Indologist, Mahabharata scholar
MythoLogical 2020: Charcha: Battle song of the righteous or an anti-war poem. Check out a panel discussion on the Mahabharata that looks at the epic in the context of war and through the many interpretations that exist in the different versions of the text.
Courtesy: Youtube Channel – MythoLogical 2020
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES & TALES[1]
GUNINDRA LAL BHATTACHARYA[2]
3.1.1978.
Tales of my childhood? Well, so be it!
However, I do not remember anything before the age of 3 years. I heard from mother that I was born at No. 10, Radhanath Bose Lane, Goabagan, at 20 minutes past 9 in the morning, Wednesday, (8th Phalgun, 1324 BS, English 20th February 1918). Then Calcutta time was 24 minutes in advance of the Railway Time which was called Indian Standard Time. At that time my grandfather (Motilal Bhattacharya) named me Gunindralal. At that time my father (Sindhu Lal) was employed in Meerut.
After that my childhood was spent in Meerut. Here my father worked in Military Accounts. Father being transferred in service was to go to the Accountant General Burma, Rangoon. Of course, before this from 1913 to 1917 father and mother (Shibarani Debi) were in Rangoon.
A scene of this travelling by ship is my first memory. I recall that on the wooden deck my younger sister Hemlata[3] and I were trying to walk but could not anyhow stand at one place. The ship was swaying and we were forced to clutch on to the railing; almost falling if we let go. There was no storm or rain. Father showed me the rear of the deck. Someone had died—he would be buried at sea. Some English people and some Indians were standing on both sides of a big coffin covered with a black cloth. A prayer was read from a book. Everyone silently bowing their heads showed respect. After that I saw that big coffin wrapped in black cloth was pulled up with a rope and from over the deck’s railing it was slowly, gradually lowered to the sea. Just a little later when everyone had left, I went to see the rear of the ship holding on to the railing. Then there was no rope and that coffin too had sunk. However, many sharks were following behind the ship. Father said earlier there were submarine ships in the sea and hitting ships from beneath, by making holes would sink them. Then to see submarine ships I held on to the railing and started thinking of that box covered with black cloth. The person who had died was a sailor of the ship. This is the first thing I remember of my childhood.
I was in Rangoon till I was five years old. We used to stay with my second eldest paternal uncle[4] on the first floor of a wooden house. Below, a little to the side, was a hotel of Chinese food. Our cooking was done by Indra Thakur. He was my very dear friend. Only a few incidents of this time come to mind.
I can see my father very clearly. In the evening, lying down, by the light of a hurricane lamp he would tunefully recite the Mahabharata and I, sitting near his head, used to listen and keep looking at the book, if I too could read it. The grave, distinct reading slowly, gradually I began to get memorized by me. I too began to recite some stories. My favourite was Bheem and Duryodhan’s mace-duel. Everyone used to be scared of father and if he got angry everyone would run away and hide. I too used to hide under a table. Only once father, as if in sport, catching me, as if for punishing, made as if to pull me up by my hair. I wasn’t beaten but the wish to scare me was successful.
At this time I began to learn to write and read Bengali from mother. One day I received a letter from my (paternal) grandmother Hearing it read out and after trying to read it I was reminded of her very much—her loving touch, her call, “Gunodhor!” Not saying anything to anyone, on a piece of paper I wrote to her my heart’s feelings. I had seen that someone, whom every called Postman, came with letters. So one day in the morning, the day after writing the letter, I kept standing waiting for him. Immediately on his coming up, before he called anyone, I went to him and giving him the paper on which I had written, in broken Hindi explained to him that he should give my letter to my grandmother in Calcutta. I was sure that it was he who had brought grandmother’s letter to me, therefore surely he goes to her and knows her. He looked at me astonished and was trying to say that it was difficult for him. So I explained in detail to him about that grandmother of mine who is in Calcutta, whose letter he had brought, it is to her that this must be given tomorrow. But now breaking into laughter he shouted out, “Babu! Mai–ji! Postman!” Then mother and all others, my elder uncle’s sons and daughters, came and hearing everything from the postman began to laugh. They began explaining to me that bags were sent by ship and so many more things. I understood this much that this postman does not know my grandmother or does not go to her. Other than this I was in no condition to hear anything else. My hidden, secret love for grandmother had got exposed and my little bit of writing was such a tiny expression of it—realising and thinking of this and finding proof of my ignorance and little ability I felt extremely small. Never again have I wished to reveal my mind so utterly with heart and soul and so briefly. And this had become a matter of mockery to others. I had felt that elders do not understand anything about children at all. Never again have I gone to that Postman. The child mind has a logic of its own which arises from his knowledge and imagination. So too for elders. Dreams have their own logic too. Perhaps one who can respect the child mind of children would be able to comprehend it and can enter the world of children; at least be respected by them, because with understanding comes friendship, not mockery.
7.1.1978.
In the eye of memory I see myself a child. Along with writing Bengali and reading a little it was decided that I would go to school where the sons and daughters of my elder paternal uncle used to study. I have heard it was “Bengal Academy”. Be that as it may, mounted on Indra Thakur’s shoulders I had gone to school. The first day I sat on the last bench of a class next to an older sister. In front were three more benches and a person with a long white beard and prominent spectacles was teaching. I understood nothing of what he was saying, nor do I remember. I noticed that sometimes one student would go out. Enquiring I got to know that taking permission for drinking water they were able to go out of the class. At once I felt extremely thirsty. Irritated, my elder sister took me outside. As she would return, therefore I too, though unwilling, had to return inside. A little later I felt thirsty again, but my elder sister would not go again and told me to shut up. I asked her, “Then what will I do? I am so thirsty!” She told me to suck the sleeves of my shirt. I began to do so and by the time the class got over the right sleeve of my shirt was soaked—perhaps it was thirsty! I remember well how I had totally believed what my elder sister said and never thought that thirst for water would not be quenched by that.
The next day just before going to school I was sitting in the bathroom. Everyone is calling and I am quiet, hoping very much that they would go away. But my mother did find me out. After that, wearing clothes, Indra Thakur took me away. I had agreed only at Indra Thakur’s words thinking I would be going for a stroll. Others, of course, had left before this. He took me to that same school. I would not enter by any means and would not let him go. Then a tall, lovely lady coming to the verandah called me. I liked her but she would hardly be teaching me. The class teacher would be that bearded dry gentleman. I felt no attraction for going. There was no fear, only rejection. The Headmistress of the school smiled and said, “Why are you leaving? Come!” I said, “But my tummy is aching!” Then she said, “Here there are bathrooms. There will be no difficulty.” I did not feel like objecting to this and blurted out, “But in that case I am feeling like vomiting!” Then she burst out laughing. Her laughter and her talk standing on the verandah I had liked and cannot forget even now. Perhaps if she had come near and said that she would sit near me and show pictures, or chat, then I would certainly have listened to her. Be that as it may, after that I returned home on Indra Thakur’s shoulders. Everyone at home began to say that I ran away from school. At that I did not feel any irritation or shame. I did not like school at all.
After this I recall another scene. Indra Thakur and I are upon a boat. The boat was a little far from the shore and for some distance the boat slowly danced and swayed. I am looking where Indra Thakur is showing, “There is the sea!” Only water and water for so far away, waves after waves, I am watching amazed at where there is no end. While staring I must have fallen asleep because later I only remember getting down from the boat, I am sitting on Indra Thakur’s shoulders and he is holding on to both my hands. Resting my cheek on his head I am as if hearing his sweet voice in my sleep.
After this at times I remember going to Tuktuki’s home. Tuktuki was a small girl like me, but I remember only her mother. She used to play the piano or organ or pedal harmonium. For listening to it there was no end to my eagerness to go up the steep stairs to the first floor. From there I did not even wish to go home. Only Indra Thakur could bring me back.
After this, something I had heard of because I do not remember him. Shri Saratchandra Chattopadhyay[5] used to work in father’s office. He did not fancy working. Office work and his world were different, so he was somewhat of a peculiar sort of special creature. He would be talked about at times at home. I have heard that he had come home a few times and apparently had liked my name and my younger sister’s name. Later in his novel, Path-nirdesh his main character “Guni” and heroine “Hemnolini”—my and my sister’s names—may be an accident.
8.1.1978
From Rangoon we came away towards the beginning of 1923. I remember nothing about coming back. We were in Calcutta till Durga Puja and the account of this time is of the house at Goabagan’s Radhanath Bose Lane.
My grandfather loved to play chess. He was the Private Tutor of the Crown Prince of the kingdom of Udaipur in Rajputana and also the Director of Public Instruction of that place. Before that he used to teach Sanskrit and Philosophy in Agra College. There my father was born in the year 1888. We used to call grandfather, “Babu”. He used to write books and followed a strict regimen. Five sons, each one a gazetted officer, with their help and his own pension he lived very happily.
On Sundays a get-together for playing chess used to be arranged. A brother of my grandmother used to come. We used to call him “Rejo-Mama”. The match of the two would be full of great excitement. Sitting at the side I used to watch hour after hour. I used to enjoy more the conversation and the occasional ululation, specially when Rejo-Mama would be forced to accept defeat at grandfather’s move. And when grandfather would enter the bathroom, when he was about to lose, how delighted would Rejo-Mama be and how he would mock! The match would be held in a big hall, Babu’s room.
