Here’s a particularly psychedelic detail:

OH! MY GOD IT’S TECHNO MUSIC!

Seasons of the Palm tells of untouchable children herding goats around a dry lake-bed.  Suspended precariously over cruelty, violence, and hunger, the characters experience fleeting moments of happiness and glimpses of a salvation that is both omnipresent and impossible.

Current Show follows the boys working menial jobs, selling sodas and storing cycles, in a cinema hall.  Tired, bored, with only their companionship and a bit of marijuana, there is only the search for some small bit of stability, which is difficult to attain for those outside of the movie-screen fantasies.

Both of these books are exhilarating reads, both familiar and strange, troubling, beautiful, and fascinating.  Instead of navel-gazing about the Indian (or Tamil for that matter) novel in the vernacular (like the recently translated Zero Degree), Murugan’s work show the possibility of an Indian (or Tamil) literature, can alienate and challenge the reader, like the best literature.

I will be teaching Current Show in my class this coming year.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

I won’t write much about it, but it is jarring and beautiful, often managing to combine ideas in shockingly effective ways.  The two highlights for me were the Indonesian-influenced collaborations with Nova.

Here’s Colony Collapse:

I find the 2012 take on the Indonesian song Gendjer-Gendjer fascinating as well, which, as rumor has it, one hundred members of Gerwani (Indonesian Women’s Movement) sang and danced to as they killed six generals and threw them into a well during the failed 1960 Communist coup (read more here!).

Anyway, the whole album is worthwhile, although these two songs I found to be the most immediately accessible.  The album is demanding and its eclecticism can be a bit overwhelming, but give it a few listens.

I had first been to the Taj several years ago, on a glowing white hot May day.  Not many crowds, just a few photos of me squinting uncomfortably in the sun.  Coming back this year in the winter time with hundreds of tourists pouring into the gates, I started thinking thoughts of a different kind.  I couldn’t help but wonder, what are these places for?  Humayun’s Tomb, Akbar’s Tomb at Sikandra, and the Taj Mahal, what were their purposes?  Perhaps an Urs a year?  Who would have access?  I really don’t know.  If anyone has information, I would of course be interested.  Still, this first series of questions pushed me on to yet another question, perhaps more difficult question: what is the Taj Mahal now?  That is, not in theory or history, but in practice?

To start, it is a great photo op, surely one of the world’s best.  There are four that must be taken.  One of the Taj majestically alone, or framed by the gate (as I took above), one of yourself in front of the long neon blue waterway leading to the base with the Taj itself rising in the background, one from the Red Fort, in which you cradle the Taj, miniaturized by distance, in the palm of your hand, and one in which you dangle the Taj from your thumb and forefinger as if you were hanging the last ornament on the Christmas tree like so:

I tried to take some of my own.  They didn’t turn out.

But there is really more to it than that.  Why does one come, and what does one do.  Why go other than to say, yes, I have been there.  See me with the Taj.  It is difficult to explain why one travels, or visits sites I suppose, but here, it seemed a logic was forming itself, something that I had entirely missed on my first trip to Agra.  Let me describe the scene.

All around the Taj, the crowds were divided into two lines, high-value ticket holders, and the rest.  There were two lines: one to get up to the pediment of the Taj…:

…And one to get inside the building itself, to the grave of Mumtaz, Shah Jahan’s wife.  All the while, I couldn’t get over the fact that it was like being in Tirupati, with the lines for different value tickets, all waiting for that moment of darshan.

I wandered over to the side of the building and realized in some important ways that it had become a pilgrimage site, a temple.  To what?  Mumtaz?  Shah Jahan?  India’s Wonder of the World?  The Nation?  Beauty?  Conspiracy theorists have claimed for years that the Taj was actually a Hindu temple in disguise.  It is perhaps ironic that it is now becoming some sort of temple in practice.

