The Cerne Giant (pictured above) is one of England’s most cherished icons. He is a chalk figure etched into the lush Dorset countryside, just above the village of Cerne Abbas.
The Cerne Giant stands tall. At one hundred and eighty feet, he is about as tall as a twenty-story apartment block. His erect penis also stands tall; at twenty-six feet it is a big as the Giant’s head. He wields a big knobbly club with which he could clearly do some damage.
While the Giant’s origins are not well known, (this New Yorker article is the source of my fundas about Cerne Abbas and is guaranteed to improve your weekend) what is abundantly clear is that the Giant is relevant today.
Volunteers maintaining the Giant's chalk markings
The villagers of Cerne Abbas take take care of their Giant. He is in such good shape because hundreds of local volunteers, fortified by tea and cakes, turn out every year to keep the Giant’s chalk outline clear of weeds. The Giant reciprocates with good karma. Cerne Abbas was recently voted “Britain’s Most Desirable Village.”
Cerne Abbas has a local brewery, as a desirable village should. When the Cerne Abbas Brewery develops a new beer, the owner Vic Irvine, and his business partner Jodie Moore, climb the hill at night – often with friends – and hop the fence surrounding the Giant. Then they pour some of the beer into the Giant’s mouth “as a libation”.
Jonathan Still, the vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Cerne Abbas, also serves as the Spiritual Director of the Cerne Abbas brewery. He joined the brewers on one night-time climb to the hilltop. Irvine and Moore had brought plastic jugs filled with their latest brews—an offering for the giant. “It was a clear night, about half past twelve, and we could see the whole valley in the blue moonlight,” Still recalled. “It was freezing cold, with the smoke curling up from the chimneys below. We sat up around the giant’s head—which is totally illegal—and we tasted this one, and that one, and we poured some into the giant’s mouth.” After about an hour of sitting and drinking, Still said, an extraordinary thing happened: “We poured this beer into the giant’s mouth, and we saw his Adam’s apple go up and down as he swallowed it.”
I’ve heard this story before.
I remember hearing it on 21 September 1995, when India came to a standstill to observe "Ganpati drinking milk”.
Neivedhyam in front of Lord Ganesha
Actually, I’ve heard it hundreds of times before. It’s the same thought as neivaidhyam, of pausing before a meal or celebration to offer one’s food to the Gods in thanksgiving.
Actually, it’s the same thought as leaving carrots and cookies out for Rudolph and Santa on Christmas night. The carrots and cookies we left out for Rudolph and Santa always got consumed. That proved that Rudolph and Santa actually, really brought our presents home.
I hope Santa takes some cookies for the Cerne Giant this Christmas. Or some crackers. To bring out the flavour of the new Cerne Abbas brews. The Giant behind Britain’s Most Desirable Village surely deserves some Christmas cheer.
And I hope the vicar of St. Mary's Church leaves some carrots and cookies out for Rudolph and Santa on the hillside on Christmas night, for when they bring presents for the Cerne Giant.
My family I are hooked on a TV miniseries called WandaVision.
WandaVision is a part of the Marvel-verse - an alternative reality with many heroes and heroines who have amazing superpowers, whose narratives are all tangled together and sometimes inconsistent, where time and causality are fluid, where good characters sometimes discover the dark side within, but where the dividing line between good and evil is always discernible.
Here is what I see going on in WandaVision.
Wanda and Vision are a loving wife and husband. They live an idyllic suburban life in 1950s America, with a Chevrolet, a Frigidaire, chicken dinners and nosy neighbours.
But that charming reality is not as it seems.
In another greater reality, Wanda and Vision were Avengers! They were warriors for good fighting against evil.
In this Avengers reality, Vision was killed on the battlefield.
Wanda refused to give up on her fallen partner.
Wanda used her superpowers to bring Vision back from the dead.
Wanda created an alternative reality in which she and Vision could be united once more.
So, WandaVision is about a strong virtuous woman with superpowers who brings her husband back from the dead. Where have I heard that before?
In another magical alternative universe. In the alternative reality of Indian mythology, where many heroes and heroines have amazing superpowers, whose narratives are all tangled together and sometimes inconsistent, where time and causality are fluid, where good characters sometimes discover the dark side within, but where the dividing line between good and evil is always discernible.
Wanda's story is basically the Savitri-Satyavan story.
Savitri was also a strong virtuous woman with superpowers who brought her husband Satyavan back from the dead.
Savitri’s superpowers were her intelligence and devotion. Wanda’s superpowers include telekinesis, energy manipulation and neuroelectric interfacing. Sure, there are differences between the two characters, and the telling of the two stories. But if the two heroines were to meet, they would have plenty in common to talk about.
Savitri negotiating with Yama in Raja Ravi Verma's Painting
A VW Pheaton rolling out of its "Transparent Factory"
Say you were a big company’s Chief Marketing Officer.
Say you were searching for a brand name for your new super-premium flagship product.
Would you choose a name associated with good karma, with success, with victory? Or would you name your product after one of history’s most notorious losers?
You’d choose a name associated with success, right? Or maybe not.
Back in 2002, Volkswagen chose to name their flagship luxury car the Phaeton.
