NATIVITY:FROM A NON BELIEVER'S EYES

That a woman could conceive and give birth to a child without congress with a man, an idea seemingly contrary to our intelligence, is the very cornerstone of Nativity or the birth of Lord Jesus. Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus gave birth to her Son in a stable at Bethlehem and remained a virgin, is the teaching of the Holy Gospels. Of all the books written on the life and times of Jesus, only four, those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are accepted as infallible by the Church. There were others, which were rejected and are known today as the Agnostic Gospels or the Suppressed Gospels. All the four accepted Gospels were written by Jewish converts to Christianity except that of Mark’s who was a Roman convert and none of them were contemporary of Jesus. They were written about seventy to a hundred years after Jesus’ Crucifixion.

The Church of Rome with a hallowed history of over two thousand years, the longest uninterrupted institution of mankind, has been persistent in its teaching of the Immaculate Conception. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is portrayed as a woman of incorruptible virtue and although she was married to her husband Joseph she had no carnal knowledge of him. She was fecundated by the Holy Spirit, which the theologians have explained as the Spirit of God, our Father in Heaven. One of the pivotal concepts of Christianity, that of the Holy Trinity, the unity of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit is rather difficult for a layman to comprehend. The Father is of course the God in Heaven and the son is Lord Jesus. The Spirit is the essence of God pervading and permeating the whole cosmos.

In due course of time she gave birth to her Son, a human being of normal flesh and bones, in an apparent painless labour. She remained a virgin with an intact hymen even during the actual time of her delivery, analogous to sunbeams passing through glass. This has been glorified in the Bible as the Immaculate Conception. We are led to believe that Mary, although a normal healthy woman, was able to conceive and deliver a child without experiencing the pleasures of sexual intercourse; nor did she suffer the discomforts of pregnancy and the pain of labour. According to the suppressed Gospels, a midwife doubting the strange phenomenon of Parthenogenesis wished to verify, and was instantly paralysed. Incidentally Mary herself is portrayed in some books as being a product of Immaculate Conception but that is a different story.

Thus was Jesus born without the taint of Original Sin, a unique concept of Judeo-Christian Theology. Adam and Eve, our first parents living in primal innocence in the Garden of Eden, transgressed the command of God by eating the fruit of the Forbidden Tree and indulging in sexual intercourse thereafter is the Original Sin of Bible. This resulted in their fall and expulsion from Paradise.

The sex act has somehow been mired in controversy. The male’s, at least those of the ruder ages, incomprehension of the normal physiology of females, the passage of blood during menstruation and the flow of vaginal fluids during intercourse has had some strange effects on the mind. It was an anathema to believe that Adam and Eve did indulge in intercourse before the Fall. The established Church still denies it. However the English poet John Milton, a staunch Puritan, unequivocally asserts in ‘Paradise Lost’ that our first parents did copulate before the Fall, as a mandate from Heaven, obeying God’s command ‘Go forth and multiply’ and it is sheer hypocrisy to think otherwise.

Milton is guilty, according to the elders of the Church, of holding the heretical views of Arianism. Arianism, a theism that held sway in the early years of Christianity, affirms the supremacy of the Father over the Son and that They were not one and the same, has been proscribed by the Church, which upholds that the Father and the Son are one and of the same ‘substance’.

In the early years, when Rome was gradually turning Christian, the esteemed Fathers of the Church were much concerned with the ideas of virginity and chastity. Virginity was not only praised to high heavens but also deified. Pre-Christian Rome, also known as Pagan Rome, did have an institution of virgins consecrated to the services of Vesta but it could hardly boast of six virgins at a time doing the temple duties. The ingenuity and the motivations of the Fathers of the Church were such that many women, even those from the noble families were more than willing to devote their lives to the Church and live as nuns, devoid of any contact with men and practicing rigid celibacy. The nuns were considered to be the spouse of the God. An esteemed Father, later canonised, St.Jerome, with characteristic naivety addressed a mother of a nun with an embarrassing sobriquet ‘Mother-in –law of God’.

The zeal for self mortification and self abnegation among the theologians and Church hierarchs was carried to such ridiculous levels that a most distinguished and learned Father, Origen, had himself castrated to be free from the pleasures of the flesh. Following his example, castration became a rage, sometimes voluntary, sometimes forcible until the obnoxious practice was forbidden by the saner elements of the Church.

To the Church, Lord Jesus on earth was the same as God in heaven. It was only natural then to believe that the body of Jesus, Corpus Christi, was unique and it was never defiled by the excretion of stool and urine and the ejaculation of semen. That the Son of Man, born of a woman, who lived among his contemporaries and shared his meals with his disciples, did not suffer the ‘impurities’ of the flesh is a strange centaur to behold. What are the Church’s views on this point, at present, is not known.

The much-debated stories of the ‘Shining Star’ and the ‘Adoration of the Magi’ are, unless proven to the contrary, symbolic. It emphasizes Divine approval to the birth of Jesus as per the opinion of the devout believers. The Magi, also known as the Wise Men of the East, were possibly Zoroastrians from Persia and were well versed in the esoteric arts of astrology, necromancy etc. They came bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus. The gifts were certainly expensive in the material sense, as befitting an Emperor. That an infant born in a humble stable to parents of modest means should be worthy of adoration by men, rich in years and erudition, is an uplifting story of redemption.

All said and done the teachings of Jesus, initially meant for the Jews only but later spread far and wide by the genius of St.Paul, metamorphosed the tribal God Jehovah, a god of strict uprightness and capable of extreme vengeance, to a God of mercy and compassion. The old Testament, pregnant and heavy with the Ten Commandments which were more often obeyed in the breach, gave way to the New Testament of Jesus Christ with only two Commandments: Love thy God and Love thy neighbour. And what a sea change it brought about in human history.

SHIKAR HYDERABAD

SHIKAR, HYDERABAD



It was a delightful evening and my daughter, the perfect hostess, desired to give us a treat. What could be more romantic than to have a gala dinner to celebrate our Independence Day [evening?] in one of the famed restaurants of our cyber city, Hyderabad, with the weather playing a perfect goddess? Not too hot and not too cold. But the problem lay elsewhere; no autos were available for quite some time and the one that was available was reluctant to take us there as it entailed an uphill climb. After some persuasion he was willing to take us provided we paid him something extra for his troubles. Are all the Indian auto drivers invariably menopausal?

So we headed for ‘Shikaar’ on road number 2 on Banjara Hills. Being absolutely novices or shall I say ‘innocents abroad’ we were undecided to turn left or right from the crossing. My daughter told me it was near Melting Women, [or so I heard] an ice-cream parlour. I asked a lady who was walking with her husband on the footpath where Melting Women was. She made a face which was certainly not amusing, which I was unable to fathom [as if women never melt, all have gazed upon Medusa’s face], and corrected me that it was Melting Moments and gave me the proper direction. Thus fortified we made it to Shikaar before you can say hello.

She opted for the Mexican Section and guided her mother and me to a secluded corner of the restaurant. And true to form she refused to sit until her mother and I were comfortably ensconced in our seats. The starched and moustachioed waiter, who could have easily doubled for Amir Khan, the Bollywood hero, produced the menu. It was all Greek and Latin to me, but my daughter was more resourceful. No, she doesn’t know Spanish but she had been there before and she was keen to have seafood. She chose Nachos, which happens to be crisp corn tortilla wedges splashed with refritos, melted cheese, tomatoes, onions and a choice of toppings. Surely a musical dish. The waiter rose to the occasion and promptly served us with aplomb. I asked him why he didn’t have a Mexican hat and carried no guitar and could he do us a Salsa to which he was modestly evasive. The dish was delightful and we did justice to it with relish.

We next had Mixed Fajitas. More used to mixed fried rice and mixed chow mien, mixed Fajitas was altogether a novelty worthy of a champion
Epicure. Fajitas is a style of cooking handed down for generations [which style of cooking is not?] made of marinated strips of tender lamb or chicken or fish, grilled with sweet peppers, tomatoes, onions and spices. Sancho Panza would have been delighted; specially when served sizzling on your table with salsa fresca and fresh hot tortillas. The lamb was tender and succulent, which a Dubliner would have approved, and we ate to our hearts fill.

Now we were feeling hot and the waiter promptly upped the A.C.

Then was the time when an old woman sat cross-legged at the crossing of Dharmatolla Street and Chowringhee in Calcutta, as only an Indian can. She was massive, really massive, as the mountains, and as old as the Vedas. She was facing west toward the Ganges and her eyes were shut, contemplating. She had a white wrinkled sari on and nothing else and her ponderous breasts were exposed to the elements. A herd of cow-elephants could easily have played on one of them and her arms, which hung limply by her side, resembled the boulders that Polyphemus the Cyclops hurled at Odysseus’ ship. Her feet looked like the Twin Towers of Word Trade Centre of New York. Her face remained the ultimate enigma: serene, benevolent and full of piety with a smile worthy of Socrates. Her locks were whiter than snow. Then was the time when all our heroes came to her bearing presents and to pay their respectful obeisance to this eternal mother. There was Subhas Bose who offered her his sword and Rabindranath Tagore who gave her his manuscript of Gitanjali. Satyen Bose, Acharya Mahalonobis, Khudiram Bose, Matangini Hazra, Satyajit Ray, Chaitanya Mahapravu, Mother Teresa, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Bidhan Chandra Roy, Chuni Goswami, PK Banerjee, Bhaichung Bhutia, Saurav Ganguly, Sailen Manna, Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Chhabi Biwas, Bhanu Bandyopadhaya, Bikash Roy and host of others waited patiently for their turn. Then was the time when her fame had spread beyond our borders. Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Amitabh Bachhan, Maulana Azad, Lokmanya Tilak, Jamshedji Tata, C.V.Raman, Ramanujam, Homi Bhabha, Sachin Tendulkar, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Homi Sethna, Rani Laxmibai, Chatrapati Shivaji, Sam Maneckshaw, Alama Iqbal, Kalidasa, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Jalaluddin Akbar, Mumtaj Mahal and Kapil Dev sought her benediction. Then was the time when her fame had soared across the seven seas and over the mountain ranges. Abraham Lincoln came carrying his log cabin and Mao Zedong brought his Red Book. Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Henry the Eighth, Nelson Mandela, Leo Tolstoy, Czar Nicholas, Vladimir Lenin, Victor Hugo, Michelangelo, Charles De Gaulle, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, Rabelais, Haroun Rashid, Vivien Leigh, Richard the Lionheart, Diana Windsor, William The Conqueror, Isaac Newton, Somerset Maugham, Patrice Lumumba, Enid Blyton, Orson Welles, Agatha Christie, James Joyce, George Washington, Babe Ruth, Washington Irving, Confucius, Gustav Flaubert, Timur the Lame, Elizabeth Tudor, Frank Worrell, Captain Cook, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Donald Bradman, Chengiz Khan, Marlon Brando, Wallis Simpson, Mae West, Papa Hemingway, John Steinbeck , Charles Dickens, Santa Claus, Alfred Nobel and a host of others made haste to her side.



