BOONS OR BANES?

All of us are quite familiar with people performing abhishekams or archanais in temples to various deities, or homams in their own houses, to propitiate some God or other with a view to seeking favours from them for better health, more wealth, higher position, greater status, progeny and whatever else. Broadly the objects of these prayers can be classified as benign or malignant in character. Mostly they are of the benign variety where people seek to get their basic needs filled to have a reasonable life-style, or want to have a child when they have none and so on. But there are people who seek favours of the malignant type, where they already have all that they need and more, but are so driven by greed, arrogance and so on that they want more of this and more of that so as to have power and control over people and society as a whole, and seek Divine help in fulfilling their ambitions which turn out to be antisocial in character. The favours that people seek through their prayers used to be called boons in earlier societies where we are led to believe that the Gods, pleased by their prayers, appeared in person before the supplicants, and bestowed the boons on them.

For the purposes of this discussion we are concerned more with the malignant type of boons with great propensity to cause enormous harm to society, and how the Gods dealt with them. The story of King Midas and his golden touch, one supposes, is very well known the world over. When Midas did something which pleased the God Dionysius, he appeared before Midas and granted him a boon. Midas thought for a while and decided that if everything that he touched turned into gold, he would become the most powerful person on earth. Dionysius heard the request and, with a thoughtful frown, asked Midas whether he really wanted it. On his confirmation, Dionysius granted the boon and vanished. Midas was in cloud nine at his achievement, and tested it out by touching a plant here and some flowers there and see them all turned into gold. Soon he became thirsty and took a glass of water to drink, only to see it turn into solid gold. He grabbed a fruit to eat and it turned into gold. In this somewhat confused state, he hugged his daughter who came along there, and she turned into a golden statue. It was only then his thoughtlessness in asking for this boon hit him like a ton of bricks. He immediately prayed to God Dionysius and asked him to take back his boon and return everything to normalcy. Dionysius of course knew what would happen and hence his initial hesitation in granting the boon. Obviously the Gods know what they are doing, and they put a twist in the tail.

Of course Hindu mythology has its quota of such boons and what sort of escape routes the Gods had provided to finally overcome them. Take the case of the demon king Hiranyakashipu. He had performed a severe penance and had earned the boon by which he will never be killed. The conditions were: he will not be killed by a human being or an animal; nor with any weapon; neither on the earth nor in the sky; neither inside the house nor outside; neither in daylight nor at night; and his blood should not be spilled on the ground. What a formidable list!! Well, finally after he had had his quota of time to throw his weight about and play havoc, God appeared in the form of Narasimha, with a human torso and lion’s head and claws, dragged the demon king to the doorstep between the house and outside, in the twilight period between day and night, placed him across His thighs, tore open his abdomen with His claws and drank all the blood without spilling a drop on the ground, thereby fulfilling all the conditions. The moral of the story: Don’t tangle with the Gods; they know how to twist you around their little fingers.

In Hindu mythology we believe that Goddess Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and the arts and speech, gets into the tongue of the seeker and makes him/her say things slightly differently from what they intended to say, thereby getting a distorted boon. Demon King Ravana’s brother Kumbakarna performed a penance to earn a boon of permanent everlasting life or nithyathva. But at the right moment Saraswati stepped in and made him say he wanted Nidrathva, or a state of sleeping always. The boon was granted of course. Ever since, he was sleeping all the time. Even during the war between Rama and Ravana, Ravana’s men managed to wake him up with great difficulty and he came to the warfield, only to earn his permanent sleep.

All of this is a preamble to a story I recently heard. The ants all over the world got together in a massive rally to air their major grouse. When a snake or scorpion or some such creepy creature bites a human being, most often the human dies. But when an ant bites a human, the human does not die. This is a great injustice done to the ant community. So the ants resorted to mass prayer to Lord Shiva. Finally Shiva’s mount, Nandi, appeared before them and said Shiva was mightily pleased by their prayer, and was ready to grant their wish. They wanted to say that when they bit a human, “it should end in the human’s death”. Saraswati intervened at this point and they said “it should end in death”. Nandi said Thathaasthu (so be it) and vanished. So since then, when the ant bites, it ends in death – of the ant.