The Phaeton was the most premium car in VW’s history, a luxury sedan positioned alongside the Mercedes S class range, priced at over USD 100,000 in today's money.
The German engineering worked. By most contemporary accounts the car was superb, with a Lamborghini class engine, with refined road-handling, fully loaded with features like passenger-specific climate control. It was made in VW’s famous Transparent Factory in Dresden, where customers could visit the shop-floor and watch their cars being assembled.
Yet, despite the superb product, the Phaeton was a commercial disaster. Production had to be stopped in 2014.
VW Phaeton’s story follows the same narrative arc as that of the mythological Phaeton, the demi-god the car was named after.
The original Phaeton was born to Apollo and a water-nymph Clymene.
In those days, the sun rode around the heavens in Apollo’s chariot, drawn by four white horses, guided by the charioteer Helios.
Phaeton had not trained as a charioteer. But the teenager ignored his own unreadiness, took advantage of an unwise divine promise and took control of his father’s sun-chariot. Unable to control the sun-chariot’s incredible power he steered it too close to the earth (therefore scorching the Sahara), he then overcompensated and steered too far away from the earth (therefore freezing the tundra). At this point he panicked and was plunging the sun towards Greece itself. Zeus had no choice but to throw a thunderbolt at his grandson to strike Phaeton dead. Zeus had his duties. He had to save the planet.
So, why did Volkswagen’s Phaeton fail?
Like all big events this failure doesn’t have a single cause. But let’s not rule out the possibility that Volkswagen invited Zeus’ wrath by invoking Phaeton’s name.
Maybe the Chief Marketing Officer would have been better off choosing a classical sounding name that Zeus didn’t have strong feelings about, like Lexus or Acura.
Phaeton the unready charioteer plunging toward the earth
_________________________________________________
P.S. This blogpost was triggered by reading the chapter about Phaeton in Mythos, Stephen Fry's excellent retelling of the Greek epics.
Meena Harris (Kamala Harris’ sister Maya’s daughter) tweeted it a few weeks ago.
It has to be my favourite image from the just concluded US presidential election. It’s a crazy, whacky, light-hearted juxtaposition of the Mahishasura Mardini Stottram with the rough and tumble of electoral politics, just what the doctor ordered to lighten the mood at a time when both religion and politics feel awfully serious.
Unfortunately, Meena Harris had to take this off Twitter because it "offended Hindus”.
I find that odd. I am a Hindu and I see nothing offensive in the image. So, I’m recirculating the image now with a little explanation on how this image can be an access-point to deeper Hindu ideas like advaita, karma yoga and bhakti.
Consider advaita, the idea that divinity is latent within each of us, that the purpose of life is to give expression to the divine within. In this context, Kamala Harris could be seen as giving expression to the power of Maa-Durga, the divinity who lives within her.
Or consider karma yoga, the idea that spiritual attainment is not the exclusive privilege of world-renouncing monks, that the divine can be fully realised by engaging wholeheartedly in worldly work. In this context, Kamala Harris could be seen fighting the good fight on the electoral battlefield, therefore getting ever closer to the divine by treading her chosen path as a karma yogi.
Or consider bhakti, the mystic experience of oneness with the divine, unfettered by intellectualism or duty. To me personally, that is the association the image brings to mind most readily. The Mahisura Mardhini Stottram, which this image is riffing on, is one of my favourite prayers. I was brought up listening to it as a part of life’s ambient soundtrack. This stottram is typically set to a rhythmic, hypnotic beat (click here to listen) that lends itself to the immersive rapture of bhakti.
The point (hopefully the now obvious point) is that there is nothing anti-Hindu about the picture above. It's not even anti-Trump. Caricature has always been (and should be) a part of politics.
So, let’s keep alive our sense of humour and sense of perspective and enjoy the jokey juxtaposition of the Mahishasura mardhini stottram with American politics. Let’s enjoy the fact that Kamala Harris will be the first person of Indian descent to ascend to the White House. And let’s trust that the Devi will manifest herself in Kamala, Maya, Meena, and in strong women everywhere, as the cycle of time turns and good times return.
Is England’s patron Saint George a dragon slayer? Or a lizard eater? The question is prompted by these posters promoting St. George's Day, prominently displayed across the metropolis, blessed by the Lord Mayor of London himself. The weapon the beast is impaled upon is, obviously, a table fork. In which case, the beast itself can’t be much bigger than a garden lizard. Do people eat lizards? Do heroes eat lizards? Quite different from the way the dragon slayer was depicted in more heroic times….
How could
Yudhishtira have done what he did? How could noble King Dharmaputra have gambled
away his kingdom, his brothers, his wife? Was it really Yudhishtira playing that fateful
game of dice? Or, was it Yudhishtira’s Shadow? The Shadow is a Jungian archetype. Having a Shadow is the inevitable consequence of having a Self. When the Self stands up in the light it naturally and inevitably casts a shadow, a distorted image of itself, that contains the less acknowledged, less developed, more vulnerable aspects of the personality.
I like to think
Yudhishtira’s Shadow had taken over, uninvited, when the dice didn’t roll for
him during that game. Yudhishtira still was a very young man then. He
hadn’t yet found or tamed his Shadow. Yudhishtira finally harnessed
his Shadow when he went into exile and became Kanka, teaching King Virata to play dice, thus finding the equilibrium needed to be a great king.
