A Delicate Matter

A few months back a reporter of a Karachi-based local eveninger narrated a funny incident to me. An Urdu teacher in Lahore divorced his young wife when she inadvertently called him "tum" (the familiar form of addressing someone) instead of "aap" (the more formal form)! This is something uncommon in this linguistically indifferent era. But Urdu literature and culture is full of such amusing anecdotes and idiosyncrasies. Josh Malihabadi, the great Urdu poet, who migrated to Pakistan after independence, took umbrage when the Nawab of Hyderabad used "tum" for him. Ghalib wrote "Teri mehfil mein aakar bade beaabroo hue/ Aap se tum aur tum se tu hue" (I humiliated myself in your company/ From aap, I became tum and finallyu tu). Ghalib himself frowned upon the more familiar forms of address and likened them to abuse. It's  said that the main reason for Ghalib's growing disillusionment with his favorite city, Delhi, was the fast intrusion of these modes of address in the Urdu based local lingo of the 19th century city. Ghalib's coeval Daagh Dehlavi was so worried about this undesirable invasion of common language that he almost stopped talking to strangers, lest they address him in a familiar fashion! Abuse me, but don't say tum to me."

There's a famous and oft-quoted anecdote in Urdu literature. The great Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir was once returning from Delhi to Lucknow. One gentleman from Delhi offered to give him a lift in his horse carriage. That man incessantly kept talking during the journey from Delhi to Lucknow. Mir remained silent. When he reached Lucknow, he profusely thanked that man for giving him a lift and gifted whatever money he had. That man asked him, "Mir Saheb, why didn't you utter a single word during the whole journey?" Because I didn't want to spoil my language by replying to your questions couched in an inferior tongue, "calmly replied Mir Taqi Mir. The late Urdu poet and judge, justice Anand Narayan Mulla, wrote of the legendary Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri who never ever used 'tum' even for his pet dog. Once Mulla went to meet Firaq at his home. Firaq himself opened the door, then saw his dog sleeping on the sofa and mildly scolded it, "Mehmaan tashreeflaya hain aur aap so rahe hain? Jaiya andar jaakar letiye!" (the guest has arrived and you're still sleeping? Go inside and sleep!). Firaq's dog calmly woke up and went inside. Mulla wrote later that he was flabbergasted to see a man like Firaq talk to his dog in such a gentle manner. Moreover, his dog also understood the refined language of his master. Firaq once said proudly, "My dog starts barking the moment he hears tum and he faints if someone calls him tu!

"Tum" or "tu" may be words of endearment for many, but some, still steeped in that pristine culture, find them to be derogatory. Subcontinental Urdu directly originated from Mughal Persian, which was devoid of 'aap'or 'tum'. It's worthwhile to mention that Persian has just 'shuma' (aap) in its vocabulary. It was Arabic, a language rich in expletives as well, that influenced Persian, and today one cn find abuses as well as 'tum' and 'tu' in modern Persian.

But in our linguistically loose times, this is a rarity. Conversations start with tu and end with fighting. So in this rather uncouth era, Lahore's Urdu teacher's stress on polished language is heart-warming and reassuring, but at the same time, isn't divorce too harsh a punishment for a simple bride, who may have said "tum" to show love towards her husband? It's worth remembering that in Urdu culture, Allah is always addressed as 'tu'. And the rationale is, there's no formality between Allah and his worshipper.

A Life Free of Burden

Why are we not able to progress quickly?

The reason why people do not progress quickly is that they are loaded with a pile of external opinions and thoughts.

If you go for a walk in the morning and someone asks you where you are going, you reply cheerfully that you are taking a walk. How cheerful your face looks!

At 10 or 11 am, if you are going the same route and someone asks you the same question, you answer dispiritedly: "I am going to office/" You no longer exude cheer. Why? Because your mind is full of all kinds of ideas - " I have to do this, I have to do that ……." - you are burdened with the sense of doer-ship. This is not the way. Go to the office or your shop, but plan your day in such a way as if you were a prince at play. You should take all your duties as if they are acts of amusement.

You may think, "If I take my work like pastime, my business will suffer."You're wrong. If you free yourself from anxiety and stress, you will work better. Why should you worry? You have seen the events of the past, you are seeing the present and you will also see what will come to pass in the future. At the most, you will die, and die you must some day or the other. Don't be afraid of death; don't try to save yourself from death, and don't try to escape it either: Invite and welcome troubles with a challenging and playful curiosity. Then they will lose their severity.

Many people are in perpetual fear of being insulted. Insult is far better than the fear of death. Death is preferable to the fear of death. Criticism is better than the fear of criticism. Fear fans the fire of distressing thoughts; it diminishes your energy. So live life free of fear, worry and stress.

