Aruni Uddalak – A Relevant Appraisal

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
...
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death.
— W. B. Yeats
 
At the dawn of this catastrophe, his existence has turned back upon itself. Returned are the burdens of anguish, despair, and vexation. Now he must live in his own way. Indeed, he must live alone. His agitated badge will speak only of knowledge and its expositions.
 
I sit, wrapped in the pride of a teacher, ever since then. Day passes into night, night again into day. Two indistinct hands fall upon my knees. Between knowing and doing lie many bridges—yet none are seen. In every household, people silently prepare their Lakshmi-worship. Each goes toward the full moon in pursuit of their own happiness. My still, unmoving posture continues.
 
To gain Vedic knowledge, Aruni once went to the guru’s house. During a devastating flood, when the disciple stood before the teacher, there were in those days ancient bridges between knowledge and action—bridges regularly traversed. The guru commanded: “Go, build an embankment for my fields.” The order of the guru was held sacred. The seeker of wisdom crossed the bridge of learning to become a man of action. Unable to stop the furious current, Aruni lay down upon the breach itself. After many days, when the waters had subsided, the guru came and saw Aruni still lying across the dyke. Transformed into stone through his karma-yoga. By the grace of his master, Aruni rose again, his spirit radiant, distributing the knowledge of the Vedas. The guru named him Aruni. And the Vedic flame was revealed within him.
 
Now, after many scorching times have passed, the reptiles stir awake from their winter torpor. Among them one pretender, a sinner of knowledge, emerges dressed as Aruni, leather satchel in hand, seeking livelihood. All day he watches for attacks, his vision blinded in the process. Man, in truth, does not live for himself, but enslaved to his ego. Today, in each of his steps, how terribly desolate he feels. Toward men, toward waters, what vast indifference he carries. The only thirst that pierces his heart is for one great aim—the provisioning of the body. What immense fury against himself in this university-educated Aruni! For the body alone cannot sate the hunger of the ego.
 
"From anger comes delusion; from delusion, confusion of memory;
from confusion of memory, destruction of intellect;
from destruction of intellect, one perishes." (Bhagavad Gita)
 
From obsession with the senses comes attachment, from attachment desire, from desire anger, from anger delusion, from delusion loss of memory, from memory’s ruin the destruction of reason, and from the ruin of reason—complete destruction. Thus he falls again into the blind pit of matter. In these days, no one pleases him. For long he has loved no one. To him, each person’s existence is irrational—even his own. News of flood troubles him not the least. No ties of love or relationship bind him. To love someone is to declare the wish to grow old beside them. But he hates none, nor can he love. Supreme indifference is his nature.
 
Urban civilization does not teach the art of weeping. It teaches the language of revelry, which makes of grief mere childishness. And so he can only rejoice. Yet in his daily rejoicing lurk disgust and a strange enchantment. His passion clings to things whose decay is inevitable. He knows neither how to rescue others, nor to rescue himself.
 
Thus the modern Aruni shows devotion in worship, but indifference in flood. His knowledge serves as a priest of his ego—the ego that dwells in his dress, his tastes, his intellectual airs. Since in modernity knowledge belongs to science and technology, the dams built by their hands turn to dust in the blink of flood. Water crosses the river’s bounds and enters the nation’s soil. Each year, like a ritual, the waters arrive. Since his knowledge is tested by no guru named Dhaumya, there exists no bridge between knowledge and action. Hence, passing his exam means merely giving donations to the unfortunate, shedding the burden of duty. Here too it is that same ego, which peeps out from behind its transparent veil as stark indifference.
 
The poet therefore said:
"No care was given to building,
and so easily the embankment fell.
Warnings were there, but you and I heeded them not.
Whose was the burden of blame?
We, fox-like, fled bush to bush at the opportune hour.
We never noticed the seed of our own downfall.
And yet, one man there was, in this dust-laden city, Aruni.
He told me once he would hold back the flood with his very body."

I sit in teacher’s pride ever since then. Day turns to night, and night to day. Two dim hands fall upon my knees. Between knowledge and action there are many bridges, yet none are seen. In every home, men prepare their Lakshmi-worship in solitude. Each goes his way toward the full moon. My still, unmoving posture remains.
 
