A Rather long Short Story 3rd installment

On the rostrum, seated in three compact rows of auditorium chairs were about twenty children, mostly girls, ranging in age from about seven to thirteen. At the first signal given to them by their instructor who looked all-pervasive because of her imposing manners and strident voice, the children looked at one another in bewilderment. Some of them opened their mouth, but were still afraid to articulate the sound, not sure if the others were ready to share the effort. Some of them tried to be clever and just put on an ingratiating smile. With exhortation from the coach to start and be audible they mouthed the words without the necessary feeling. The coach now thought it best not waste time on further exhortation, blew a note on her pipe and the children raised their hymn—books above their heads and started singing in unison. They sang with the unsentimental innocence natural to their age. I had never heard the hymn, but it had a soothing quality and a healing effect; I wished it not to end soon.

Listening, I drifted in thoughts and scanned those young faces absent-mindedly. The child nearest me was in the front row of the group. Well, not exactly a child; she looked about somewhere between fourteen and sixteen, with straight black hair cut to shoulder length, which stuck around her forehead because wet, making her face look unglamorous and common. But as I continued to listen, I noticed that her voice was distinctly superior to others. It was sweet--sounding, and because it was the surest, it naturally led the others.

However, the young lady seemed to be indifferent to the activity she was engaged in at the time because I saw her controlling an overpowering yawn once. It was a closed- mouth, lady-like yawn, but her nostrils gave it away. Her eyes had no expression at all except perhaps that of being unimpressed because of over-familiarity. Once or twice she seemed to scan the people in the audience with a casual interest that did not amount to curiosity, except as if she was counting the heads.

A Rather Long Short Story installment2

Whenever I tried to open a conversation with the lady the cat would snarl viciously from behind the counter to block any further potential or real overtures from the unwelcome alien that was me. Needless to say that it was a wise policy for me to ignore both and go past them straight to the bookshelves.

That day a notice stuck on the window pane  caught my eye and I stopped to read it. It was an announcement of a book-exhibition that was housed in a small public-hall around the next corner. I threw a glance at the inside of the book-shop. The unappealing sight of the gothic cat and its  dumb owner hastened to help me make up my mind in favour of the  book-exhibition around the corner. which was not too far away from there.

By the time I started  walking in the new direction, the drizzle was piercingly sharp, with the wind sweeping past my coat and umbrella with an impatient bustle. As I entered the hall,to my surprise, I found that the exhibition was to start on the next day; I had overlooked this bit of information in my eagerness to find out a new haunt.

In the meantime, the place was occupied by a group of young choir girls practising  singing for the Sunday at Church. By that time, it had started to rain heavily; so there was  no point in venturing out again in the rains. I hung my coat and the umbrella on the stand in the corner and myself in one of the chairs in the front row.

A Rather Long Short Story Chapter 1.

An untitled story


It was humid throughout the day. Soon I have to move on from here and go back home, but still a month to go. Considering the three long years I was posted here for the training as marine engineer one month now seems like a day. With nothing much to do now; this sudden respite feels like a push-over from the buzz of insanity into a suffocating silence.

Vancouver is generally peaceful. It is a town nestling among hills and the sea and is covered by persistent drizzle. That accounts for the feeling of gloom that settles upon outsiders like me who cannot find the pulse of the life in here. That was a particularly cranky day when the sky  and the weather were stubbornly gloomy and grey. After breakfast I had to find something to occupy myself till lunch and that was a pretty long interval. There were two oldish bookshops on the street behind my lodging. I always felt at home in the one where a tired-looking shop-assistant watched over the entire shop from her dark gothic corner, with an equally gothic cat to give her company.

To be continued

Vivekananda: The caricaturist

Very few people know perhaps what a great humorist Vivekananda was in his lighter moments. The following is an account of a parlour meeting held in Paris to discuss religion,philosophy, spirituality etc., where he remained an aloof spectator; but you can see for yourself how aloof he was, from the following letter he wrote to his benefactor  Mrs. Francis Leggett of America.

