LITERARY VISIONS IN ABSTRACT SPACE

English  is  an  interesting  language,  in  the  sense  that  no  language  has  been  so  active  in  begetting  new  dialects  and  regional  varieties  as  English.  At  least   in  the  modern  period  of  known  history  this  feature  of  a  global  language  remains  unique.   English  was  thought  to  be  singular  once  and  many  cultures were  thought  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  world  language.  But  this  concept  has  become  archaic  and  English   is  seen  to  be  adapting  itself  to  various  cultures  and  ethno  domains.   Actually  English  is  thought  of   as  a  plural  language,  again  unique  in  this  kind.   For  no  language  adapts  itself  so  thoroughly  to  the  receptor-culture.   There  are  very  many  good  examples  to  vindicate  this  point.   Aurobindo's  works  in  English  are  an instant  to  the  point.   Sri  Aurobindo   relaid  the  cultural  fibre  of  Indian  English  and  made  the  English muse  sophisticated  enough  to  resonate   the  Eastern  nodes.  
Of course  that  was  mainly  in  and  through  poetry.   In  prose  also  he  did   a  lot.   But   to  make  English   a  facile  patois  to  voice  all  sorts  of  domestic  din  and  banal  tunes  of  the  whole  cultural  spread  of  India  in  extent  and   depth  is  a  remarkable  feat.   One  way  of  measuring  it  is  to  say  such  a  venture   is  Mahabharathean  in  its  enormity.  Such  a  feat  of  our  times  is  The  Suitable  Boy  of  Vikram  Seth.    More  I  will  write  on  the  book  in  the  following  days. 

The birth of a nation is a very rare sight we get in literature. Two such instances are
available in the case of America and India. The emergence of the national identity as
evidenced in literary works, initiated and instantialised in the context differs in the context of America from that of India. In India the cultural identity is preexistent to the emergence of Nationality, whereas in the case of America both the identities, cultural and national, emerge more or less in the same time span.

Sri C Subramania  Bharathi,  the  poet  of   Tamil  Renaissanace,  shows  a  happy  flourish  of  style  even  in  his  English  writings.  The  twists,  turns  and  thrusts  of   his  phrasal  fibre  mark  him  as  an  active  mind  in  unison  tension  with  the  language.   For  example,  in  an  essay  'Immortality'  he  argues  for  an  underlying  basis  of  Reality,  which  is  Beauty  in  the  heart  of  this  world:" For  a  Divine  Truth  is  the  first  reality  of  man's  experience.  There  is  a  Beauty  in  the  heart  of  this  world.  All  conscious  things  are  conscious  of  it in  various  degrees.  It  is  what  you  know  as  existence,  life,  thought,  passion, aspiration, or love. 
The  world  lives.  It  has therefore  a  life  working  in  and  through  its  body.  It  is  the  life  of  the  Universe  that  the  sages  have  glorified  by  the  name  Divine."    Also  he  writes  'for  the  wine  of  mortality  has  a  terrible  fascination  for  most  of  us'.   Agree  we  may  with or  argue  out  his  ideas,  Bharathi's  using  of  the  language  has  a  naivity  about  it  and  hence  freshness.

everywhere the sunshine
everywhere the downpour
in mist vale and dale
and valiant hills are asleep
what is that call from the chirper there?
what message to whom it conveys?
in the primeval streams of primate genes
there swims across the walking being
to fly to dive to sit immersed
in epical dreams

Fire, the old friend of man, is even now fresh and interesting to look at. Manifold forms of energy have not made this raw guest in any way less wonderful. But what was his reception in the days of old when darkness, dampness and dangers from the wild were making his absence acutely felt. He was a God once ! Now may be a utility. Who can access those primordial times and see his world, where men and cattle worshipped him devoutly? If at all we can do that, I think it should be through Rig Veda, the oldest log of subjective reactions to the outside world and the symbolising initiatives toward the abstractions. This god Fire, or Agni as he was called in Rig Vedic times enjoyed not only worship but also teasing and humour at the hands of the devotees.

In R.V.10.79 he is portrayed as a magnificient immortal making visible his might among the mortals. Do you know his might? With a touch of humour the poet says, "he is of two jaws rent asunder, devouring everything in without masticating anything". A glutton impatient even to chew!

His head is in a cavern safely sheltered off. His eyes are wide, viewing all. His tongue gulps in even a forest without chewing. So naturally the worshipper is doubly careful! He stands at a safe distance and raises his two hands up away from the touch of his tongues and offers oblations.

