Sour Grapes

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Aesop's Fables fascinate me. 

Having read them as a grown-up, I find them pretty dumb.

So, for fun six years ago, I tweaked and retold a dozen of them with atrocious twists in their tails.

This is how our "Tweaked Tale of Two Cats & A Monkey"(which has been read 489 times) ends:

And then Ishani smiled at me and said:

"I know what is going to happen now...the Himalayan Monkey bites away the two pieces one by one till he eats both of them entirely, and runs away and climbs and hides in the top branch of the banyan tree, no?"

"No, dear...you are not right"

"Then, how does this story end?"

"As the two fighting cats were watching and arguing and watching and arguing endlessly, the Himalayan Monkey first screeches and then howls and then lies on his back and then closes his eyes and then faints and then dies peacefully"

"Why?"

"That slice of bread was poisoned"

"Did the two cats know it?"

"Yes, yes, very much"

"Then why were they fighting?" 

"Theirs was a mock fight...they wanted to kill the Himalayan Monkey"

"Why?"

"They wanted to take revenge"

"How did they know that the Himalayan Monkey would come down from the banyan tree and offer to settle their dispute?"

"Oh...they were then in UKG and they had read Aesop's Fables in their Nursery Class"

"Very very clever!"

"Yes, remember, not all cats in the world are copycats"

https://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2014/10/fables-for-clever-girls-two-cats-and.html?m=0

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Let us now redo the: "Fox & Sour Grapes" for fun:

Last night Ishani came to me for another story.

And I began thus:

"There was this fox who was walking in the forest. And he noticed a succulent bunch of grapes hanging from the tall branch of a tree.

And he wanted to grab and devour its sweet grapes. So he jumped up but could not reach that bunch of grapes"

And then Ishani said: 

"I know this story"

"How does it go?"

"The fox jumps up twice more without being able to reach the bunch. So he tells himself: 'What a waste of time! Those grapes certainly must be sour'. And then he abandons his labors and resumes his walk happily"

And I said: "No, Ishani! That is not the right ending"

"How does it go then?"

"After three failed attempts, the fox goes home, opens his fridge, picks up a bottle, opens it, drinks its contents, and rushes back to the tree. This time on his very first jump he catches the bunch. And tastes a couple of grapes. And finds them sour. And he says to himself: 'What a waste of time on sour grapes!' And then he throws that bunch afar and runs away and catches a rabbit and devours it happily"

And Ishani asked:

"Very clever! What did that bottle in the fridge contain?"

"An energy drink"

"What is its name?

"Red Bull"

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For now let us abandon our mod version of Aesop's fable and its implications...that would be material for another blog. And revert to Aesop's fox and its sour grapes.

Politics is full of sour grapes.

In 2014 this fox wanted to jump and grab the PM post. And he failed miserably. And he grinned. He jumped again in 2019. He not only failed to become PM this time but had to abandon his hole in UP and scoot to Kerala to survive. Beaten badly by a woman with a jhadu....

And now he says:

"UP voters are fools. Kerala voters are wise"

Sour grapes!

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Literary Critics too are foxes. In their hearts of hearts they crave to write a famous bestseller. They fail. And they try and fail again. And they say to themselves: "What a waste of time! Literary grapes are sour!"

And then they turn into critics.

Listen to this:

....(RK) Narayan has also come in for criticism from later writers, particularly of Indian origin, who have classed his writings as having a pedestrian style with a shallow vocabulary and a narrow vision.^[16] According to Shashi Tharoor, Narayan's subjects are similar to those of Jane Austen as they both deal with a very small section of society. However, he adds that while Austen's prose was able to take those subjects beyond ordinariness, Narayan's was not.^[102] A similar opinion is held by Shashi Deshpande who characterizes Narayan's writings as pedestrian and naive because of the simplicity of his language and diction, combined with the lack of any complexity in the emotions and behaviours of his characters....

The first Shashi is a politician (failing).

And few have heard of the second Shashi...poor fox!