Chic Macho Mam was our last port of call. Not exactly; it was the conjuror’s last trick, as the saying goes. It is grilled chicken served with Mexican rice and potato fries. Very delightful, very refreshing. A far cry from the grilled chicken we have in Kolkata. These were free ranging chickens that were well cut, well dressed, well and truly seasoned. I could spot a twinkle in my daughter’s eyes when she put the succulent pieces in her mouth.

The tables all around us were occupied but there was no din and bustle to rob us of our serenity. We relished our dinner as the occasion demanded with a song in our hearts and a smile on our lips. We simply could not expect more. Time to say goodbye and step out into reality.

The waiter brought us our bill and we appreciated his effort with a generous tip. The night was black as black can be, and the stars, shining brightly, showered their benedictions on us. We had ice creams from ‘Melting Moments’ as we strolled down Road number 2 of Banjara Hills. We did not have any problem on boarding an auto on our way back.


Merci Beaucoup Shikar.

AN ODE TO JAMES JOYCE:SAGE OF JUDAPEST

Yes Poldy still loves to eat the inner organ of beasts and fowls which saves him from erectile dysfunction although he still receives plenty of emails from gonorrheal ladies with outlandish names such as Fresh Nelly
Marlene Barnacle not to mention Pussy Galore advocating the use of various penile enhancement techniques although we have not done it ever since Milly had her Catamenes but I have noticed that Poldy gives a sly look when he sees Gerty Macdowell passing by possibly he remembers the time when he had seen her lower drawers and had experienced a certain wetness there and even nowadays he goes walking the length and breadth of Dublin with Stephen Dedalus who is presently the Lecturer in French Letters to the youth of Dublin but men are never to be trusted yes as our bonny Prince Harry was recently caught on camera squeezing the ample breast of a blonde in a night club who knows what mischief they will be upto when their wife’s back is turned but Poldy knows that if I ever find out I will cut off a certain part of his anatomy so that unlike Lord Nelson the one handled adulterer he will become man noman but that is neither here nor there for English bottoms are different from Irish bottoms as any bottompincher bottomkisser bottomgrabber bottomhandler bottomcleaner knows we are devout the way we take care of our bottoms but Stephen could have slept here last night yes no trouble for me for Stephen still has a nice and clean mickey and always takes the care of washing it before going to bed and iam sure his woman will never grow mustache but a woman needs to be cuddled atleast 20 times a day no matter by who as long as she is in love it makes her feel and remain young and I always say yes to Poldy when he comes to me with that thing of his hard and strong but so calm and smooth to touch and play and imiss him but he can stay in millis room as for long noone has slept there and iwill give him his breakfast in bed and he can tell me allabout the history of different nations and poldy dear can again come at blueoclock in the morning without putting his body through the window O and iwish poldy takesme out to the lakes where we can enjoy a nice summer day with the flowers blooming and the swans swimming and the children playing and we can have a delicious boatride and ican show poldy my old drawers and make him salivate but what dress shalli put on O ican remember the time when we first kissed an cuddled and poldy fondled my breasts it was so heavenly not like the time in gibraltar and thalatta thalatta and yes he puthis hands all around me and asked me and isaid yes and ikissed him yes isaid yes

315 UP to BANKURA

Come Sunday evening, Howrah station beckons us once again to her ample bosom. After having the customary dinner of rotis and vegetables with a fish occasionally thrown in, I leave for the station by 8.30pm, availing myself of public transport. Some of my colleagues are already assembled there by the time I reach and some follow me. By 10pm we are all assembled for our journey and we while away the time discussing any topic this side of Jupiter.

Mr. S. also nicknamed ‘the manager’ is a jovial pathologist of some fifty summers. It was he who informed us that the Professor of Pathology, Mrs. K.M. has developed a new stain which is identical to Gentian Violet but called Genital Violet instead! Mr. A.G., who continuously chews ‘paan’, nods his head approvingly to all manner of ambiguous propositions; it is difficult to decipher what exactly are his views on any question. Once while discussing the immortal passage from Kalidasa’s ‘Meghdoot’ where the forlorn lover remembers the time when he had laid his wearied head on the naked thigh of his mistress after a vigorous bout of love-making, Mr. A.G gave the rather recondite analysis that a woman’s thigh was a much better resting place than anything farther north. Talking about women’s thighs, wasn’t it Hamlet who was desirous of laying his head on Ophelia’s thigh?

Our resident humour-monger, the slattern Sabitri, who earns her livelihood by begging, drops in to ask of the manager about his latest matrimonial conquest. She habitually teases him of his polygamous behaviour [not true of course] and the hapless manager has no other recourse but to send her off with a one rupee coin. The rest of us simply relish and devour the manager’s discomfiture.

Its time now to board the train 315UP and our convoy proceeds toward platform number 11. All of us are accommodated in coach S3 and we head for our respective berths. By 10.40 pm our train is on the move
and we make our beds to lie down. Very little is required for our comfort but winter necessitates woolens to keep ourselves warm. Our journey is more or less hassle free except on those occasions when a political party holds a rally in Kolkata on a Sunday. Then the rabble of ticketless travellers tries to get in our compartment and we labour to keep them out. We are ably helped in our endeavour by Mr. Choudhury, the T.T.E.
Mr. Choudhury, very dear to us, rather short in height but wide in the midriff [like Caesar we do not favour “lean and hungry” T.T.Es] is a veritable Good Samaritan and never fails to wake us up at Onda, which is a ten minutes traveltime from Bankura. That reminds me of the occasion, when, during my absence, most of my colleagues were carried beyond Bankura. Mr. Choudhury was not on duty that evening.

There is a bit of excess rush in winter when many board the train for an excursion to the hills of Purulia. Youngsters from college go as a group and keep us awake the whole night singing songs and making merry. It happened once when a bumpy jolt forced a traveller on the middle bunk to tumble down. Mercifully he was unhurt. On the 25th of December last, only three of us were travelling by train, the others were having their annual vacation; and the train was as punctual as usual. We reached Bankura at a quarter to four in the morning. There were no taxis available on that frightfully chilly night with the wind biting and blowing, and the three of us had to walk the whole distance to our quarters braving the scrotumtightening cold.

Bankura is indeed pleasant in winter but summers are horrible. In the nacreous morns of winter, when sunlight and shadows dapple the city, Bankura is at her pristine best. It is a thousand pities that very few venture out for a morning walk; the cold, it seems, is formidable and forbidding. But for those bold enow to face the elements there is no time like a wintry morning to seek inner solace and to stand upright in the sight of our Maker. We are rewarded adequately; we are able to experience the tectonic shift occurring in our lives between the drudgery of our existence and the sublime bliss that awaits those who keep the covenant; the fast approaching andropause of the flesh and the long delayed andropause of the mind. Summer is an altogether different kettle of fish; a sizzler, if indeed there be one, and there is water scarcity to boot.

The other day I had a lesson in humility. It was early in the morning, at daybreak; I was up and about taking a morning walk, as is my custom, when I felt like having a cup of tea from a roadside stall. Few stalls were open then and in only one someone was fanning the flames of his coal oven. The shopper- keeper’s assistant brought out a dish containing the previous night’s leftovers of potato fries [known locally as Aloo Chop ] which he scattered to the pigs and dogs scavenging the ground in front of the stalls. There was a mad scramble between the dogs and the pigs for the leftovers with a murder of crows pitching in. I can hardly believe my eyes now, for I saw a woman emerging out of nowhere, as if a psychopomp, shooing away the birds and mammals alike and partaking herself of the food from the ground however besmirched with dust they might have been. She put them to her nose, sniffed it, found they were not all that putrid and promptly wrapped them in the folds of her saree and vanished from where she came. She never came to me begging for alms and I am not certain if she was not in the Lord’s mind when He said “I was hungry yet you did not feed me.”

An early morning walk before the crack of dawn is invigorating, refreshing and rejuvenating. There are very few vehicles on the street at that hour; only a few bullock carts and buffalo carts ply loads of hay. I really pity these magnificent beasts, the mainstay of our rural economy. Underfed and underkept, they are made to lose their ballocks to our cupidity and ungrudgingly carry out their master’s service till their dying breath. Shall Maneka Gandhi do something? The word ballocks reminds me that Hitler had only one, which is neither here nor there; but just imagine what would have happened if he had the customary two?

Near the Bankura Police Station I often come across a robust, auburn haired he-goat rummaging the dustbins who stinks horribly of a provocatively erotic stench. Quite a fine specimen he certainly is and must have sired innumerable progeny by now; a cheeky Satyr that would have given Casanova a run for his money.

