Concepts

My father used to tell us bed-time stories. How well I understood them was not his problem. And I was myself a problematic kid even then, so quite a few of them did work or wove into funny ways, conjuring up funny ideas into my little head. One of such stories stayed within me for too long a time. The reason was the questions it raised.

This story had two characters. One was an aged Namboodiri, belonging to what was regarded as an orthodox, sacred and pious type of people. The other was his very close friend , a Christian priest! I realized later during the adulthood, that this story was quite true, and did happen! But the names of the places, where these two people hailed was too complex, beyond my ability to even repeat, so no way to remember. Names of people and the places they live in, get almost welded like those gas-welding of metals! When I asked about such complexity in names, my father narrated a small joke: It seems there was a Nair, whose first name was Raman. Now there are dozens of “Raman Nair’s” all over the village. So people identified him with a herbal shrub “Kanjhara” beside his house. So he became ‘Kanjhara Raman Nair”. After this name stuck too hard to him, he felt irritated, because it diminished his own grandeur, his family, its house etc, and gave some silly undue importance to a stupid shrub. People even called him for short ‘Kanjhara’ and so on. One day he simply chopped the shrub, at its trunk, leaving just a barren stub. But, the name now simply became “kanjhara-kutti-Raman-Nair” ! ‘Kutti” means a ‘stub’ or a short pole. He now got really annoyed, and uprooted the stub, right from below ground level, not sparing even the roots. Now, his anger, annoyance, and stubbornness was quite visible, when people passed by, noticing a deep hole in the earth where that innocent shrub had once stood. But by now, people had got so much used to addressing him with that ‘Kanjhara’ prefix that, they simply added that pit-hole, to make it as ‘Kanjhara-kutti-kuzhi-Raman-Nair’ !! Yes, you don’t need to be told the meaning for the word ‘kuzhi’!

Sorry, for leaving the main story with just titles. Our Namboodiri friend was once afflicted very badly with some kind of serious skin ailment. No doctor could find a cure. He tried all types of known concoctions in ayurveda! Then he turned to his friend the Christian priest, and asked him if he could do something. Very peculiarly, this Namboodiri maintained a ‘safe’ distance on every aspect from this Christian priest, because of their diverse religious faiths. Yet, this Namboodiri could never pluck out the friendship and love that he ‘naturally’ felt for this priest. The priest in turn, respected the other’s sentiments, understood very deeply the other’s love for him, and never became a cause of concern to ever reduce the heart-level-intimacy, though proximity was always at an arms-length! Namboodiri knew that this priest had medical skills too, but came to him only as a last resort, just because he was very hesitant about physical examination by him! But now the ailment had aggravated and spread around visibly enough. The priest prescribed a medicine, which included some python’s fat as an ingredient. Our Namboodiri was visibly annoyed at such ridiculous suggestion, knowing fully well, that his religion rigidly prescribed strict vegetarianism, this priest had the audacity to suggest a snake-fat for consumption! Namboodiri retorted “to hell with your medicine, your friendship and all. I shall go to my last resort now, my faith in my prayer, my God.” Having said thus, the priest did not turn up for the joint-morning-walk, they usually had together, and the only time they nourished the friendship each day. After a few weeks, the Namboodiri got cured! He now felt his first duty to be to storm into that priest’s place and declare with emphatic proof that his own faith was good enough to cure! The priest smiled calmly. He then humbly and politely asked what exactly the Namboodiri did by way of rituals, to merit this benediction. “Oh!” said the Namboodiri, cutting the story short, ‘nothing much, I used to get into the river water up to waist level, chant incantations, sip holy water several times, in between, and invoke divine blessings. I did this for few hours each day, as a rigorous penance’ he added. There was nothing more to probe into this miracle, felt our Namboodiri. The priest now politely requested ‘do you mind taking me to the very place where you performed this ritual?’. The Namboodiri proudly marched his friend to the very spot along the river banks. The river was small, with some modest flow. The priest took a look, and now suggested that they walk a little further, along the flow, upwards. Very soon, they reached a spot where the water was flowing out of a narrow gap between two huge rocks. Somehow a very large python had got trapped between these two rocks, leaving them to even guess as to how it died. But it was quite visible, that it had remained there for a few weeks, trapped, undisturbed, and the flow of water over its huge and long body ensured that did not rot in dry humid air. Now it was the Priest’s turn to explain. He said ‘My good friend, with due respect to your faith, it was also the very same snake-fat, but in larger and raw doses that did the work!’ The rest of the story does not matter.

This is how concept works sometimes!

Concepts are usually too subtle. So what good could a ‘concept-about-concept’ do to us, to be easily understood first? I found a chapter(‘Concept Formation’) in one of the books by a renowned author, ‘Ayn Rand’ where she describes ‘concept of concepts’ in the book, entitled ‘Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology’. I cannot but help quoting one sentence I loved, in it : “… In this sense and respect, perceptual awareness is the arithmetic, but conceptual awareness is the algebra of cognition”. I would not even venture to go any further about that. But yes. Each is left to one’s own concepts about everything. Some scientific concepts are thrust upon us in school text books, and we are fortunate that nobody challenges us about it at degree level or ever thereafter!

Somehow, I have a feeling that most of us are now very reluctant to look at simple things with the ‘respect’ it deserves! Perhaps that is why those simple rituals, simple traditions, got scoffed at and got lost into oblivion over a period of time. The more complex a gadget is, that we have, more the respect it fetches to us! Complex solutions have some kind of instant magical appeal! That is what made me think about those old-fashioned concepts, the two liners that the ancient simple saints and sages sang for their disciples, what we call as ‘Kabeer’s doha’, Vemmanna’s Padyamu, etc. Oh! Is it that what we ‘perceive’ is going to become what we conceive, and the concept? Then, it is verily our perception levels that decides as to what and how we perceive, and in turn we then ‘conceive’ it. Perhaps exactly, just like it is described in biology text books, only one in million sperms get a chance for human womb to get ‘conceived’ with it! No wonder even that process is made far too complex and costly too, for us now!

Psychiatrists invariably make lot of money, when we love to get addicted to complexities and complications! Oh! It all started when I looked at the ‘best’ answer for a very simple question in ‘Yahoo Answers Forum(How can u memorize easily?), and then I too inadvertently got trapped into forwarding it as a ‘worth’ reading mail to a few of my young recipients! I don’t know whether it was my laziness or what, that I told myself, ‘Oh! Mercifully, it is any way not for me now, at this age!’

My collection of concept says, not to make this too long now, so I give just the web link to the question, only for those who like to take a look at it.

http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhAODhQRJYXbmc_QEx_iWQaRHQx.;_ylv=3?qid=20090523001631AAT8ple&show=7#profile-info-3e8fFRCIaa

Conceptually yours,
Psn (25th May, 2009)