I’ve been thinking about the concept of Vairāgya, which Sir Monier Monier-Williams defines as “disgust, aversion, distate for or loathing” or more philosophically as “freedom from all worldly desires, indifference to worldly objects and to life, asceticism”.  This term is central to the thought of many thinkers, so to get to the bottom of it, I decided to turn to poetry, specifically Bhartṛhari’s Vairāgyaprakaraṇa, a chapter of stanzas on the topic.  This poem made my heart stop:

na dhyātaṃ padam īśvarasya vidhivatsaṃsāravicchittaye
svargadvārakavāṭapāṭanapaṭurdharmo’pi nopārjitaḥ |
nārīpīnapayodharoruyugalaṃ svapne ‘pi nāliṅgitaṃ
mātuḥ kevalameva yauvanavanacchede kuṭhārā vayam ||

Here’s my translation, which doesn’t do it any justice:

We did not meditate upon the feet of God

To cut our ties to worldly existence

As is required;

Nor did we acquire merit strong enough

To force open the doors at heaven’s gates;

Even in our dreams

We did not embrace the round breasts of women.

We were only axes

Cutting down the forests of our mothers’ youth.

When I sang the Sulṭān songs from the Gītagovinda, he became immersed in love for Kṛṣṇa upon hearing them, overcome with an indescribable sentiment (ko’pi rasaḥ).The soft tune struck up by both our voices resounded from the thickets [on the shore] as if repeated by celestial singers staying there, driven on by the dignity of the Sulṭān. In an instant, gods showered flowers in the semblance of snowfall upon the Sulṭān, skimming across the lake, as if pleased at his devotion.[1]

Here’s a picture of the snowy lake taken in the late fall of 1940.

I tried to understand a bit of the math, but taking pictures was easier.

Ok, and kinda unrelated to math, here is a huge rath wheel right outside of the house, with lanky me for scale:

But still the question of dealing with ancient and medieval eroticism is a difficult one.  I put up pictures with a short and goofy commentary, but really, how can one talk about them?  I managed to find two sources on those carvings: a book on Kāmaśāstra in Nepali I briefly saw at the NRC, and Dr.  Giuseppe Tucci’s contribution to the Summer of ’69, “Rati-Līlā (Geneva: Nagel, 1969).  Here is a selection from the latter’s delightfully gauche  introduction:

“Since the publication in 1962 of Kama Kala, the first volume in the series “Unknown Treasures”
which was acclaimed by the international press for its audacious beauty, Nagel Publishers have
continued to unveil the secrets of the erotic art created by the civilisations of the world. Eros Kalos, Roma, I
Amor, Shunga, Checan and Sarv e Naz have thus successively revealed, under the guidance of leading
authorities, the artistic manifestations of the erotic sense of the Greek, Roman, Japanese, Peruvian and
Persian peoples.

“A further area of unknown territory is now opened up with this seventh volume in the series, Rati-Lila,
which is concerned with the erotic imagery of the temples of Nepal. Under a title which to some readers
might appear frivolous – for “Rati-Lila” means “the sports of love” – Professor Giuseppe Tucci, of
the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East in Rome, initiates us into the esoteric mysteries of Tantric
thought in a luminous analysis which is the product of over twenty-five years of uninterrupted contact with
the civilisation of Nepal. We should like to express our sincere gratitude for his ready helpfulness throughout
the preparation of this work.

“The reader will be struck at once by the exotic originality and the extraordinary humour shown in these
erotic creations by the artists of Nepal. To photograph these works entailed an expedition lasting more
than two months, and the 230 illustrations presented in this volume were selected from over a thousand.
This is an indication of the care that has gone to the making of this book, for the greater pleasure of readers
whose appreciation of art comprehends all the varied manifestations of the nature of man.”  (p.6)

Thanks to I. S. for the reference.  He is truly font of all things arcane and amazing.

Right on Tridevi Marg in Thamel, in the backpacker epicenter of Kathmandu,  there is a slightly beat up, slightly run down temple.    I must have walked by this temple dozens of times without giving it a second look—and why would you when there are the spectacular complexes in Durbar Square or Patan to look at.  Actually, I had never seen anyone paying any attention to the place.  While wandering around looking for an ATM I happened to look up.

Wow.

Some are pretty run of the mill:

But others are a bit more creative:

…or perhaps we should say athletic:

There are also a few for those who prefer solitude:

…or:

I end with my personal favorite.  Is that corn?

Some wooden balconies:

A nursery: 

A door:

You never know who might be looking out.  Siva and Parvati in Durbar Square: