Henpecked Husbands

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"ఎంత నేర్చినా ఎంత జూచినా,  ఎంత వారలైన కాంత దాసులే"

("However learned, wherever looked, however great, all are slaves of ladies")

That is what our famous poet-musician-saint Tyagaraja wrote centuries ago...he knows.

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I haven't read any of our Puranas. So whatever I say here is hearsay :)

Let us take our Trinity first:

Lord Shiva, I am told, had to share half of his body with one lady; and carry another on his head. What a nuisance!

Lord Vishnu had to accommodate his wife on his chest. With the result that, when a madcap rishi kicked him on his chest, and his wife ran away in anger, he had to run around in search of her, and become permanently indebted to his treasurer.

And Lord Brahma has to keep his tongue permanently stretched out because that is where his wife is said to reside...very inconvenient.

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Let us come to Ramayan:

King Dasaratha was so henpecked by one of his three wives that he had to not only lose his fond son but, soon thereafter, his own fond life.

And the said son was so henpecked that he had to lose his fond wife to a Ceylonese gent just because he couldn't put his foot down and tell her that golden deer are mythical. All his troubles had started long long ago when he had to meekly submit to her demand that she too would accompany him on his sojourn in the lovely forests of "Incredible India"

What about Lord Krishna? He was kicked by one of his wives, I am told; but still had to consent to wed another thousand odd dames.

What about the wisest man of Mahabharat? He had to obey his one-fifth of a wife and agree not to marry other dames; unlike his valiant brothers.

One such brother had to go forth in the forest to fetch flowers to please his one-fifth wife, and suffer insults by an old monkey who placed his tail on his way, blocking it.

And another had to turn a eunuch for a year.

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Let us come to the best of our Vedic Sages: 

Uddalaka apparently had a wife whom he fondly called: "Chandi"

...Because she did precisely the opposite of what he asked her to do.

Being a wise man, he invented a clever ruse by which his wife obeys his real intentions:  He would ask her to do precisely the opposite of what he wants her to do :)

When time came for his father's death anniversary rituals, he said:

"Let us not observe them this year".  And she disagreed.

"Let us invite no brahmin this year".  And she invited three.

"Let us not feed them any sweets this year".  And she fed them six.

...And so on....

He was so charmed by the success of his ruse that he totally forgot it at the end of the ceremony and said:

"Great! Chandi! Go now and feed this pindam to our cow"

And she fed it to their dog :)

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Coming down to our Greek philosophers, the wisest of them had to suffer the tantrums of his termagant wife. 

One day he was sitting on the pyol of his forecourt enjoying his sunbath. His wife was loudly cursing him. 

He told his friends, "Thunder has started...rain will follow." 

And his wife came out and poured a bucket of dirty water on his head and giggled. 

Instead of getting angry and beating her up, he smiled.

His friends asked him why he didn't drag her into the street and wallop her. He, being a philosopher (like me), replied:

"Oh! THAT is what you want so you can enjoy watching us two fighting on the road! Sorry! My dear wife gave me three lovable sons. Did YOU?"

And he drank his cup of hemlock committing suicide :)

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Let us now come to our Shakespeare's four great tragic heroes:

Macbeth died due to the ambition of his fond wife. King Lear to his daughters'. Othello did kill his wife but thereafter killed himself. Hamlet had no wife but he went mad due to that:

"Brevity is wit...I will be brief. Your noble son is mad";  said Polonius

In England the wife of its King may be called a queen, but the husband of their Queen is only a Prince .

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Let me now come to my own family which is the realm of my expertise:

My poor father was certainly henpecked. His wife (for her own selfish reasons) demanded that he bequeath his house conditionally to his only son, instead of unconditionally to herself. The said son thereupon sank into severe clinical depression and recovered only when he returned that gilded house back to his father's wedded wife.

My elder sister's IAS-husband was worse...he had to tonsure his admin head to please Lord Balaji when his wife threatened to tonsure her own otherwise.

