A Question of Ethics

A short news item reported in the Hindu today (21^st February 2012, p 9) on an issue related to “plagiarism” in an academic situation in a premier centre of scientific excellence in the country has set me thinking on the whole question of academic ethics. The scientists who stand accused under the eye of scrutiny in this context might perhaps be innocent or even be unaware of the gravity of their deed: somewhere it is also mentioned that they had only drawn some information related to the literature survey in context.  However, the issue is not as simple as it appears to be. What is “overlap by oversight” intended to mean in this context when the entire onus should be on the authors of academic papers? One cannot dress oneself up in borrowed feathers and claim academic privilege.

We live in a civil society where we uphold as inviolable all rights to an individual’s property and possessions, in the material sense. We have laws and regulations to ensure the protection of such rights. However we still do not ascribe much sanctity to intellectual property rights as such. For scientific discoveries and inventions we have patents and legal rights, but not so for any individually generated idea or concept. Any way who recognizes such things as of any consequence these days amidst our society? People have no qualms in spouting other people’s ideas as their own. Once someone comes up with something, the other appears to think it is there for the taking for all simply because there is no legal record for such statements. Similar is the case with creativity and almost all literature.

Not so long ago, a renowned film maker approached me and asked me to rework a script based on a famous literary work.  I was delighted and replied that I will do it provided I get enough time and am able to get the copyright permission from the writer and publisher.  The man’s reply shocked me.  He said: Don’t wait for such things! I just need you to capture the same spirit.  However, the poor soul was so insensitive to my arguments that borrowing without permission amounts to intellectual burglary and it is unethical.

This is the case with another well-known fiction writer in the Malayalam who raised a controversy for having lifted a whole section on sea-faring from Gurudev Tagore’s work and incorporated the same into his work. In response the author politely recorded that he wanted some information on sea faring and so he used Tagore! This is the abysmal level to which fame-mongers and opportunists fall into for securing their own name and fame in the eyes of the media!

Academics are none the worse for indulging in such heinous acts of plagiarism. There was an instance of one PhD thesis submitted to a certain university which was evaluated by an external examiner who was shocked to realize that he himself had been an adjudicator for the same thesis submitted by another scholar from another University! The case was examined and the thesis summarily rejected. But then perhaps only one in a thousand such cases come up to be reexamined. Many often go unnoticed. In our fast and faster ways of living we are compelled to pass everything by. And of course media seldom follows up anything, because they survive on breaking news minute by minute. Nevertheless what get left behind half-way through might be matters needing to be readdressed. Society becomes blind to issues of such gravity because they are not re-invoked in the limelight.

In peer reviewed journal articles there is of course less chances for such plagiarism to go unnoticed what with such new and newer softwares available. Nevertheless the very idea of plagiarism needs to be brought to the forefront. We need to recall that when Aristotle envisioned the academia among the other subjects like Logic and Rhetoric he had also introduced Ethic as worthy of being taught there in. Perhaps he had visualized the compulsive need for the presence of ethics in academic debates. This is virtually absent in today’s cut-throat world of competition and success.  Publish or perish appears as the motto in a market-driven world of teaching learning and evaluation. The teacher who strives to excel finds himself/herself in the situation similar to burning a candle at both ends. Perhaps it is this pressure to re-search, find, and publish that compels them toward such acts of intellectual suicide— their potential incompetence goes unrecognized while they stay on in circulation. The intellectual and academic condition deteriorates day to day. One can seek pardon as a fresher or undergraduate perhaps but a senior academic caught under such culpability cannot fain ignorance.

Plagiarism in any form needs to be addressed and completely wiped out. Students, scholars and young academics have to be warned to stay on this side of the line by their seniors through setting exemplary examples of their own. If such senior scholars and scientists commit criminal acts of ignorance they cannot be pardoned because they plead not-guilty. Ethics is something that has to be incorporated into human actions in every sphere of life including the intellectual. What is one person’s finding cannot be appropriated as another’s—this amounts to neocolonialism in the geography of the mind. How could we remain complacent or neglect these issues?

Orange Breasted Green Pigeons (Treron bicincta)– among Mango Blooms in Pondicherry Feb2012 again

Treron bicincta in Pondicherry by Dr S Murali

Treron bicincta Pondicherry 4th Feb 2012

Orange Breasted Green Pigeon Treron bicincta

The Song of the Whistling Thrush

Come to think of it, we have known each other for over thirty, thirty- five years! That is a very long time indeed.  We speak of each generation in terms of a gap of thirty years, and so this is over a generation of friendship. He was always a calm and composed person, and when he did laugh his whole body shook, and his long dark mane of hair flew in the breeze like a flag behind him. Many a time I had been tempted to ask him whether he had allowed his beard to grow without any trimming at all! In fact someone had the cheek to ask me one of those days how I managed to maintain my beard! With the characteristic impudence of youth I had derided: I don’t maintain it, it just grows! But Shanthi’s beard was much longer than mine and bushier. Yes, in those days all of us friends had unkempt beards and we also dressed carelessly in loose fitting garments sometimes much longer than our knees, and I had always been at home only in jeans! This was a generation that didn’t fit anywhere just like that. Born after Independence, and not being able to connect to the previous Gandhian era in any meaningful manner. Religion did not hold much sense either and neither did skepticism for that matter.  We were willing to believe, provided we could.

