To Daffodils

I had written this some time back for Padyapaana, but did not publish it there because I was too late. It is a translation of the famous poem 'To Daffodils' by Robert Herrick.
ಕಳೆವ ಮುನ್ನವೆ ಹೊತ್ತು, ಓಡೋಡಿ ಹೋಗದಿರಿ
ಎಳೆಬಿಸಿಲ ತಂಪಿನಲಿ ನಗುವ ಹೂವುಗಳೇ !
ಅಳುವುಕ್ಕುವುದು ನೀವು ಸೊರಗುವುದ ನೋಡುತ್ತೆ
ನಳನಳಿಸಿ ಗಿಡಗಳಲಿ ನವಸುಮಗಳೇ! !

ತಡೆಯಿರೈ! ನಿಲ್ಲಿರೈ! ಸಂಜೆಯಾಗುವ ತನಕ
ಪಡುವಣದಿ ರವಿತೇಜ ಮರೆಯಾಗುವನಕ
ಕೂಡಿ ನಿಮ್ಮನು ನಾವು ಬರುವೆವೈ, ನಮ್ಮೊಡನೆ
ಮಾಡಿ ನೀವ್ ಸಂಧ್ಯೆಯೊಳಗರ್ಚನೆಯನು

ನಿಮ್ಮಂತೆ ಕ್ಷಣಿಕವೈ ನಮ್ಮ ಬಾಳೂ ಕೂಡ
ನಮ್ಮಯ ವಸಂತವೂ ಚಿರವಲ್ಲವಲ್ಲ!
ನಮ್ಮ ಜವದೇಳಿಗೆಗೆ ಜವರಾಯ ಕಾದಿರುವ
ಎಮ್ಮ ತೆರವೂ ಕೂಡ ನಿಮ್ಮಂತೆಯೇ

ಮುಗಿಸುವೆವು ನೀವು ಜೀವನ ಮುಗಿಸುವಂತೆ, ಬೇ
ಸಗೆಯ ಮಳೆ ಧರಣಿಯಿಂದಾವಿಯಾದಂತೆ
ನಗುವೆಲೆಯ ಮೇಲಿನಿಬ್ಬನಿಯ ಮುತ್ತುಗಳೆಲ್ಲ
ಮುಗಿಲ ಮಡಿಲನು ಸೇರಿ ಕಾಣೆಯಾದಂತೆ ||

Happy Independence Day!

