Are We Modern Humans Demon Taraka from Kalidasa's Kumārasambhava?

Karl Kraus:

"Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it...Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools."

 (A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with such a devastating cost that it carries the implication that another such victory will ultimately lead to defeat. One of the meanings of pyrrhic- Of or relating to a war dance of ancient Greece. )

meteorologist Hans von Storch, June 20 2013:

" I'm not aware of any studies showing that floods happen more often today than in the past. I also just attended a hydrologists' conference in Koblenz, and none of the scientists there described such a finding."

Maharaj K. Pandit, The Hindu, June 21 2013:

"The catastrophe in the Himalaya is the result of deforestation, unchecked construction of dwellings and large-scale building of big dams...neo-religious movements, linked to changing socio-political developments in India, are responsible for significant human movement into the Himalaya beyond the region’s carrying capacity, whether it is Amarnath in Jammu & Kashmir, Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Hemkund in Uttarakhand. "


In one of the most tender verses (is there anything non-tender there?)  in Dnyaneshwari (ज्ञानेश्वरी), Dnyaneshwar (ज्ञानेश्वर) 1275-1296 writes:

"आणि गंगा शंभुचां माथां।  संकोचली जेवि पार्था।
तेवि मान्यपदे सर्वथा। लाजनें जें॥" (16-203)

It describes the feelings of river Ganga as she lands on Lord Shiva's head on her way to the earth from heaven. She first felt very shy and then she blushed.

Was she shy ('संकोचली')  or blushing ("लाजनें जें") at Rishikesh in June 2013? 

Not quite.

 

  A submerged idol of Lord Shiva stands in the flooded Ganga at Rishikesh. 

According to the Central Water Commission, the water level in the Ganga had risen 1m above the danger mark.  Photo courtesy: AP  courtesy: The Hindu, June 19 2013

Weather, climate change, 'global warming' are largely not responsible for what happened in Uttarakhand.

We, and what we do in the name of progress, are and the bizarre picture above reminded me of  Kālidāsa's  epic poem 'Kumārasambhava' (The Birth of the War-god).

 The subject of the poem is the marriage of the god Shiva, the birth of his son, and the victory of this son over a powerful demon.

"प्रस्थानकालोचितचारुवेषः स स्वर्गिवर्गैरनुगम्यमानः ।
ततः कुमारः शिरसा नतेन त्रैलोक्यभर्तुः प्रणनाम पादौ ।। १३.१ ।।

जहीन्द्रशत्रुं समरेऽमरेशपदं स्थिरत्वं नय वीर वत्स ।
इत्याशिषा तं प्रणमन्तमीशो मूर्धन्युपाघ्राय मुदाभ्यनन्दत् ।। १३.२ ।।

...

कुमारसैनापत्याभिषेको नाम त्रयोदशः सर्गः ।"      (source: कुमारसम्भवम्/त्रयोदशः सर्गः)


In the thirteenth canto, as translated by Arthur W. Ryder:

"Kumara takes an affectionate farewell of his parents, and sets out with the gods. When they come to Indra's paradise, the gods are afraid to enter, lest they find their enemy there. There is an amusing scene in which each courteously invites the others to precede him, until Kumara ends their embarrassment by leading the way. Here for the first time Kumara sees with deep respect the heavenly Ganges, Indra's garden and palace, and the heavenly city. But he becomes red- eyed with anger on beholding the devastation wrought by Taraka."


 He saw departed glory, saw the state
 Neglected, ruined, sad, of Indra's city,
As of a woman with a cowardly mate:
  And all his inmost heart dissolved in pity.\
He saw how crystal floors were gashed and torn
  By wanton tusks of elephants, were strewed
With skins that sloughing cobras once had worn:
  And sadness overcame him as he viewed.

He saw beside the bathing-pools the bowers
  Defiled by elephants grown overbold,
Strewn with uprooted golden lotus-flowers,
  No longer bright with plumage of pure gold,
Rough with great, jewelled columns overthrown,
  Rank with invasion of the untrimmed grass:
Shame strove with sorrow at the ruin shown,
  For heaven's foe had brought these things to pass

Amid these sorrowful surroundings the gods gather and anoint Kumara, thus consecrating him as their general."

(Taraka in the following picture- from Ramayana- is a different figure than the one that appears in  Kumārasambhava.)

  

'Taraka vadh' by Artist: Raja Ravi Varma

courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

H A Bhave, A Practical Idealist I Liked...ह. अ. भावे, मला आवडलेला हिशेबी आदर्शवादी

Mr. Bhave, a Pune based publisher of Marathi books, died on June 18 2013. Most of the books he 'published' were free of copyright.
 
 "creative commons vs copyright"

Artist: Marcelo Braga 

I will always remain in Mr. Bhave's debt for making it possible for me to buy a number of rare / out-of-print Marathi books. His best 'gift' to me would be Laxmibai Tilak's (लक्ष्मीबाई टिळक) unabridged "Smrutichitre" (स्मृतिचित्रे).  

