Hell or Heaven - Imaginary Idiocy?

Have you ever noticed how every religion ends up defining rights and wrongs as a list of To-Do's, to be rewarded by a place in the heaven or hell respectively?

Have you ever noticed how every religion defines heaven as a place filled with bodily pleasures of food, drink, physical company, and hell as a place where immense physical torment will be inflicted upon the erring humans?

Moreover, all these religions talk about pleasures only in terms of the masculine: booze, food and celestial maidens. Isn't that evidence enough that all these religions were perceived by sophisticated male-chauvinistic shamans to exploit their gullible 'followers'?

And, just in case, today I am to form an 'organized religion', what sort of a hell and heaven should I define - (hell) as a place where your body loses all charm, virility and vigor (facial fairness, in case of women) or (heaven) as a place with all the snazzy gadgets, abundance of booze, hashish and barely dressed svelte seductresses?!

Ashok Krishna

Do Women Expect To Be ‘Empowered’?

During the wee hours of this day, as I was tossing and turning in my bed, moving in and out of sleep, my mobile emitted a buzz notifying a message. Wondering who could be sending me a message at this odd hour, I picked up my phone and peered into it half asleep. It was from a friend of mine from across the globe, from across a different time zone.

She had sent a couple of lengthy messages admonishing one of my Facebook posts, where I had mocked an actress proclaiming 'her choices', in what I considered to be ‘a stupid and senseless manner’. My friend was of the opinion that the Indian women are only now coming of age – my friend herself is an NRI, having shunned this ‘Third World country’ for the comforts of modern skyscrapers of dreamland America – and are starting to come out of their cages(!). She said that men like me (I don’t know whatever the hell she meant by that) should stop questioning the choices of women and start being more generous by accepting and supporting her choices. It went on like this for a few lines.

Drowsy till then, my mind started playing faces like movie-reels, faces of all those women who had entered my life and made their presence felt in one way or the other, women that had either graced or grated my life. It is one long list, but I was able to think of many women whose mention is relevant to the context of this video of my choice.
 

There have been plenty of women in my life - woman who loved one person and married another, woman who fought to the hilt to marry the only guy she loved, women who opted divorce due the cruelty/infidelity/incompatibility of their husbands, woman who divorced her husband for her own promiscuity, women who booze and party as they wish, women who consider it a taboo to even mention such things, women who brilliantly shone in academics but decided to dwell into family ways, a woman who runs a successful business despite the lack of education, a woman who is a lesbian, a woman who has even shunned the very idea of sex, women who brutally believe in their religions, women who question the very need for religions, widowed women who have gone through their entire lives to bring up their children singly and in the best ways possible, women who fight with their companions tooth and nail over every petty topics of life, women who chose their companions simply on the basis of religious/caste/financial backgrounds, women who chose their men for reasons other than the mundane, women who have had as much physical intimacy as they wanted before marriage, women who avoided even talking to the men before tying the knot, women who behave like jack-in-the-box and lead sprightly lives, women who prefer the solitude and safety of their residential confines, women who address their husbands however they wish, women who won’t even utter the name of their husbands, women who chose wealthy grooms to take them abroad and settle there, woman who withstood physical abuse and rape but went on to make a good family life of her own with a man of her choice, women who chose a life of solitude or simplicity to stay back and work for the society around them, women who started working at very young ages to support their struggling families, women who have not even entered the kitchens of their houses  – the list kept going on and on.
 

As I lay there in the dark, I tried recalling as much as I could about whether any of them ever waited for the approval of their choices from the people around.  To whatever little knowledge I had about their lives, to whatever extent I was allowed a glimpse of their lives, I didn’t remember knowing any of them give up on their choices due to the disapproval from others. They all made their choices, and they all live with the consequences of the same still now and contentedly so. None of them sought the approval for their choices from the world around them, including that of their own family members and none of them had any need to advertise their choices as pertinent to all of womenfolk either.
 

With the recent video of that movie actress making headlines, and the social networking sites abuzz about it, I get see a flurry of messages, jokes, videos that go for and against that video. I am thinking – aren’t we all getting into a stereo-typing show here?
 

On one end, people who crave for age old chivalry, who need to see knights in shining armors arriving in their mighty stallions to protect the damsels in distress – protect women from dowry, protect women from abuse at the household, protect women from rapists, protect women from oppression, protect women from this, protect women from that, protect women from what-not. According to them, a woman is nothing but a dainty creature that needs protection from evil, careful and tender handling – a delicate flower that should not suffer violation at evil hands and wilt away.
 

On the other end, there are people who try to pull down her supremacy, by casting her as a clichéd ‘feminist’, a ‘free’ persona, whose freedom is defined only by her ability to booze, visit pubs, ability to copulate with anyone at will, ability to flaunt her skin and gain applause, everything that will make her physically free but nothing that will approach her as a soul, a bundle of thoughts, ideals, ideas and emotions. These so-called feminists are just the mirror images of those oppressive mules who cannot think about women as anything more than whatever is visible to the eyes.
 

If one lot thought of woman as just a possession that has to be protected with ‘chastity belts’, the other lot feels that a woman’s freedom is all about breaking it away for mere banal carnality.
I felt that both are absolutely irrelevant and ridiculous in the context of the women I have met in my life. None of these women waited for their knights in shining armors. None of them worried much about the size and shapes of their exterior. None of them cried from within the dungeons and castles awaiting a knight to come and save them. None of them took to blatant brazenness as freedom either. They took charge of their lives and live with their own ways, seeking peace and happiness in the process.
 