Shadow-puppet of King Yudhishtira
How did Rama,
the other great king of Indian mythology, find and harness his Shadow? Did he find and harness his Shadow?
Every Self has
a Shadow. But Rama’s Shadow is invisible, we don't know anything about it. Rama is flawless. He was born the perfect
man, the maryada purushottam. He didn’t have to
struggle to grow into the role, which, paradoxically, makes me less comfortable
with Rama; like there is a Shadow out there that might emerge at a crucial moment
and do something spectacularly daft.
My children were listening to a story. I was sitting with them, squirming with discomfort.
The story was Samudra Manthan: about the churning of the ocean by the devas and asuras that produced Halahala, the terrible poison, and Amrita, the nectar of immortality. We’d chosen this story because it is one of the nicer, less gory Indian puranas, but I still was uncomfortable, because it story reads like a divine con-job.
The devas invite the asuras to work with them to churn the ocean, implying that they would share the Amrita. Yet, when the Amrita does emerge, Lord Narayana shows up disguised as the beautiful Mohini, gives all the Amrit to the devas and none to the asuras. This was justified because the devas were devotees of Lord Narayana, while the asuras were not. Bascially, its okay because “they” are not God’s people.
To my ears, this moral logic sounded a bit like the logic that European colonials used to justify the genocide of Native Americans, or that Nazis used used against the Jews. I needed to step in and re-frame this story. I needed to find a reasonable interpretation.
It turns out that my grandmother, Kamala Subramaniam, had been similarly troubled by the Samudra Manthan story, and had thought through its implications. I found a considered, and positive, interpretation in her translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam. Here’s her take:
"The incident of the churning of the ocean must be pondered over. The devas and asuras were both working towards the same end: finding of Amrita. Both worked strenuously and equally sincerely towards this end. They both pulled the mountain Mandara with the snake Vasuki as the rope, and both efforts were equal: as a matter of fact, the asuras put in more work since they had more powerful arms. As a result, however, the devas enjoyed the benefit while the efforts of the asuras were all wasted. This was because the devas had surrendered themselves to the Lord. They had taken the dust off the feet of the Lord, and their labour were duly rewarded. Men of the world, when they strain their minds, their riches, their actions and other similar things towards benefiting themselves, their children, their homes and their personal happiness, their actions become all futile. If however, man does the same things dedicating the actions to the Lord, man’s actions will never be fruitless."
I like the Samudra Manthan story partly because churning the ocean is such an easy metaphor for the life-work of a karma yogi, of people like you and me who work to earn a living and raise a family. The point of this metaphor is not that God will appear at the denouement, and distribute goodies to “us” but not to “them”. It is that dedicating one's life-work to the Lord, whatever you conceive Her to be, is its own reward.
Looked at this way, the difference between the devas and asuras is not intrinsic or inborn. The difference arises from the way they frame their lives, the lens through which they choose to see their work. The devas dedicate their work to the Lord, they experience bhakti, and bhakti is the difference between the Amrita the devas experienced, and the bitterness and cynicism the asuras must have experienced.
Just watched
Snow White and the Huntsman. Enjoyed the movie, in much the same way that I
enjoy watching Brendan Nash bat.
Brendan Nash in action
Nash doesn’t
strike the ball especially sweetly. However, as a white guy playing for the
West Indies, he asks some interesting questions of unspoken assumptions, and for
that reason is one of my favourite contemporary cricketers.
Similarly, Snow
White and the Huntsman suffers from wooden acting, and a plot line that occasionally stalls. However, it does challenge the assumption that fairy tales are meant for
children, and therefore need to be told in a brightly-lit Disney-esque style. This
telling is dark. The palette is wintry: all greys, blacks, browns and whites, broken
only by the occasional splash of blood red. This menacing mood works. It feels
more true to the dark heart of the Grimm Brothers’ story than Disney’s incongruously
cheery style.
I would love
to see an even more radical reinvention of Snow White. Say, one in which Snow
White is offered the throne, and refuses, because she prefers to live in the
woods with her beloved dwarves. Unfortunately,
this telling isn’t that adventurous or brave. It’s about style, not revolution. But its still
worth the watch just for its style.
Yesterday, Saint Michael saved me from a terrible fate.
I could have wasted my Friday evening watching the Indian cricket team getting savaged by Australia. Instead, I attended a very pleasant Michaelmas service at my children's school. I was grateful for having been saved from hours of TV-misery, and was a little embarrassed that I had no idea what Michaelmas was. Such ignorance is inexcusable in this age of Google, and so, I Googled-up Michaelmas.
The interpretation I like best is that Michaelmas is an autumn festival. It is a thanks-giving to the earth for the bounty of summer, a moment of reflection as the earth and the spirit turn inwards for renewal through the winter. Rudolf Steiner - the inspiration behind the Waldorf school my children attend - thought Michaelmas and Easter were the year's most important festivals, yin and yang, each completing the other, together forming the circle of life. Looked at this way, Michaelmas is like Pongal, the harvest festival of South India; Michaelmas is Shiva to Easter's Brahma.