Poet Melton's wife would chide him when he set out to walk with the aid of a walking stick. "Every day you go for a walk, but what do you seek to gain from this? You can't even see properly now"

Milton would reply, "Birds sing, winds play about and cress me. In that fresh morning air, when the dawn comes tearing the nocturnal darkness apart, it brings an untold beauty. I go to see that beauty."

His wife would say, "But you don't have vision. How can you see beauty?" Milton would reply: "Beauty is not seen with external eyes. The eyes that see beauty are within us"

Similarly, to analyze our life there is no need of the external eye; we need the internal eye. To see how calm or happy we are, or what is the state of our mind in adverse circumstances, we don't need external vision. We don't require external eyes to see if we behave with equanimity in the face of troubles and insults.

We require the internal eye to respect or we remain untouched by them. This insight to make life joyful and free is available only from satsang and company of saints who have awakened to their real Self; and is perfected through the practice of developing the 'witness' attitude. Therefore, instead of carrying the burden of the sense of doer or enjoyer, one should seek refuge in the enlightened ones and comprehend their witness absolute, eternal, pure, knowledge personified real self free from all bondage.

Character from Ideal

Meaning: The stanza of Yajurved 18/8 illustrate that — "Let me do such deeds that my truthful belie, faith, friendship, wealth, breadth of mind, play, humors, speech, and good deeds are uplifted".

Message: How lucky we are that we have been granted this invaluable human body and simultaneously what misfortune that we waste it away, in the animal-like activities of filling the belly and procreation. Our biggest and most important difficulty is of the proper, good use of life. Farsightedness lies in finding a solution to this difficulty. Only then will we be able to fulfill our life's objective and also fulfill God's wish.

Is the treasure of the power of knowledge, insight, capacity, worthiness and discretion given to us by God only for maintaining our bodies and families? If we recognize our capacity we will realize that after fulfilling our needs there still remains so much time, money and strength with us, which we do not put to good use and on the contrary, by its misuse, we are heading for the chasm of downfall. In trade or office, man has to spend maximum ten hours only; 6-7 hours are required for sleep and 3-4 hours for daily routine and meals etc. Even then daily four hours remains. We must sometimes think about what use we make of these four hours.

We must pay attention to our spiritual progress also. Believing this world to be a vast manifestation of God, all our remaining capacity must be utilized for making this world more fragrant and more developed. This will be possible only when throw out our faults, bad activities, bad thoughts and bad tendencies and make tremendous efforts for their eradication. Along with it we try to achieve perfection by including to the maximum extent, more qualities, deeds, idealism and naturalness in our character. Let us believe that proper plans for public-welfare are the real worship of God and let us consider as high level austerity the difficulties to be faced for removing the backwardness, ignorance and bad conduct all around us. Our spiritual progress will be in proportion to the attention that we pay to these matters and our willpower will increase accordingly. We should also listen to the voice of God within our conscience and determine our deeds according to its direction. Otherwise the habit of crushing the interests of the soul under our feet and spending all our mental capacities for bodily and worldly actives will prove foolish in the end and willpower costly.

The meaningfulness of life lies, only in employing the self in good deeds. Let us always think, see, speak and do good only through our mind, speech and deeds. Let us create all around us an atmosphere of purity and inspiring all our senses for good deeds, let us go forward on the path of progress.

A man of character receives praise by making such a life his ideal.

Formation of good character - for the upliftment of the soul, the foremost requirement is the excellence of character. Lucid explanation of the mantras highlighting the importance of good qualities in life is essential.

Chasing the Oracle

There isn't a single Indian TV news channel that hasn't featured Paul the celebrity octopus. After successfully forecasting the results of FIFA World Cup matches, this eight-legged marine creature has proved his clairvoyance. Well, that's at least the case with an energetic game played by the two-legged race, a sport that has become a passion in several countries but is yet to capture the hearts and minds of our young Indians. There's however, been recent news of threats from German fans to serve Paul up as soup or on seafood platters. But he and his handful of Indian fans seem far from appalled, now that the German authorities have vowed to protect him. Not without reason.

The Germans looked upon by the entire Euro-zone to pull it out of economic toxicity, have finally found Paul to lend a helping hand. For, if not European youth in search of employment. Paul certainly had many job offers - most of them from India, the only place that has plenty of jobs today!

So, will Paul prevent the polarization of countries of the Euro alliance by accepting the offer from our TV business channels to predict the outcome of our stock markets - for which he would have to study some other what longish sideways movement of the bourses, analysts are divided over which way the stock market will go. They would welcome Paul's help in figuring out the way ahead. After all, despite several heads pooled together on the issue, there's no consensus on this subject. One can't help but think more legs may work better than more heads. Paul could aid the experts in overcoming their 'predicament' - the predicament of being unable to predict the future.