So, whenever anybody seeks a boon with ulterior motives, it ends up as a bane or curse for the seeker.

“God’s in His Heaven, and all’s right with the world” as P.G.Wodehouse used to say through Bertie Wooster.

Jai Gurudev

JUST LIKE YOU.

Yesterday a friend of mine called and said that he had met a person who looked very much like me, a spitting image. I replied that there is a belief that at any point of time there are seven persons, spread all over the world, who are look-alikes. He said he too has heard about that. We started thinking about it. What happens if one of them passes away, leaving the look-alikes one short at six? What happens to the long held belief then? Is it possible that all the seven die at the same time? Or, is someone else suddenly created out of thin air, looking just like them, to fill the gap? Some food for idle minds, indeed.

Jai Gurudev

PRESS ‘1’ FOR ENGLISH.

September 29, 2011, was designated as World Heart Day of the year. One report in the Times of India said, “This year the theme "One world, One home, One heart" focuses on how the whole world is at risk of cardiovascular diseases and how all countries must join hands to prevent and control the risk of non-communicable diseases together.” The Indian Express pointed out that the Geneva, Switzerland, based World Heart Federation is keen on individuals and families becoming proactive about reducing heart diseases and strokes. There is an urgency injected into this problem as it is estimated that by 2020, India will have the largest cardiovascular burden globally and account for 1/3 of all global deaths. As of now, cardiovascular diseases collectively form the number one worldwide killer, claiming 17.1 million lives a year, 80 percent in the developing world.

Among the numerous risk factors for heart disease, one’s age, gender and ethnic origin are non-modifiable given factors. Modifiable or controllable risk factors include Hypertension (or high Blood Pressure), Diabetes, Obesity, Physical inactivity, High Blood Cholesterol, Stress and Tobacco use. Out of all these various risk factors, special mention need to be made of two items – hypertension and stress.

Hypertension, high blood pressure, is the most common risk factor, which can be prevented or controlled through diet, exercise, weight management and if needed, medication.

Stress: Poorly controlled stress and anger can cause heart disease and stroke. Stress and anger management techniques should be adopted to protect oneself from heart disease.

Plenty of newspaper articles would have been published and many symposiums conducted all over the world on World Heart Day to highlight how the families can play an active role in managing the heart condition of everyone in the family so that heart attacks and strokes can be kept at bay.

But none of them will ever talk about the single major aspect of our present day environment which is enough to shoot up the Stress levels and BP levels beyond bursting point and drive everyone up the wall – the Automated Interactive Voice Response System used by all organizations now-a-days to answer the customer’s queries, which is a euphemistic way of saying that the customer will be kept going on a great big merry-go-round till he/she falls down foaming in the mouth and gets out of the hairs of the organization.

Have you ever had the misfortune of contacting the Customer Care unit of any organization? It is immaterial whether it is a public sector or private sector or manufacturing sector or service sector or banking sector or any tom-dick-and-harry sector. A silky smooth voice will greet you with a “Welcome to XYZ company. If you want Dept ABC, press 1. If you want Dept DEF, press 2” …….. and so on till 6 or 7 or more. By the time the voice reaches 5 or 6, you have already forgotten 1 and 2, if at all you had got it in the first place. In case you somehow got it right and pressed 1 or 2 or whatever, the cycle starts again with a fresh list of 1, 2, 3 to 8 or 9. After 3 or 4 rounds of this run around, when you are confused about what to press, the voice will smoothly say, “Sorry. You have exceeded your time limit for your query. XYZ company thanks you for calling”, and cut you off. If anybody checks your Blood Pressure then, it will show 250/150. If your spouse or children see flames coming out of your ears and nostrils, and call the fire service, they cannot be blamed. You may be blood-red in the face and raving mad for the next 3 or 4 days. But they will be just happy that your heart was still strong enough to carry you to the next encounter with Customer Care.