If Michaelmas is so important, why is it so little known? Competition, maybe? In Britain, the Anglican church replaced Catholic Michaelmas with the Harvest Festival. In America, two big-budget blockbusters, Thanksgiving and Halloween, sit in the same perceptual space. In Latin America, Santa Muerte is venerated in autumn, typically on November 1. The top Google search term associated with Michaelmas is secular: Oxford and Cambridge refer to Fall Semester as Michaelmas Term.
Why is the heroic warrior-angel Michael, who defeated proud Lucifer in battle and cast him out of heaven, associated with this introspective autumnal festival? It isn't obvious. The Archangel Michael might have been a Christian element layered onto a ancient and much-beloved pagan tradition, like Christmas. Regardless, St. Michael has done me a good deed this weekend. Today is his day. Happy Michaelmas!
Luke Skywalker strides towards the twin sunset on Tatooine
I'd posted yesterday about the poem "Keep Ithaka always in the mind", in which Ithaka is a metaphor for home, for integrity. Other classical traditions have their own Ithakas, their own sacred places that stand for integrity. For instance, Star Wars fans might think of Tatooine - the desert planet in a galaxy far, far away where Luke Skywalker was raised - as their Ithaka.
The mythic, metaphorical Ithaka has a physical analogue: the island of Ithaki in western Greece. It turns out that Tatooine also has a physical analogue: Tataouine, in southern Tunisia.
George Lucas filmed the desert landscapes of Tatooine on location in Tunisia, the Breber architecture in Tataouine is recognizably the inspiration behind Luke Skywalker's childhood home. Apparently, he borrowed the name of a local town as well. Adherents of the Jedi faith are now making pilgrimages to Tataouine. The World's latest Technology podcast has a story about a Jedi knight, Mark from Norwich, who got married at Tataouine.
If only the people in power would uphold Britain's traditions of tolerance and include the Jedi religion on the census questionnaire, conversion to the Jedi faith would hit a tipping point...pilgrim traffic to the Tunisian Sahara would take off...the Tunisian economy would improve...the Arab Spring would be reinforced...inexpensive and effective nation-building in the Arab world!
Came across another classically inspired poem. This time, I didn't randomly spot it on the tube. It came to my inbox in a farewell email from a Greek colleague, Clementina, who dedicated these lines to us:
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. Ithaka as a metaphor for integrity reminds me of:
"You, who are on the road, must have a code, that you can live by.
And so become yourself...".
Ithaka is where you learn that code, the code itself, and where you get to when you've lived by that code. Echoes of the Bhagavad Gita as well, "not expecting Ithaka to make you rich" maps directly to "कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन".
Clementina found some beautiful words with which to acknowledge us, her colleagues, for being a part of her unhurried, marvellous journey, her Odyssey. Cheers Clementina! May Ithaka remain always in your mind.
Zigackly. I picked this gem up from Michael Lewis' hilarious new book, Boomerang. The passage in question is about Ireland:
Ian (Michael Lewis' Irish guide) will say “Over there, that’s a pretty typical fairy ring,” and then explain, interestingly, that these circles of stones or mushrooms that occur in Irish fields are believed by local farmers to house mythical creatures. “Irish people actually believe in fairies?,” I ask, straining but failing to catch a glimpse of the typical fairy ring to which Ian has just pointed. “I mean, if you walked right up and asked him to his face, ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ most guys will deny it,” he replies. “But if you ask him to dig out the fairy ring on his property, he won’t do it. To my way of thinking, that’s believing.” And it is. It’s a tactical belief, a belief that exists because the upside to disbelief is too small...
To my ears, that rings true of India too. Superstition is about economic, rather than scientific, rationality. Lewis' chapter about Ireland is still visible at Vanity Fair.
I read, and enjoyed, a book that called Christ a scoundrel. The book is by Philip Pullman, a well known atheist. Pullman isn’t being subtle about his name calling, Christ is referred to as a scoundrel in bold print, in the book’s title.
Initially, I wasn’t sure if I should be blogging about a book that calls Christ a scoundrel, I'm not here to offend people. Then, I found that the Church of England Newspaper called the book “magnificent” (while noting that five hundred years ago Philip Pullman would have been burnt at stake as a heretic). The former Bishop of Edinburgh wrote a thoughtful and positive review in The Guardian. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s review found in it “a voice of genuine spiritual authority”. My blogging about the scoundrel Christ should be okay.
Pullman’s book is a retelling of the life of Jesus, with a twist.
In Pullman's telling, Jesus is born with a twin brother called Christ. Jesus is a passionate, charismatic idealist. Christ is a clever, careful pragmatist, an apparatchik. Jesus connects with real people, and moves or exhorts them to a more fulfilling life. Christ hero-worships his brother Jesus, diligently records his words, and conceives of an institution he calls “the church” to celebrate and immortalize Jesus, an idea Jesus despises.
Jesus says “if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the left as well...love your enemies, and pray for them...The road that leads to life is a hard one, and it passes through a narrow gate, but the road to destruction is easy, and the gate is broad...do to others as you hope they would do to you.”
Christ says “think of the advantages if there were a body of believers, a structure, an organization already in place...I can see the whole world united in this Kingdom of the faithful...local groups under the guidance of a wise elder in the region, the regional leaders all answering to the authority of one supreme director, a kind of regent of God on earth...I can see Caesar himself having to bow down before this body, and offer obeisance to God’s own kingdom here in the world...I can see the majesty and splendour of the great temples, the courts, the palaces devoted to the glory of God, and I can see this whole wonderful creation lasting for generation after generation.”
