Please Your Lordship

I often have to go to courtroom no. 24 at the High Court of Calcutta to observe one of the proceedings between the Birlas and the Lodhas, being the advocate on record for the former. There are hundred such applications pending on the part of both sides, which are fighting for property worth the Gross Domestic Product of certain countries I am sure. Such applications are responsible for my bread and butter and whisky.

These matters are always argued by Senior Counsels, since one cannot take a chance with lesser mortals. And they are almost always 'specially fixed' (let's say, at 2 p.m.) for arguments by these Counsels, since once cannot take a chance, unlike cases of lesser mortals, which may take years to appear on a cause list, and further years to be heard, and yet further years to get disposed of. They never end, since our wonderful systems of appeals ensure that complete justice is meted out, to both parties. The judiciary often seems to be like the intermediary monkey taking the responsibility of dividing a piece of bread between two fighting cats, and to ensure complete division, biting off the surplus portion on anyone's share. In the process of ensuring absolute division, it is discovered later that the piece of bread has ceased to exist, but the fight goes on. 

On one such occasion, just before my matter had to start, I saw an elderly man, slowly edging towards the court. He must have been in his 60s, wearing middle-class clothes and patent black-rimmed glasses. He went before the court and said he wanted a date for hearing of his matter, since he was not being issued his retirement benefits and was in considerable difficulty. The Judge again asked him the urgency involved for Him to hear his matter earlier than the rest of the matters, and the Birla matters. He pleaded that he had to come from Madhyamgram everyday for his case, which by the way takes around three hours by train from Calcutta. The Judge finally ruled that He cannot decide a case out of turn, and since it was appearing in the cause list, his case would ultimately be taken up. The man bowed and left, unsure of what he was to do next.

I suppose he must have got hold of one of my fellow brothers from the profession to fight his case, since on the next occasion I saw him in court, he again slowly edged in front of the Court and said that his lawyer had not appeared that day, and asked what could be done about it. "Your lawyer hasn't come, is it? Are you an officer of the court?" the Judge asked. The man, who perhaps was not even sure about what an 'officer of the court' was, nodded his head in the negative, with hopeful eyes, as if suggesting that he could argue his case himself, since he anyway knew his plight more than his lawyer did. "If you are not an officer of this Court, you have no locus standi to be heard", the Court observed. The man, in obvious ignorance of the Latin expression the Courts freely assume and use, stood there, not knowing what he was supposed to do. "You have no right to be heard", came the Judge's stern voice again. The man bowed again, and left, and Senior Counsel Mr. Mitra commenced his submissions in Birla versus Lodha. "May it please Your Lordship", he began.

A halt at the past

While purposelessly surfing television channels on a rare free Sunday morning, I tuned in to Doordarshan on a random whim. I guess it was more out of curiosity than anything else that I thought of revisiting the only television channel of my childhood. Had it changed with years? Possibly, I thought. Definitely I didn't expect Surabhi or Chandrakanta to be shown. 

But they were broadcasting a show called 'Chanakya' at around that time of the Sunday morning. Quite surprisingly, Chanakya had Chandrakanta-like qualities (I don't mean the characters here; I mean the show). It showed characters in that exact semi-darkness that I was wont to watching as a child. The actors spoke in semi-Sanskrit, as if a purer form of Hindi necessarily posed a closer depiction of those times. Be that as it may. 

The next show was an interview of Khayyam, music director of an equivalent past glory as Doordarshan itself. By this time, my entire family, comprising my parents and my aunt, had joined me in being glued. They spoke about past movies in the show, and yesteryears, and how there was no music these days, about how everything that happened these days was 'nangaa naach'. 

However, I just thought then, when was the last time when my entire family saw anything on the television for that long together? We were not only watching the show, but also talking among ourselves - another rarity these days in commercial nuclear families. I remembered the discussions I had with my colleagues - about how we had our own favorites. I had Alif Laila on Friday night at 9:30, someone else had Superhit Muqabla on Saturday evening. 

Unlike the 90s, one now had a gamut of consumerist choices of channels to choose from - soaps showing women in silk sarees slapping one another, news channels broadcasting breaking news, Hindi-dubbed Telugu movies, and so on. Yet, we did not agree on a common interest, unlike the forced situation of yore when we would happily watch the only option we had. 

We kept watching the show and I kept evaluating in my head about the situations of movie-making gone wrong. Having made documentaries on similar budgets out of college funds, I knew the low end camera and sound techniques involved due to paucity of budget, the heavily amateurish editing, and so on. In essence, the thought process behind a Doordarshan documentary. Time had moved on, and one saw evolved processes of interview-shooting now. People didn't watch Doordarshan anymore; no Sir, not even in small towns. The interview that was conducted in an atypically Doordarshan manner finally ended, and we got back to our 2014 lives. But not before watching Renuka Shahane and Siddhartha Kak as anchors on the next show.

