What They Say..

About four or five days back, I read a blog by a Czech String Theorist. It was about two Czech entomologists who had been arrested in India for trying to smuggle some insects out from here. In his post, he had some nasty things to say about us Indians, calling us barbarians, wild animals who ought to be under British Rule etc. Some of what he said was true, but in general he was venemous and boorish.

It infuriated me, of course. But it should not have, may be. I think, if we were a confident people, we won't be bothered with what others say about us.

But I do feel happy when someone has anything good to say about us, and unhappy when abused. All our praises are deserved, and the abuses unreasonable and insensitive, right?

So when I read "Passage Through India" by Gary Snyder, who came here in the 60s, I felt happy about some of the things he had to say.

I will put them in for you now, and if possible, a more balanced post later:

"Such intelligence, pride, and poverty- India is a developed world, but anciently developed in a different way. Today, its joining the new "developed world" is in some ways a decline."

"But this is about India. East of the Indus river, the land that gave us Beginning Linguistics (Panini's Grammar) and Beginner's and Ender's mind: the teachings of Shakyamuni the Awakened One. Plus all that yoga practice and devotion to a host of Gods and Goddesses that will cleanse the whole universe of pollution (but it's not time yet). That's the high culture. (Whenever I want to get some help with my software I call up somebody who just happens to live in a place like Bangalore. We talk. I take this to be an after-effect of Panini's great work.)"

"I honour India for many things: those neolithic cattle breeders who sang daily songs of love to God and Cow, as a family, and whose singing is echoed even today in the recitation of the Vedas and the sutra-chanting of Los Angeles and Japan. The finest love poetry and love sculpture on earth. Exhaustive meditations on mind and evocation of all the archetypes and images. Peerless music and dance. But most, the spectacle of a high civilization that accomplished art, literature, and ceremony without imposing a narrow version of itself on every tribe and village. Civilization without centralization or monoculture. The caste system as a mode of social organisation probably made this possible- with some very unattractive side effects. But those who study the nature of the rise of the centralized state will find India full of surprises. And lastly, no culture but India prior to modern times imagined such a scale of being- light years vast universes, light-year size leaps of time. Dramas of millions of lifetimes reborn. How did they do it? Soma? Visitors from Outer Space? Nah. I think just Big Mind drank in with Himalayan snow-melt rivers and seeing Elephant's ponderous daintiness, and keeping ancient shamanistic sages and forest hermits fed on scraps of food, to hear and respect their solid yoga studies. The Buddha Shakyamuni, one of those, was loved and listened to by cowgirls, traders, and courtesans.

"India has had superb times- now fallen a while on hard times. And, beginning to end, irreducible pride. The sharp-tongued, sharp-eyed village men and women, skinny with hard work and never a big fat meal to eat a whole lifetime, live under an eternal sky of stars, and on a beginningless earth .They might need aid-dollars or aid-food but they don't need or want pity or disgust. An anvil the spirit is pounded finer on, India. Skinny, and flashy eyes"

There are a lot more things I love in this book, and will post them later, if possible.

Be you thoroughly saturated with happiness.