All husbands of my other five sisters are equally henpecked, if not more; except the the one who was kicked out by his angry wife :)

My fond son says it is he who takes all their family decisions, since his fond wife asks him to say so :)

I am the ONLY husband who can declare that he is not at all henpecked (my wife in her sweet heaven is winking knowingly :)

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Acknowledgment:

I thank Sri Kandi Sankarayya Garu for giving me the title of today's blog responding to my recent boast:

"Give me a word and I will give you a blog"

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శంకరార్పణం - 3627

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శంకరాభరణం సమస్య - 3627

“ఇంతకు ముందు చూచినదె యిప్పుడు చూచుచునుంటి వింతగన్”

కొంతయు కారమున్ మరియు కోరిక తీరగ నూనె మెండుగా

సొంతపు తీరునన్ కలిపి సోయగ మొప్పెడు తెల్లజుత్తునన్

సుంతయు మార్పు లేదుగద సుందరి నీదగు నావకాయలో

నింతకు ముందు చూచినదె యిప్పుడు చూచుచునుంటి వింతగన్...

(కంది శంకరయ్య గారి సౌజన్యంతో)

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Parables & Arguments

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Jesus Christ is renowned for his parables...there is a whole book listing his parables...like:

"And he discoursed largely to them in parables, and said: Behold, there went forth a sower to sow; and as he sowed, some fell by the road-side, and the fowl came and devoured it.

Another fell upon the rock, where there was not much soil; and immediately it sprung up, because there was no depth of earth. But when the sun was risen, it burned, and, because it had no root, it withered away. And another fell among the thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked it. And another fell into good earth, and gave fruits, this a hundred, another sixty, and another thirty. He who hath ears to hear, let him hear. And his disciples approached, saying to him,

Why dost thou speak to them in parables ?

He replied and said to them, Because unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but unto them it is not given."

...Gospel of Matthew

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Ramakrishna Paramahamsa also reveled in parables...like:

"A weary pedestrian finds a magnificent tree in the forest and sits under its shade. He fondly wishes in his heart for a luxurious bed so he can lie down on it. And a bed appears from nowhere. Lying on it wondering, he wishes for a damsel to knead his aching legs; and a damsel materializes. And then a sumptuous dish of sweets. And that too appears. And he wonders what would happen if a tiger comes and attacks him. And sure, it does...

...that tree was a wish-fulfilling kalpataru..."

...Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 

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...And then there are folks immensely fond of arguments like our Vedantins.

There are about ten major Upanishads in our scriptures. And hundreds of minor ones. Their texts are beautiful but haphazard.

In order to codify and clarify them, Badarayana Vyasa came up with his 555 briefest Brahmasutras (aphorisms) which are even more elliptical than the Upanishads, like this inaugural one:

1. "Then therefore the enquiry into Brahman" (athaa tho brahma jijnasa)

In order to amplify and elaborate these concise Sutras, Shankara, Ramanuja et. al. wrote extensive glosses (Sutra Bhashyas) on them, each arguing according to his own lights, prejudices and dogmas.

The main quarrel between them is whether the word "atman" (self) occurring in a particular context in a particular Upanishad is to be interpreted as "jivatman" (lower self) or "Paramatman" (Highest Self).

...waste of time....

Heated quarrels followed and prejudices multiplied...Shaivites vs Vaishnavites vs Madhvas...and their dozens of subsects.

And they procreated a plethora of profound pseudo-vedantic pundits claiming to explain the simplest of facts in perverse ways like:

Q: "Why can't a diver submerged under water speak?"

A: "Because Fire is the Deity of Speech and water is inimical to fire" :)

They brought disrepute to a glorious subject; like: "silly vedanta" (metta vedantam)

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Of course we physicists too argue. But our arguments are not in thin vedantic air but settled by stark experiments.

If a theory nicely explains 99 experiments but utterly fails to explain one, it has to be dust-binned and a new theory found. 

It is like a batsman hitting 99 and then getting bowled...(our Pankaj Roy of the 1960s was famous for that :)

He has to quit.

Feynman says that the business of experimenters is to stretch and disprove the prevailing theory; and the business of theorists is to invent a newer one.

