Dear friends, As I sit tapping out this posting on my keyboard, a line from a very famous Vedic passage echoes in my ears. In the Vedic "prashna" or passage called "chamakam" there is a "mantric" chant that speaks of the many wondrous blessings of life bestowed upon a Vedic adherent. To the repeated chant of the Vedic litany, "may cha cha may!" (meaning, "May I be bestowed with (such and such) blessing..."), the euphonious "chamakam" passage goes on to recount an exhaustive list of several human blessings to aspire for in life -- such as, for instance, well-being, love, wealth, progeny, plentiful food, worship... so on and so forth: "sham cha may, mayas-cha may priyam cha may 'nukAMascha may... .... deerghAyucha may na'mitram cha may..." Now, towards the end of one "anuvAka" of the "chamaka-prashnam" there is a curious phrase, so full of significance, that describes one of the rarest blessing of life -- "na'mitram cha may..." "na-mitram" in Sanskrit means "a state of being friendless in this world"; "anamitram" is never being in such a state. One of the rarest of blessings a man can hope for is never -- not for a single moment in life -- to be in a state of "friendless-ness". Being friendless in this world is the next worst thing to being orphaned. To be orphaned in life is tragedy; to be friendless is a curse. At every stage of one's life, says this Vedic line, be it in childhood, youth or manhood, one must always be blessed with the company of good and abundant friends. At no time in life is the value of friends more strongly felt than in two particular situations. One is in sickness or old age. The other is when one is in an alien land, far from home, and amongst utter strangers. The need for human friends and warm companionship in old age is indeed very acutely felt. It is a terrible thing indeed -- far more terrible than ill-health -- not to have enough friends in old age. In the evening of our lives, when it seems as though everyone is shunning our company, it is in the evening of our lives more than ever that we need lots of friends with whom to spend the rest of time left in the world. Similarly, landing up on foreign soil amidst alien people, and not knowing the native language, customs or manners -- i.e. being "friendless" or "namitram", or feeling lost in a faraway land -- that can also be equally painful. One of the many reasons we are asked to chant the famous passage of mantras from the Vedic "chamakam" is to protect ourself against falling into a state or situation of such abject "friendless-ness" in life. If ever proof was needed of the compassion and solicitude the Vedas have for human beings, it is truly in this significant phrase -- "na'mitram cha may..." *********** I regarded my first ever visit to the vast and great land of America with a certain amount of nervousness since I hardly had any true friends ("mitra:") there to welcome me (although I must hasten to add here that I have many close kin). But thanks to a very pleasant experience that befell me by sheer chance, I did not, after all, have to go friendless -- or, "namitram" -- in America. On the contrary, the real significance of the Vedic phrase "na'mitram cha may..." came to be driven home more starkly to me in America than at any place else or anytime ever before. ************ Every year numberless people go to India as excited tourists. Many of them transform into humble pilgrims. One may go visiting the great many historic temples of India as a casual tourist but there should be no surprise if it is as pilgrim that one returns. I have seen this happen all too often -- the tourist who went to enjoy himself at the hill-resort of Kodaikanal returns instead as a pilgrim of the famous Madurai Meenakshi-amman temple; the tourist who went with the purpose of shopping for silk returns from Kanchipuram talking more about the great historical temples there than about sarees or scarves; the tourist who went to Calcutta to see the colonial splendour of the Victoria Memorial there returns instead with accounts of a trip to the Belur or Dakshineshwar... I went to America too with a tourist's expectation of plain fun and curiosity. Certainly, I did enjoy the grand sight of the New York skyline from the edge of Ellis Island. I watched too with gaping admiration, alongwith hundreds of tourists, the great Statue of Liberty. Again, as I drove through the maze of streets in Manhattan and past "Ground-Zero" -- the sad remains of the Twin-Tower site of the "9/11" carnage --I too, like any ordinary tourist, could not suppress a lump in my throat... But although America greeted me as a plain tourist -- one amongst statistical thousands who throng the country from all parts of the globe every year -- it was with a pilgrim's humble but overwhelming emotion that I eventually returned from the tour. And the reason was, quite simply, a temple... Yes, a temple, again indeed, but a "temple" of entirely another sort. There are 106 great temples in India designated in the Tamil language as "divya-dEsam-s", or "divine provinces". Thousands of worshippers flock every year to these beautiful places. In America, across the length and breadth of the land, there are similar such wonderful "temples" -- probably 106 or even more of them -- which, in my opinion, deserve no less to be duly designated and revered as "divya-dEsam-s". These "temples" are "temples of learning". I mean the great many Universities of America -- such as Yale, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and a host of others -- all the great universities that collectively have made America the world's wonderland of higher education. Young and brilliant