The Mind of the Maker

I borrowed ‘The Mind of the Maker’ by Dorothy Sayers on an instinct at the British library recently. This edition was published as a part of a series – The Library of Anglican Spirituality. For some time now I had been meaning to get hold of some of Sayers’ Christian writings just to see what kind of theologian she was, so I was quite happy to have found it but I was a little afraid that I would be disappointed if it turned out to be a bit propagandist in nature.

I needn’t have worried. However devout a Christian Sayers was, her writing is brilliantly detached and superbly incisive. Plus she writes about my most favourite topic, the relation between Art and spirituality. God! That sounds hopelessly inadequate, but I imagine it is because ‘spirituality’ is such an abused term these days that it is impossible to use the word without it dredging up a hundred common connotations. But that is without help.

In ‘The Mind of the Maker’ Sayers uses a compelling analogy of the creative artist, more specifically the writer (of The Word with all its Biblical implications) to elucidate the doctrine of trinity. Or perhaps it would be righter to say that she uses the statements in the doctrine to explain the creative processes that converge in an Ideal work of Art.

The most appealing aspect of Sayers’ thesis is that she doesn’t ‘argue’- she states. After a surfeit of academicians who use the ‘argue and withdraw’ tool to impress their audiences with the solidity of their academic objectivity, it was a rare pleasure to read an extremely well-ordered thesis presented almost as facts. I am personally convinced that that is probably the only valid way when one is talking of matters of theology or Art. Simply because in some matters rational debate will take you only so far till you reach a stalemate. A person who will rationalise life on his dying breath has got to be uncommonly foolish.

And it is an uncommonly good book that can find coordinates for the ‘Trinity’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Three Persons) in the Idea, Energy and Power – the three elements within a ‘maker’s’ make-up that together and simultaneously ignite, fuel and sustain a work of Art.

Through this schema Sayers guide us through the meaning of Free Will drawn parallel to originality in Art, Evil corresponding to Bad Art, Real love equaling True Art, and my personal favourite, what she calls very interestingly Scalene trinities – which correspond with the various types of Less-than-ideal Art, and she lets us in on how to identify what exactly is ‘wrong’ with such a piece of flawed Art.

Most, most fascinating stuff.

If you are interested in theology or Art, or the correlation between the two or just plain writing, this book will probably interest you.

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• I am struck repeatedly by how all the major religions of the world essentially say the same thing. Very often the kind of imagery and knowledge-constructs are so similar it really gobsmacks me. The Three Persons of the Trinity are crazily similar to the Bhramha-Vishnu-Maheshwara of the Hindu trinity or even to the Shiva-Shakti-Kundalini concept.

• Also I am tying myself into knots about this one: see the workings of the Trinity are very similar to the Hindu concept of Dharma. Okay, now the word Dharma comes from the root ‘Dhri’ which of course sounds like ‘Tri’ but actually means ‘that which holds or sustains’. We know that the Hindu theology holds the Trinity as the mechanism through which the world as we know it is sustained. Of course Dharma is a much much older word and concept. So I am thinking maybe ‘Dhri’ comes form an older form of ‘Tri’. What say?

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I have never had any deep knowledge of Christian theology, in spite of being educated at a convent for the first fourteen years, or probably because of it. I must have crossed myself thousands of times, and muttered the words “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” not quite knowing what I was committing. I think I had a grasp on the father and the son (often equated with Christ) but I wasn’t ever sure who the Holy Spirit was. Considering the fact that subsequently the subject of theology has become a prime favourite with me I am quite surprised that I had never explored the doctrine of trinity or in fact any other aspect of Christian theology until this recently. I blame this squarely on being subjected to the mundane peripherals of the religion too early in life, which made it familiar but somewhat uninspiring.

A master's voice

Have you heard Mehdi Hasan sing Ab ke hum bichde? He sings it like a dream. The first sher is okay and some others are really good, but you don’t think of all that when you hear him sing it – they all sound uniformly brilliant.

Today was a long-bath day (pedicure included) and this was my song of choice. The bath turned out longer than I expected and so I had to make up another sher to go along. It has the same khafiya as the maqta, but is different in content.

Ab na woh tu hain na main hun na woh maazi hai Faraz

Jaise do saaye tamannayon ke saraabon mein mile

Ahmed Faraz

Ye aane ka chalne ka jaane ka sabab

Ho ke seharaon mein phir ke saraabon mein mile

Another one happens as I write-

Aag-e-hijr mein jalaa di thi tere shumaar-e-khata

Shaayad tarq-e-ishq ki wajah tere hisaabon mein mile

Cleaning the closet

The eagle-eyed will notice that this blog has now been neatly filed under labels. Let me tell you that it has been the most arduous task especially when one realises that there was nothing ‘neat’ about the posts to begin with. As a result they have most of them been labelled half a dozen things.

But must say this labelling business is very self-indulgent activity. It has you going fondly over a couple of year’s worth of vomitorious verbing. Naturally I am ever indulgent because I have a policy against cringing for past selves. So I have resolutely ploughed through the archives of this blog with a grin plastered onto my face. I have valiantly resisted every temptation to hit the delete button. One or two things I have noticed which I will remedy now.

Reconstructing Faiz:

Sometime back I had a post up with an alternative take on Faiz’s Raat khoyee huee… Sheetal assures me that it is disgustingly lazy to put up a version of a poet's work without exhibiting the original for comparison. So that has been remedied here.

Neurotic therapy:

I realized during this labelling process that I used to have some remarkably healthy habits. People who know me will avow to the fact that I have never actively concealed my neurotic tendencies. But in the past I had developed a system of healthy release, which I seem to have misplaced along the way. ‘No fret all action’ is my motto so I am just going to annihilate my latest brain-bug by a few nicely placed bytes:

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It was as usual a situation where my eyes were constrained to watch a certain frame for a prolonged period, and my hands were powerless to ease the pain.

