Calvin Hole

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/197129/

Date: 19-Feb-2024

 

I recently remembered, out of the blue, one of the classes of Nitya Chaitanya Yati. That too, when I was on my morning walk, viewing the huge Earth Movers that are laying the 8-lane roads. "Poetry is an art of misusing words".

Amazing line. As he talks, Nitya drops such comments nonchalantly. So true! Aren't all the poetic lines that we remember made up of a combination of words that brings meaning in a way unknown, unusual for us? I was immediately reminded of the word "கண்ணிநுண்சிறுதாம்பு" (Kanninum Cirutampu - translated as knotted, slender cord) and that day became quite radiant for me.

That is why grammarians and poems do not get along well. Once you study grammar, poems move away. One more line was remembered. This time by Sundara Ramaswamy. "My father used to say long back that a chaste girl cannot dance". Even though he was mocking his father, it is true to an extent. During a dance performance, if the intense chastity prescribed by Cilappatikaram isn't dropped even a little bit, how else can concupiscence be expressed?

Grammar is just the basic structure. Even if we consider the highs of yesterday, it is still just a basic structure. At the maximum, it is art's target. Therefore, with fire on one hand and Udukai on another, when a poem dances, grammar cannot help but be a Muyalaka at the feet. Yet, there is no poem without grammar. No art is possible without a grammar. It must be present at least for the sake of assessment.

Any educational institution teaches merely the grammar of a particular domain. Primary education teaches the basic grammar of language and maths, but before that, it educates the grammar of an imagery called social human. A gigantic factory making bricks out of mud. There is no choice but to construct the building.

Its quite horrific to think of what must be learnt before the first 3 years of life. Primarily the monster, that is time, gets introduced - the merciless ruler enslaving our entire lives through work, business and journeys. Next is uniform. When did the world realize that everyone must wear the same dress? Nebular, the alien, from the foreign world that Calvin imagines, might be astonished seeing this. He might write in his journal that nobody on earth has their own dress. Everyone wears similar dress.

How many commands a day - to go in a line, to sit in order, answer only when questioned, to go to restroom after getting the permission!! A singular utility is enforced on every single thing. Notebooks are only for writing and not for making paper boats. Tiffin box is only for eating and not for utilizing as a wheel. Employing the tie for nose blowing is being punished.

The 'human' that is created through all these violences must fit  perfectly in all life aspects. But it doesn't happen. Most of them oppose or violate these somewhere. There is no use with those fitting perfectly. They are nicknamed novices.

Educational system is but an attempt to fit Calvins within the space-time-social plane. It is an endeavor to convert into a circle or a square the brains operating in an expanse sans space or time. A new universe await Calvins when they wake up at dawn. We prohibit their ascent towards that universe and instead steer them towards yesterday's curdled universe. The place which churns butter out of it and discards the residue is called School.

Though Calvins are being born and have been wrestling against the education system, it is still becoming quite rigid. Perhaps, it is a result of the incessant attacks by Calvins. Perhaps, out of good faith. The doors that Calvins created must not let out the non-Calvins. Therefore those doors are always closed. If Calvins are indeed real Calvins, they will make their own holes.

Sending Calvins to school is a nighmare encountered by every parent. Assuming 200 days of school a year, it amounts to a total of 2400 days of school in 12 years. This means 4800 different reasons must be prepared - one reason per school day and one more for the follow-up question. But its usual for those reasons to expire by noon and for Calvins to return home in the afternoon.

What Calvins learn from school are the other sides of education. If education is grammar, then Calvins learn only the slangs. Who can say for sure that the food eaten doesn't go directly to our heart? Who can deny by saying that its a lie that the universe can still go on without algebra?

The education for Calvin is but a great struggle - that is for everyone other than Calvins. Its soaked in tears and blood. It is through that struggle that the human civilization evolved. Education has been constructed around the expectations of the society. Calvins accept it according to their own expectations. Some people are prepared and established as lubricants between this dialectics. It is a tradition to call them as teachers.

