Veni, Vidi, Vetti

(The sage Nārada has just arrived at King Yudhiṣṭhira's court (before the Rājasuya and the subsequent dice-game), and the poet makes this an avenue for his thoughts on what ought not to be present in a good kingdom. The attention to detail, and the incredible, almost verbatim applicability to current affairs blew my mind. Six centuries, and the problems, the acute, helpless awareness of those problems and the misfortune of having to endure them appear not to have changed one whit. I heard these verses in Ganesh's most excellent lecture series on the Kumaravyasa Bharata. Only the faults in the liberal English translation are mine. Don't feel compelled to follow every link.)

ಭಜಿಸುವಾ ಭಕ್ತಿಯಲಿ ದೈವ-
ದ್ವಿಜ-ಗುರು-ಸ್ಥಾನವನು? ದೇಶ-
ಪ್ರಜೆಯನರ್ಥಾಗಮದ ಗಡಣೆಗೆ ಘಾಸಿಮಾಡೆಯೆಲೆ? 

ಕುಜನರಭಿಮತದುಗ್ರದಂಡ-
ವ್ಯಜನದಲಿ ಜನಜಠರ ವಹ್ನಿಯ
ಸೃಜಿಸೆಯೆಲೆ ಭವದೀಯ ರಾಜ್ಯಸ್ಥಿತಿಯ ಹೇಳೆಂದ

bhajisuvā bhaktiyali daiva-
dvija-guru-sthānavanu? dēśa-
prajeyanarthāgamada gaḍaṇege ghāsimāḍeyele? 

kujanarabhimatadugradaṃḍa-
vyajanadali janajaṭhara vahniya
sṛjiseyele bhavadīya rājyasthitiya hēḷeṃda

Are you giving due reverence to that beyond your abilities to comprehend, to wisdom and to experience? Are you refraining from distressing your subjects just to balance your finances?

Are your sure subjects' hunger-fires not being fanned by of the fickle caprice of wicked men? (A note here - this is a classic Kumaravyasa 'rUpaka' - metaphor. The entire work is full of such wonderful metaphors, leading a famous critic S.V.Ranganna to label him "Rūpaka Sāmrājya Cakravarti")

ಆಣೆಗಪಜಯವಿಲ್ಲಲೆ? ಕೀ-
ಳಾಣೆ ಟಂಕದೊಳಿಲ್ಲಲೆ? ನಿ-
ತ್ರಾಣದಲಿ ಸಂಗರವ ಹೊಗೆಯಲೆ ಶೌರ್ಯಗರ್ವದಲಿ? 

ವಾಣಿಯವನುಚಿತದಲಿ ಧರ್ಮದ
ಲೂಣೆಯವನಹಿತರಲುಪೇಕ್ಷೆಯ
ಕೇಣವನು ದಾನದಲಿ ಮಾಡೆಲೆ ರಾಯ ಕೇಳೆಂದ 

āṇegapajayavillale? kī-
ḷāṇe ṭaṃkadoḷillale? ni-
trāṇadali saṃgarava hogeyale śauryagarvadali? 

vāṇiyavanucitadali dharmada
lūṇeyavanahitaralupēkṣeya
kēṇavanu dānadali māḍele rāya kēḷeṃda

Are you sure your promises are not mere words? Is your currency reliable? Are you sure your army is well equipped and not merely posturing?

Are you sure commerce is not encroaching what ought to be free? Are your ethics not eroding? Are you not underestimating your enemies? Are you generous with your support to the good?

ಅರಸು ರಾಕ್ಷಸ; ಮಂತ್ರಿಯೆಂಬುವ
ಮೊರೆವ ಹುಲಿ; ಪರಿವಾರ ಹದ್ದಿನ
ನೆರವಿ; ಬಡವರ ಬಿನ್ನಪವನಿನ್ನಾರು ಕೇಳುವರು? 

ಉರಿ ಉರಿಯುತಿದೆ ದೇಶ ನಾವಿ-
ನ್ನಿರಲು ಬಾರದೆನುತ್ತ ಜನ ಬೇ-
ಸರದ ಬೇಗೆಯಲಿರದಲೇ ಭೂಪಾಲ ಕೇಳೆಂದ 

arasu rākṣasa; maṃtriyeṃbuva
moreva huli; parivāra haddina
neravi; baḍavara binnapavaninnāru kēḷuvaru? 

uri uriyutide dēśa nāvi-
nniralu bāradenutta jana bē-
sarada bēgeyaliradalē bhūpāla kēḷeṃda

"The ruler is a tyrant; the ministers, hungry tigers; the officers, roving birds of prey; who will listen to us?

