Two Jewels of books and others

Om Gam Ganapathaye Namah!: (from Ganapathi Atharva Sirsha Upanishad.)

Two Jewels: (1) Translation of Shankara's Self-Knowledge (Atmabodha) by Swami Nikhilananda. It also has a beautiful introduction to Vedanta philosophy with an appendix that includes English translations of many of Shankara's works. (2) Ramakrishna and His Disciples by Christopher Isherwood about Shri. Ramakrishna, the phenomenon.

==

Some belated obituaries: The great indian novelist Raja Rao, the great musician Bismillah Khan (interview and anecdotes [Hat tip: Uma]) and a great entertainer Steve Irwing.

Other books: Zen mind, Beginners mind, Our Kind by Marvin Harris, [Hat tip: Atanu] and Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins [Hat tip: SMS].

Other stuff: In his introduction to Bhagavad-Gita, Prof. Deutsch considers Chapters 12 and 13 to be the pinnacle of Bhagavad-Gita.

Hope everyone is doing fine. More later.

--
Amar Read the rest of this entry >>

googling for Raja rao

I thought that that there may have been some interesting posts on Raja Rao in the newsgroups (or I was just trying to pass time). Either way, I searched in groups.google.com and found that there indeed were some interesting links.



Searching for "Raja Rao Serpent Rope" lead to many links. One link mentions the encounter of a person with Raja Rao in UT-Austin.

>Sanjiva Prasad wrote:
>This old master, based at UT Austin, is definitely older than 56!
>Probably a good 20-30 years older than that.

The old master was born in 1907, I think. He is about 85 now and quite cogent, though frail. His first novel, 'Kanthapura', was published in 1929, inspired by Gandhism. His latest novel is titled 'The Chessmaster and His Moves'.

He lives in a red sandstone house close by the campus. The lawn is unkempt and the street very quiet and narrow. On the door a yellow note was stuck. It simply said: "Raja Rao". He was expecting us. He answered the door himself, stooped and wrapped up in a dressing gown. He waved us into some chairs and apologized for making us sit in almost total darkness. "The light hurts my eyes", he said smiling. Upstairs, I heard someone walking about, the wooden floor amplifying the sound. "My wife Susan", he explained, "she is not feeling too well".

We didnt talk much about books. In fact, he did most of the talking, and he talked clearly and passionately, late into the evening. About Gandhi, Nehru, De Gaulle, Churchill, Malraux, Diego Rivera, and a whole galaxy of others. People whom he had met and known; legendary figures like Subhash Bose, whom he had shown around Paris while at the Sorbonne. He argued with feeling about the relevance of Gandhism, and with more than a hint of seriousness, about why monarchy was necessary in India; about how the Brahmins had betrayed the soul of India, and about how he had disavowed his own Brahminical heritage: casting the sacred thread of the twice-born into the Ganges at Benares.

Later, as we sat in the darkness of his living room, the shelves and the chairs overflowing with books, he talked about his spiritual quest: about the Buddha, Ramana Maharishi, Krishnamurti, and about his guru: Atmananda, a policeman turned Vedantin, in Travancore. His last novel had borne a quote from Atmananda: "I am the light in the perception of the world".

We accepted his invitation to visit again, as he showed us to the door. Next time, we will talk about Mathematics, we said, and the Novel, and Nagarjuna, and the decline of the erotic in Indian culture.

Nice encounter indeed!
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Happy Birthday, Raja Rao!

Raja Rao (08-November-1908 to ?) would be 98 years today. Arguably, he is one of the greatest Indian English authors. He ranks along with Mulk Raj Anand and R.K.Narayan and the three are aptly called the original trinity. The next generation of Indian English writing had to wait for around 20-30 years till Salman Rushdie appeared. The comparision between Raja Rao with Salman Rushdie is reasonable. A better comparision of Raja Rao could be with James Joyce, as both of them created a new way of writing and then expressed themselves excellently in the new way.



His way of writing is unique. The punctuation itself is so close to the the way Indians talk and think. The following, from the preface of his first novel Kanthapura, explains about his way of writing.