Here is an actual experience I had with Tata Indicom whose Wireless Internet USB modem I am using with my computer. They had overcharged me for one particular month. I calculated the correct amount, paid it and wrote to them that I am withholding the balance pending an explanation from them. Their Customer Care does not care for the customer. They promptly disconnected their service to me. After trying to contact their Customer Care, I wrote them a letter from which here is an extract.

“I contacted your Customer Care on 9244000121, and this is what transpired.

“The Voice gave a ‘welcome’ message and asked me to press 1 for English, or 2 for some other language and so on. I pressed ‘1’.

“The Voice: If you are an existing Tata Indicom customer, please enter the ten-digit Tata Indicom Number, (and then continued with some other options). I entered 9282215495.

“The Voice: You have entered 9282215495. If it is incorrect, please press ‘1’ and re-enter the correct number. Otherwise please wait. I waited.

“The Voice: Your service has been disrupted for non-payment of outstanding dues. Your uncleared outstanding amount is ZERO.

“WHAT A SCREAM!!!!! Your own FACELESS SOULLESS AUTOMATISED VOICE says my outstanding amount is a HUGE BIG ZERO, and you, BRILLIANT FOLKS, have disabled my connection. HOW FUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERY ONE OF YOU SHOULD DIE LAUGHING AT SUCH FUNNY BUSINESS.

“RESTORE MY CONNECTION IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN WE CAN DISCUSS ABOUT THE PROBLEMS I HAVE FACED FROM THE SUPERMEN IN YOUR CUSTOMER CARE AND ACCOUNTING/BILLING SECTIONS. You owe me compensation for this disruption.”


Writing such letters with bold face and All-capitals is all supposed to be bad etiquette. But so is all this ring-around-the-roses idiocy adopted by the corporates with their nonsensical Automated Interactive Voice Response Systems. And those Bold faces and All-Caps were my only way of showing how much I was burning inside with anger and exasperation at my helplessness to deal with these people. One need not be surprised if someone bursts a blood vessel and collapses.

The World Heart Federation should take urgent steps to ban such systems as a serious health hazard.

Jai Gurudev

Gods and their Assignments.

The Hindu pantheon of gods consists of a vast number of gods and goddesses. The primary concept of God in Hinduism, as spelt out in Vedic scriptures, is that of the One and Only ultimate Truth which is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, the all-pervading, all-powerful, all-knowing force or energy which governs the entire universe. However as the Vedas say, “Ekam Sath Vipraah Bahudhaa Vadhanti”, meaning that the Absolute Truth is only one, but the learned people call IT by various names. Why?

The main problem seems to be that the human mind, in the case of the general multitude of people, is unable to conceive of such an all-embracing energy which remains invisible in the background but carries out all the activities like creating the entire universe, making everything work in unison according to certain set rules, and periodically causing them to be destroyed and recreated. The human mind can more readily understand and accept the physically formed administrative structure consisting of the King with his council of ministers and numerous other officials, or a corporate structure with a Managing Director assisted by various managers and other officials and workers to make the company perform properly its functions like producing the goods and services and supplying them to the customers. So there has to be some “persons” in charge of creating/generating, operating/preserving/maintaining, and destroying/regenerating the various things in the universe. Some interpretations define the term ‘GOD’ itself to represent Generator, Operator and Destroyer. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were conceptualised for this purpose.

Well, does the matter end there? No. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva alone, by themselves, cannot be trusted to do everything that we humans as well as the animals, birds and marine creatures need to live on this earth, just like the Chairman and Managing Director cannot act in a vacuum without other managers and executives to carry out the jobs further. They need assistants to do the work. Having been born on this earth, we need something to eat to survive, grow and perform our various activities. The earth has to produce things for us to eat. Bhudevi or Bhoomadevi or Mother Earth was entrusted with that job. But earth by itself cannot produce the vegetables and fruits and so on, without proper heat and synthesizing energy. The Sun God fitted the role. Well, is heat and light alone adequate? Water is also an essential requirement. Varuna Bhaghavan stepped into that role. However, after a hard day’s work, we human beings need something to cool us down. The Moon God came in for that. We need air to breath as well as some nice breeze to make us comfortable. There we have Vayu Bhaghavan. Don’t we need fire for cooking our food? Agni Bhagavan is there for us. Continuing along the same lines, we have Saraswati as Goddess of learning, knowledge and fine arts like song and dance, Lakshmi as Goddess of wealth and Parvathi/Durga/Sakthi as Goddess of power, and many others.

