Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Kullu

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According to Pundits:

Jealousy is the feeling you have when you possess a goody and want to guard it so closely that none else can take it away; like that Geek you have in your breast-pocket.

Envy is the feeling you have when you, in addition to that Geek in your pocket, eye lustily your bosom-friend's Greek God.

But in real life things are not as cut-and-dry as that.

In truth we always have a deliciously pungent mixture of the two in various proportions from 10-90 to 90-10; like fever & headache.

So we need a good portmanteau word like envisy or jealovy...both ugly.

So I asked my wife what is the good word in her lingo. She said: "Kullu"...So be it!..

Note that kullu rhymes with bull-oo, full-oo, and pull-oo; not dull-oo or gull-oo or hull-oo.

Kullu is a Universal Feeling ranging from animals to gods.

I asked my Oxford Colleague and Don Rev Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) to tell me frankly if his Lion and Unicorn were really fighting for the crown:


The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown
The lion beat the unicorn all around the town.
Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town


He scoffed and said: "Pagal Hai! Everyone knows that the Crown is only the Freudian symbol for that slim and youthful lioness, which unfortunately doesn't rhyme with town and brown".

So I wondered why he didn't say so, at least in his Introduction. He replied that Queen Victoria was a prude and didn't approve of such things in childrens' books. So he dedicated his next dry book: The Theory of Determinants to her by way of revenge (no blushes in Determinants...even for Dons, Queens, Monks or Nuns).


You may say that "Unicorn is a mythical creature" as Thurber's old man said in his Fables for Modern Times: Unicorn in the Garden.

But kullu is not mythical, it is very REAL.

Going up the animal kingdom, we know that the elder brother-monkey Vali kicked his younger brother-monkey Sugriv who stole his kingdom and wife Tara; Vali taking away his wife Ruma and banishing Sugriv out of his kingdom.


So far it is neat and clean kullu and follows the impartial jungle law that might is right.

Things change as soon as God incarnates as a man called Rama. As we all know there follows an absurdly tragic story of subterfuge, betrayal and double-betrayal, all human weaknesses imposed on hapless monkeys.

Indeed the entire plot of Ramayan hinges around the kullu of Rama's step-mother Kaikayi eying and stealing the kingdom of Ayodhya (in the news again) for her son rather than her stepson.

And that virtuous Ceylonese Brahmin, Ravan, eying Kshatriya Ram's wife and stealing her.

Stealing other people's wives is also the plot of Iliad (Greeks are no better).

For all I know she may have launched a thousand ships (actually sail boats), but Helen of Troy holds no candle to our Ash or Madhuri. The end is bitter, Troy razed to the ground and wait a couple of thousand years to reincarnate in New England.

I asked Aniket how these Greek towns like Troy, Ithaca and even Syracuse reappeared in New England.

He said the surveyor was a fan of Greek Mythology.

Romans and Egyptians were slightly more civilized about their kullu. Both Mark Antony and Cleopatra had the sense to commit suicide.

The whole of Mahabharat hinges around kullu.

What if that girl Draupadi laughs at him....Girls will be Girls!.

But Duryodhan couldn't see it in that lucid light. Kullu blinds people of their reason. And it ends up in the entire North India participating in an unequal and unethical war at Kurukhetra (where there is now a University) destroying themselves as so many blinded moths on a suicide mission.

Li'l Ishani is much more civilized. As you can guess she is always surrounded by a hundred toys. But she couldn't care less about 99 of them at any moment. She holds that 100th one close to her chest.

Then enters the neighbor's son, a li'l older than her. And tries to fiddle with all the 99, and Ishani just about grunts.

But the moment that fellow starts to peel the one she is holding close to her chest, boys being boys, she just bites him and the buffoon squeals and appeals to the UN.

That brings us to India and Pakistan.

Pakistan badly wants India's favorite toy: Kashmir. Kullu in the very extreme. Every time he tries to steal it from India, he gets bitten and appeals to the US (UN having died long ago and replaced by US).

Kullu is truly Eternal and Infernal!



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