Of mountain, man and mother tongue

In an exclusive interview with HP, Namita Gokhale talks about things that are close to her heart...

Anjali Nauriyal

Namita Gokhale is a well-known name in the literary firmament. Her first novel Paro: Dreams of Passion created quite a stir by its bold theme and is said to have "pioneered the sexually frank genre which made Shobha De famous." This book is a satire on Delhi's upper class and has been described as witty and genuinely irreverent by none other than the master of wit, Khushwant Singh. Her other popular books include the names of Gods Graves and Grand Mother and A Himalayan Love Story. In Doon to be part of the literary festival, she is the main force behind this initiative that is earning a place in the heart of the city's intelligentsia. In an exclusive confab with TOD, she talks about things that are dear to her heart.

"Through this festival, I want to go back and look and relook at the trans-Himalayan identity. I may be a Kumaoni. But it's just not my Kumaon, but it's my Nepal, my Bhutan, and so on. The entire Himalayan range has huge energies and we have to look at them. Personally I just love the landscape of this mighty mountain range," states Gokhale.

Despite the love that she professes, she says that she cannot help but feel a sense of great shock when she looks at the Himalayas. "We have degraded the mountains so much! Recently I went to Bhutan and was pleasantly surprised to see that the land is not degraded. It has remained just as it should have remained. But this is not the case elsewhere. And this should be an important issue with any Uttarakhandi and any environmentalist. Our air, water, quality of life, etc., have been all defiled, especially the environment that can sustain pure thought," she avers.

Gokhale says that like Blake she believes that great things are done when men and mountains meet and not by jostling in the streets. "This festival is also about language and how language is being flattened in particular places. All these need to be looked at by all of us. All said and done, there is very high rate of literary activity in Uttarakhand that I feel very proud of. And one purpose behind this festivity is the gut feeling that we can all do something that can change the life of the people for the better," says the author.

Gokhale, who was the force behind the highly successful Jaipur Literary Festival, pronounces, "We are organizing the Bhutan Literary Festival in May. All these mountains emanate real voices and the idea is to listen and let people speak in their dialect. The oral tradition is in real danger in a society that has been essentially oral. When we lose something that has been an integral part of our heritage, we lose infinite riches. Our mother tongue is endangered and if we lose our roots, we lose all accumulated heritage. Problem with oral is that it has to be transmitted and I hope this festival is a step in that direction," she concludes on a positive note.

Speaking Tree: The cardinal importance of faith in human life

Dr. Pranav Pandya

Faith is one of those foundational principles of human life which enable a person to evolve spiritually. Without faith, one cannot attain happiness even though s/he may have succeeded materialistically. Faith is the basis of happiness. Faith makes life joyful. Normally, human beings fear death because it means transition to an unknown realm. Loneliness is the cause of fear. To the extent faith in our true immutable self is strengthened, the fear of death recedes. A person living in an uninhabited, desolate place, with faith and trust in the dwelling divinity, loves the cosmos and interacts with it as manifestation of the all pervading self-spirit of which he himself is a spark. One feels oneself as a part of the infinite cosmos. The happiness one experiences through this faith filled vision flows from deepest recesses of the inner being, which is one with The Cosmic Being. From this happiness emerges the joy of atma jnana - the realisation that man's true identity is the soul that resides within the body and not the body itself. Faith has the power to make any object lovable and a source of joy. Faith makes a sculpture carved in a stone worthy of being worshipped as a living deity. There is a famous story in the epic Mahabharata of a lowcaste boy called Eklavya. He wished to learn the art of archery from Dronacharya. Since Dronacharya accepted only the princes as his disciples, he refused to teach Eklavya. This did not discourage Eklavya. He made an idol of Dronacharya, gained inspiration from it as his guru and learned the art of archery to such perfection that even Guru Dronacharya was amazed by his mastery. In the modern times also, we find examples of people who, on the basis of faith, achieved wondrous success. One of the most notable examples is of Helen Keller, whose legacy inspires people even today. Helen was a deaf-dumb-blind American woman, whose faith in her capability to learn, speak and study was stimulated by her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. She later went on to earn a university degree and scores of national and international awards.

Ancient seers, gurus, sages and teachers used to first assess the level of faith of their disciples/students before initiating them into the profound teachings of Brahma vidya. If the disciples/students did not meet a certain criteria of faith, secret knowledge was not imparted to them. Incidents relating to this fact are aplenty in scriptures. Faith is also the basis of love towards one's family members, religion, culture, nation and humanity. Students have faith in their teachers. When we go shopping, we have faith in the quality of products we buy. We receive respect when we express our faith in others; this enhances our inner sense of happiness and well-being. In spirituality, faith is considered a fundamental attribute of nobility and occupies a prominent place in every religion. Faith has been the basis of all-round progress of human beings. Therefore, we must cultivate faith in the basic goodness of the Divine Dispensation.

(The writer is head of All World Gayatri Pariwar, Shantikunj Haridwar and Chancellor of Dev Sanskriti University, Haridwar.)