Only random thoughts today.

Yesterday morning just at the entrance of my office building I was offered a complimentary copy of the Deccan Herald. Now, I have never been too keen on that paper. Especially, I hate the insipid political cartoon on the Front page. But I took the paper anyway, as if on instinct, and regretted it the very next moment. It lies in the old newspaper pile at home without being opened even.
Question: Is greed ( more rather than less) an instinct in human beings.

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The Week's cover story this time is about India's myths, demystified. They talk of, did Ashoka kill his brothers, did Buddha renounce the world and a lot of such stuff, was Razia's slave her lover etc. I love ancient times somehow and I felt like reading that cover story. I did read some of it. And it is nice. I dont know or care about the truth or logic of what they are saying but the old sounding names of cities and kings and tribes. Those are nice. It makes you try and imagine, to visualize, with the aid of other similar stuff you might have read or seen, how those times might have been.

Come to think of it, I love period movies- Lagaan, Utsav, Razia Sultan, Umrao Jaan, The Mummy, Ben-Hur, anything set in old times and I am bound to give it a try.

India has such a great tradition, such great mythologies, such very interesting people have lived here. There aught to be more movies and serials made based on this stuff.

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On my very last day at IITM, I went to the Library, I had to return a few books for a friend, I wandered into literature section found a poetry book, some Sanskrit stuff, translated to English by some lady. So I read it and loved it and not knowing what to do, since I had to go home that day and wanted to read the whole thing. So I took it to the reference section and got the whole thing zeroxed.

Only later while trying to find the text on the web so I could send it to my friends, did I find out that that poem was a very famous poem called "Chaurapanachasika" by the famous 11th Century poet "Bilhana" also called Chauras. (In my eagerness I had not zeroxed the title page).

Chauras it seems was in love with the king's daughter and was sent to prison on account of that. So he composed the Chaurapanachasika, meaning "50 fantasies of a love thief". The king liked it and set him free. This is one particular version of the story. No one knows for sure.

You can search on Google for Bilhana and you'll find different translations of it. It is an erotic poem, but since it is so famous and all, you won't object if I put a link here . It is one translation. It seems different from the one I read. I have the zerox copy with me still.