Another New Year's Day

Thus wrote Jawaharlal Nehru, who was then imprisoned in the district gaol of Dehradun for political charges by the British Empire, on the New Year Day of 1933, to his daughter Indira:

It is New Year's Day today.  The earth has completed another cycle round the sun.  It recognizes no special days or holidays, as it rushes ceaselessly through space, caring not at all what happens on its surface to the innumerable midgets that crawl on it, and quarrel with each other, and imagine themselves--men and women--in their foolish vanity, the salt of the earth and the hub of the universe.

I was reading his Glimpses of World History earlier this morning when these words caught my attention.  Indeed, the sun and the earth know no novelty in completing one cycle and starting of another one.  But, we, as pity human beings we are, must have to stop somewhere and take a break to review the past and to plan for the future.  So, let us take this chance as an opportunity to look behind and then to take a great leap forward…

Wish all the readers of this blog a very happy new year.  Let the New Year just only be the first step of a lot more prosperity and joy to come.

The case much harder

This time it was 'Crime and Punishment' by Fyodor Dostoevsky that made me nervous.  It has now been a typical situation.  I visit to book stalls and book exhibitions; rather they pull me towards them.  I just go through the books with eager eyes.  I just go through the books knowing that I cannot afford buying them.  I just go through the books knowing that it's going to make me panicky at the end.  I can't help myself to keep away from the book stores and exhibitions.

I learnt the poem 'The Two Boys' by Mary Lamb in my college days.  The first boy, who cannot buy books, tries to read books at the bookstall itself.  The stall-man shout at him saying "You, Sir, you never buy a book, therefore in one you shall not look."  And the boy has to leave the stall with a sigh wishing if he had never been taught to read, then he should have no need of the old churl's books.  On another day, the poetess sees another boy, very much hungry by his appearance, looking at meat in a tavern larder, and she thinks this boy's case is surely harder and "No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learned to eat."

I am not fully convinced that the second boy's case was really harder.  For one who loves reading, it's no less dreadful not to get books than not getting food to a hungry.  If not getting food kills the body, not getting to read the long-wished books (after being so close to them) kills the Self.  The first boy's case was no lesser worse than the second one's.

One another poem I remember is 'Kondawada' (i.e. Dungeon) by a Marathi poet Daya Pawar.  Born in a dalit (then untouchables) family, he and his family always had to succumb to various socioeconomic stressors, and he had a thought that he expressed beautifully in the concluding lines of this poem--I could not translate it, just the wildest translation--'Better if I had remained as illiterate as a stone.  I would have happily done all that that other people do.  At least, I would not have to suffer this scorpion-sting-like pain.'

And here I wish--better if I had remained…--oh, nay…better if I had enough resources…

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Marathi, Poetry

It's bit more ghalibana now!

You may say, as Shakespeare said, and people often quote “What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.” But don’t we have any attachment with the names, which give us our identity from birth to death and even after that? Don’t we expect people to use our name correctly and properly? Don’t we keep on pondering over the names of our beloved ones as a token of our love even we know that the names are only dry alphabets and are as different from those beloved ones as crocodile and cucumber? We do know that the names are merely names, and still we love them as we love their owners. Names work as the token of our beloved ones in our hearts. Not only the names of the living things, but also the names of nonliving objects, even the abstract ones, have some meanings in them that can make us happy or sad or anything.

But why I am telling all this to you now? It’s because I have been thinking over the name ‘Ghalibana’ for the last few days. I registered this name on blogger when I had been reading ‘Diwan-e-Ghalib’ and was very much impressed by Ghalib’s poetry. In that state of mind, I chose the name Ghalibana. I didn’t even know the exact meaning of the term, but knew ghalibana is widely used to refer something that is poetic. It is widely used as an adjective. Anything like that of Ghalib is ghalibana. I found the word very much ghalibana (poetic) in itself. I created the blog, but had nothing to write on it, so it remained idle for few months until I had an idea of combined blog of us three. I was not very much convinced about the success of this idea, so rather than starting a new blog, I used ‘Ghalibana’ for this purpose on an experimental basis. And it worked. It has been working more successfully than I had ever thought. And at this point, taking a variety of subjects on this blog in consideration, I had a thought that is the name ‘Ghalibana’ still suitable so that it can be continued forever? The blog is still poetic in its heart, and forever it will remain so, but there is also a vast material that does not seem to be poetic from any angle. So should we go on with the same name or think upon changing it?

I went on searching the exact meaning of ghalibana, but found no word ghalibana in Urdu dictionary. I did find ‘ghalib’, which means ‘probably.’ This meaning is far away from the poetic meaning of ghalibana. I again went on thinking why did Ghalib choose such a word as his takhallus? It certainly would not mean anything poetic in his days. He would certainly have the meaning ‘probably’ in is mind. He would certainly have some hearty attachments with the meaning ‘probably’, so that he gave up his real name ‘Asad’, and changed his pen name to ‘Ghalib’ though he had already started gaining popularity with his original name.

