The Sparrow And The Eagle

My dear kkrish
Reading your concluding sentence, I am urged to proclaim 'Honesty. thy name is kkrish!'
But I must hasten to assure you that just because I talk about all this, I don't become Cheeniya, the Enlightened!
I have had a sympathy for turkey not because it cannot dance like a peacock. It is because they are roasted in millions and consumed on the Thanksgiving Day! Fortunately lesser beings do not worry about their future or they will be dead well before their killing!
Sri

 

@Viswamitra
My dear Viswa

When I was in State Bank, we would usually answer customers’ written queries saying ‘With reference to the above, see the below’. Old habits die hard you know! I find myself unequal to respond to your fabulous response on an even tone. At the same time, I would be failing in my duty if I don’t endeavour to answer this to the best of my ability. First of all I don’t even know how to thank you for all the nice things you have said about my writing. Being down to earth has its own disadvantage. As you rightly point out, being down to earth all the time may make us eventually extinct! It is necessary occasionally to chase a more capable bird to prove that we are still around! I have seen earthbound birds often chasing high flyers for a while and returning back to their place with a proud look as if to imply ‘Look nothing is beyond me!’


‘Please don't blame me if my response is spiritual’, you have cautioned me but don’t you understand that it is what that we eagerly look forward to from you? This response of yours is indeed a feast. “Lucy” is a movie that I am yet to see. I called my granddaughter to enquire about it. She had seen it as I expected and predictably she was all praise for the movie. ‘If you have to describe it in one word, what will you say?’ I asked her. ‘Clever’ thatha she said. These children of the modern age have an IQ several times greater than us. That’s why I wanted her response in one word. If I had asked her to tell me about the movie, I would have ended up scratching my head! But I understood what you said about our high cerebral power and how we used only a negligible percentage of it. My dad had mentioned this several times in my childhood. ‘Do you have clay in your head?’ he would often as me. It has the potential to store enormous day but my problem is its retrieval when needed! The recent stroke had made it even worse but my doctor assures me that only a very negligible percentage of my brain is affected and the healthier portion is good enough for me to become a great scientist. I was not sure if he was serious or was merely joking.


Your explanation of our mental prowess and your mention of how we miss using it are very familiar to me. ‘People develop a bald head as they age only to indicate to the world how much of their brain they have used all their life’ a friend of mine told me once referring to a bald friend of his who he disliked. Applying that yardstick to myself, I have to say that I can’t agree with him more! When I read about a mystic being present in everyone us, I remember what Aldous Huxley wrote. He had pointed out that the human psyche had the capability to exist both at the level of our spirit or our body. Immortality is all about keeping our psyche closer to our spirit and far, far away from the body. You have explained it in much simpler terms saying:

‘The mystics spend most of their time exploring something that they had never been before while a person like me is exploring my five senses even today despite all the rich knowledge available from the teachings of the learned people and despite seeing the Mystics who demonstrate how life has to be experienced.’

Sri

 

@LakshmiKMBhat

My dear Lakshmi
"We too do not see sparrows at all. It is sad. As always it is good to read your posts Sir. "
Nobody has understood the meaning of the saying 'Brevity is the soul of wit' better than you!
Your appreciation is always crisp and easy to acknowledge. In the olden days, people always corresponded on a post card for economy. And many were ignorant to understand the contents of the card. Therefore, the sender always started his message with an auspicious mark and words like 'Upayakuchalopari' to indicate all is well! These signs would reassure the illiterate receiver that there was no cause for anxiety! The husband would come back from work to read it and despite all the auspicious marks, his face would still get dark, the letter being a reminder for the repayment of a loan he had taken from the sender!
Sri

 

@LakshmiKMBhat
Dear Lakshmi
After I wrote that reply to you, I was a bit worried if you might mistake me. Your reply has assured me that you have taken it in the right spirit. Every family in those days had one or two teachers among them. Two of my maternal uncles were teachers. My mother's brother was a Headmaster in a school in Pune and is presently 99. My maternal Aunt's husband was a teacher in Chennai and after each public exam, he used to get huge bundles of answer papers to correct. Scoring centum in any subject other than maths was unheard of in those days!
Sri

 

@Iravati
Dear Iravati
As a child, I seldom cried for anything as such a need never arose. What I mean is if anything needed crying to get it, I would avoid it. But as I grow older, tears well up in my eyes if there is too much light or too little of it. But occasionally I am moved to tears as for example when I hear of Aeschylus's story. Greek tragedies never leave the eyes dry but the story of Aeschylus tops the list of tearjerkers. I won't blame the eagle for reading his head wrong. Mind you when we stand facing him, his lush beard gives one a feeling of its all pervading nature but an aerial view could be highly misleading. There is no further record of anyone dying this way.
I guess those long distance fliers have to fly nonstop to beat the force of gravity. But it is still a puzzle how they keep themselves otherwise engaged. Do they crack jokes to beat the monotony of long distance flying? My friend forgets that even the most serious blogs have a scope for comedy. Even in Ramayana, it is there when the jubilant monkeys on hearing from Hanuman that he has sighted Sita break into a drinking binge full of jollity!
Sri

 

@Iravati
There is nothing wrong in men crying on appropriate occasions but it is the mode of crying that makes the difference. One can beat his chest, blow his nose and cry buckets but that will make the hardliners purse their lips in disgust. Kamal is an expert in this category of crying. When the film, Naya Daur, was released in Chennai, a popular Tamil magazine pointed out that the subdued grief shown on his face proved what an experienced artist Dilip Kumar was! After the ascent of Kamal Hausin male-crying has undergone a sea change.
Such unnatural deaths always throw me off balance. The one that deeply moved me was the death of Isadora Duncan.
I never knew that godwits cried 'Bach, Bach' I would have sold them too if I were Mozart. Or on second thoughts, I would have quipped back that only godwits would like him!
Sri