After this I remember the puja in the zamindar’s house in the neighbourhood. A huge, vast pandal within the house. The image above and a little below a large courtyard where sacrificing was done. Well-dressed, busy people, incense-smoke and music. Amidst all that indeed roaring tremendously a person with a big khanra (curved sword) ready for sacrificing. Two men would come, each bringing a goat. Their heads would be fixed in one place. After that with the priest’s waving of lamps, bells ringing, drums sounding and shouting “Joy Ma!” with a single blow the sacrifice was done. One man running with the bloody head would offer it at the image’s feet. On the day of “Maha-ashtami” there would be many sacrifices. Once day after that I did not like it very much and did not go any more, did not look for long. Grandfather said that he did not believe in this type of puja. It seems that Vedic Brahman pandits do not do such puja.
After this, one day in the afternoon a photograph of ours was taken. Father wanted that before going to Delhi all of us should be photographed with his parents. The photo was taken on the roof of the house. Our new dress was khaki half-pant and shirt. We seven brothers and sisters, Grandfather, Grandmother, “Pishima/Thandidi” (father’s sister), father and mother. My elder brother used to live with Grandfather and studied in Calcutta, matriculated from Scottish Church. He was asleep then. I had gone down to call him. With a sulky face he came. I remember his frowning face. In the photo too it came out quite well.
This roof was a place of great fun. In the late afternoon after removing the washed and dried clothes the women of the house—mother, elder brothers’ wives, pishima, elder sister, all would sit on a “madur” (reed mat) to dress their hair. One would dress another’s hair with many types of buns being made—braided, plaited etc. So many sorts of laughter and talk—I could understand nothing. But who had not brought hairpins, whose comb was lying in her room, and who wanted another ribbon—all these I had to bring. In the evening, cleaning up here itself, durries would be spread. And my elder uncle’s son would play a gramophone with a big horn. Many types of folk-plays would be played. Everyone listened with great joy. I used to always wonder that the one who used to sing from inside the box, how do I get to see him! At times looking into the horn I used to try to see. I was told that male and female singers lived inside. I believed that and used to wait so that in case they came out I would see.
In this way the days would pass. One day I went with someone to Hedua crossing to hire a carriage. Those days there was a stand for horse-carriages there. Three carriages were booked for going to Howrah Station the next day. Then it took three days to reach Delhi. We left by the horse-carriages. At home I was amazed seeing the weeping of mother and grandmother. Grandmother caressed me a lot and gave me one rupee. After that it was going to the station, getting into the train and proceeding to Delhi.
Many stations were there on the way. Father seemed to know all indeed: what food is good at which station—where hot puris,[6] where rabri,[7] where burfi! A small compartment was reserved for us—3rd class, but being reserved we were travelling quite comfortably. Only mother was irritated—father was buying a lot of food and she was saying it wasn’t necessary. Still he bought and we, eating up all that, embarrassed mother. Father praised his own intelligence and we had such great fun. Greedy for food, we left nothing at all to show father was right.
In the daytime I recall from Bihar onwards on both sides dry, dusty fields and alongside the tracks innumerable spiny manasa trees. Far away some villages and large trees that were running along with us.
On the third day in the morning we reached Delhi. There two assistants from father’s office had come to the station. Getting down there, on two-wheeled horse-tongas we reached Raisina. On 23rd October 1923 we first stayed in No. 9 Ridge Road. All arrangements for cooking were there in the house. A servant named Damodar had come with us. Mother arranging everything properly fed us. After that in the evening all of us fell asleep. The house was quite big, with a small garden inside and a dry toilet, and inexhaustible water supply. Right in front was a dairy and a small hill that used to called “Ridge”. These are my memories till reaching Delhi. My age was above 5 years and less than 6. We stayed in this house for almost five years.
Now some stories about the time when we stayed at Ridge Road. Apparently now this road’s name is MANDIR MARG.
At that time the real capital was in Simla. Raisina was being built. All around the huge pillars of the Legislative Assembly were huge wooden supports. Initial construction of the Viceroy’s house has begun. North Block was complete. South Block was not yet completed. In the distance the War Memorial Arch was coming up. On the road running straight from the Gol Post Office to Connaught Place, Regal Cinema had just opened and going from Ridge Road straight to Talkatora Park was a club of Bengalis.
Alongside the front of our house then was a narrow railway line on which small and large engines used to go carrying broken stones straight via Talkatora and Alexandra Place, over Queen Victoria Road up to near the Purana Quila railway line. For making a stadium before Purana Quila many stones used to be taken there. The numbers on the small engines were 1, 3 and 11. The big one’s number was 7. Looking big, the line was metre gauge.
In front of the house, on the other side of the road, was the hill (Ridge). Here at winter time there were many wild jujube trees with tasty sweet-and-sour berries. For quite some hours some of us would wander in sunlight and shade seeking where how many good, sweet berries could be found—wild sweet-and-sour jujubes. We would climb up the hill by footpaths or anywhere indeed. However, a little to the south, near the house at No. 3 Ridge Road, a road went over Ridge Road. Quite far off there was a big water-tank from where water used to be pumped to all the houses. Entry was prohibited into that water-tank at the right side of the road and at the left side was quite a thick jungle in which were many “palash” trees. I remember they were truly flame-of-the-forest—densely full with so many red flowers. Through them indeed there was a horse-riding track laid with wood-chips, quite a soft path. I used to hear that it runs straight to Roshanara Gardens to the north and on the other side to near Talkatora Park. From time to time I have seen one or two English ladies and men walking quite slowly. Apparently this Ridge was the final edge of the Aravalli Hills of Rajputana.
At this time in summer it would be extremely hot in Raisina. As we were small, perhaps we did not feel the heat so much. In the afternoon under the fan, at night on the open ground in front or inside in the courtyard’s garden we used to sleep. But I remember about the “aandhi” (dust-storm).
From about 4 to 6 in the afternoon, suddenly on the western horizon would rise a cloud-like reddish ochre filling the sky. Along with it was the loud cawing of crows and their flying about hither-thither restlessly. That dense cloud rising at high speed in the sky would reach overhead. After this would come a dust-storm. To stand outside would be extremely difficult. I used to try but the blast of the wind from the west would push me back. After that it would bring along plenty of dust. Mouth, eyes and ears would get filled with dust. If the house-doors were shut, it was difficult to open them because immediately after the storm began we would somehow flee inside the house. That wind would keep pushing against the bolted doors, as if saying, “Open up! Open up!” Nothing at all could be seen outside the glass windows, only a storm of red dust blowing, or it seemed like a cyclone. After about half an hour slowly, gradually, when the fury of the storm would lessen, then suddenly it would rain very hard and sometimes not even that. It would remain sullenly hot and till about midnight or 1 A.M. our bodies would burn from the heat. But there was plenty of water in the taps and we would bathe three to four times from the afternoon onwards. Another special problem was cleaning the dust in the rooms. However, the way in which the dust-storm like a red cloud would at swift speed overcast the western sky and below it crows, kites and other birds would fearfully fly about here and there and their outcries; the repeated banging on the doors, banging as if some invisible person were angry with the doors—these scenes and sounds still float in front of my eyes and it seems my ears can still hear.
19.1.1978
Many years later in the year 1957 when I used to live alone in Jammu in the month of May then and was the Colonel in the Signals Regiment of 26 Division, then I went roaming after the evening to where I would take the troops to our grenade throwing range. There was sand all around. Suddenly, just like the old Raisina dust-storm, red dust clouds began to rise quite swiftly in the western sky. Along with it that cawing of crows and just a little later the current of dust-storm. Pushing myself forward in the face of it felt fun because the storm’s speed was pushing me. However, this storm did not last for more than half an hour. But seeing the manifestation of old memories of Raisina I did like it indeed. For, after Raisina in 1930, that type of dust-storm had not occurred. The adjoining village habitations and fields had become filled with crops and vegetable gardens.
Then there was only one market. Its name was “Gol Market”. Inside were some vegetable and fruit shops and a Mussulman’s meat shop. Outside where there were shops of atta, rice, ghee etc. Near that in a small shop a Sikh used to sell meat. The Mussalmans used to cut the meat after halal and Sikhs did exactly the opposite—“jhatka” (beheading with one stroke) without halal. Be that as it may, good meat was 8 annas a seer.[8] Even better meat was available at Ajmeri Gate. As we were a big family, father used to bring 3 seers of meat. On Christmas it would be gram-fed or “dumba”[9] meat. On cooling it would congeal, full of ghee or fat. But eating it with hot rotis tasted like amrita (ambrosia). Also, one felt extremely hungry. We brothers used to eat 12 to 18 rotis. Ferrying fish from Okhla, a Mussulman named “Sadhu” used to insist on supplying almost daily. The head of the fish was free. Fish, too, was 8 annas a seer. Excellent atta was 8 seers a rupee. Fine Basmati rice was 7 rupees a maund[10] and ghee 2 rupees a seer. Father would bring monthly provisions from the city. I used to go with him on a tonga. Then the fixed official rate for a tonga was 12 annas. 6 annas for the first and the next hour. From Lal Kuan and Khari Baoli atta, rice, masala, ghee etc., and right next door from big vegetable shops about ½ maund potatoes and other vegetables. Later from Chandni Chowk sweets: Sohan Halwa, laddu, and for mother many types of fried dal from Ghantewala’s shop. After that via the fountain in Chandni Chowk by Nai Sarak, Chawri Bazar, Ajmeri Gate and a dusty road that later became Minto Road, by that straight west from the Gol Post Office after Havelock Square, Dalhousie Square and Ranjit Place, our house on Ridge Road. During the journey father would buy a Hindustan Times newspaper. At home we used to read Pioneer. As father was born and studied in Agra and while working in Kanpur, Kanauj and other places he was used to reading The Pioneer. At that time in Delhi no other English daily had come out.