minds from the farthest corners of Asia, India, Europe, Latin America and Africa -- so many students every year flock to these "divya-dEsam-s" of advanced learning in so many fields and disciplines... It would make anyone wonder why? I was no exception. If there be but one compelling reason for touring India and should that be in being able to visit a "divya-dEsam" temple, then by the same token, I would have no hesitation in saying, a tour of the USA is well worth it for the sake of a few hours spent inside any of the country's great many eminent universities. The American university as a place of lofty learning and knowledge is as sacred a patch of soil upon earth as any holy "divya-dEsam" I have been blessed to visit. America, I realized, is really more sacred "gnyAna-bhoomi" or "vidyA-bhoomi" than mere "bhOga-bhUmi". ************* On a clear and fine day in spring, March 20th '04 -- my first day in America -- I set out from New Jersey on a long 4-hour route on my first ever pilgrimage to an American "divya-dEsam" ... which in this case was the University of Connecticut or "U-Conn" as many young American students, I later discovered, call it with the same sort of fondness a SriVaishnavan like me, say, would refer to the "divya-dEsam" of Tirupati, back home in India, as "malai" or SriRangam as "kOvil". The route took me past the arterially busy George Washington Bridge, a big, bustling and nodal gateway through which an unending stream of gnarled, and often snarling, automobile traffic gushes in and out of the states of New Jersey and neighbouring Connecticut. As my car swung into the fast-lane along the long, winding and snow-swept 'Interstate', I became aware I'd entered, for the first time ever in my life, into a whole new fabled world -- the world of the great American highways... a vast, labyrinthian but efficient network of roadways criss-crossing miles and miles over a giant of a continent. My companion and chaperone on the trip to the American "divya-dEsam" was my good Muslim friend, Syed Nawaz Ahmed. Nawaz and I had been classmates in school 30 and more years ago in Chennai, India. We had not met -- nor had we corresponded with each other -- since 1972 when we both left high school to each follow our separate ways in life. It was by sheer accident -- one of those miraculous happenstances one often hears occurs these days on the world-wide Internet circuit -- it was pure happenstance that Nawaz and I came into contact again in late 2003 --- after almost three decades! Nawaz had migrated to the USA in the early '80s where in New York he had set up his own limousine-car service company. He and his family had thrived, he told me, and he was now presiding over a prosperous business with many important clients including (he told me in hushed tones) "top-ranking officers of the FBI"! Afer 30 long years, to meet up again with a dear old school friend in far off America was a rare and moving moment of revival indeed in life... It was a blessing of Vedic character too, for, the "chamaka-prashna" line of "na'mitram cha may..!", for quite some strange reason, began to ring ceaselessly in my ears... It did not stop until long after I'd wound up my first tour of America and set sail home... ********** More miracles of friendship were to follow! Motoring down an American interstate into Connecticut with my old friend, Nawaz, I found myself eagerly looking forward to meeting with -- miracle of miracles! -- yet another old school-mate of ours residing now in the "divya-dEsam" of "U-conn". It was at the invitation of this other friend, in fact, that we, both Nawaz and I, were headed that way. We were journeying to a grand class re-union in America -- 3 friends from Chennai who hadn't met in more than 30 years! His name -- Narasimhan Srinivasan... He and I, I instantly recalled, had been the only two SriVaishnavite boys in the whole of that class of '72 way back in the Catholic Missionary school we'd studied together... "Hans" (as Narasim(han) was being called by everybody in America) was now (tenured) Associate Professor of Marketing at "UConn". How he had changed indeed! His lectures and published papers, Nawaz later told me, were now legend in academic circles. He had attained some kind of near 'campus-guru' status amongst his students. But by God, Nawaz said to me, though transformed in America into "Hans", Narasimhan remained still the same old fellow we'd known in our school days... a jolly good friend, a true "mitra:"... ************* As I now look back upon the moment of my re-union with two good friends whom I'd all but forgotten for 30 years -- but brought together again by sheer, blessed accident, in far-off America, on the sacred grounds of a great American temple of learning, a "divya-dEsam" of sorts -- what can I say about such a moment except that it seemed somehow God pre-ordained. As Nawaz drove me through America past the cities of Hartford and Yale and into the snow-swept county of Glastonbury, heading towards "U-Conn", the familiar chant of the "chamakam" kept ringing silently in my ears -- "na'mitram cha may...." (to be continued) Regards, dAsan, Sudarshan ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner online. http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony/ ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/XUWolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Oppiliappan/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: Oppiliappan-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Home Page
http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia |
oppiliappan-subscribe@yahoogroups.com To subscribe to the list |