...
The telling has not been easy. One has to convey in a language that is not one's own the spirit that is one's own.
...
After the language the next problem is that of style. The tempo of Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs. We, in India, think quickly, we talk quickly, and when we move, we move quickly. There must be something in the sun of India that makes us rush and tumble and run on. And our paths are interminable. The Mahabharatha has 214,778 verses and the Ramayana 48,000. The Puranas are endless and innumerable. We have neither punctutation nor the treacherous "ats" and "ons" to bother us -- we tell one interminable tale. Episode follows episode, and when our thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move on to another thought. This was and still is the ordinary style of our storytelling....
...

Beyond the use of language in style and punctuation, his scholarly way of writing can put people in his awe. I would like to think that if Sri. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan would be a novelist, he would write the way Raja Rao. Raja Rao's careful use of Advaitic concepts in The Serpent and the Rope makes it, what Arvind Sharma calls, India's most famous Advaitic novel.

Some biography snippets from the preface of Makarand Paranjape's book.

Raja Rao was born in an ancient and respected Brahmin family in Hassan, Karnataka, on 8th November, 1908. The eldest son in a family of two brothers and seven sisters, he was the centre of the family.
...

The Introduction chapter in the book by Shyamala Narayan gives another date of birth (the text also implies that there has been a confusion regarding the year of birth too). The following is the relevant excerpt from the book.

Raja Rao was born in Hassan, a small town in the state of Mysore (now called Karnataka). There is some confusion about Raja Rao's date of birth: his books mention it as 1909, but he was actually born on November 5, 1908, as M.K.Naik clarifies. There is an interesting story about his birth. He was born at the precise moment when his father was receiving the Maharaja, Krishna Raja Wodeyar of Mysore, at their house, So the child was called Raja and not Ramakrishna, after his grandfather. Raja Rao comes from a family of Brahmins who had been Vedantins and advisors to kings for generations. He was greatly influenced by his grandfather at Hassan, who taught him to love Sanskrit and kindled his interest in Indian Philosophy.
...

The date of birth given in the following link link also agrees with the one given by Makarand Paranjape.

Raja Rao was born on November 8, 1908 in Hassan, in the state of Mysore in south India, into a well-known Brahman family. ...
...

Autobiographical rant:

He has been of huge influence on me. My first memories of any of his works was looking at his classic book The Serpent and the Rope in my home. The cover had a picture of a beautiful European lady. Behind her was a dark man from India with a cigaratte in his hand. The background to this picture was the waters of Benares. It was one of the books that my mother used in her M.A (literature) and had since become part of the family library.

In one of the first classes of first year of engineering, one of our professors, Prof. P.V.Ratnam, who I admire a lot, had suggested us to read this book. I came home and started it right away "I was born a Brahmin. Brahmin is one who knows Brahman and all that..." The magic in the words, however, could not force me to read beyond a couple of pages and so I kept it aside. However, the book was never far away from me or my personal cupboard. I did not keep the the book away probably because I thought this was just a book like M.G.Say or Clayton-Hancock or Van Valkenburg (the classic books of EE) which needed a couple of careful readings to understand it. Alas, it did not occur to me that to understand the book, all that was needed was a mature reader. Also, that the book was recommended by Ratnam-garu made it a top of the list book.

I intuitively understood that, being unable to understand beyond a couple of pages of a novel which presupposes a good understanding of my beliefs is a serious deficiency on my part.

In the summer vacation between first and second years, I had read a couple of novels mostly R.K.Narayan (quite a few of them) and Serpent and the Rope.

When I went for higher studies to Bangalore, this was one of the books that I took with me -- inspite of the fact that I knew I may not have much time for novels -- mainly because I felt that this book had some magic in it. I was enchanted by the first lines.

Later in Bangalore, when I was in a book reading spree, I began Raja Rao with earnst. This time, I did some research and began with Kanthapura. Next I read The Serpent and the Rope. This time, the words in the book started to make sense. I continued and completed the novel. I also read another novel, The Cat and the Shakespeare. When I left to US, I still had my mother's copy with me. I read the book in the summer of 2003. I donot think I read it again in the next two years.

I began with a earnst study of Advaita as such and had read Deutsch, Arvind Sharma and some books on Ramana Maharishi.