But once Paul lands on the shores of our great country, regional politicians will be quick to make angry statements about soothsaying 'outsiders' and root for our traditional parrots. After all, there is many a bird in India competing with Mani, the fortune telling parakeet who happens to be an astrologer's assistant in Singapore's Little India. Our desi parakeets are waiting to make a complete poppet out of Paul the octopus, despite him having got it right with every football match outcome. Only, most of us are likely to think of homegrown psychics as ghar ka tota dal barabar. Which means Paul will get more offers, especially from 'charitable' and flush-with funds cricketing bodies, to predict the results of IPL matches. Why, he may even have to pick out the man of the match. Be prepared for lots of legwork, Paul!

Bollywood will then jump into the fray. It'll want to cast Paul in a lead role with female octopus chosen from a reality TV show to partner him. So if he's worried that all this television coverage will only give him temporary fame, he'll be underestimating the power of publicity on our national channels. Indeed, he'll have an opportunity to dance with his costar around plastic trees even while a villain forces him to turn his predictions into chores at gunpoint. But what the heck - think of the moolah the industry will offer!

Psephologists will not be far behind. At the cost of being renamed pse-Paul-logists, they too will extend an invitation to the eight legged - or is it eight-handed? -Creature. This time around, Paul will need to familiarize himself with a dozen national and scores of regional political parties in order to choose winners! That is, if he wants to be here and do something more than just drift listlessly like our bourses. Get the drift? But there's a catch. Paul may survive the threats of being turned into soups or seafood platters. But chances are he may not survive our media trails if ever allegations are made about a 'foreigner' coming to our shores and playing Paulitics! So good luck Paul, you might just need it.

Climate of Karma

What's been the hottest topic in India or at least in all of north India for the aspst several weeks? An American scientist's claim to have created life in a laboratory, thus effectively pink-slipping God? The patch between the Ambani brothers? Mayawati's/Mamata's latest tantrum (tick whichever applicable)? No, the hottest topic for the past few weeks has been the heat.

The plains of north-west India get hot in summer. It's a fact of life. Like gravity makes apples (ad other things) fall. Like birds can fly, but pigs can't? Like Behenji/Mamatadi will throw a tantrum on any given day (tick whichever applicable, which on some days might be both).

However, summer heat has always been a hot topic. Everyone agrees that the summer of 2010 is the hottest summer they've ever been through. However, within this broad framework of agreement, there is plenty of scope for heated argument. Some say it's the hottest summer in 60 years. Other says it's the hottest summer in a hundred years. Some say it's the hottest summer since meteorological records were invented, whenever that was. Other claim it's the hottest summer since the molesters were invented, whenever that was.

The more people talk about how hot this summer is and how much worse it might still get-the hotter I feel. Ad I am sure so does everyone else. So why do we do it? Why do we work ourselves into a frenzy telling each other how hot it is, recounting cases of people we know who've got sunstroke, or are likely to get sunstroke? Why do we send our internal mercury soaring by squabbling about whether it was hotter yesterday than it is today or whether that ought bothersome dog which, if you pay it the slightest attention, will feel encouraged to get familiar, trying to jump into your lap and slobber all over your face with its great big drolly tongue? Why do we make the heat so much worse by talking so much about it?

Are we a nation of masochists, people who take pleasure in their own suffering? Is that why we allow ourselves to get so hot and bothered about a routine occurrence: On the tropical plains, summer is going to be hot, as sure as eggs is andas? Or do we talk so much about the heat simply because we have no other topic of conversation. (Scientist who created life in a lab? What's so hot bout that? Didn't that Frankenstein fellow do its years ago? Tell you what. Let's compare heat waves instead. I bet my heat wave is bigger than your hat wave).

No, I don't think it's either of these reasons. I think that the reason we talk about the heat so much is because of our profound philosophy, not of man-made climate change, but of karma, which is the same thing. According to the laws of karma, all suffering in this life is an expiation of sins committed in a former life. If we suffer now it's because in our past we probably had it far too cushy and swanked round living the life of Reilly and looking down our noses at our less fortunate neighbors. Yesterday's gain today's pain. That's the karmic formula, as cosmically valid as E=MC². Conversely, today's pain must equal tomorrow's gain. If we put in more than our fair share of suffering today, tomorrow must in recompense, be hunky-dory, and the more dory the hunky the better. It's like insurance premia; the bigger the premium you pay today (pain) the bigger the insurance pay-off you get tomorrow (gain).

That's why we moan and bitch and bellyache about the heat. Because by doing so we hope in our next incarnation life will in all senses of the term, be cool. Me? The heat's making me so miserable right now that in my next innings Hell itself should freeze over. A real chill out.