One of the greatest predictions invented by a theorist was meant to disprove a rival's theory, but ended up proving it:

Fresnel proposed that light travels as waves and invented his beautiful theory. Poisson immediately pointed out that Fresnel's theory leads to the absurd conclusion that there ought to be a bright spot at the center of the dark shadow of an opaque coin.

And Arago did that experiment and, lo and behold!, discovered that bright spot. 

That beauty spot it is called "Poisson Spot"; not Fresnel's nor Arago's :)

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Mathematicians too argue. There was this Zeno who invented paradoxes like:

 "Achilles can never overtake the tortoise" and "An arrow in motion is always at rest" 

The resolution of Zeno's paradoxes led to the discovery of the continuous infinity and calculus.

JL Synge wrote a booklet titled: "Kendelman's Krim", which features a lion, an orc, a kea, and a carpenter, all of them discussing "infinity".

Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" is full of animals fond of arguments. But his arguments are verbal calisthenics like:

"Have some more tea"

"But I have had none so far"

"You can always have more than nothing, but not less than nothing"

....Lewis Carroll was the mathematician, Charles Dodgson, in real life :)

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"Women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it; that is, married women"

....Mark Twain

https://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/09/perverse-arguments.html?m=0

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శంకరార్పణం - 3626

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శంకరాభరణం సమస్య - 3626

"పద్యము వ్రాయఁ బూనుటయె పాపము ద్రోహము మానుకొమ్మికన్”

విద్యల నొల్లకే నగుచు వేషము లేయుచు విఱ్ఱవీగుచున్

సద్యశమంద గోరుచును శంకర దేవుని చెంతజేరుచున్

హృద్యము గాని భావముల హేళన రీతిని శాస్త్రివర్యుడా!

పద్యము వ్రాయఁ బూనుటయె పాపము ద్రోహము మానుకొమ్మికన్...

...ఓకే అలాగే సార్!

(కంది శంకరయ్య గారి సౌజన్యంతో)

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Prayers: Private & Public

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There were no Community Prayers in our household:...All prayers were private: silent or loud.

(Budugu was praying aloud for his marbles in front of their deity. When asked if he thought their deity deaf, he says, "No; but grandma is" :)

During my school years I never saw my parents asleep: they woke up before I did and slept after I slumbered.

School started at 10 sharp, after the three bells rung aloud by the peon.

In our Puja Room, my mother rang her own tiny bell thrice at intervals of five minutes each.

Upon the first bell, my HM father would get up from his chair and sit down in the dining space on a wooden seat and start his sandhyavandan. 

Upon the third bell, he would wind it up; and we would all wait for our grub which would soon be forthcoming.

His sandhyavandan was a silent affair. I was curious once and asked him what it was that he mumbled. 

And he said it was a secret mantra which he would teach me in a public function soon enough.

And he did do that...just before I was kicked out of our home for higher studies. 

The climax of this function was his whispering this mantra in my ear while we two were covered in a loose dhoti stretched overhead (so secret it was!). 

...And my uncle, sitting by my side, pinching my thigh ceremonially, slipping his hand into that shroud (called "Scorpion-Sack" in good humor).

Anyway, we trooped to our school-assembly presided over by my father. 

It started with a public prayer by one of the four students who had a passable singing voice. The prayer itself was one of the four approved padyams from Bhagavatam.

The climax of the Assembly was the tumbling down of one of the four students prone to fainting under our Coromandel Sun.

In due course all my six sisters, one by one, acquired their own individual rosaries of different colors for their own silent mantras. 

Rosaries are also called "Worry Beads" by Christians who roll them on their nervous fingers whenever they want peace in their flaming hearts.

I watched on TV the current US President Biden rolling his worry beads when he was their vice-president a decade ago. 

That was while he was waiting (along with his boss Obama) to hear the assassination news of their pet enemy: Osama Bin Laden.