Pullman makes no secret of his contempt for the church, his anger about “the Crusades, the witch-hunts, the heretic-burnings, the narrow fanatical zeal that comes so swiftly and naturally to some individuals in positions of power when faith gives them an excuse”. His character Christ is written to be the object of this contempt, this anger. Pullman explains: “I wanted this Christ to embody as much as possible of what the church later did to alter, edit and ignore the words of Jesus, and to benefit from his death and supposed resurrection.”
So, in Pullman's story, Christ betrays Jesus to the Romans. The church needs the crucifixion to happen, to serve as its founding myth. Pullman sees the church as the judas who betrays Jesus.
Yet, paradoxically, by writing Jesus and Christ as distinct characters, and by juxtaposing them, Pullman liberates the good man Jesus from the scoundrel Christ. Jesus' greatness is so much more apparent when the evil that has been done in his name can be decanted into another character.
Even his portrayal of the scoundrel Christ is kinder than it might have been. Pullman explains, “Christ developed in a way I hadn’t expected, and found himself with a human conscience, tempted and torn and compromised”. The modern church has good reason to be so relaxed about Pullman’s heresy.
I find I can relate to this tension - between an ideal and an institution that claims to stand for that ideal - more directly, more emotionally, by porting it into an Indian context. These lines from Tagore’s Gitanjali are often cited as the animating spirit behind India’s freedom:
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."
Unsurprisingly, the Republic of India doesn’t always live up to Tagore’s ideal. That isn’t a reason to lose faith in either Tagore’s ideal or in the Indian republic.
Perhaps the only certainty with any institution is that the institution seeks to enhance its own power. This is true for nation states, churches, business corporations, NGOs, universities, armies...the whole shooting match...they’re all out to turn themselves into something majestic, splendid and glorious, lasting generation after generation. In the process, they can do terrible things. Limiting their power, so terrible things happen less often, is good. Yoking that power to a higher ideal, doesn’t always work, but is not bad.
So, just how much of a scoundrel is Pullman's Christ, thought of both as a character in this story, as well as a metaphor for the church as an institution?
Pullman's narrative starts
at Jesus' conception. The story continues along Jesus' noble path - rejecting
Satan's temptations, the sermon on the mount, the cleansing of the temple -
until it descends to the squalor of Christ taking money from Caiaphas to betray
Jesus. That narrative arc feels like the fall of man. it shows Christ as a
scoundrel.
However, Jesus is not Adam. His story didn't begin at his conception. Jesus was born into a context, a context which is
apparent even in Pullman's tight narrative. Jesus was born into a world of
brutal Roman oppressors, of the rigid and corrupt Jewish establishment, and of
any number of transient spiritual cults. These cults, however transient, gave people
something they valued - a sense of purpose and belonging. In that context,
creating an durable institution that would provide people with some of this
value feels like the right thing to do.
Was it worth betraying Jesus to create such an institution?
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Pullman's Christ is like one of John Le Carre's spies,
Smiley's people, doing shady deals that may or may not work, for a cause that may or may not turn out to be just, like Kim Philby, the upper-class Englishman who betrayed his people to spy for the soviets because he sincerely believed in the communist ideal. Maybe Christ's dilemma was like Brutus':
Brutus loved Caesar, but loved Rome more. History judged Brutus kindly. Either
way, Christ seen in context is an ambiguous character, not obviously a scoundrel.
Or maybe (I don't like this thought, but it is too strong to resist) it comes down to youth. Jesus had the charisma, idealism and moral clarity of youth. Like John Kennedy, Jim Morrison and James Dean, like Gautam Buddha, Adi Shankara and Swami Vivekananda, Jesus died young, and remained pure. Christ lived on, to be tarnished by an imperfect world, to be called a scoundrel for his troubles. Looked at this way, the benediction that follows most naturally from the life of Jesus and Christ are the words of another man who was once called Judas: "may you stay, forever young".
Jalaluddin Rumi was wandering the streets of Konya, overcome with grief at the death of a dear friend, when he was captured by the rhythmic beat of a goldsmith's hammer. He started whirling, found consolation, and inspired a tradition that has continued for seven hundred years.
Sufi whirling has always been laced with lamentation. Though, arguably, the whirling in the cartoon above, whirling to lament a moment which is about to die, is even more poignant than traditional Sufi whirling. I found this cartoon at xkcd.com.
Incidentally, I did get to see a dervish sema ceremony on my last trip to Istanbul, at the Hodja Pasha Cultural Centre. Real dervishes do whirl counter-clockwise.
Once upon a time, King Drupada ruled over the land of Panchala. Drupada was wise and just, his subjects were happy and loyal.
However, King Drupada was not as strong as he was wise. He was drawn into war against the Kauravas of Hastinapura, and was comprehensively defeated. He was captured on the battlefield, bound in chains, and presented as a prisoner to Dronacharya, the victorious Kaurava commander. Drona showed mercy on Drupada and spared his life, but annexed half of Panchala.