In the Sep, OCT-2005, when I had a fracture of the hand and my movement was restricted, I read the book again, and the book made lot of sense and I could understand many of the quotations and monologues.
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Story of Sudhama as narrated by Raja Rao

The princes of Kathiawar, like the Rajputs everywhere, claimed their descent from the sun and the moon, and belonged to the clan of Sri Rama (the Ikshavakus) or of Sri Krishna (the Yadavs). For, after all, Dwaraka was just around the corner of the peninsula, and that was where Sri Krishna ruled, so that most of the princes of course belonged to the Yadavas, or so they believed. Remember, Sri Krishna married his wife Rukmini at Madhavpur, and that is just down the curve of the bay, and the Yadavs once (and remember too) on that fateful day when they went gambolling to the sacred city of Prabhas Patan and got into a fist-fight, and then to a brawl and then to a real battle, they sent for Sri Krishna.


But he was not to be found -- he'd so planned as to go and lie under a tree (and had not Gandhari cursed that the race of Sri Krishna come to an end) -- and a hunter took Sri Krishna's heel for the head of a deer, and the greatest of Indians thus played the game of even death. He had planned it all, so everything happened according to his intent -- for, for him intent and action were just experience, there was none to act, as it were for he was in action as inaction and in inaction as action.

And so too was that other game of Sri Krishna. He had, while at school, a poor Brahmin companion, Sudhama was his name and he was raggedly miserable. Life had been most ungenerous to him (again it was Sri Krishna's game) -- Sudhama had a wife with a tongue of charcoal cinders and hair made as of rough hemp. When she called, even the street dogs would thgink it was one if their kind talking, and they started answering back. But Sudhama was so patient; he would always speak, when humiliated by his wife, of his friend Sri Krishna who ruled in Dwaraka. "Fine thing to have such a friend. But what does he do for you, you son of tamarind tree hag."

Hearing this morning after morning, Sudhama said one day to his wife: "I go and see Sri Krishna today, this very day."

"Oh yes you will go, you and your cononut-head and bursted-bleak belly, and seeing your tousled hair and bent back and bamboo limbs, even the guards will laugh at you."

"Perhaps you're right," said Sudhama, "but give me please a handful of puffed rice and a piece of molass."

"What for?" She asked.

"Well, when ones goes to see someone, you don't ever go empty handed, do you?"

"A beggar," declared Sudhama's wife, "has no manners," as the buffalo have no courtesies."

"Well, so be it. Give what puffed rice and molass you have to me."

Cursing her stars for such a rice miserable destiny -- that even the little puffed rice she had, she had perforce to give part of it away -- she threw a handful of it to Sudhama's dhoti-edge, broke a piece of molass from the pot, and said with wide-fingered threatening hands: "And don't you come back plain-handed, you cononut-head, after all this. I'll howl till the very spirits in the crematoriums will be frightened. Let's see what your great friend Sri Krishna is going to proclaim and perform for you. I take the name of God and tell you he will have chased out of city."

Sudhama was so accustomed to his wife's tongue and breath, it was as if he heard sound but not meaningful speech. He picked his stick from the corner, and taking the thought of Sri Krishna, he started towards holy Dwaraka. Long was the road to Dwaraka, but such sweetness of love, the trees seemed to open up and spread wide-limbed shade, and cool breezes blew from the northern mountains, and the sea seemed to churn in fervered joy. For when you take the thought of Lord true, all things that seek him rejoice in your rejoicement -- they also wave up and swell with your joy. Sudhama arrived at the city gates and these opened themeselves as if by vestal deities, and even the palace guards did not seem to mind his looks.

"Could you tell His Highness," he begged, "the Lord of Lords, his poor school fellow, the Brahmin Sudhama is at the door?"

"Be so kind as to wait here, Pundit Sir," said the guard politely, and "I'll go tell the Chamberlain."