Only Bernard Shaw was honest. He said:

"I am taller than Shakespeare. But of course I am standing on his shoulders"

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I too am a literary fox.

Six years ago I abandoned daily-blogging in English and joined the celebrated group of Telugu poets in: "Shankaraabharanam".

The poets there fascinated me with their scholarship, Sanskritized vocabulary, knowledge of puraanaas, and charming style.

I too wanted to reach their supreme heights. And failed. Jumped again. Failed. And then I said to myself: 

"Telugu writing is pedestrian. Waste of time"

Sour grapes!

And I reverted to English a couple of months back.

And, with the impeccable technical support of Sri Kandi Shankarayya Garu, I published two booklets in English...charming according to many of my English readers (one of the booklets is dedicated to him).

And I greedily distributed them to all  of my Telugu pundits in the Shankaraabharanam group.

None read them. Nor even bothered to acknowledge.

I hope they are saying to themselves:

"English writing is pedestrian. Waste of time" 

:)

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Here is the tailpiece of our "Tweaked Fable of Tiger, Brahmin & Fox" (that has been read 254 times):

The two then walk further and meet with a fox. The Brahmin tells his story to the fox and asks him for his judgment. The fox says:

"I just can't believe your story. Till you two really take me to the trap cage and give me a demo"

The tiger and the Brahmin walk back to the cage and show it to the fox. The fox says:

"How can such a small cage hold such a big tiger. Both of you are faking"

"How can we convince you?"

"Let the tiger get back into the cage and show me it can indeed hold him"

Ishani then said:

"Granpa! I know how this story ends"

"How?"

"The tiger then walks back into the cage and the fox at once shuts the gate of the cage and traps the tiger back and asks the Brahmin to run for his life"

"True...you are indeed a clever girl...but this is not the end of the story"

"What happens next?"

In the evening the Brahmin was walking back to his village and hears the pitiful braying of a donkey. And he finds a donkey trapped in another similar cage. And the donkey pleads with the Brahmin to open the trapdoor and release him. 

The Brahmin feels pity for the poor donkey which eats and survives only on old newspapers. And he opens the trapdoor and, guess what?

Ishani then said:

"The donkey runs away as fast as he can and the Brahmin goes home"

"Not exactly"

"What happens then?"

"Before running away the donkey gives a vicious back kick to the Brahmin in his vitals"

"Why?"

"This donkey is a symbol of the Democratic party" 

"What about the South Indian Brahmin?"

"Oh, he is a Born Loser"

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2014/10/fables-for-clever-girls-tiger-brahmin.html?m=1

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Acknowledgement:

I thank Sri Kandi Shankarayya Garu for suggesting the topic of this blog.

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శంకరార్పణం - 3649

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శంకరాభరణం సమస్య - 3648

“మంచిది మద్యపాన మనుమాన మదేలనొ సజ్జనుల్ గొనన్”

సంచుల నిండ దుడ్డుగొని సాగుచు రాత్రుల క్లబ్బులాదటన్

కొంచెము గూడ సిగ్గు విడి కొంగులు జార్చుచు నాట్యమాడుచున్

వంచన జేయగా సతులు బంజరు హిల్సున ప్రాణనాథులన్

మంచిది మద్యపాన మనుమాన మదేలనొ సజ్జనుల్ గొనన్...

(కంది శంకరయ్య గారి సౌజన్యంతో)

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Rip Van Twinkle

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In my school-leaving year (1956-57) we had a fantastic English text book...starting with Rabindranath Tagore's "Where the mind is without fear" and a "Psalm" ('P' silent like in Psmith of PG Wodehouse's "Leave it to Psmith").

I am so sad I lost that book. And would now gladly buy a used copy of it for Rs 5000. (RK Narayan  kept his 'Nelson's Reader' with him under his pillow till he died).

In our text book there was this Washington Irving's story "Rip Van Winkle" (condensed version).

My HM-Father-cum-English Teacher taught it so well that it soon became my favorite. Dreamy stuff.

