for the other person’s food as well. But he politely declined my request and said that he gets to see so many people like that every day and they don’t have any qualms in offering food to such people. With my conscience pricking, I thanked him for that nice gesture of offering food to an unknown hungry human being, and put a twenty-rupee note in the charity box at the cash counter to appease my nibbling conscience.
 

And, as I entered the station and moved towards my platform to board the train, I happened to see another nice little gesture of humanity. It was a subway through which the people need to move and climb some steep stairs to reach their platforms. Climbing the stairway, some twenty steps ahead of me, I noticed a burly old woman, clad in a dark burkha, slowly moving up the stairs with a big bag in her hand. The bag must have been really heavy, since she kept placing the bag on the step above, stood for a brief while before climbing each step. Just as I wanted to move up quick and help her, I noticed another lady close to her grab that heavy bag, climb the remaining flight of stairs quickly, place the heavy baggage in the landing and wait for that woman to climb. The woman in burkha didn’t even realize what was happening, but she was assured to see the other woman leave the bag in the landing and stand there waiting for her to complete climbing the stairs. By now, I had also climbed the stairs and was able to see them both face to face.
 

The expression and the gentle smile on the face of that woman in burkha conveyed her sincere and genuine gratitude. And, the happy smile in the face of the other woman who helped the lady thus, did convey a genuine sense of acceptance and amiability.
 

Just as my train chugged in at the platform, I felt a sense of gratitude for having been a witness to these two gentle acts of humanity and philanthropy, no matter how small or big you, the reader, may perceive them to be. On one side, there was this person, who willingly fed a stranger, without looking into the caste, clan and religion the hungry soul belonged to. And, on the other, there was this woman, a Hindu if it would please you to know, showing an act of care towards another woman, a Muslim as it happened to be, and both of them going apart with a sense of genuine affection and gratitude for one another.
 

Where exactly do we humans need senseless classifications like caste and religion?! Did the hotel manager confirm the person’s ethnicity before feeding him? Or, did the ‘Hindu’ woman feel any sense of superiority to not touch the ‘Muslim’ woman’s luggage? Or did the ‘Muslim’ woman feel offended to have her bags touched by a ‘kafir’?! No, sire.
 

When a child riding a bicycle falls down on a busy road, everyone rushes to lift up the little kid and check whether s/he was hurt anywhere, without pausing to confirm the religion of the kid. When someone suffering from hunger raises his hands and asks for alms, any human with a sense of conscience will share whatever little morsel is left with him/her without worrying about the religion. 

And, no doctor ever treats his patients after confirming their religion/caste. You can identify many such instances in life where caste and religion play no role at all. If we observe with a keen sense of wisdom, we will realize that religion and caste play little or no role in our interactions with our fellow human beings on a day-to-day basis.
 

Classifications like religion and caste are said to have been founded for the purpose of controlling people’s lives and making them live ethically and morally. If the same religions and castes suck away the love, joy and peace from the lives of humans, if the same religions and castes don’t help us see our fellow human beings with the sense of amiability, if the same religions and castes are being manipulated by political persons and priests to sow dissension amongst us and be reaped as personal benefits in the form of power and money, then, do we humans need such religions and caste classifications?!
 

Does humanity really need religions and caste classifications?