But the issue for Calvins is that they are the usuals. The human mind can be sharp in only one field. But the education system doesn't accept if one doesn't endeavor into all domains. There is nothing that excite Calvins other than the knowledge that each domain can be entered in different ways. But the system that understands that it is a hole that is below the pot and not its mouth, keeps intimidating Calvins.

Societies become civilized only by handling Calvins. Mature societies keep creating new kinds of totally immature Calvins. They write poetries, create literatures, scale mountain peaks, become important by confusing themselves and others, and then attaining clarity, but confusing some others in the process. They incessantly attempt to establish as lies all things that have been told till then.

"There is a violence in any education", I got reminded of this statement by Guru Nitya. This is when he made me stand outside in frost for my question on creativity. "Because human mind has a tendency to leap forward without limit. If it is not streamlined, then cogitation can never happen. Education is nothing but training the mind, be it any education".

"But does poetry need education? Does it have a grammar?", I asked. "Meditation is more boundless compared to poetry and it too has grammar and education", Nitya replied. "Classification is necessary to distinguish the exceptions. Learning the existing is needed to identify new things for oneself. Education is a kind of self torment that is balanced by the joy of attainment."

If so, then what happens to the unfillable hole in Calvins' brains? What can fill up that hole, that is opened up towards the vast vacuum expanse of the sky? "Real education closes all the usual doors and windows and opens up a single escape path".

 

References: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitya_Chaitanya_Yati

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanninun_Cirutampu

https://prabandamuyarchi.wordpress.com/2020/04/04/%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%A3%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%A3%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%A8%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%A3%E0%AF%8D-%E0%AE%9A%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%B1%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%A4%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%BE%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%AA%E0%AF%81/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundara_Ramaswamy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilappatikaram

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataraja

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apasmara (Muyalaka)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udukai

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Human Web

  Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/193158/ Date: 9-Nov-2023   "What use are the travels that a writer undertakes? Shouldn't he be writing about the people and the places that he knows quite well? How can the lands, places that he skims about and the passing acquaintances that he makes help him? Wouldn't he be able to write in detail only about those that he knows?". Several years back, a senior Tamil writer asked me this. This is the reply that I gave him. Writers are of 2 kinds. The first kind are those who write about things that they know pretty well or about things that they have experienced with a direct narration and with correct details. These are the majority. A few among them have some significance in literature. But they are not artists. Because, literature is a quest undertaken with imagination as the tool. These authors are against imagination and are incapable of understanding imagination. They will be labelled as "biographers of life" ...
Read more

What did Gandhi achieve

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/133260/ 22-Jun-2020 What really is Gandhi's contribution; Is Gandhism merely just a belief like that of religion? This conversation has been going on among friends for the past few days. In fact, this discussion had been going on from Gandhi's living days. Occasionally, a notable person from another domain would mount a vicious denunciation. Osho or V.S.Naipaul or Sudhir Kakar. Marxists and Hindutvas had similar - mostly in similar wordings - antagonism on Gandhi. It would just keep coming. Marxists have conversed with me like that. I would retort, "Aside Gandhi, who has had real influence on the world? Whose words does the world follow sincerely?". They would hesitate a little and would say "Marx". "Apart from being a pioneer of an intelligentsia, where is Marxism existing now? It is just a political action plan. In the past century, where has this plan succeeded?", I would ask. With some difficulty, they ...
Read more

Is there really a Hindu religion?

 Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/183585/ For the past month or so, readers have been asking me this question via email - Is there really a Hindu religion? Majority of them are youngsters, beneficiaries of modern education and are interested in culture. But all they listen to are social media and the politicians' blather only. I replied rather irritated, "Hindus have a uniqueness. It is only them, who learn about their religion from their enemies and from those who have vowed to destroy their religion." Just give it a thought. How many numerous philosophers and scholars have existed here. How many books have been written. Nobody reads those. But they form an opinion about Hindu religion listening to the hatred speeches of those who do not have even an iota of understanding on the history or the spirituality of Hindu religion. Is there any other religion that exhibits such a pitiful state? To form an understanding by reading books and placing the concepts within t...
Read more