Potter's Superstick

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AP is very caste-conscious....KGP was not. This was one of the factors in my Culture Shock soon after I retired from KGP and tried to settle down in AP.

Fortunately Hyderabad is slightly less, but the virus is latent.

A couple of days after we settled down in this rented apartment complex, I was accosted by a grand old gentleman, obviously a retired official, around 76. God (who else?) gave me a puny and nondescript stature which comes to me as a blessing. Whoever looks at me ignores me as a nobody. And I am always happy to be left alone to my woolgathering.

This retiree looked at me and my mobile tucked into my shirt pocket with a string round my neck to secure it, and asked me a direct question: "What is that in your pocket? Can you follow English?" To which I demurred trying to escape giving a straight answer to his second question. [RKN writes there are some questions which can't bear a straight 'yes' or 'no' answer, like: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"]

He then said: "I am a Chief Engineer...not a Cheap Engineer like the present crop".

It took a dozen encounters (unwilling on my part) over six months for him to be convinced that I knew a little English; after which he settled down to our mother tongue, Telugu.

I got to love him. He really is a dear, with vast experience in the field in Bhutan in the Border Roads Organization. Schooled in the golden 1940s, imbibing the Freedom Spirit of that SDM generation and absolutely incorruptible.

After a year or so, he said: "Your name Sastry betrays that you are a brahmin. But I must confess I am a non-brahmin, in fact a Kamma". I said it didn't matter at all since I don't even wear the sacred thread.

The other day he invited us to his granddaughter's wedding, and said sotto voce, "It is a Love Marriage. She is marrying a Brahmin youth". I then said that we are now relatives and he was happy for it. Both my wife and I attended the wedding of our bridegroom.

One day he revealed that he has only one prayer: "Next birth I want to be born a Maharashtrian Brahmin; and a Konkani Brahmin if posible" (Kedar! Are you listening?).

I asked him why. He said they are all well-versed in the Vedas, Upanishads and Sanskrit and also accomplished in liberal arts like Carnatic Music and Bharata Natyam, while his kamma community knows only how to make money. I said I would love to change castes with him for a year. But told him I will also add my 'brahminical' prayers to his own so that his wish could come true.

Well, I must confess, as Saswat also reveals, that my home in my childhood was reverberating with the Vedic chants of my father's booming voice; in particular with the daily chants of Shree Suktam, Pursusha Suktam and Mantra Pushpam on which I commented in my blog titled: " Sound Bytes". For in a way that is what they are: extraordinarily grand sounds.

Don't ask of them much more. Except when they deal with Unitary Consciousness, which is their exclusive domain (no, not the Quantum Consciousness!), they are but so many 'stories'. But as I said day before yesterday in 'Our Own Lost World', they are indeed very instructive, in a way.

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Here is one casteist story, not from the Upanishads but about very historical personalities of the 13th century:

Nam Dev (ND) of Pandharpur (Maharashtra; yes Chief Engineerjee!) became a devotee of Krishna (Vitthal) at the very early age of 5. And became very friendly with him, playing and chatting with Krishna himself in his famous temple.

Word spread about it and ND became famous by and by in his village, town and district. This naturally gave him a swollen head. Krishna wanted to rectify this defect and one day asked ND to go and meet the Saint Jnan Dev (JD) who was camping on the outskirts with his chelas.

ND asked why he should go anywhere else when Lord Krishna himself could teach him whatever he wanted since they were on talking terms. Krishna replied that the two were friends; and friends can't have a good guru-chela relation. (Although brothers-in-law can at times have as in Gita {;-)]

So, ND walked over to the campsite and found JD and his chelas having fun and frolic. As JD saw a newcomer approach the crowd, he instructed everybody to squat in a line at his feet so he could start the day's discourse.

And ND joined them at one end of the line .

JD then called one of his chelas, Gora Kumbhar (GK), so-called since he belonged to the potter community but was extraordinarily fair. And asked him to test if all those lined up were ripe enough for the day's teaching.

Then GK took his potter's stick in his hands and went about testing them if all the assembled 'pots' were properly baked or not.

As he went along the line, everyone duly bent their heads to take the light hit from GK's stick as he approached them.

As GK came to the end of the line ND was debating if it would be proper for him to bend his head to a potter, who was lower down the caste ladder than his own tailor caste; and so he was a wee slow and hesitant.

Upon which GK declared that "every pot is fully baked but the newcomer ND is a little wet and raw".

And everyone laughed.

And ND started crying and left the place in a huff to Krishna and complained that he was sent only to be humiliated.

Upon which Krishna replied that the Potter GK was an expert and couldn't go wrong.

And advised ND to go back and take the test again.

ND passed gloriously in the Supplementary and became a famous disciple of JD.

JD wrote the definitive Marathi Gita: 'Jnaneshwari'; and ND wrote many 'Abhangs' and 'Teerthavali' singing the glories of the Lord and his Guru JD.

Nam Dev is famous in Punjab, where he stayed for long and wrote many songs.

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This blogpost is in Celebration of the thorough intermingling of our rigid caste system: potters with their supersticks, tailors with their caste egos, deviant KGP-trained Southee brahmins without a sacred thread, kamma Chief Engineers dying to be born Konkani brahmins, their granddaughters seducing AP brahmins; all supervised by that Kshatriya at Pandharpur who preferred to grow up as Laloo Krishna Yadav of the UP cow-belt!!!!

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