Of course we humans are experts in preparing administrative structures, or Organisation Charts, and assigning tasks to various gods and goddesses. But do they conform to the system designed by us and act out their roles according to that? It does not seem so. It looks like it is much more chaotic in their world than in ours, and they violate the borders and meddle in someone else’s jurisdiction left, right and centre. For a start, even though the preservation/maintenance job assigned to God Vishnu should naturally include the health aspects of the people, for some reason God Shiva has been given the name of Vaidyanatha, the Lord of healing. In addition Dhanvantri, who appeared carrying the pot of nectar out of the churning of the milky ocean, is considered as the physician of the gods, and hence the chief healer of all creation too. But we find other contenders too for this job of healing.

Let us take a detailed look at the royal, or Divine, mess that has been created.

Take the case of Goddess Lakshmi for a start. In her avatar as Ashta Lakshmi she has grabbed eight roles for herself. As Dhana Lakshmi, the bestower of money and gold, she is into her primary task as the giver of wealth. As Dhanya Lakshmi, the goddess of grains, she takes charge of all agricultural produce including vegetables and fruits and so on, which are all primarily the responsibility of Bhudevi or Mother Earth who brings them all out of her bowels. As Gaja Lakshmi, where gaja the elephant stands for the animal world, she is the one who populates the world with all animals, which brings her into direct clash with Brahma who is supposed to be the creator. As Santaana Lakshmi, the bestower of progeny or off-spring, she is again into conflict with Brahma. As Veera Lakshmi, she claims a double role of providing people with good health (for which already Vishnu, Shiva and Dhanvantri are in contention) as a necessary precondition for equiping them with valour and courage, which is essentially the job of Shakthi/Durga/Parvathi. As Vidhya Lakshmi, she spreads knowledge, education in all aspects, arts, sciences, including fine arts like music and dance, all of which belong in the domain of Saraswati. As Vijaya Lakshmi, she is the giver of victory, not just in battles in the war-front but against all sorts of hurdles in one’s life. Isn’t she again in conflict with Shakthi/Durga/Parvathi? Then finally as Adhi Lakshmi, the Primeval Lakshmi, she goes overboard claiming superiority over all the above Lakshmis, and by extension, over all the gods/goddesses with their allotted duties in the Organisation Chart. She is not totally out of justification though, as each and every one of the topics considered above is an aspect of wealth.

Healing

Let us take the case of healing. Generally when we, Hindus, take our medicines, we are supposed to recite a sloka which ends with “Vaidhyo Narayano Hari”, which means Hari, Narayana, Vishnu is our physician. But as we have already seen, two more contenders have come into the picture, namely Shiva and Dhanvantri, apart from Lakshmi as we saw above. Are there any more gods in the fray? In comes Lord Subrahmanya or Kartikeya or Swaminatha, to mention only three of his names. The sloka in praise of Subrahmanya which starts as “Hey Swaminathartha bandho” carries plenty of passages with this theme. “Roudra rogam harathwam” means one who kills even severe diseases. “Maam paahi rogaath agorath” – please protect me from severe illnesses. “Sadhu sangasya rogaan sadha samharantham” – one who is busy all the time destroying the illnesses of pious disciples. Of course Dakshinamurthy being one aspect of Shiva must be expected to be proficient in healing as Shiva is Vaidyanatha. It is confirmed by the following hymn in praise of Dakshinamurthy which says:

Guravae sarvalokaanaam,

Bishajae bhavaroginaam,

Nidhayae sarvavidhyaanaam,

Dakshinamurthaye namah.