Ghalib loved introspection. He was a great critic of himself. Certainly, he had had respect for other people’s opinion—I think like this. You may have another point of view on this issue and probably yours may be a more appropriate one than that of mine—this philosophy of life would have prompted him to chose ‘Ghalib’ as his takhallus. I find this explanation very much possible one for his choosing such a pen name, which would be very awkward-looking in his days.

And what we do on ‘Ghalibana’? We put our point of views and expect counter-views from each other. In this way, we are going on with our great tradition of arguments and counter-arguments. It may not be ghalibana in a poetic manner, but it certainly is ghalibana in this broad manner. Coming on this conclusion, I assured myself that the name ‘Ghalibana’ is the most appropriate one for our blog. Now in this new light, this name worth more to me than it had been previously.

Obama, Elections, and Greenland

Lot of issues are in mind to discuss, but cannot find time to think over them. Just trying to keep them in front of you:
1. Elections in Maharashtra. Counting on November 13. Shivsena/BJP has no issues and Congress/NCP has 10 years of anti-incumbency. Maharashtra is waiting for results this Diwali.
2. We had talked about Greenland. We talked about how can such a big territory remain under sovereignty of some other state (Denmark)? It is an autonomous state under the Kingdom of Denmark with the queen of Denmark as the Head of State.
3. The topic of Greenland gave rise to thoughts about many other united dominions that form a state collectively. UAE consists of seven separate Emirates: Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi are well known to us. Each Emirate is ruled by a separate Amir.
4. Nobel prize of peace for Obama. Obama states: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.
5. Nobel prize of literature to Herta Muller, Romanian-born German novelist and poet.
6. Nobel prize to Venki Ramakrishnan, Indian-American molecular biologist.
7. Problems on permutation and combination, I find them very tough.

Waiting for you views. ~~Ganesh.

The Old Civilization and Our Inheritance

To know the old civilization let us try to forget the present for a while and go back 2000 or 3000 years in Egypt and in ancient Knossos in Crete. The ancient civilization took root in these two countries as well as in what is called Iraq or Mesopotamia, and in China and India and Greece. Greece, perhaps, came a little later than the others. So that the civilization of India takes rank in age with its sister-civilizations of Egypt and China and Iraq. And even ancient Greece is a younger sister of these.

What happened to these ancient civilizations? Knossos is no more. Indeed, for nearly 3000 years it has been no more. The people of younger civilization of Greece came and destroyed it. The old civilization of Egypt, after a splendid history lasting for thousands of years, vanished and left no trace behind it, except the great Pyramids and the Sphinx, and the ruins of great temples and mummies and the like. Of course Egypt, the country, is still there and the river Nile flows through it as of old, and men and women live in it as in other countries. But there is no connecting link between these modern people and the old civilization of their country.

Iraq and Persia-- how many empires have flourished there and followed each other into oblivion! Babylonia and Assyria and Chaldea, to mention the oldest only. And the great cities of Babylon and Nineveh. The Old Testament in the Bible is full of the record of these people. Later, in this land of ancient history, other empires flourished, and them ceased to flourish. Here was Baghdad, the magic city of the Arabian Nights. But empires come and empires go, and the biggest and proudest of kings and emperors strut on the world's stage for a brief while only. But civilizations endure. In Iraq and Persia, however, the old civilization went utterly, even as the old civilization of Egypt.

Greece in her ancient days was great indeed, and people read even now of her glory with wonder. We stand awed and wonder-struck before the beauty of her marble statuary, and read the fragments of her old literature that have come down to us with reverence and amazement. It is said, and rightly, that modern Europe is in some ways the child of ancient Greece, so much has Europe been influenced by Greek thought and Greek ways. But the glory that was Greece, where is it now? For ages past, the old civilization has been no more, and other ways have taken its place, the Greece to-day is but a petty country in the south-east of Europe.

Egypt, Knossos, Iraq and Greece--they have all gone. Their old civilizations, even as Babylon and Nineveh, have ceased to exist. What, then, of the two other ancients in the company of old civilizations? What of China and India? As in other countries, they too have had empire after empire. There have been invasions and destructions and loot on a vast scale. Dynasties of kings have ruled for hundreds of years and then been replaced by others. All this has happened in India and China, as elsewhere. But nowhere else, apart from India and China, has there been a real continuity of civilization. In spite of all the changes and battles and invasions, the thread of ancient civilizations has continued to run on in both these countries. It is true that both of them have fallen greatly from their old estate, and that the ancient cultures are covered up with a heap of dust, and sometimes filth, which the long ages have accumulated.But still they endure and the old Indian civilization is the basis of Indian life even to-day. New conditions have arisen in the world now; and the coming of the steamship and the railway and the great factory has changed the face of the world. It may be, it is indeed probable, that they will change as they are already changing, the face of India also.