The country is burning. We can't stay anymore!" Are you sure your citizens are not thinking this?

[15 Apr: Fixed typo, makes it even more incredible. Thanks, Nirmal!]

So, Facebook acquired Instagram for a billion dollars. Naturally (oh how I love this word, verily the Prince of Segues!), this leads one to ponder the preponderance of visual media over all other senses. Just look at how advanced our visual transactions are - we read (highly non-linear and asynchronous), see pictures, see nuances in colors, see videos (somewhat more linear and synchronous), etc. Sometimes we do a multi-layered visual transaction all at once - imagine seeing a movie with subtitles, with a scene having elements of black-and-white and selective color, with some elements changing and others stationary in time. A typical news cast involves all these - an anchor, a infographic still, a video, feed, a scrolling ticker below, etc.

In contrast, our aural transactions are primitive. We are confined to pretty much one kind of listening, and only very few of us are trained to recognize pitch and tone. That's the equivalent of only a tiny population being trained to read. Even for those, it is mainly a linear, synchronous kind of input. The most multi-layered it can get is someone speaking with music, but even then our resolution rapidly drops as more elements are added.  Our olfactory (smell) transactions are even more primitive. There's hardly any creative expression with smells, and pretty much all of us are at a very primitive level. The visual equivalent might be a population which can't just not read, but one where most can't even see more than vague blobs of color.

All this can lead to interesting questions of how this came to be, and how it could change in the future. One of the first steps in answering the former is to ask, how is it that our eyes see what they see?

There are many ways to interpret that, but one way is to focus on the electromagnetic frequencies that the eye is sensitive to. It turns out that pretty much every eye, in every organism in existence, is sensitive to approximately the same band of EM frequencies! Some insects can see farther into UV etc., but these changes in range are very tiny compared to the total part of the spectrum we're blind to. How come there is this extraordinary uniformity?

One theory, a very convincing one, is that the eye as an organ evolved when all organisms still lived underwater and had not yet crawled onto land. Water blocks out pretty much the entire EM spectrum (which is why you can't have RADAR under water) except for a tiny window between 400nm and 700nm. All eyes are sensitive in this range, because an organism would be fatally disadvantaged if it didn't evolve to see and compete. After they began moving onto land, there was no incentive for organisms to see any further than this range, because every other organism (competitor) saw only in this range!

The EM attenuation curve in water is amazing.

The attenuation curve drops 1000 orders of magnitude just around the visual range. Think about it, 1000 orders of magnitude! The range between a subatomic particle and the diameter of the visible universe is just around 40 orders of magnitude. Even if you measured the diameter of the visible universe in Planck lengths, you'd still be stretching at just around 60 orders of magnitude! There isn't much in this universe that changes that much, and even less where this change makes such a manifest impact, like be the cause of our ability to see.

One can very nicely motivate a creationist mindset by twisting cause and effect a little bit: How amazing it is that water's physical property has this incredible feature, that allows us to see! Surely, you can't explain away a 1000 orders of magnitude drop just around our visual range as chance - it sure feels like someone put it there, just so that we can see!

This reminded me of this Abstruse Goose comic, and yet again of the famous, iconic, beautiful Pale Blue Dot video. It is humbling, isn't it, that our window to the world rests precariously perched on one of the most stupefyingly rare features of a physical property of water?

Groucho Marx is said to have said, "Life is just the whim of several billion cells to be You for a while". A vanishingly temporary wisp of low entropy, man "appears as a somewhat ridiculous strutting animal, shouting and fussing during a brief interlude between infinite silences."

Right, we were talking about the Instagram story, and how it is is so amazing. [/condescending Wonka :P]

--

[1] I found most stuff about the eye in this very nice paper by Russell Fernald on the evolution of the Eye. That in turn I found when randomly browsing wikipedia and following the references in the Eye article.