The free ranging pigs are everywhere goring the earth for juicy tubers and occasionally harrassed by the mongrels. Being chased by a vicious canine, a pig once bumped into me and was bewildered at the impact: he raised his face and the moon shone brightly on him. I realized I had seen this face before; in fact his was the most recognisable face of my childhood: the face of Albert Einstein. I had a feeling he understood the mystery of the universe, he knew who built the pyramids, but alas! If only he could talk.
Bankura like all cities surely has its vices but unlike Kolkata there is very little extortion. Street smart thugs do not approach house builders for donations nor do they insist on supplying the building materials however of poor quality they may be. This is in stark contrast to the browbeaten Kolkatan who is left to fend for himself and who has no freedom to choose his own hardware store. I only pray that Bankura keeps alive her undefiled virtue for all eternity. During the Autumn festival, Durga Puja, there is hardly any arm twisting or furburger tweezing by the roving gangs of subscription collectors. Even the small transport operators, men who run aoturickshaws and trekkers, are courteous with modest auri sacra fames.

In the field of education Bankura is a shining beacon. The students do exceptionally well in the school leaving examinations. The Christian Mission Schools for boys and girls have a reputation to keep and they do their job sincerely. The Christian College with its sylvan surroundings is a landmark in Bankura and I was delighted to know that they impart education to a significant number of tribal children at concessional rates.
The Pricipal Mr. Richard Bajpaie, is a self-effacing gentleman [no stiff upper lip, no putting on airs] and also a minister of the church. No, I did not ask him his views on the doctrine of trans-substantiation, gays in church service or same sex marriages; reckon, I shall ask when I meet him next.

There is a laid back lifestyle, reminescent of the early 1950s, and the men and women are not glued to their idiot boxes as is common in Kolkata. People do pay courtesy calls and there is much time for a tete-a tete and a family get-together. Come to think of it, home grown Bankuraites are very civil in their approach to strangers and the aged are shown due respect and decency.

It is a marvellous fact that though a district capital, Bankura does not boast of any redlight area. It doesn’t have a proper brothel, in a manner of speaking, although a few savvy whores can be had for the asking in the seedier areas of the city. I am informed by my dermatologist friend that the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases is unbelievingly low in this jewel of a city. The answer certainly lies in the rather simplistic reason that Bankura is far from the National Highway and the floating population of truck drivers and fellow travellers is remarkably scanty.

Bankura is a strong contender for the last bastion of innocence in West Bengal. I was astonished to learn from quite a few women that the nearly-vanished Edwardian art of coitus-interruptus is still practised as a method of family planning : “he always withdraws in time, he is such a sweet darling”.

CIRCE:AN ETERNAL ENIGMA

At the very onset I must apologize to the shade of Ms. Virginia Woolf for writing on a woman without being the least qualified to do so: I am not a woman, I am not a feminist and I have never immersed myself in anthropology. Not that I am a misogynist but I have seldom come across an article on Circe written by a man or a woman who depicts her without horns and a broomstick.


It was in the early 1960s when Nirad Choudhury wrote an award winning non-fiction called the Continent of Circe that aroused my interest in this charming lady. Not that I understood much of what he wrote but I gathered from my English teacher, who always donned a three piece suit even in the torrid summer, that Circe was an enchanting woman in Homer’s Odyssey who made animals out of men and held them in captivity. Like other school boys in quest of esoteric knowledge I asked some of my forward looking seniors what Circe was all about and the inevitable reply was “Don’t waste your time on that bitch, read ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ instead”. I was in junior high school then and the hormones of those pubescent days had stirred inquisitiveness in me to the opposite sex; what girls did in their spare time, what books they read at leisure, how they did their coiffures, who were their heroes etc: in short what was it to be a girl. Like many boys of my class I had a crush on my mother, which I later understood to be a quasi-fatal manifestation of Oedipus complex and I imagined Circe to have bountiful breasts, not necessarily pendulous, delightful to behold and more delightful to play with and the nipples oozing milk and honey. As years rolled by, Circe remained deep in my brain and on reading E.V.Riew’s translation [in Penguin Classics] of Odyssey; I once again forayed back in time to the magic moments of my childhood to pay homage to this fascinating enchantress.


Odyssey is the story of the Greek hero Odysseus who is homebound after the fall and sack of Troy. Next to the great Achilles he is the most charismatic of the Greeks and Homer describes him variously as the resourceful, of the nimble feet and the nimble wit, the sacker of cities, the favourite of Zeus or in other words he was the quintessential male: bold in spirit and daring, and master of stratagems. For those of us who hardly ever brought any prizes from the school games he was all that we wished to be. His travails across the sea, hopping from one island to another, surviving encounters with cannibals and standing up to the very wrath of gods were all heady wine to the awe struck neophyte.

Circe, Κϊρκη in Greek, is mentioned in book 10 [chapter 10] of the Odyssey and also in book 12. Odysseus and his crew land in Circe’s island Aeaea after narrowly escaping the cannibals of Laestrygonian land. Only a solitary ship remains of the mighty flotilla that left Troy. Homer introduces Circe as the beautiful goddess with a woman’s voice. She is the daughter of the Sun, sired on Perse, offspring of the Ocean. On the third day Odysseus sets off to reconnoiter the island when he descried smoke arising from Circe’s house which stood in a clearing of the forest of oak trees. The colour of the smoke is relevant; it is red, which prompts Odysseus to return and send a team to investigate the house. Why the smoke is red in colour, Homer does not explain but surely it has something to do with Circe’s enigma: sorcery.


Next day Odysseus divided his crew into two parties and by lottery it fell on the party led by Eurylochus to explore Circe’s house. Eurylochus and his team of twenty-two men approached Circe’s house which was built of stone and were surprised to see mountain-lions and wolves roaming freely about. But instead of attacking the men, the ferocious animals came fawning to them, wagging their tails like pet dogs greeting their masters. They heard Circe singing inside the house while she was working on the loom and the music must have been seductive.


One of them called out to her and Circe appeared at the door and invited them in. Only Eurylochus, the sceptic, suspected a trap and remained outside. Circe offered the visitors chairs to sit on and then prepared their victuals. To this she added a drug she had prepared and served her guests. The unwary Greeks devoured the food with relish and promptly lost all memory of their native land. Circe took a stick in her hand and goaded them to the pigsty: the men were all turned into swine with bristles and snouts; however they retained their human intelligence. Here lay double tragedy: a human mind in an animal’s body.


Eurylochus had observed everything from the outside and he rushed back to the ship and narrated his dismal story. Odysseus and the remaining members of the crew were deeply troubled by what they heard. Odysseus girding his mighty sword on his shoulder decided to visit Circe’s house to rescue his comrades but least knew how to do so. Here Providence or, as the Greeks say, Almighty Zeus helped him. On his way he met Hermes, the messenger of the Gods, walking the other way and looking a lot younger and attractive. [Incidentally Hermes is remembered in mythology for fathering a child on Aphrodite- Hermaphrodite, a child of dubious genitals.] Homer does not mention where Hermes was coming from but the description alludes that Hermes was heading back from Circe’s where he might have shared her bed.


Godsend Hermes cautions Odysseus about Circe’s bewitching powers and gives him a potent antidote: the herb ‘moly’ which is forbidden to a mortal to pluck but Hermes being a god is empowered to do so. Furthermore Hermes tells Odysseus that on escaping transmogrification he will be invited by Circe to share her bed which he must not refuse if he wishes to bring back his fallen comrades. But Circe will have one more trick up her sleeve; that on stripping him naked she will rob him of his courage and manhood. He must immediately unscabbard his sword and rush at Circe who will then fall at his knees and plead mercy. Odysseus should make her promise by the very gods of high Olympus not to play any more tricks and to liberate the captives from her bondage.


Thus forewarned and forearmed, Odysseus reached Circe’s house and called out to her. As foretold by Hermes, Odysseus is entertained by Circe and offered a wholesome repast which the antidote moly renders harmless. Circe is astounded and she recalls a prophecy that one Odysseus returning from Troy will be proof against her ministrations. She now invites Odysseus to share her bed and understand each other better during the intimacy. Odysseus sees through Circe’s plan and as urged by Hermes rushes at her with his naked sword ready to strike. A terrified Circe falls on her knees and pleads mercy to which Odysseus agrees provided she promises not to play any more tricks and to release her captives to which she promptly consents. Circe is now a changed woman, she uses her stick and herbal paste to make the captive swine humans once again and there is a happy reunion of the crew of Eurylochus and the remaining men.


Odysseus spends one whole year in Circe’s company; Homer says ‘as noted by the change of seasons’. Odysseus the champion at Troy is treated majestically by Circe and sleeps with her during his stay at Aeaea. After a year he is reminded by his crew to return to their native Ithaca. And Odysseus sought Circe’s help for his onward journey. Circe does not hesitate to render help; she is not annoyed nor is she sad but wishes well of Odysseus and his tempest-tossed crew.


Homer’s book on Circe raises many questions the primal one being ‘was she really a witch? Witchcraft as we understand today was unknown to the ancient Greeks. A woman dabbling in decoctions and concoctions was said to possess magical powers, the power to rejuvenate the old and infirm and also bewitch unsuspecting humans. The appearance of Hermes as he passes Odysseus is that of a young boy when the beard first darkens the face. Homer does not tell us whether Hermes ate at Circe’s table or he also bedded her but as Hermes cautions Odysseus about Circe’s guiles, it may be understood that Hermes had his carnal knowledge of her.


Odysseus first has a feel of the supra-natural on seeing red smoke billowing from Circe’s house. Why the smoke was red, remains unanswered. Could it mean to symbolize something definitely Primaeval? Odysseus was no novice to blood, having fought at Troy and partaken in its sacking. Or Odysseus thought it had something to do with ‘katamene’, the blood issuing from the female without violence and said to possess mystic properties which the ancients in their innocence understood so poorly. Homer the master story-teller does not elaborate.


Why should Circe ensnare humans and turn them into animals remains a mystery. She was a goddess, a lot more powerful than any mortal and had nothing to fear from anyone. She lived in a lonely island and had only three maids for company and was totally destitute of any masculine
attention. However to those whom she was pleased to offer her sexual favours, Odysseus for example and possibly Hermes too, she bestowed an invigorating youth. It is quite possible to believe that she found most men unworthy of her bed, or to say it in plain terms, unfit to fertilize her and produce an offspring of her choice. Homer does not mention it but some other Greek playwrights tell of a son of Circe by Odysseus.


