Better understanding

Among the least readable books I include autobiographies of retired civil servants and army officers. Some of them have turned out good fiction but when it comes to their memoirs, they cannot get away from recounting how good they were at their studies, how they qualified for the jobs, got out-of-turn promotions till they got to the top. Years of writing reports, memoranda and notings on files blunt their writing abilities and all they can churn out is banal prose expended on self-praise.

J.N. Dixit?s memoirs were no different. He was an extremely able civil servant and diplomat but what he wrote was not very readable. I gave his book a very adverse review and made it a point to rub it in that becoming a foreign secretary was not like getting on top of Mount Everest. There were dozens of foreign secretaries before him and there will be hundreds more who will make the grade and then go into oblivion. I thought the next time I met him, he would spit in my face and tell me some home truths about myself as a scribbler. I had got the man wrong. He dropped in to see me, never said a word about what I had written about him and was most affable. He made me ashamed of myself: there was more, much more, to J.N. Dixit than I had thought.

Mind over matter

I had always scoffed at meditation as something people who wanted to feel superior practised instead of religious ritual: ?Main mandir-vandir nahin jaataa, mediate karta hoon (I don?t bother to go to places of worship, I meditate).? My immediate response would be to ask, ?Kya milta hai (what do you get of it)?? Invariably, the reply was ?Peace of mind (sukoon or shantee).? I did not let them get away with it and asked again, ?And what do you get out of peace of mind? Why not take a short nap instead?? No one gave me a satisfactory answer. I would proceed to explain that nothing worthwhile was created by minds at rest but only minds highly activated: great works of art, music, literature, science and everything else came from mental agitation. In support of my point of view I quoted Allama Iqbal?s lines:

Khuda tujhey kisee toofaan
say aashna kar dey
Keh teyrey bahar kee maujon mein
iztiraab naheen

(May God bring some storm in your life!

The waves of your ocean are not agitated)

I have begun to change my mind and have come round to the view that one?s mind also occasionally needs rest from its restless hopping from one subject to another. Stilling the mind for even a short while refreshes it and renews its energy. One does not have to sit padma asana to regulate one?s breathing. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. Shut your eyes and silently chant the mystic syllable ?OM? in its elongated form ?Aum?, stretching over to between five to ten seconds. Osho Rajnish?s interpretation of Aum is pertinent: ?A? stands for awareness, ?U? for understanding, ?M? for meditation. Meditation need not be emptying of the mind, but single-minded concentration on one thing. I find listening to music a great help in achieving stillness of mind, provided you think of nothing else; let the music resound in your head. To get the maximum benefit, you must listen to every word and tone.

I find listening to Western classical music more rewarding than listening to hymns or classical ragas. Being superficially acquainted with my own I find it predictable. I know next to nothing about Western classical music so I have to concentrate on every note to imbibe it. Every time my mind begins to wonder, I bring it back to focus on the music. At the end of the session I feel re-charged with energy and am able to concentrate better on what I read or write.

Defying translation

While working on translations of Urdu poetry, I am stuck for English equivalents of many words. There are many which lose the flavour of the original. The one I find most troublesome is angdaaee. In English it simply means stretching one?s arms. In Urdu it is loaded with sexual innuendo. When a woman takes an angdaaee, she stretches her arms above her head, puts out her chest to display her breasts to their fullness. It is not an expression of fatigue or desire to sleep or shed sleeplessness but a wanton gesture indicating desire to engage in sexual intercourse. That is the way I interpret it and find no matching words in English. Perhaps white women do not indulge in such gesture to convey lustful desires. They send messages through their eyes or in words. Urdu poetry has more than its share of this secret code. I give a couple of examples. One is from Rasikh:

Dabey fitney qayamaat ban kay
utthtey hain qayamat mein
Voh jab angdaaeean ley lay kay
seena taan leytey hain

(Hidden desires like devils from hell raise their heads

When she stretches out her arms and pushes out her breasts)

And Kirat:

Abs angdaaeean lay lay kay maltey
ho aankhon ko,
Bhalaa yeh bhee to ghar hai, so raho
gar neend aayee hai

(For what do you stretch your arms and run your eyes?

Regard this as your home, fall off to sleep if that is what you want)

Fixed deposit

My father, late Diwan K.S. Purik, was a renowned criminologist. He also had a ready wit. One day he went to deposit money in his bank, accompanied by my youngest son, Anant, then aged 8 years. The bank was in a crowded commercial lane in Patiala. In a dingy room of the bank he showed the young lad how to deposit money. On the way back, he drove round the city to show his grandson some historical sites. The boy suddenly found a neat, impressive building with a sign board reading ?Semen Bank? of the State Buffalo Breeding Institute, where frozen buffalo semen was kept for cross breeding. The boy asked ?Grandpa, why don?t you keep your money in this bank instead of the dirty old one?? Dewan Puri glanced at the signboard and said, ?Anant I have exhausted the money which could be deposited here. You do it when you are older.?

(Contributed by Jagjit Puri, Chandigarh)