[2] The keenly perceptive reader would have noticed that water's attenuation reaches the same low value as it does in the visual range at around 10^3 Hz and below. This corresponds to the long-wave radio range. Some underwater animals apparently exploit this, and use it for sensing! However, because of this extreme low frequency, the resolution is also low. Even large-sized objects cause huge diffraction distortions because the wavelength is several tens kilometers.

Some of the most celebrated verses in the Raghuvamsha describe the king Dileepa:

जुगोपात्मानमत्रस्तः भेजे धर्ममनातुरः।
अगृध्नुराददे सोऽर्थमसक्तः सुखमन्वभूत्॥

jugopātmānamatrastaḥ bheje dharmamanāturaḥ |
agṛdhnurādade so'rthamasaktaḥ sukhamanvabhūt ||

"He protected himself, but not out of fear. He 'did the right thing', but not in haste. He collected wealth, but not with greed. In summary, he enjoyed pleasures, but didn't cling to them"


ज्ञाने मौनं क्षमा शक्तौ त्यागे श्लाघाविपर्ययः।
गुणा गुणानुबन्धित्वात्तस्य सप्रसवा इव॥ १-२२

jñāne maunaṁ kṣamā śaktau tyāge ślāghāviparyayaḥ |
guṇā guṇānubandhitvāttasya saprasavā iva ||

"He was silent in spite of being learned; he was forgiving and forbearing in spite of being strong. He didn't care much for praise, in spite of giving away much. Such contrary features resided in him, like brothers in a family"

--

"The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; someone strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action." -Winston Churchill

--

The more one sees of power and its abuse, the more one is convinced that such traits are the sole hope for any kind of sustainable governance.

One of most favorite, most cherished quotes: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -Plato


ರಾವಣನ ಹಳೆವವನೆ, ಜೀವವನೆ ಬಿಸುಡಿಸುವ
ಲಾವಣ್ಯವೆಂತಹುದೊ? ನೋವದೆಂತಹುದೊ?
ಬೇವಸವ ಪಟ್ಟು ತಿಳಿ; ತಿಳಿದು ಹಳಿಯುವೊಡೆ ಹಳಿ
ಗಾವಿಲನ ಗಳಹೇನು? ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ


rAvaNana haLevavane, jIvavane bisuDisuva
lAvaNyaveMtahudo? nOvadeMtahudo?
bEvasava paTTu tiLi; tiLidu haLiyuvoDe haLi
gAvilana gaLahEnu? maMkutimma

(Rough translation, does no justice to the beauty of the metre)
"You are quick to judge Ravana - but what do you know of the beauty he saw, which made him throw away his entire life? What do you know of his pain that made him do it? (One argument goes, Ravana treasured Sita more than Rama because he held on to her even after knowing he'd be defeated in battle. It doesn't take much love to wage war when you know you're going to win, does it?) Don't speak lightly of others' troubles."

[Aside: lAvaNya, commonly used to mean "Beauty" or "Charm" literally means "Saltiness". Societies that treasured salt, etymology of salary, "worth his salt", the monkey trapping scene from Animals Are Beautiful People, etc.]

--

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh" - H.L.Mencken


ತೋಯಿಸುತ ಬೇಯಿಸುತ ಹೆಚ್ಚುತ್ತ ಕೊಚ್ಚುತ್ತ
ಕಾಯಿಸುತ ಕರಿಯುತ್ತ ಹುರಿಯುತ್ತ ಸುಡುತ
ಈ-ಅವನಿ-ಒಲೆಯೊಳು-ಎಮ್ಮಯ ಬಾಳನಟ್ಟು ವಿಧಿ
ಬಾಯ ಚಪ್ಪರಿಸುವನು - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ



tOyisuta bEyisuta heccutta koccutta
kAyisuta kariyutta huriyutta suDuta
I-avani-oleyoLu-emmaya bALanaTTu vidhi
bAya capparisuvanu - maMkutimma

It's impossible to translate without Kolaveri-fying it. The rough meaning, omitting the cooking-actions analogies, is, "Fate throws us into an oven called life, and relishes our trials". The choice of words is almost signature DVG.

How long will it be before GMail flashes a classic black-on-yellow, above-inbox notifications that says "Are you trying to hit on X (x.y@gmail.com)? We might be able to help. Interested? Click here."

