Sakaleshpura......in nature's lap!

Somewhere, midway between Bangalore and Mangalore is Sakaleshpura. Somewhere, midway between this work-a-day world and your make-believe, fairy-tale world is Sakaleshpura.  It is your proverbial Malgudi. How else will you describe it? Where else will you find a saloon which says "Decent Gents Beauty Parlor!"? It's as if you can enter the saloon only after a careful character assessment! Or the other hoarding at the main market which warns- "Girls teasing on road?". Yes, it appears to be a town with a difference- where boys may actually be at the receiving end or so it seems....at least unintentionally! What is Malgudi's River Sarayu is the River Hemavati at Sakaleshpura. It curls its way just outside the town.


The "Bee Keeper's Co-operative Society" is an interesting place, just off Sakaleshpura's main-market. Apart from the bottles and bottles of honey which are stashed away behind its cupboards, it stays arrested in a time-bubble. The wall has a full roll-call of owners in an unbroken list dating back to 1940! A black-and-white photograph fills up one wall- with folks in elaborate coats and turbans. It was the day it celebrated its Silver Jubilee. It was in 1967! Printed portraits by CN Row- of Gandhi, Nehru, Tilak, Shastri and Indira Gandhi peer at you intensely from one end of the hall. The overhead ledge at the other end is cluttered with files- all frayed at the edges, yellowed with age, gathering dust and seemingly untouched....since 1940! And not to be missed is one curious black-n-white photograph- a man in black-boggles and a full beard. Except....the beard is made up of a swarm of bees, all pasted to his face!
Eventually, we did buy the honey and carried off an entire boxful of bottles, enough to last a whole year, or at least till we make it back to Sakaleshpura!


We leave Sakaleshpura town and hit the hills. In 10 km, we've left civilization behind...and land in nature's lap. From now on, it's all about coffee and enchanted woods! The hills are gentle and covered in a full coat of green. A dusty trail takes us through the coffee-plantations- demarcated neatly with the year the coffee-trees were planted, the number of trees and the variety. It's either the "Arabica" or "Robusta" family of coffee. Coffee beans hang off in clusters- bright-red, resembling the Christmas Hollies! From here, these beans get picked, washed, the seeds separated from the pulp, and then cured and dried. They go off to Chikmanglur, where they will be roasted and powdered. That's the amount of human ingenuity required to bring that cup of filter-coffee to our hands!



The trail takes us deeper into the woods- a bison-skull hangs off a tree-trunk, spider and snake burrows dot the sandy mounds on either side. As for the path, we look closely for any animal-footprints. We don't find any- but this is wild animal terrain all right. If you are a bird-lover, there is enough to keep you interested- woodpeckers, orioles and cranes. From time to time, grilled-gates break the monotony of the landscape. They are from an earlier age. These estates date back to 1865! Our trek takes us by a hill-stream, over a wooden-bridge, up a little water-fall and by a lake....covered in a coat of mist with a lonesome house in the distance!


The nights are really cold at this time of the year. But the sky is clear and studded with more stars than you can imagine. It's like a diamond merchant, who in a moment of recklessness, has taken diamonds by the fistful and scattered them with abandon on a black-velvet drapery! Such is the bounty of the night sky! Through a clearing, we spot a couple of hills....their tops on fire- these are forest-fires!
The moon is half, but its beams slice through the trees and light up the trail. The shadows of the tree-trunks and twisted branches pave the path with such clarity....even in the dead of the night....that we need no other light to find our way!


As the head hits the pillow, it is all quiet. So quiet that even a snore is amplified many times over and jolts us out of bed! There is the occasional click of the Cricket. And drum-beats in the distance. Many hills away, the animals are on the move due to the forest fire. The drum-beats keep them away from straying into human-territory. But then, where are these animals headed? Towards us?
There is a "scratch" on the outside walls....muted initially....and slowly picking up both volume and frequency. What is it? A cat, a wild-boar or a wild elephant? No one wants to venture out. Imagination runs riot. And now, sound of footsteps on the roof. Is it a rat...or a disembodied spirit may be? The brooding is broken with the sound of a hoot. It's a train.....down below in the valley, many miles away....snaking its way through these hills and bound for the sea! A faint rattle of the coaches...their trailing sounds swallowed by silence...and all is quiet once more.
Someday, I want to be on that train....pass through these hills and halt awhile at each of these fairy-tale towns! The poet Rumi wrote "Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there!"
I will meet *you* in these woods!

Of poets and poetry- "Once is enough!"

To compare between two texts, "consistency in content" is one aspect, examples of which we have seen in the previous posts. In this post, we look at an example of "consistency in style". "Shabda-alankaara" in Sanskrit is essentially a 'turn of phrase', a word-play that poets use to add relish (rasa).


Shankara uses this technique in both works- Shivanandalahari and Saundaryalahari. 
One idea he wants to convey is this - It is enough to surrender to the Lord just once.  If the surrender is total, once is enough!  For this, he uses the word "sakrid" meaning "once", in both texts. The beauty is in the arrangement of the word "sakrid" along with the rest of the words.


