Matsya, Kurma, Varaho, Narahari……..

I’m a great fan of Lord Narayana, the Lord of ‘Stiti’, the sustenance as per the Hindu myth.

This devotion was implanted by the stories told by my dearest Grand Mother at a young age. I still remember listening to her vast repertoire of stories from the mythology, in wide eyed and open mouthed astonishment, as she was engaged in her daily chores. Hailing from a conservative family of traditional ‘temple dwellers’, my ‘Ammamma’ could quote at will from any major text of mythology.

And coming back to Lord Narayana, this Lord appeared to me to be friendlier than Brahma, the Lord of ‘Srishti’ and less fearsome than the Lord of ‘Samhara’ Shiva.

And he had that special skill to adapt to any situation ……

Let’s take a look at the evolution of His Dashavataras

In the beginning when the earth was full of water, He assumed the role of Matsya, to float along the infinite oceans…..

As the oceans dried up in certain regions and the land was revealed, He became Kurma and set out to explore the land.

When the vegetations and greater land area was required to be explored, He changed to Varaha, to roam around far more conveniently……..

Then He rose on two legs and became Narasimha……

When he realized that there was no point in having brute strength alone, He assumed the role of a full man, Vamana.

Then He set out to establish the Brahmin domination in the role of Bhargava.

After the Kshatriyas were badly mauled by the campaigns of Parashurama, He crossed over and became Shri Rama and showed Parashurama the way out.

And then ………

…………..then he saw the power shifting to the backward classes………

Centuries before Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad established their fiefdoms across the cow belt, the younger brother of a Yadava Chieftain had declared in the Mahabharata that in the entire Aryavarta, there was no one to rival the Yadavas and we know how the manipulative brilliance of Lord Krishna led to the systematic decimation of each of His formidable rivals.

Going by that trend, where will the Khalgi rise?

My wild guess is that in all probability it’ll be in an Adivasi family :-)

In Defence of Ahmedinejad?!

The fall had taken its toll……

If the scars were not apparent,

It was b’cos they overlapped with the previous ones…

It required something extraordinarily outrageous to shock me back to my senses…

…….to force me back into writing…

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad might never have been someone on whose defense I could write, but for this…

India, Italy, Istanbul or Iran. ……….the fanatics across religions speak in the same perverted tone…

But can any one stoop this low?!

The only time these days, I feel like a naughty little boy is when I occasionally visit a friend’s house where my Primary School Teacher will be sitting in his easy chair on the Verandah. There, for once, I forget my manliness. In spite of the balding pate, the long beard and my social stature, I find myself being reduced to a bundle of nerves. And my Primary School Teachers are the ones who command the greatest respect as a group, if not as individuals in my life. The innumerable stories they had told us, the myriads of things that they introduced to us for the first time in our life, the excursions they had taken us to, the gifts they had bought for us on those trips spending money from their pockets, I still remember some of my class mates standing up and crying when one of our favorite Teachers was transferred.

In most countries the primary education is not yet given the due importance and the primary school Teachers are lowly paid. And their biggest satisfaction and reward is when they see their favorite students climb up in life. I had always noticed the glow in their eyes whenever I paid a visit to them to convey and share some major happy incident in my life. They seemed to me to be happier than myself at times.

And coming back to what shocked me into this post.

This morning as I lifted the news paper, I saw another stricture for the embattled Iranian President from his godfathers. This time on Teachers’ Day he committed an “indecent act” of kissing the hand of a woman in public. He didn’t stop there; he went on to embrace her!

How outrageous?!

This is for the first time in Iran’s history since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that such an act was committed by an official of the state, let alone the President, in full public glare.

Some sympathizer of the President tries to downplay the incident by stating that the Woman, a Primary School Teacher, who is over 70, became emotional after receiving the award from her former pupil, and made the first approach bringing the President into a difficult position as he either had to reject her or give into shaking her hand.

Ahmedinejad, in spite of all his tough talk, seems to me to be emotionally unfit for Politics. And I thought the expression in his face, for once, resembled that of a little child.

If you haven’t seen the picture in The Hindu, take a look here

What would have been your reaction, if you were in the Iranian President’s shoes?