At the stroke of midnight today, we turn sixty-five. As our Swamiji once told me - a birthday is not just a reminder of the day you were born, but it is a vardhanti - to celebrate growth, to introspect, to think about what we have achieved so far and try to plan for what lies ahead.
When I was younger, our patriotism was intense. Songs like "bhAratIyaru nAvu endendu onde" and "bhAratAmbeye janisi ninnoLu dhanyanAdenu" moved us to tears accompanied with happiness and excitement and contentment. (The former song still moves me to tears sans all the good feelings). Our patriotism also found expression in the marchpasts, in saluting our tricolor with pride. In fact, it is always a cherished dream of children that they will grow up and achieve things that will make their country proud of them. We were no exception. We read stories of war and Independence with greed and pride. We were proud that we belonged to a country of brave soldiers, valiant and benovelent kings and queens and freedom fighters who cared more for the country than for their families.
It was not long before we started questioning our beliefs. Of late, all I have are questions. True, we are a great country. But is the greatness showing itself? If so, where and how? Various news reports and surveys show us that we rank down there along with Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia in the way we treat fifty percent of our population, that we are only slightly better than Pakistan when it comes to corruption, that we rank lower than tiny countries like Belarus when it comes to winning medals in Olympics, that we are slowly but steadily losing vast tracts of our land to our neighbors.
Coming to the last thing first, the news about Assam was conspicuous by its absence in the newspapers. Assam violence certainly deserved many more pages than it got. Initially I thought that it was just because of the way we thought about the Northeast - news from the Northeast does not jump out of the newspapers like the Bacchan family. But the more I read, the better I realized that Assam is being deliberately kept far from the prying media. Or, may be the media does not venture too close to the weaknesses of the Congress party. Things would have been vastly different if we had exchanged Gogoi with Modi. There are no Sardesais interviewing Gogoi. There are no online petitions this time around (I remember signing one for Irom Sharmila a few years ago).
Our problem has always been that of shortsighted leadership. Chacha cared more for his image on the international political stage than his policies at home, and left us with a legacy far too troublesome to ignore - Kashmir and Tibet (by induction, Arunachal Pradesh). Indira Gandhi was better, but did nothing to check Bangladeshi immigration. And look what it is doing in Assam.
Another recent incident in Assam shook my belief about my country. Unlike the Bangladeshi immigration and associated violence, this news was literally popping out of newspapers. The torture undergone by a young girl oustide a pub at an early enough time were disconcerting. The Mangalore and Jharkhand news came not too later, and both found me asking myself if I would like my daughter to grow up in such an environment. There is a beautiful shloka in the raghuvamsha about Raghu's rule, that says that while Raghu was king, even the wind did not dare to disturb the clothing of an abhisArikA who went in search of her lover at night. That was the kind of freedom and security that an able leader like Raghu gave his subjects. In contrast, we are scared to venture out of the safety of our homes after dark, even for work or buying medicines. IMO, the culprit here is not just patriarchy as some feminists claim, but a sick mentality and confidence that they can get away with anything by paying a good enough bribe. And also that ordinary people would not give a damn, whatever happened.
In our History classes, we often studied about various dynasties. The achievements of these dynasties would be listed in separate categories like Conquests, Literature, Art and Architecture and so on. When I tried to do the same thing now, I could not come up with as many items as I would have liked. The progress we have made is on par with other developing nations of the world, not any better. The technological advancement we seem to have made is less because of indigenous technology and more because of technological advancement happening halfway across the globe. Indeed, our poverty is such that we do not have one good institute other than IISc that encourage the Sciences, but cry ourselves hoarse celebrating the accomplishments of the likes of Sunita Williams and Kalpana Chawla. They are Americans, for crying out loud! And also, there are no signs of any improvement coming the people's way with respect to education either, with Sir Kapil as the incharge of the country's education.
I have never felt this depressed on any Independence day. As a person remarked, we seem to have passed from the hands of the British to the hands of thugs and rowdies and criminals. This sort of makes me agree with what Churchill had said once, that we were still not capable of ruling ourselves. Till date our biggest achievement seems to be that we have remained whole as a political entity, even when we have people in our midst who think they are in their right to vandalize a monument to our soldiers when people elsewhere are killed. Oh, and also that we can talk about gifting phones to families below the poverty line.
There, I did not mean to be so caustic in this post. I would like to think that there are promising things happening around us, that we are still living and thriving, Churchill's words be damned. And sure there are, if we look for them. There are little things happening everyday, that show that though all is not well, somethings at least are going in the right way. We have come far from the days of the license raj. Schools are more accessible than in the past. Sensible laws exist, even if they are mere paper tigers, as do sensible people, even if they are not powerful. All is not lost, yet. It is up to us to make the best of what we are provided with, and also to make the lives of those around us better.
So, folks, wish you a very happy Independence Day! May God give us the ability to live up to the dreams of countless people who died fighting for freedom.

Māyūrī modayati manāṃsi

It was some years ago, when I was still young and impressionable, that I first laid my hands on the book 'Mayūra' by Sri.Devudu Narasimha Shastri. I remember that I had liked the book a lot, though some of the intricacies in plot and emotion were beyond my comprehension. For a long time I had wanted to re-read the book, and recently my wish came true*.

The original story of 'Mayūra' is a fairly familiar one to many of us, from our History classes. An orphan boy raised as a brahmin, Mayura Sharma lives in Kanchi, belonging to the Pallava kingdom. He has an altercation with one of the princes of the kingdom and is forced to leave Kanchi. The rest of the story is about how he overthrows the regime of the Pallavas and establishes the Kadamba kingdom. History tells us this much, and it takes a master craftsman like Devudu to make a beautiful sculpture out of this fine granite. He has added his own details - ministers loyal to the old king, wars fought with the brain and not with brawn, an enemy everyone would wish to have and a love interest. The result is a book that guarantees hours of absorbing reading.

'Mayura' is not as heavy as Devudu's other books**. The language is definitely a lot lighter (more Kannada and less Sanskrit :)). One can see expressions like "ತಲೆ ಕುಟ್ಟ" and "ಬೊಡ್ಡೀ ಮಕ್ಕಳು". Rural Kannada is used very effectively. There is more action and less description and hence this book is much more egalitarian than his other three novels.