Not only that. He is born of the mother earth. But how he ravages her creeping over her as a child and swallowing trees and even licking out the hidden roots in her crevices.

He was made from the two logs of wood churned to friction. Once he is born, the Fire devours the parents! The poet makes a dig at Fire saying "see! I am so devoted to my parents and respect them. And I am only a mortal. But this one, he devours his parents immediately when he is born and He is called Immortal!"

The poet asks this god, "what wrong, what sin you have committed among the gods, that you are let down like this on the earth here to hunt for your food over dale and vale?"

The symbolisation and the subjective interaction with a primordial natural element being so much suffused with bristling humour speaks of that age in a modern tone and makes credible the possibility of not only fear and mystery, but also humour and certainty and subjective gregariousness with the greater questions of life being the initial conditions of theology.

I remember so vividly even now how my father used to train me up in acting when in school functions I used to present monoacting on stage, sometimes it was Antony's oration and again sometimes it was Prince of Morocco and again the legendary Shylock. Prof C S Kamalapathi did create a niche for himself in acting Shylock.

Any place where the men dwell becomes human habitation, in so far as adapted to the human purposes. The place becomes subservient to the wish, the wants and the needs. But as Victor Hugo says, 'L'homme respire, mais l'artiste aspire'. Man as l'homme occupies the place but man as a religious aspirant is occupied by the place. The man of needs uses the place whereas the man of piety worships the place. The man of religious ontology concretises his values within the contours of a real place. The man of wants concretises his necessities thru the contours of his will in the utility world. The log of the habitation may assume various forms but the log of the religious place most often assumes the same form, viz., the SthalapuraaNaa. What we have here as an instant is the sthalapuraaNaa of Thirukkurukoor or Alwaarthirunagari in Tirunelveli dt., being the birth place of the Vaishnavaite Tamilsage, Nammaazhvaar.

I am interested in thinking, in understanding me, my life and the world around. My whole life has been a persistent effort in those lines. In some way, if I have to say that I cannot become old, I am able to understand that it is true in some essential sense. My emotions are so valuable when I read them in the context of my personality. They bring it immediate the animal that is me. My aches, my desires, my pains, my pleasures make me so interesting and make the world so much classified. My reason is such a light, whether as science or philosophy or theoretical analysis
or analogous encoding of emotions. I remember me as a small boy in the west chitra street srirangam studying in saraswathy patasala elementary school when I find myself immersed in Aristotelian philosophy or Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy or in sanskrit philosophical and logical nuances or facing the world geniuses of literature in intense moments of reading or doing poetry in fervent raptures of creation.. My insatiable interest is who was then who has become now the person who could have been in there..! A boy, the son of Mr R Venugopal and Mrs Anasuya and a being who can understand that he can be afterall consciousness and could have been all along.. A place to understand this transmorphication if logged may be called Rangan's life.

The other day I was talking to a friend. She was asking me 'how could you do that?'. Well it is customary in my experience that people do ask me at some time or other this question. They have known me before. They do not expect from that knowledge that I will be able to do that. But really even I do not know that I can do somethings which I have done. Examples will be tedious. You can replace any thing from your experience. The point is why I can't be sure about myself. Sometimes I am tempted to say, as I said to her on that day that 'Nowadays I am not able to predicate anything of me. Rather I am not able to be believing any of my own self definitions. To sound mystical I can say 'I am but a gatekeeper to the fellow inside, whom I don't know about except to the extent that he gives me to know about.' The funny thing is the fellow inside really is me !
We are born to the knowledge we profess and we transcend the same in no time.
Right from the moment of birth somebody is writing the story from inside out and reading the scenario from outside in. He is calling himself as he was and has been so far many identities changing over and over with time. A small boy with shorts kicking an imaginary football in a wayward pebble thru the streets, taking out the groundnut cookies from the trouser packets and pelleting in as going along and singing some ditties and hooing back to the call of some buddies---is he the same script writer as one just now? May be may be not.

Some time back I was trying to translate Aristotle into Tamil, ofcourse from the English translation. The great man seems to be ever fresh and putting him in whatever language we want only enhances our understanding of the philosopher, leaving still something to be intuited. The methodology is highly sophisticated given or not given the ancient nature of the times of his occurrence. It is as if sitting before a professional knower on strict terms of epistemic business. Sometimes I want to start study group of neo - aristotelian kind may be through this site or localised as a come-together. I think the time becomes old and decrepit if we don't replenish it every now and then with this Ionian