I bought a number of books by visiting his showroom-cum-press. I had a long conversation with him on one of the occasions.

Once I wanted the entire writings of Rajaramshastri Bhagwat (राजारामशास्त्री भागवत). They were listed in his catalogue. When I asked for them, he said they went out of print long time ago. He had to sell them really hard. He of course was kind enough to offer the 'master' copy of it for me to photocopy it in the nearby photocopy shop.


Although his aims were noble, he probably never forgot that he was, in the end, running a business. I often felt he could have priced some of the books cheaper.

I wanted to ask him what he thought of the books- similar or the same as reprinted by him-  priced at Rs. 50 by  Samanvay Prakashan , Kolkapur (समन्वय प्रकाशन, कोल्हापूर). (Read more on that here.)

I understand almost nothing of the business of Marathi publishing but I always feel most publishers aim to sell to libraries ahead of retail crowd like me. I don't buy some Marathi books because I perceive them to be expensive.

Go well Mr. Bhave. I hope Maharashtra's future generations will keep producing practical idealists like you. 

Catalogue and price list of Mr. Bhave's 'Varada Prakashan' dated 2011

Today Baby Bump's Like a Jasmine Bud...आज टपोरले पोट, जैसी मोगरीची कळी;

Ian Mortimer, SPIEGEL Online, Dec 7 2012:

"...Rape could almost never be proved. It was the woman's word against the man's. If the woman became pregnant, this was taken as proof that the sex had been consensual because people in the Middle Ages believed a woman could conceive only when sexually aroused..."

 "Pregnant"

Artist: Balbusso Sisters, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

B S Mardhekar (बा.सी.मर्ढेकर)'s very beautiful Marathi poem, what I call  'Hymn to a Journey: Girl to Mother':

"पोरसवदा होतीस
कालपरवांपावेतों;
होता पायांतही वारा
कालपरवांपावेतों.

आज टपोरले पोट,
जैसी मोगरीची कळी;
पडे कुशीँतून पायीं
छोट्या जीवाची साखळी.

पोरसवदा होतीस
कालपरवांपावेतों;
थांब उद्याचे माऊली,
तीर्थ पायांचे घेईतों."

[Poem no 27 from 'Kanhee Kavita' (कांही कविता)]

("You're childlike
until yesterday or day-before;
there was wind beneath your feet
until yesterday or day-before.

Today belly has grown,
like a Jasmine bud,
from limbs falls at feet
a string of  tiny life.

You're childlike
until yesterday or day-before;
hold tomorrow's mother,
I drink holy water of washing of your feet.)

My apologies for poor translation...

Hope King Shivaji Comes Back Without His Century! राजे तुम्ही परत जन्माला या, तुमचे शतक मागे ठेवून!

तुकाराम : "रात्रंदिन आम्हा युद्धाचा प्रसंग। अंतर्बाह्य जग आणि मन।"

Geoffrey Parker and Lesley M.Smith

"Writing early in 1643 some friends of the count-duke of Olivares, the disgraced chief minister of Philip IV of Spain, noted a global context for the failures of their hero in the apologetic tract, Nicandro: All the north in commotion… England, Ireland and Scotland aflame with Civil War… The Ottomans tearing each other to pieces… China invaded by the Tartars, Ethiopia by the Turks, and the Indian kings who live scattered through the region between the Ganges and the Indus all at each other’s throats."

('The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century', 1978)

रा भा पाटणकर :

"शिवाजीने रयतेच्या भल्यासाठी केलेल्या गोष्टी सर्वश्रुत आहेत. पण तरीही तेथील सामान्य रयत सुखात होती असे म्हणता येणार  नाही ."

(पृष्ठ 56, 'अपूर्ण  क्रांती',  1999)


JOHANN HARI :

"You and I and everyone we know are always living only a few weeks of food away from famine psychosis. Here’s how it goes. Deprived of meals, your body starts to consume itself. It uses up the glucose stored in your liver and body fats. It uses up the proteins in its own muscles and cells. Rapidly, your body starts to mock you: your belly swells as if you are becoming fat, because the breakdown of muscle causes the remaining fat to bunch there.

And then your personality is consumed. As Thomas Keneally puts it in “Three Famines”: “The victim becomes a new person. The fastidious become slovenly; the kindly become aggressive; the moral are caught up in the great amorality of famine. Fraternity and love wither. Judgment vanishes, and a hyperactive anxiety seizes the mind.” You are gripped by psychotic delusions. Sometimes you will eat your own children. You will become so insane you don’t even recognize food when it is put in front of you; rescued famine victims often howl for sustenance long after it is offered to them. And then you die..."

 
In Maharashtra, I have now seen a number of motor vehicles (and even other structures) that carry Shivaji's (1630-1680)  picture with an appeal.

The appeal in Marathi reads something like this: "राजे तुम्ही परत  जन्माला या." (King you be borne again.)