It was all as if the gods were playing a trick, the Chamberlain seemed just waiting for this event at the door, and Sri Krishna himself, when he heard the news, he had such joy, people could see tears run down his lotus eyes. "Prepare," he commanded, "water to wash my guest's feet." And as Sri Krishna clad in silken blue, his eyes clear as sleep, his gait as if made by the curvature of form when he stood, the washing-stool before him, there he appeared across the courtyard, Sudhama, his boyhood friend. In their high niches the pigeons and parrots began to coo, and the ladies peered from the top apartments at this wondrous happening [You can see this in many a Rajput miniature today.]. Krishna bade Sudhama stand on the ivory stool, and rich with jugs of silver swan-shapen and filled with water, first warm and then cold, and when these were thrown on the Brahmin's withered and dusty feet -- then did Krishna taking the silken hand-cloth from Chamberlain's arm, wipe the friends feet himself. Now Sri Krishna took his friend to the marbled court and before all his noblemen, he said, "Friend, be seated," and showed Sudhama the throne. Could a poor Brahmin occupy such an august seat? No. He would not. Krishna himself sat on a couch beside his friend. They now spoke to each other of all that happened and passed by since their boyhood. They wept and laughed but all around there was as if a wall of luminescent silence. Everything moved in the palace as usual, the noblemen retired to their afternoon siesta, the servants moved with agility and calm, from corner to corner of the palace, the nine diurnal musics sounded, the elephants trumpeted after a good feed, the cows lowed for their returning calves, and when the evening fell a great banquet was laid for the poor Brahmin, Sudhama and he ate as if he was eating his own food, at his home. For, for the first time he was at home himself. Krishna enjoyed munching the puffed rice his friend had brought, and some of it was sent upstairs to Rukmini, and all the palace was given bits of it. It tasted, did this puffed rice, as nothing one has tasted before. It had the delicate saffron smell of Sri Krishna himself. And when the night drums sounded and the meal was over, the hands were washed, the betel leaves served, a carriage was made ready, and beneath the high chandeliers, flower and fruit hangings, as Sri Krishna said farewell to his friend, he embraced him again and again, and they wept. Yes, Sudhama had to go. He had now to go back home. But he'd forgot his promise to his wife. He had asked nothing of Sri Krishna., Pray what can you ask of a friend who is King?

Yet Sudhama was so happy the very mind-picture of Sri Krishna brought him to tears. And when he came nearer and nearer his home, he began however to have fits of fearfulness. What would it be like coming back plain handed? But when the town came it was all a different -- the very walls were shining as if white-washed and much repaired, and when his carriage stopped, his wife stood, a gold plate in her hands, flowers and Kumkum water floating in it, and lighting the lamp of auspiciousness, she welcomed her lord befittingly, and fell at his withered feet. And from that day onwards the city came to be called Sudhamaputi, or the city of Sudhama, but due to the crookedness of people's speech, it became Puri, and later someone added bunder[Bunder means harbour, haven] to it so that today it's called Porbandar, Haven-city.
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Story of Radha, Brahmachari-Krishna and Upavasi-Durvasa: Raja Rao

One day Radha had a very possessive thought of Krishna. "My Krishna", she said to herself, as though one could possess Krishna as one could possess a calf, a jewel. Krishna, the Absolute Itself, immediately knew her thought. And when the absolute knows, the knowing itself, as it were, is the action of the act; things do not happen according to his wish, but his wish itself is his own creation of his wish, as the action is the creation of his own action.



So, Durvasa the great Sage was announced.

"He is on the other side of the river, Lord", spake the messengers, and "and he sends his deep respects".

Then Krishna went into the deep chambers and said to Radha, "Radha, Durvasa the great Sage is come, my dear. We must feed him".

"Oh, then I will cook the food myself" said Radha, and Krishna was very happy at this thought. So he went back to the Hall of Audience, and not long after, Radha came in with all the cooked food. "Yes, the meal is ready my Lord. And I will take it myself to Sage Durvasa".

"Wonderful, wonderful!" exclaimed Sri Krishna, pleased with the devotion of his wife to the Sages.

"I'll go and come," said Radha, and hardly had she gone to the palace door when she remembered the Jumna was in flood. No ferryman would go across. She came back to Krishna and begged, "My Lord, how can I take the food? the river is in flood".

"Tell the river," answered Krishna, "Krishna the brahmachari [The celibate, or who has taken the vow of celibacy] wishes that the way be made for you to pass through."

And Radha went light of heart, but suddenly bethought herself it was a lie. Who better than she to know whether Krishna be brahmachari or not? "Ah the noble lie, the noble lie," she said to herself, and when she came to the river, she said, "Krishna, the Lord, the brahmachari, wishes that way be made for me to pass through".

And of course the river rose high and stood still, but suddenly opened out a blue lane, small as a village footpath, through which Radha walked to the other side. And coming to the opposite shore, she thanked the river, and saluting the great Sage Durvasa, in many a manner of courtesies and words of welcome, spread the leaf and laid him the food.