I had taken up teaching in a state Government college in north Kerala in the early eighties and then one day a whole host of admiring students ushered in two kurta-clad bearded forms right from the highway all the way up the hill to the college. I was in class lecturing when Shanthi and Raman came up to the open door. For a minute I couldn’t believe myself, I had given up hope of ever being with my old friends once I joined the Collegiate education department. And here they were right in my classroom! I had just about winded up my lecture on the nuances of modernist writing and so we all trouped into our college canteen. Shanthi said while munching banana fries: we are on our way to Kollur, care to join us?  I said yes and then we were off in no time. I stuffed some things into a haversack and we jumped into the first available bus north-bound. Travel in those days was a little more difficult than that of the present. Buses were rather few and far between. Trains two times a day. Our journey took us to Kannur, to Kasaragod and then to Mangalore. There we got into a private bus and were on our way to Kollur and the Mookambika temple. We reached sometime in the late evening and stayed at an Ashram. The next day Shanthi went around looking for his friend and guide to the hills Chandukutti sami.  He was a rather short dark tough person who spoke very little and smoked beedies. He agreed to come with us into the hills. And we set off the next morning. Shanthi and Raman had gone about collecting a few essential stuff for lighting a fire, vessels for cooking etc. The walk into the shola forests of the greener parts western ghats was memorable. Trees of the tropical evergreen always appeared to reach right into the skies and each one struggled to reach higher than the rest for the favoured sunlight and warmth. Dew dripped from above on to the bush and creepers below.  The rivulets sparkled in the speckled sunlight as the breeze blew high among the trees. It was late September and the touch of autumn was on every leaf. The climb was slow first and then became arduous and demanding as the path became steeper and steeper. Once we were on the top of the Kodajadri I was informed that the total walk was but 16 kms. However, the scramble through the tangled bushes and creepers dodging thorns and sharp rocks appeared then to me pretty long indeed. This was my first exposure to the wonders of Kodajadri.  As the ubiquitous mist withdrew briefly I could see the breathtaking panorama of the blue and purple hills. All three of us were silent for the most and our stops and pauses were as though decided in unison. Perhaps this was what they meant by the touch of the hills. I had written in a rather long poem about Ganga a couple of months ago:

The mountains know the hand of god. They are so huge, so mute, so invincible.

I have lost my bearings confronted with such vastness.     

I recalled my experiences in scrambling up the lower Himalayas in search of the trickle in the bosom of Himvant!  Here in the far south of India I was experiencing almost the same breathless joy! The touch of the hills was magnificent, almost religious. What is prayer but the heart’s lonely mutterings to the unknowable? The seeker and the search have become one here in the silence of the hills. Kodajadri will remain with me forever. The profundity of feeling, the depth of emotion, the largeness of vision my heart experienced cannot be expressed in plain words and I did not try the impossible either. I had just let myself go and merge with the rising curling unknowing mist of unreason. Where was I? Was it morning or time to sleep? None of us cared. We were in the thick of being. That was all. Shanthi always had a smile as answer to many of my queries. Raman was one of those people who could simply fade away here in the hills. He kept pace with the breeze and clouds.  He helped to light the fire and make the food, wash up and get our sleepings places readied. Shanthi sometimes would talk about many things, about his Guru, about meditation and meaning. We sat around the dancing fire near the Sarvajnapeetam and listened. This was the sacred place that Adi Sankaracharya lay when he was sick and the benignity of the Devi brought water trickling down the hills. We huddled together in the late evening and watched wide eyed as the sun disappeared over the hill tops and the cave Chitramoola became mysterious all the more. The trickling sound of falling water and the gathering dark were extraordinary. And then I heard the whistle. Because I had heard it earlier in many of my wanderings in the hills I recognized it immediately. The Malabar whistling Thrush, we call it the Whistling Schoolboy. Because the thrill and the casualness of a truant boy straying off from school was there in the song. Now this day it rang mysterious, while the bird lay hidden in the darkening evening. This entire Kodajadri, this outcrop that descended from the hump of the hill that held the Sarvajnapeetam, on to the sheer drop below the cave of the ancients called Chitramoola, reverberated with the song of the dark thrush. We did not know the passage of time, neither did we care. The trees were shivering in the coldness of late September and the sky was vibrant with vanishing and merging colours. The hills were sentinels of a strange experience a hastening in of complete being.  I had not felt such calm mingled with such excitement; the sheer touch of amazement. The bird would not stop.  The breeze was becoming chillier and night was swirling up the carpet of darkness through which some strange points of lights flickered. Kodajadri was lighting up with the mystery of all being. Here was the centre of all life. This was the point where everything returned. My mother’s arms reached forth and embraced me. I was a child once more.  I didn’t know anything. There was no knowledge. The song and sky and mist and breeze and star all rolled into one. The rock on which we sat for meditation had disappeared and the sound of falling water was so loud. Where is the thrush song leading me? A deep fever rose in me—deeper than the distant seas, dreams and forms rolled into one long experience of nothingness.

It took me a few days to get well. We slept in the cave and meditated on the sun and wind. Water was there a plenty and silence through the colours of the rainbow as the sun’s rays danced on the droplets. Then many days later we decided to regain our mortal existence as Shanthi and Raman and myself. Our walk downhill was even more silent. The thrush song was everywhere but the touch of mystery had lifted. Life was so ordinary afterwards. But then we are all mortals. We live and we pass. I had kept in touch with Shanthi for a long long time. Much later when I was travelling toward Umeo in Sweden, I flew into Stockholm and the old familiar face with the long beard appeared at the airport. Shanthi had driven all the way from Goteborg where he was living then and he brought me a large case full of warm clothing.  He had k

nown I was flying further north and had come to arm me for the severity of the northern winter. By then he had become quite well known and had followers and disciples all over the world as far away as Rome and Italy and Sweden. We both looked up at the moon and marveled at its upturned figure. This was close to the north pole and cold.  There was thrush song too in this late autumn in Europe. But I recalled our Kodajadri.  Our own Himalayas. The toughness of the mountains and the pure existential touch of the hills. The song of the Malabar Whistling Thrush!  Nothing like it before and after.

