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Hinduism a throbbing everyday reality in Bali Bali: Sukendra places fresh flowers on a small banana leaf platter, lights incense sticks and sticks them to the edge, prays for a few minutes, and keeps the platter on the pavement outside his home in this tourist paradise in southeastern Indonesia. He does this thrice a day, every day.
He is one of 2.7 million Hindus in this Indonesian island who practise their religion more regularly than one would see in most parts of India. In any of the 11,000 temples, it is a fascinating riddle for an Indian visitor to pick out Sanskrit words in the local hymns and try to figure out who is being worshipped, as the deity is usually underground, out of sight except on special days. Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country in the world. Of its 245.5 million people, 88 percent are Muslims and a little over one percent Hindus. But the demography changes in the little island of Bali - 140 km from east to west and 80 km from north to south - where over 90 percent of its three million people are Hindus. The practices are a unique mix of Hindu, Buddhist, Javanese and local religious customs, started since Hinduism first came to this island in 400 AD, but developed after the Hindu kings of eastern Java - Indonesia's main island - were defeated by a Muslim kingdom in the early 16th century and the entire court shifted to Bali. It was a bit of a special day in the Tanjung Benoa neighbourhood - a resident was moving into his new house. All neighbours were gathering at the local temple with offerings of fruits and flowers, and then carrying it on their heads to the new house. That action was at one edge of the temple complex - the main area was reserved for the stage where there were dancers, with an orchestra of xylophone players on one side. The fathers and grandfathers in the audience wore small white turbans - the colour signifying that they were going to the temple. The mothers and grandmothers were loud in their appreciation of one stylised movement after another. Down the road, Sukendra stood at the entrance to the restaurant where he works, trying to lure diners inside. The open-air walled-in eatery had statues of Hindu gods in prominent niches, all with offerings of fresh flowers and incense. He is a tourist guide during the day, with a special spiel for an Indian visitor. 'I'll take you to temples where you'll be able to see how the culture of India thrives here.' It was thriving right in the middle of the holiday crush in Kuta beach, the epicentre of tourism on the island. As the tourists bathed, sunbathed, drank and shopped in the minutes before dusk, a large group of locals knelt on the sand, praying to Varuna, the god of the seas, as a bearded patriarch led the chant over a microphone. Shop assistants and executives came from their day's work and joined the prayers, oblivious to the tourists, palms joined in the traditional pose as the setting sun reflected off the Java Sea and lit their faces. From the Sanskrit words in the leader's chant, it appeared they were thanking Varuna for having brought them safely to the island of the gods, as Bali is known all over Indonesia. Falling snow and storytelling in Kashmir
Master Habibullah, 59, is a retired schoolteacher. He has a large family. His wife Halima, three sons, Fayaz, Shabir, Showkat, and their wives and children, all live under one roof. Habibullah is pestered by his grandchildren to tell them a story, as they get closer to the hearth lit by firewood to avoid the chill that accompanies snowfall in this village in Ganderbal district of north Kashmir. Even though this small village is just 26 km away from summer capital Srinagar, the snow-blocked roads, the uprooted electric transmission poles and the erratic mobile phone services here appear to have multiplied this village's sense of distance a hundred fold. 'I remember my childhood. Man, those were the days. My mother would cook the duck over a simmering fire with turnips for the entire night in an earthen vessel,' Habibullah remembers. 'We would sit close to the hearth as father told us stories of fairies, princes and demons. I realised later as a teacher how crucial story telling is to the holistic development of a child,' he said. As his eyes glow with memories of the past, Habibullah tells his grandchildren a story about a poor carpenter's son who made a wooden horse that could fly. 'The poor, young carpenter flew on his wooden horse over the king's palace and landed inside the royal garden to be bewitched by the beauty of the princess. The two fell in love, but the king was not reconciled to their marriage. 'He set the carpenter upon the task of bringing him the elixir of life from a distant land inhabited by demons, fairies and monsters...' The recital is punctuated with short songs of love, with the sonorous voice of the grandfather adding magic to the narrative. Kashmir's rich tradition of folklore includes both storytelling and folk dancing. Until the 1970s, the arrival of local folk dancers known as the 'Baands' was eagerly awaited in every village here. 'That was a masterpiece of street theatre. The 'Baands' in their colourful dresses would play street theatre across the Kashmir valley. 'Today this great art has almost died. Cinema and television have replaced every form of traditional entertainment in Kashmir,' Habibullah rues. M.Y. Teng, a noted scholar, speaks passionately about the rich heritage of folklore and storytelling in Kashmir. 'It was a local scholar named Som Dev Bhatt who translated 'Brakat Katha' into Sanskrit from the ancient 'Pashanchi' language and called it 'Katha Sarit Sagar' in the 11th century AD,' Teng said. 'Interestingly, today this translation is the only replica of the original masterpiece and subsequent translation into different languages have been made from Som Dev's version,' he said. The scholar also spoke of the wonderful local collection of short stories by a local writer, Vishnu Mitra, in Sanskrit in the 4th century, popularly called the Panchtantra. 'As we get drift away from our rich heritage and culture, we tend to ignore the fact that real treasure houses lie in our backyard,' Teng says. Today, Master Habibullah is trying to rediscover those lost treasures with his grandchildren. The heavy flakes of snow falling outside provide this revivalist an idyllic setting. Junagadh braces for mountain climbing contest Junagadh (Gujarat): The Girnar hill, home to several shrines held sacred by Hindus and Jains, will host an annual competition next month that will see school and college students scurry up and down 2,200 steps on its slopes.