[Edit 25 Sep 2:30 PM: Several very useful edits by Shreevatsa.]

I attended my first ever 'ashtAvadhAna' by the effulgently brilliant ShatAvadhAni Dr. R. Ganesh today (thanks Shreevatsa for the invite), and to say I was impressed would be the understatement of a lifetime [1] I learnt more in those few hours than I probably did in the past few months. Anything I might say to describe the experience would be a pale shadow of the real thing, so here is an attempt to reconstruct the event with some of the notes I managed to take.

--

There are 9 people on stage - the avadhAni (the person answering, the performer) and 8 pRcchakas (the questioners). The performer has a chat with each of the 8 questioners in series, for a total of 4 rounds (these numbers can vary in general, but the one yesterday had these). The performer has no paper or pen, and has to rely entirely on memory. The questioners yesterday had the following roles, and I've filled in details of what happened with each of them yesterday. Above all, this is a test of concentration because ALL 8 conversations are interwoven.

(The program was in a mix of Kannada and Sanskrit, with almost no English; I didn't remember exactly what they said at times, so I have glossed over them in English)

1. niṣedhākṣari ("Forbidden letters")

The questioner suggests a topic and a metre for the performer to compose a poem. He also prohibits the use of a certain opening letter. In each round with this questioner, the performer must compose one line of the poem (so 4 rounds would make a full verse). But there's a catch: every line must be composed interactively with the questioner, letter by letter, and at each letter, the questioner can prohibit the use of any letter of his choice for the next letter!

For example, suppose the questioner asked a verse on Gaṇeśa, in the śloka metre and the first letter prohibited was 'ga', in the hope that the performer couldn't start off with anything like 'gaṇeśa', 'gajAnana', 'gaṇapati', etc. Suppose the performer thought of the line 'śuklāmbaradharam viSNum' - he has to say -'śa' first. The questioner would immediately know he's onto this verse, and prohibit 'ka' next!

The example here uses a known verse - but in the avadhAna, the verse is being composed on the fly. This levels the playing field - the questioner doesn't know what the performer is thinking, and has to guess at the next possible letter to ban, while the performer can think of huge array of alternatives if he has the vocabulary. It is absolutely BRILLIANT in how it engages the questioner and the performer.

The questioner for niṣedhākṣari yesterday was Prof. Kannan, Sanskrit lecturer at National College, Jayanagar. The topic he gave was "What would happen if Modi became the PM of India?". The metre he prescribed was pramANikA which had the syllable form

short-long short-long short-long short-long for 4 lines [The 4 together is called pañca-cāmaram]

If you think about it, it's a very clever choice - the questioner knows that the next letter WILL be a short or long, so the number of possibilities is greatly reduced!

The first letter prohibited was 'pa' - presumably to prevent any opening like 'pradhAna mantri'. Here is how it transcribed: (SRG is Ganesh; Q is the questioner)

Q: Alright, let's start, 'pa' is banned
SRG: bha
Q: He's probably going to try a variant of 'bhavati'. va banned next!
SRG: Ah, you got me there. Let me try this: bha-jE
Q: He's going to use a form like 'bhaje-ham'. ha banned next.
SRG: Nope. bha-jE-ta
Q: This is the end of the word. No matter what I ban,  he can find another word. But I think 'modi' has to come somewhere, so I'll ban ma next.
SRG: bha-jE-ta na
Q: Is he trying narendra? ra banned
SRG: Good one.  bha-jE-ta na-ndi
Q: Something with milk? nandini? na banned next
SRG: Nope! bha-jE-ta na-ndi-tam
Q: Aargh. Ok, end of the word again. Have to shoot in the dark. Ok, 'ta' banned next
SRG: pa. bha-jE-ta na-ndi-tam pa
Q: He's definitely trying something like 'patha', path. 'tha' banned.
SRG: Come now, that is nothing. de.  bha-jE-ta na-ndi-tam pa-de

That finishes the first line!

[The performer then moves on to the other questioners for the rest of the 1st round. I'll collect each of the questioners here in serial order. Note that in doing so, I'm gliding over a very, very difficult part: the performer comes to the second line only after 40-50 minutes with the others. I couldn't even remember what I had WRITTEN DOWN, but he had to start perfectly right from memory.]