It means salutations to Lord Dakshinamurthy who is the Guru or preceptor for all people of the earth, physician for all diseased persons and is the treasure-house of all knowledge. Well, well, his being the physician for all ill persons is quite fine. But is he not crossing the borders, and trespassing on someone else’s territory when described as teacher of all people, and depository of all knowledge? Brahma whose four faces are said to represent the four Vedas, the sources of all knowledge which He Himself created, should be the logical repository of all knowledge. Similarly Saraswati, Brahma’s consort, is said to be in charge of all learning, wisdom, knowledge. How come Dakshinamurthy is described as the storehouse of all learning, as well as the Guru of all people? This gives rise to the question of how many gods are involved in this field of knowledge, education, learning and fine arts like music and dancing.

Education

Of course for a start we have Goddess Saraswati to whom everybody prays for proficiency in any field of knowledge like literature, science and technology, secular as well as spiritual knowledge and also fine arts like music and dancing. But even Saraswati cannot succeed in filling one with knowledge and wisdom unless one has initially propitiated the elephant-faced god Ganapathi or Ganesa in the form of Vidya Ganapathi. Of course no enterprise of any kind can succeed without invoking the Grace of Ganapathi or Vigna Vinayaka. Then in comes a familiar face, Subrahmanya, who has already poked his nose in the healing field. The same sloka cited earlier has some passages like “Brahmaadayo asya sishyaah” (Brahma and other gods are your disciples) and “Omkara tatwam vadantham Sambhu karne” (who taught the essential principle and significance of the primordial sound ‘OM’ in the ears of His father Shiva). Not to be outdone, Shiva himself as Dakshinamurthy is said to be “Guravae Sarva Lokaanaam” meaning the preceptor for all the people of this world. Hayagriva is an important deity in the Vaishnava tradition and is considered as an aspect of Vishnu. Depicted with a human body and horse’e head, he is also worshipped as the God of knowledge and wisdom. He is generally depicted as Lakshmi-Hayagriva with Lakshmi as his consort. However, to my knowledge, in at least one temple in South India he is paired with Saraswati as His consort. What a logical representation, both standing for knowledge and wisdom! Then of course Bhagavan Vishnu’s credentials as a great dispenser of knowledge is beyond question as it was He, in His avatar as Krishna, who taught the Art of Living to everyone in the form of Bhagavad Gita.

Of course learning is not restricted to the literary field alone but embraces music and dance as well. Saraswati is always shown as playing the veena. But as far as I know, She is never shown in a dancing pose. That is reserved for Shiva as Nataraja, the king of dance. Ganesa too is depicted as Narthana Ganapathi in many temples in South India. Can we ever think of the flute without immediately thinking of Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu?

Destruction

Shiva is said to be the God of Destruction. By destruction it is not meant to be the final annihilation and total devastation after which nothing exists any more. Destruction is followed by reconstruction and rejuvenation. This is not a difficult concept to understand. Our own physical body consists of millions and billions of cells. The cells one has today are not the same as what one had at birth, and will not be the same at the time one comes to the end of life. Every day thousands and thousands of cells in our body die and new cells are created. In a sense we die to some extent everyday and are regenerated. The same thing happens with towns and cities all over the world over a period of time as archaeology tells us. In World War II London, Berlin, Hamburg and many more cities in Europe were destroyed and then were rebuilt with much superior town-planning with much better facilities. The ultimate destruction took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were devastated by two atom bombs thrown at them by the Americans. Today they are totally new, very vibrant communities. The same thing seems to happen in a much greater scale to the entire world, and the universe. But Shiva does not seem to have any monopoly in this destruction business.

The Dasavathara stories tell us that Vishnu periodically appears in the earth whenever demons proliferate and threaten the entire creation. He destroys the demons and protects the poor suffering mankind and reestablishes the just rule of law. This is what Krishna specifically says in the Bhagawad Gita. But are Shiva and Vishnu alone in this activity? We have Krishna’s consort Satyabhama destroying Narakaasura, Parvathi as Kali or Durga destroying Mahishaasura and so on. In any picture or idol of Kali/Durga/Shakthi, the Goddess is shown standing on the head of Mahishaasura or buffalo-headed demon. Similarly the idol of the dancing Shiva as well as Dakshinamurthy show the right foot of the God trampling a demon called Apasmara. These representations take us back to the topic of education.

