First Impressions – Myth = Mithya by Devdutt Pattnaik

-
This book is one tasty meal. It begins with exploring what myth is, what purpose it serves and who needs it. According to Western philosophy, myth is understood to be ‘falsehood’. In Hindu philosophy, it is not so much a falsehood as one superficial layer that must be peeled back and transcended to really understand the ‘Truth’ – that is, what we, the worlds, and all of this dance of time and space stands for.

The blurb succinctly outlines the main message of the Hindu mythology. Hindus have one God. They also have over three million gods. (By, the way, note the difference in capitalization.) They have gods and goddesses with their unique specialization very. They also have various kinds of demons and ogres. But Hindus have no ‘Devil’. In a nutshell, the equation between the gods or devas who reside in the heavens and the demons or asuras who reside below the ground is really a tussle between disciplined, cultured ways of living or wanton, hedonistic lives in the natural world. The dynamic between gods and goddesses is also depicted as the tussle between culture and nature. Gods stand for culture, goddesses stand for nature. Culture is required to establish a certain predictability in society. Nature is required to sensitize one to the impermanence of life. Both are necessary. Both are important. Both help. Both ruin.

As with other books by Pattanaik, this one too dwells on the differences between Vishnu and Shiva. I think, personality-wise, I lean towards Shiva, Any entity that has figured out a way to keep society at bay and stay sequestered gets my vote. However, lately, I have been thinking quite a bit about Vishnu. This is after a friend’s observation that any avatar of Vishnu, especially Krishna, has a pretty tough life. To be born in a prison, to have your brothers killed, to be away from your mother, to have to confront and kill your uncle, to not be with the woman you truly loved, to give up your home and return only to see it destroyed – and yet when you see any picture of Krishna, he always has a smile. What must it take to engage with a world so fully, knowing that it will take you down and yet…smile/ I had never quite seen Krishna that way before. It was quite a revelation to see what really draws one to a deity anyway.


I definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants the warm comfort of some good storytelling. Also a reminder that maybe Hinduism with all its gods and goddesses and God is a big group hug. And not this tirade of being virgin and vegetarian that it’s devolving into.

Comments

charvak said…
Very well analysed, I have read almost half of the book, will get back to it now.
4:17 PM
vennila said…
I am going to read
7:26 AM
Mukta Raut said…
:-) yes. do read and tell me what you thought about it.
1:08 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Check (the) mate

-
My cousin, who was born sixteen hours before me, got married recently. I am expected to follow her footsteps soon. Thankfully, I have been granted more than sixteen hours to do that. My father’s health has taken a turn for the worse. My mother is completely exhausted. Rationally, points 1, 2, and 3 would be distinct from each other. But in my family there is no such thing as ‘rationally’. Therefore all these points are inter-related. Strangely, here, we believe my marriage to be an antidote to mortality and fatigue. I happened to be sitting in my parents’ room while Ma looked through Papa’s blood reports. They didn’t look good. Ma was worried and Papa didn’t help matters much. He kept talking about Sourav Ganguly and why he deserved better. Ma got further agitated and after flinging the reports somewhere inconvenient to retrieve (I should know), she snapped, “So what? There are many like him.” Papa doesn’t believe that and would have no one in his family believe that either. He went to
Read more

Not the same, all the same - Rang de Basanti, being a Hindu, uniform civil code, and Hostage – in that unrelated sequence

-
I watched ‘Rang de basanti’. That, however, is not the point. Everyone now wants to go to Delhi and cruise around in jeeps at night. And that too is not the point. I need to say something. That, really, is the point. ‘Rang de…’ is a good movie but frankly, I’ve seen better. I’ve seen ‘Yuva’. It is creditable, though, that the movie could say what it did without using the ‘sage on the stage’ (as we say in Instructional Design) approach. The movie does have a couple of ideas that I have been besotted with for a long time now. One is the life of a story. There is the germ of an idea about men who go to their deaths cheerfully. There is fascination about what could inspire such courage in ordinary people. That story lays inside a diary for a long time. How long? Long enough for history to play itself out and begin the process of repeating itself. A nation goes the ‘Animal Farm’ way – humans out, pigs in. The story lays untouched – fermenting in latent vigor. Then someone discovers it. She
Read more

Save the Indian (male) child

-
This isn't exactly a feminist tirade, but this is written by a woman, and it is written in annoyance. You raise your girls to be sweet, strong, and independent. (Wise parents teach their children to listen to opinions and discard or heed accordingly. The other ones just teach their kids to bullshit everything that everyone says. Still others bring up girls to be on guard and forget that spine so that everyone thinks well of them. I am not sure which is worse, but I detest people shoving their opinions down other people's throats in a show of liberation, so I'll lean towards the former. But only slightly.) As the gender construct of being a 'female' is pushed even further, you teach your daughter complicated activities – driving, perhaps, sending them off away from home, wearing a sari (those freaking pleats!), cooking and de-veining prawns for added advantage. At the end of that, you have a person who genuinely dislikes blending into anything, doesn't like bei
Read more