Culture Shocks

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 http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/06/jimi-hendrix-grace-slick-and-janis-joplin.html

 "I was told that he was most excited to watch The Who and (Jimi) Hendrix. But Hendrix lit his guitar on fire and that was enough for Ravi (Shankar) to storm out. Indians, he said, accorded divine status to their classical music and instruments."

...DC, Page 2, 13 Dec 2012

This of course reminded me of our own Kipling's ballad:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

By 1994, Edwin Taylor of MIT and I were already close pen friends by snail mail for more than 7 years. It all started with acads, but by then I managed to break his Western Privacy Barrier in my own open ways. In 1993 he had a triple heart bypass which was new to the KGP crowd then. And he wrote a long and charming letter describing his entire experience (he was an Ex-Editor of AJP and is a wordsmith, an essential qualification for that job). 

Then there was this Community Magazine at IIT KGP that asked me to contribute a piece. Since I was too lazy to write, I passed on a hard copy of Edwin's Bypass letter to our neighborhood Editress who published it in toto. And I sent a copy of our Campus Magazine to Edwin. He was sccccandalized but was generous enough to forgive that the faux pas on my part may have been due to the Culture Divide. 

But since we are 'two strong men standing face to face, though coming from the ends of the earth', we stay friends. The other day I had posted a blog titled: Joint Property:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/12/joint-property.html

in which his and his wife's names occur in the last para. I didn't care to take his permission but I sent him the link and he wrote back:

"GP: How sorry I am that you have lost your life companion, and in such a harrowing way.

But you continue to spread your wisdom, continuing your lifelong pilgrimage. The piece you sent me is charming..."

Even within our diverse India we get culture shocks. The only wish my Father expressed to me aloud in my childhood was that I should take him once to Benares to worship Kashi Viswanath he heard so much of from his Kashi Mama: 

 http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2011/02/propitiation.html 

So, after 30 years I took him and my mom on a Kashi Yatra. And we had the boat ride from Assi Ghat to Dasaswameth Ghat which he enjoyed very much...Ganga was his dream river. And, jumping down from the country boat, we walked the steps and somehow landed inside the famous temple.

And like the Princess in Landor's Gebir said:

"Is this the mighty ocean?...Is this ALL?"

my Father was sorely disappointed...there were no skyscraping gopurmas like in the Madurai Meenakshi Temple. And Shiv Lings in the South Indian temples are so sacred that no one (except the Pujari) is allowed inside the sanctum sanctorum.

But Father saw his Dream Shiv Ling at Benares in the public domain with everyone scrambling to push forward, jostle, shout, elbow, and fall one over the other to touch Him.

And Father never recovered from his shock...and never asked for a repeat visit...

 

 http://dhruvplanet.com/7087/get-prasad-from-varanasi-kashi-vishwanath-temple-and-ujjain-mahakaleshwar-temple-via-india-post-during-shravan-2012/ 


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