Travel: Nothing Like Home...!

For a few years now, we have been celebrating a sort of  ‘Tourism Interlude’ in our personal life- ‘interlude’- unless the period culminates in our getting dissolved and dissipated  in the cultural cauldron that is the North East...there is that precedent, you know… महाराजांनी पिताम्बरास पर्यटना करिता शेगाव पासून दूर पाठवले आणि शेवटी त्याने कोन्डोली ला मठच उभारला!.... पांडुरंग......असुदे! We take up the cause the Warkaris towards the end, of course...

Today, simply stated, we propose to take a hard look at the underbelly of that graaanddd idea, blessed by al-Beruni, al-Vasco, ibn-batuta...of ibn batuta pehen ke juta nikal pada toofan me, thodi hawa naak me ghus gayi, thodi ghus gayi kaan me...!

Reverence and awe for Travel Phiolsophy...

We stumbled upon the ‘traffic sources’ feature on our Blogger Dashboard and it was a revelation to discover that many of the ‘reads’ of our pages stemmed from tourist literature. As one peels off the layers of the ‘traffic sources’, and branches off into other related sites, the hidden hand of the Capitalist Conspiracy becomes apparent in its splendorous dimensions, if that makes sense to you... For instance Wine Tourism or Vintourism, launched in India by the Saint of Baramati, who cannot be named in this blog for reasons of hygiene, aims at clearing up the inventories of red-wine that are decaying fast into acetic acid on account of faulty storage practices. The drive, which finds echo in the fawning features on Red Wine appearing in the Fourth Column, also lends a helping hand to Mumbai hotels carrying these precious hordes of acetic acid. God bless them...!

Whew...

To revert to the main topic- the endless procession of stuff about the ‘intellectual wholesomeness’ or somethinglikethat of ‘Travel’, which, we readily concede, has always inspired excellent literature.....and which by universal consent is treated as respectable, being a pretentious cousin of Ms. Anthropology and Ms. Sociology…

Many a wise line has been uttered on the subject of Travel, some of which have graced and added colour to our blog as well, to recall a few, the one by T.S.Eliot about rediscovering your own abode, another by Disraeli, “Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen..”

Travel quotations form a major body of Literature, and as Tourism threatens to become a greater money spinner, travel quotes get re-discovered, re-invented and re-tweeted. We observe talks about the all-round benefits conferred by travel getting more and more strident, the cacophony getting louder and louder as travel becomes more and more packaged and structured. The explosion of quotes about the salubriousness (salubriety should be crisper) , one feels,  arises from the human tendency of parsimony. One spends and expects a bang for the buck- BFTB for short. And then the hoo-haa about the ‘transformation’ it begets, ‘world peace’ (remember the beauty contest in Miss Congeniality starring Sandra Bullock) empathy, and some other mysterious things travel allegedly brings about. This BFTB theory to us is the Common Sense of Travel and Tourism quotes.

So- we enter the portals of Google and embark on a cyber-journey of a different kind. We begin with the premise that every particle has an antai-particle, and ergo there must be body of Literature consisting of antai-tourism views, and as we tug at one string, a torrent of contrary quotes inundates us, the choicest being:

“As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”

― David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

“I sat on a toilet watching the water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.”

― Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

“As I see the world, there's one element that's even more corrosive than missionaries: tourists. It's not that I feel above them in any way, but that the very places they patronize are destroyed by their affection.”

― Tahir Shah, House of the Tiger King

“In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place.of.tourists.” (*)

― Tahir Shah, In Search of King Solomon's Mines

(*) fits Garo Hills like a glove.

Whewww...

Being a Shillongkar, the last two by Tahir Shah, khuda aapko salaamat rakhe... may God bless you, ring true in the North East situation. We draw the attention of the reader to the following passage from a previous post:

“Boss rightly says good that there are restrictions on outsiders buying property in the hill states, otherwise bahar ke saale.. is natural beauty ko bech khaayen..that is outsiders would sell all this natural beauty for a song..Amen!(http://indrayanikaathi.blogspot.in/2012/09/leave-us-alone.html)”

Our friends Dr. Sangma and Manikda may publicly disagree, but...jaane do, apun ka kya...Khublei shibun...all the best...Godspeed to the Tourism Bug, may it flourish..!

Travellers of Vitthal-  Pandhari che Warkari:

Till matters are settled as regards the benefits of Travel, we’d like to pay our obeisance to the Warkaris. They do pride to ‘Tourism’ though people tend to misclassify them into that obnoxious category “tirthyatri”.