On the Ridge, a little north from our house higher up on that road, a lot of the hill was being broken down and flattened. Daily in the morning groups of Delhi village women would come singing. At summer time at noon one or two of them would sit to eat on the verandah of our house. Two or three dry thick rotis (almost half an inch thick), raw onion and red chillies—this was their food. If spoken to they would laugh a lot because they did not speak proper Hindi. They were Gujar tribe, speaking broken Hindi, sounding quite sweet. Be that as it may, I heard they were working because a temple would be built. Birla was getting this temple built. The women workers got 6 annas a day and the men got 8 annas. From this, however, each had to donate daily one anna for the temple! Even at that young age I felt bad about this. I had heard Birla was a wealthy man. To deduct money forcibly in this fashion I felt was unjust and I felt no respect for this temple. However, in the evening when the men and women in separate bands would go southwards by the road in front singing away, then it felt extremely nice –the words of their songs and the way they walked. Somewhat like a dance and swaying away. On their heads they carried iron pans in which they used to take broken stones for spreading. They came from quite far away. I had not seen exactly from where.
In the year 1924, probably in the month of March, father decided that we would all get admitted to school. Then where Willingdon Nursing Home is now there was MB School and a school of Bengalis had started. We would be admitted in the Bengali school and were all going with father one day. On the way someone came and said something to father. I heard the wife of someone of father’s office had committed suicide in the morning setting fire to kerosene possibly in Tughlak Place. Father told me to return home because he was going to help there. So at the very beginning my going to a regular school having been prevented I was not sad at all. I have already said that in Rangoon I did not like school at all.
To the north of our house was Ranjit Place. In house No. 1 there lived Subrata Chakrabarti, an assistant in father’s office. As taught by father, we used to call everyone “Kaka-babu” (Uncle) and their wives were our “Kakima” (Aunt). On the day of Bijoya we would do pranam to all kakas and kakimas. Father did not believe in Brahman and non-Brahman distinction and had instructed us accordingly too.
At this No. 1 Ranjit Place Subrata Babu’s son Dulu or Sukumar became my intimate friend. Subrata Babu’s relative was Ajit-da. He was possibly in class 8 of that Bengali school. Then the Headmaster was Mr. Ganguli.
At father’s bidding after one or two days it was Ajit-da who got me admitted to school in class 4. The exams were just a few days later. About attending classes I only remember the grave and calm Mr. Ganguli’s class. I used to sit on the rear bench and listen, understanding nothing at all. No one used to ask me any question.
Of the exams I only remember the day of Arithmetic. Then I knew only addition and subtraction. On the day of the test, father saw that we also had multiplication and division. On the morning of that very same day father taught me to multiply and divide. I learnt with tearful eyes with some slaps. At the time of the test however there was no simple addition, subtraction or multiplication and division at all. In the question paper were rupees, annas, pie additions and some simple or problematic calculations. I could not tackle a single one. I remember I was writing in the copybook when I saw tht one or two boys asked for and got more paper. I thought this must be the rule, so I too asked for an extra paper and actually got it. But I could only write my name.
I remember the results of the exam in the class. The teacher, Noni-babu, was calling out names and announcing the marks. Hearing that my mark was zero I was not surprised, but out of shame my face had become hot. In other subjects I heard I had passed. Be that as it may, at home I was not beaten by father.
Immediately after this test we came to Calcutta during father’s holidays. On both sides those fields and running along with the railway line big, large thorny manasa trees. On the way my father’s eldest brother boarded, probably from Aligarh. He too was going. His youngest daughter’s marriage was in Calcutta. Everyone used to get together. Grandfather used to enjoy a lot with sons and grandchildren who were living outside Bengal.
Be that as it may, I remember in the train my father’s eldest brother asked about my studies. Very innocently I told him that I had scored zero in Arithmetic. He was very grave, with a white beard. All of us were in great awe of him. Hearing of my getting zero in Arithmetic he said at once, “Then what else now—eat gur-muri (molasses and puffed rice)!” At first I understood nothing. Later I felt perhaps he had mocked my mother’s parents, because my maternal grandfather belonged to the village Geedhgram in Burdwan district. Molasses, puffed rice, kheer etc., were his favourites. He used to cultivate a lot of land himself. Thinking of this I felt that eldest uncle had decided that my studies could not improve at all. And all this mockery on telling the truth I did not like at all. At such a tender age (almost 7) somehow I lost all respect for him at these words.
Returning from Calcutta I began to go to school again, possibly in class 4 itself. My younger brother Robi[11] also got admitted in class 1. He was about 2 ½ years younger to me. As he was not good in studies, father engaged a private tutor. He used to come to teach me and my younger sister Hemlata in the evening. I remember that I used to get only the smell of milk and sugar from his mouth. At that time I had a fixed idea that my intelligence was very little.[12] Somehow I began to study in class, but I got many friends—Sukumar, Biraj, Shitangshu, Satyabrata, etc.
From the year 1926 I began to get a lot of Malaria fever. There was terrible shivering, one quilt atop another, and upon them some younger brother or sister would lie down. I remember the fever rose to 108.2 degrees once. Immediately after the shivering stopped the fever would shoot up very much and often after an hour would become normal. I had become quite weak. I had a lot of Quinine mixture and from Harsha-Babu homeopathic medicines. By no means would this fever leave me. It would come almost every week.
At the time of this fever I remember about one night. All were sleeping. We brothers and sisters were lying within a large mosquito net. A low powered electric light was on. My sleep was broken. I do not why I took off the mosquito net. After that I kept it in a corner and saw the light and fan switches. In those days the surface of the fan-regulator used to be uncovered. By turning its knob the fan could be slowed or speeded up. I felt as if I must put my finger inside the hole of the regulator, curious to see what would happen. I remember getting a severe shock. Being quite contented, curiosity satisfied, I lay down and fell asleep again.
Harsha kakababu (uncle) lived at Ranjit Place, probably at No. 15. Every morning he used to give homeopathic medicine to all. My duty was to get medicines from him for myself and my brothers and sisters before going to school. One day, after asking many people many types of questions, he prepared small paper packets. I was his last patient. He was preparing medicines and saying how good homeopathic medicine was—could do all types of treatment. I remember asking him, “Kaka-babu, is there any medicine to increase intelligence?” Remaining silent a little he said, “Yes, of course there is!” Going home after that one day finding my father alone I had said, “Harsha kakababu has said there is medicine for increasing intelligence too. Wouldn’t it be good if I take it?” Father did not give any reply to this at all. I felt, “Alas, no one at all wants that my intelligence should increase a little and I do a little better in school studies!”
In the year 1926/27 father decided that he would send me on a change of climate. My elder uncle’s son Moni-dada and my elder brother Noni-dada had come from Calcutta. My elder brother was studying in a college in Calcutta, studying M.A. in Philosophy to become a professor. He did not like government work or clerkship. Be that as it may, it was being decided that I go to Calcutta with them. Father was talking with them about me. I was outside the room, listening. On my lap was my younger brother Amarendra.[13] I was keeping him quiet, very curious about what father would decide. I heard I would have to go with them. And father spoke about my weakness in arithmetic and simultaneously said that I was quite ‘intelligent”. I knew that in English “intelligent” meant clever or sharp. This was the first time I heard something a little good about myself—that too from my father’s mouth. Hearing this I felt very happy. And to prove that I was good began to make great efforts to keep my little brother—who was on my lap—quiet and moved away from there. This was my first prize, I felt, that too from my father!
Before this I used to hear from my mother in the afternoon the poem, “Meghnad-Bodh.”[14] Mother used to read books father had bought. Besides this, two volumes of the Kashidasi Mahabharata I had read many times and several passages had got committed to memory by themselves. At home a portrait of Satyanarayana was very dear to me. It seemed as if the portrait were smeared with wealth, beauty and friendship. Besides this mother would observe “broto” (vows) and a book titled “Meyeder Brotokotha”[15] that mother used to read I liked very much. Father had bought me some Bengali books like Asutosh’s autobiography[16] in Bengali. I used to be full of respect reading about such great people. Be that as it may, leaving my friends to go to Calcutta I was suffering a lot. But on coming to Calcutta my fever really stopped. After Pyrex at first I had taken Arsenic Album 30 given by my “mejda” (second eldest brother).
For one year I lived with my grandfather and grandmother in Harinabhi and during the monsoons in Calcutta. Some matters of that time that affected me a lot I am writing down.
[1] Translated from Bengali by his son Pradip Bhattacharya.
[2] 20.2.1918-4.9.1988. Lt. Col. (Retd) Corp of Signals, 1942 commission.
[3] Married to Satish Chandra Mahapatra of Baripada, Orissa.
[4] Sindhu Lal was the 3rd son of Motilal. He was conferred the title of “Rai Sahib” and was Assistant Accountant General in Delhi when he died.
[5] The renowned novelist of Bengal.
[6] Deep-fried puffed pancake.
[7] Sweet condensed milk.
[8] 0.9 kg.
[9] fat-tailed sheep
[10] 37 kg.
[11] Rabindra Lal Bhattacharya who retired from the Indian Air Force.