Obama himself was pursing his lips and fiddling with the tiny hanuman-idol which he said he always carried in his pant-pocket :)

In 1965, a few months after my reaching IIT KGP, my friend Chari asked me to accompany him one evening to the South Institute which was an Anglo-Indian Assembly-cum-Dance-cum-Cinema Hall. 

Apparently Chari had an itching eczema on his neck, and the skin-specialist at the BNR Hospital, after prescribing an ointment in the morning, asked him to come to the South Institute in the evening at 7.

Chari went into the hall asking me to wait outside for a few minutes...

...And he returned after a good one hour, with an embarrassed blush anointing his stupefied face. 

Meanwhile I was hearing repeated Hallelujas emanating from the Hall.

Apparently it was a weekly Christian Prayer Meeting for patients, of whom our Vaishnavite Chari happened to be the leading one...

I love Christian Prayers, by the way. 

There is this famous Lord's Prayer taught by Jesus himself:

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil."

And this "Hail Mary!":

"Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death."

And this Ancient Mariner's:

"The self-same moment I could pray; 

And from my neck so free 

The Albatross fell off, and sank 

Like lead into the sea. 

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, 

Beloved from pole to pole! 

To Mary Queen the praise be given! 

She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 

That slid into my soul. 

He prayeth best, who loveth best 

All things both great and small; 

For the dear God who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all."

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Tailpiece Story:

This pastor of his village trains his two male parrots to close their eyes, roll their beads, and pray silently.

And this woman who bought a female parrot in the flea market is embarrassed by her pet's constant chatter: 

"I am a prostitute...let us have some fun"...

She carries her scandalous pet to her pastor asking him to teach her (the female parrot) how to pray.

The pastor opens his cage door and seats his guest-parrot between his own parrots...hoping she would imbibe devout prayers from her saintly companions.

Upon which she (the parrotess) squeals her sacred mantra:

"I am a prostitute...let us have some fun"...

Upon which the senior male parrot opens his eyes and wakes up his junior:

"Throw away your beads...our prayers have been answered!"

(The parrots of course are metaphorical)

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శంకరార్పణం - 3625

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శంకరాభరణం సమస్య - 3625

“మాలాలంకృతుఁ జేసి తిట్టిరి నిజామాత్యున్ జనుల్ సత్సభన్”

మేలౌ రీతిని గానముల్ పలుకుచున్ మేధావులే కూడగన్

పోలేరమ్మది కోవెలందు జనుచున్ పోగాల మేతెంచమన్

పూలన్ వీడుచు పాదుకల్ గొనుచు భల్ పూజింపనున్ గోరుచున్

మాలాలంకృతుఁ జేసి తిట్టిరి నిజామాత్యున్ జనుల్ సత్సభన్...

(కంది శంకరయ్య గారి సౌజన్యంతో)

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Chatterboxes

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"Brevity is the soul of wit"

...Polonius in Hamlet

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James Thurber recounts this advice he got from his sub-editor when he joined his first newspaper as a cub reporter:

"Write a paragraph describing the scene of action, its ambience, and crowds. Then three sentences about the action. Then a paragraph about your conclusions, morals, and expected consequences. Take a pair of sharp scissors, snip the first and last paragraphs, and submit the middle three sentences"

In our "Sankarabharanam" Telugu padyam-group a hundred or so poets write their 4-line verses and be done with the exercise for the day.

But there have been three or four well-read poets who write a long introduction and a long conclusion between which is buried their 4-line verse...they haven't heard of the "snipping" dictum Thurber got.

My genius PhD guide, SDM, used to write up his 15-page flowing paper within a day; and then take a fortnight writing its short Abstract.

The famous journal, Physical Review, had this advice to its authors:

"Abstract should be as brief as possible but not so brief that the reader has to read the entire paper in order to understand the Abstract" 

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I have heard many chatterboxes in my time who loved to talk for six or seven hours at a stretch.

But most of them have a "switch". 

Most interesting are people who are otherwise silent but talk talk talk when they are suitably drunk: alcohol is their switch.

Mark Twain wrote a hilarious piece titled: "Grandfather's Old Ram":

He was advised to meet one Jim Blain when he was "precisely" drunk to listen to his famous adventure with his grandfather's old ram.