The event Feb 3 is being organised by the Gujarat government's Sports, Youth Services and Cultural Activities Department and the Junagadh district administration. The competition is open to all students in schools and colleges. The participants are categorised into 14-18 years and 19-35 years. The men in the former category have to traverse 2,200 steps uphill and downhill in a span of one hour and 15 minutes. The time limit for women in the same category is two hours. The criterion for the older category of candidates of both genders is the same. Girnar Hill, around 300 km from Ahmedabad, has around 10,000 stone steps to climb before one finally reaches the ultimate peak of Dattatreya. Those desiring to participate in the event can contact Devkumar Ambaliya at 9825261871 or at 0285630490. Ambaliya is a Junagarh official and he had set a record in climbing the Girnar hill around 1979 that was unbeaten for almost 20 years. This Girnar competition was started in 1971 by a local newspaper, Phoolchab, as a way to mark its golden jubilee. The newspaper held the event until 1979 before handing it over to the Junagadh civic administration. Mount Girnar is sacred to Hindus and Jains. It also attracts people with its charm of the nearby Gir forest that is home to Asiatic lions. The Girnar forest too has 35 lions. Many 'sadhaks' or ascetics had laid their lives to rest on the mountain, most notably, the fourth Jain tirthankar Neminath, adding to its sanctity. The mount is home to a beautiful Jain temple complex on a small plateau, followed by the Ambaji Mata temple situated on one of the peaks. Then there are steps rising and descending to the Gorakhnath shrine. There is also a spot venerated as the place of the Pir, sacred to Muslims. Hyderabad’s 'numaish' has something for everyone Hyderabad: It is a New Year gift that this city awaits every year. Popularly known as 'numaish' - the Urdu word for exhibition - the fair has come a long way since it was first organised in 1937 during the reign of the Nizam. The All India Industrial Exhibition, an annual shopping event, began Jan 1 and will continue for one-and-a-half months. Many swanky shopping malls might have changed the landscape of the city in the last few years but this open-air shopping mall has its own charm. All the roads during this part of the year lead to the sprawling exhibition grounds in Nampally in the heart of Hyderabad as people from different parts of the city and even neighbouring districts and states descend to be part of the gala event. From the carpets of Iran and dry fruits of Jammu and Kashmir to handmade garments from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, handicraft items from all over India and electronic goods of the best brands in the country, the exhibition brings together the best from all around. Started as a local exhibition intended to display indigenously produced goods, the numaish is today one of the biggest display windows in the country for trade, commerce and industry. It not only attracts traders from India but also, as seen in the last few years, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey. Electrical goods, glassware, furniture, kitchenware, costumes, jewellery, traditional garments, toys, trendy wear, leather goods, footwear, table ware, ceramics, handlooms and fitness equipment, you name it and the big open air shopping mall has it. The fair is incomplete without entertainment. A mini-train, a giant wheel and 'dragon' rides add to the thrills. Then there is the 'maut ka kuwan' or well of death, where a group of youngsters ride motorbikes and also a car driving at breakneck speed in a well-shaped structure, almost touching the outer edges. There are dozens of stalls selling lip-smacking dishes like chaat and paav bhaji, Chinese fast food, sweets and ice cream. Old timers recall how the fair over the years has reflected the changing lifestyle of the people.
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Chanduna (Jammu and Kashmir): As a pristine white blanket of snow covers the countryside, Kashmir's rich tradition of folklore comes to life in this village.
I can't go on, says Beckett's Unnamable. I will go on. A writer's injuries are his strengths, and from his wounds will flow his sweetest, most startling dreams.
And Proust, too, killing himself to write his book comes close to the concept of dharma when, echoing Balzac, he says that in the end it's less the desire for fame than 'the habit of laboriousness' that takes a writer to the end of a work. But dharma, as this ideal of truth to oneself, or living out the truth in oneself, can also be used to reconcile men to servitude and make them find in paralyzing obedience the highest spiritual good. 'And do thy duty, even if it be humble,' says the Aryan Gita,
'rather than another's, even it be great. To die on one's duty is life: to live in another' death.
My discovery over the years is that the mother tongues have so much in them, so much that is alive, and are much more pervasive, in all strata of society, in all ages from children to the very old, men and women, literate and non-literate. What holds them together? It's not Sanskrit. It's these mother tongues. I think I went into linguistics because of that. That spoken languages had to be very, very important. It was important in my youth to have discovered this.
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. Maybe I wanted to find more rigorous ways of thinking. We are talking now about the earliest writing I did and about the power of language to counteract the wallow of late adolescence, to define things, define muddled expression in economical ways. Let's not forget that writing is convenient. It requires the simplest tools. A young writer sees that with words and sentences on a piece of paper that costs less than a penny he can place himself more clearly in the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by daemons. He doesn’t know why they chose him and he is usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
I am trembling with cold