Residing at Parel Village, Mumbai 400 012 in 2006, we booked a cab for Hari Hareshwar, intending to depart by 6.00 AM for our little holiday. The cab was nowhere in sight, and we were constrained to call the intermediary Digamber Kadam. Nahi nahi saheb, tumchich chuk asnaar, bagha ki jara khali jawun- warkari aahe saheb driver...you’d better be sure Sir, the driver is a Warkari...! The tribe whose public face is the Sigma 6 Dabbawalas of Mumbai! Warkaris of Lord Vitthal of Pandharpur, who faithfully undertake on foot every aashadhi ekadashi  the 250 km. journey from their remote abodes, nacheez proposes, are the real  substantial Travellers of our times...

In the angrezi section above, the idea and purpose of Travel- flows from  the Destination to the Traveller- while in case of the Warkaris, it originates from the Traveller, and flows to the Destination- Vitthal’s home. Who are the real Travellers, I sayyyy...!? According to the neat Travel Literature, the Mega Spenders, no? People on a 7 and half day Tour, who’d rather capture the sights on Handycams for posterity rather than enjoy the here and now...?

Just undertake a wari with the guys from Indrayanikaathi...the REAL Marathis, farmers who would rather swallow poison when their lenders were distressed, than cause losses of crores to Public Sector Banks- you know, Purti Group- promoted by that overweight featherweight from Nagpur... tondaat shen bharun haklawa lagla... punnha ugawala...

Warkaris are the real inheritors of Dynaneshwar  Mauli and Tukaram Maharaj...the Warkaris who care little for the ideology of our Marathi arm-chair intellectuals- the 2% middle classes who jalaoed ghee ka diyaas when a humble ‘protected’ monument was pulled down in presence of 88 aspiring PMs of our land! 

The 2% is more concerned with the hygiene issues inevitable with so many people congregating... that's what they pretend during the chaityabhumi festivities also...what better occasion could there be to test your PM's mobile-washroom theories I sayyy...seems we're selective about our amnesias too...

Our blog has boldly gone ahead, unbeknownst to humanity, renaming the faithful rhythm addressed by that ungainly and infelicitous term ‘theka’, as the ‘warkari’. Mince we’d rather say ‘warkari teen-taal’ than ‘teen-taal theka’.

TAILPIECE:

How do they do it- these Dabbawalas of Mumbai- sigma six of course allows only 3-4 wrong deliveries for a million deliveries. Digamber has a nice anecdote to relate:

This dabbawala friend was once faced with a perplexing situation- somebody spilled paint on some of their colour codes of two tiffin-boxes- ‘dabbas’. He was left holding two dabbas with identical looking codes as a result of the snafus. But he intelligently delivered the right dabba to the right owner- how..? “Mya ughdum bagitla, eka dabya mandi methi chi bhaji hoti ani mal thawuk hota ki Shevde sahebanchya dabbyat baryachda methi chi bhaji aste…- ani Phlumare sahebanchi baayko bahutek batatich deti ”-  I simply opened one dabba, and finding methi- chi- bhaji in one of them, concluded that it should belong to Shevde saheb, for I know it’s often there in his dabba, while Phulmare saheb’s wife usually serves him potatoes…!

              THE REAL MARATHIS: HER REAL SAVIOURS: I MEAN  - मराठी अस्मिता:

मराठी अस्मिता 

Speaking Tree: GOD as Company

Paramhamsa's idol at Belur Math, Kolkata

In 1995, we were banished to a difficult territory of our organization in mid-year, when our younger son was struggling to recover from the deadly PUO and had to be hospitalized also. That was when we learnt that any bloody organization was an organization, not a human being, was devilish and merciless, and we decided the 88th time to quit. But it also turned out that organizations are like the mafia: easy to embrace, but difficult to part ways with. The mafia has frank and transparent methods, but our organization, although sarkari, possessed devious techniques. Anyway.

Office work was light. We had to market our services convincingly and the market was barren. Once home from office, there was no company -initially. The house was a huge affair, going by a single man’s needs, freshly painted yellow, smelling of turpentine, with four rooms, uninhabited by man or mortal. Shortly thereafter, we borrowed a black and white TV. Our bedroom was bare and on a shoe-rack, lay the TV. Doordarshan was the staple fare those days. One would only watch programmes dear to junior, one of them one remembers, Sinbad the Sailor, with a lilting signature tune. We discovered the Ramakrishna Mission campus quite close to our office, and got attached to the grand Paramhamsa idol, done intricately in pristine white marble. In the expression on Swami’s face there is a hint of a mischievous smile, and a look of patience with mankind. Add to that the delicious tirtha, with the gentle flavour of camphor, which seems to be a trademark of Mission temples. The musicians providing accompaniment to the bhajans were particularly gifted. An hour could evaporate swiftly at the temple.

Things settled gradually. Saturday evening one would fly to Titu’s home, and be dropped by Titu’s dad on Monday mornings. But week days were lonely. Gopal told us to chant Hanuman Chalisa, which he regularly did, and mind you, he hails from AP.

That’s when an odd thing started growing on us.

