Aaah; Yeh cheez badi musth musth

When i was writing my last post, i had a compulsion to write about this word Musth..but refrained because it was not really relevant to the main story (.may be remotely...if at all.)..and feared it would have taken the emphasis out of the main character.....But now, i must...

It tickles me...The word Musth...It must have been an urdu word...Literally means INTOXICATING..as an adjective ..and as a noun in particular cases like the person in my last post....Usually , you can call a heavily inebriated man as being in a state of musth...It is that pinnacle of mindset,semi consciousness, where a man..or a woman, as the case may be....lose their faculties , inhibitions, senses and ultimately themselves in the clouded mists of vapours of the intoxicant..Whew...How i tied myself into knots in trying to put it into words.......

Kenneth Anderson describes Musth as a periodic ailment that affects male elephants from time to time..akin to sexual excitement....During this stage ,a fluid oozes from their eyes and they become a menace to everything on legs...They become insane and resort to violence...often tramping on anything on hand to pulp...He warns that jungles are usually safer than many cities and metros...only watch out for three things...an elephant in musth, a cubbing tigress, and ofcource mating big cats....Don"t ever go near them and lord help if you ever do...

Common though is the MUSTH of drinks and opiums,and their after effects, now , i want to talk about the range of the word musth in sufi or bhakthi philosophy...for..the highest state of philosophical enlightenment and devotion is nothing short or even lenghthier than the other musths..And no languaze sang it better than urdu.... In fact, once you understand that devotion is nothing more than love towards God...even the sleaziest of lyrics sound like sookthi mukthavali...Just read this one..The famous hide and seek song from Jawaani Diwani....


jaan-e jaan
doondhtaa phir rahan
ghoomoom mein raat din
mein yahaan se wahaan
mujh ko aawaaz do chup gaye o sanam tum kahaan?
mein yahaan

The distraught lover, pained by the non -appearance of his Mashooq is roaming across the land...seeking his beloved hither and thither in frenzied quest..---just as the seekers and mystics run after the ultimate truth...pleading with him to answer...


o mere humsafar
pyar ke raah par
saath chale hum magar
kyaan khabar?

they are lamenting how tortoured are these ramblings...

Rasthe mein kahin
khogaye humnasheen


we were united at first, but lost contact midway...

The mashooq-in this case, -god, replies playfully

Haath mein ho bus aisi hi
chod kar chal diye

Why did you leave my hand when i was accompanying you so faithfully?

pas ho tum khade
mere dil mein chupe
aur mujhe kuch pathaa naa chale

ultimately the lover is found out..in his own heart..not hidden anywhere else...He is wondering how he did not ever look inside.....To which, the lover replies rather meaningfully

dil me dekha nahin
dekha sara jahaan

or this song from phool aur kaante

door tumse rahoon tho hon bechainiyan
pas aaoo tho badhthee hai betaabiyaan
ho na jaaye kabhi tu mujh se judaa
ho na jaaye kabhi tu mujh se judaa
ye dil tere liye hi machaltha hai
tum se milne ko dil kartha hai
tum hon woh jis pe dil martaa hai


Once , he tasted this musthi,he is not willing to let go of it..and craves the union forever...

jab se tum se shuroon yeh kahaani huyi
log kehthe hai ke main tho deewanee huyi
jaane kyaa baat aisi hai tujh mein sanam
jaane kyaan bat aisi hai tujh mein sanam

He is lamenting that people are now calling him insane...Oh..What was it in you that makes me this mad?

See..how the rather commonplace lyrics of a b-rated movie are going straight to heart?..

In Hinduism, this kind of love is called mathura bhakthi and is generally confined mostly to vaishnava saampradayam....krishna and his gopikas and the legend of Goda,...meera..It reached it"s best expression in the gopika geethas and bhramara geethas of Pothana in andhra bhagavatham

nee charana yugmambu channula meeda mopi
badha harimpu varimpu Madhava

kitiyeie kougita cherchenu
vatudye vardhilli koliche
vadi krishnundye itu padachinhambulide
krindati bamunanemi nochithamma dharithri

The gopis have lost their siggu, lajja, abandoned husbands,and lactating babies in an unabashed pursuit of the lord in thousand ways..as they went through the all stages of love..the seduction, pursuit, viraham, doubts and jealousies,

Alternately the lord is loved upon as a master,friend,parent,and child too,with an intense abandon as the devotees got ready to renounce families,friends,and the self in a no holds barred display of bravado..for this exacting lover who demands complete surrender..
So.?what is the secret of this musth ?

