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Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Discussion in 'Cheeniya's Senile Ramblings' started by Cheeniya, May 20, 2017.

  1. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    On Life

    There are very few writers who I read in the middle of the night and chuckle under my hooded blanket. De Button is one of them. I like his modern retelling of philosophical narratives. I recommend his writings immensely.

    His language is youthful and sparkling. He cleans up your cluttered brain with light-hearted edicts. I like his other work Essays in Love also. It is about a man falling in love and falling out love when his lover jilts him. He is confused, he is heartbroken, he is withdrawn and the latter part of the book is his amusing recovery from the setback. I have highlighted too many passages in that book as my constant force to be able to laugh at life and its romantic quirks. I am sharing two of my favourites.

    Jesus Complex


    It is hard to imagine Christianity having achieved such success without a martyr at its head. If Jesus had simply led a quiet life in Galilee making commodes and dining tables and at the end of his life published a slim volume entitled My Philosophy of Life before dying of a heart attack, he would not have acquired the status he did. The agonizing death on the Cross, the corruption and cruelty of the Roman authorities, the betrayal by his friends, all these were indispensable ingredients for proof (more psychological than historical) that the man had God on his side. Feelings of virtue breed spontaneously in the fertile soil of suffering. The more one suffers, the more virtuous one must be. The Jesus complex was entangled in feelings of superiority, the superiority of the underdog who considers himself above his oppressors, with their tyranny and blindness. Ditched by the woman I loved, I exalted my suffering into a sign of greatness (lying collapsed on a bed at three in the afternoon), and hence protected myself from experiencing my grief as the outcome of what was at best a mundane romantic break-up. Chloe’s departure may have killed me, but it had at least left me in glorious possession of the moral high ground. I was a martyr. The Jesus complex lay at opposite ends of the spectrum from Marxism. Born out of self-hatred, Marxism prevented me from becoming a member of any club that would have me. The Jesus complex still left me outside the club gates but, because it was the result of ample self-love, declared that I was not accepted into the club only because I was so special. Most clubs, being rather crude affairs, naturally could not appreciate the great, the wise, and the sensitive, who were to be left at the gates or dropped by their girlfriends. My superiority was revealed primarily on the basis of my isolation and suffering: I suffer, therefore I am special. I am not understood, but for precisely that reason, I am worthy of greater understanding.

    Romantic Positivist

    Shortly after Chloe left, I came across a classic of romantic positivist literature on a stand in a station bookshop, a work by a certain Dr Peggy Nearly that went by the title of The Bleeding Heart. Though in a hurry to get back to my office, I bought the book nevertheless, attracted by a notice on its pink back cover that asked, ‘Must being in love always mean being in pain?’ Who was this Dr Peggy Nearly, a woman who could boldly claim to answer such a riddle? From the first page of the book, I learnt that she was . . . a graduate of the Oregon Institute of Love and Human Relations, currently living in the San Francisco area, where she practises psychoanalysis, child therapy, and marriage counselling. She is the author of numerous works on emotional addiction, as well as penis envy, group dynamics, and agoraphobia. And what was The Bleeding Heart about? It told the unfortunate yet optimistic story of men and women who fell in love with unsuitable partners, those who would treat them cruelly or leave them emotionally unfulfilled, take to drink or become violent. These people had made an unconscious connection between love and suffering, and could not stop hoping that the unsuitable types they had chosen to adore would change and love them properly. Their lives would be ruined by the delusion that they could reform people who were by nature incapable of answering their emotional needs. By the third chapter, Dr Nearly had identified the roots of the problem as lying in deficient parents, who had given these unfortunate romantics a warped understanding of the affective process. If they had never loved people who were nice to them, it was because their earliest emotional attachments had taught them that love should be unreciprocated and cruel. But by entering therapy and being able to work through their childhood, they might understand the roots of their masochism, and learn that their desire to change unsuitable partners was only the relic of a more infantile fantasy to convert their parents into proper care-givers.