[12] Later this changed. Raisina Bengali High School gave him a medal for standing 6th in the H.S. Board exam 1933. In ISc he stood 1st in the University 1935; in BSc 1st in the University 1937 despite losing his father suddenly on 4th January 1936 at 6.15 AM. He shifted to Arts and took his MA in English in the II class in 1939 from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he also lectured 1938-40. In 1968 he got the LLB degree from Calcutta University and practised law.
[13] Amarendra Lal Bhattacharya who retired from the Indian Meteorological Department.
[14] An epic by Michael Madhusudan Dutt on the killing of Ravana’s son Meghnad or Indrajit.
[15] Tales of vows/fasts for women.
[16] Sir Asutosh Mukherjee, Vice-Chancellor, Calcutta University for five terms.
Professor Saroj Thakur has a detailed review of the Panchkanya National Seminar here : https://www.boloji.com/articles/1542/panchkanya-of-indian-epics-a-critique
The Doctrine of Karma is a vexed philosophical question and Karmic Law has often been confused with fatalism—that everything is preordained. Therefore, it is made out to be a debilitating and disempowering philosophy that drew India down into abject misery. The author seeks to put forward his understanding of this complex concept. It is a cosmic law of action with its inevitable consequence and reaction. Narration of parables—metaphors pregnant with rich meaning—supplemented with instances from real life show a path out of the labyrinth, even the much debated issue of determinism and free will. The thesis is that the Karmic Law can provide the discerning intelligence, cultivated through chitta-shuddhi, adequate guidance for making the choice that may help one—if one chooses to—in avoiding decisions for short-term gains that breed long-term misery.
In tragic life, God wot, no villain need be;
By what is false within.[2]
Noble blood is of little help.
Deluded by passions, the best
of men turn wicked, and reap
the evil that they sow.[3]
Ma karmaphalheturbhurma te sangostavakarmani //[4]
The Doctrine
Whether it is Meredith writing in “Modern Love” in England of the 1860s, or Vyasa dictating to Ganesha in India’s mythic past, the finger points unwaveringly not outwards at the other, but inwards at oneself. The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, but it is the individual who is responsible for making that choice, thinking that thought, feeling that emotion, doing that act which sets off the inexorable chakra of karma, and not just blind nemesis that visits unjustified calamity on his head. The Indian insight into this law was voiced memorably by Robert Frost:
“Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference.”[5]
Whether it is Sri Aurobindo choosing to turn away from comfortable employment with the Maharaja of Baroda to leading the revolutionary movement for India’s freedom and on to the sadhana of the Supramental, or Mahatma Gandhi adopting non-violence to challenge the brutal might of the British, or Lincoln deciding to face the spectre of civil war to wipe out slavery, in each case it is the choice of the road less travelled that has made all the difference, not just for the individual taking that option but for society in general. That difference in the consequences may not necessarily be evident immediately. Christianity overcame the Roman Empire centuries after Jesus was crucified and thousands were martyred. The anguished cry might well ring out:
“The best lack all conviction. While the worst
Are full of a passionate intensity.”[6]
Indeed, that is why we bemoan the good suffering unjustified misery while the evil enjoy the best of times. Sri Aurobindo’s short story, “Svapna” (Dream), slices through this Gordian knot at one fell stroke: the external appearances are deceptive; the mind of the evil-doer—who seems to be floating in a lake of bliss—is full of scorpions; the righteous person mired in poverty enjoys a far higher quality of being—the ineffable wealth of a mind at peace with itself.
In both cases, the condition of being—whether feebly lacking conviction or perversely passionate in intensity—is a function of conscious choice, with inevitable consequences to be borne. Surely, it is critically significant that of all creatures man alone has the option of making choices instead of compulsively following instinct. As Krishna tells Arjuna after all the advice of the Gita: yatha icchasi tatha kuru—“Act as you wish.” Given that undeniable fact, how is one to make sure—as the Pepsi jingle has it—“Yehi hai right choice, baby, aha!”—that the correct choice is being made? As Professor Albus Dumbledore tells the novitiate wizard Harry Potter, “As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all—the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things which are the worst for them.”[7] Ravana and Vibhishana, both are sons of the sage Vishravas and the rakshashi Kaikesi. Yet, how different are their ends, each the consequence of individual decisions regarding the way of life chosen. Ravana is the egotist par excellence, world-conqueror but a slave of his passions; Vibhishana’s unclouded vision clearly distinguishes right from wrong. Surya, the deity upholding Rita (truth), and Dharma, the god of righteousness, both sire sons on Kunti—Karna and Yudhishthira—who make choices differing radically in motive and in action. Yudhishthira seeks out truth and grapples it to his heart with hoops of steel; Karna, knowing what is righteous, elects to oppose it[8]. And Mahabharata records what happens to each of them.
The Law of karma can provide us an invaluable guide in choosing the road to take, in being creatively proactive. It is precisely the opposite of fatalism, which encourages an inert, passive state of being. Karmic law is quite plainly stated: every act has a reaction, a result. Arnold Toynbee even spoke of a national karmic effect, citing the examples of England, France and imperial Russia, to which we could add communist Soviet Union, ancient Greece and Rome. Great empires all, fallen to the dust and living today in the shadow of a super power. Closer to home do we not have the mighty Mauryan hegemony collapsing soon after the Asoka’s Kalinga carnage and barbarian hordes crushing the Gupta Empire as they would the Roman and the Mughal? Sri Aurobindo had stated, long before Toynbee, “Nations as well as individuals are subject to the law of karma, and in the present political and industrial revolt British rule in India is paying for the commercial rapacity which impelled it to prefer trade returns to justice and kingly duty and use its political power to turn India from a land of fabulous wealth into a nation of starving millions.”[9]
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[10]
This consequence may not, however, be either immediate or necessarily equivalent in Newtonian manner. As Sri Aurobindo pointed out, “The payment (by British rule) has only just begun—for these karmic debts are usually repaid with compound interest.”[11] Therefore, when on occasion it appears long after the act, or appears to outweigh by far the choice one had made, the chooser is unable to connect and complains like King Lear of unjustified, inexplicable misery being visited upon him:
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.”
The first lesson is that making the connection is the critical factor in achieving this understanding. The second lesson is: before making the choice to be aware that it is bound to produce not just a result but also a reaction. The law has a corollary too: “good” acts do not wipe out the reactions produced by “bad” karma. The consequences flow along their own individual paths; they do not cancel out one another. The only exception is the path of yoga which, when adopted, is said to wipe the past slate clean.[12]
What is the meaning of karma? Sri Aurobindo has explained its true rationale:
“The true consciousness within is not unaware of the past; it holds it there, not necessarily in memory but in being, still active, living, ready with its fruits, and sends it up from time to time in memory or more concretely in result of past action or past causes to the superficial conscious being.”[13]
The Wish-fulfilling Tree
One way of gaining insight into this cosmic doctrine is through a parable that sets forth the existential predicament of humankind in the universe: the parable of the Kalpataru, the wish-fulfilling tree, narrated by Sri Ramakrishna.[14]
Into a room full of children at play walks the proverbial uncle, back from the city, who, of course, knows better. Laughing at their preoccupation with make-believe games, he asks them to lift up their eyes and go out to the massive banyan tree, which will grant them whatever they wish—the real stuff! The children do not believe him and remain busy with their toys. The uncle shrugs and leaves. And then they rush out, stand under the branches of this huge tree that cover the sky and ask for what all children crave: toys and sweets. In a flash they get what they want, but along with an unexpected bonus: the built-in opposite of what they wished for. With toys they get boredom; with sweets tummy-ache. Sure that something has gone wrong with their wishing, the children ask for bigger toys and sweeter sweets. The tree grants them their wishes and along with them bigger boredom and bigger tummy-ache. Time passes. They are now young men and women and their wishes change, for they know more. They ask for wealth, power, fame, sexual pleasure—and they get these, but also cupidity, insomnia, anxiety, and frustration/disease. Time passes. The wishers are now old and gather in three groups under the all-encompassing branches. The first group exclaims, “All this is an illusion!” Fools, they have learnt nothing. The second group says, “We are wiser and will wish better next time.” Greater fools, they have learnt less than nothing. The third group, disgusted with everything, decides to cop out and asks for death. They are the most foolish of all. The tree grants them their desire and, with it, its opposite: rebirth, under the same tree. For, where can one be born, or reborn, but within this cosmos!
All this while one child has been unable to move out of the room. Being lame, he was pushed down in the scramble and when he dragged himself to the window, he was transfixed watching his friends make their wishes, get them with their built-in opposites and suffer, yet compulsively continue to make more wishes. Riveted by this utterly engrossing lila of desire and its fruits, a profound swell of compassion welled up in the heart of this lame child, reaching out to his companions. In that process, he forgot to wish for anything for himself. In that moment of spontaneous compassion for others, he sliced through the roots of the cosmic tree with the sword of non-attachment, of nishkama karma. He is the liberated one, the mukta purusha.
This wondrous kama-vriksha, tree of desire, is portrayed in a marvellously eidetic image by Vyasa in the Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 254. 1-8):
A wondrous kamavriksha grows in the heart,
a tree of desire, born of attachment.
Anger and arrogance its trunk,
impulse to act its irrigating channel.
Ignorance its root; negligence nourishes it.
fault-finding its leaves, past misdeeds its pith.
Grief, worry and delusion its branches,
fear its seed.