"Once is enough" in Saundaryalahari:


In Saundaryalahari, the line reads as follows: "sakrin natva natva sataam sannidhadatey". ('Sakrid' becomes 'sakrin' due to the word following it). Here, we see natva natva repeated as we chant the line. The first natva in the line is "natva"- to bow down, to prostrate. The second natva is actually "na tva" - "not you" and intentionally placed for word-play. The "na" (not) in the second natva should be connected with sannidhadatey (to bestow) so that it should actually read as "na sannidhadatey" ("not bestow"). What Shankara wants to convey is this- "bowing down to you  (O Devi), even once (sakrid), how will it not bestow?" Note the use of the negative for emphasis. And then, in the next line, he conveys the benefit of this surrender- "madhu ksheera draakshaa madhurima dhurinaa phanitayah"- It will bestow upon the devotee the gift of poetry, so sweet, that it is like relishing honey (madhu), milk (ksheera) and sweet-grape (draakshaa) all at once! On a side note, the gift-of-poetry may strike us as a strange result. Do we even want it? If we don't have a value for poetry, this result can be taken in a wider sense to convey the benefit of "effective communication". Whether it is Lord Dakshinamurti or Shankara, the highest teaching has come down to us through communication- silent or verbal! Hence, the benefit is of utmost importance.
The above lines in the text are used to describe Devi in her special form of Saraswati. The reader can look up the verse beginning with "sharad jyotsnaa shuddhaam..." (verse 15). Saraswati, being the embodiment of all knowledge and art, it is fitting that when we bow down to her, even once, she bestows us with knowledge, poetry, fine-arts and all else.


"Once is enough" in Shivanandalahari:


In Shivanandalahari, Shankara uses the same word "sakrid". Let's see how he arranges it here. The reader can look up verse 33. Shankara says- "sakrid eva deva bhavatas-seva natirva nutih". Here again, when we chant the line, we see the same repetition after "sakrid", so that it sounds like "sakri-deva deva". What sounded like "natva natva" in the other text, sounds like "deva deva" here, due to the peculiar arrangement of words! The first "deva" is actually "eva" (even) so that with "sakrid", it should mean "even once" (sakrid eva). The second "deva" is an address to Lord Shiva, as in "hey deva, O Lord". The line now means, "O Lord, even once, is it not enough ('naalam va' in the text) to do any of the following?" And then, Shankara gives a list of sadhanas- "nati" (to bow down, same as "natva" in the other text), "nuti" (to sing, to extol your glory), to do "pooja", "katha-shravanam" (listen to your stories), "smaranam" (think about you), "aalokanam" (see your form) etc.
What Shankara wants to say is- pick any one of these means, whatever we have an inclination for. If even one of them is done, even once effectively, that's enough! He follows up the rest of the verse with the benefit gained from this sadhana. Here, there is no gift of poetry specifically called out. He goes even higher and says that the fulfilment in the performance of these acts is verily moksha itself. Like in the other verse, the whole thing is again framed in the negative for emphasis- "kaa vaa mukti?" What is mukti, other than this? Shankara asks.


Thus, it is amply clear, that these two verses in the two texts are complementary verses. We find a striking similarity across both of them, in the content, and more so, in the style of presentation.


"Once is enough" in Bharati's composition:


Before we close, one more point comes to mind. "oru dharam shiva chidambaram endru sonnaal podhumey". The Carnatic music enthusiast will surely know this line. "Oru dharam"- "once" is enough (podhumey) to say "shiva chidambaram". This line is from the famous composition by Gopalakrishna Bharati, a contemporary of Tyagaraja. We have already seen the context behind this song in one of the previous blogs- how he met Tyagaraja, how Tyagaraja wanted him to sing Abhogi raga, how Gopalakrishna Bharati composed the song "sabhaapatikku veru daivam samaanam aagumaa" in Abhogi raga specially for this occasion.
In the charanam of this composition, we have the above line- "it is enough to say, even once, just the words "shiva-chidambaram". The reader can now easily see the relationship in this usage with the previous topic that we discussed. Interestingly, this Tamil composition seems like a paraphrase of verse 33 of Shivanandalahari. Shankara gives a range of sadhanas and says pick one. Bharati has already made the selection and says, just say "shiva" once! The similarity does not end here. In verse 33, Shankara moves on and asks a question. When Lord Shiva is so magnanimous, what will we get by extolling other fickle devatas (asthira devataa anusaarena aayaasena kim labhyatey)? Bharati begins with a similar question and asks, when Lord Shiva is such a krpaanidhi, can other devatas (veru daivam) equal him in any way(samaanam aagumaa)?
The more we look at verse 33 and the above composition, it looks as if Gopalakrishna Bharati has rendered Shankara's verse in Tamil and set it to Abhogi raga!


A final quote on this "once is enough" topic, this time in English! The quote is beautiful. It says "We live, but once. But if we live right, once is enough!"