smurals@gmail.com

Samuel Beckett Dramatist and Artist of Silence

Samuel Beckett

Avidya and Advaita

Swami Vivekananda stood for a long time allowing his gazing eye to wander all over the stormy waters around him. He was now in the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, at Kanya Kumari the seat of the goddess Mahishasuramardhini, the destroyer of the demon Mahisha. Here the three great seas merged—the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea came together in a great confluence. Earlier, he had asked a local fisherman to ferry him across to the jutting rock face a few meters into the sea, but the man had refused because the sea was too rough. Nothing could keep Vivekananda back from his destiny—he jumped into the raging sea and braving the current swam across to the rock face. Even to this day there is a shrine built on those rocks to commemorate the Saint’s presence. Vivekananda was shocked at the inhuman system of caste hierarchy prevalent in those parts in those days. He termed it a madhouse of superstition and segregation. Even today things have hardly changed, if not in one way but another. Those men in power –the present day politician princes– drunk with the potency of power drive around in huge flocks of cars and vans driving all human traffic away. When a politician prince moves over the highway there will be a pilot streaming with blaring horns ahead and over open windows many men will throw their arms out and wave away all commoners on their path as though the common folk are so negligent as to be non existent. Nothing can or should obstruct the way of power politics. Whether it be in religion or politics we humans are indeed so stupid as to consider ourselves superior to the other in body and soul. Granted a politician’s time is rather precious most often and any delay could be quite decisive, but so is the quality of time and space for all men and women. And now what right does a single individual have in pushing his/her way through?

A Victorian poet wrote:… that men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things!  Rising on their own dead selves to higher things is a process of erasing the ego and arousing the spirit within. However, trampling and treading on other selves to promote their own ungainly selves is still the sick decease of present day actuality. We pride ourselves in having built civil societies of equal opportunity for all and social equity for all. And our religious literature and thought have already scaled great and glorious heights. Human achievements are unimaginably high, and human societies have collectively reached hitherto unreachable heights of excellence and material plenitude. Nevertheless we have hardly changed.

There is a curious but equally mean tale that goes like this: A deal had been stuck between a Japanese company and an Indian company for exporting live crabs from India to Japan. Now when the first packages arrived the Japanese wrote to their Indian counterparts: “Many thanks for the great work you are doing. But, pray, tell us how you manage to export live crabs in open containers?”  “Simple,” wrote the Indian exporters in reply, “simple, indeed! Remember they are from India.  If one crab attempts to scramble up to the open end the other crab would pull it down! So none can escape!” Such is the lethal cut-throat level to which physical and material competition has come to be in this part of the world! Politics and spirituality are two sides of the same paper—tear one you tear the other. And competition is a matter of ego based on the stupid assumption that the physical self is of prime importance. The information-rich society that we have built around us is a huge market place where all values are simply prices, and all wealth is bound around avarice and greed of the advancing physical self that elbows itself around, pushing and pulling. All that we are informed or are interested in being informed is about how to promote ourselves. As Nietzsche derisively wrote: “All waters are impure where the rabble also drinks!”  And the rabble is the majority. The minority that is practically effaced is content to sleep the deep sleep of pretentious ignorance. After all, all life is a mind game, and once we have laid aside our humanness all that remains is our sordid petty self of ignorance and meanness. This is what Sankara terms Avidya. He distinguishes between Vidya (knowledge) and Avidya (Ignorance). This ignorance is not the binary opposite of knowledge, but both are complementaries, extending into one another. Avidya is nescience,absence of knowledge.

The modern day politician who sears  through the crowded streets with a pilot car making the way clear for him with horns blaring and arms waving through the open windows is of course so ignorant of what he or she is doing in this world of so called democracy. It is said that once while Sankaracharya was walking down the steps toward the Ganges in Benares he was confronted by a Chandala, a person of low birth walking up the steps leading a couple of hounds on a belt. The jagatguru’s alarmed disciples tried to wave him off the saint’s path but the man stood his ground and stared straight at the Saint. Sankara himself was a little taken aback at this audacity of a lower caste person and quizzically raised his brows.  The Chandala asked him: what are you waving off your path? Me or my body? Isnt my body made of the same annamaya and pranamaya as yours is? Is my spiritual self different and contaminated? 

Sankara found himself dumbfounded and stuck speechless. It dawned on him all of a sudden that his own advaitic teaching had a different dimension. How could he have been so ignorant and blind not to have perceived the sameness everywhere? The poet in him then composed a sloka with this profound meaning of oneness. Now the tale is not merely instructive and illustrative of the universality of the all pervading spirit but it also goes a long way to prove the uniqueness of the saint. It was indeed his humility that made him realize blatant truth hidden from his own eyes thus far. The Chandala was perhaps sent there or it was lord Siva himself, come to open his inward eye. The adavitin realized his avidya or ignorance within a split second. And that is spiritual revelation. Avidya is not absolute ignorance as we would perhaps understand it, but on the other hand it is not knowing the full implications of knowledge, a knowledge that transforms and remakes, a knowledge that leads itself on to wisdom. How far from this is our modern day politician who whisks past us in the crowded streets of the present. We are all Chandalas, perhaps. Well any way it is good to be the Chandala who is potential eye opener for some Sankara rather than being a fully ignorant political leader!

As Tiruvalluvar says: all beings are born alike; their actions make them different.