    I would recommend this book to everyone falling in love or falling out love or confused about falling and failing in love. An adorable read!
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2017
  2. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Asha Bhosle

    In a million years, I would not have guessed that the singer was Asha. She is a versatile singer, forsooth!
     
  3. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    Sleepy Towns (747)
    You are taking a highly moralistic view of the issue. Shankaran is not an idealist looking for the real meaning of life. He is an ordinary individual with the normal aspirations of a normal man. When he meets Sivakami, a normal married woman, he falls for her. In that frame of mind, nothing seems improper, not even a physical relationship with her. It is when her husband commits suicide, he realises his folly and goes wandering in search of peace of mind. The final scene where he meets Sivakami as a shoe keeper outside the Chidambaram Temple with a deep gash on her face, he stands transfixed. The film ends there.
    This is not the story of an idealist but of a normal human suffering from a guilty conscience making him almost lifeless. We see plenty of such characters in real life and we see how they suffer when the feeling of guilt catches up with them.

    There was a Hindu Saint by name Arunagirinathar. His story was like this:

    "Arunagiri was born during the 15th century in Thiruvannamalai, a town in Tamil Nadu. His father died soon after his birth and his pious mother and sister instilled in him, their cultural and religious traditions. Legends claim that Arunagiri was attracted to the pleasures of the flesh and spent his youth in pursuing a life of debauchery. His sister always gave whatever she earned to make her brother happy, and he frequently visited the devadasis. It was said that since he was enjoying his life in dissipation, he started to suffer from leprosy and because of it people started to avoid him.

    There came a time when his sister had no money to meet his demands for dissipation. Arunagiri said he was going to kill himself because of this. To prevent Arunagiri from committing suicide, his sister said that he should sell her in order to have money, upon hearing which Arunagiri realised how selfish he had been. He decided to end his life, went to a temple and hit his head against the pillars and steps, begging for forgiveness. He considered jumping to his death from the temple tower but according to legends, the God Murugan himself prevented him from committing suicide, cured his leprosy, showed him a path of reform and piety, initiated him to create devotional songs for the benefit of mankind." -Google

    You must read this mind boggling summary of Prasads of notable temples
     
  4. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    On Walk (748)
    Very true. While running, your mind tends to get focused on the job but walking makes no such demands on your mind. Walking is the best way to reflect on nonsense particularly if it is in wilderness
     
  5. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    On Sleep (749)
    Mind you, he was about to ask for total annihilation of their own clan and they had to do something about it. Gods don't say 'We can't grant that! Ask for something else instead'. It was under compelling circumstances that they had to play this trick. Anything is permissible if you want to stay alive!
     
  6. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    Soothsayers (750)
    On 'forsooth' dictionary gives the meaning as: indeed (often used ironically)
    It is more appropriate when telling a friend whose wife just dished out unbelievably horrible food 'Your wife has cooked a delicious food, forsooth'

    Rather intriguing, isn't it? When you see soothsayers in action, you can't help feeling that the word sooth should indeed be the antonym of truth!
     
  7. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    @Iravati
    On Life (751)
    De Button sounds like Northcote Parkinson to me though in different genres. Your quotes of him have really generated a great interest in me for him but the snag is that my book reading has virtually come to a nought after my stroke last year robbed me of my right eye. My reading is like an UKG student learning his alphabet! I'll catch with him through the small quotes you give of him. This quote of him really made me very spirited:
    “The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.”
    He has just explained my moments of tearing in movies and in real life very precisely. Sivaji Ganesan or ShahRukh Khan in tears do not make my teary eyed but scenes like these do.
     
  8. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    New Generation

    I shudder to think of the times when such bright women were subjugated and harassed under the name of Hindu Law. A ten year old consummating a marriage? I cannot even fathom the suffering those children endured. Again, they had little or no sexual awakening and were harvested only to secure progeny for the family.