Let us look at it from another angle. Circe symbolizes the eternal woman, created at the very beginning of life, ever vigilant and ever patient, waiting and watching, relentlessly, over the shifting sands of time, like some silver crested mountain, to produce the perfect ovum which on mating will form the Super Male, the ultimate conqueror and benefactor of the Universe. What else can explain her mischievous propensity to turn men into swine or to castrate those who escaped her first attempt at bewitchment? She was searching for the perfect man, the alpha male of modern terminology, whose seed would fecundate her to produce a Son she was hoping for all these millennia.


Homer was indeed in love with this beautiful woman and like all men he was unable to understand the woman he loved. His infatuation is evident when he fails to give us any idea what Circe looked like: the shape of her head , the colour of her hair, the angle of her nose, the rondure of her breasts, the flatness of her abdomen, the music of her voice, the serenity of her eyes or the silkiness of her alabaster thighs. He gives himself away when he makes Circe do a redoubtable about turn, from being viciously evil to being simply divine and benevolent. Odysseus was no novice to the charms of a woman and had spent ten years in the tumult of a camp; he had partaken in the sack of Troy where the vanquished women were taken as war trophies. Yet he was destined by Providence to guard against the wiles of a woman who chose her bed-mates with maturity and caution. He was born to the gore and to the wanderlust as Circe was born to produce the unimpeachable offspring. Circe later on advises Odysseus to make the dangerous journey to the under-word ‘Hades’, from whose bourne no traveller returns, to seek out the soul of the prophet Tieresias and to know his destiny. She knew the answer to Odysseus’ questions yet she sent him on an arduous journey. She wanted him to see for himself the outcome of war: its total futility, its misery and its rapacity. For Circe indeed was immortal; she belonged to the past, she is in the present and she will be in the future. She understood that the male principle will, throughout its tenure on earth, be bent upon destruction of the species whereas she, the very epitome of the female principle, will be called upon to produce the perfect man who will be the repository of empyreal wisdom, [LOGOS in Greek] and our saviour. Her womb will be given the pride of place: it shall nurture and nourish Him who will recall humankind to sanity and prevent the world from utter destruction.

MAINLAND CHINA, CALCUTTA

January the sixth being my birthday, my daughter Ananya, a soft ware techie invited us for lunch at Mainland China, a premier restaurant in Kolkata specializing in Chinese cuisine. My wife and I along with two of my uncles [both octogenarians] and their better halves, my cousin sister and my sister –in- law and her daughter made up the team.

The restaurant is quite a groovy place and at lunch time is rather crowded. We were ushered in by smartly attired waiters to our table and on sitting down everyone sang ‘A happy birthday to you’ to me. Not that it was embarrassing but I would have appreciated a quieter welcome. The ambience was sophisticated but not stifling. And who is bothered when one is among one’s very own, the few, the very few whom one loves dispassionately.

Ananya advocated a buffet to which all of us agreed. The waiter served us chicken soup along with mou-mou, both steamed and fried. It was simply divine. Afterwards we lined up for the main buffet. There was a wide range of choice and dish in hand we helped ourselves to each item.


``Oh, Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
Take thou in charge this day!


Baby corn in sauce, ladies fingers with mushrooms, two types of noodles, rice with shredded chicken, two preparations of chicken, fish in whitish sauce and crabs. Yes crabs; and they were the main attraction. Forgive me, I am not much of a connoisseur of Chinese delicacies and I am unable to give an exact description of the dishes, but the food was indeed delicious. Aditi, my niece, is quite at home with chopsticks and she used them with delectable élan. The rest of us used fork and spoon but when it came to the crunch we had to use our fingers. Yes your guess is right; for the crabs, especially to get at the claw-meat there was no other way. And the crabs, both the corpus and the claws were exceedingly succulent. The elder of my uncles did not try it; his dentures would not permit. Time and again we went to the long table and refilled our dishes and the conversation that flowed was congenial.

There were two ladies, both Indians, in their late fifties dressed in European style eating with chopsticks sitting immediately behind me. Nothing unusual in that but suddenly one of them felt unwell and was comforted by the other. I approached her and thought of saying ‘ete vous malad?’ mistaking them to be well versed in French. However she spoke in chaste Bengali that she was allergic to ajina moto [sodium glutamide] and the food in the restaurant had a generous sprinkling of the same. I further gathered from her that ajina moto was banned in the hotels of Europe when I politely informed her that it was in regular usage in India as an essential ingredient of Chinese cookery. Anyway her vitals were well maintained and I informed the maitre’d who had come running by then to offer her some brandy. She gulped down the drink and quickly recovered and her spirits soared.

Time slipped by as we did justice to our fare. My cousin informed me that ajina moto was indeed banned in Europe; I wasn’t all that certain though. Aditi, the sweet darling, regaled us with tales about Switzerland which she had visited last year. I was intrigued to know that the second and third piercing of her ears were a Swiss affair! Ananya later recounted her life in the information industry at Hyderabad, the pranks they play and the dressing down they receive from the project manager.

My sister–in–law Sharmila, who is Aditi’s mother, is a many splendoured lady. A product of Presidency College, Calcutta, she has an excellent academic record, and wonder of wonders, is a superb cook to boot. Her forte is ice-cream and soufflés. But the drudgery of a home-maker is taking its toll; she says she no longer makes ice-cream on her daughter’s request, on the contrary she hands over the money for ice-cream to her daughter and tells her that all the ice-creams in her repertoire are available in the City Centre. There is wisdom somewhere in this but it overshot me.

Talking of ice-creams, its time to describe what we had for desserts. There were fried crispies dipped in syrup and ice-cream. We had an over generous helping of the dessert.

We ate and ate is if there was no tomorrow, my better half making innumerable bee-lines to the ice-cream table. Talk about watching the calories; its ‘gone with the wind’.



And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods.


It was time to say goodbye; but wait a minute. No we did not sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. The waiter brought a cake and a tumbler with an electronic cracker to me and I had to do the honours to blow out the candle. We all shared a piece of cake before we left.


It was an experience worth the visit. Mainland China is indeed a place where good food can be had for the asking at competitive rates. And believe me the clientele there, as it appeared, are well behaved and do not flaunt their wealth and N.R.I manners if any.

CATO THE YOUNGER

Was it a conspiracy of fate that Republican Rome in her dying throes produced such men of eminence the likes of whom the world has seldom seen, leave alone seen holding the centre stage? Like some ethereal apparition they appeared in brilliant effulgence and then faded away heralding a period of universal gloom.

When the civil wars of Marius and Sulla were over, when the banks of the Tiber were breathing the draughts of relief once again, there emerged men of exceptional caliber to guide the destiny of Rome. The names of Julius Caesar, Cicero and Pompey the Magnus reverberate today with awe and splendour across the long corridor of time. What was it in the Roman psyche, in the Roman ethos and in the Roman upbringing that gave us these men of indomitable spirit and lustrous mind which lesser mortals throughout the ages have tried to emulate and only a few have succeeded?

Cato the Younger, named after his great grand father, Cato the Elder, was no exception. He has gone down in history for his stubbornness and incorruptibility. There were many exceptional facets to his character and his whole life upheld the ennobling qualities that Providence bestows upon her favourite. He was born in Rome in 95 BCE, of Patrician parents and was orphaned at an early age. His maternal uncle brought him up along with his siblings. Even at an early age he showed his mettle when he refused to be bullied by elder students, his teacher or by any political big-wig.

On coming of age Cato left his uncle’s house to live independently and studied philosophy and moral and political questions. In his day he was the greatest practitioner of Stoic Philosophy. He tempered his body to withstand the extremes of heat and cold and could do with a minimum of food and clothing. He used to avoid the luxury of riding a horse and often traversed long distances on foot when his compatriots and juniors sat on the saddle.


Cato saw military service in Macedon where he commanded a legion. He shared with his soldiers their work, food and living quarters. He was a frontline leader of his men and was strict in discipline and punishment. He enjoyed the undiluted love of his legionaries. Later on he visited the Roman colonies in Asia and conversed with the famed Philosophers, especially the revered teachers of the Stoic school.

On his return to Rome he was elected a quaestor which entailed supervision of the treasury. Cato made a thorough study of the taxes and kept a close watch on functioning of the tax collectors. He did not hesitate to punish those guilty of embezzlement and extortion.

Afterwards he became a senator and he never missed a single session of the house. He was the first to arrive and the last to leave after the day’s business was over. Cato publicly rebuked them who shirked their senatorial responsibilities.

The women in his life

His relations with women were to say the least, strange, if not downright confusing. He was initially betrothed to Aemelia Lepida who was earlier engaged to Cornelius Caepio. This suitor had declined to marry her and Cato was free to make his proposal which he did as per custom. Matters were progressing amicably and the marriage was destined to take place in the not too distant future when Cornelius reappeared on the scene, proposed to Aemelia and ultimately married her. Cato was infuriated and insisted on dragging the pair to court for breach of faith but was prevented by his friends. A distraught Cato gave vent to his ire by penning some vitriolic poems.

Cato later on married Atilia. She bore him a son and a daughter, the famous Porcia who was to have the legendary Brutus as her second husband. At the height of the Cataline conspiracy when Rome was engulfed in tumults and chaos everywhere, when her very existence as a sovereign republic was precarious and the conspiracy was being passionately discussed threadbare in the Senate, there happened an unseemly incident that forever riveted the hatred of Cato for Julius Caesar. A letter was brought in the Senate to Julius Caesar which Julius read. Cato lambasted Caesar for ignoring the affairs of the state and indulging in frivolous pursuits. He further alleged that Caesar was in league with the conspirators and was indulging in clandestine activities. Caesar handed over the letter to Cato to read aloud which was a love letter from Cato’s sister to Caesar. Cato was humiliated and disgusted. For Caesar had a notorious reputation of sleeping with and debauching his political opponent’s wives. Later on Cato divorced his wife Atilia for adultery with the same Julius Caesar.