The Musth

When we were kids,...--even till 73 n 74--, a trampish sort of man used to go around in Bandar ,begging for food...May be still some people can remember him for he was quite a mysterious character...A frail looking man, emaciated from want,he used to carry a biig bundle of rags on his back... yes..rags...no diamonds or currency hidden in folds...They were just rags as one can easily see through.......I always wondered why he carried this additional burden...We, kids were simultaneously fascinated and frightened with this person"s Dickensian appearance-(-he did exactly look like the sketches of villains in Dickens"s novels---dark,smeared with mud,and serious---)I never saw him smile..

Some said he was insane...A bandaru pichadu..Our cook, satyanarayana used to say such people are called MUSTHS..a kind of leftist spiritual seekers...People who have given up the mundane world and sought god by leading a lonely life as mendicants... When he was not on streets, he stayed at the backside of the Gangaanamma gudi at the Thadepalli vari satram..resting with his sooty backpack..in sun ,in the rains of a bandar storms and cold...

Whenever he arrived at our doorstep,i ran in and brought almost pavu seru measure of rice and gave it to him...all the while trembling with fear...He used to accept it with an inscrutable face and move off...

Once, when i was out of station, it seems he arrived at our door and begged for alms..It was a busy time and my people told him to move off...Then ,strangely, he said that he came in to see the little girl who gave him alms and not for food...My people smiled over this and did give him something after all but i was pleasantly surprised when i came to know this...

Some time later i heard that he was found murdered near the backside of the ganganamma gudi where he usually stayed ..by unknown assailants...I still keep remembering him...

The Day I Saw God

May be the title should read as the evening.....For it was on an evening....one june evening in 1969 to be precise..when i saw the mother for first time in Jillellamudi..

I was about to celebrate my twelfth birthday soon...and enjoying my summer holidays at that time in Guntur, with my favourite cousins...and was supposed to join my parents later,when they travel to Penukonda (ananthapurDt) as dad was transferred there...But still there was lot of time before that and as i said before, i was having a whale of time in Guntur....

I hazily remember that there had been a lot of talk in the house about taking a trip to Jillellamudi (uncle and aunt are related to the mother).. though it never seemed to materialize.. and ofcource we kids never bothered...But one day Apparao mamayyagaru and Sarusatha called for a taxi and we were bundled in to it and started for the two hour long trip to Jillellamudi......I could remember how we got inordinately delayed, right at the Radhakrishna theater over some mechanical trouble...I think we waited for nearly one and half hrs before the car could start, and reached jillellamudi at about four or five in the evening...

In those days...Why? even now jillellamudi was such a peaceful place but going to it was tortuous.....Those seven miles from Bapatla seemed to be like seven hills ..the roads were that bad... We turned right, at the seventh milestone and motored in along the two or odd kilometers to jillellamudi, across the naked fields that had already been harvested and waiting for the first rains... we reached the big building that was called Adaranaalayam..I curiously watched as my aunt and uncle relaxed, talking to the few of their relatives, and other followers there...I think we were taken to Hymalayam too..before going up to the tiny penthouse on the third story of the building to see mother..

We were ushered in to a small room...and i could not describe the silence in there...It was a tense...exciting...throbbing kind of silence..as if the breathing is put on a hold....Not the drab, soundless gloomy silence..forgive me for being unable to put the feeling in to words...Mother sat on her bed...Visitors went up , bowed at her feet and sat back...I too sat back with my cousins and watched her...Dressed in an olive green silk sari with a red border, looking on with a calm face..she was a spell binding personality... I mean...put her in any place on this world ,without all this building up of the atmosphere,.. and still everyone would be staring at her...Though, personally she was not bothered and received people naturally..If they are known to her, she would give a happy smile and greet..Many strangers used to come to see her..and she would give them a considerate look...and was ready to talk if they so desired..