    Today, we live in very different times, but I am still appalled on meeting women with good education and upbringing still chained to foul marriages in the hope of reforming their husbands. That's where I like De Botton when he identifies these irredeemable people with Jesus Complex, in that, they feel virtuous for having endured untold suffering. They equate love with suffering and pain and nobility and virtue and tolerance and compassion, that is every silvery word in the dictionary, except love. But they don't know what love is, for they never experienced love so they cling to these hopeless relationships in the hope that one day they will be honoured for their misplaced endurance and unreasonable compassion. Such women baffle and amuse me! Self-deception in humans in extraordinary. We varnish our plain foolishness as unshakeable probity.

    Hmm, you got me piqued on the the difference between conventional and common thinking.

    Common thinking is fertile. It means majority have arrived at a thought by way of independent thinking. Conventional thinking is morass. It means you hardly think but acquire the thoughts from people around you. And, this is precisely the kind of thinking I detest: a lazy herd following the ram. Conventions and norms are societal finery that serve very little practical purpose. I feel women are less thwarted by the rearguards or the conservative elements of the society than their own insecurity and complacency and inhibitions. I am wary of snivelling women who cry foul in life because they are deprived by circumstances and men of their life. If that 12-year old Rukmabai in the late-19th century stood up against the injustices of her barbaric community, so can an internet-voiced woman of today.
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2017
  9. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    On Food and Cooking

    I feel that chopsticks were invented as a dining shibboleth. Only the Chinese can eat with chopsticks finesse while the rest endanger their reputation with air-borne noddles and spillage.

    Valala reminds me of the Valhalla in Norse mythology, the abode of Odin. This "aviyal" ascription to Bhima is questionable. There are many origins of aviyal which brings to fore the just-so-origin stories and myths.

    Recently, I was reading about the origin of Parsi food in India.

    After the Arab conquest of Persia in the mid seventh century, adherents to Zoroastrianism, which may be the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, fled their ancestral home. Piling into boats and carrying their sacred fire with them, they landed on India’s west coast, in the state of Gujarat.

    According to lore, the local king eyed the newcomers with suspicion. Not speaking their language, he presented the Zoroastrians with a jug of milk, filled to the brim, in an effort to communicate that there was no room for them in his kingdom. In response, the Zoroastrian high priests dissolved sugar in the milk without spilling a drop from the jug, demonstrating how they would enrich the local community without displacing anyone.

    The sweetened milk won over the king—and eventually the rest of India. Thousands more Zoroastrians came to India, crossing present day Iran, Pakistan, and India on foot, on camel, and by boat. -- Atlas Obscura.


    The assimilation myth is a tale of cordial and harmonious exile in a bowl of sweetened milk. The mythical tale is nice and sweet in the context of naive foodies but when sideline zealots hold these tales with a feverish pitch as the pride of their clan, then trouble brews like what is happening with the Padmavathi movie, based on the epic poem Padmavat (1540) by Indian Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi. It's a fictional poem. It's an artist's imagination. But now that medieval poem has sowed rabid faction.

    I hope Keralites don't call upon a war on North India to reclaim their aviyal. If that happens, mind you, delete our blogs. We don't want to be embroiled by factional gastronomes. They will throw spoons and forks at each other while we both are trembling with our inept chopsticks.
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2017
  10. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    On Tourist Tall Tales

    Folklore elevates the grandeur of tourist places. A lot of places would just be lifeless stones and marble if not for these lively tales.

    Remember the conversation we had on Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy? I was in Vatican City few years ago. On that note, I must be the only non-believer who loves to visit the sacrosanct tourist places. I had plans to travel to Israel and Jerusalem back then, may be, some other year. These days, I prefer my cold drink and sheltered home to travel and getting roasted in the sun.

    Back to the topic, Michelangelo painting on his back to give a finish to the ethereal ceiling is so well-entrenched in folklore that if Michelangelo was brought back to life, he would fearfully admit to that daredevil stunt. The guides in Vatican charm you with incredible artistic folklore that at the end of the tour you feel that construction of Pyramids is a child's play.
     

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