And those days we had Quarterly and Half-Yearly, in addition to the Annual Exams (the final one held, not in our Muthukur but in Nellore). 

And in the beginning we used to get printed question papers for all these exams from our DEO's Office (later on cyclostyle machines got installed in some schools and the Quarterly and Half-Yearly became local affairs...but not the Annuals).

And in every question there was this "internal choice" ("either-or of two questions").

And in the Quarterly I chose Rip Van Winkle. Father was pleased. And in the Half-Yearly I chose Rip Van Winkle again. And Father taunted:

"Haven't you read any other lesson?"

And in the School Final Public Exam, in a different room, Father was an invigilator in the VR High School, Nellore, where it was held.

After the exam was over and Father and I got together for a quick lunch, Father said:

"Of course, you would have again chosen Rip Van Winkle which is your favorite"

"No, I chose RC Majumdar's 'Why should we learn English?' "

"You fool! Why?"

"Because you taunted me all the time"

"Ayyoe! Ayyoe! Ayyoe!"

"Don't worry...I have all the lessons in that book by heart"

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Here is an online summary of the story of Rip Van Winkle set in a Dutch-Settler Village in the suburbs of New York in the era of the American Revolution (1765 – 1783):

Rip Van Winkle is an amiable farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains, where he comes upon a group of dwarfs playing ninepins. Rip accepts their offer of a drink of liquor and promptly falls asleep. When he awakens, 20 years later, he is an old man with a long white beard; the dwarfs are nowhere in sight. When Rip returns to town, he finds that everything is changed: his wife is dead, his children are grown, and George Washington’s portrait hangs in place of King George III’s. The old man entertains the townspeople with tales of the old days and of his encounter with the little men in the mountains.

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I am somewhat like Rip Van Winkle. As well as unlike him.

Only, instead of his 20 years, I slept in Bengal for 40 years, away from my Andhra Pradesh, and returned to it upon waking up.

Rip Van Winkle found everything changed in his village during his long sleep.

For me however, nothing seems to have changed in AP during all those 40 years...in certain features.

Still, like Rip, I go on telling tall tales about the "good old times" to whoever I can catch.

(Purists! Don't yell that should be 'whomever' in the above sentence :)

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It is like this:

A few days after I was born, during my naming-ceremony (baptism), my father chose to name me "Prabhakar"...without consulting me. Apparently I had some infection in the scalp and astrologers told him that Sun God is in charge of the scalp since Sun is 'overhead' up above the sky.

During my elementary school years I had no problem with that name.

But when, as HM, my father entered my name in my SSLC Register (lifetime possession) he changed it to:

"Prabhakara Sastry"

Later on I came to know that he was fond of one Venkata Sastry (his uncle who went to Kashi and became a learned Pundit-cum-Panda).

...And my troubles started then on, since in AP those days 'Sastry' automatically revealed my caste as Brahmin.

And those were the beginning of  the 'reverse discrimination' decades.

Somehow I resented that 'Sastry' appendix to my name.

Most of my classmates at Andhra University had names ending in: "Murthy", "Rao", "Rajyam" et al whose caste could be anything...not as self-revealing as "Sastry". And our lady classmates had the bland names: "Kantimati", "Sasikala" and "Lakshmi Tanya".

 And I was always curious...

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This trouble ended for me as soon as I reached Bengal....they thought I was a close relative of our then PM "Lal Bahadur Sastry" and I was accordingly highly regarded. 

Incidentally Lal Bahadur was a Kayasth (Srivastava). His "Sastry" was a Degree he earned in Sanskrit and appended to his name; like our Avadhanis are fond of hooking pompous epithets in front of their names:

"Ashtaavadhaani", "Shataavadhaani", "Sahasraavadhaani", "Shata Sahasraavadhaani" et al.

And luckily there was no "caste discrimination" in Bengal then. They were indulging in "class discrimination" (till they themselves became rich by the excesses of the now-infamous "cut money culture"...ask Didi).

So I had no complaints with my name. In any case I was always referred to as "gps" by my students since that was how it was spelt in the Time Tables (called 'Routines' in Bengal).