Vines of craving clasp it around
creating delusion.
All around this fruit-giving mighty tree of desire
sit greedy men,
shackled in iron chains of desire,
craving its fruit.
He who snaps these bonds of desire
slices this tree
with the sword of non-attachment.
He transcends grief-giving age and death.
But the fool who climbs this tree
greedy for fruit,
it destroys him;
even as poison pills destroy the sick.
The roots of this tree reach far and wide.
Only the wise can hew it down
with the yoga-gifted
sword of equanimity.
Who knows how to rein in desires
and knows study of desire itself binds,
He transcends all sorrow.” (my transcreation)
The cosmic fig tree itself is figured forth by Krishna in the Gita (15.1-3) thus:
“Mention is made of a cosmic fig-tree
rooted above,
whose leaves are said to be the Vedas;
the knower of this fig-tree
is the knower of the Vedas.
Its branches reach out below and above,
its flowers are the objects of the senses;
below the ground flourish more roots
giving birth to action.
You may not see its real shape,
nor its end, birth and existence.
Slice this fig-tree with non-attachment.”[15]
MAYA: the unanswered question
Another way of approaching an understanding of this predicament is through trying to answer the question: what is Maya? This was the question put by Narada, the inveterately wandering sage, to Vishnu. The story that follows was retold—curiously but typically Indian in happenstance—to Andre Malraux in Varanasi by a passer-by. In Anti-Memoirs Malraux writes that suddenly an Indian came up to him and said, “Mr. Malraux Sahib, would you like to listen to a story?” Taken aback, Malraux muttered that he was going to an official meeting. “But this is a very good story,” was the insistent reply. Malraux, perforce, agreed and here is the story he heard:
Narada, the itinerant divine sage roaming the three worlds, sowing seeds of discord and inveterate experimenter, goes up to Vishnu and demands that Maya be explained to him. Vishnu is silent. Narada is not one to be denied. He insists so persistently that the god has to answer him. “Maya cannot be explained, it has to be experienced,” he says. “If you can’t explain what you create, then I won’t believe in you,” retorts the never-say-die sage. Quickly deserting his serpent couch—for the fate of gods in whom humans do not believe is shrouded in uncertainty–Vishnu beckons him to follow. Walking together, they reach a desert where Vishnu sits down under a tree and exclaims, “I am so tired, Narada! Take this lota and get me some water from that oasis. When you return I will explain Maya to you.” Eager to plumb the mystery, Narada speeds off to the oasis and finds a well there beside a hut. He calls out, and a lovely girl opens the door. Looking into her eyes, Narada is reminded of the compelling eyes of Vishnu. She invites him in and disappears indoors. Her parents come out and greet the guest, requesting him to rest and eat after his journey through the burning sands before he returns with the lota of water. Thinking of the lovely girl, Narada agrees. Night falls, and they urge him to leave in the cool morning. Awakening in the morning, Narada looks out and sees the girl bathing beside the well. He forgets about the lota of water. He stays on. The parents offer him their daughter’s hand in marriage. Narada accepts, and settles down here. Children arrive; the parents-in-law die; Narada inherits the property. 12 years go by. Suddenly the floods arrive–floods in the desert! —His house is washed away. His wife is swept away. Reaching out to clutch her, he loses hold of his children who disappear in the waters. Narada is submerged in the floods and loses consciousness. Narada awakens, his head pillowed in someone’s lap. Opening his eyes he gazes into the eyes of Vishnu, seated at the desert’s edge under that same tree, those eyes that remind him of his wife’s. “Narada,” asks Vishnu, “where is the lota of water?” Narada asked, “You mean, all that happened to me did not happen to me?” Vishnu smiled his enigmatic smile. [16]
Is the karmic law real? Who experiences what happens? Shankaracharya entered the corpse of king Amaruka, experienced a royal life of luxury with queens, courtesans, retainers, war—the lot. And then he returned to answer Mandanamisra’s wife in the debate on erotics[17]. Which of these conditions was real? Do we dream or live? Certain things remain an enigma. It is said that the path of yoga shatters the adamantine shackles of karma. That is why the Buddha exclaimed:
“Anakejati samsaram
Sandha isman anibhisam
Gahakarakanga visanta
Dukhayati punahpunam…
How many births have I known
Without knowing the builder of this body!
How many births have I looked for him.
It is painful to be born again and again.
But now I have seen you, O builder of this body!
All desire is extinct, Nirvana is attained!
The rafters have crumbled the ridge pole is smashed!
You will not build them again.” [18]
The Drop of Honey
After the Kurukshetra holocaust, when the blind Dhritarashtra bewails the unjustified misery thrust upon him and turns to Vidura for consolation, this son of Vyasa and a maidservant narrates a gripping parable that provides yet another clue to understanding our existential situation[19]:
Take a certain Brahmin who loses himself in a dense jungle filled with wild beasts. Lions and tigers, elephants and bears…Yelling and trumpeting and roaring…a dismal scene to frighten even the god of death, Yama. The Brahmin is terror-stricken. He horripilates. His mind is a bundle of fears. He begins to run, helter-skelter; he looks right and left, hoping to find someone who will save him. But the fierce beasts—they are everywhere—the jungle echoes with their weird roaring—wherever he goes, they are there, ahead of him.
Suddenly he notices that the fearful forest is swathed in a massive net. In front of him, with open arms, is a horrendous-looking female. Also, five-headed snakes hiss at him—tall snakes, their hill-huge bodies slithering up to the sky.
In the middle of the forest is a well covered with grass and intertwining creepers. He falls in that well and dangles there, clutched by a creeper, like a jackfruit ripe for plucking. He hangs there, feet up, head down.
Horror upon horror! In the bottom of the well he sees a monstrous snake. On the edge of the well is a huge black elephant with six heads and twelve feet hovering at the well’s mouth. And, buzzing in and out of the clutch of creepers, are giant, repulsive bees surrounding a honeycomb. They are trying to sip the deliciously sweet honey, the honey all creatures love, the honey whose real taste only children know.
The honey drips out of the comb, and the honey drops fall on the hanging Brahmin’s tongue. Helpless he dangles, relishing the honey drops. The more the drops fall, the greater his pleasure. But his thirst is not quenched. More! Still more! ‘I am alive!’ he says, ‘I am enjoying life!’
Even as he says this, black and white rats are gnawing the roots of the creeper. Fears encircle him. Fear of the carnivores, fear of the fierce female, fear of the monstrous snake, fear of the giant elephant, fear of the rat-devoured creeper about to snap, fear of the large buzzing bees…In that flux and flow of fear he dangles, hanging on to hope, craving the honey, surviving in the jungle of samsara.
The jungle is the universe; the dark area around the well is an individual life span. The wild beasts are diseases. The fierce female is decay. The well is the material world. The huge snake at the bottom of the well is Kala, all-consuming time, the ultimate and unquestioned annihilator. The clutch of the creeper from which the man dangles is the self-preserving life-instinct found in all creatures. The six-headed elephant trampling the tree at the well’s mouth is the Year—six faces, six seasons; twelve feet, twelve months. The rats nibbling at the creeper are day and night gnawing at the life span of all creatures. The bees are desires. The drops of honey are pleasures that come from desires indulged. They are the rasa of Kama, the juice of the senses in which all men drown.
This is the way the wise interpret the wheel of life; this is way they escape the chakra of life.
Dhritarashtra, of course, misses the point Vidura is making: man, literally hanging on to life by a thread and enveloped in multitudinous fears, is yet engrossed in the drops of honey, exclaiming, “More! Still more! I am alive! I am enjoying life!” And, like the blind king, we tend to miss the point too. Ignoring the law of karma, taking that other road, we fall into the pit and rale; but inveterately, compulsively, perversely, strain every sinew to lick the honey. The Buddha figured it forth in a characteristically pungent image:
Craving is like a creeper,
it strangles the fool.
He bounds like a monkey, from one birth to another,
looking for fruit.[20]
If heeded, the doctrine of karma becomes a powerful instrument for building character, maintaining integrity and establishing a society that functions not on matsya nyaya [the big devouring the small] that celebrates individualism, but on dharma that upholds society and the world itself.
The Pure Mind
The question is: how to comprehend the law and make the right choice? Man, by definition, is manav, a mental being. The primacy of the intellect and of intelligence is stressed in the account Vyasa provides to his pupils of how creation occurred:[21]
Having created Brahma, Narayana directed him to create, but Brahma pleaded that he lacked the necessary prajna, wisdom. Thereupon, Narayana thought of buddhi, intelligence, which appeared. Infusing her with yogic power, he commanded her to enter Brahma, who was now able to create. Subsequently, the Vedas, which symbolise wisdom and knowledge, were spirited away by two demons–Madhu created from tamasic ignorance and Kaitava, born of passionate rajas. Bereft of the Vedas, Brahma was now unable to create. Narayana, retrieving the Vedas from the depths in his Hayagriva avatara, slew the two demons, to re-establish the supremacy of Sattva essential for creation.
But, if the mind’s mirror is itself overlaid with dust, how will it reflect the light of pure intelligence, of unsullied discrimination? Hence the need for wiping the mind’s mirror clean through the practice of chitta shuddhi, so that the choice made is based upon perception that is not clouded by the passion of rajas and the ignorance of tamas. It is to such a mind that the law of karma makes sense as a beacon light to choose the right path for lokasamgraha, preserving the peoples, which is the call of dharma. For, at the back of our minds we need to hear, ever, the warning Krishna voiced:
Dharmo rakshati rakshitah; dharmo hanti hatah
“Dharma, protected, protects. Dharma, violated, destroys.”