In his descriptions, Devudu has followed the path of our classical writers. One cannot forget the way he describes the cow Nandini in his mahabrAhmaNa. It is easy to see the touch of Kalidasa there (बिभ्रती श्वेतरोमाङ्कं सन्ध्येव शशिनं नवम्). It is so even in this book. When Mayura asks how his mother looked, Narasimhadatta replies "ನೇರಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣಿಗಷ್ಟು ಕಪ್ಪನ್ನು ಕೊಡುವ ಕೂದಲು, ದಂತವನ್ನು ಚಿನ್ನದಿಂದ ತೊಳೆದಂತೆ ಮೈಬಣ್ಣ..". As in his other books, the descriptions of nature are lyrical. His writing is poetry in prose. The beauty of this book is that it is definitely a work of great erudition, but also maintains simplicity.

Devudu had an uncanny eye for the beauty of words. He has used a couple of Kalidasa's nuggets to great advantage in Mayura. The first instance is when the Pallava princess Premavati suspects that the merchant Gupta is Mayura himself, and receives a present from him. The present is a peacock (mayUra) that, when given the key, turns around and bows. Later, a priest brings her a message from Gupta, apparently about a dream that he had. Immediately the princess retorts "मायूरी मदयति मार्जना मनांसि", and then, feeling shy, runs away. Now this line occurs in the first act of the Malavikagnimitram. Mother Kaushiki says this line when getting ready for the competition between the dance teachers. In both cases, the very air is full of the moisture of longing and the fragrance of romance. There is the sound of the beating of māyūrī drums keeping time with melodious music, jingling anklets and hearts full of yearning. In that one line of harmless-sounding reply, the princess indicates that she suspects Gupta to be Mayura, and that she is in love with him. An outsider would have just thought that she referred to the gift of the peacock.

The other heartwarming instance happens after the princess is married to Mayuravarma, who is a king by then. She is singing a line from the Meghadūta "इष्टे वस्तुन्युपचितरसाः प्रेमराशीभवन्ति". (My fervent opinion is that each verse from the Meghadūta is a nugget of sheer joy. Well, almost all of them. The beauty of these words, these sounds joined together in the beautiful Mandākrāntā meter is so great that so many times, I cease to think about the meaning and play the sounds in my head over and over again). Again, one can see the queen playing the veena with the king watching her with satisfaction on one side, and on another side there is the yakshi playing the veena, thinking of her husband.

Today is the age of pacifists. While warmongering is not good, it is basic human (even animal) nature to defend one's territory, and not to do so is to go against nature. Mayura probably had another interest in having a cordial relationship with the Pallavas, and so he resorted to bloodless war, even when he had a full-fledged army fighting for him. The warring sequences are simplistic but fantastic, and capture the imagination well. The simplicity and far-fetched-ness of the sieges are just afterthoughts. Such is the writing prowess of Devudu that when one is reading the book, one is sure that that was exactly how Mayura became the king. The plot is woven delicately and intricately, and makes it hard to put the book down once you pick it up.

Incidentally, this book was made into a movie starring Raj Kumar and Manjula. As it is with almost all movies based on books, the movie fails in a lot of things. It does inspire the viewer with patriotism but brings in unnecessary Kannada-Tamil controversy. But it is certainly a movie that can be watched once.

In my opinion, a good book can be differentiated from a not-so-good one by its ability to elevate and calm the mind. All of Devudu's books are just that - good. They leave the reader calm, peaceful and happy. Dear Reader, if you read Kannada but have not read Devudu so far, do find Mayura and read it. And do tell me about it!

********
*This post was written some time back.
** A note on Devudu: Devudu Narasimha Shastry is a well-known Kannada author. He has written other books like Mahakshatriya, Mahabrahmana and Mahadarshana. Mahakshatriya is the story of King Nahusha and Mahabrahmana is the story of how Kaushika became Vishwamitra. Mahadarshana is the story of Yajnavalkya. This last one can probably be called his magnum opus, because of its depth and the magnanimity of the subject itself. Recently, I also came to know that he translated each verse of the 'Yoga vAsishTha'