Orangeheaded Thrush in rain

Zoothera citrina

From the Notebooks of a Bird Watcher

Even in a bustling city like Chennai one can come across small pockets of greenery. Among the less noted ones is the Madras Christian College Campus in East Tambaram. I recall with a tremendous sense of nostalgia the days and nights I used to wander along the many footpaths that criss-cross this amazing piece of green land in the late seventies and early eighties. I am also now amazed at the amount of bird and insect life I have recorded in the small pocket diaries I used to carry during those days. I have among my old papers a short write-up – among the many such–of those days that I presented as a record of natural history activities at one of our monthly get-togethers in Trivandrum.  We had a small group of enthusiastic naturalists and amateur birdwatchers and our society was registered as the Kerala Natural History Society, presided over by none other than the pioneer of bird study in our part of the world—Prof K.K. Neelakantan (@ Induchoodan). Among the many field activities of our society was this monthly meeting at every last Saturdays of each month when we shared notes and reports. As a youngster I used to look forward eagerly to these evenings. I have now before me one of my early papers where in I had waxed eloquent about the Madras Christain College Campus. These days when we celebrate Wild Life Week and World Bird Watch Day, it is in the scheme of things that we also cast a backward glance at our past.

This beautiful campus situated about 15 kilometers south ofMadrasis an interesting place for the bird watcher.   Indeed he can spend days on end wandering through the many forest footpaths or tracks that run through the 300 acre scrub and thorny jungle.  Continuous with the Vandalur reserve forest, this wonderful piece of wilderness was once mostly undisturbed except for occasional clearings for the college buildings, hostels, playground etc. In fact it is in and around the clearings that the amateur bird watcher spots his heart’s desire.

Large flocks of white browed Bulbul (Pycnonotus luteolus) occur near the footpaths or among adjacent bushes searching for food, frequently bursting forth into loud rattling calls. The Indian Robin (Saxicoloides fulicata) with its conspicuous wing-patch and rusty red under-tail coverts frequents the fringe of the jungle and open grassy patches. It is a more quiet bird. By far the most widely distributed and fairly commonly seen bird of the campus is the Indian Spotted Dove.  Apart from these the more vociferous and vocal birds of the early dawns and late evenings are the Ioras, the Coppersmith Barbets, the Red Vented and Red Whiskered Bulbuls, and the White headed Babblers.

Hoopoe and the Black Drongos are found around the tennis courts and the cricket grounds. I have come across many a cup-shaped nest on a forking branch often about 20 feet off the ground, with the Drongo parent bird sitting on its eggs, tail hanging limply over the edge!

I did frequently meet with the shy and silent Green Billed Malkoha (Rhopodytes viridirostris) in the thick scrub bordering the cricket grounds.  It was seldom seen in the open, always skulking in the bushes, much a Crow Pheasant, but never once descending to the ground. One hot summer midday, seeing a long, graduated, white tail disappearing into a bush, I moved closer quietly to investigate.  And the bird froze. The heavy bright and green bill and the sky blue eye patch confirmed its identity. The bird is really good and adept at disappearing rapidly through the bushes.

Another bird of the thorny bush was the Common Hawk Cuckoo (Cuculus varius). One day hearing its loud screams rising in crescendo I hastened to the spot.  The bird the size of a pigeon, but more slender and with broadly barred tail was perching on an exposed branch.  Its cry rose: brainfever…brainfever…brainfever….Suddenly on catching sight of me the scream stopped halfway. The bird watched me for some time and then with heavy wing beats flew off in to the next bush.

The pied crested Cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus) is a local migrant in these parts.  I usually met with this beautiful black and white bird that haunted the open thorny patch on the western edge of the campus.  It is not normally a shy bird and is really quite a handsome sight with its black crest.  I have often listened to its metallic call peepipiu…ringing across the fields. Once or twice I have recorded the Grey Patridge and Blackbreasted Rain Quail.

Further west in the campus there was a great Baya Colony on palm trees. This was a centre of great activity.  The entire palm was covered with quaint hanging nests—a remarkable sign of instinct and craftsmanship. Unfortunately I was never able to record a whole day’s activity under the bustling colony. However I could observe some interesting factors in their community life. I remember having collected a number of half completed and discarded nests. In those days I did not understand the significance of these thrown away nests.  Much later I came to understand how the males first began the nest-building activity; when it was half completed the female would join him and together they would complete it. However, if by any chance there were no female takers the male abandoned the half done nest and moves on to the next.

There are no records of the Common or Jungle Crows or the otherwise ubiquitous Small Green Barbet anywhere in my notes of those days. They are conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps that would go a long way to establish the pristine quality of the campus of those day—with little debris or garbage!  Among the other birds I have recorded are the following–

Small Minivet

Pariah kite

Blackwinged kite

Koel

Magpie robin

Golden backed woodpecker

Tailor bird

Rose ringed parakeet

Wren warbler

Black headed Oriole

Shikra hawk

Brahminy or Black headed myna

I have recorded that on 14^th June 1979 early dawn while I was just entering the campus from its eastern gate I heard a harsh croak of a Night Heron to my right.  The bird was apparently sitting on a low branch of a thorny tree spreading over the path from the left and disturbed by my sudden appearance had taken off to my right where there was a big patch of thick undergrowth and thorn. (Much later when I published my first volume of poetry I titled it Night Heron) Cautious, watching my steps, I tried to follow the bird, but then found it wasn’t necessary.  Even from where I stood I could spy the swaying tops of the trees that were virtually covered with roosting birds.  There were Pond Herons (Ardeola grayii) Little Egrets(Egretta garzetta) Night Herons(Nycticorax nycticorax) and to my pleasant surprise the Indian Reef Herons(Egretta gularis).  I cannot find any records of having sighted any Bitterns among them.  However I recall that the entire place was reeking of the heavy stench from their smelly white droppings!

On the 29^th of June 79 evening at around6 pm I saw a large flock of Night Herons flying over Tambaram in the direction of Chengalpet lake.  So it appeared that as the diurnal birds like the Pond herons and egrets return by evening to roost the Night Herons take off from their roosting place inside the campus, and they settle down for their rest only during the day.