Determination & Free will
The whole point of comprehending this doctrine lies in perceiving that the much-vexed controversy over determination and free will is resolved if seen in perspective. Let us, once again, take recourse to a story to understand this complicated issue.[22]
Two friends, Shyam and Yadu, lived in a village. Shyam was an ambitious go-getter, and Yadu a happy-go-lucky, ne’er do well. Keen to know the future, they approached a hermit who lived apart in the forest. After much persuasion, he agreed to look into the future and tell them their fates. After a year, he said, Shyam would become a king, while Yadu would die. Returning to the village, the shocked Yadu turned to prayer and began leading an exemplary life. Shyam, immediately on reaching the village, started throwing his weight about, grabbing whatever he fancied from others, threatening anyone who dared to protest, vociferously announcing that soon he would be their king.
A year passed by. Shyam sought out his friend and asked him to help pick the site for his palace. As they walked along the river bank, Shyam stumbled over something and fell. Picking himself up, he found the mouth of a jar protruding from the sand. Digging it up, he found it full of golden coins. Hearing his shouts of celebration at finding such treasure, a robber ran up and tried to snatch the jar. Yadu rushed to Shyam’s help and clutched on desperately to the robber’s leg. Unable to tackle the joint resistance of both friends, the infuriated robber stabbed Yadu on his arm and ran off.
Days passed. Yadu did not die; Shyam found himself still no king. So, they went off to the forest and hunted out the hermit. Confronting him, they demanded an explanation for the failure of his prophecy. The hermit went into meditation and then explained: the conduct of each of them had altered what was fated. Yadu’s austerity and prayers had reduced the mortal blow into a stab injury. Shyam’s tyrannical conduct had reduced the king’s crown to a jar of gold coins.
Fate, therefore, is altered by the individual’s choice of the path. Those that have eyes can see; those that have ears can hear. To develop this intuitive sense one has to dive deep, beyond the superficial sensory perception to the manas and cultivate living in that peace within, that pearl beyond price.
The Purpose: Insights from examples
Why this karmic law, what is its purpose? The history of mankind shows a development from subservience to the group, through the growth of the increasingly conscious mental faculty, towards variety and freedom of the individual.[23] In exercising this freedom, the karmic law is an inestimably valuable reference point. The purpose has been succinctly stated by Sri Aurobindo: “…it is into the Divine in each man and each people that the man and the nation have to grow; it is not an external idea or rule that has to be imposed on them from without. Therefore the law of a growing inner freedom is that which will be most honoured in the spiritual age of mankind.” Self-knowledge is the pre-requisite for this freedom, “since spiritual freedom is not egoistic assertion of our separate mind and life but obedience to the Divine Truth in our self and our members and in all around us…And as soon as man comes to know his spiritual self, he does by that discovery, often even by the very seeking for it, as ancient thought and religion saw, escape from the outer law and enter into the law of freedom.”[24] Until man achieves that to a significant extent, the compulsions of family, caste, clan, religion, society, nation will inevitably constrict his choice. The lower nature has to be subjected to the guidance of the illumined self and be transformed by it into a state where it naturally obeys the Divine Truth within the self. The eternal design is to allow each aspect of our being to grow freely in accordance with its known nature in order to discover the Divine in itself, not to extinguish it in a grand holocaust.
Let us take an example of this grand design. GLB, an officer in the Indian Army, lost his father when 18 years of age, and had to support his mother and 10 brothers and sisters on provident fund proceeds and whatever he could earn from tuitions while studying in college. As a child, he could recite parts of the Bengali Mahabharata by heart. In college, he was profoundly influenced by Christian missionaries and may have turned Christian had it not been for the influence of the lady he chose to wed. She, the youngest of 14 children, supported her mother and elder siblings on her meagre salary as a teacher. Two of her brothers were associated with revolutionaries, and she was herself strongly based in the Hindu ethos. GLB was contemptuous of ritualistic Hinduism and used to say, laughingly, that he would turn to it only in old age. When 43, he was ambushed, shot, and dragged into East Pakistan, where he had to spend many years in solitary confinement in prison, locked in a cell behind the ward for lunatics, a powerful light always burning above his bed that was bolted to the floor. Repeatedly he was urged to divulge intelligence secrets, tempted with high status in Pakistan and sought to be demoralised with accounts of how his own government had let him down (the Prime Minister had announced in Parliament that he was a retired officer!) and denying him medicines for his ailments. Here, in the jail library, he discovered a copy of Sri Aurobindo’s Bengali introduction to the Gita. He was able to procure a copy of the Gita, and practised its sadhana over the years, simultaneously studying the Koran in depth, completely changing his life, ultimately returning sane to his country.[25] While in prison, he refused to ask for mercy as advised by his own government. Instead, single handed, he drafted applications to the High Court and the Supreme Court of Pakistan challenging the false evidence brought against him. This created such nation-wide sensation in both countries that the military government reduced the sentence from 8 to 4 years.
On one level, here is an instance of unjustified, inexplicable calamity. GLB received no recognition from the government for his heroism in the face of all odds. During his imprisonment, his wife had to bring up two sons with great difficulty, suffering much humiliation and many travails. Both sons topped in the university, obtained degrees from foreign universities on scholarships, and he saw them established in life. GLB used to say that he must have been a yogabhrashta (fallen from yoga) in his earlier birth and, therefore, the Divine had purged him of his impurities through this traumatic experience, virtually flinging him onto the path of yoga long before he had planned. GLB chose to join the army because his wife-to-be had pointed out that the one hundred and fifty rupees he earned as pay was too little to support a family. By ‘accident’, at the age of 30, he happened to meet Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, when his wife had gone on a visit to Pondicherry. 13 years later the ‘accident’ occurred in which he was shot and imprisoned.
Thus, the individual makes his choice, but the Divine also intervenes decisively in a person’s life: GLB could have chosen not to practise the sadhana of the Gita and the Koran and lose his reason in solitary confinement. Such are the critical choices man faces in life, which the ancients represented so graphically in the dream of Hercules[26]. Some he elects to make, others are thrust upon him. In either case, the consequences inevitably follow. In making the choice, the heritage of the individual, the training to which he has been subjected by family tradition and socialisation, all play parts. But, in the ultimate analysis, it is when the psychic self chooses that the choice becomes one with the Divine purpose. Then does the soul spring forth to evolve into its glorious plenitude and the earthly life progresses towards the Life Divine. GLB’s greatest satisfaction was hearing from his wife that, when he fell unconscious with a heart attack, he had called the Divine’s name thrice. He felt that in thus invoking God even unawares, caught in the throes of acute physical agony, he had achieved what he had wanted and this more than compensated for all the suffering he had undergone in life.
The lesson of working without craving for the fruits of one’s actions was brought home to Kanak in a telling manner. He was disgruntled with being transferred frequently and arbitrarily. As the years went by, more and more he was chosen for assignments that had never before been handled by an officer of his service. He found himself faced with tasks of veritably Herculean proportions, calling for either cleaning up the Augean stables, or creating a new organisation from scratch. The day he had joined service his boss had told him that he must learn the work of everyone, from that of the office peon to that of the head of the office. He had faithfully done so, rehabilitating thousands of evacuees in the newly created Bangla Desh. Years later, he found himself working as typist, computer operator, message carrier, general handyman, janitor-supervisor and simultaneously as head of the organisation in several assignments in succession. Repeatedly he had to weld into a team officials belonging to different disciplines who were avid backbiters or were at one another’s throats. Invariably, he found that once the organisation had been cleaned up and a new ambience of disciplined work culture created, or it had been established on firm moorings and was ready for take off, he was peremptorily moved out and someone else moved in to enjoy the fruits of his diligent labour. He was asked to take up assignments that no one else was willing to touch, either because of the difficulties they posed or for being unglamorous, but was unceremoniously ignored once he had completed the task. He could not understand why this was recurring, time and again, until one day he listened to the three parables being narrated. It dawned upon him that through this repeated exercise he was being taught two things: (i) to work devotedly just for its own sake, not coveting enjoyment of its fruits; and (ii) the ego needs to be bruised regularly to prevent arrogance building up from success in achieving goals.
After his father’s death, Kanak had been sent out of the city on promotion. He had requested that this be reconsidered as his recently widowed aged mother ought not to be left alone. He was passed over and people much junior to him were promoted. Seething under this injustice, he found that his nature would not permit rebellion by abstaining from doing his best in whatever job he was given. After a couple of years, suddenly his proper status was restored, wiping out all the injustice. He had been shown that having steady faith in the Divine and doing all work as an instrument bears its own fruits.
Once these realisations dawned, Kanak found himself strangely peaceful within and able to smile at his repeated shunting from post to post, free from the anger and hurt he used to suffer from at the lack of recognition of his integrity and of the hard work he put in.
He was also given the insight into how, at times, the law of karma can be seen to operate within one’s lifetime. It is not that unattached diligent labour produces no ‘fruit’. When his mother had fallen very seriously ill with infarctions in the brain, Kanak had nursed her day and night. He found himself blessed with her miraculous recovery from inability to read, write, eat and walk to leading a completely normal life. Once, suddenly, Kanak found himself saddled with an assignment that required his stay in a wonderful building, over 300 years old, with the river flowing by. The peace in which the environs enveloped him healed old wounds. In just a couple of months he found that he had completed a quantum of work that would ordinarily have taken a year. The incessant, tireless flow of energy was astounding. When he left this post, he understood that he had been shown the fruition of his own capabilities. Looking back, he found that this assignment had been given to him exactly when his children had come for holidays from abroad, so that they could be with him in this wonderful place.
