THE KURDISH MUSLIM GOVERNOR WHO WROTE A SHIV LEELA

                           

 ( A Portrait of Ali Mardan Khan)

  ( Mughal King Shahjahaan welcoming Ali Mardan Khan to his Darbaar)

           (Chashme Shahi Garden Kashmir)


SHAB  SHAH  E  KI MUN  DEEDAM....
    .                              
A man of Kurdish background , an administrator who first served under  Persian Safavid Kings and later Mughals. A poet, scholar , spiritualist , engineer ,builder and a specialist in laying canals and water fountains ,  Ali Mardan Khan was held in high esteem by Mughal King Shahjahaan. Shahjahaan sent him as Governor of Kashmir where he witnessed a phenomenon that he wrote in a Persian poem.He wrote he saw Shiva in his dream. I quote some parts from this long poem that begins as:

" Huma Asle Maheshwar Bood
 Shab Shahe ki mun deedam..
Gazanfar Charam dar bar bood
Shab shahe ki mun deedam"

He was in fact Maheshwara (shiva)
whom i saw last night.
Nothing except a Lion's skin he wore,
That king i saw last night.

 I quote more



(1)

Ze  Basmash Jaam-e-bar-tan,
Junaar-ish mar-e-bar gardan,
Ravanish Gang-e-bar sar-bood,
Shab Shahe ke mun deedam.
.

Body smeared with ash,
A snake around his neck as his scared thread ,
And river Ganga flowing uninterrupted from his hair,
That king i saw last night..

(2)

Ajab Sanyaasi -e-deedam
"Namoh  Narayana "Guftam
E-Khaakay paaye bosidham
Shab Shah e ki mun deedam

A strange sanyasi my eyes saw,
 At that sight , i uttered "Namoh Narayan"
I kissed the dust at his feet ,
 That king i saw last night..

In literal meaning Namoh Narayana means  salutations to Lord..Swami Jankananda writes"

" The mantra expresses that no matter where you come from, then I respect the path you have chosen. I greet you! I bid you welcome, as I would to god. "

(3)
Umaa  Az soy e -chupp-binger,
 Ze Sad Khursheed Tabaan-tar,
Savare Kulb-e-nar bood,
Shab Shahe ke Mun deedam.


On his left , i saw Uma or Parvati ,
His face radiated like  thousand suns

seated on Bull ( Nandi) ,
That king I saw last night……

(4)

Nigahay bar manay Miskeen
Namood Az Chashm e Tabaan Tar
Makanash Laamkan tar bood
Shab Shah e ki mun deedam.


Upon a poor man like me,
He cast a glance  ,
His eyes were bright and radiating,
His abode, i saw in that infinite and uninhabited Land,
That king i saw last night.

(5)
Ba poseedam khuda Hasti
Kina hasti chira Masti,
Sarosham guft shankar Bood
Shab Shah e ki mun deedam.

I asked"Are you the lord,
If not , then what is  this
Carefreeness all about?"
From sky a voice said
" He is none other than Shankara"
That king i saw last night.


(6)


Se chash-mash bar jabeen khushtar
Ze mehr o Maah Roshantar,
Hilaalash Taaj bar sar bood
Shab shahe ki mun deedam..


With three eyes shining bright like the
Sun and the moon,
Beautiful looked his forehead.
On his head, he wore the crescent as his Crown,
That king i saw last night.

(7)

Manam Mard e Musalmaanam
Ali khanam Hami daanam
Khudaaya Banda parvar bood
Shab shah e ki mun deedam


I am a muslim by faith
Ali khan ( Ali Mardan Khan ) is my name,
Beyond that i know nothing.
The lord,  the benefactor of mankind had Come himself,
That king i saw last night..

                               

SHUFTAA. ..THE TRADITIONAL KASHMIRI SWEET DISH

                                         

SHUFTAA.

In DAV School , i  had heard this word " Shufta " from my teacher Pandit Narayan joo Miyan. He would generally say to us :
" Kolla Shufta karaai "
                    Or
"You boy , i shall make shufta of you"

This word remained embedded in my memory. Post marriage, my wife added one more item to our shivratri Cuisine : SHUFTAA..

Now,  Apart from other dishes, Shufta is invariably prepared in our house on shivratri day.

SHUFTA

It is prepared with  cocunut, almonds, small pieces of fried  cheese, cashewnuts and khas-khaas (Poppy seeds) . Hard skin of the cocunut is  scrubbed away and it is  cut to small pieces.
Fried cheese cut to small pieces is mixed with all and then boiled  in simple sugar syrup or chaashni for about one hour  or more till it turns soft. It is then Cooled and served. No need to re-heat even if kept in regrigerator .Better soak almonds   in water overnight to peel off  the skin effortlessly .

And shufta has been traditional sweet  dish of Kashmir..In olden days, it was seved as sweet dish in marriages  to Baratis who accompanied the Bridegroom . It was brought in small containers or metal pots  and served with spoons to all Baratis who sat inside the shamiyana for meals. For various reasons,  Gulab jamun replaced shufta as sweet dish in marriage functions.