And I was happy in my caste-anonymity for all of 40 years in Bengal.

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And then I woke up and returned to AP (now Telangana) and 'settled' in Hyderabad.

What happened then was weird. Here is the diverting story:

"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 the mobile phone 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 any 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... a Konkani Brahmin, if possible"

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. 

https://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2014/09/potters-superstick-repeat-telecast.html?m=0

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श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुणः परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात्।
स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः।।

:)

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శంకరార్పణం - 3648

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శంకరాభరణం సమస్య - 3648

“ఆద్యంతంబులు లేని గాథ విన బ్రహ్మానంద మబ్బున్ గదా”

పద్యంబందున పూరణన్ పలుకగా బ్రహ్మాండమౌ రీతినిన్👇

సేద్యంబుల్ కడు జేసెడిన్ ప్రజలహో చెండాడగా నేతలన్

చోద్యంబొప్పగ రాజకీయ సరణిన్ జోకుల్ సదా కూడునా

యాద్యంతంబులు లేని గాథ విన బ్రహ్మానంద మబ్బున్ గదా...

(కంది శంకరయ్య గారి సౌజన్యంతో)

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Guru Parampara - 3

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Let me now talk a little of Spiritual Gurus...a troublesome topic.

It is said that "Man doesn't live by bread alone"

King James Bible

But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Man (and woman rarely) is troubled by birth, disease and death. He desires peace and happiness and an understanding reconciliation of the meaning of life, love and loss.

It is easy in religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism which have their own revered Prophets whom they can adopt as their ultimate gurus.

For Hindus, it is different. Luckily or otherwise, they have no unique prophet. If I am compelled to name a Universal Guru for Hindus, I would name Sri Krishna. In various ways he compels devotion, knowledge, and liberation.

Gita:

मन्मना भव मद्भक्तो मद्याजी मां नमस्कुरु |
मामेवैष्यसि युक्त्वैवमात्मानं मत्परायण: ||

अनन्याश्चिन्तयन्तो मां ये जना: पर्युपासते |
तेषां नित्याभियुक्तानां योगक्षेमं वहाम्यहम् || 

There he advises "surrender"

But not all can surrender to someone they have not seen or heard with their physical organs of sight and hearing.

That demands a heart-melting devotion, as proclaimed in the Svetasvataropanishad:

यस्य देवे परा भक्तिर्यथा देवे तथा गुरौ।
तस्यैते कथिता ह्यर्थाः प्रकाशन्ते महात्मनः 

प्रकाशन्ते महात्मन इति॥

For those who require an intimate touch, someone who proclaims that He resides in the Hearts of All is needed desperately.

Sri Krishna Himself said it:

अहमात्मा गुडाकेश सर्वभूताशयस्थित: |
अहमादिश्च मध्यं च भूतानामन्त एव च ||

ईश्वर: सर्वभूतानां हृद्देशेऽर्जुन तिष्ठति |
भ्रामयन्सर्वभूतानि यन्त्रारूढानि मायया ||

And there is also this Shriti from the Svetasvataropanishad again:

एको देवः सर्वभूतेषु गूढः
सर्वव्यापी सर्वभूतान्तरात्मा ।
कर्माध्यक्षः सर्वभूताधिवासः
साक्षी चेता केवलो निर्गुणश्च ॥

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Intimacy...that is the key word in the search for a spiritual guru.

And each shishya is made differently. So there are different gurus predestined for different seekers.

And it depends on their mental makeup, family background, and cultural affinity.

Soon after my marriage in 1979, I discovered that my out-and-out Andhra wife was a staunch devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba.

That great saint was not at all well-known or popular in Andhra Pradesh then...unlike now.

In my branch of the family, there was NONE who heard of him then, forget about being his devotee.

And on probing I discovered that my wife's parents (although she didn't grow up in their home always) were living for decades in Maharashtra, not far from Shirdi!