But it is interesting and rather wonderful to think of this long range and continuity of Indian culture civilization, right from the dawn of history, through long ages, down to us. In a sense, we in India are the heirs of these thousands of years. We are in the direct line, it may be, with the ancients, who came down through the north-western mountain passes into the smiling plains of what was to be known as Brahmavarta and Aryavarta and Bharatavarsha and Hindustan. Can you not see them trekking down the mountain passes into the unknown land below? Think of them, those distant ancestors of ours, marching on and on, and suddenly reaching the banks of noble Ganga flowing majestically down to the sea. How the sight must have filled them with joy!

It is indeed wonderful to think that we are the heirs of all these ages. But let us not become conceited, for if we are the heirs of the ages, we are the heirs of both the good and the bad. And there is a great deal of evil in our present inheritance in India, a great deal that has kept us down in the world, and reduced our noble country to great poverty, and made her a plaything in the hands of few peoples. But have we not decided that this must no longer continue?

Fiction and facts.

When you asked me for a list of books for your school library, I had lot of names in my mind. Hundreds and hundreds of names jumbled in my mind and I could not send you a list earlier only because I could not sort out only a few names out of them. I had the list of best 100 novels by Times in my mind. I had a lot of literary classics in my mind. I had many veteran names from the fictional world in my mind. Then what did I choose?

I preferred non-fiction to the fiction. I preferred not literature, but I preferred history, politics, social studies, and science. The list I have sent you mail contains only one or two names in fiction and all the others are just non-fiction.

It is not that I do not understand the importance of fiction in life. It is not that I underestimate the importance of literature. It is not that I am only a cold-hearted lover of science. I love literature as I love my life. Literature has helped me to move forward when I was in great worries in my personal life. You know it.

But, again it is a time to move forward. Literature gives you ‘nazariya’ to look at the things, but science and facts give you a ‘nazar’. They tell you exactly what the thing is.

Let’s move towards the list. The first name in my list is the biography of Rabindranath Tagore written by Robinson and Dutta. I have been strongly attracted towards Tagore over the period of last few years when I read his Gitanjali and some of his short stories. I want to know more and more about him. How as a human being he was? How he lived? How he loved? How he looked towards the life? This is the only reason that the list also contains complete work of Rabindranath Tagore, which is the only fictional list other than Midnight’s Children.

The next name is ‘Poverty and Famines’ by Amartya Sen. We know his authority on this subject, and after reading his ‘The Argumentative Indian’, I wanted to read him more and more for his completely logical attitude to see the basic problems in the Indian society.

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, as I told you, is the only fictional work except works of Tagore in this list. This book is one of the best 100 novels selected by Times and it was also selected as the best from those 100 at various occasions, so I eagerly want to read this one.

‘What the Buddha taught us?’ is the scholarly work about the teachings of Buddha by a SriLankan monk and scholar Walpola Rahula. It has been regarded as an important introductory work on Buddhism. The explanation of ‘suffering’ in Buddhism by him worth to be read in original.

The next number in the list is ‘Ten days that shook the world.’ This is the book written by John Reed, an American journalist that is based on October revolution in Russia in 1917.

The next one is ‘Discovery of India’ by Jawaharlal Nehru and this hardly needs any explanation. You have been reading his ‘Glimpses of world history’ over the last few days and you must be very keen to read this another work by him as I am.

From this point, the list takes a sharp turn and moves towards the field of basic sciences. The first book in this part is ‘Philip’s Atlas of the World.’ You are very much acquainted with my interest in the maps and this would be a great thing if I can have such an atlas of my own to be kept with me always.

The next number is ‘A history of India’ by Romila Thapar. As you know, Romila Thapar is a well-known historian and author of at least a score of books including great works such as ‘Asoka and the decline of Mauryan Empire’ published by Oxford University Press. This book covers the period from Mughal rule through the years of British control to the government of Nehru, with emphasis on the continuity of development from one era to the next.

The next three books—Thinking Chemistry, Explaining Physics, and Illustrated Biology published by Oxford University Press—are standard works of basics in these three branches of pure science. My love to the basic sciences urges me to read such kind of works again and again.

‘The evolution of Indian economy’ is published by NCERT and would be of great help in understanding this aspect of our society.

The last one that I forgot to mention in the list is the classic work by a notable scholar of Indian constitution. ‘Working on a democratic constitution’ by Granville Austin is an important work if you want to learn more about constitutional structure of our country.

You may get surprise on viewing this list. Study, study everywhere and no fiction to read. But let me tell you, this is the time to move forward. This is the time to know the things as they are. A long, long life is spread in front of us to have fun. This is study time.

You may get details, such as publisher and prices, of these books from net if you need them for technical needs.

I am keenly waiting for you reply.
~~Ganesh.