Our quarters earlier were seemingly occupied by a religious tenant. There were pictures of Hindu Gods stuck randomly on walls, windows, kitchens etc. etc. Out of sheer habit one made little bows to the pictures. Both Shiva and Srihari were represented in their various Avatars. Hanuman was there. One felt one was in company! There could be no better company, of course. Examining the pictures, when moving about, one came to admire the skills of the humble painters, who imbued the faces of the Gods with interesting, metamorphic expressions that could imitate your moods. And our pooja consisted of just lighting the intoxicating ‘Ganga’ incense-sticks available at all Mission temples.

Yours truly is neither a whole-time agnostic or an atheist or rationalist or believer. We hate to admit it, but it is contextual, as we yusstu teach in our behavioral science classes. Mince, varies. But mostly we’re in an agnostic frame of mind.

We are by heart on Budhakaushika muni virachita Srirama stotram, sampurnam, reciting it in toto from the age two months. The meaning of ‘Swami Ramo matsakha Ramachandra’ now dawned on us. Twameva mata cha pita twameva, twameva bandhuscha sakha twameva! It was all there! We had read and read about this. But it had not registered. Of course the notion pervades the entire body of Bhakti literature. Tukaram greets Vitthala as Vithu, they say. The Bhagwats of Maharashtra, who count Dnyaneshwara Maharaj as among theirs, look upon God as a friend, as a wife, a husband, one supposes a spouse can also be occasionally counted as friend. Wikipedia says, the notion was also there in the Old Testament, in Isaiah What better company than God Himself! God, who is all thing to all men can also be company. The comfort, the feeling of security generated in that house cannot be described by us. Our house simply became a home! There was also the kinship one developed with Paramahmsa!

That brings us to our little, personal dharmakshetra-kurukshetra. Faith vs reason? Not exactly. It is more subtle than that. Mince, right now one can’t explain. May be sentiment vs. reason? We always believed our intuition was great, and we always felt a rustle behind curtains. That’s one part. But to what extent do we stretch our beliefs? How far do we go? Analysing our grey matter mathematically, the spot our right brain has allocated too religion can be described as a singularity: the junction where a one-to- one-correspondence cannot be established between members of one set and the succeeding one. How should a man of reason react to this phenomenon- the comfortable, cocoon feeling of being in the company of God?

Now, please read this. This is a passage from a book by one of the greatest agnostics of our time.

(Context: Mythology of the Puranas)

If people believed in the factual content of these stories, the whole thing was absurd and ridiculous. But as soon as one ceased believing in them, they appeared in a new light, a new beauty, a wonderful flowering of a richly endowed imagination, full of human lessons. No one believes now in the stories of Greek gods and goddesses and so on, without any difficulty , we can admire them and they become a part of our mental heritage. But if we had to believe in them, what a burden it would be, and how, oppressed by this weight of belief, , we would often miss their beauty. Indian mythology is richer, vaster, very beautiful, and full of meaning. I have often wondered what manner of men and women they were who gave shape to these bright dreams and lovely fancies, and out of what gold mine of thought and imagination they dug them

Looking at scriptures then as a product of the human mind, we have to remember the age in which it was written, the environment and mental climate in which it grew, the vast distance in time and thought and experience that separates it from us. We have to forget the trappings of ritual and religious usage in which it is wrapped, and remember the social background in which it expanded. Many of the problems of human life have a permanence and a touch of eternity about them, and hence the abiding interest in these ancient books. But they dealt with other problem also, limited to their particular age, which have no living interest for us now.

Uncoat”

Common sense on our ancient scriptures. That is how an agnostic would look at this issue. The agnostic in question is woi hai- Jawaharlal Nehru, writing in ‘”Discovery of India”. For our purposes, the feeling of being fond of God, and (being fond of) our intellect, is reconciled.

That passage makes living with contradictions easier for us. Yin and yang. No more need to see the issue of veracity of scriptures in black and white. Loving Rama or Krishna need not entail carrying the baggage of believing that every Indian God was born under a mosque.

And look how pregnant with meaning that passage is. Hallmark of a classic. Just see this:

“Looking at scriptures then as a product of the human mind, we have to remember the age in which it was written, the environment and mental climate in which it grew, the vast distance in time and thought and experience that separates it from us.”

The passage teaches you to be magnanimous with Manusmruti, or Tulsidas who famously wrote ‘Dhol, ganwaar, shudra, pashu naari, ye sab taadan ke adhikaari’.

To end, here is a lovely story from the Puranas. The sage Jamadagni, our fore-father, incidentally, was an impatient and passionate man, endowed with an insanely fiery temper. Angry with his wife one day, he commanded his son Parashurama to behead his wife, that is, Parashurama’s own mother. Obedient as he was, the son carried out father’s wish with his divine Parashu, and then naturally wilted with grief. The father was touched with the son’s act of obedience and granted him a boon.

Make my mother whole again, said Parashurama.