Sacred Thread.

This morning, I went with Ujwal to a thread ceremony among her relations, the so-called Upanayna, the second birth of the twice-born (dvija) Brahmin, Kshatriya or Vaishya male. The first birth in the womb is followed by the second birth when the gayatri mantra is received. The three-threaded, three-stranded yajnopavitam (sacred thread) worn by him thenceforth is a reminder to the Brahmachari to be pure in thought (Gayatri), word (Sarasvati) and deed (Savitri). The Jewish Bar Mitzwah and the Zoroastrian Navjote are also rite-of-passage rituals (in both cases for both boys and girls) with similar intent. The crowd was naturally Pathare Prabhu, very hip and prosperous folks one and all with a globally spread diaspora and, surprisingly, still sticking to age-old traditions. The family of the new Brahmachari had come from Dubai to get the ceremony performed. Related posts: Breaking News. http://digbig.com/4yppm. Bad boy. http://digbig.com/4yppp. Not my best friend’s wedding. http://digbig.com/4yppn.

Ten. Far better than Tolkien.

Lord Vishnu sounds like quite a brainy god. Look at the functionally appropriate forms he assumed in his dasavataras or ten reincarnations. In other words, if the task was, say, to bring up a sinking earth from the depths of the ocean, he would promptly become a tusked boar. My first introduction to it was as a child when we used to chant the Dashavatara Aarati to my khelacha (play) Ganapati at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. http://tinyurl.com/4ywmwm. Lord Vishnu, the Preserver in the Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh Trinity, would arrive among his true believers (bhaktas) having assumed what I described earlier as a "functionally appropriate form" to restore the balance between good and evil, he told Arjun in Bhagvadgita (iv, 7 -8). http://tinyurl.com/3jb5xb. When the asuras stole the Vedas, Vishnu assumed the form of a fish (matsyavatara) to save Manu, the primordal human being, from the Great Flood. In the kurmavatara (Vishnu as tortoise), he carried the sinking Mount Mandara on his back during the churning of the ocean to find the divine nectar, the so-called amrit. Enter Hiranyaka next. This demon misbehaved or sinned so much that the earth was unable to bear the load of his wrongdoings and literally did the sinking act. The ever-alert Preserver immediately put on his tusked boar form (varahaavatara) to prevent the calamity. Another demon king with a similar-sounding name, Hiranyakasipu, his twin brother, terrorised the devotee Pralahada. The Preserver had no option but to assume narasimhavatara (the man-lion form) because the perpetrator of the atrocities had a boon that he could be killed by neither man nor animal. A combo could however do the trick. A part of the boon also was that he could not be killed on land, water or air, in day or night, inside or outside his abode. So, Vishnu placed him on the man-lion's lap (neither land, water or air) at dusk (neither day or night) and at the entrance of the house (neither inside nor outside). The first four distinctly anthropomorphic avataras were in the satya or krita yuga. The next four happened in the treta yuga and the dwapara yuga. http://tinyurl.com/4r9g3e. The fifth avatara was the dwarf son (Vamanavtara) born to Kashyapa, one among the Saptarishis, and Aditi, the daughter of Agni, the Fire God. I wrote about his conquest of the all-powerful King Mahabali here: http://tinyurl.com/4p6btu. Vamana tricked him into surrendering his kingdom comprising heaven, earth and underworld by requesting for a plot of land admeasuring his diminutive three steps to which the generous king readily agreed. Vamana then regained his viraat swaroop (the original gargantuan form) and occupied the entire kingdom. (By the way, Mahabali happened to be the fourth direct descendent of Hiranyakasipu. Please see above.) So far, the Preserver was involved with fighting the demons. The sixth avatara (Parsurama) though, went after the human Kshatriya warriors. And, that too twenty one times. Yes, twenty one. They must have been up to big mischief, to be sure. In the next two episodes of Ten that reputedly took place at the cusp of the treta yuga and the dwapara yuga, Vishnu switched back to looking after the humankind as Rama who got rid of the ten-headed rakshasa, Ravana and Krishna who did likewise to Kamsa. Lord Buddha is most likely the next avatara in which case it occured in the kali yuga. Not everybody agrees with this version, though. They take Balarama, elder brother of Krishna and slayer of several demons in the dwapara yuga, as the holder of that honour. Avatara No. 10 Kalki is likely to come into the world on a magnificent white stallion when the kali yuga is about to end. Some people believe it will happen in 2012 A.D. http://tinyurl.com/47ug4c. His mission statement? Destroy all the mleccha. http://tinyurl.com/3k26td & http://tinyurl.com/46b6lp. Free the world from the clutches of Kali, the very embodiment of strife. Re-establish the perfect dharma. Inaugurate a new time cycle of existence with a brand new satya yuga.

Best of Enemies.

I don't know why enmity was so widely and avidly practised by the Aryan denizens of The Mahabharata. It's astounding how most of the principal characters had prima donna tendencies: quick to take offence, quick to anger, quick to feel envy, quick to seek revenge and retribution. The higher-caste ones, Brahmin and Kshatriya, were remarkably similar in this respect. They would do just about anything for power, glory, fame and all that jazz. To my mind, the only totally harmless and thoroughly well-meaning character was the low-born (suta putra) Vidura, the half-brother of the defective duo: blind Dhritarashtra and impotent Pandu. The poor fellow would have most likely made an able and just ruler. But just because his mother was of suta extraction, he was denied the throne. He looked after the Pandavas and, in their absence, after their mother, Kunti. The other (mock) suta putra, Karna, was of course a thorough scoundrel of the first order. He was the one who provoked the Kauravas to disrobe Draupadi in the royal assembly, saying that any woman who married five men was no better than a whore. This was after Dharma had gambled away everything the Pandavas owned in the dice game master-minded by Shakunimama. What's more, Karna was no match for Arjuna as a couple of instances before the Great War amply proved. Drona, a Brahmin turned Kshatriya, was the tutor of martial skills for the royal cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. He got Arjuna to vanquish King Drupad because, earlier on, the latter, who was his fellow-student and a close friend, had insulted him when he went to his court seeking his patronage. Thereafter, instead of ending the feud there and then by reminding Drupad of the error of his ways, he deprived his former friend of half his kingdom. In the best of the Mahabharata vein, Drupad promptly worshipped Agni and asked for a son who would avenge him. Out of the ceremonial fire emerged the fully grown twins, Dhrishtaduymna and his sister, Draupadi. The themes of greed and hate, retribution and revenge, oneupmanship, jealousy and envy keep recurring in the epic. There was also the pastoral Aryan lifestyle being forcibly imposed on the native Nagas, very much reminiscent of what is going on even today in India. If there is a moral to the story, it is probably the following. Learn not to take offence. Learn to keep anger in check. Avoid violence. Eschew greed. Learn to compromise. Learn to control your tongue. Maybe, I'm looking at it through a post-modern pair of glasses, though. (By the way, "Maya", the previous post, is also about The Mahabharata. http://tinyurl.com/5suent)