I suddenly felt as if I had accidentally stumbled upon a past step, stopped for a while, given a smile, and proceeded with my onward journey.

The Myth about Mythology

Mythology (noun): A philosophy which so-called religious fanatics base as an excuse to cause destruction of human faith.

You would see the omnipotence of mythology pervading through today's society. And it is often, mistakenly, linked to religion. By religion I would mean old texts, beliefs, dogmas, dastoors, indoctrination. It is used to terrorize, partition, kill, ravage and rape the human essence - human spirit.

But look at the word closely. Mythology comes from the Latin Mythos, the same word that gives rise to the term 'mithya' in Hindi. Mithya would mean that which is false. Or 'myth', which means, "a widely held but false belief or idea". Of course, what is 'false' has a different theory altogether. The concept of the absolute truth is perhaps in fact, a 'myth', and thus the argument becomes circular.

But suffice it to say that Mythology stems from myth? If that be so, why not view mythology as yet another compendium of stories. Most of them are interesting to hear. Fables, like Amar Chitra Katha, or Aesop's. And some early religious texts that are not exactly stories but considered Mythology are interesting to read. If for nothing else, then the beauty of understanding a language. I wish at times that I knew Sanskrit. Like I wish I knew Latin. Like we know, ingrained in them are the foundations of present-day languages like English, Spanish or Hindi. Wouldn't it be great to know the origin of a river that has flown for centuries past? The source of a river is the purest part of it. It is not convoluted by clogging hair, washing power Nirma, sacred threads, or heaps of mud that are the result of immersion of Hindu gods.

Coming back to the richness of language and meaning of primal languages, consider for example, the Gayatri Mantra. Google its meaning, and its translation, and read up a little more on its significance. Maybe you will realize the 'Bhur Bhuva Swahah' gives rise to the powerful expression which could mean a conjunction of the earth and ether, it could mean the essence of life - being creation, preservation and destruction, it could mean 'existence, consciousness and bliss', which is, 'sat-chit-anand' ("Satchidanand"), and it could mean an all-encompassing term - God. 

I am not for once saying that reciting this for a hundred and eight times near a river makes you attain salvation. That theory has also been propounded. And therein lies my first problem with the inherent problematic nature of Mythology. 

My second problem lies with its usage to state the 'truth',  when the epistemological and lingual origins lie in a word denoting falsehood. And as I said, who knows what is THE truth? Is there one?

And then you derive notions from Mythology to talk about nonsensical terms like culture. You ban homosexuality on the pretext that it is 'unknown' to 'our' 'culture'. We shall note how problematic these terms are.

1. 'Our' - What do you mean by 'our'? Are you a Hindu? A Muslim? A Zoroastrian? If you say your 'culture' is irrespective of Hindu or Zoroastrian, then you are a liar. A Hindu God (Indra) is the Zoroastrian Devil. Both Hindus and Zoroastrians are part of India. If you say Zoroastrians are not, I insist you try tracing the "Berry Pulao" anywhere else apart from Britannia on Dadabhai Naoroji Street in Bombay. Next. Considering you are a Hindu. A majority. Are you an Aryan? Are you a Vedic Aryan? Do you trace your roots back to the Indus Valley Civilization? If it's the third, then are your gods Shiva and Shakti? If it's the second, then are your Gods Surya, Vayu and Agni as well? If you are not sure, then you yourself are a hybrid of previous races. Then why the fuss about 'our'? What is yours, by your account? The Rgveda had 33 gods. By the later vedas, there were apparently 33 Crore. Was there an equal population explosion in heaven then? OK, so you do not have an answer to 'our'. So then why do you say the Muslim is a foreigner? Is not the Aryan from Iran? Have you been to the British Museum to verify? And what is so Indian in 'our'? What was India before the 19th century? Is there even a resemblance of the present geographical map anywhere before the 19th century?
2. 'Culture' - What is culture? If you are not sure about identity, if you have an existential crisis, then how do you determine culture? Do classical ragas invented by later musicians, meaning musicians of this century not form part of our culture? 
3. 'Unknown' - Ayyappan (he is also one of 'your' Gods), was born of Vishnu and Shiva. I am sure you are googling him now. Anyway, so, was that not homosexuality? What did you think it was? Lawn tennis?

Well, so this was so much about mythology. Yet, you claim your culture, your religion, your God, your law on the basis of your culture, on the basis of mythology.