But it seems that the Unseen Hand takes care to see that we do not sink into somnolence having had such a realisation. Kanak suddenly found himself separated from his wife after 30 years of marriage by a whimsical transfer order served on her. So, the couple had perforce to reconcile themselves to their lot and undergo considerable expense and harassment, commuting hundreds of miles to be with one another occasionally. Gradually, they came to see the blessing in what had seemed to be yet another instance of the gods amusing themselves with human misery. For, in the new post Kanak’s wife found a vastly better working environment besides being free from the endemic tension of simultaneously having to run a household with aged mother, mother-in-law, husband and children. It was a compulsory “retreat” she was thrown into, whose pleasures Kanak also came to realise whenever he was able to be with her. After a few months, his wife was unexpectedly promoted, having been passed over for long. Well-wishers who appeared out of nowhere reached her the information while she was on leave the very day the orders were out. Having to rush back immediately to join, she was astonished to find no queue at the railway ticket counter which was manned by an unusually polite clerk who gave her a reserved berth for the same day! When she went to collect her promotion order, she was taken aback to find people unusually helpful in ensuring that she faced no impediment.
Kanak had always been puzzled by what he saw as his repeated failure to establish a way of working that, he fervently believed, provided true service to the people while simultaneously making the delivery-agents better human beings. Finding no answer, he had to develop a mechanism to protect the flame of his own enthusiasm from being snuffed out: shrug and go on to tackle the next job with the same bone-headed, obdurate persistence to get the work done properly according to his lights. One of the major experiments he had taken up with considerable courage was to try to disseminate what he had learnt about methods of consolidating healthy values in oneself among new recruits, introducing them at the very inception to ideas and methods that would help them to stay on the straight path and act as bulwarks against straying. The reactions were so encouraging that follow-up meetings with interested trainees were held now and then with long gaps in-between because of their preoccupations. In one such meeting scheduled after a year, news came that about 6-7 would attend. Kanak felt quite put out and wondered if it was worth holding the meeting at all. When he arrived, he was pleasantly surprised to find the room already three-fourths full. Soon everyone turned up and the meeting was extremely satisfying and rewarding. It dawned upon Kanak that the seeds that had been broadcast through his hands years ago had naturally to take time to germinate and grow. Now and then he would get unexpected phone calls complimenting him for work he had initiated years back that had come to fruition now. So, the Divine had not remained an aloof President of the Immortals playing His game with puny mortals. Time is the key that unlocks the sealed door of the crypt. The secret, Kanak realised, is to have faith, to be patient and wait. He remembered that his mother used to say, “All comes to him who knows how to wait.”
Nishkama karma produces its own resultant ‘reward’ even in this life. Perhaps the Celestine Prophecy[27] is not just fiction. The sensitivity to perceive it has to be cultivated and along with it the ability to scotch repeatedly the rearing head of the ego that inveterately seeks to bask in self-praise for a task fulfilled.
The question arises: when I take up a piece of work in return for payment, how can I perform that action without expectation of receiving that return? Doing a job for payment is not an instance of the principle of nishkama karma. This is a contract between two parties, one part of which is carrying out the assigned task and the other is receiving payment as the value of the work done. The principle the Gita enunciates is a spiritual one: you put your best into the effort, without craving that you must get recognised thereby, that it must get published, accepted, praised. In other words, it is work as worship, an offering of your best to the Divine. When one makes an offering truly, one does not entertain the desire for getting a return. That is the businessman’s prayer and is fraught with danger —remember the Kalpataru: it will give what you crave, but with its opposite in double measure. The Grand Secret is: not to crave, but do one’s best as an instrument of divine energy working through oneself. When this succeeds even a little bit, the Divine showers unexpected joy. Proof of this is plentiful. A young teacher, thrown out by a new principal wanting to accommodate someone of his community, found herself bumping into her students throughout the holiday season, one and all of whom were effusive in their expressions of how much they missed her teaching. Quite stunned at this unexpected bounty, she thought back to her teaching experience and recalled the spirit in which she had done it—payment was expected, as a contract; but she had never craved for adulation from students or admiration from colleagues. She had striven to give of her best, even getting books from abroad at her own expense for that purpose. Some months later, quite unexpectedly, she landed a job of the type she had been wanting.
It is strange how the Divine shows us precisely what the principle is all about, but our minds confuse the issue. Hence, the need is to feel with the heart, instead of allowing the mind to be caught up in the gymnastics of logic.
In the midst of unprecedented floods, Kanak was engaged in doing little bits of facilitation like ensuring supplies of rice, kerosene oil, roof and floor covering for the homeless. He made the arrangements and everything went through smoothly, but his superiors never acknowledged his contribution. It pinched him, undoubtedly, because within there was surely expectation of being recognised. Perhaps that is precisely why recognition was not forthcoming. But there was a bonus: heads of the affected districts suddenly called up to express gratitude for the help he had provided. It gladdened his heart, all the more so as it was unexpected. Much later, again unexpectedly, he was communicated the Governor’s appreciation for his work. Then he realised that what he had done had been without any expectation of receiving such returns. He had acted because it needed to be done. And so, the doctrine of karma showed itself in action by sending the ‘results’, the ‘fruit’ of the action.
So the secret is: do the work with all your heart and soul, so that it is a perfect production. That is the result. What one has to be detached from is craving for personal rewards from that work, not to be confused with the objective that the work is supposed to achieve. For instance, Kanak did his best to rehabilitate evacuees in Bangladesh so that the objective of rehabilitation was achieved. That happened. What could he have craved: some recognition for what he did? He did not even dream of this. He had immersed himself in getting the job done to the best of his ability, happy with the pat on the back he received from his boss (this usually took the form of a dish of curd and rice set before him by his boss’ wife when he returned smothered in Bangla Desh dust and grime to report the work done). There was an unexpected bonus. Unknown to him, all the photographs of Bangladesh relief work he had sent to his training institution were put up as an exhibition before the President of India. No one informed Kanak at that time. He got to know much later. Repeatedly he found himself coming into the limelight and, just when he was about to bask in the glory, the Unseen Hand shunted him into obscurity, saving him from a bloated ego and from losing his foothold on the path. And yet, even in this “retreat” he was invariably sent to an assignment where he had to learn something new, thus enrichening his experience both in compass and in depth.
However, life is not all that crystal clear. Perceiving the law of Karma in action becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, in many cases. Take, for instance, the case of NM. Educated only till class 4, she was a sophisticated beauty gifted with outstanding qualities of hand and heart who was married off at the age of 14 to one whose personality and appearance were at the other extreme of the spectrum. She lived the life of the ideal housewife, devoted to the family despite all the insults and neglect she faced, taught herself English and kept her intellectual life alive. Both her sons committed suicide. Her husband predeceased her. She could find no answer in yoga and meditation to the inexplicable misery she had to undergo throughout her life and died with this unsolved mystery haunting her consciousness.
Or the example of Subala Devi, mother of 14 children, who, as a widow, spearheaded women’s education in Allahabad, got her widowed daughter trained so that she could become a teacher, took up a teacher’s job herself to support the children, wrote poetry and primers, was profoundly respected by the theosophists and had considerable spiritual realisations. Two sons were associated with the revolutionary movement for independence. She sold her jewellery to smuggle out one to the USA to escape the British police. The other was imprisoned in the Kakori bomb case and disappeared. None of her sons earned a living. Everyone depended upon her and the earnings of the youngest daughter. When this daughter asked her why, with all her spiritual attainments, her sons had been so useless, the answer she gave provides a clue to the enigma and indicates the detached insight she had achieved: “Everyone has good and bad within oneself. They are the fruits of what must have been bad in me.” During her lifetime she had to bear the deaths of 3 sons and 4 daughters. Her dearest wishes had been to witness the graduation ceremony of one of her children in the presence of the Viceroy, and that one child should be a postgraduate. Her youngest daughter took Subala Devi to see her graduation ceremony in the Viceregal Lodge in Delhi, and some years later delighted her with the news that she had got her M.A. in Applied Psychology. Subala Devi passed away the next year. Until her last breath, she chose to stay on her own, never dependent on her children, even though she lost use of her legs. Her youngest daughter had once asked her what had been the result of so much ascesis that she had practised all through her life. The answer was: “Now I have become a ‘drashta’, a witness.” What is fascinating is that her children never heard her complain about the extreme privations she suffered throughout her life, thrown virtually on to the streets after having spent her childhood and wedded life without any material want. When her youngest daughter once complained to an acquaintance about her mother’s travails, he responded, “You are complaining that she has suffered so much, but have you ever heard Mata-ji complain? She is at peace. These matters do not affect her.”
Some questions will always remain unanswered.
In the end there is perhaps no finer advice to take to heart than the Buddha’s exhortation:
“So karohi dipam uttano…
Be a lamp to your self,
be like an island.
Struggle hard, be wise.