Humiliated, Drupada swore revenge. He prayed to the gods for a valorous son who would defeat the Kauravas and kill Dronacharya, and performed the putra kameshti yagna. Lo and behold, from the sacred flames rose a perfect warrior, fully armed and ready for battle: Dhrishtadyumna. This fire-born warrior fulfilled his destiny. Dhrishtadyumna was commander-in-chief of the victorious Pandava army through the great eighteen-day war at Kurukshetra; he slew Dronacharya on the fifteenth day of battle.
Yet, as the eons passed, Dhrishtadyumna remained an uncelebrated character. Children are traditionally named after other Pandava heroes like Arjuna, Bheemasena, Krishna, Abhimanyu and Satyaki, even Yudhishtra, but not after Dhrishtadyumna. The defeated Kaurava commanders Bheeshma, Drona and Radheya are all arguably more revered than Dhrishtadyumna, the victorious Pandava commander.
I think this is because Dhrishtadyumna was never more than a warrior, he never became a hero. He was born complete. He therefore never went through the hero's journey. His character was not forged in the crucible of events, like, say, Bheeshma's vow of celibacy, Duryodhana's embrace of Radheya as a true kshatriya, Bheemasena's fury after that fateful game of dice, or Arjuna's reluctance to wage war on his grandfather. It was never obvious that Dhrishtadyumna fully felt the shame of his father's defeat, or of his sister Draupadi's humiliation. His character and destiny were a given, preordained by his progenitors. Therefore he remained a bit of a cynical automaton, more a Terminator-like android than a real hero worthy of adulation.
Dhrishtadyumna's spiritual descendants are modern sports "professionals", who are brought up from birth to fulfil a single, narrow aim. These modern-day Dhrishtadyumnas include a vast number of Soviet era athletes, mass manufactured by the communist machine to win Olympic medals. Tennis once had a surfeit of these bloodless, colourless, insufferably boring androids, especially between the Borg-McEnroe era and the Federer-Nadal era. Anyone want to watch Thomas Muster vs. Michael Stich?
When Serena Williams first came on the scene, I didn't warm to her, I didn't especially want to see her play. She seemed to be just another android, another avatar of Dhrishtadyumna. Serena was conceived by her parents, literally, to win the sweet prize money now on offer in tennis. The only self, the only personality, young Serena seemed to have was her parent’s warped ambition.
Over the years, however, Serena changed. She distanced herself from her pushy dad (he no longer attends Venus vs. Serena matches holding a placard that reads "Welcome to the Williams' Show”). She became a shopping-addict, and went through therapy. She threatened to shove a tennis ball down a match official's throat. She learnt to look sweet and starry-eyed at press interviews. She kept improving her game. She glammed it up at the Oscars. Serena went through a freak injury - she stepped on broken glass in a German night club, and that developed into a life threatening pulmonary embolism, which stole a stole an entire year of Serena's prime. She went through a string of failed relationships with rap artists and sportsmen. She dished out boyfriend advice to Caroline Wozniacki: “I told her never look through the guy’s phone,” Serena said. “That is the worst thing you can do. I told her most relationships end.”
Basically, real life happened to Serena. Real life changed Serena, and in those changes authentic self was created. Serena’s humanity is apparent now in a way that Dhrishtadyumna’s never was, which is why watching Serena play today is so much more compelling than it ever was.
Chennai Super Kings, my home town cricket team, just won IPL 4 in style. They have clearly been the best team on show since the inception of the IPL, with two trophies, one runner up spot, and one semi-final finish.
Many reasons have been ascribed to this performance, from MS Dhoni's captaincy, to the stability of the squad, to Stephen Fleming's coaching. I really like the tactical intelligence of CSK's game plans - Ashwin opening the bowling, Hussey and Vijay playing traditional cricket shots rather than low percentage slogs and Dil-scoops, Badrinath's clear role as the crisis man, Dougie Bollinger's yorkers at the death, shuffling the batting order to maintain left-right pairs - good, smart cricket.
But, as the many erudite Mylapore Mamis in CSK's fan base will be happy to explain, success does not derive only from one's tactics, from the flow of one's deeds on the field of action, from one's karyas on the dharmakshetra. Success also derives from karma, from the stock of goodness accumulated through many small acts of kindness and decency. These acts happened long before the men in yellow stepped onto the dharmakshetra of Chepauk.
One of these karmic factors working for CSK, which mainstream cricket commentators seem to have completely missed, is their co-ed cheering squad. CSK were the only IPL team with both men and women in their cheering squad. They were led by a shaven-headed fifty one year old drummer called Sivamani.
I certainly don't mean to pass judgment on the all-girl cheerleading squads, or on their admirers, as "bad". But CSK's co-ed approach just feels better, more comfortable, more natural. There is no obvious reason why leading a cheer for a sports team should be sexually charged. Cricket has long had a tradition of colourful, noisy and committed fans: Sri Lanka's Percy Abeysekara, India's Sudhir Gautam, West Indies' Trini Posse, England's Barmy Army. This cheering was never sexy (though the Barmy Army's chat with an Aussie fielder at the boundary line could involve pointed references to his sexuality). Sex and cricket always were fulfilling, but distinct, aspects of life.