He then married Marcia Phillipa and was happy in her company. Cato had an admirer, Quintus Hortensius, matured in years, a renowned orator and a man of great virtue. Quintus desired to have an alliance with Cato by marriage and proposed to marry Cato’s daughter Porcia. "For," said he, "though this in the opinion of men may seem strange, yet in nature it is honest, and profitable for the public that a woman in the prime of her youth should not lie useless, and lose the fruit of her womb, nor, on the other side, should burden and impoverish one man, by bringing him too many children. Also by this communication of families among worthy men, virtue would increase, and be diffused through their posterity; and the commonwealth would be united and cemented by their alliances." Cato answered, that he loved Hortensius very well, and much approved of uniting their houses, but he thought it strange to speak of marrying his daughter, when she was already given to another. Then Hortensius, turning the discourse, did not hesitate to speak openly and ask for Cato's own wife, for she was young and fruitful, and he had already children enough. Neither can it be thought that Hortensius did this, as imagining Cato did not care for Marcia; for, it is said, she was then with child. Cato, perceiving his earnest desire, did not deny his request, but said that Philippus, the father of Marcia, ought also to be consulted. Philippus, therefore, being sent for, came; and finding they were well agreed, gave his daughter Marcia to Hortensius in the presence of Cato, who himself also assisted at the marriage. This caused a massive scandal in Rome but Cato, the stoic, remained unperturbed. Modern feminists may scream ‘murder’ that in this rather peculiar affair Marcia was never consulted but such was the genius of those times that Marcia dutifully consented to her husband’s and father’s requests.
Stranger it may seem that after the death of Hortensius, during the consternation at Rome on account of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Cato remarried Marcia.
En passant it may be relevant to mention that the great Octavius on being made Augustus Caesar and Emperor divorced his wife Scribonia and hastily married Livia who was then big with her husband’s child, after first compelling her husband to divorce her.

The Cataline conspiracy

Now we come to the Cataline conspiracy. Cataline a noble youth of Rome led a dissolute life and had dissipated his patrimony quite early. He planned to take over the Senate and the administration by force with the help of his associates and colleagues, brothers in profligacy all; in short a revolution. However this conspiracy was detected and Cataline fled from Rome fearing retribution. Two of his co-conspirators were arrested and their fate was being deliberated in the Senate. Cicero and Julius Caesar spoke in favour of exile and their speeches bear testimony to their clarity of thought and nobleness of spirit. Cato spoke last and a truncated portion of his speech is being presented to have a glimpse of the capacity of a brilliant mind.

"My feelings, Conscript Fathers, are extremely different, when I contemplate our circumstances and dangers, and when I revolve in my mind the sentiments of some who have spoken before me. Those speakers, as it seems to me, have considered only how to punish the traitors who have raised war against their country, their parents, their altars, and their homes but the state of affairs warns us rather to secure ourselves against them, than to take counsel as to what sentence we should pass upon them. Other crimes you may punish after they have been committed; but as to this, unless you prevent its commission, you will, when it has once taken effect, in vain appeal to justice .When the city is taken, no power is left to the vanquished. But, in the name of the immortal gods, I call upon you, who have always valued your mansions and villas, your statues and pictures, at a higher price than the welfare of your country; if you wish to preserve those possessions, of whatever kind they are, to which you are attached; if you wish to secure quiet for the enjoyment of your pleasures, arouse yourselves, and act in defense of your country. We are not now debating on the revenues, or on injuries done to our allies, but our liberty and our life are at stake.

Often, Conscript Fathers, have I spoken at great length in this assembly; often have I complained of the luxury and avarice of our citizens, and, by that very means, have incurred the displeasure of many. I, who never excused to myself, or to my own conscience, the commission of any fault, could not easily pardon the misconduct, or indulge the licentiousness, of others. But though you little regarded my remonstrances, yet the republic remained secure; its own strength was proof against your remissness. The question, however, at present under discussion, is not whether we live in a good or a bad state of morals; nor how great, or how splendid, the empire of the Roman people is; but whether these things around us, of whatever value they are, are to continue our own, or to fall, with ourselves, into the hands of the enemy.

In such a case, does any one talk to me of gentleness and compassion? For some time past, it is true, we have lost the real name of things; for to lavish the property of others is called generosity, and audacity in wickedness is called heroism; and hence the state is reduced to the brink of ruin. But let those, who thus misname things, be liberal, since such is the practice, out of the property of our allies; let them be merciful to the robbers of the treasury; but let them not lavish our blood, and, while they spare a few criminals, bring destruction on all the guiltless.

Do not suppose that our ancestors, from so small a commencement, raised the republic to greatness merely by force of arms. If such had been the case, we should enjoy it in a most excellent condition; for of allies and citizens, as well as arms and horses, we have a much greater abundance than they had. But there were other things which made them great, but which among us have no existence; such as industry at home, equitable government abroad, and minds impartial in council, uninfluenced by any immoral or improper feeling. Instead of such virtues, we have luxury and avarice; public distress, and private superfluity; we extol wealth, and yield to indolence; no distinction is made between good men and bad; and ambition usurps the honors due to virtue. Nor is this wonderful; since you study each his individual interest, and since at home you are slaves to pleasure, and here to money or favour; and hence it happens that an attack is made on the defenseless state.

But on these subjects I shall say no more. Certain citizens, of the highest rank, have conspired to ruin their country; they are engaging the Gauls, the bitterest foes of the Roman name, to join in a war against us; the leader of the enemy is ready to make a descent upon us; and do you hesitate; even in such circumstances, how to treat armed incendiaries arrested within your walls? I advise you to have mercy upon them, they are young men who have been led astray by ambition; send them away, even with arms in their hands. But such mercy, and such clemency, if they turn those arms against you, will end in misery to yourselves. The case is, assuredly, dangerous, but you do not fear it; yes, you fear it greatly, but you hesitate how to act, through weakness and want of spirit, waiting one for another, and trusting to the immortal gods, who have so often preserved your country in the greatest dangers. But the protection of the gods is not obtained by vows and effeminate supplications; it is by vigilance, activity, and a prudent measure, that general welfare is secured. When you are once resigned to sloth and indolence, it is in vain that you implore the gods; for they are then indignant and threaten vengeance.

In the days of our forefathers, Titus Manlius Torquatus, during a war with the Gauls, ordered his own son to be put to death, because he had fought with an enemy contrary to orders. That noble youth suffered for excess of bravery; and do you hesitate what sentence to pass on the most inhuman of traitors? Perhaps their former life is at variance with their present crime.

In conclusion, Conscript Fathers, if there were time to amend an error, I might easily suffer you, since you disregard words, to be corrected by experience of consequences. But we are beset by dangers on all sides; Catiline, with his army, is ready to devour us while there are other enemies within the walls and in the heart of the city; nor can any measures be taken, or any plans arranged, without their knowledge. The more necessary is it, therefore, to act with promptitude. What I advise, then, is this: that since the state, by a treasonable combination of abandoned citizens, has been brought into the greatest peril; and since the conspirators have been convicted on the evidence of Titus Volturcius, and the deputies of the Allobroges, and on their own confession, of having concerted massacres, conflagrations, and other horrible and cruel outrages, against their fellow-citizens and their country, punishment be inflicted, according to the usage of our ancestors, on the prisoners who have confessed their guilt, as on men convicted of capital crimes."

Ultimately Cato’s view held sway and the conspirators were summarily executed.


The death of Cato

It goes without saying that Cato led one of the most exceptional of lives. His death or rather the manner of his death surpasses all that he did in his life. Rome was then facing civil strife [49 BCE-46BCE]. Julius Caesar was demanding his pound of flesh which the Senate was reluctant to give. Cato, who harboured a visceral loathing for Caesar, since the Cataline affair, was most vociferous in condemning the excesses and rapacity of Caesar. But when the dye was cast and Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his legions, the hapless city was all turmoil; those inside rushing out and those outside rushing in. The Senate’s sole defender Pompey the Great was old in years and his best was behind him. Caesar led Pompey a merry dance all the way and at the decisive battle at Pharsalus, Macedonia, defeated him round and square. A fleeing Pompey sought refuge in Alexandria, Egypt, where he was slain by the Ptolemies. Cato had accompanied the Senatorial army to Pharsalus and after the rout Cato settled in Utica, Africa [near present day Tunisia]. Caesar with single minded determination landed in Africa and decimated the remnant of the Senatorial army at Thapsus.


Cato on hearing the news was unwilling to live in a world ruled by Caesar. It was not for him to seek clemency from any one, least of all from Caesar, and live the rest of his life in peace. Cato committed suicide by falling on his own sword and disemboweling himself.

Thus ended the life of Cato: a man uncompromising in his beliefs, who stood alone and unrepentant in the face of formidable adversity and who was the foremost champion of liberty.

Seneca, the philosopher and tutor to Caesar Nero, wrote: but lo’ here is a spectacle worthy of the regard of God as he contemplates his works; lo here is a contest worthy of God- a brave man matched against ill fortune. I do not know, I say, what nobler sight the Lord of heaven could find on earth, should he wish to turn his attention there, than the spectacle of Cato, after his cause had already been shattered more than once, nevertheless standing erect among the ruins of the commonwealth.”




The summing up

That Cato was the foremost stoic of his day is needless to mention. Zeno of Citium was the first to establish the Stoic School of Philosophy at the ‘Stoa Poikilos’ in Athens at about 308 BCE. However the concept of Stoicism was first adumbrated by the great Socrates and trickled down to the later generation through his student Antisthenes the Cynic.

Stoicism has now come to mean indifference to pain but initially Stoicism taught freedom from passion by following ‘reason’. The Stoics knew that human flesh is heir to passion and hence unavoidable; but they sought to avoid emotional troubles by the practice of logic, reflection and concentration.

The very kernel of this philosophy was to be free of suffering through ‘Apathy’ as the word apathy was then understood i.e. objectivity or clear judgement. To the Stoic, ‘Reason’ not only encompassed logic but was a votary of that celestial wisdom which the Greeks called logos. The four cardinal virtues of the Stoic Philosophy are wisdom, courage, justice and temperance.