When you meet a stranger, you could look in to their eyes and know and read whatever the language they speak...usually it is impersonal..sometimes curious,sometimes indifferent,interested.annoyed, admiring,wondering,hating according to case......But when mother looked at you ,you can hardly read anything. of that sort...It was as if you are not a stranger..as if she knew you...She looked at you once or twice and carried on with other things.

On that evening someone presented her with a basket of ripe mangoes and she called in everybody present and gave a fruit to each one..I myself received one..later in the evening, she retired to the lovely open terraces of the building and all of us gathered around her bed and she sat talking to the few people ..

We spent nearly ten days there,..and i am sorry to say, we kids were immersed in ourselves playing, fighting, and chatting...We hardly paid any attention to the mother....Ofcource at all times we used to go and have darshan and even sat with her for sometime, and thought highly of her..But the age being such we concentrated more on games than on anything else..that it surprised me myself very much when, on the last day of our trip,as we sat before her and the fact suddenly realised on me that i may not see mother again once i go away...a slight feeling of sorrow started nibbling me and just then mother beckoned me to come to her...She used to have an uncanny sense of knowing other"s feelings...I went up and -did"nt know why- ,began crying..and really cried my heart out...Mother took me into her arms and soothed me affectionately...Oh.The sheer grace and game of lord....Why should i cry to part with a distantly related woman? and why should she, a rather busy woman, take some silly young girl to her heart and console her?...

Thus began a long relationship.....It saw some highs and lows, some offs and ons, some tantrums, -entirely on my part-,when i thought she was not caring for me,.. when something did not happen to my taste,---So,just because you believe in god he is bound to do as you bid?.--- but she always stood by me steadfast,showering her grace...it passed all those stages...and now if you asked me to show god i would be able to...

some links on mother
http://www.motherofall.org/
http://www.viswajanani.org/index.htm

On The Perils Of Reading

Everybody says reading is a good habit, an art by itself, a great pastime, a door towards knowledge,it must be inculcated in children from very young days, blah, blah blah........Personally i am not very sure... My expierience tells me otherwise....Though one sentence is ofcource correct...about it opening the doors to knowledge...(information,might be a better word here).....Only i wonder if knowledge is such a good thing?....and what kind of knowledge?.....These days, i am coming to the conclusion that the surest way to happiness is through ignorance....

I think, this fine art of reading is also a hereditary sort of thing...My maternal grandmother was said to have been a voracious reader...She was said to have used to preserve the paper bags that came with provisions and read them....My mother inherited that...I remember her devouring weeklies,novels,classics,in the short free time she could catch between her busy household duties of presiding over a brood of five temperamental kids,.. attending on a demanding husband,...( she had to run after dad with a towel as he went for his bath...He was so royal in his habits that he could not be bothered with trivial details like carrying a towel for the bath)..and to round it off, looking after an extremely fierce dog....

I myself took to this pastime as a duck takes to water...and do"nt take this as bragging...For i now regret it and wish i had"nt.....As a girl of eight,(student of third class,) i used to read the serials of ANDHRA PRABHA and PATHRIKA...I can still remember some instances of them...Dad used to be proud of this and he egged me on further by subscribing to the M>S>co pocket books,,,..and i lost my self in the excitement of the adventures of ALLARi GOPI -_ADBHUTHA YATRA, Alladdin"s lamp, and umpteen others, so much so that the class books seemed tame in comparison to the thrills provided by the fiction....Needless to say, the studies suffered.....

And there was no looking back to this spree of reading...As i grew up , i , seriously followed the current serials in the popular magazines,graduated to novels,---yaddanapudi, koduri,dwivedula, latha--- to classics,---chalam, viwanatha,sarath,-- veered to mystery and made mincemeat of detective yugandhar, parasuram, narsan,enjoyed the breezy puranam sitha, rachakonda viswanatha sastry,ravuri,....

When introduced to the english literature,i made it a hobby to exhaust the entire works of specific authors,.... Dickens, Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle,chase,earlier Harold Robbins, Sheldon's,..what not.... i impartially read everything,.. fiction, philosophy,mystery,and hunting too,---Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson-- though i never saw a real gun in all the 48 yrs of my life, and tigers and cheetahs only in zoos.... ..

