TUKARAM AND OPPENHEIMER

PREFACE:

Well, as we have been telling our captive audiences through various means, we continue to be concerned about the incomprehensibility of our blogs. The dilemma is that they are openly so, if not designed to be so. And yet we are left wondering why the world has not beaten a pagdandi to our humble door-step. For one, there are the traffic jams which have also now overtaken Ramgarh of Sholay. Basanti drives a Nano now. Then, we are changing our address too often, in Hyderabad, in Mumbai, then Bhavnagar, then Ahmedabad, then Baroda, then Mumbai, then Patiala, then Indore, then Guwahati, then may be Shillong, if Chabiwala Bank reads the writing on the wall. He, he, he whatta joke!!! Shiva, Shiva, Shiva!!

A while back Gopal showed us the calendar and gently reminded us that we had not yet kept our monthly trysht, with IndrayaniKaathi. Then we happened to discuss our new orphanage, Chabiwala Bank. On the issue of incomprehensibility of the blog, we told him what our Organisational Intervention friend, the grand old man, the sexy Devadason told us about top executives of Chabiwala Bank. His observation was that some of our top guys had an attention span of 5 seconds or less. Come to think of it, we could place 3 of our bosses in that exalted space. Equipped with 5-second circuit breakers. Believe us jeee! So, why, why, why with so many ‘cirkits’ around, should anyone in his senses read such tedious blogs?

And then missus strikes the 0000 gong. Fold up that stuppid blog and that lap-top, aai sayyyyy…..!!!. We send her packing with a little tale from the stables of Bhau, our Grandad. It’s about the ironies of addiction, blogging included. Here it goje:

A bhakta sets out to propitiate Shiva, the generous God. The bhakta stays frozen in a standing pose for 12 years, food-less and water-less. Impressed, the Neelkantha appears before him in all magnificence, and grants a boon. The bhakta, unfortunately happens to be an old tobacco addict, and the moment he comes to, and beholds Shiva, exclaims, “ um..um..could I just have a pinch of tobacco please? Granted! says Shiva, relived, one imagines. The bhakta is left rubbing his ?? tobacco, he,he,he! That’s the power of addiction, one tells missus, and she bolts.

Back to the theory of short attention spans. If the people running Chabiwala Bank cannot stand a situation for more than 5 seconds at a time, how can we expect ordinary guys (mince not our regular readers haaan…) trying to wrestle with IndrayaniKaathi to last more that 5/6 seconds?? Ordinary guys like ....like say Amartya Sen or Warren Buffett or Duvvuri Subbarao? So, why should we expect people to read our sesquipedalian blogs, whatever their merit. Unless readers are trapped in their homes like readers of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, lucky chaps, contending with Siberian winters. Or unless IndrayaniKaathi is declared to be a ‘bestseller’, or is declared an endangered species, maybe.

To cut it short, we decided to write a short short blog this time, ekdum ektu,ektu. Apology for a blog. Here it goes:

BLOG:

It is about a phenomenon we admire. The prescience of some of our ancient holy men. In the Bhimsen abhang Parrikar cites as model Malkauns, Tukaram says “ Tuka is as small as the atom and is as vast as the Universe”. In another great bhajan set to music by Sharang Dev (who ijj he?- God bless him?) Kabir predicts the death and extinction of the Sun, the Moon, the numbers 9, 10 and the 33 crore Hindu deities:

The Tuka abhang transcript followj:


Too scarce to occupy an atom,
Tuka is vast as the sky.
I swallowed my death, gave up the corpse,
I gave up the world of fantasy.
I have dissolved God, the self, and the world
To become one luminous being.
Says Tuka, now I remain
Only to oblige.

Atom is an interpolation from history, mince it was later that the word ‘anu’ was adopted for the Dalton-wala atom. But just you imagine! And do you remember what the father of the atomic bomb Robert Oppenheimer was reminded of, when he beheld the first nuclear explosion? The viraat swaroop interlude of Lord Krishna in the Bhagwad Gita. Coat:

“…I am become death, the destroyer of worlds…..”
You must hear the words in his own voice on Youtube @

He also tells about the scene, the feelings of scientists watching the explosion from a safe distance. People were immensely saddened and some scientists wept.

Finis! That’s it. Kya blog hai? Tail longer than the dog…. ehhh? We would like to point out to chatur wachakani, that fellow genius G.B.Shaw’s play collections always came in sets of twos- the preface, comprising 10122 pages, and the main body, running into say 520 pages.

To end, here is another non-sense verse:


“Who killed Cock Robin?”
“I said the sparrow,
“I killed Cock Robin,
With my bow and arrow”

Some snaps of Cherapunji:

Gorges a km deep



Top of waterfall

 



Point just before CP

Clouds drift into you