Durvasa was mighty hungry and he ate the food as though the palm of his hand went down his gullet. "Ah, ah," he said and belched and made himself happy, with curds and rice and many meats, perfumed and spiced with saffron, and when there was nothing left in leaf or vessel, he rose, went to the river and washed his hands. Radha took the vessels to the waters, too to wash, threw the leaf into the Jumna and stood there to leave. Then it was she who remembered, the river was in flood. Sri Krishna had told her what to say while going and not what to utter while coming back.

Durvasa understood her question before she asked - for the sages have this power too -- and he said, "Tell the river, Durvasa the eternal upavasi [He who fasts] says to the river, 'Open and let Radha pass through to the other shore.'"

Radha obeyed but she was more sorrowful. "I have seen him eat till his palm enter his gullet, and he has belched and passed his hand over his belly with satisfaction. It is a lie, a big lie," she said, but she went to the river thoughtful, very thoughtful. "River," she said, "Durvasa who is ever in upavasa says open and let me pass."

And the river opened a lane just as wide as a village pathway, and the waves held themselves over the head, and would not move. She came to the other shore and returned to the palace in heavy distress. "Yes, nature is a lie, nature believes and obeys lies. Lord, what a world," She said to herself and going into the Hall of Sorrowing, shut herself and began to sob. "Lord, what a lie the world is, what a lie."

Sri Krishna knew the cause and cadence of this all, and gently entered the Hall of Sorrowing. "Beloved, why might you be in sorrow?" he said.

"My Lord," she answered, "the river believes you are a brahmachari, and after all who should deny it better than me, your wife? and then I go to Durvasa and he eats with his palm going down his gullet, and he says, "Tell the river, Durvasa who is ever in upavasa asks you to open and let Radha pass." And the river opens herself, makes a way large as a village pathway, and I pass over to this side. The world is a fib, a misnomer, a lie."

"The world, my dear, is not a lie, it is an illusion. Besides, tell me, is my body your husband, Radha?"

"No, my Lord."

"Is my mind your husband, Radha?"

"No, my Lord."

"Then what is it when you say to yourself, 'Krishna, my husband?'"

"Assuredly something beyond the body and beyond the mind -- the Principle."

"And tell me, my love, can you possess that, can you possess it?"

"No, my lord, how can I possess the Absolute? The I is the Absolute." And she fell at the feet and understood, and lived ever after in the light of the Truth.
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The Serpent and the Rope

Last updated: 11/05
=============
Due to running into rough weather (laptop disk crash and hand fracture), I was reasonably offline for most of the time. The nice part of that being that I had a chance to read the wonderful book The Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao a second time. Also, I had a chance to read two comparative studies of works by Raja Rao. The one Shyamala Narayan titled Raja Rao: Man and his works and the one by Makarand Paranjape titled Best of Raja Rao.


begin side note


I have added an excellent biography of Shankara in the sidebar. It is this. It contains one sloka describing the success and glory of life of Adi Sankara:

“Ashta varshe chaturveedi
Dvaadasae sarva saastravit,
Shodasee kritavaan bhaashyam
Dvaatrimsee munirabhyagaat.”

meaning,

“At eight, a master of four Vedas
At twelve, a professor of all sastras,
At sixteen, an interpreter and commentator
At thirty two, a great sage.”

Also, the following biography by kamakoti peetham is good.


end side note.

Though the title and the beginning of the novel give hints that the plot may be Advaitic, no such hints would help the reader through the philosophical musings and metaphysical dilogues in which come as part of the plot. I myself was put off in the previous reading (in Bangalore?) by his sudden change of context, very slow movement of story and other things. Perhaps I was not slow enough then to appreciate such a great book!

The epigraph of the book is the deep Advaitic saying (from Astavakra Gita?):

Waves are nothing but water.
So is the sea
-- Sri Atmananda Guru

Sri Atmananda guru [Sri Krishna Menon] is the Guru of Sri Raja Rao.

Use of other languages in the book

The Serpent and the Rope is an amazing book and Raja Rao's scholarly writing puts me in his awe. He quotes from Sankara (Dakshninamurthy astakam, Kashi Panchakam, Kalabhairava astakam, Annapurna astakam, Manisha panchakam, Nirvana satakam) Bhavabhuthi's Uttararama Charita, Kalidasa's Raghuvamsam, French sources and others.