I lived for 40 years in Bengal. And I learned Bengali script with the express intention of reading "Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita" in the Bengali original (a 1000-page close-printed tome). 

And I thoroughly enjoy reading it...the wit and humor apart from the wisdom of the Paramahamsa.

But still, I can't call him my Guru...the cultural divide is too deep (with schools of fish swimming in it :)

Guru of the third kind...Neutral.

Oh! Well! Everyone his Destiny ;)

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Concluded....

Guru Parampara - 2

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And then I retired and settled down in Hyderabad.

And I was satiated with learning. Did not seek any more gurus of any kind...or shishyas for that matter. Left physics happily...it was always a necessary evil :)

And as a recreation and avocation I started blogging in English. Soon enough I found that there were readers for my fun-blogs; most of them my ex-students of IIT KGP spread all over the world. While googling idly for other things, they discovered my blogs accidentally and found them nostalgic. And responded. That was how I started blogging daily in English on all sorts of fun topics without rule or rhyme...all of 2700 blogs over a period of 6 years.

And suddenly one day I got fed up with English in 2015.

And was at a loss what to do.

Then I recalled that I used to love verses in Telugu from Vemana Shatakam in my school years. But I was out of touch with Telugu for most of my life and was never good at it. Not having read Puraanaas, Prabandhaas, Kaavyaas, Telugu was almost a foreign language to me,

Yet I wanted to learn the prosody of the simplest verse called: "Aata Veladi" (ఆట వెలది) in order to indulge in writing fun-verses in Telugu.

My sambandhi was working then as a Telugu Pundit at Nellore and used to visit Hyderabad once in a while. I learned the two kinds of Ganas called Soorya Ganas and Indra Ganas from him.  But not the intricacies of  Yati and Praasa.

Still I ventured to write a Shatakam (100 verses) in order to dedicate it to my fond B-i-L, Shri G Ranga Rao IAS.

Despite its faulty Chandas, that Shatakam happens to be my all-time-favorite in Telugu. It was a political satire of the most rabid kind...so profane that I never dared to blog it.

And then I came to be enamored with another kind of verse called Kanda Padyam. I had no living Guru to teach me its weird Chandas. So I picked it up from Google and was writing fairly passable but faulty political satires in that prosody and blogging them.

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Then a miracle happened. 

One fine morning, while googling for something else, I hit upon a Telugu blog titled: "Shankaraabharanam" (శంకరాభరణం).

There was in it given a "samasya" (a line in verse with an often atrocious meaning). The challenge to the participants was to do a "poorana"...filling in the three remaining lines in the given Chandas so that the entire verse of 4 lines read together removes the absurdity of the 4th line, and sounds nice with a tidy anvayam (syntax).

As that day's samasya happened to be in the Kanda Padya Chandas with which I had some familiarity, I posted my poorana in my fun-style impishly.

And thought that it would be either ignored or condemned.

But lo and behold! Within a couple of hours I found this comment from one Kandi Shankarayya (who I later learned was the admin of that blog):

"GP Sastry Garu: Shankaraabharanam Blog welcomes you. Your poorana is good"

I was astonished, delighted, amused, baffled; and turned into an instant fan of this unknown gentleman. 

I did a similar poorana next day for another Kanda Padya Samasya.

And found that Sri Kandi Shankaryya Garu left this comment:

"GP Sastry Garu: Your poorana is good. But there is a fault in your praasa. This is how it should be"

...Very very gentle correction.

Within the next two days, I learned all the yati and praasa that I failed to learn in two years...

And it went on day after day...

And soon Sri Kandi Shankarayya Garu became my online Guru of the most Positive kind.

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But pooranas require not only a knowledge of Chandas (and cleverness) but also Grammar (వ్యాకరణం).

Sensing that my knowledge of Telugu Grammar was primitive, Sri Kandi Shankarayya Garu e-mailed me pdf versions of the two standard grammar books, Baala Vyaakaranam (బాల వ్యాకరణం) and Praudha Vyaakaranam (ప్రౌఢ వ్యాకరణం).