Needless to say, he will never return to the guru again. Today he seems dry, drained of the nectar of wisdom. All he sought was to know many things. And he has learned much—every rule and every perversion of rule. He has used his learning as a ladder to climb higher. Thus—
 
"O sorrow, how beautifully boneless you shine through the lens,
casting nights upon the sky,
turning a merchant’s balance into a spine,
paying wages with eyes
in dark rooms by the roadside each day."
 
And then?
 
O City! O dazzling, radiant city!
Your nights burn brighter than the vultures feeding upon the shattered carcass of buffalo. At dawn, your streets rise in festival of relief.
 
1770 - Post-Industrial Revolution world. The sky-shattering roar of the English nation. The first nation to give birth to democracy. From the very seat of knowledge and science came a band of “great scholars” who wrought in India the cataclysm of the famine of ’76. In that holocaust, ten million perished in an instant. It is said that though the English granaries overflowed with grain—twice the need of Bengal’s population—yet famine-stricken, multitudes starved to death.
 
In that tradition still he stands, at the threshold of the twenty-first century, upon a mountain of knowledge that knows no contact with action. Since the individual self is not rational in isolation, without the whole, the life of man is crippled. Events that transcend sin or virtue, justice or injustice, good or evil—there lies a vast gulf between acknowledging them indifferently and truly bearing their weight. For surrender is far away.
 
"Whosoever surrenders unto Me, I reward him accordingly.
Men everywhere follow My path, O Partha." (Bhagavad Gita)
 
Surrender, and be rewarded! O Partha, follow My way!
 
Thus in this great calamity, Shankha Ghosh’s poem Aruni Uddalak becomes utterly relevant. For it is unworthy of civilized man to remain indifferent to action and seek only religion’s sanctuary. If you are to be devout, then walk the path of the charioteer of Partha. Otherwise, be not a hypocrite. To say that none have any desire for action is better than the sophistry of knowledge without action.
As the poet said:
 
"As my lifeless body each night I hurl in contempt at the feet of your deliverance,
so too in distant waters I cast dead cows and rotting swine—and you too, O Mother.
…
This too is a Janmashtami, when the blue child, cradled in two joined hands, lies upon a destitute body.
The waters break.
In the scattered glow of Gokul’s blossoms, from whatever Yamuna the anklets sound,
in the reverse doorway where three sisters entwine—
with a snap of fingers, the whole household is gone.
For the image of the nation—
the image of the nation is no longer within the nation itself."
 
And when, at the night’s end, the neighbour’s wife flutters dark wings in forgotten streams, morning arrives, silver-shocked, worthy of Kanchenjunga. The artisan whose embankment fell in grace of flood hurries away, two hours from his village, to bind bamboo frames for colossal puja pandals in Kolkata. The joy that festival lends his labour, his bodily rhythm—toward that, the poet says:
 
"The fire I carry in my mouth earns me no piety.
Whose right is grief in death?
Only the river calls still—‘Suman, Suman’—
and I cry, Come, come, rise up, become Uddalak!
Be clear, live!"
 
He thinks himself an existential mystic. Not pity, love, or compassion, but a sense of duty seems to drive him most. The rise and fall of an individual’s life is so small compared to the rise and fall of a nation, that it seems—
 
"This alone—no other knowledge remains.
All other development, all other salvation,
are but the turning of countless shops across the land.
What they give is unworthy to receive.
Our consciousness grows ever dim, withdrawing its hand of help.
There is only surrender—in destruction, too—
and a return to oneself, to live again."
Waves, “Begin, and cease, and then again begin,”

seem to echo the metaphor of the individual self. The “eternal note” of the sea—signalling nation, world, and cosmos—returns again and again at the whitewashed dawn, even on the brink of ruin.
 
Men choose to forget, and easily forget.
But he who once said:
 
"Even now, in this flood, in this uproar of clouds, I desire all my knowledge"—
 
He, with his own body, had once gone down into the waters to build the embankment.
He has not forgotten.