Cleansed of weakness, you will find freedom from birth and old age.”[28]
by Pradip Bhattacharya [1]
[1] Member, Editorial Board, Journal of Human Values, Member Board of Governors, IIM Calcutta (1993-2002), member of the Indian Administrative Service, authored 20 books and several papers on public administration, transactional analysis, values in management, Mahabharata, comparative mythology, the Indus Valley Civilization.
[2] George Meredith: “Modern Love”, 1862
[3] Mahabharata, Adi Parva, 119.2
[4] Gita 2.47: “Your duty is to work, not to reap the fruits of work. Do not seek rewards, but do not love laziness either.” (The P. Lal transcreation, Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1986).
[5] Robert Frost: “The road less travelled by”.
[6] W.B. Yeats: “The Second Coming” (1921)
[7] J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury, London, 1997).
[8] Pradip Bhattacharya: A Long Critique on Shivaji Sawant’s Mrityunjaya (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1993).
[9] Quoted in Sujata Nahar’s Mother’s Chronicles Book Sixth (The Mother’s Institute of Research, New Delhi, 2001, p. 205.)
[10] P.B. Shelley: “Ozymandias” (1817)
[11] Sri Aurobindo ibid.
[12] Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, Collected Works Vol.17 pp.289 (Pondicherry, 1973).
[13] The Life Divine vol. II, p. 354 (2nd edition, Arya Publishing House, Calcutta, December 1944).
[14] Pradip Bhattacharya: “Desire under the Kalpataru,” Jl. of South Asian Literature, XXVIII, 1 & 2, 1993, pp.315-35 & cf. P. Lal’s Introduction to Barbara Harrison’s Learning About India (1977).
[15] The P. Lal transcreation (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1969).
[16] P.Lal: Valedictory Address in Mahabharata Revisited (Sahitya Akademi, 1990, p.291-302–papers presented at the international seminar on the Mahabharata organized by the Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi in February 1987).
[17] Recounted in Madhvacarya’s Sankara Digvijaya.
[18] P. Lal: The Dhammapada (Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 1967, p. 12).
[19] P. Lal: The Mahabharata (condensed & transcreated, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1980, p. 286-7)
[20] P. Lal: The Dhammapada, op.cit. p.157.
[21] Shanti Parva 349.22-26
[22] Related by Prof. Manoj Das in an address at Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Calcutta, in 2000
[23] Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo, vol. 15, p.273 [Pondicherry, 1973]
[24] ibid. p. 243.
[25] Lt. Col. G. L. Bhattacharya: Krishna of the Gita [Writers Workshop, Calcutta]; Shyam Kumari: How they came to Sri Aurobindo & The Mother, vol.3 [Pondicherry]
[26] Hercules saw two paths before him: one smooth, leading to a pleasant life; the other rocky, beset with brambles and trials. He chose the latter. So, too, Achilles was given the choice between a long, uneventful life and a short, glorious span of war and heroism.
[27] James Redfield: The Celestine Prophecy (Bantam Books, 1996)
[28] P. Lal: The Dhammapada, op.cit. p.121.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought…
I am looking at a rare document: a small piece of blue notepaper covered with writing impeccably spaced, each letter perfectly formed. This is the character certificate-cum-recommendation Professor T.N. Sen wrote out for me at his residence at 18/56, Dover Lane when, with much trepidation I approached him as I wished to apply for the post of lecturer in English in St. Xavier’s College in 1969. I have not heard of him providing such a certificate to other students of his—perhaps they dared not ask! I guess my Xaverian brashness led me on to enter where betters dared not tread.
After graduating with Honours in English from St. Xavier’s College, when I wanted to join the Calcutta University’s M.A. course in 1966, I found that it was possible to be enrolled through Presidency College. As a Xaverian, I had been brought up on a staple diet of the impossibility of anyone but a Presidencian attaining the dizzy heights of a first class in English. The cold, hard truth of it had been brought home when that summit eluded me by two marks in Part-I and a single mark in Part-II. I was, therefore, intensely curious to find out what made the English Department of this college so very special.
I found myself the solitary “outsider” in a class consisting of four ladies [Chitrita Banerjee, later a well-known author, Indrani Chaudhuri, Anjushree Ghosh, both became lecturers subsequently, and Sunipa Basu, who joined the Indian Customs & Excise Service] and two men [Arya Gupta and Gautam Basu], all native Presidencians. I grit my teeth and was determined to stick on despite the fulminations of Dr. Amalendu Bose, the Sir Gooroodas Banerjee Professor and Head of the English Department of the Calcutta University, who demanded to know what was so wonderful in “that college” that I enrolled in it. The answer was obvious. What a galaxy of luminaries taught us: Dr. Sailen Sen, Prof. Amal Bhattacharjee, Dr. Kajal Sengupta, AKDG (Prof. Arun Kumar Das Gupta— Tarak Babu’s “onlie true begetter”) and Prof. Ashoke Mukherjee. Above them all was Prof. T.N. Sen himself: lanky, tall, appearing almost spectre-like as the shades fell when his classes began, going on well into the dark, teasing out every little nuance of Shakespeare and Yeats. Amal Babu’s remarkably clear explication of T.S. Eliot’s complicated The Sacred Wood inspired my first book. AKDG took up Timon of Athens, turning a minor play into a major experience. S.K. Sen took us through Shakespearean criticism with classically structured deliberation. Kajal-di handled Chaucer with scintillating brilliance, communicating her delight in “The Nonnes Priestes Tale” unforgettably. Prof. Ashoke Mukherjee taught Browning’s “Dramatic Monologues” in his inimitable “Do you follow?” fashion.
Much to my surprise I found Prof. Sen usually referred to as “Tarak Babu” (in St. Xavier’s College we weren’t used to anything but “Mr.” or “professor” for our teachers). He began our classes with a devastating statement delivered in his characteristic sibilant whisper: “If you have come to get the M.A. degree of Calcutta University, it is of no use as it is not worth the paper it is printed on.” Over the next eight weeks he dictated to us an elaborate bibliography paper by paper, dividing it into three categories marked “M” for ‘must read’, “D” for ‘desirable’ and “O” for ‘optional’. A more comprehensive reading list spanning the entire gamut of English Literature I have yet to come across. I used it later when teaching literature in St. Xavier’s College, distributing it to my students as an invaluable resource to be passed on.
As Tarak Babu took up Yeats’ poems on Byzantium I came to realise the vast gulf separating the University teaching from his. The charismatic Prof. P. Lal completed the Byzantium poems in two lectures, one for each; Tarak Babu took eight. The richness of that experience cannot be communicated in words. During this time I noticed a first year fresher poring over a tome in the library where Tarak Babu’s classes were held in a cubicle. It was Indrani’s younger brother, Sukanta Chaudhuri, subsequently a Shakespearean scholar of international renown. He was looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s “Madonna of the rocks” that Tarak Babu had asked him to examine, possibly in the context of Rossetti’s “The Blessed Damosel” (or was it Renaissance poetry?). That is how literature was taught by him, interlinking it with art, leading the student to explore and develop his own insights.
And then he started on “King Lear”. What a wealth of insight he held out to the eight of us (Kasturi Gupta, our senior, joined these classes too and insists it was “Othello”)! The approach was intensely textual, concentrating on extracting the last drop of meaning from every single verse. Indrani Shome, who had graduated from Presidency, used to regale me with accounts of how Tarak Babu’s teaching of “Macbeth” sent shivers up her spine in the witches’ scenes, with his long lanky arms snaking about and how the ladies were taken home in police vans for their safety when classes went on into the dark hours in those Naxalite terror times. Gautam Basu—ardent left extremist who switched loyalties to join the IAS—was a treasure trove of anecdotes, sending us into peals of helpless hilarity with his account of Tarak Babu’s ghost springing out from behind a Presidency pillar as AKDG performed the funeral obsequies, hissing, “Short line! Short line! Action needed! Ghee dao, ghee!” (Tarak Babu’s paper on “Shakespeare’s Short Lines” is a major contribution to understanding Shakespeare’s art and craft).
I remember his setting me a tutorial assignment on Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”. True to Xaverian tradition, I put into my essay all the critical insights available from various “eminent critics”, only to be told in a sibilant undertone that I was expected not to reproduce others’ views but my own. I grit my teeth, slogged away and resubmitted my tutorial. My exercise book was returned with just one remark that left me crestfallen and considerably puzzled: “This will do”. When I asked my class-mates, they enlightened me that this meant I had achieved the expected standard. That was truly a crowning success for an outsider! This was followed by a bonus: he appointed me Secretary to the English Seminar, putting me in charge of its excellent library.
At the end of two years I found to my complete surprise that I had been placed first in the first class, with Anjushree following. And, in the paper on Romantic and Victorian poetry I had won a medal. The tradition of only Presidencians topping the Calcutta University had been broken—thanks to the unforgettable tutelage of Professor Tarak Nath Sen and his team of colleagues, the likes of whom we will not see again.
This paper features on pp. 33-67 of IGNCA’s journal of arts, KALAKALPA, Basant Panchami 2019, vol.III, No.2. The Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Sachchidanand Joshi, Member Secretary of the IGNCA, writes in his editorial, “Professor Pradip Bhattacharya is an acclaimed scholar on Mahabharata…Professor Bhattacharya’s contribution is stupendous.” The paper has been published with 3 colour plates of photographs I took of frescos on the walls of the Silver Pagoda in Phnom Penh, 3.65 metres high, illustrating the episodes contained in these 2 manuscripts of Jaimini which retell unknown episodes from the Ramayana in the Ashramavasika Parva of the Mahabharata.