I found them totally unreadable...the fault was entirely mine...I thirsted for a tumbler of grammar and they turned out to be vast salty oceans.

What to do?

I then found a way out. 

Getting to know that Sri Kandi Shankarayya Garu had been running his fond child: "Shankaraabharanam" for all of 8 years unremittingly day after day, I started browsing all the previous pages of this Holy Bible without leaving a single page. It took me a whole year 24/7. But it was pleasant. The hundreds of contributors to this blog were Telugu Pundits, Avadhanis, Poets, Grammarians, Stylists and Petulant Versifiers.

And I found that Sri Shankarayya Garu was handling this menagerie adroitly without hurting anyone, with infinite patience and kindness, correcting the various submissions and improving them constantly...a fantastic achievement.

And I learned the little Grammar I needed for my fun-poornas by reading his comments and corrections on other peoples' verses meticulously.

Thus, not only Shankarayya Garu, but also his child "Shankaraabharanam" became my Guru of the Positive kind.

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And as he was then living in Hyderabad, I had occasions to meet him in person for a few minutes once in a while. And glean more of his charming personality.

And on his 70th Birthday last year there was this bulky "Saptati Sanchika" (70th Birthday Souvenir) dedicated to him. And I contributed my little effort to it like that squirrel did to the Sri Raam Sethu;

https://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2020/06/17-july-2020.html

https://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2020/06/17-july-2020_28.html

Those were my humble tributes to his saintly qualities as a person and as an ideal Guru (of the First Kind).

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But Shri Kandi Shankarayya Garu is also my Guru of the Third Kind:

He is a formidable poet, having composed "Shankara Shatakam" (శంకర శతకం) and "Varada Shatakam" (వరద శతకం) and many other booklets in Telugu, often overnight.

I admire his poetry (from a distance ;)

But I neither have the vocabulary nor the bhakti to read and understand and appreciate his poetic fervor.

I don't have a poetic heart...thank you!

I am an "inert gas" as a female acquaintances of my youth declared.

And I have nil desire to write poetry...I am a versifier...

All I want to do is to continue writing fun-pooranas in his blog.

Not only does he permit my irreverent (సరదా) pooranas to appear at the top of his celebrated blog every day; he had also taken the trouble to compile 116 of them; and published them as a Shankaraabharanam Prachurana entirely on his own initiative, doing its immaculate DTP work himself.

A truly unique Guru!!!

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Continued...3

Guru Parampara - 1

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गुरुर्ब्रह्मा ग्रुरुर्विष्णुः गुरुर्देवो महेश्वरः । 

गुरुः साक्षात् परं ब्रह्म तस्मै श्री गुरवे नमः ॥

First I heard the word 'guru', with immense delight,  was from the side-hero, Balakrishna, in the 1951 movie "Patala Bhairavi' (పాతాళ భైరవి).

He says: "మోసం గురూ! మోసం గురూ!" (Cheating Guru! Cheating Guru!)

...And then this clever shishya Ashaadhabhooti (ఆషాఢభూతి) from Panchatantra who cheats his Guru badly.

...And then, when I reached Vizagh in 1958 for my university studies, I discovered that friends who turn thick as thieves would address each other: "guru", absurdly.

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Every shishya has a guru...often more than one. There is no dearth of gurus. No hoarding and blackmarketing.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had many gurus during his lifetime as he progressed in his spiritual efforts. : Bhairavi (who taught him Tantra), Jatadhari (Vaishnavism), Totapuri (Adviata)...

My own PhD guide Prof SDM used to boast:

"I am the Higher Court, Prof MSS the Lower Court"...meaning:

"Don't rush to me with your silly questions on Mechanics! First go to MSS and if he fails to answer you, then and only then come to me"

During the Farewell Function of Prof MSS, I went up to the dais (which was rare) and said:

"I had the unique good fortune of having the Lower Court as well as the Higher Court as my gurus.