I will not suggest adding walnuts to shufta  because other than seasonal stuff, old walnuts turn dry ,oily and a little bitter to taste. You must be 100% sure about walnuts in this preparation  and better use fresh seasonal walnuts after soaking them in water overnight to peel off the skin. Shufta is not to be confused with Sund Panjeeri prepared in some  Punjabi households more specifically in Jammu .

(Autar Mota)




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WHERE HAVE THE BOOK READERS GONE ?

                                                                            

WHERE HAVE READERS GONE?

( Photo EBD Book Store Dehradun)

If there is a dearth of Good writers , there is a real dearth of readers for them. Something dangerous is happening on the Literary front .. The writer is constrained to be a reader and the reader tends to become a writer . 

I met owners of some Book stores in India and abroad. All are experiencing downward trend in sales. Worldwide, readers for poetry books are shrinking at an alarming rate. A time may come when you won't be able to find a poetry book in a Book shop.

  A Senior employee of a  reputed  Book Shop in Mumbai  in  told me:

" In many countries, Book stores selling literature are using existing space for some additional profitable Busuness to meet *fixed cost. Poetry Books are not selling.May be people are experiencing poetry in their life style.I mean romance, feelings and emotions.Demand for short story books is also dwindling. People read Novels, Travelogues and Biographies .They desire a peep into personal lives of celebrities and famous people. From Biographies, they want to emulate good things ;A short route to self improvement. Novels written as Visual scenes and something different are picked up. "

Recently i found the old EBD ( English Book Depot) book shop on fashionable Rajpura Road Dehradun using front space of the book store for running a coffee shop . This is a very old and Premier  Book shop  in Dehradun.  The gracious old lady (who owns the book shop ) at the counter confirmed declining trend in sales due to  Poor Book Reading habit of present generation.

Has Information Technology  and Television     done this   damage ?   
.
( Autar Mota )

*In simple terms, Cost is an expenditure that is to be incurred for running and managing a business. In a business, fixed cost is something that has to be paid at periodic intervals even if there is no turnover or the business is in loss. Fixed cost means rent, Telephone and Internet fixed rentals, electric bills, salaries to employees etc.

 
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ALBERT CAMUS AND ACTRESS MARIA CASARES..

                                                                           

THE SECRET AND PASSIONATE LOVE AFFAIR BETWEEN ALBERT CAMUS AND ACTRESS MARIA CASARES .. ..

Catherine Camus brings out a 1300 hundred page book that has about 860 love  letters exchanged by  her father Albert  Camus and actress  Maria Casares .

Maria was an exile . Her   family  had moved  out from Spain  during the Spanish  Civil War and had decided to settle in France.  She was 21 and he 30 when they  first  met in 1944. It was wartime ( IInd world war ) and  France was under Nazi occupation. 

She  , a talented and independent   actress ,  and he,  a writer and  editor of  the underground newspaper ,Combat .  One day, Camus brought Casares to a dinner  hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Simone de Beauvour had  remarked :

" She is beautiful and  confident" 

She would  tell  Camus, “ when you are around, I don’t know where I am “. Camus was straightforward in expressing himself. He had told her many times , “ only when you are around, i become conscious about where   i am . “

 In 1944 , Many friends saw Camus driving  a bicycle down Paris Boulevard with Maria on handlebars . In 1950, Camus wrote to her :

“ We are tied to one another by bonds of earth , intelligence , heart and flesh . Nothing , i Know can surprise or separate us. “ And Maria wrote back :

“ Do you realize what happiness we have, and what has been given to us . We met , we recognized each other , we abandoned ourselves one to the other . “

After Allied forces won and  Nazis left France , Camus’s  wife came from Oran (  Algeria ) to live with him . Maria had already given him an ultimatum . Camus may not have believed in the institution of marriage yet he  opted for  his married life and went to live with his wife Francine Faure  who was pianist and a  Mathematician. 

Through this new book ,  Catherine Camus  makes all that secret  aspect of Camus’s 15 years (1944 -1959 )   steaming relationship with actress Maria open.  They exchanged hundreds of letters   even when Camus had children( son Jean and daughter Catherine)  and lived as a family man. 

Maria acted in many of his plays .  It is believed that Maria, his lifelong love and attraction,  is   “ Mary “   of his Novel  “ The Outsider “. And Francine knew all and that was possibly  the reason of her slipping into bouts of depression . About this depression,  Heims, Neil   in his book "Biography of Albert Camus",  writes: 

"In 1953, Francine's pain at Camus's indifference and her unreciprocated love became overwhelming. It was expressed in a depression that grew in severity into a full blown illness which included a suicide attempt and severe withdrawal, staring straight ahead and repeating the name Maria Casarès. Francine was hospitalized and subjected to more than thirty electro-shock treatments."

Both Camus and Maria kept shining  like bright stars in their respective professions ; She in acting and he as writer . After  being cheered lustily for her performance in Buenos Aires in 1956 by a crowd of 3600  ,  Maria wrote to Camus :

“ I uttered a few words of thanks  but kept  thinking of you only “

After receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957, Camus sent a Telegram to Maria and wrote :

“ I have never missed you as much as I did today “

Some days before his fatal accident, Camus wrote to Maria:

. "I send a cargo of tender wishes, and may life splash up inside you all year long, giving you that dear expression that I've loved for so many years, but I love your face when it' s worried or any other way. See you soon, my superb one, I'm so happy at the idea of seeing you again that I am laughing as I write it... I kiss you and hug you tightly until Tuesday when I can start all over again."