As I turned to fall asleep for a brief while before the Sun came up, I couldn’t help imagining the following thing – a strong while horse with a flowing mane, astride it a knight in shining armor, with a long, unsheathed sword in one hand. And, as the knight moved the hand up and removed the visor to reveal the face, it turned out that the knight wasn’t a male, but a female with glowing eyes and flowing tresses. Yes, a woman is her own ‘knight in shining armor’ that neither needs you to protect her nor oppose her. She neither needs you to approve her choices, nor cares if you assail them. A woman just expects to be left alone with her choices and her own ways of living, free from both the stereo-typing feminists and slickly shining knights!

Ashok Krishna

Is Cruelty A Part of Parenting?!

A couple of days ago, while at work, happened to notice something cruel. 

 

A father and son duo walked into one of my company outlets to get some clarifications regarding a phone they had bought recently. It seemed the son, a boy of around 10 years, had forgotten to bring one of the components of the phone that was required for the demo. Immediately the father started scolding the kid. The words that he were using against his own son were something that you can hear only in the brawl between hooligans. Such an abuse! 

 

The poor little boy was looking sullen and ashamed in front of us. Finishing his abuse after a whole minute, the father stormed out to fetch the component. The child's face was a picture of shame and gloom. I couldn't even stand the boy's face. 

 

Is this the way to parent a child?! Won't that boy's self-respect and confidence be dented after such a verbal barrage, that too in front of utter strangers like us? Or will such children grow up feeling any semblance of compassion to care for their parents when they grow senile and dependent on them?

Micro-Reviews – A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces (compiled by David Davidar) - Part 1

One of my friends used to proudly tell me that she does not like to read the works of Indian authors and prefers the foreign authors’ writings indeed. After picking up this book, I understood how dumb her arrogance has been and how foolish she has been. The loss definitely is not that of Indian literature but hers. Without going deep into the overall structure of the book, let me just tell you about the tales.

So far from ‘A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces’…

1. The Hunger of Stones, Rabindranath Tagore – Originally written in Bengali, this short story is translated into English by Amitav Ghosh. This story will put the modern day scary movie makers to shame. Without even bringing in any gore or perverse elements onto the scene, Tagore exacts fear and thrill in the minds of the readers and weaves the story with a great element of suspense and mystery. The end will make you feel so restless and you might even end up wanting to recall Tagore from his Final Abode to change the climax.

2. The Shroud, Munshi Premchand – Translated from Hindi by Arshia Sattar, this is a story about two loafers, father and son as they come, who have not even a semblance of responsibility in their being and how they end up denying even the final dignity to the woman of their household. While you will cringe at their behavior and wonder how low the human beings can stoop, you will also realize that this is not a mere work of fiction but the state of many households in these modern times too.

3. A Horse and Two Goats, R.K.Narayan – R.K.Narayan is one of those Indian writers who made fame for themselves by writing in English directly without resorting to the vernacular to vent their ideas. I have somehow always found RKN a tad too slow for my liking. It is like you have to wait forever, going through the mundane details, for that worthy punch-line in the end. This story is no different. It is a funny quirk of fate in the life of an old peasant. You will end up smiling at the deserving fortune of the old wretch.

4. A Life, Buddhadeva Bose – You won’t read anything more intense and emotional than this one – this is what exactly I thought when I first went through the story. People always used to tell me that there is a time for everything. I always respond with cynicism that anything that does not arrive in the time when we need it is of no use and value. This story comes to bolster that view of mine. Set in the pre-independence India and ending at the post-independence period, this story outlines the life of an ordinary school teacher who takes up a big task to add meaning to his life – literally – the compilation of a vernacular dictionary. Arunava Sinha has beautifully translated this Bengali story into English, without making the words lose their life.

5. Toba Tek Singh, Saadat Hasan Manto – Whom do you approach to translate the Urdu story into English, when that story revolves around the partition of India-Pakistan and the story is sort of tragi-comedy? If you said Khushwant Singh, then full marks to you. Khushwant Singh has brought in his unmistakable sense of humour to this story that proves that those whom we call as insane are saner than most of the sane beings.

6. The Flood, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai – TSP has become one of my favorite Indian authors ever since I first read Chemmeen and later a bunch of short stories of his, translated into English. The reality and sharp emotions depicted in his stories are truly remarkable. Dogs are always known to be loyal to men. But would a human being remain loyal to his loyal pet when disaster strikes? I am not sure and neither is Thakazhi. O.V.Usha has translated this Malayalam story into English.

7. The Blue Light, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer – Another Malayalam story in the collection, translated by O.V.Usha., this is also a ghost story which deserves all the appreciation that I had heaped on Tagore’s ghost story in the beginning. Unlike the modern ghost tales and movies where the evil spirits appear only at the most inopportune of moments, like when the female protagonist is ill-clad or bathing, or appear with nauseatingly ugly faces, this is a tender tale. When the story ends, you will even end up falling in love with the ‘ghost’.

8. The Somersault, Gopinath Mohanty – This is another intense tale in the collection, originally written in Oriya and translated into English by Sitakant Mahapatra. An occasional success does nothing much to change the fortunes of a poor labourer, who has been marked out by destiny for a life of oblivion and misery. How many such worthy people languish in darkness, poverty and oblivion for the lack of the right stroke of luck!

9. Portrait of a Lady, Khushwant Singh – I have always been told that Khushwant Singh is a lewd writer who can write about nothing other than women and whiskey. How wrong an opinion have I been fed! Fresh from reading his classic ‘Train To Pakistan’ and having got mesmerized at his ability to weave captivating tales, I found this to be yet another gem. It is not true that we humans speak a different language from other beings on this planet – animals, birds and plants. It is also not true that we are in anyway superior to any of the other creatures that coexist with us. This tale will tell you that.

(to be continued...)

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?