Q: Let me ban 'ra'. No reason, just a whim.
SRG: sva
Q: Likely going to be 'da'. da banned.
SRG: sva-bhU
Q: Surely he's trying 'bhUmi'. ma banned.
SRG: Ah good one. But I can get around that. dha. sva-bhU-dha
Q: Is he trying 'dhana'? na banned.
SRG: Got me again. But how about a va? sva-bhU-dha-va
Q: Aaargh. vasu? vasati? sa banned.
SRG: Not even close! ccha!  sva-bhU-dha-va-ccha
Q: This completely beats me. The only word that strikes me now after 'Cha' is 'Chala', cheating. la banned.
SRG: ("Enu swamy nammanu mosagaararendu nemisibittiri?") vi. sva-bhU-dha-va-ccha-vE
Q: The word ends there. Have to shoot in the dark. 'ma' banned.
SRG: pa. sva-bhU-dha-va-ccha-vEH pa
Q: pada? position? da banned
SRG: No! ra! sva-bhU-dha-va-ccha-viH param

That's the second line. Note how the metre is being perfectly adhered to, and how it's almost like a chase sequence out of Catch Me If You Can!

Q: Third line. Surely he has to use 'modi' SOMEWHERE! ma banned.
SRG: Tch tch, why? hi. hi
Q: Something like hita, I'm guessing. 'ta' banned.
(Brilliant quip by SRG: "Nodi sir, ivaru endU nanage 'hita' bayasolla")
SRG: hi-mA
Q: Talking about himalayas? something about siva? sa banned [I didn't get this, he could have banned la]
SRG: You can't stop a mountain! ga! hi-mA-ga
Q: End of the word. Maybe next is dharma? dha banned. [Didn't follow reasoning for this either]
SRG: va. hi-mA-ga-va
Q: ta banned. vatamsa something.
SRG: cchi [Made a nice joke about deriding the questioner].  hi-mA-ga-va-cchi
Q: Aaargh, the Cha again. Maybe it's a sandhi he's talking about shikhara. 'kha' banned.
SRG: Devaranne maretubittira sir? vam. hi-mA-ga-va-cchi-vam 
Q: End of word. Pure guess, 'sa' banned.
SRG: va. hi-mA-ga-va-cchi-vam-va
Q: vara? 'ra' banned.
SRG: het. hi-mA-ga-va-cchi-vam-va-het. 
End of third line!

It was very late by the time the 4th round came to this questioner, so he gracefully said he'd troubled the performer enough, and so in the interests of time he could compose the 4th line as he pleased.  SRG took less than a few seconds to compose the last line:

sa-kun-ta-lA-tma-jA-nva-yE

The full poem reads:

bha-jE-ta na-ndi-tam pa-de
sva-bhU-dha-va-ccha-viH param
hi-mA-ga-va-cchi-vam-va-het
sa-kun-ta-lA-tma-jA-nva-yE


At this point, I still wasn't sure how this was making sense, but he gave a brilliant explanation. "nanditam means 'one who is happy' - that's the same etymology behind 'modi', so it is a fair synonym. bhajeta nanditam pade endaru "modi pradhAna mantriya padaviyannu paDedare" endu.

'dhava' is "King" or "Lord". 'svabhU' is "our land". sva-bhU-dhava is "The ruler of our land". Chavi endare sundara. Andare, adu ati sundaravAgi iruvudu endu.

himAga is himAlaya (aga is mountain). vat - like. vahet - will carry. Himalayavu Shivannanu hotta haage Modiyavaru Shivavannu (oLLeyadannu) horuvaru. A second interpretation via [S] "Like the Himalayas he will protect us from invaders, harsh winters and is the fount of the rivers that are the lifelines of India"

'Shakuntala's son (Atmaja) is Bharata. "anvaya" is that which follows, in this case our country, Bhaarata.


Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant stuff!



 
2. samasyA-pUrti (Making sense of a 'bad' line by introducing context)

samasyA-pUrti is a classic round where one line is given to the performer, and  he must compose a poem with that line as the last one. This line is nonsensical, or contradicts a well known truth, or is not fit for recital in public (has dirty or vulgar references, say). The rule is, the line must be heard as the final line in the poem. The typical way to 'solve' it is to add a letter at the beginning so that the meaning changes (but the context must make sense, so the first 3 lines are used for that purposes); or to identify an alternative sandhi than the ones that are originally apparent.

