Let me start 2018 NaNoWriMo
this way. I am into creating you or if you like it this way, helping you in
coming forth into the world. So I am your mother or your Dai mother (or midwife
as they call in a tasteless way).
As we are always randomly unto
each other each year, year after year, let me be at it.
Today is 22nd Nov 2018. The
tithi is… What? Let me Google…
I did NaNo (not NaMo, not that
I don’t like him, but here I am talking to the No), yes, I did search for the
tithi, NaNo, but now the day has become 24th and the idea I had in
searching for the tithi has died or no, did it? Well, I was looking for the
tithi in which Vivekananda entered Kerala in 1892.
But does it matter you may ask.
What avails me now if somebody went to some place some long, long ago years?
But this man is in love with
me. Get it right, he is my affectionate Elder Brother. Frater, the Universal one. He is the Brother of All and the Friend
of All.
He became my dear one too, one
day or rather one night.
Let me tell you how:
You call it day or night, when
you are yet asleep but not fully and awake but not fully? The Date has begun
promptly after 12 mid night but the day awaited the Sun. This bodied self, me, then known as Brahmachari Subrahmanya Chaitanya, lay in repose when I found myself in Swami Vivekananda’s
company.
He was singing his own
composition.
He was singing about his Guru.
The song that is sung every evening as part of vesper services in many, many
places. But I was not bothered too much about the song. As his eyes met mine, I
could sense at once the great love he had for me. Sense, is too limited a word
to tell you what hit me. ‘Hit me’ too is not sufficient to tell you how so
tangible it was. The thing was that Me,
the name I call myself, a very, very little self at that, is being loved by Him a much-heralded and so, so obviously
a great, so, So great a soul!
Well, so what he did then, be
it in 1892 or be it later, he keeps doing now.
He spoke to me into my heart
when he made me pick up the books, which printed his spoken and written words.
Well, you will not understand
it. You better pick up one such book and check it up if it works for you. It
should if he wants it.
So I suppose you have figured
out by now that it does matter terribly what Vivekananda did in 1892.
But the Tithi perhaps is not
that special, but you can’t rule anything out in case of people such as this.
Because I found many special things when I looked into tithis connected with
Sarada Devi’s South Indian Sojourn or Swami Nirmalananda’s ministry to Malabar.
But for now, dear NaNo, let
tithi be…
Now listen:
2018 minus 1892 is 126. Do you
know what comes if we go like this? It is the infinite series 12624120720504040320,3628803628800....
Well, we are being truly
tangential. I was thinking that perchance I might get a serendipitous
Ramanujam, but let me stay away, lest the Devi of Namakkal gets cross with me.
So okay we are not getting a Srinivasa
Ramanujam but are we getting a Gunther Grass Tin Drum or James Joyce Ulysses? I
Googled and am of the prima-facie opinion that JJ is nearer me but I am sure I am what I am
and I am happy at it.
So to reiterate the main thing
or to focus on what we need to focus, (well, do we need to focus on anything at
all? Why not just be at it tangentially or ramble on? Ok, let us take it that
we do need to focus), yes, the main thing is Vivekananda at 1892, where is he
now? Vivekananda is now in Banglore 1892 and I am in Bengaluru 2018. We are in
the same place but at different times at the same time.
We have been at it earlier too.
We two, Vivekananda and Sampurnananda have been traveling over two trains on
the same track but at different times, sometimes His train coalescing with mine
for some moments, though belonging to different times, on the same tracks though
both were laid at different times.
I was productively doing it
with Sarada’s Grace laden blissful tour of the South. So did M at the same time
but from a different place. I did it at a different time and different
place. So I am doing with Tulasi
Maharaj’s incessant peregrinations through Karnataka Kerala KanyaKumari.
Advance Happy Birthday Lunatic
Kerala! You’ll be 126 soon!
Good Morning NaNoWriMo 2018 !
We are on 25 November and our togetherness
is to be for another six days. Let us see how we do and how we end up. But fine
as of now, aren’t we? Do we care what is our shape on 30/11 mid-night our time
? As long as we are at it, that’s it, isn’t it? Our going gets it, right? Or rather,
the going is the getting, Okay? The process is the real thing, as they say.
But is it? Is it a bit Buddhist,
the current hotcake trend about being in the zone, etc.? Was it not
comprehensively shown the door by Shankara?
‘Ja Icha Karo’ (‘Go about doing as you like it’), Sri Ramakrishna
did say and we are doing it, okay, but did he not preface it with ‘Advaita Jnan aachale bende’ (‘Tying the
knowledge of Advaita to a corner of your cloth’)?
So I go about doing what I like
but the staying, holding, pervading Charm and Power of Brahman will cover my
actions over time and space.
(By the way, oh, you silly,
bird-brained twittering Jack ! You can’t get away from Brahman! She will become a Protective Patriarch
when you run away from your mother to father and will become a Merciful Matriarch
when you run crying back to your mother! Button up your pants and do remove all
silly slogan boards.)
Come NaNo, let’s get ready to greet
the mad Malabaris!
Though the good doctor Palpu
had warned him, Vivekananda must have been startled when he started experiencing
the madness soon after he alighted from his bullock-cart near Trichur.
Let me describe how a very reputed man behaved. He was hailed
as a man of steady wisdom.
He used to keep a
large part of his personal terrace shaven and keep a tuft of hair somewhere in the middle of the
backside of his pate. But that was not a too distinctive feature for him
because almost the whole of the region had such male heads. His distinction was
in assigning different meanings to keeping the tuft at different locations on
the head.
He mostly bared his upper body and displayed his pot belly to
the world. That was some distinction but still most his peers had that
prominent belly though his was somewhat on the side of the more voluminous. Though almost
all of his countrymen bared their upper body and most of them could not grow and
flaunt a flat belly and so he did have strong competition in belly potting and
was definitively not singular in this matter.
So what showed him apart ?
So what showed him apart ?
A long piece of fine cotton cloth was slung casually and
carelessly over the otherwise bare upper body. That showed he possessed fine
clothing.
That was something special.
That was something special.
This piece of clothing adored him at all occasions, whoever
be in his presence. That showed his singularity. Most of others took off theirs
when they approached his presence. Even the few who had their upper cloth on,
held it on their body in a restrained strung way while his cloth was clinging
to his body in a jaunty, 'I don’t care for you' attitude.
That said something.
He was a man who held the Power of life and death.
He was Nambudripad. He ruled over this bad, mad land.
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