Dogs & Doggerels

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Soon after I joined IIT KGP in 1965, I had the good fortune of making friends with the excellent teacher and perfect gentleman, Prof B Raghavendran.

It was he who had asked me to read Jerome K Jerome's  hilarious novel "Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)". 

Which I did promptly, and then on half a dozen times by now.

He also warned me not to read its sequel: "Three Men on the Bummel".

I told him not to worry...I knew all about disappointing sequels, having bought Jane Austen's "Emma" and her "Sense and Sensibility" :)

In 1970, I happened to browse Oliver Wendell Holmes's: "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" in our Technology Club's fledgling "donation" library. And at once I exchanged it for my copy of "Emma"

And I read the Autocrat back to back...astonishing to many of my friends who couldn't wade through even its first page...one man's meat is...

And then I promptly lost my copy of the Autocrat. 

And 20 years later I was dying to re-read it. But it was long out of print and was not available in India for love or money.

So I wheedled my MIT-friend Edwin Taylor to hunt for it in Boston and gift me a copy. He searched for it in all the bookshops in the Harvard Square in vain...out of print. Finally he found one "used copy" and sent it to me...it has this calligraphic inscription on its first page:

"Jennie B Joy, 25 December 1885"

And then Edwin offered to look for its sequels, "Poet at the Breakfast Table" and "Professor at the Breakfast Table" for me.

And I shouted: "No please! Thank You...Never"

It is like getting the good bride "Rukmini" for the first son, and landing upon "Satyabhama" for the second...

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Prof Raghavendran also told me (apropos that dog in the boat, Montmorency) that the word "dog" has a dozen meanings including the one in our pushbikes:

dog..."any of various usually simple mechanical devices for holding, gripping, or fastening that consist of a spike, bar, or hook"

We are familiar with umpteen diverse homonyms in Sanskrit, like:

"hari" has a dozen meanings including: "lion, horse, monkey, snake, frog, parrot..."!

In Sanskrit there is this "Amara Kosham" that has homonyms as well as synonyms for various words. e.g. synonyms for moon:

"Himangshu, Chandrama, Chandra, Indu, Kumudabaandhava, Vidhu, Sudhangshu, Shubhrangshu, Oshadhisha, Nishapati, Abja, Jaivatruka, Soma, Glau, Mriganka, Kalanidhi, Dwijaraja, Shashadhara, Nakhatresha, Kshapaakara"

My father purchased a highly abridged version of the first few chapters of "Amara Kosham" (of about 50 pages) and made me mug up all the 100 odd words and their synonyms, when I was a kid of 9.

60 years later I was hunting for a copy of that fond book in all of Nellore Bookshops. All I could get was a 1000-page close-printed giant version of it. I bought it for the sake of nostalgia and browse it now and then for fun.

That is how things go when you want good old times back again...they return with a vengeance :)

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Talking of dogs there are two in the sky...the constellations "Canis Major" and "Canis Minor".

We also have the "Ursa Major" and "Ursa Minor" meaning "Great Bear" and "Little Bear"...that was how Westerners named their constellations.

The "Great Bear" is named in our lingo: "Saptarshi Mandalam".

But of course there is a dispute about who those seven rishis are: we have a hundred to choose from and different folks name them differently depending on their predilections...the Wiki one is currently the list:

Kashyapa, Atri, Vashista, Angira, Gautama, Vishvamitra, Bharadvaja

Vashista is the middle star in the tail of the Great Bear. And just below him is the faint one named for his wife: Arundhati (Alcor).

And there is this custom: 

The newly-wed couple is dragged by the Purohit into open grounds where he asks them to peer and have a look at the star Arundhati...by day or by cloudy night. Arundhati is supposed to be the ideal wife to her ideal husband.

The Purohit has as much of an idea where Arundhati is as I have of jeera in the kitchen of my D-i-L. 

In 1993, I happened to buy (on instalments) the gorgeous coffee-table glossy book: "The Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy (Second Edition)". There is a cute Star Chart in two parts (northern and southern hemispheres) in it (in true colors).

I located and marked all our 27 stars...Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika, Rohini....et al. 

That book was a gift for my son on his 12th birthday...it is still as good as ever, ready for the 12th birthday of his daughter Ishani next year.

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Let us now talk of "doggerel". Webster defines it as:

"(verse) loosely styled and irregular in measure especially for burlesque or comic effect"

 

Here is a famous example by Ogden Nash:

"God in his wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why"

And then there is this one on "Boston Brahmins" (like I used to tease my friend Edwin Taylor):

"And this is good old Boston,

The home of the bean and the cod,

Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,

And the Cabots talk only to God"

I wrote about a hundred political doggerels and published them as the booklet titled:

"Limericks & Light verses"

in 2009.

This booklet is however out of print now:)

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Whenever I think of "dogs" I recall the couple of dogs of Lord Yama who assist him in his Judgments. They are named "Shyama" and "Shabala" (the dark and the vari-colored twins).

There is this charming couple of verses in the Chandogyopanishad (Prajapati to Indra):

మఘవన్ మర్త్యం వా ఇదం శరీరం ఆత్తం మృత్యునా

తద్ అస్యామృతస్యాశరీరస్యాత్మనో అధిష్టానం

ఆత్తో వై స శరీరః ప్రియాప్రియాభ్యాం

న వై స శరీరస్య సతః ప్రియాప్రియ యోర్ అపహతిరస్తి

అ శరీరం వా వ సంతం న ప్రియాప్రియే స్పృశతః

O Maghavan, mortal, verily, is this body. It is held by death. But it is the support of that deathless, bodiless Self. Verily, the incarnate Self is held by pleasure and pain. Verily, there is no freedom from pleasure and pain for one who is incarnate. Verily, pleasure and pain do not touch one who is bodiless.

శ్యామాచ్ఛబలం ప్రపద్యే శబలాచ్ఛామం ప్రపద్యే

అశ్వ ఇవ రోమాని విధూయ పాపం

చంద్ర ఇవ రాహోర్ ముఖాత్ ప్రముచ్య ధూత్వా శరీరం

అకృతం కృతాత్మా బ్రహ్మలోకం అభిసంభవామి

అభిసంభవామి

From Shyama, the dark, I pass to Shabala, the vari-coloured; from the vari-coloured I pass to the dark. Shaking off evil as a horse his hairs, shaking off the body as the moon frees itself from the mouth of Rahu, I, a perfected soul obtain the uncreated Brahma-world, yea, I obtain it.

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