I believe people are so fed up with the current state of administration in Maharashtra that they long for what they perceive as the good administration: Shivaji's rule.

A commercially successful film 'Mee Shivajiraje Bhosale Boltoy' (मी शिवाजीराजे भोसले बोलतोय), 2009  had the theme of return of Shivaji to the current times to address the so-called woes of middle-class Marathi speaking people in Mumbai.


I too wish Shivaji returned to rule Maharashtra with a small rider: He doesn't bring back 17th century along with him!

Why?

I recently read a review of  Geoffrey Parker's book "Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century". Review is done by Christopher Booker  for  The Spectator, UK. (The following words are based extensively on that review.)
 
All around the globe except in a few countries like Japan, 17th century was peculiarly cruel time to be alive.

"It marked the depths of that ‘Little Ice Age’ which saw global temperatures lower than at any time since the end of the last glaciation 13,000 years ago."

This change of climate would play a decisive role the way 17th century shaped. 

When we read popular history of 17th century Maharashtra, this fact seldom comes across. 

Not just that but I don't recall even D G Godse (द ग गोडसे) or T S Shejwalkar (त्र्यं शं शेजवलकर) or Setu Madhavrao Pagdi (सेतु माधवराव पगडी) mentioning it- little ice age-  in any of their great essays on Maratha history and culture.

It is a big miss because of what that huge climate change did to people of India.

"Everywhere from China and India to Britain and Ireland, droughts, floods, cold summers and freezing winters caused massive crop failures and economic breakdown, not only leading to widespread famines but making it impossible for impoverished and starving populations to meet those ever-rising tax demands."

Anthony Reid writes: "In India as a whole the worst years were 1630 and 1631, representing ‘almost certainly the most destructive Indian famine of the early modern era’, which killed about 3,000,000 people in Gujerat alone...In 1660–61 another appalling drought struck South India, and particularly Tanjore, where ‘famine has so increased that whole villages, towns and hamlets have been depopulated, and hardly anyone remains, the dead lying in dried-up tanks’."

 ('THE CRISIS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA')


Poet-saint Tukaram (1598 ? - 1650) was very much alive during 1630-31. His life too like most others was wrecked by the recurring droughts and famines of 17th century. 

Since self-rule started in 1947, the rain-gods have generally been kind to Maharashtra, planet earth has not seen anything like a little ice age and yet we have this huge water crisis in the summer of 2013.

How lucky we are that we don't live in 17th century and how lucky 17th century people were that they didn't have 21st century rulers!

Natives Waiting for Relief at Bangalore

The Great Famine of 1876–78,  the worst famine of the century, which claimed perhaps 5.5 million lives in the Deccan and the south

Artist: Unknown, The Illustrated London News , October 20 1877


courtesy: Wikimedia Commons.
  

"It has long been familiar that the 17th century was also a time of extraordinary political turmoil right across Europe and Asia, from the Thirty Years War which laid waste vast tracts of Germany to the overthrow of the Ming dynasty in China; from the murderous civil wars and revolutions which rocked Britain and France to the disintegration of the Spanish empire. As early as 1643 a Spaniard observed that it was ‘one of the epochs when every nation is turned upside down’. Voltaire noted, a century later, how many rulers had been murdered or executed, from the Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim in 1648 and Charles I in 1649 to the Mogul emperor Shah Jehan in 1658, calling it ‘a period of usurpations almost from one end of the world to another’.

Again and again we see similar patterns, as empires and kingdoms became drawn into a plethora of wars, requiring their rulers to raise ever larger sums of money in taxes. But again and again, as countries and whole regions were thrown into chaos by war, made worse by epidemics of disease, such as smallpox and the last recrudescence of that plague which had wracked Europe since the Black Death, we see how extreme weather events intervened to make the situation much worse.

 It is no accident that it was right in the middle of the 17th century that Thomas Hobbes included his heartcry in Leviathan that the life of man is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. Reading Parker’s painful accounts of how the general crisis tore apart one country after another, from Ireland to China, one can only think how fortunate we are not to live in a time as desperate as any in human history.

 In Szechuan alone, in the chaos surrounding the downfall of the 200-year old Ming dynasty, more than a million died. Vast areas of Europe in the chaos of the Thirty Years War lost up to a third or more of their population. The French civil war between 1649 and 1653, the Fronde, caused a million deaths. In Britain the various civil wars between 1638 and 1660 led to the deaths of seven per cent of the population, far greater than the two per cent who died in the first world war. In Ireland this rose to a fifth.

 By adding the vagaries of the weather to the overall equation, Parker is not suggesting that these were the cause of the general catastrophe. But what he does show for the first time, with his wealth of evidence drawn from thousands of sources, is how the climate seriously aggravated the effects of all those wars and other disorders which made the 17th century such a peculiarly cruel time to be alive... "

That is why I appeal to Shivaji: King you be borne again, leaving behind your century! (राजे तुम्ही परत  जन्माला या, तुमचे शतक मागे ठेवून!)