Let me dive straight to what happened yesterday. The questioner posed this as the last line:
"stana doDDatanadalli shobhisuvudu" (crudely "The breasts are beautiful because they are big"). Now obviously this is not fit for a public performance! How can this be modified?!

He started off with a lovely joke, "noDi, namma uttara kannaDadalli doDDastana (local variant of doDDatana) shobhisutte, neevu stana doDDatanavannu shobisibittiri" [S]

Just like the last, in each round the performer gives one line. This keeps the audience on tenterhooks. The first line which he gave right away was:

anurAgavati geLati modala rAtriya baLika

("The curious friend, after the lady's first night with her beloved...")

(At least 40-50 mins till he speaks to the other participants)

mana bicci nuDiyutirpe Alige embaL
(asks her when she's in a good mood)

I'm amazed at how he's almost speaking in perfect verse effortlessly!

"binadi enE nallanu?" ella bageyinda

("Is your lover a fun guy? It looks like it, because...")

"hya-stana doDDatanadalli shobhisihudu"

(hya: yesterday; hyastana - something that happened yesterday; he split hyastanadoDDatana as hyastanada-oDDatana. oDDatana is coyness or roughness)

"Neenu nenne enAyitu endu heLalu oDDutana (shyness, roughness) torisuttiruvudarinda nanage haage annisuttide!"

"You're so coy about what happened yesterday, that tells a lot!"

Again, pure brilliance!

The questioner had a different but equally interesting solution, where he spoke about kri-stana doDDatanadalli shobhisihudu
 - how Christianity shines because of Christ's sacrifice. No sandhi magic,  so I am inclined to like SRG's better :-)

3. datta-pada ("Given word")

Here, the questioner specifies a topic and a metre. Then, he rules that in each line, a certain word must appear. This word can be anything, even something from another language! Yesterday, the topic was "In the Ramayana, what did Hanuman feel when he was just about to jump across the ocean?". The questioner did not specify a metre, so SRG chose mattebha-vikrIdita - and what a choice! It is a very rare, very difficult metre! The required words from the questioner blew me off. They were:

In the first line: Ape
2nd: Lemur
3nd: Monkey
4th: Gibbon

!!! These 4 must appear - or sound like they appear. Here are the lines he composed. Again, these had 40-50 mins gap between each line, so he had some time to think but he was answering other questions in the gap. That makes it even harder!

vibhu ramEpse vasanta maNgaladakam mAtanga kandAspadam

"The wish (IpsA) of the lord (vibhu, i.e. Rama) is like an auspicious spring, dignified, beautiful and playful as an kid elephant"

svabhavOddeshame swAmigAgali murOdhAryam tadIyam matam |

"Let it be the purpose (uddesham) of my life (sva-bhava) to serve him (swaamige aagaLi) - I should take on (dhAryam) a gigantic form (mura)" - thinking thus (tadIyam matam)

shubha sandEshavan Ivenendu nabhaman kIkhEshvaraM muTTutum

"I will bring him good news" - thinking thus, he grew skyward, touching the sun [But what is the kI? kheshavara is the sun]

prabhavippam migilAgi bandhura mahAkAyam nikAyOcitam  ||

"He took on (prabhavippam) the beautiful (bandhura) enormous (nikAya) form"

This poem is at the level of classical poetry! The construction, the metre, the alankaras - they can beat ANY classic, and yet this was composed on the fly in a very noisy and deliberately distracting environment!
 
4. citrakAvya - Constrained writing 

The questioner gives a topic and metre, and some constraint. Yesterday, the topic was 'saraswati', and metre was 'rathoddhata' and the constraint was 'gUdha chaturtha' - in this constraint, the performer has to first compose the LAST line of his verse and say it out aloud. Then, in the subsequent rounds, he has to compose the first 3 lines, in which the letters in the last line must appear sequentially.