The peculiar marital arrangement of Cato which caused a lot of confusion and scurrility at Rome has never failed to raise indignation in the later ages. To get a proper understanding of the institution of marriage in ancient Rome one must seek refuge in the sterling essay of Professor Ferrero ‘Women of the Caesars’ [1911]

‘The individualistic conception of matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization was alien to the Roman mind, which conceived of these from an essentially political and social point of view. The purpose of marriage was, so to speak, exterior to the pair. As untouched by any spark of the metaphysical spirit as he was unyielding--at least in action--to every suggestion of the philosophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and consolidating the state of which he was master, the Roman aristocrat never regarded matrimony and the family, just as he never regarded religion and law, as other than instruments for political domination, as means for increasing and establishing the power of every great family, and by family affiliations to strengthen the association of the aristocracy, already bound together by political interest.’

Elsewhere he writes ‘More important still were the woman's dower and her personal fortune The Romans not only considered it perfectly honourable, sagacious, and praiseworthy for a member of the political aristocracy to marry a rich woman for her wealth, the better to maintain the lustre of his rank, or the more easily to fulfil his particular political and social duties, but they also believed there could be no better luck or greater honours for a rich woman than for this reason to marry a prominent man. They exacted only that she be of respectable habits, and even in this regard it appears that, during certain tumultuous periods, they sometimes shut one eye.’


Cato was the last obstacle to Julius Caesar toward absolute dictatorship. The death of Cato has been panegyrised by innumerable authors and poets. Reckon it will be in the fitness of things to mention the name of Joseph Addison, the English politician and litterateur, who wrote the play “Cato- a tragedy’ [1713].

Here are some nuggets from the play:-

‘Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it’

‘A Roman soul is bent on higher views:
To civilize the rude, unpolished world,
And lay it under the restraint of laws;
To make man mild, and sociable to man;
To cultivate the wild, licentious savage
With wisdom, discipline, and liberal arts
The embellishments of life; virtues like these
Make human nature shine, reform the soul,
And break our fierce barbarians into men.’

‘To strike thee dumb, turn up thy eyes to Cato!
There may’st thou see to what a godlike height
The Roman virtues lift up mortal man.
While good, and just, and anxious for his friends,
He’s still severely bent against himself;
Renouncing sleep, and rest, and food, and ease,
He strives with thirst and hunger, toil and heat;
And when his fortune sets before him all
The pomps and pleasures that his soul can wish,
His rigid virtue will accept of none.’

‘Better to die ten thousand thousand deaths,
Than wound my honour.’


George Washington was highly enamoured of this play and had it played to his troops in America during the American war of Independence. Furthermore he often paraphrased some quotations from this play while writing his letters.


References:-

Project Gutenberg
Sallust The Cataline Conspiracy
Plutarch The Life of Cato
Ferrero The Women of the Caesars
Addison Cato- A Tragedy

THE MONTHS OF THE CALENDAR

The months of the calendar are very much a part of our lives and whatever we do in them add up to our net worth and existence .But this is old hat; what is interesting is the story behind their nomenclature.

The months are derived from the Roman calendar of antiquity and the words are Latin. Originally the year had only ten months starting from March and ending with December. It was only to be expected that the early Romans should honour the God of War at the very beginning of the year. But more of it later.

It was the genius of Numa Pompilius, who was entrusted with the charge of Rome after the founder Romulus passed away, that added two more months to the calendar. Numa was not a Roman in the truer sense of the term; he was a Sabine. But he was the most cultivated of the people in Rome, indeed a savant if not a sage .He added the first two months, January and February.

January is derived from the Roman God Janus. Janus had two faces, each facing the other, signifying strife and bellicosity. The temple of Janus in Rome had massive iron doors which were always open except when absolute peace reigned, which happened only twice in Roman history; once in Numa’s time and once again during the golden period of Augustus Caesar. Incidentally January is juxtaposed between two years, the old and the new and hence may be visualized having ‘two faces’ looking forward and backward.

February, the second month of the year, is derived from ‘februa’ meaning purification. On the Ides of February i.e. the 15th, the festival of Lupercalia was held. It was a fertility festival consecrated to the preservation of domestic animals from wolves (lupus means wolf) .Lupercal is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar .It is worth remembering that the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she wolf during their childhood. In this festival a young boy used to run around clad in a short garment, striking the onlookers with a branch of a tree as a mark of purification.

March comes next. As mentioned earlier it is named after the Roman god of war, Mars, corresponding to the Greek Aries. Originally it was the first month of the year in the ten-month calendar, later becoming the third after the introduction of January and February. Julius Caesar was poniarded on the Ides of March.

The fourth month is April. There are two concepts as to its derivation. Some claim it honours Venus, Aphrodite in Greek, which appears farfetched as the first two letters are A&P and not A&PH[Φ]. However others believe it is derived from “apert’ or to open (aperture) as in this month the buds open and flowers bloom. Spring exerts herself in right earnest.

May is the next month and is an abbreviation for Maia, the mother of Mercury, Hermes to the Greeks. It is rather strange that Maia should merit a full month as she is not a member of the Olympian twelve. Her son Mercury is however a proper Olympian and is the patron God of thieves, traders, doctors, musicians and many more. His wand, the Caduceus, is the modern emblem of doctors all over. Incidentally the term Hermaphrodite [we all know what it means] is the illegitimate son of Hermes and Aphrodite. The pre-Hellenic function of Hermes was that of chief psychopomp, carrying the soul of the dead to Hades.
His mother Maia then was a substitute for the mother Goddess whose cult was suppressed by patriarchal Hellenes. Naming the month after Maia was a sort of atonement for this injustice

June is named after Juno, Hera to the Greeks. She was the matriarch of the Olympians, being the consort of Jupiter. As Jupiter has a planet to his name, and the largest one at that, it is only proper that his wife should have a month to herself.

That July is named after Julius Caesar is very wall known and he had himself named it so; a matter deemed offensive to his assassins. After the conquest of Egypt, Julius had lengthy discourses with the Egyptian astronomers and he made a sincere attempt at the calendar’s correction. Previously it was called Quintilis, the fifth month. That Julius would choose the fifth month to lend his name to was natural; he claimed Venus as his ancestress. The number five in Latin is V, the first letter of Venus. Furthermore to the ancient mystagogues V represented an isosceles triangle with the base up and apex down, resembling the female reproductive area [Does anyone remember the ubiquitous red triangle of the seventies?] hence symbolizing birth=regeneration=life itself. The reverse triangle with the base down and apex up signified a pyramid =delta=death.

Augustus Caesar named the sixth month Sextilis after him .This happened to be the most inauspicious month to the Romans .The rape of the Sabine women had taken place in this month and this outrage was one of the curses of the Roman republic and the empire. Augustus took upon himself to wipe away the stain of this month. Rome was founded by the two brothers Romulus and Remus with all the riffraff of the country, fugitives, runaway slaves, thieves and the like. But they needed women to breed who were difficult to find. Romulus hit upon a plan: to abduct the Sabine women from a religious gathering. It was executed with precision and Rome had the required women for raising families.

Nothing much need be said about the remaining four months of the year as their names indicate their chronology: - September, October, November& December signifying the seventh eighth ninth and tenth months respectively. However as Lupercalia is spoken of earlier, so a brief mention may be made of the chief Roman festival, the Saturnalia. It was held in December during the winter solstice and the whole of Rome were literally ablaze with fun and gaiety. The Festival lasted four days initially when the later of the Caesars of the Julian house put in a fifth honouring the youth of Rome and called it Juvenalia.

On Emperor Constantine embracing Christianity every attempt was made to suppress the polytheistic religion of Rome which was called Paganism; and what better way to bring it about than celebrating the birthday of Jesus Christ during the Saturnalia? The Bible nowhere mentions the birthday of Jesus; the Church of Rome persisted and ultimately Paganism withered away.



Calendar is derived from the Latin word Kalend meaning the first day of the month. The word month itself means moon, moon= mon=month; the lunar
cycle takes a month.

HYPATIA : AN ODE

An ode to Hypatia:

Thou Art Not Born For Death, Immortal Bird
No Hungry Generations Tread Thee Down
John Keats

Let us now praise famous women and our mothers that bore us [no pun intended]The woman I am about to praise this delightful autumn morning was indeed famous but she was never a mother; for she died as she lived; a spotless virgin dedicated to the cause of mathematics and philosophy.

Hypatia was the daughter of the mathematician and philosopher Theon. Theon had written an excellent commentary on Euclid’s geometry, and his name would have been well remembered by posterity had not his daughter outshone him.

Hypatia was born in Alexandria in 370?A.D. Alexandria in those days was the capital of Egypt. Egypt was a part of the Roman Empire and had a Roman governor. Its populace was various and mixed: native Egyptians, Greeks, Jews and Romans. Indeed Egypt was the melting pot of the whole world where East met the West.

There all the religions had existed in harmony: ancient Egyptian, Paganism of the Greeks, Judaism of the Jews and Christianity of the later Romans. Theon was Greek in origin, and a Pagan by birth.

Alexandria was then one of the greatest cities of the Empire if not of the whole world. It rivalled Athens and Rome as a centre of excellence. There were no unemployed or unemployable in the whole city; even the lame and the blind found something worthy of their labour. The Alexandrians manufactured papyrus, blew glass and wove linen. Furthermore the trade of Asia and Africa passed through Alexandria on the way to Rome, its harbour was blessed by a splendid lighthouse on the island of Pharos. Though founded by Alexander the great, it was the genius of the Ptolemies, the ruling dynasty, that raised this city to celestial heights. The Ptolemies patronized art and culture and Alexandria boasted one of the greatest libraries of antiquity, nay, some scholars believe it had the greatest library that ever was. Librarians, teachers and students were funded by the public exchequer to devote their time and energy studying and teaching. Theon was the chief librarian during his longevity.

In addition to the library, Alexandria had a magnificent temple of Serapis which paralleled the Parthenon of Athens and the temple of Capitoline Jove at Rome. It was a unique blend of the best of the Egyptian architecture with the creators of the Athenian Acropolis. The Egyptians and the Greeks worshipped there. Serapis was credited to being the source of the Nile and was responsible for the annual flooding which made Egypt the coveted granary of the Roman Empire.