6 place des estate unis,
Paris,
3rd September, 1900.
Dear Mother,
We had a congress of cranks here in this house.
The representatives came from various countries, from India in the south, to Scotland in the north, with England and America buttressing the sides.
we were having great difficulty in electing the president, for though Dr. James (Prof. William James) was there, he was more mindful of the blisters raised on him by Mrs. Milton (probably by magnetic healing) than solution of world problems.
I proposed Joe, but she refused on the ground of non--arrival of her new gown--and went to a corner to watch the scene from a coign of vantage.
Mrs. Bull was ready, but Margot objected to this meeting being reduced to a comparative philosophy class.
When we were thus in a fix---up sprung a short, square, almost round figure from the corner, and without any ceremony declared that all difficulties will be solved, not only of electing a president but of life itself, if we all took to worshipping the Sun--God and the Moon--God. He delivered his speech in five minutes; but it took his disciple, who was present, fully three quarters of an hour to translate. In the meanwhile, the master began to draw the rugs in your parlour in a heap, with the intention, as he said, of giving us an ocular demonstration of the power of "Fire God", then and there.
At this juncture Joe interposed and insisted that she did not want a fire sacrifice in her parlour, whereupon the Indian saint looked daggers at Joe, entirely disgusted at the behavior of one he confidently believed to be a prefect convert to fire--worship.
Then Dr. James snatched a minute from nursing his blisters and declared that he would have something very interesting to speak upon Fire god and his brethren, if he were not entirely occupied with the evolution of Miltonian blisters. Moreover his great Master, Herbert Spencer, not having investigated the subject before him, he would stick to golden silence.
"Chutney is the thing", said a voice near the door. We all looked back and saw Margot. "It is Chutney", she said, "Chutney and Kali, that will remove all difficulties of life, and make it easy for us to swallow all evils and relish what is good". But she stopped all of a sudden and vehemently asserted that she was not going to speak any further, as she has been obstructed by a certain male animal in the audience in her speech. She was sure one man in the audience had his head turned towards the window and was not paying the attention proper to a lady, and though as to herself she believed in the equality if the sexes yet she wanted to know the reason of that disgusting man's want of due respect for women. Then one and all declared that they had been giving her the most undivided attention, and all above the equal right, her due, but to no purpose. Margot would have nothing to do with that horrible crowd and sat down.
Then Mrs. Bull of Boston took the floor and began to explain how all the difficulties of the world were from not understanding the true relation between the between the sexes. She said, "The only panacea was a right understanding of the proper persons, and then to find liberty in love and freedom in liberty and motherhood, brotherhood, fatherhood, Godhood, love in freedom and freedom in love, in the right holding up of the true ideal in sex".
To this the Scotch delegate vehemently objected and said that as the hunter chased the goatherd, the goatherd the shepherd, the shepherd, the shepherd the peasant, and the peasant drove the fisher into the sea, now we wanted to fish out of the deep the fisher and let him fall upon the peasant, the peasant upon the shepherd, and so on; and the web of  life will be completed, and we will be happy--he was not allowed to continue his driving business long. In a second everyone was on his feet and we could only hear a confusion of voices---"Sun God and Moon God", "Chutney and Kali", "Freedom holding up right understanding,sex, motherhood", "Never, the fisherman must go back to the shore", etc. Whereupon Joe declared that she was yearning to be the hunter for the time and chase them all out of the house if they did not stop their nonsense .
Then was peace and calm restored, and I hastened to write you about it.
Yours affly,
Vivekananda.

The Language of Myths

Some poems by Swami Vivekananda which offer a glimpse of the unseen side of his personality.
The following rather long poem is found among the letters he wrote. It is remarkable for its fervor and intensity. It is also remarkable because we no longer think, feel and write with the same sensibility. A great many things have changed our world and us living in it. I wonder if he could share this sensibility with his contemporaries even.

This was found in a letter he wrote to Prof.. J. H. Wright of Boston who introduced him to the Parliament of Religions. The letter is written from Salem on Saturday, September,4,1893.

O'er hill and dale and mountain range,
In temple, church, and mosque,
In Vedas, Bible, Al Koran
I had searched for Thee in vain.

Like a child in the wildest forest lost
I have cried and cried alone,
"Where art Thou gone, my God, my love?"
The echo answered, "gone".

And days and nights and years then passed.
A fire was in the brain;
I knew not when day changed in night.
The heart seemed rent in twain.
I laid me down on Ganga,s shore,
exposed to sun and rain;
with burning tears I laid the dust
And wailed with water's roar.

I called on all the holy names
of every clime and creed.
"Show me the way, in mercy, ye
Great ones who have reached the goal"

Years then passed in bitter cry,
Each moment seemed an age,
Till one day midst my cries and groans
Someone seemed calling me.

A gentle soft and soothing voice
That said "my son," "my son",
That seemed to thrill in unison
With all the chords of my soul.

I stood on my feet and tried to find
The place the voice came from;
I searched and searched and turned to see
Round me, before, behind.
Again,again it seemed to speak
The voice divine to me.
In rapture all my soul was hushed,
Entranced, enthralled in bliss.

A flash illumined all my soul;
The heart of my heart opened wide.
O joy, O bliss, what do I find!
My love, my love, you are here
And you are here, my love my all!

And I was searching thee---
From all eternity you were there
Enthroned in majesty!
From that day forth, wherever I roam,
I feel him standing by
O'er hill and dale, high mount and vale,
Far far away and high.

The moon's soft light, the stars so bright,
The glorious orb of day,
He shines in them; His beauty--might--
Reflected lights are they.
The majestic morn, the melting eve,
The boundless billowy sea,
In nature's beauty, songs of birds,
I see through them--it is He.

When dire calamity seizes me,
The heart seems weak and faint,
All nature seems to crush me down,
With laws that never bend,
Me seems I hear Thee whispering sweet
My love, "I am near", "I am near".
My heart gets strong. With thee my love,
A thousand deaths no fear.
Thou speakest in the mother's lay
That shuts the baby's eye;
When innocent children laugh and play,
I see thee standing by.

When holy friendship shakes the hand,
He stands between them too;
He pours the nectar in mother's kiss
And the baby's sweet 'mama'.
Thou wert my God with prophets old,
All creeds do come from Thee;
The Vedas, Bible, and Koran bold
sing thee in harmony.

"Thou art", "Thou art" the Soul of souls
In the rushing stream of life.
"Om tat Sat om". Thou art my God.
My love , I am thine, I am thine..


[ Tat Sat means 'That only real existence'. (Swamiji's note)]  

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The last man standing in the beam of light

the point of an end and a new beginning,

wondering what to leave behind 

and what to take with him

as he stands listening to the call of the infinity.

Tolstoy and the green branch

Tolstoy felt that in the deep greenery of Yasnya Polyanna, somewhere far away in the valleys there is always a green branch—buried in the depth of earth—and that branch bears bunches of glorious letters.

Tolstoy saw those letters and that branch made his writings really glorious. He was a divine artist. Others however, wander far, in the wilderness of the mind, obsessed, in search of that green branch.