These notes bespeak of those wonderful days of bird-watching I did in what appeared to be an unending campus of delight for me then. Even in the midst of a fast developing city and an equally fast depleting wilderness one could find solace at the thought of such small green pockets. They survive as memory. But just imagine the plight of its feathered denizens.  Perhaps they are forced to seek out other dwellings or quietly succumb to the pressures of urbanization and perish. When we celebrate these wildlife weeks and bird-watch days it is time for us to remember what we did, have done, and are doing. As the Upanishad says: krato smara, krtam smara—remember what has been done.  And finally perhaps, what we can do is to take measures to protect and preserve what we are left with— and to give it a personal responsibility let’s call it my beloved wilderness!   

smurali1234@yahoo.com

The Finer Art of Taste

A couple of years ago my daughter brought a little kitten home.  It had such beautiful eyes and a furry tail with soft brown down, she decided to call her Cleopatra.  And Cleo– for short—fitted the description quite well with her regal up-bearing and disdain for what cats normally do for a living—hunting.  She seldom stirred outdoors and stayed indoors expecting us to feed her all the time.  However, on rare occasions when she did indulge in the chase she made it a point to drag whatever writhing thing she brought in on to her favorite carpet in our drawing room floor very much to the chagrin of all of us.  Cleo perhaps felt that this was the safest place on earth to relish her repast, and also she must have felt she was sharing her spoils with her family!

Like Cleo most of us often tend to have a special place, even a specific posture, or seat or where we ensconce ourselves to dig into our own delicacies.  We relish food all the more when we are at peace and in our familiar or preferred surroundings. Food and the way we consume it is certainly a matter of taste, something that depends a great deal on upbringing, social background, class, race, customs and manners of the times we are in.

The oft-cited truism that what one eats becomes one’s demeanor does really hold some truth in it.  The choice of food and the practices of making/cooking, and eating/ relishing it differs considerably from people to people and from person to person. And when people migrate, or are exposed to different cultural influences, most often their food habits are usually the last ones to change. Language, clothing, and ways of thinking even would change but not so easily their habits of food.

In south India for instance there are innumerable practices of cooking, serving, eating and tasting.  Of course for the most a great deal depends on whether you are a vegetarian or an omnivore.  And another depends for the most on your social standing and exposure. Alas! One could never cherish or relish what one could dream or desire!

For the most, a majority of people (who of course, could afford to obtain food) eat with their fingers. A certain large percentage cherishes their culinary delights served and dished out in spoons and ladles and with the help of forks and knives.  Much before the advent of European colonial cultures we south Indians were wont to rely on our own fingers for eating. And of course, for the gourmet there is nothing like one’s own dear hands for savouring food!  After all, there is the matter of individual taste! Even the posture of eating has changed over the years.  When we were little kids I recall I used to enjoy sitting cross legged on the floor with the plantain leaf spread before me while they served the delicacies from left to right following a specific order beginning with a sweet and rounding it off with another in the end.  Those were good old days, and now with the advent of bad new days we are wont to sit on comfortable chairs at the dining table in the dining room. The very idea of the dining table and chair has certainly changed and transformed the manner and mode of eating.

From the south Indian combo of Idly, Vadai, Sambhar and coconut Chutney, to the North Indian Roti and Sabji , the red-rice-meals of the far south to the white and/or basmati of the Indian peninsula,  the variety of foods and food habits are so dramatically different in the Indian subcontinent. Perhaps what our ubiquitous globalising economy has achieved for us is to make all varieties available to and within reach of almost everyone. Apart from our own daily meal wherever we are, we tend to look upon all other food varieties as delicacies and of a much dearer taste. Whatever other harms globalization has brought in, this aspect of bringing variety of taste into the lives of all and sundry apparently is certainly a good thing.  While on the one hand multinational companies like McDonald-s and Kentucky Fried Chicken–s thrive in ushering in homogeneity of taste, the roving tongue of the gourmet reaches for the overseas taste and varieties made available through the interchange of economies.

Eating is not merely an act in pursuit of survival but a great art indeed. When people eat one can certainly discern in them their character, culture, class, upbringing, and their family backgrounds. Some people can approach a delicate Masala Dosa like a warlord and tear it into ungainly bits and pieces so that the onlooker might not feel like eating anything for some days after that or even bring out! Still others can make the heady repast of smoked bacon and steak rounded off with a dash of a marmalade toast look so appealing that it could make mouths water!  The children’s writer, Enid Blyton, in her adventure stories takes so much pleasure in describing the taste and smells of food charming and most endearing to her readers. Even Tolstoy and Dostoevsky would like to describe the meals of their characters quite sumptuously.  Yet other instances are writers like Somerset Maugham ,H E Bates, Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan. The Indian writer in Malayalam O.V.Vijayan who has authored such magical-realistic works as The Saga of Khasak and other immortal works of fiction, towards the end of his life created a work of different sensibility like the Dharmapuranam, wherein he specifically resorted to the use of epithets of defecation and urination alongside the finer tastes of eating and relishing. The intention of course was to shock the readers from their complacent non-committed political positions.  However, the legacy of the culinary and the gourmet’s aesthetic are so wide and large indeed and spreads across cultures and continents.

Food easily becomes a habit with most people that they tend to uphold the maxim of eat to live as something sacred and inviolable. However, there is so much to the finer art of taste than what meets the eye at the outset. In relishing good food, the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue and even the soul come into participation. Try eating food with your eyes closed and you will find out the difference yourself.  Similar is the case with the sense of smell.  Small wonder that food appears tasteless to one who suffers from a bad cold.

In the aesthetic canon of Classical Indian art discourses among the sixty four arts equal importance is set apart for the finer art of taste in terms of cookery. However it is not merely in making delicacies but also in partaking of these in the right manner does the culinary delight lie. A good cook is also a gourmet.