SRG gave the last line in an instant:

shAradE rasika vAgvishAradE

The first line was:

sharadindu kamanIye


Oh you who are as beautiful as the post-monsoon season moon, 
  
lAsikA AsphAla camatkriye

Oh you whose movements are magical like that of a dancer,

AsaradaNte poreyamma sragviNI

Protect us, oh garlanded one, like a savior

shAradE rasika vAgvishAradE

Oh Sharada, one adept at speech

I am not too clear on this one - several questions - would be very glad for any assistance.

5. AshukAvya

In this round, the questioner gives a topic and the performer must compose a poem instantly in a metre that is "appropriate" to the topic.

Topic 1, The end of the rainy season

SRG's instant answer:

kAmana billekhaniyane

("With the rainbow pen...")

stOmam kondirpa mugila hALegaLol

("On the paper of the skies")

[Couldn't transcribe the next two lines]

(To the extent I remember, he compared the end of the rainy season to that of a poet writing the last verse of his epic, with the rainbow compared to his pen, the skies to his paper, the clouds to his inkpot and the earth to the subject of the epic.)

Topic 2: How should a husband balance his duties to his mother and his wife? How should his relationship with them be?

[Several brilliant jokes on how Ganesh is a brahmachari, and he seem adept at a lot of questions about married life; several anecdotes also related: from a Kailasam play, a character always calls his horrible, domineering wife "Dolly". A friend asks, what's so cute about her, why do you call her dolly. The chap says "Well, I say "cham" in my head every time" (chan-dali :D :D :D)]

He composed this poem in the sAngatya vritta - Brilliant choice! (sangati - companionship). Apparently this vritta has a lot of very interesting metrical and tala properties - it can be sung in any tala very nicely.

smara-rati bANagaLirpa chandassante

"Like a story involving Kama, Rati and Kama's arrows: i.e, Kama chooses when to fire his arrows to seduce Rati"

or

"Like the vritta which has smara, rati and bAna (i.e. sAngatya) - alternating attention, can go at any pace, etc."

merevudu maga mEN patiyu

"The role of both the husband and the child could be played perfectly"

doreyada hAge tAyige heNDatige

"If he slips away from both his mother and his wife"

[Not transcribed correctly]

Holy amazing self reference Batman!

Topic 3: On the feeling of a parent seeing his child take its first step

[Not transcribed correctly]

A nice poem comparing the feeling to how a guru would feel seeing his discipline complete his first avadhAnam!

Topic 4: What would Bali feel when he comes to visit the earth this Deepavali?

mitApi viSNunA pUrvam
"Even though it was measured by Vishnu"
amitA nu vasundharA
"The earth was still an infinite bearer of wealth"
hatA adya hatOsmi iti
"Oh, I am ruined! I am ruined!"
vairochaniH arochakaH
"The son of virochana will be desolate"

Then followed a BRILLIANT commentary on the Reddy brothers. His humour is incredible!

6. kāvya-vācana - Identify the verse

The deepest, most soul-crushing of tragedies that can befall man are those from 'silly' causes. Something that works as a matter of routine for everyone so much that it's not even a thought that crosses your mind, but alas, a trivial random event so fully exposes the horrific fragility of being human.

Tragedies stemming from acts of God or 'great' events that feature in a long-arc narrative, or as identifiable to some deep cause, are relatively 'manageable'. It takes superhuman mental strength to deal with an event unique to you in impact, but is unclassifiable to most other people. The enormous guilt that comes with it, with a post-mortem of every decision that lead to it no matter how far away back in time or relevance, no matter how deceiving the clarity of hindsight; the constant reminder of what could have been; the constant self-flagellation, ... I shudder at the thought.

Inspired by A short history of modern African-american music[Image]

Shanubhogara MagaLu - K.S.Narasimhaswamy, 1942



An extraordinarily perceptive, sympathetic and gently humorous description of the joys, unsaid wishes, constraints, little white lies and wisdom of lovable characters in a harsh social mileu.

**

Amma Loosa - V. Nagendra Prasad, 2011



"Pappa pyaanv..bum bum bumbum...Amma loosa? Appa loosa? ... Baa baa black sheep ..."

--

I debated for a long time whether to choose Shanubhogara MagaLu or Rayaru Bandaru for the gold standard. While the latter is much lighter, the lyrics are no less brilliant.

The nadir also had stiff competition: I had been intending to write this post for years now, and the prize contender till this clear champion came along was the hitherto apodictic Taliban Alla Alla.