                            

        
                ( Camus with his wife Francine )

After Camus died in the fatal road accident , Maria  suffered severe depression. She married her friend and singer Andre Schlesser. She was 74 when she died in 1996.Maria and Camus lived mostly  separated from one another. Now that these letters are out, the collection may provide a  sense of  their togetherness to Camus fans  . This collection  will  also trace their beautiful love story that remains unknown to world at large.To Camus lovers , I pose a question:

"Does Camus hide himself in his novel "THE FALL" ?" 

I end this post with a Camus quote:

" Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow

Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead

Walk beside me… just be my friend ."

( Avtar Mota )

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SOME PORTRAITS OF ALBERT CAMUS

                                                                                 

    



PORTRAITS OF ALBERT CAMUS DONE BY  VARIOUS  ARTISTS ..


A Cigarette between the lips , the  upright Aura and the thoughtful gaze .And Camus had said :

“An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”

( Autar Mota )

( Images source ..Internet with due thanks to the up-loaders )

 
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CARTOONIST R K LAXMAN'S BOOK " A DOSE OF LAUGHTER "

                                                                             

                                                                                

Reading " A DOSE OF LAUGHTER "
by
RK Laxman(1921-2015)

 Published by Penguin Books India ..

This book contains 100 funny cartoons that Laxman has drawn over the years about doctors, the medical profession, and health care in general. These cartoons are accompanied by one hundred funny jokes about doctors and the medical profession . Through these cartoons, Flaxman takes you to world where politicians and criminals feign illness. 

Laxman was very popular for his "The Common Man" character .And Most of his common man characters were published in the newspaper "Times of India". For this Newspaper, these cartoons created a value addition that helped it in improvement of sales through widening of reader base.
These cartoons presented the issues faced by a common man in India.

                                            

Laxman also did portrait sketching of so many famous celebrities.He also did wonderful illustrations for the book "Malgudi Days," written by his brother RK Narayan.

Laxman was a winner of Ramon Magasaysay award apart being confered Padma Vibhushan by Government of India.

(Autar Mota)

 

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WHY DO SCIENTISTS LOVE MUSIC ?

                                     

WHY  DO SCIENTISTS  LOVE  MUSIC ?

Photo Dr. Hargobind Khurana (1922-2011)

Albert Einstein played violin, it's said, because it helped him think. But he played a beautiful Mozart, too. Einstien had said that if he were not a scientist he would have been a musician. Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone was an accomplished piano player. Tomas Edison was also an accomplished musician. There are so many other examples on this subject.

"I have always considered and experienced music as a counterpart to my scientific interests. Music has helped me stay healthy, mentally, and that's motivated me in my work." says Reinhard Brinkmann, an accelerator physicist at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY), who plays a mean jazz piano . 

Dr Hargobind Khurana cracked the DNA code jointly with  some other scientists. His mentor, Prof Vladimir Prelog was also a Nobel prize winner and loved music intensely. At MIT Boston,  I came to know that Dr  Khurana had a personal library of western classical notations and apart from science , he loved music intensely .

Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (born  1938) , noted indian astrophysicist who developed with Sir Fred Hoyle the conformal gravity theory, known as Hoyle–Narlikar theory,  is not only a lover but an avid amateur practitioner of Bharti Shastriya Sangeet.

Almost all Indian scientists had deep interest in classical music. My queries are:-

Is Western classical music based on physics and  precisely mathematical in nature?

 Does music feed  the soul of  the  scientist?

Is Indian classical music , especially instrumental  based on principles of physics?

Is there a  link between musical training and development of cognitive skills.? 

 

I have observed that  beats created by two  performing instrumentalists in a Jugalbandhi concert  are nothing but Doppler effect in  sound (physics).

 I also believe that  this  entire universe is filled with patterns and vibrations. You may not see vibrations but they touch you. Many scientists say they've found a curious pattern that's common to musical rhythm. It's a pattern also found in nature. There is music in rain, music in wind, soft and soothing music in breeze, music in chirping of birds , tree leaves clap in symmetry when air passes through them, music in recitation of poetry and music when waves keep striking a sea shore at regular intervals of time. With music, a human being feels a part of the whole creation. And  that is what creativity is all about .

To understand universality of music you need to know what bioacoustics is all about  . This science can be extended  to include plants also apart from animals . 

And  Dr T C Singh ,the  well known Indian botanist   went a little ahead  of J C Bose and wrote this   in his research Papers :-

"Seeds that were exposed to music and later germinated produced plants that had more leaves, were of greater size, and had other improved characteristics. It practically changed the plant's genetic chromosomes."

My suggestion to those who don't believe in  what i say  to kindly read the book "The Sound of Music and Plants" published in 1973 by Dorothy Retallack.

( Avtar Mota)

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