For the most the Northern part of India is a wheat growing belt while the South produces lot of rice—this accounts for the staple food habits of the people as well.  South Indians use a lot of rice in their cooking while the north Indians resort to wheat and maize. This does not necessarily mean that people of the north do not relish Idlis and Dosas nor that the south Indians do not dote on Pooris, Chappathis and Paranthas. In most households people eat three meals a day. Lunch is the heaviest usually. And the south Indian rice repast is a whole meal and an art in itself in its highest form.

Kerala Brahmins are especially well-known for their gourmet tastes and there are innumerable tales revolving round the feudal Brahmin often depicted with his large pot-belly—a creature of caricature no doubt! Nevertheless the Kerala Brahmin is also credited with a highly evolved sense of taste in almost all the finer arts mentioned. There is this repartee of a Namboothiri who was specially tested by a certain King: he had been treated to a large and sumptuous meal upon completion of which he remarked blissfully that he was so full that he could eat no more! The clever King then slyly informed him that there was a special course of Palada Pradaman (a sweet rice pudding) to follow. The Nambothiri in his characteristic sparkle of wit informed the king that when the bedecked elephant arrives the crowd for all its mass makes way for it somehow!

The Chinese are said to have an equally highly evolved sense of taste. Much before Europe’s geographical explorations began, the Chinese had sailed the vast oceans and landed in all the continents. The southwest coast of Kerala likewise had had contact with the Chinese from a long time ago. Among the innumerable tales of travelers from overseas there is this one about a Chinese traveler who was shipwrecked near the south west coast and he sought asylum in a poor villager’s home. The Malayalee couple although extremely poor took good care of the man who happened to be a trader, and upon getting well, while he bade adieu to them he asked whether he could leave behind some of the big jars that he had brought his wares in (which were washed ashore along with the wreck) and which he could collect later when he could sail back in a new ship eventually. He explained that the sealed jars contained pickled tender-mangoes. The couple agreed and the Chinese sailor was on his way. After many days when they were in dire straits and couldn’t find anything to eat, the man of the house thinking that he could help themselves to a few bits of pickled mangoes from the Chinese pot opened one and thrust his hand in. Very much to his surprise what he drew out was not mangoes but gold coins!  The pot held gold coins! He made use of a few coins and tided over their difficult times. Eventually their house prospered and they became quite well off. It was years later that the Chinese came back to retrieve his pots.  The man of the house returned all the pots and told the whole story of how he helped himself to a few coins from one of the pots. He also added that he had replaced what he had taken. The Chinese traveler was quite taken aback by the honesty of the people of the household and as a token of his gratitude he gifted some of the pots to them and was on his way soon. The honest man’s house prospered and became quite well-off.  Many years afterwards when they had finished all the gold coins they used the Chinese pots for pickling tender mangoes.  The taste of these mangoes has gone down into Kerala’s legends and history.  Even to this day people talk of the heavenly taste of the tender mangoes pickled in the Kodan Bharani of Pandan Parambu! (One of the Chinese pots had a twisted mouth and hence came to be known as Kodan (Crooked) Bharani)

There are a million tales of this kind regarding the finer art of taste. Over the centuries this art too has evolved with the human beings and their history.

Let me conclude with another relating to the same series of the Chinese pots. A certain king overheard one Brahmin talking to another while partaking of the feast given to them that the meal would have tasted far better had there been a tiny morsel of tender mango pickle from the famed Kodan Bharani of Pandan Paramabu!   The King sent his courtiers forth to search for the legendary mango pickles far and wide.  Eventually they traced the Chinese pots and fetched the tender mangoes which were served alongside the other stuff at the feast the next year.  The king was a casual observer this year too and then the very same Brahman exclaimed: Wow! Now the feast is complete! We have here the legendary tender mangoes too! The king was very pleased and rewarded the Brahmin suitably for his rich taste buds that could detect such finer tastes.

If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder then taste is in the tongue of the relisher. In our blind process of ultra-fast  development and globalization where in we hasten to eat like the American in the fast-food style joints of MacDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chickens, what we are tragically laying aside are our unique taste buds which could distinguish fine and finer tastes. In a globalised village of the future technology there could be but one master taste which everyone would have to relish. Where is fled the glory and the taste of yore!

smurals@gmail.com

Occurence of Red-Winged Crested Cuckoo –Clamator coromandus

I am not sure whether this bird has been recorded in this part of the country.  On 16^th February 2011 afternoon at around 4.30 p.m. the bird landed on a broad leaved tree near my residence in the Pondicherry University Campus.  It was a slightly pleasant afternoon and the sunlight was trickling through the sparsely wooded campus. The bird appeared not too frightened and intimidated by the photographer. After a quick glance around and waving its crest the bird flapped into the neighbouring wooded area adjacent to Auroville campus.

Clamator coromandus

The Pondicherry University campus is coterminous with the boundaries of Auroville—(a significant place on all tourist maps of the country on account of the idealist bio-centric international community living together inspired by Sri Aurobindo’s vision of harmony)–  and the land, soil and vegetation certainly is not much different. There are not much variety in terms of trees and bushes. Cassia, Acacia and Cashew Nut trees along with variety of palms comprise the major flora. An occasional Neem or a Tamarind would add spice to the air. Many new species are also being planted and cared for.  But then for the most the campus is dry and does not harbor many fruiting or flowering tree, except of course for the ubiquitous cashew—and when in season it is rife with birdlife. Coppersmith Barbets and the other kinds of frugivorous birds usually live off the nuts and berries. Tamarind, Mango and Lime are also not too hard to come by.  Insects and reptiles abound. And so do a variety of amphibians.  An occasional visit from a Peafowl from beyond the walls of the University Campus would add a tinge of colour to the red sand dunes.