When cheerleading was invented in America, at Princeton University in 1884, it was an all-male activity. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt were cheerleaders in their time. Somewhere along the way, cheering a sports team morphed into the stylized sexual displays put on in the USA today in football and basketball (but not in cricket's cousin baseball). The IPL imported this into cricket in the name of "marketing".
Perhaps the greatest failure of NFL style cheerleading at the IPL is not moral but material: it doesn't seem to work in marketing terms. Several teams with great looking all-girl cheering squads are failing to fill their stadiums, or to animate their crowds. Ultimately, people who want to watch dancing girls can watch them elsewhere, without the annoying bat-ball distractions. The men and women who pitch up at cricket matches are there to enjoy the cricket. Sivamani and his co-ed troop successfully orchestrated the cheering of these real fans. CSK's fans were easily the most passionate and vocal in the IPL, effectively adding another player to CSK, making them almost invincible at home. Long may the force remain with CSK, and with Sivamani.
How did we do it? (A) we cheated (B) we were lucky (C) we have a team of geniuses (D) it is written. And yes! Ladies and gentlemen, you are right. The correct answer is (D). We won the World Cup for the same reason that a chai wallah called Jamal Malik won Rs 2,00,00,000 in a quiz show. We won the World Cup because - it is written.
I didn't just make that up when I was celebrating our win. I have it on good authority that we won because it is written. The authority in question is India's coach Gary Kirsten. Here is what he had to say to Cricinfo:
As the tournament progressed in those knockout stages, I just felt a sense of destiny there. I felt we were going to do this thing. To the point that, the day before the final we knew were going to win. We actually even spoke into it. That we were going to win this thing. It's how we prepare to deal with the success, because we are going to win. Mike spoke about it: we are going to win this thing tomorrow. There was never any doubt at that stage.
I don't think Gary Kirsten is seeing ghosts here. He is talking about something real, a very tangible spirit that was present in this Indian team, that helped them raise their game when it mattered. This spirit is most apparent when it is absent, like when a team or player can't summon up the self-belief to win, and therefore crumbles or chokes, like Jana Novotna at Wimbledon 93 or South Africa in the cricket World Cup 99. But the converse is also true. The presence of this spirit, this deeply experienced sense of destiny, gives a team or player resiliency, an extra edge.
India didn't have this spirit in 83. After that win, Kapil Dev told the media that he had brought champagne into the dressing room before the final, because even if India lost, we'd done quite well to reach the finals, and that was something to celebrate. That quiet sense of destiny was a lot more apparent in Gavaskar's team in 85. Of course, a sense of destiny doesn't guarantee success. Saurav Ganguly's team had a potent sense of destiny in 04, pushing for an epoch-making win at the SCG. But it was not to be, as Steve Waugh denied fate in his final test match.
Destiny's intent for this World Cup was for Sachin Tendulkar to score his hundredth hundred in a World Cup final in Bombay, to lead India to victory. Over thirty thousand India fans at Wankhede had read this destiny in the stars, and in the palms of their hands, and were fervently willing it to happen. It didn't. Malinga punctured that dream.
The aspect of India's performance in the finals I was most impressed with was the calm, purposeful confidence with which we played even after that dream had been punctured. That tells me that the team's dream, the sense of destiny Kirsten talks about, was not about individual performances but about winning the World Cup. Because if the team had believed deeply that Sachin was destined to score his hundredth hundred that day, they would have been shattered by Sachin's dismissal. They would have been shattered like Zizou Zidane was when he head-butted the Italian Materazzi during a football World Cup final.
Here is former England batsman and Kent and Middlesex captain Ed Smith's take on Zidane's World Cup final:
"Scratch a brilliant sportsman deeply enough and you reach a layer of self-certainty in his own destiny. The greater the sportsman, usually the more convinced he is of his own predestined greatness. The big stage means it must be his stage, victory has been prearranged on his terms, it is his destiny to win the World Cup or the Olympics or the Ashes. It might be perfectly rational for a great player to believe he has a good chance of decisively influencing the big occasion. But that isn't what he thinks. He thinks it is inevitable. After all, well-balanced self-awareness and genius seem so rarely to co-exist.
If you could bottle that self-certainty you would have the most potent winning drug. That is why champion teams so often have a talismanic force at their centre - someone who believes the match, the day and the championship have been set up in accordance with his own destiny. His self-belief radiates to the rest of the team. Zidane had exactly that quality. When France really needed something special, he believed he would do it. That belief can be so strong that not only your own team but even the opposition can fall under its spell.
In extra time of the World Cup final, with Thierry Henri off substituted, France again looked to Zidane, almost exclusively to Zidane. We can be sure that Zidane, despite being unusually exhausted and having played longer than he would in normal circumstances, shared that view...the script had gone according to plan. Zidane had taken France to the final... one last moment of pre-destined brilliance was all he required.
And he almost did it. In the 104th minute, summoning up one last effort, Zidane made a decisive run into the penalty box, a cross was delivered just in time, and Zidane's soaring header sailed inevitably towards the top of the goal...Just as it was meant to be.
Having complied with Zidane's will so far, the gods finally made a mistake. The Italian goalkeeper Buffon made an inspired save in response to an inspired header. What followed was the most revealing and desperate image of the World Cup. Aimed at no one in particular, not at the keeper, not at himself, perhaps at the heavens, Zidane's face contorted into an agonized scream. This should not have happened, cannot have happened, must not be allowed to stand. Zidane's face resembled Edvard Munch's famous painting.
