January 10, 2012
Now that Achan is out of town, I have taken over the gardening duties. It consumes 45 minutes in the morning. Besides watering the plants, the generous amounts of leaves shed by the Jackfruit tree in the front and the Teak in backyard need to be picked up and dumped under the coconut trees or into the fire pit.
I have a growing fan club of the sharp mouth garden lizards which anxiously follow each of my moves. Their unblinking attention reminds me of the Indians who still haven't lost hope on Tendulkar. But just the shadow of a crow is sufficient to send these troops scampering back into the crack on the wall and crevices under the slabs.
Picking up fallen leaves is good Zen. I have read that the word Zen is a Chinese corruption of Sanskrit "dhyan" meaning reflective meditation. The original meaning had nothing to do with 'sit in a spot with eyes closed' circus that is peddled these days and much less with the the breath magic that has caught the fancy of the IT crowd. It simply meant mindfulness. But along with Buddhism, we exiled that out of India and imported more jewelry.
Gruesome murder in the driveway following breakfast. Suppressing my burps, I bore silent witness. The perpetrator was an Oriental Magpie Robin. A beautiful specimen of the species in shiny black and white. Of course, beauty is often the killer!
Whipping about its erect tail, it went about the crime with singular focus. The victim was a poor gecko which had strayed out of the house walls.
By the time I arrived at the witness stand, the lizard tail had already formed a separate entity. Broken off from the main body, it flailed about wildly, twitching epileptically like a new Kerala congress outfit that has spun off from the original party.
But the magpie had seen this trick before.
It kept its beak firmly shut holding the "sthoolasharira",main body. Couple of times the gecko was dropped and attempted a great escape. The bird carried him off from the driveway to the secluded shadowed netherland under the bordering hedges. Vicious, premeditated!
It would repeatedly drop the lizard who kept on realizing that he was growing weaker and weaker. The leash of escape grew tighter and tighter. And then, in one gulp, it was all dark.Or may be the inside's of the magpie are black and white too.
Not fully satisfied, the bird hopped back to the driveway and swallowed the tail that had by now exhausted its evolutionary purpose...futile. Sweet dessert.
Early birds catch the worms...bigger breakfasts for those who wait!
Two jet black koels are on one of the branches of the jackfruit tree as I type this. The conversation is intense. Their eyes seem to grow redder. Both males, they are having a man to man talk about the lady bird that is perched a little away on the golden shower tree. Major points are scored by either side from time to time.
New songs sung. Sharp rebukes issued.
She looks uninterested in this charade. There are occassional threats of physical violence in the form of twig-shaking, but no contact was ever made.
Managed to make some progress with the Malayalam translation Dr. Ghevergese's "Passage to Infinity". He zeroes in on the period between 3rd century AD (from Mahodayapuram Perumals) and 9th century (beginning of Alwar dynasty) as the formative period of the Kerala school of Mathematics. The "school" according to him formally begins only with Sangamagrama Madhava in the 14th century. The first records of astronomical mathematics in Kerala are traced to Vararuchi's "Chandravakyam" of the 4th century. This is the same Vararuchi of the legends who had 11 or 12 children in a Parayi woman. Chandravakyam is a string of meaningless words that lets you calculate the position of moon at given times during the day. This meaningless words gave way to the Kadapayadi system in the 7th century. And in between the works of Aryabhatta and Bhaskara appear. I need to write a separate detailed blog about this topic.
Another topic that needs its own special treatment arrived as the cover story of the Mathrubhumi weekly this morning. It is about Kesari Balakrishna Pillai's theory of origin of civilization in the now lost "Dil Mun" and "Punt" of Arabia. In his "Outlines of the proto-historic chronology of western Asia with some historic chronology of ancient India appended to it", he proposes these regions to be in modern day Bahrain and Qatar. Though written in the 1950s, this book has been published by Kerala University only in 2009. Too much information and references in that article to be digested in one or two readings.
Hoping to finish the next lesson in Dr. Paulose's Sanskrit guide later tonight.
Mathrubhumi has a new poem by Sugathakumari from which I loved this particular stanza
"Koduthu theerkanavatha
verum snehakadangale
kanatha chumadaiperi
nadakuka nadakuka"
Impossible to repay
the simple debts of love
heavy with their burden
keep walking, keep walking!
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