Red-Winged Crested Cuckoo

The heart-line of the campus is of course the deep gorge or the Ravine that runs toward the sea on the east coast. A walk down or even along these red slopes in the early dawn or late evening is bound to yield interesting results for the avid bird watcher. Resident owls and nightjars have been reported by enthusiastic students. During the rains this ravine empties the excess water down to the sea and all along the dry summer days the ravine affords some sort of cool shade and respite for the ground dwellers, lizards, scorpions, snakes and chameleons as well.

Clamator coromandus

For the most the sprawling eight-hundred acre campus is a quiet haven for a large number of bird species. And overhead at almost any time of the day depending on the season one can find large flocks of estuary and coastal birds, egrets, and herons slow winging toward the marshes and salt water ranges on the east coast road. The crackling racket of Roseringed Parakeets is a fairlycommon greeting for the naturalist who steps into the campus during the day. So is the tonk-tonking of the Coppersmith Barbet.
The afternoon of the 16^th February was just like most other late winter afternoons—there were Common Myna, Black Drongo, Red-Vented Bulbul, Iora, Brainferever bird, Paradise Flycatcher, White-browed Bulbul, and Golden Oriole, hunting about when the Red-Winged Crested Cuckoo landed. There was a slight breeze from the east. My excitement was overflowing. At first I had thought this was a rather plump Paradise Flycatcher female, but then closer inspection showed the clear white shoulder patch and black crest. Identity confirmed! [Clamator coromandus]

It was the Red-Winged Crested Cuckoo visiting the campus and perhaps taking off immediately. Strangely enough I spotted the very same specimen the next day at almost the same time on the same whereabouts.  But that was all. The bird’s brief visit had ended as suddenly as it began.

s.murals@gmail.com

Anguish and After

When I was thirty I wrote a poem and called it Autumnal.  I thought that was the end of the world. I was facing the worst critical intellectual dilemma in my life so far and didn’t know where to go, which way to turn. I even considered terminating my life in a philosophical manner. My greatest passion then was the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. And Kirilov who appears in The Possessed was one character whom I totally identified myself with.  At one stage in his life he states categorically that life offers barely two options: either to kill oneself or the next immediately obvious one – to kill the other. Suicide or homicide would lead to some definitive action and thus provide meaning to one’s life. This was indeed crazy and the more I reflected upon this logic the more crazy I felt within. There was no essential morality no essential ethics. In fact, faced with a philosophical existentialism I realized there was no valuable essence as well. Existence precedes essence—that was Sartre’s dictum. And I then wholeheartedly believed it too. However, there was action, the possibilities of commitment to life in the real world, some ideological yearnings that my thirsting mind was egging me on to. What about the world out there that held me and everything else? What about my fellow creatures? What about earth and nature and all that beautiful world of sun rises and dawns long bright afternoons and awesome evenings leading on to silent star-studded night skies? How could I terminate my life? Shouldn’t I seek out the answers to those million questions of existence and being that my thinking brain churned out second by second? What am I? The passionate nature of my quest led me on from question to question. And no answer came up. It was interminable anguish.

Readingwas one way. Meditating, another. I would spend long silent hours lying under the shade of my favourite tree on a hill slope overlooking the border of our city. Many of my friends thought I was foolish and was simply wasting my time avoiding work and entrepreneurship. Of course I had also indulged a great deal in my other passion of sketching, painting and writing poetry. And then there were the innumerable birds. I had taken ornithology quite seriously and kept a small bird note book. Wherever I went I had it in my sling bag along with a copy of the Bhagavat Gita and my other favourite books by Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and Nikos Kazantzakis. The world held the answers to all my questions, some how I was sure of all that. But then how does one go about getting the world to spill them all out? On the one hand there was this nagging anguish that was like a deep unquenchable thirst that left the throat parched and dry always—existential questions that loomed large like some lilac mountain, solid, unrelenting, mysterious, and yet tempting, tantalizing…on the other hand there was this tremendous feeling of an oceanic nature, beautiful, bounteous, wholesome, that was on an aesthetic and spiritual dimension—this was never fulfilling though; however, it is the experiences of this second kind that held greater promises of a holistic kind that was as yet probable and possible.  There is bound to be some order, some harmonious rhythm that would set the heart and soul at ease and satisfy the deep yearnings of the inquisitive intellect. Poetry and art gave some hints of such possibilities. The natural world of beautiful creatures and exquisite experiences delighted the sensuous aesthete in me and prodded me on like a passionate pilgrim in an eternal search of stars and sonnets. There was Rilke, there was Yeats, there was Herman Hesse, and above all there was KCS Paniker and Pablo Picasso, Ravi Varma and a multitude of like minded souls who appeared and disappeared perpetually taunting the mind as though they were equals and kindred spirits who also underwent such distressing moods of depression and loneliness and who also somehow survived to set everything right. However, there never was anyone who in my view succeeded in finding some permanent solace to the yearnings of the heart. Each encounter only served to deepen my troubled mind and dampen my creative self. Not in poetry not in art, not in nature, then where in the world was I to seek recompense for my self-quest? Nikos Kazantzakis and Freidrich Nietzsche and Herman Hesse spoke about the torments of the self and soul—while on one side the flesh with its pounding heart and sensuous skin held multitudinous desires of the self that throbbed for unending gratification, the soul that gleamed like a distant star uncontaminated and untainted by any of this tumult and turmoil, held the profound promise of a spiritual fulfillment. The split with in was so deep and I could feel this eternal battle raging in the apparent silence of the dark night of the soul! I empathized with Zorba, the Greek; Narcissus and Goldmund; Zarathustra and a dozen other great existential heroes of the world literature. This, I realized, was not the sheer romantic tensions of an immature soul, they were abiding passions of the human mind.  W.B Yeats has immortalized this in one of great poems: The Dialogue of Self and Soul.

When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing ,

We are blest by everything:

Everything we look upon is blest.

However, I believe he has given a more touching poetic expression in his Wild Swans at Coole. This could work like the Arnoldian touchstone:

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

This not withstanding, my greatest humbling fear was that what if all these torments were merely another aspect of the human mind, the trickster? Then this great human tragedy would become nothing but the human comedy of errors. I was hooked on to The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno. I identified with that great pessimistic philosopher and the prophet of the will: Schopenhauer who also remarked that “life is essentially tragic and I am willing to make it more tragic by reflecting upon it!”

On my book shelf I found Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Immanuel Kant resting side by side with the Gita and the Koran and Khalil Jibran and Gurudev Tagore. I rode with angels and demons. Recited the Lalitha Sahasranamam, chanted the Gita and relished the immortal lines of Omar Khayyam in Fitzgerald’s classic translation.  The Buddha spoke to me and so did Christ. Lenin and Mao and Che Guevera found equal place in my inside. I was like Hesse’s Siddhartha meditating on the moving river all day and night. Sri Aurobindo and Ramana spoke to me. I lived through the struggles of these great minds. While Ramana sounded simple at the outset he made me pause and think. Sri Aurobindo was tough. But then I was fortunate enough to read through all that he wrote, not missing out any single line. His complexity I found was only at the outside, while deep within he was like I was, confused and bewildered, confronted with a million existential questions, relishing the great aesthetic experience of being and becoming, at one with the universe. Of course it took me only a little while to recognize his great and steadfast will that gave him the continued impetus to forge ahead in the supreme quest of the spirit. I felt I understood the reason for his overt withdrawal from the world of politics into the silence and solitude of the ashram. It was not a withdrawal at all but an all inclusive immersion into the larger being of the cosmic spirit. What delighted me most about this amazing intellectual yogi was his continued openness to the questions of the body and the intellect. Someone had called him a radical mystic. Yes, Sri Aurobindo gave clear cut answers to many of my questions. However the greatest challenge was in unlocking these observations in the laboratory of ones own mind. Behind every Jelkill there is this Hyde. It might be one thing to follow these teachings of these noble masters as teachings but another to experientially encounter them. My questing mind was always alert and devious, mischievous. I wanted the cake and to eat it too. Yoga and spirituality demanded great disciplining of the senses and the mind. I was worried whether these might lead to an incarceration of the sensuous self. I wanted the passions of the body and the soul to be equally well balanced. It was a virtual impossibility.

There are among the many possibilities of life two major options: having or being. The desires of the physical self are only gratified by the possession of material objects and other things relishable through the physical senses. The hungers of the higher self are not easily satisfied: the entire being has to be transformed. Now, the most wonderful aspect of existence as I came to understand aesthetically is the inexhaustibility of life. There is no end to what you can, have or be. The craving of the self can never be abated; the desires of the soul are equally well unsatisfiable. One can go on possessing the endless riches of this world and still feel the emptiness that only becomes vaster by the second. The physical being is like a hole in the ground the larger it becomes the more emptier it becomes. The soul on the other hand desires completion of being, as Sri Aurobindo has rightly pointed out in his The Life Divine. Aspiration rises up and grace comes down– the final union results in a transformation of the being. The physical ceases to be itself and the encounter enhances the human being. The process, as I understand it, is never complete in a stasis, but results in a dynamis—a constant process of becoming. Being is becoming. The passions of the mind are not mere freaks of the imagination but they are the beacons of the divine becoming.

This is the point where the Nietzschean superman recognizes that morality and ethics are for the commoners. This is devious turn of events; leading only to fascism and eternal perdition. This is anti humanism. But reading Nietzsche closely revealed to me that he was not so naïve as to lead humanity into eternal damnation. If I were to state that he was a self-realised soul it might raise many an eye brow and even raise the hornet’s nest against me. But then the man who debated music with Wagner and pried open the philosophical positions of the western rational enlightenment grounded on binary opposites only to reveal that there are no contradictions but only complementarities, could be no simple intellectual philosopher but only one with a profound insight gained out of rigorous self analysis very much in the lines of the Upanishadic Rishis. Blake had claimed : without contraries there is no progress. Nietzsche propounds: there are no contraries but only complementarities.  Not in complete possession but in complete surrender lies the ultimate becoming of the cosmic spirit.

I have come to understand that the intellect never gives up. It always craves for more. The mind never is satisfied. It is always questing. The passions of the self are uncontrollable. Well, why should one try to do the impossible? Living is its own becoming. Love and compassion, understanding and tolerance swell forth from a completeness of being, that is forever becoming. Not in having, that is for sure, but in becoming is the greatest satisfaction of having lived! A life that is free from regrets and misgivings, free from intentional acts of evil that bestow pain for the other, relishing in the completeness of being, is spiritual indeed.

To believe the poet: after such knowledge what forgiveness? Once you have looked into the heart of anguish there is no escape. Knowledge is pain. The more one comes to know the more one feels burdened, until one learns to empty one’s intellect like unwinding a taut spring. My passion for the unknown that used to torment me then is with me still; however, I have learned to look upon those tensions with more controlled ease. The Upanishad speaks of two birds sitting on a tree. One calmly looks on while the other eats the fruit. I am sure this is to be seen in the symbology of the Upanishads as the self-aware soul reflecting on the self. There is a certain calm that befalls one as one enters a huge cathedral or a temple or any religious site, and provided one is able to maintain the same calm one can come away with it. Just like the sannyasin who returns to the human habitation after sojourning the jungles as a vanaprasta, with a calm that passes all understanding, the tormented intellect is smoothened after it allows itself to be percolated by the spiritual.  Perhaps this is the self same condition in which Dostoevsky’s Kirilov comes to decide that he is ready to quit the world. It does no more matter whether he exits this way or that; no more is he a vassal to the flesh, nor bound by the lesser moral laws of the mortals.

smurali1234@yahoo.com