Having come this far with him, how could the gods now abandon him? But they finally went their own way, and left Zidane in solitary despair... Which would weigh more heavily on a champion's mood - a verbal insult to his family (the kind of insult that sportsmen hear all too often and nearly always manage to ignore) or being denied, in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, what he considered to be rightfully his: the winning goal, the perfect narrative, his destiny...
Zidane wasn't thinking logically when he headbutted Materazzi. He wasn't thinking at all. He was acting at a level, as he often did, which was beyond the bounds of normality."
It was written, yet it was not. Zidane was not grieving a game, or even a trophy. He was grieving an entire world. The world in which he had lived had broken apart, the fabric of fate had been shredded. Buffon's unbelievable save threw Zidane squarely within the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. Headbutting Materazzi was only a part, and not an especially important part, of Zidane's experience of crazy sorrow. In Ed Smith's words, "it's not a long journey from extreme self-belief to madness".
Fortunately, the Indian team believed in their destiny to win a World Cup, but they didn't really believe in Sachin's hundredth hundred in the World Cup final. Sure, that would have be nice, but that was icing on the cake. That lack of belief let them keep their heads when Sachin fell. That lack of belief allowed them to give Sachin a glorious World Cup winner's send-off. Zizou Zidane also deserved a send off like that. It was written, even if it didn't come to be.
This post is being published on December 25 to honour a deity whose birth is traditionally celebrated on this day: the sun god, Mithras.
I discovered Mithras (or Mitra) while exploring Rome this summer, at the Basilica di San Clemente. Entering at the street level, this Basilica is "one of the most richly decorated churches in Rome". Walk a couple of staircases down, and you're in the ruins of another great church, grand enough to have hosted papal councils, that was destroyed in the Norman sack of Rome in 1084. Another couple of staircases down - it's starting to get chilly now, and you can hear the rush of water from an aqueduct leading to the Tiber - is a cave with long stone benches running along the side. In the middle of the cave is a stone altar with a relief of a boy slaying a bull. This is what remains of the Mithraeum, the temple of Mithras, which was destroyed when the church was built.
Apparently, around 300 years after Christ, the cult of Mithras was one of the biggest of many foreign-inspired religious cults in the Roman empire. Mithras, which comes from the same root as Mitra, the Vedic sun god, was considered Persian. Other popular cults included the Greek-inspired cult of Demeter, the Egyptian-inspired cult of Isis, and the Palestinian cult of Christ. Mithraism was especially important because it was a for-men-only religion, and was popular with soldiers.
A few years later, Constantine converted to Christianity, and triggered Christianity's inexorable rise as the official religion of the world's most powerful Empire. But Constantine had emerged as Emperor after a bloody civil war between the Tetrarchs. He was looking to unite, not divide. He retained his status as Pontifex Maximus, as the symbolic head of the classical Olympian religion. He continued to support naturalist traditions, like worshipping the sun god Sol Invictus on Sundays. He made Christianity more appealing to the powerful Mithraic cult by accommodating its sacred symbols and myths within the Christian canon, including the legend of the three wise men and their gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense, the taking of meat and blood as holy communion, and celebrating the deity's birthday on December 25.
Constantine issued an edict in 313 AD that declared December 25 to be the birthday of Jesus Christ. Previously Emperor Aurelian, a practicing Mithraist, had declared December 25 to be Mithras' birthday.
Constantine gave his name to his new capital city, Constantinople. But he cut his teeth at the other end of the Empire, in Britain. His approach of integrating elements of older folk religions into a powerful state religion may have been educated by what he observed in Britain, where the Romans successfully accommodated Celtic beliefs within the framework of their classical Olympian religion.
I saw this process beautifully showcased at the Temple of Sulis Minerva in Bath. The local Celtic people had long worshipped Sulis, the Goddess of Healing, at the mineral rich hot springs. When the Romans arrived on the scene, they gave this Celtic goddess a new hyphenated identity as Sulis-Minerva, and turned the hot spring into a thriving Roman Bath.
I believe a similar process also happened at home, in South India.
As Vedic Hinduism spread south through the sub-continent, it encountered a number of very sacred local deities, sites and practices of worship. This spread, for most part, was not orchestrated by empires, armies or a church. It happened through what would now be called "soft power".
This soft power was exercised by expanding the Hindu pantheon, and mythology, to give places of honour to these local deities, so new populations could reach into the philosophy of Hinduism without giving up their treasured local gods.
So, for instance, Murugan, the peacock riding boy-god who resides on Palani hill, was consecrated as Shiva's exiled second son. Murugan gets married both to Valli, daughter of a local tribe's chieftain, and to Devyani, daughter of Indra, the king of the Vedic gods.
Or Iyyappa, another revered hill-dwelling boy-god, is understood as Hariharaputra, the son of both Shiva and Vishnu, from when Vishnu was incarnate as the beautiful Mohini. He continued to live in his tropical rain forest home on Sabari Malai, instead of relocating to Mount Kailas in the snow covered Himalayas. Mythic win-win relationships.