And i can not say if i am any the better, having read so much...Except for the sheer enjoyment i derived from reading, i did not seem to have developed as a person, and only got bad eyes to show as a result ...Not only that,...i do"nt think all this stood me in good stead for the forthcoming eventualities of life ...I have a suspicion that excessive reading made a person flighty...I generally saw that people who read a great deal of philosophy mistook themselves to be very virtuous--..I knew a man who read a lot on medicine and thought he was a virtual doctor....he used to gather patients from his place and personally took them to specialists...He used to show off and talk knowledgeably with them before those patients and interrupted them often with his own prognosis,...till the poor docs, unable to bear it any longer, stopped him with a polite word or two...

So, when i had a daughter, i took that extra care to see my daughter never indulged in this addiction and saw to it that she strictly read nothing more than the stories in her text books ... sometimes, she exhibited such an unholy appreciation of them that it bothered me with vague apprehension....Thankfully Anasuya had never shown any inclination towards it... Sometimes she got carried away by her friends and attempted to read some of the best sellers,but fortunately got tired very soon .. It delighted me when she yawned after ten pages of Da Vinci Code and wondered why the author made such long descriptions....I was secretly pleased when she read few episodes of Kenneth Anderson,pronounced them as very good, but gave a wide berth to other episodes... ....

She studied well, and has become an earthier person than me, i am glad to say...

usha

I don"t really remember when Usha got into our class....Might be in seventh? or was it in eighth?...must have been in mid seventies...not very sure....No wonder, since i rarely paid any attention to the goings on in the classs....I was always a backbencher, had the reputation of a shirker,skipped school at least one day a week, and studied only those subjects that interested me and managed to scrape through others, and cleared my tenth with a liitle help from the government of andhrapradesh in form of moderation marks,with a precarious,36/ in maths.....

Usha Padmanabham was a newcomer,..turned up in the middle of the academic year,as her father ,-an L.I.C employee-got posted to Bandar on transfer...., They were tamil brahmins,, had little knowledge of telugu,and her parents were worried over whether she could cope up with this mid term joining ,and by the fact that she was new to studying in telugu medium.......Usha always sat in the side front row,strategically placed to be in full view of the teachers, as she tried to grapple with the studies........A thin girl with two long upturned plaits in ribbons, and two big bright almond shaped eyes in a good humoured face..


Later i was surprised to see Usha on our own street...They were staying in rented portions in the area, quite near to our own house..........Once or twice i visited her at home,and I could recollect her father as having been a thin ,short,energetic man,who spoke rapidly and also quite loudly and flitted in and out of the house wrapped up in a towel if it was mornings ....(.must have been doing his pooja) and lungis in the evenings.....Her mother, a large woman with the same good natured face of Usha used to give us a big smile and just that.........since she could not manage even one word of telugu......

It was not as if Usha had no prior knowledge of telugu, since she could speak it well, though with a heavy accent and few faux pa,where she freely mixed up genders, and tenses....and cared not for whether she was speaking in first person or second person... She came prepared,-I think was trained beforehand- managed to clear subjects comfortably --science, social studies, maths-had no trouble with english and hindi,but quite predictably, met her waterloo in telugu...and her nemesis was none other than our redoubtable Lillee teacher....

Lillee teacher was already retired,serving on extension and it appeared quite plain that she should have rested...I personally thought she looked over seventy ,tired, as she hummed and hawed,,,and as irritable as only very old people can be and it fell to Usha" lot to train under her......It used to be very funny to watch Usha as she stood up with a resolute shake of her head -ribbons and all--to submit her notes and assignments to Lillee teacher... Madame screwed up her eyes and went through the papers with a grim expression..Then she threw them down in disgust, demanded a rivision,, and wailed to the world how long she had to keep dealing with these stupid girls, and called Usha an arava gadidha..Which, in plain telugu meant a tamil donkey...The class watched in half sympathy and half amusement..for everybody knew old Lillee teacher was never stingy with her expressions and liberally used them as she chose.........Usha never batted an eye lid. She calmly picked up her notes, went back to her bench, sat down and carried on in the same good humour...

In time we completed our tenth..,Usha gradually picked up telugu and in junior college opted for telugu literature...Her parents decided to continue at Bandar without trying for transfers,..I on my part , went away from bandar and the last time i heard of her,she did her B.Ed in Telugu,and was working in a reputed school ,as a telugu teacher...=D>