Purusha Suktam on page 272

In particular, this great (greatest?) author from India seems to have problems in expressing some feelings in English. At the places when words fail the author in English, he uses -- more often than not -- Sanskrit to express the emotion.

Beginning of the book

This is the often quoted beginning of the book:

I was born a Brahmin - that is devoted to Truth and all that. "Brahmin is he who knows Brahman," etc., etc., ... but how many of my ancestors since the excellent Yagnyavalkya, my legendary and Upanishadic ancestor, have really known the Truth excepting the sage Madhava, who founded an empire or, rather helped to build an empire, and wrote some of the most profound of Vedantic texts since Sri Sankara? There were otheres, so I'm told, who left hearth and riverside fields, and wandered to mountains distant and hermitages "to see god face to face." And some of them did see God face to face and built temples. But when they died -- for indeed did they "die" -- they too must have been burnt by tank or grove or meeting of two rivers, and they too must have known they did not die. I can feel them in me, and know they knew they did not die. Who is it that tells me they did not die? Who but me.

So, my ancestors went one by one and were burnt, and their ashes have gone down the rives.

When ever I stand in a river I remember how when young, on the day the monster ate the moon and the day fell into an eclipse, I used til and kusha grass to offer the manes my filial devotion. For withal I was a good Brahmin. I even knew grammar and the Brahma Sutras, read the Upanishads at the age of four, was given the holy thread at seven ...
...

Rama and the place his Advaitic thinking gives to Women in general and Man-Woman relationships in particular

There are a reasonable number of pointers in the book as to where the Advaitic thinking of Rama places Women in general. Also, where do the Man-Woman relationships figure in his thinking.

Some forward pointers of where his marriage is headed to given in one of the first pages (page 26?):

And Yagnavalkya had said to Maitreyi. "For whose sake, verily does a husband love his wife? Not for the sake of his wife, but verily for the sake of Self in her." Did little mother love the Self in my father? Did I love the Self in Madeline? I knew I did not ...

Also, Rama's description of what he feels about Savitri -- when he first meets her -- shows what he expects from a wife:

We had one thing in common: we both knew Sanskrit, and could entertain each other with Uttara Rama Charita or Raghuvamsa.

On pages 57, we get an insight as to what the Advaitic Rama expects from a wife.

It makes all the difference in the world whether the woman of your life is with you or not; she alone enables you to be in a world that is familiar and whole. If it is not his wife, then for an Indian it may be a sister in Mysore, or little Mother in Benares.

Love is a way of way of looking at things. If you love you forget yourself, and percieve the object not as you see it, but rather as seen. The woman therefore is the priestess of God.

The saying by Yagnyavalkya is again used when Rama goes to Cambridge to meet Savitri (page 171)

One cannot possess the world, one can become it: I could not possess Savitri -- I became I. Hence the famous saying of Yagnyavalkya to his wife. "The husband does not love the wife for the wife's sake, the husband loves the wife for the sake of the Self in her."

Second reference to the priestess of God??

(yet to add: stuff about Mother, little-mother, Madeline, Savitri, Lakshmi in Bombay, Lakshmi in Cambridge, Catherine)


Some parts are poetic

Rama and Madeline's pet Bull and the pet Elephant. Also their taking care of them by feeding the "pets". Madeline's saving of the Bull from the old man. Rama thinking that the signs on the Bull make it an auspicious Basavanna.

The symbolic marriage between Rama and Savitri.

Some parts are extremely poignant: The time when Rama takes leave of Madeline:

Devi, Devi ayam paccimas te Ramaciraca padapankajasparchah
Goddess, here for the last time
Does the head of Rama touch the lotus of your feet.

At the end of the novel, there are two upa-kadhas (pitta kadhas in Telugu):

The story of Rama-Deva and the

The story of Radha, Krishna and Durvasa.