Hypatia was the student of her father from whom she learnt her mathematics .She is credited with writing commentaries on the Arithmetica of Diophantus, on the Conics of Apollonius and the Arithmetical canons of Ptolemy. All these books are now lost. Later on she travelled to Athens where she learnt Philosophy and became a teacher in the Neo-Platonic school. It may be recalled that the study of science and philosophy was no easy matter for a woman in those days and to excel at it and become a teacher was simply unheard of. Hypatia not only excelled but her renown spread far and wide.

This Neoplatonic school was founded by Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus. She was the greatest votary of this philosophy in Alexandria and her classes were always full of students eager to learn the mysteries of human existence. There exists an interesting story of Hypatia being constantly pestered by one of her over-eager pupils for her amorous favours which many modern-day feminists cite as an example of sexual harassment in those days. Far from it; sexual harassment has little to do with sex and even less with harassment, it is all about power and supremacy. As Hypatia was more powerful than her pupil the allegation of sexual harassment holds no water. Hypatia however dissuaded her ardent pupil by displaying a bloodied sanitary napkin and exclaiming “This is of my flesh. If you love me you have to accept this also.” The horrified pupil beat a hasty retreat. For, truly, if a man loved a woman he loved her in her entirety, including her red roses and white roses [menstruation and leucorrhea].

Hypatia taught at the museum of the academy which stood near the temple of Serapis. She had refused many suitors, for philosophy was her first and only love. Many were the students who traveled by land and sea from Athens and Rome, Constantinople and Antioch to hear her expound the intricacies of Plato and Aristotle.

But those were strange times, harsh times. Less than a century earlier the Emperor Constantine had embraced Christianity and it had now become the state religion. Rome was no longer Pagan, it was Christian. But Christianity was split into multiple sects and creeds. The capital was shifted from Rome to Byzantium, now renamed Constantinople. Christianity, the religion of love and compassion, was turned inside out by their followers and preachers. Christians persecuted Christians on specious interpretations of the Holy Book. The history of this period makes gory reading. The streets of all the major cities of the Empire were littered with the corpses of the devout; even elderly matrons and young ladies were not immune to unmentionable and unspeakable violations.

A semblance of normalcy, and only a semblance, was restored during the reign of the most Christian Emperor Theodosus. The orthodox faith now became the official religion of the Empire and all other forms of worship were prohibited by law. Christianity was young and virile. With utter viciousness she sought to destroy all the temples, shrines, religious texts and emblems of the unbelievers. She had the might of the state and the sword of the Roman Army behind her.

At Alexandria, power was shared by a prefect who was a civil magistrate and by a bishop who was the spiritual leader. The bishop at this period was Theophilus who is described by Gibbon as “the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue; a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and blood.” To the everlasting shame of the orthodox faith the ignominy of the destruction of the Alexandrine library lies in the sullied hands of Theophilus. Unquenchable being his zeal and fury, he now proceeded to raise the temple of Serapis to rubble. He succeeded majestically in this disgraceful enterprise and one of the marvels of antiquity was forever lost to us.

After the death of Theophilus, his nephew Cyril succeeded to the bishopric. Cyril was raised as a monk, and now he enjoyed absolute power in Alexandria, basking in the confidence of the Roman Emperor
Theodosius. There was indeed a civil magistrate, Orestes by name and a Christian by faith, who tried to prevent the excesses of religious fanaticism of the bigots.

But Cyril was made of a different stuff. Little did he care for religious tolerance and the niceties of human behaviour. Gibbon mentions "Without any legal sentence, without any royal mandate, the patriarch, at the dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack of the synagogues. Unarmed and unprepared, the Jews were incapable of resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the ground, and the episcopal warrior, after rewarding his troops with the plunder of their goods, expelled from the city the remnant of the unbelieving nation."

The Jews who had lived in Alexandria from the time of Alexander were now finished as a nation. Alexandria lost a cultured and creative minority.

Orestes however made an attempt to check this lawlessness of Cyril and his supporters but to no avail. The Emperor of Rome was a puppet in Cyril’s hands. Orestes used to confide in Hypatia, the most famous personage of Alexandria, who advised him not to lose heart. Orestes although a devout Catholic did not subscribe to the religious fanaticism sweeping through Alexandria.

Having tasted victory in his action against the Jews, Cyril cast his vision on the most spectacular icon of Paganism, Hypatia. Gibbon writes ‘In the bloom of beauty, and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers and instructed her disciples; the persons most illustrious for their rank or merit were impatient to visit the female philosopher; and Cyril beheld, with a jealous eye, the gorgeous train of horses and slaves who crowded the door of her academy’

It was the year 415 A.D. Cyril decided to strike. On a clear day as Hypatia was boarding her chariot to go to the Academy hundreds of half starved monks set upon her, dragged her to a nearby church, stripped her naked and flayed her alive with oyster shells, spattering the walls with her innocent blood. The horror is unimaginable and the disgust is revolting. A woman of repute whose very shoestrings Cyril was unworthy to untie, lay brutally massacred by the goons unleashed by this excellent representative of the Christian faith in a church where the saviour of mankind was worshipped.

These monks were the real barbarians in those days" The monks, who rushed with tumultuous fury from the desert, distinguished themselves by their zeal and diligence ... In almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction."

Thus perished Hypatia who had the mind of Socrates and the spirit of Plato in the body of Aphrodite. Her crime? She was a woman, an intellectual and a Pagan. Three heinous offences in those days, sufficient to label her a witch and harlot, when men like Cyril were championing the cause of the Catholic church. For his labours Cyril was canonized and made a saint! Well done Cyril.

Hypatia was the glory of her age and the wonder of ours. The world had to wait the revolutions of sixteen centuries when another woman could equal her in intellectual pursuits. The murder of Hypatia heralded the Dark Ages when scholarship of any sort was frowned upon and condemned by the church. The best books of ancient Greece and Rome were consigned to the flames. Little, very little, of the majesty of the writings of the ancient sages remain.


It will be only befitting to give a few quotations attributed to Hypatia before ending.

"Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel, the more truth we comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond."



All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing.


Wonderful isn’t it?



References

Edward Gibbon: DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Mangasar M Mangasarian : THE MARTYRDOM OF HYPATIA

Kenneth Humphreys : MURDER OF HYPATIA

MIRABILE DICTU

Wonderful to Tell



INTRODUCTION

This is an excerpt from the 45th and 46th chapters of the immortal Latin book THE GOLDEN ASS by Lucias Apuleius. For sheer imagination and hidden wit this book ranks with the very best of the genre; and for unrivalled entertainment one does not know where else to search. Incidentally this is the only Latin novel of the pre-Christian era to have survived the ravages of time. I have relied on William Adlington’s translation [1566] for a grasp of the story. Lucius has used the first person throughout and I have done the same otherwise I believe the charm would be lost. Lucius, the Latin, on his peregrination lands up in Thessaly, Greece, where through magic and witchcraft he is transformed [metamorphosed] into an ass. He retains his human power to think and understand but alas, the power of speech is denied him. His physique though is that of an ass. Many wonderful adventures befall him and this is one of them.


‘Lend me your ear, reader: you shall enjoy yourself’


My master, the soldier, sold me to two of his underlings, the Baker and the Cook for a paltry sum of eleven pence. The Baker baked sweet bread and other delicacies and the Cook prepared superb meat for his master. They shared their hearth and victuals in common and would often take me from one place to another to carry their goods and I was like a brother to them. I was very happy to stay there; for at night after the day’s work was done and supper was over, they would keep many a dainty dish in the chamber where I was kept, before they retired to their rooms after shutting the chamber door. The Cook kept dishes of pigs, chicken and fish and the Baker laid out a table of fine bread, cakes, pastries and biscuits dipped in honey. Now I had my heart’s fill of these savouries and I was neither a fool nor an ass to spare the meats and eat hay. For a long time matters proceeded like this, for I was an honest ass and I took a little of one dish and a little of another to remain undetected as long as possible.

As time passed I became sturdy and commenced devouring the whole dishes which made the Baker and the Cook to suspect something fishy. But they never mistrusted me and were on the lookout for a thief. As no thief was apprehended they soon came to charge each other of infidelity, as follows ‘you have broken faith and promise by stealing the choicest meat and selling it for profit; yet you take your share of the residue that is left. If you do not like our partnership let us go asunder; for the heavy loss I sustain because of your greed will soon cause fraying of the tempers and much else besides’. To which the other replied ‘I praise your cunning and sophistry. After secretly taking away the meat you start complaining whereas I have suffered your thievery for a long time without complaining as you were a brother to me’. After discussing the matter over a length of time they settled the issue amicably swearing
by the very Gods of Olympus. They endeavoured to catch the thief by whatever methods necessary. It neither was in their imagination that a humble ass standing alone in a corner would eat such meat nor were they inclined to believe it was the handiwork of mice or harpies to polish off whole dishes of meat. Meanwhile being fed on such delectable dishes I became muscular, my skin became glossy, my hair developed a luster and I became robust and gallant in every part. This led to my undoing for it dawned upon the duo that I was appearing ever so sleek and shiny in spite of hardly eating any hay. When the time came for their rest they went to bed locking their chamber door and peeped through a hole. They saw me doing full justice to the meat and the cake, and without bothering for their loss, fell into peals of laughter. Wondering exceedingly at this marvel, they called in the servants of the house to show the voracious appetite of the ass. Such was the din created by the laughter that the master of the house rose up and wished to be told the reason of such hilarity. After being a party to it, he too peeped through the hole and on being satisfied, he ordered the door to be opened so that he could watch the scene without any encumbrance.