It was the first play of the Hindu Metro Plus Theater Festival and I was looking forward to watching Love letters with pleasurable anticipation. It is quite usual in these two-actor psychological dramas for them to go real easy on the props. So no sweat there. In fact I was quite happy to see that instead of hanging around without a thing to do with their hands, the actors were in fact given the task of arranging a set of cubes* in various (quite inspired) formations that not only were used as furniture/props but also doubled up as symbolic and mood creating elements. So far so good. Each actor (Rajat Kapoor, Shernaz Patel) was give a ‘L’ shaped block and a solitary cube with different colour on each face. Shernaz’s character was an artist so her cube had one face with some nice graphic-type art.

I did not know if the original productions had used the same techniques or if it was a Rage productions innovation but I was quite impressed and looking forward to seeing exactly how many different ways these simple props were going to be used. Also I was seated in the balcony**, which gave me the best possible vantage to really appreciate the lighting.

If only is a sad phrase.

• If only the art director had seen fit to give Shernaz Patel a crash course in the critical importance of symmetry.
• If only Shernaz Patel’s LKG teacher had smacked her bottom hard each time she drew a Squiggly when she was asked to do a Standing up line.
• If only some good US uncle had thought to replace toddler Shernaz’s (haphazardly arrangeable) building block set with a Leggo set with GROOVES.
• If only Shernaz Patel had fallen off a couple of times in rehearsals from the top block because she persisted in arranging it lopsided instead of placing it EXACTLY on top of the bottom block.
• If only Shernaz Patel was not colour blind.

See, half way through the play I even tried to convince myself that the damned woman’s pathological inability to comprehend and execute a straight line is just a well-planned reflection of the character’s unbalanced nature. But she had to go and ruin it all by placing the blocks in a manner befitting a well-aligned space rocket for a couple of scenes. So naturally I relaxed and prepared to watch in peace for the rest of the time. Oh but the torture of hope!

She slipped, people, she slipped. No, not physically (which would have ruined the play for everybody) but back into her sloppy ways. She arranged and she arranged - letting show just that bit of beige behind the black, creating a nice little curve from two squares - and my nerves frayed just a little bit more... she had gotten on my nerves in Black, but that was nothing compared to this!

I am convinced that I came back from the play with considerably less enamel on my teeth than I had going in.

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*A device which has come to be known as Pippin's boxes, the trusty internet tells me.

**Being possessed of a very superior intellect I had naturally chosen the Cheapest & Bestest option, which was not the fate of other unfortunate folks.

Tazaah tar

Qaid-e-zeest se fursat ka zariya nahi tha

Maine apna khuda tarasha nahi tha

Mehfil ke behlane mere paas us waqt

Rudaad-e-hayaat thi falsafa nahi tha

Waqt hi ke irade beimaan nikle

Varna imaan se woh shaqs bewafaa nahi tha

Nazar andaaz hotein hain jo ashnaa mehfil mein

Un mein hum bhi shumaar hain andaaza nahi tha

Umr bhar karvatein badle hain asvi

Neend jab bhi khuli savera nahi tha

Notes from a trek around Madhya Pradesh ( with update)

• Some sleep is more important than a lot of food
• From now and forever buses (long-distance carrier types) are always going to make me shudder in pavlovian response. I have been permanently scarred now; nothing can disabuse my mind of its belief that buses are chambers of torture

Sub notes-

1. In cases of particularly sadistic and disobliging drivers, one need have no scruples in dismantling the speakers and fixing the wires (the end entirely justifies the means as has been satisfactorily demonstrated)

Sub sub note:

Care should be taken not to lose the screws, lest a badly put back speaker lands on your head during the night

2. It is an inescapable fact of life that during a night journey you will require all of the things that have been securely packed under yards of tarpaulin on the roof of the bus, and none of the things that you have in your trusty rucksack

• Climbing up up up a steep steep hill is always worth it
• Spotted inventory: Item, two jackals, in particular beauty; item, a moonlit wolf, stuff of firelight tales; item, birds - treepies, paradise flycatcher, woolly-necked stork, more- in jungle resplendence. Point to be considered: does this compensate for not sighting a tiger at Pench?
• Kareena Kapoor has more spunk than I had credited her with. Has gone up a notch in my estimation (no nothing to do with Saif)
• Always check for Russell’s vipers before you dry clothes on tree trunks
• An 18mm wide angle lens is not nearly wide enough for god’s world
• Determined bonhomie is very nerve-grating; it is also to be mistrusted
• Hot springs are fantastic things; politicians are bores, no exceptions to be had; litterers should be super-glued to garbage cans.

One or two pictures-




Sheetal and Shweta at Vulture point
















The Yogi

Update- Especially for Gaga’s edification

We went to the spot in Panchmahri where they shot for Ashoka. A lovely deep pool of water surrounded by rocks and the path leading up to it was treacherous. The forest guide who was with us told us that that for one scene Kareena Kapoor had to sprint along this break-your-bones-trail and dive headlong into the pool (she was supposed to have been chased by goons or whatever they called them in Ashoka’s time). I, who had gingerly made my way down, feeling for every loose rock and pebble and regaling the general public about my views about the unwisdom of getting your rubber footwear wet, was very impressed with the vision of Bebo blithely haring down the rocks.

Needless to say she was to be rescued in the film. The guide tells me they got a local boy to dupe in for Shahruk. You are seeing?

I am saying doodh ka doodh pani ka pani.