Story of Radha, Brahmachari-Krishna, Upavasi-Durvasa

The story involving Radha, Krishna and Durvasa is a very interesting one, explaining a fundamental concept of Advaita: namely illusiory nature of the world. Here is the story:

"One day Radha had a very possessive thought of Krishna. 'My Krishna,' She said to herself, as though one could possess Krishna as one could possess a calf, a jewel. Krishna, the Absolute Itself, immediately knew her thought. And when the absolute knows, the knowing itself, as it were, is the action of the act; things do not happen according to his wish, but his wish itself is his own creation of his wish, as the action is the creation of his own action.

"So, Durvasa the great Sage was announced.
...

The full story is here.

The original story is also excerpted here.

The women of Vraja once asked Lord Krishna to name some Brahmin to whom they could offer food. Lord Krishna named “Durvasa”. The Gopis asked: “How can we approach him? There is the Yamuna which is in floods. How are we to cross it? Name some other Mahatma, please”. The Lord said “Request Yamuna in the name of Nitya Brahmachari Krishna to give way and it will instantly do so. The Gopis were amused, and though sceptic, did as requested and lo! the river at once gave way for the perplexed Gopis to cross it; Yamuna indeed knew the real Svarupa of Krishna, the spotless divine purity that He was! He was a Nitya Brahmacharin.

What amazes me -- besides the story itself -- is the story telling power of Raja Rao. Raja Rao added spice (and other ingredients) and explained the story so beautifully that the vivid images of the story and the moral stick permanently in the mind!

To continue the thoughts of Rama after the story:

To be free is to know one is free, beyond the body and beyond the mind; to love is to know one is love, to be pure is to know one is purity. Impurity is in action and reaction: what is born must die, what has form must vanish and stink. ....
....

Benares is everywhere where you are, says an old Vedantic text, and all waters are the Ganges. ...
...

Other than that, the concept of illusory nature of the world is experienced by Rama in the whole book. In fact, in pages 340?? Rama says to Madeline

"The world is either unreal or real -- the serpent or the rope. There is no in-between-the-two -- and all that's in between is poetry, is sainthood ... "

As Shyamala Narayan pointed out aptly in her book, The Serpent and the Rope begins and ends with the definition of a Brahmin. In the latter, some humor is added by giving another definition.

...
"Do you know what a Brahmin is, Catherine?"

"No, what is it?" She came back, having gone halfway to the kitchen.

"A Brahmin is he who knows Brahman. That is one definition," I said. "There is another rouguish definition. A Brahmin is he who loves a good banquet."

"You certainly do not belong to the second category, poor dear. Rama, what shall we do when you are gone? You have become so like one of us. We will be lost."

Georges looked at me. He looked so sad.

"We must have been brothers in a past life."
...

The roughish definition Raja Rao is hinting at is Brahmanah bhojana priyah. Rama can now afford to laugh at the two definitions as he has found a Guru and is on the path to realization.



Makarand Paranjape says the following about the book:

Published twenty two after Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope is the Rao's most appreciated work. If the former is modelled on a Upapurana, the latter is a kind of Mahapurana or epic: geographically, historically, philosophically and formally, its sweep is truly epical.

Raja Rao as a part of the Original Trinity of Indian English Authors

It is well known that the trinity of Raja Rao, R.K.Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand are the pioneers of Indian english writing in the form of novels.

Later, Makarand Paranjape goes into controversial area by comparing Raja Rao with R.K.Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand and (nearly) calling them trite. I agree however with his observation that Raja Rao is more scholarly when compared to others. I used to once agree with him on the former point. What happened was that, in the midst of a heated conversation I too called R.K Narayan names. This is surprising considering that I had read almost all his major works. After reading Raja Rao, I prefer Raja Rao to R.K.Narayan. I would not mind R.K.Narayan when asked to make a choice between him and other Indian authors. He is good. He is simple. He may be too simple.

The Cat and the Shakespeare is said to be the book where Raja Rao shows that the Absolute can be approached through play (as in The Cat and the Shakespeare) as effectively as through ascetic meditation (as in The Serpent and the Rope).

yet to add:

Rama and fear?

second place of reference woman priestess of the God???

Argument between Rama and Georges pages 108-112 about truth.

The two times when Rama feels he took a bath in Ganges: when he wins an argument with Georges and when Catherine tells him that she and Georges are going to have a baby(340-341?).

...
"I have news to give you," said Georges, pursuing his own thoughts, and playing with a knife on the table. He w as silent for a brief moment, looked at Catherine with adoration and announced: "Catherine will have a baby in five or six months. You are first person to know it, Rama."