When I saw that everyone was viewing me with pleasure I became more bold and continued eating without the least shame. The master however ended the episode by bringing me to his parlour and spread all kinds of meat on his table for me to savour. I greedily ate up all the meat that was placed there. Being pleased with the novelty he ordered a servant to place wine before me which was immediately complied with. Everyone watched eagerly to see what would happen; but I did not require much of a prodding. I put my lips together and finished off the whole wine in one suck. Overjoyed at this unheard of phenomenon, the master called forth the Baker and the Cook and paid them four times the amount they had paid for me and took possession of me. He handed me over to his hostler with the admonition not to spare any expense for my comfort. This he did and did well and to further curry favour with his master he taught me a thousand etiquettes; not that I needed much teaching. Among other things he taught me how to sit on my tail at the table, how I should leap and dance holding my forefeet high in the air, on being asked a question how I should nod my head and if I wished a drink or two, to gaze constantly at the pot. Everything that he taught me I did obediently and I could have done the same without his teaching but I feared that had I done so I would be considered to be bewitched and thrown to wild animals. In a short time my fame was spread far and near and my master was renowned all over the country because of me. The onlooker would say ‘there goes the man whose ass will eat and drink with him, that will dance and if questioned will show signs easily understandable’.


Before proceeding further I must tell you who my master was and of what country. He was Thiasus, born at Corinth which is an important town of Greece and had held many important offices and was now elevated to Lordship. To show his benevolence to the masses he wished to offer a public show of gladiator fighting for a period of three days and had now come to Thessaly to purchase wild beasts and fighters.


After he had bought the necessary items for his show he became homeward bound. However he would neither travel in a chariot or a wagon nor would he ride a Thessalian horse, a French stallion or a Spanish mule. He had me nicely caparisoned with a brave harness, with purple coverings, with a silver bridle with pictured cloth. I was trimmed with barbs of gold with shriveling bells hanging from my neck. Such was I decked up to bear my master who with soothing words rode on my back and rejoiced to have me as a Servant to carry him, and a Companion to share his victuals at the dining table.

A long while later, after traveling by land and sea, we arrived at Corinth where the multitude came to see us, not out of any reverence for my master but to see me as I my fame had preceded me. My master made a lot of money, as people rushed in to see my pranks and the master had the gates closed so only the paying public could enter. I became a highly profitable companion to my team.

In the gallery there was a noble and rich lady who was delighted to behold me, and finding no recourse to her passion and perverted appetite paid continuous attention to me like Pasiphae in the story of ‘Pasiphae and the Bull’. Being exasperated she promised a substantial reward to my keeper, the hostler, for the pleasure of my company for one night. The hostler readily agreed and after I had supped with my master at his parlour, my keeper took me to the lady’s residence. She was waiting eagerly for me: I am not able to tell you in exact detail how things were prepared for our enjoyment but four eunuchs were reclining on a bed of soft downs, the cover was a cloth of gold and the pillows on which this lady was accustomed to place her head were tender and delicate. On our arrival, the eunuchs did not delay the commencement of our sport and locked the door and departed. The chamber was well lit with lamps that gave a clear glow. The lady undressed and was nude to her naked skin and taking hold of a lamp she anointed herself with balm and did the same to me. She specially anointed my nose and afterward kissed me lovingly; not as they do in brothels and seraglios but with deep purity and sincerity, all the while moaning these words ‘you are the one I love, you are the only person I desire, without you I cannot live’ and other such words that women use when they are burning with passion.

Then she took me by my halter and laid me down on the bed which was nothing unwelcome to me as she was a beautiful woman and I had already had wine at my master’s and she had rubbed balm on me. But a thought perturbed me quite a lot: how could I with my large and hairy legs embrace so fair a woman or how should I touch her smooth and silky skin with my hard hooves or how could I possibly kiss her delectable lips with my monstrous mouth and stony teeth or how this lady who was young and tender will receive me.


If I hurt this woman in any way, I knew, I was sure to be thrown to the wild animals. Meanwhile this lady kissed me and with burning eyes said ‘you are my rabbit, you are my sparrow’ and shortly afterward embraced my body all around and had her pleasure of me. I realized then that the mother of Minotaur had no cause to complain when she was covered by the Bull. When the night was over with a lot of joy and very little sleep the lady went to my keeper to bargain for me for another night. My keeper readily obliged partly for gain and partly for discovering a new pastime to please my master. My master on being informed of my new luxury was mighty glad and thought about exhibiting my prowess in the open for which a search had to be made for a suitable woman as the lady I was accustomed to ‘do’ could not be displayed on account of her wealth and status.

Hyderabad : A Charming City

We checked into a hotel in Paradise Circle in Secunderabad which was much to our liking. It was not a fancy place but relatively neat and cozy. It was an out and out a veggie joint and the notice board glaringly declared that consuming alcohol and eating non-vegetarian food in the hotel premises are strictly forbidden. So far so good. However the room manual, as well as the printed receipt, had this in small print “It is forbidden to bring in sex workers in the rooms”. Wonder of wonders! I am a family man and I had been to Hyderabad with my better half. Not for me to indulge in this luxury however enticing it may seem. But for men traveling alone, I reckon a few moments with an understanding female in total privacy is a sure tonic for weariness. So what if she is a strumpet! Later on I realized that the hotel lacked two wholesome amenities; there was no residential doctor and, I understand, there was no residential ghost either. A residential ghost or two would have definitely added to the charm of the place.

The star attraction of Hyderabad is no longer the fabled Charminar but
the much publicized Ramoji Film City. Ramoji Film City is about 25 kilometres from Paradise Circle and a taxi ride brought us to our destination. Surely Ramoji Rao has invested a lot of money in his dream project. It is indeed a place worth visiting and revisiting. The entry fee of rupees two hundred is worth every penny.

We spent five hours there, and, believe me; we could not do proper justice to a quarter of the sights. It is an ersatz world of tinsel and make-believe. Immaculate lawns of verdant green rolled majestically to our view as we passed by in our guided tour with glimpses of plaster of Paris statues strewn in between. We had to climb a hillock to soak in the full grandeur of the environment. Post lunch we were entertained to a live action replay of a Hollywood Western, reminiscent of say ‘Gunfight at O.K Coral’. We visited the caves and saw the Hindu God Nataraj, in its adamantine incarnation, execute the ‘Tandav’ dance with frightful élan.

Paradise Circle is named after the restaurant Paradise renowned for its biriyani. We savoured the delicacy and truly it lives up to its reputation.
The kebabs were undoubtedly tasty but it lacked the crisp flavour of kebabs cooked over simmering charcoal fire.

Where Secunderabad and Hyderabad meet is the Hussain Sagar – a ponderous lake having a monolithic statue of Lord Buddha at its middle. A cool breeze wafts through the waters and the traveler can get some relief from the sun, idling his time under the canopies. As the sun sets and night encompasses the land, the lake is a pleasure to view. Smart fluorescent lightings add an eerie luster to the romance of the place. Not for nothing is it a favourite haunt of lovers, assembling in pairs to imbibe the vesper flavours.


The Birla temple is not far off where those with a religious bend of mind can visit and offer their prayers after climbing some stairs. Not that it leaves the devotee rather short of breath but those with compromised lungs beware.


Salar Jung Museum has a reputation to keep. It is the finest art museum in India and the prime exhibit, the century old clock, which chimes the hour every hour, draws crowds by the hundreds. The statue of veiled Rebecca is sheer poetry in marble. How was it sculpted remains a mystery to me. The salon of European paintings and sculptures on the first floor, with exquisite nudes in alluring postures, simply takes the breath away. Time flies surreptitiously to the avid museologist engrossed in unraveling the artifacts on display.

Charminar rules supreme at the heart of the old city and one has to climb a flight of stairs to reach the first floor. Though the walls are pretty disfigured by graffiti, there is a musty aroma to the place giving the visitor a benediction worth the travail. Nearby are the shops doing brisk business in trinkets like colourful bangles and ear rings. The famous pearls of Hyderabad are available here and women spend hours shopping to their satisfaction.

A foray to the Golconda fort is a must. Climbing to the top is quite a labour . A panaromic view of Hyderabad can be had for the asking. The whole place is seeped in history. From the very bowels of this fort [which was a diamond mine previously] came the fabulous Kohinoor diamond. The son-et-lumiere at 7pm when the best known voice in India [big B’s] expounds the history of this place in English ought not to be missed at any cost. However the tourist should be well advised to take a supply of mosquito repellants with him.

Jubilee Hills is another place worth a visit. This is where the people who have made it big live. Hyderabad Circle, a shopping mall, caters to the cognoscenti. The Vengal Rao Park is but a short distance away, where well manicured lawns with an enclosed lake are a delight to the tourist.


Regarding more mundane matters let me say that the roads are cleaned
regularly and there is hardly any sign of garbage piling up. Driving is indeed a pleasure as no potholes jar the motorist. At busy intersections there are flyovers to ease the traffic. However I was surprised to find an alarming propensity to jump the red light, especially by the two-wheelers. The traffic police indeed do a commendable job and are very helpful. It was rather disturbing to see beggars, mostly lepers, seeking alms by the roadside; surely an anachronism. During my sojourn there, the Traffic Chief had gone nuts, wishing to introduce some newer concepts in Traffic management and restricting some busy thoroughfares in Jubilee Hills to one way vehicles only, leading to inevitable chaos and confusion.

The Deccan Chronicle, the local newspaper, can hold its own against the very best of the country. There was a shocking news of Arab men marrying local Muslim women by paying a large dowry and then leaving them to fend for themselves. I had come across some peculiar advertisements of many Muslim lawyers boldly publicizing their expertise in arranging international marriages [whatever that may mean]. Meanwhile I read an interesting article on local aphrodisiacs highly in demand by the Arabs. It seems there are two varieties; one, a drug, a legitimate produce of the Unani School of Medicine and the other was a liquid extract of the humble earthworm which is used for rubbing in. May the Almighty succour the naïve!

The public transport is well organized. Buses are frequent, relatively comfortable and the fares are competitive to boot. The ubiquitous autos are always there to ferry you places and I believe they don’t take the passengers for a jolly ride. But for the pedestrian, crossing the street is often hazardous and one should keep his eyes wide open.

All said and done the visit will remain memorable and I must be thankful to Hyderabad for allowing us to have another honeymoon after so many years.