1872
I grew up under the large skies of Trymbakeshvar. My town lived in the shadow of the row of Brahmagiri hills, which looked like a painter had painted them onto the sky with large, easy strokes, and then his brush, set at ease by the undulating forms it was creating, relaxed into a contented murmur. .
Only some places retain a charge that you can experience when you walk the land. Trymbakeshvar is one of those places, that has an electricity about it, a possibility that here, you might be able to walk, further and further, into your own consciousness.
In the ages that preceded all ages, in a time that was before all times, that was not a point, but beyond the point, always beyond every point.. the gods and the demons were children then, and always engaged in competitive fights, that we call their battles. Still children to existence, they had encountered the spectre of death while at play. They wanted Amruta, the nectar which could give them eternity.
Fear made bravehearts out of them. They uprooted the mountain, Meru, put it on top of a tortoise and wrapped the giant snake Vasuki around it. The devas gathered on one side of the mountain, the asuras on the other, and like a tug of war on the largest scale you can imagine, they churned the ocean.
The skies were full of the gems that the churning threw up. A white horse with wings, Kamadhenu the cow with dark eyes of the containing silence of the smoothest pebbles on the riverbed.
But the churners only wanted amruta.
They wanted to defeat death, rout him from their playground, so they could play and fight amongst themselves forever. In the machinations, the fights, the interventions that were made to distribute the Amruta when it finally appeared, a few drops fell to the earth. Trymbakeshwar was one of those places where a drop of the nectar of the gods did its alchemy on the soil.
In a time when there was no plough, what did it take to have a greener field? Rishi Gautam flung seeds here and there on the ground like everyone else, and still when the crop came up, his made a beautiful field. This got Gautam a lot of respect on earth, and it got him the jealously of the gods.
They plotted and sent a hungry cow to his field. Some say that they prayed to Ganesh and while he detested their lowly plan, he was bound by the rules of the devotee who does the hardest penance and the deity, to obey them. The elephant god disguised himself as a cow entered Gautam's field.
Gautam saw a large cow lumbering among his radiant crop, looking isolently at him, her jaws slowly making mulch of his magical farm.
He would wonder for a long time after, he had merely flung a piece of straw at her as he chased her out, how did she die?
Gohatya is a crime with no easy penance. Gautam prayed deeply and desperately to Shiva, his body still as a corpse. Shiva knew his bhakta had to first bathe in the Ganga to do penance. Feeling tender towards the already weakened Gautam, he asked Ganga to help him.
Ganga would not refuse the blue skinned god, you remember, she had lived in his hair. It had been meant as a trap, but she had- she had not disliked living in his matted locks.
Saraswati: And he saw how she did not dislike it, and no longer thought of her as just an animal to be trapped, he now wondered about her
Dada: Like I said, then Shiva, charmed by the presence of two whose thoughts he often lived in, came to live at my hometown, our hometown Trymbakeshwar.
Shri Trymbakeshwar Jyotirlinga
The Indian Charivari appears. "The turbanned Mr. Punch of Calcutta smokes a hubble-bubble while being entertained by dusky maidens in scant clothing. The cover includes baby Punch being fed pale ale by an Indian nanny... Since wood engravers were in short supply the magazine had restored to lithography"
Its predecessors in India- Delhi Sketch Book(1850) owned by the leading newspaper, The Englishman. Had a more romantic view of Indians, in line with the Orientalism of Jones Munro Elphinstone
magazine had to close in 1857.
Returned in 1863 as the Indian Punch. bitter mood.
The educated Indian the butt of racist jokes now.
" The Indian Charivari shared mild jokes about English social life with expatriate readers. Art exhibitions and other topical issues, treated in the style of Punch, were also included. One fails to discern any political consistency of the paper other than a general conservatism. It look a protectionist line in its cartoons of the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, a Liberal and a supporter of free trade. He is depicted as a menacing bully, who keeps India, a comely young woman, manacled. The semi-nude females personifying India, had its precedent in Punch; symbolic figures and personifications were the mainstay of political cartoons in the West. Other cartoons of Northbook the bully include him dragging a reluctant Indian Nawab to be presented to the Prince of Wales. The Indian Charivari also took over the Delhi Sketch Book practice of publishing witty poems based on Sanskrit Literature.
Mookerjee's Magazine is offering trenchant political criticism. It will speak against Lord Lytton's Dramatic Performances Bill. It is one of the earliest Indian magazines to print lithographic cartoons. The cartoons are not necessarily funny, but they offer political comment.