After many unsuccessful attempts he was told one night that Jim Blain was "just so" drunk to commence his tall tale.

And Jim Blain starts with his grandfather's old ram and strays into all sorts of interesting side-stories till, after half an hour of that, he falls fast asleep snoring.

No one had ever succeeded in getting him talk about his adventure with his grandfather's blessed ram :)

In 1971 when I was living in our Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, I had a remote guest-family whom I placed in our Guest Suite. 

Wife was talkative but her hubby was as silent as a tomb.

That evening the hubby borrowed my pushbike and vanished. Wife was waiting anxiously for more than a couple of hours for his safe return in our village to which he was as stark a stranger as I am to New York.

At last he returned wobbling, to the blessed relief of us all, took his dinner, and dragged me by my hand into his bedroom.

Wife appeared briefly and whispered in my ear: "Don't believe his tall tales" and left for her bedroom.

The hubby talked the whole night on what turned out to be his intimate conjugal adventures.

Next noon when I met him I asked him where he vanished the previous evening on my pushbike:

"I went hunting for my daily dose of country liquor"

"Where did you find it?"

"Simple...kept going till I found a neem tree by the wayside hidden below a culvert, with three or four happy customers sitting and singing" 

I then remembered one such neem tree in Jhapetapur...I never knew :)

And then my eldest B-i-L, Shree G Ranga Rao, IAS. 

During our 50-year friendship, we must have been brought together one-on-one a dozen times at least.

For all I know, my face serves him as his switch. 

He talks hours upon hours unremittingly. All his talks are eminently entertaining, informative, interesting, and educative. But I myself being in the education line, the saturation point is reached rather quickly.

He had a standing invitation to our Qrs in the campus at IIT KGP. Occasion arose in 1995 January when he was to attend a Refresher Course in IIM, Calcutta, at its new Joka campus (then a remote village far from the center of Calcutta). He had of course up-and-down air travel and govt hospitality at the expense of us taxpayers :)

But he agreed to travel from Chennai to Calcutta by the Coromandel Express breaking his journey at Kharagpur for two days and two nights...provided I agreed to accompany him on the third morning to Calcutta and settle him at the Guest House of IIM.

Most welcome. 

But by the third morning I was a totally exhausted listener ; and after "placing" him at IIM and gorging a guest-lunch, I happily boarded a bus back to the Howrah station via the Esplanade. At the last minute, however, he decided to see me off at the Howrah Station. A compromise was reached that we would have Khejur Gud Rosagollas at the famous KC Das outlet in Esplanade, after which we part...he to Joka and I to Howrah (phew!)

And then there was this Chief Engineer (Retd) Shree Prasada Rao, a decade older to me, who found my face as his switch when we were renting in Khairatabad. 

A dozen times over a couple of dozen hours over three years he narrated to me his adventures in the Royal Bhutan Army, I standing on either leg by turns at the street-corner. 

As a recompense, he told my son once:

"Your father is a very LOVABLE man" :)

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2014/01/konga-japam.html?m=0

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Everyone says I am a strong silent man. I agree. For 11 months in a year, I hardly speak nowadays with anyone  in our Nile Valley Township.

And then, every December, arrives my young friend, Professor JK Sharma, from Agra.

And locates me sitting quietly on our lawn bench. He takes his seat by my side and switches me on with his charming smile.

And then I talk talk talk at random on all sorts of topics: physics, philosophy, jokes, anecdotes, poetry...for three or four hours till he gets up and goes home.

Same story next day...

I am his favorite jukebox :)

Here is what my student (now Professor at IIT Kanpur) wrote in my sixtieth birthday souvenir (among other things):

"...GPS talks a LOT. Whenever I went to his house, he would just give me a plate full of sweets to finish. While I am on my way of finishing those sweets GPS would keep talking. I used to enjoy each and every word of his. Once in a while he also used to give me a chance to speak. To be honest I used to prefer listening..."

...Anand Kr Jha

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/09/sweet-sixty.html?m=0

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