And gurus need not all be human beings. Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi used to say that the sacred hill Arunachala in Tiruvannamalai was his Guru...he never left his Guru from when at the age of 17 he approached Him to 70 when he departed from this world.

And the Avadhuta Dattatreya declared he had as many as 24 gurus, most of them non-human:

Once, while Dattatreya was roaming in a forest happily, he met King Yadu, who on seeing Dattatreya so happy, asked him the secret of his happiness and the name of his Guru. Dattatreya said that the Atman alone was his Guru, and yet, he had learned wisdom from 24 individuals, who were therefore, his Gurus.

“My 24 gurus are: 1. Earth, 2. Water, 3. Air, 4. Fire, 5. Sky, 6. Moon, 7. Sun, 8. Pigeon, 9. Python, 10. Ocean, 11. Moth, 12. Bee, 13. Honey-gatherer, 14. Elephant, 15. Deer, 16. Fish, 17. Dancing-girl Pingala, 18. Raven, 19. Child, 20. Maiden, 21.Serpent, 22. An arrow-maker, 23. Spider and 24. Beetle.”

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Let me enumerate my own umpteen gurus during my long innings of 77 years and more.

Mu gurus came in three flavors:

1. Positive: I adored their knowledge and wisdom and tried to imbibe them

2. Negative: I noted their failings and tried to avert them

3. Neutral: I admired their knowledge and wisdom from a distance but had no desire to acquire them

My gurus were often combinations of these 3 kinds.

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The first guru I had was my HM-Father GRK. One fine morning, when I was in Class 6, I discovered that he knew lots of English. 

And I made him teach me English grammar whenever possible. Sensing my addiction to English, he turned himself into my walking Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, Library, and Literary Cornucopia. 

But he had a streak of violence in him, and used to regularly wallop me for not being good at arithmetic. But as soon as I graduated to algebra in Class 9 he left me alone...he didn't even know the solution of a quadratic equation :)

So he was a combination of a Positive and Negative Guru for me. 

And then I landed up for my pre-university year in the house of our English Lecturer-cum-Principal, Sri GVS (Nellore Shakespeare).

He taught me nuances of English like Figures of Speech, Syntax, Prosody very well.

But he was given to superstitions and pseudo-sciences like Astrology which I could see was bakwas even at that tender age of 13. 

So he was again a combo of Positive and Negative Gurus.

And then I got to live for 2 years in the home of my maternal uncle Dr KKM. He was a wizard in Medicine and the smartest gent I ever saw. And very helpful. But he tended to insult those he considered his inferiors. So I avoided him completely.

He too was for me a mixture of Positive and Negative Gurus.

Strangely I didn't find any guru of any kind among my many teachers of Andhra University. They were all enigmas to me...they kept forbiddingly aloof from us students; and vice versa.

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I then reached IIT KGP as a young teacher, and retired as an old professor a good 40 years later.

Soon after I joined, I discovered that students there were way smarter than me.

https://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2008/01/first-class-encounter.html

So I decided to be free with them so that they could ask me fearlessly questions on physics they couldn't find answers to. Trying to answer them honestly, I learned a lot of undergraduate physics. Most of my scientific articles (including some that have entered into standard text books) have names of my students as co-authors.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c632/6e1786de60b737c69b70e8b39464013c4c26.pdf

So my students there were all Positive Gurus for me.

And then I came into contact with my eventual  PhD Guide. He was the only genius I met with in flesh and blood.

Apart from teaching me physics he removed the fear of mathematics from my soul. And I learned scientific writing from him...concise, precise, and lucid.

30 years after he left KGP and 10 years this world, I wrote a 17-page Homage to him that was truly "inspired":

https://web.archive.org/web/20110721154816/http://www.phy.iitkgp.ernet.in/ansatz3/sdm.html

But he was very secretive and avoided teaching except when compelled.

So he too was a combination of Positive and Negative Gurus for me.

Turning to my physics colleagues at IIT KGP, the less said the better...Bengalis by nature are "intellectuals"; and come with all the concomitant baggage. 

Gurus of the Negative Kind...

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Continued...2