To this day I cannot tell you why, but I felt somewhere I had been washed clean and whole by the Ganges, dipped again and again and made shining with Shravan Saturday sun. I must have looked very moved, for Catherine put the soup in front of me, touched my head as Saroja might have and said:
"You will look after him, when he grows up, and give him all your wisdom, won't you?"
...

I am reading The Great Indian Way, a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Raja Rao. The beginning is very good and exceeds expectations.
Read the rest of this entry >>

interests, favorite movies, favorite books

I removed the following section from the links.
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My interests:
Philosophy, Vedanta, Advaita, Theoretical Computer Science, Computational Complexity, Books, Cricket
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favorite movies:
Gandhi, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings
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favorite books:
The Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, The Ramayana, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi the man, The sermon on the mount according to Vedanta, On having no head, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance, Hamlet, Lord of the Rings, The Art of Computer Programming, A History of Indian Philosophy, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction, Sophie's world, Goedel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Advaita Vedanta: An Introduction (Arvind Sharma),
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A bigger listing of the books, or works of authors I have read, understood and would on any day read again, if I have time. I will add my reviews of all of them some day:

G B Shaw: Saint Joan(amazing), The Devil's Disciple (quite good), Pygmalion and My Fair Lady (who doesn't like these?)
Oscar Wilde: The Complete works, in particular: the four main plays and short stories (brilliant)
O Hentry (complete short stories): possibly the best short story writer
Somerset Maugham: short stories (ok, a little sad: O Henry's OTOH come in all tastes and hues)

Kalidasa: The Main Works: In particular, Raghuvamsham and Kumarasambhavam: awesome!
Richard Bach: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions
The Alchemist, The Fifth Mlountain,
Harper Lee: To Kill A Mocking Bird: Oh Atticus as Peck!!
James Allen: As a Man Thinketh
Ayn Rand: The Fountain head, Atlas Shrugged, The Anthem
Daniel Quinn: Ishmael, The Story of B, The Man Who Grew Young
Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet
The Little Prince
Herman Hesse: Siddartha
Huxley: Brave New World
George Orwell: 1984, Animal Farm
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Hosdafter: Goedel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid
G H Hardy: A Mathematician's Apology
Stephen Hawking: Brief History of Time,
Yakov Perelman: Physics for Fun, Mathematics can be Fun
George Gamov: One two Three Infinity
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Poems by Emily Dickinson,
Poems by Robert Frost
100 best loved poems (a wonderful inexpensive book by dover)
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Indian Writers
Raja Rao: The Serpent and the Rope (awesome would be understatement), Kanthapura (nice work, He can write simple stories too!), The Cat and the Shakespeare, Meaning of India (his chapters on Gandhi and Nehru are awesome).
R K Narayanan: A tiger for malgudi, The English teacher (near autobiography, very nicely told: one of my early literary experiences), My Days: The official autobiography, Waiting for the Mahatma(runs in a different way from Rajarao's Kanthapura), A tiger for malgudi, Malgudi days, Ramayan (he should stick to what he does best, writing simple stories. BTW, Narayan retells the story of kamba-Ramayana, not valmiki-Ramayana, )
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Fantasy and adventure
Tolkien: There and Back Again (The Hobbit), LOTR, Silmarillion, The Atlas
J K Rowling, Harry Potter 1,2,3,4,5
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General
Douglas Adams: H2G2: Trilogy in four parts (the last one was not that great)
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Simple, no category
The Great Gatsby (ok, ok)
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Easwaran: Meditation, Gandhi The Man, Mantram Handbook, Dhammapada (one of his best translations) over his Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita
Selections from the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
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Audio Books I liked a lot: The rendering of The Alchemist by Jeremy Irons (nice rendering) and Sophie's world
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In Bangalore, when I was bored and wanted to know what to reead, I used to refer to this list compiled by Best Web Buys on the best sellers and similar "hot" lists. This is inspite of the fact that I donot like "hot" lists a lot. In Bangalore, I was subscriber of a very good library (One on infantry road: name blue mountain?) and used to buy books from the shop next to Kadambam restaurant(). Why is it that I remember only the landmarks? and why do I remember the restaurant so much:-)? Read the rest of this entry >>