The buffalo is eminently noted for its brute force coupled with brainlessness and thoughtlessness. Apasmara represents ignorance or non-learning or negative learning, which translates to qualities like lust, hatred, miserliness, greed, arrogance and so on (kama, kroda, lobha, moha, madha, matsarya) which leads people to behave like demons and cause great havoc to society. Demons are not a separate species with horns and other appendages as depicted in pictures. We see them daily in our own lives in the form of corruption-ridden politicians, profiteers, drug and hooch peddlers, arms dealers and all such anti-social characters. The destructive aspect of God is seen when casualties on a mass scale take place in events like wars in which a big bunch of such ‘demons’ get eliminated along with a large chunk of apparently innocent folks too, which leaves a sobering effect on the rest of the people so that they tend to go straight for a while before the cycle starts again.

Wearing different hats.

The concept of wearing different hats is quite familiar in the corporate sector now-a-days. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director of a company has to wear different hats when he interacts with different departments of his company, like the research scientists, design/development engineers, production personnel, marketing and sales folks, purchase department, finance and accounts staff, customer care and so on. He has to deal with the different set of concerns and problems each one of these activities has, and strike a balance between all of them to ensure cohesive functioning of the enterprise. He is said to wear a different hat when dealing with each one of them.

How an ordinary working woman is involved in such a situation is brought out very well in the blog reproduced below.

Blog on Relationships and the Different Hats We Wear

12 May 2008

By Dr. KC Kelly, Ph.D., LMHC

http://DOCintheBiz.com (http://docinthebiz.com/blog/relationships-and-the-different-hats-we-wear/)

“We all have many different relationships in our lives. Each one is unique and all of them are ones in which we “wear different hats”.

“Let’s say a woman is a mother, daughter, sister, wife, friend, co-worker, and teacher. That’s an awful lot of hats to wear!

“As we know from our wonderful William Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage” and this woman mentioned above certainly takes on WELL more than five completely distinct roles. Even within her classroom and with her co-workers, she maintains different rapports with each and every person. She will certainly act differently with the principal of the school than she will with any of her students. Even each student sees a varied side of her personality as she shares connections with each one differently.

“So, let’s quickly follow her day. When she leaves work (her 25 or so students and all her co-workers from other teachers to administrators), she may stop at the small convenience store and converse with the same lady who checks her out each time she’s there. She then goes home and calls and relates to her mother, sister, and perhaps a friend or two. Her three children enter the home from their day at school and she spends time with them. Then when her husband arrives home from work, she will spend her time with him as well. I felt amazed when I actually began to think about how much of ourselves we exert and give to others in a single day!

“Doesn’t it almost seem as though we have to maintain MANY separate and distinct personalities to have all the different relationships we have in our lives? But somehow, we remain ourselves and all the different facets of what make us who we are shine through and make us the person we need to be for all these important people in our life.

“Each relationship we have demands and necessitates different requirements from us. Many times we find ourselves juggling our emotions and our time. The key to staying fulfilled and whole ourselves is to learn how to maintain balance in trying to make time for everyone in our lives and make them happy. All the while, we must learn our limitations, when to say no, and take care of our own needs. We need this inner strength and fortitude to be able to keep giving to the countless people with whom we are in relationships. This does not make us selfish; it makes us emotionally healthy!”

This is the situation of an ordinary woman who may have to deal with a 50 or 100 or so people on a day-to-day basis. The CMD has to wear a dozen or two or more hats to manage his limited enterprise. Then how many more hats should God wear to deal with 6 billion people, 190+ countries and country heads and their innumerable assistants, a 1000 religious and political parties and so on in this planet alone, leave alone the entire universe which is His Empire.

These 3 crore or 30 crore Gods of the Hindu pantheon are just the numerous hats that the One and Only GOD wears to handle His Empire.

Ekam Sath Vipraah Bahudha Vadanthi.

Jai Gurudev