Nirmukta » Creative Arts

Just How Much Gold Do You Need For Worship?

Arvind Iyer — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:42:44 +0000

The mills of God grind small, we are told…

But too slow for those in hunger’s grip!

For whose sake is saved God’s hoarded gold?

How much gold do you need for worship?

Law’s blindfolded; God’s reclining…

Both indifferent to human hardship!

Poverty is far from declining…

How much gold do you need for worship?

By earthly need, not heavenly faith…

Should the the scales of earthly justice tip!

Charity’s prop when you say is faith…

How much gold do you need for worship?

From raiders this bounty was withheld…

Can’t our own, now with pride, into it dip?

What’s the harm when as Art it’s beheld?

How much gold do you need for worship?

“Serve the Lord within everyone”,

Is a chant on every pious lip.

Shouldn’t this work from shrines be begun?

How much gold do you need for worship?

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M F Husain In Memoriam

Arvind Iyer — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:53:49 +0000

Rabindranath Tagore is famously known to have said “Kobi tabo monobhumi ramer janmasthan, Ayodhar cheye satya jeno” (The poets’ mind is the birthplace of Ram, which is more real than Ayodhya). Icons of the national imagination who take birth in a poet’s mind, come of age in an artist’s canvas in every age, and today stand bereaved at the passing of this age’s best-known rearer and reshaper of India’s inherited iconography. For his vivid reimaginings of myth and bold recastings of symbols, M F Husain was much misunderstood and maligned by both rigid idolaters and rabid iconoclasts. For vivifying and animating on canvas figures which to the stultified imagination of his haters were familiar only in the rigor mortis of reverential orthodoxy, he was threatened in both life and limb.

The truism that criticism says more about the critic than the object of criticism was never truer than for Husain and his haters. A vivid illustration of this is this artist’s impression of India’s riparian pride, Ganga and Yamuna.

Someone reveling in Nature and with a taste for metaphor, might think that this painting could lend itself to an interpretation like the following: “Revelling in their pristine purity, undefiled by the viles of the wild world; these miraculous Maidens are ever itinerant, yet ever in royal repose.” But for someone intending to to rouse a rabble, with a sectarian worldview and with malicious intent, this painting is a disrobing and a denigration of deities, deserving a lynch-mob-enforced exile. What Indians must mourn is their acquiescence to this lynch-mob and their largely tongue-tied complicity in the burial of artistic freedom, before the time to bid farewell to this exiled artist himself after a fully lived life.

Imagine a cow trembling with fright under the onslaught of a menacing, raging bull. Imagine an undaunted, yet overpowered woman attempting in vain to save the cow and confront the bull. Imagine, as an unwitting witness of this paroxysmal scuffle a helpless child in the arms of the woman. This is how, perhaps the attacks of 26/11 in the artist’s mind’s eye, appeared the appalling sight of the nation’s pride being savaged by terrorism, with a distraught citizenry watching helplessly the ravaging of the motherland’s sovereignty. Self-proclaimed ‘defenders of the faith’ and thought-police acted as though this painting was a worse injury to national honour than the flesh-and-blood tragedy of the all-too-real event itself! The response from artists of the world to the thought-police of the world was given once and for all by Pablo Picasso. In more than one way, Picasso’s Guernica is to the Spanish Civil War what Husain’s ‘Rape of India’ is to the Mumbai attacks of 26/11. While living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, Picasso suffered harassment from the Gestapo. One officer allegedly asked him, upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment, “Did you do that?” Picasso responded, “No, you did.”

In Memoriam: Ajita Kamal, 1978-2011

I Wish Everybody Forgets My Birthday

Pratap Kumar Rath — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:08:49 +0000

I wish everybody forgets my birthday,
After I became an adult,
A painful reminder of time waits for none
Some Useful Period Wasted (SUPW, Socially Useful Productive Work, they say in school level education)
What is that but, an accident
Or may be a matter of convenience of a painful process
Quickly to be got over,
So that people can smile when you arrive complaining at the top of your voice.
What if, you had not arrived?
Would that have made a difference to the lives of the billions who have already arrived?
Or you just add another number to the already exploding
Would my god in reverse (dog for the uninitiated) have missed me?
Would the good wishes, flowers and cakes, sweets not been used?
Like the New Year
It comes every year to celebrate the hardly celebratable
A point of time in an essential continuity,
Making you sing out, “and miles to go before I sleep (or slip – depending on how sleepy you are)….
And “oh thank you, thank you so very much” with a painted smile that makes your cheek ache
Can somebody not see,
I am celebrating my birth by living everyday,
For each day could be my last,
Everyday is a birthday of mine
When I can rise from bed and say “rise and shine” to myself
Carrying humanity a little further with my temperament,
What matters is that I have put in efforts.
When I came is of no significance,
For if we celebrate the birthdays in real earnest
There won’t be much else to do
And so in all fairness,
Why cant we all forget that sometime back we were born,
And since we arent dead yet, we are alive.
But alive isn’t living
For we must live with dignity
And my dignity nobody else can take away,
For all of us are one of our kinds.
So to help me get down to the serious business of living,
I wish everybody just forgets my birthday

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The Reign of Reason (A Poem)

Arvind Iyer — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 17:36:31 +0000

We insist the past is not wisdom’s sole source…
But among us you’ll find no idol-smasher!
Wielding high thinking, and never brute force,
The reign of Reason let us now usher!

Birth as a measure of worth we reject!
In our world, an upstart’s no gatecrasher!
Equal opportunity is our project.
The reign of Reason let us now usher!

Prayer does not count as contribution.
Of what use is a passive well-wisher?
Our charity will exceed Faith’s ration!
The reign of Reason let us now usher!

To the crowd’s convention we won’t prostrate;
Or slump on desks as a paid pen-pusher!
We’ll educate, organize, agitate!
The reign of Reason let us now usher!

-Arvind Iyer

Editor’s Note: “The Reign of Reason” captures the spirit of Yukti 2011, a Nirmukta event to promote scientific temper. To know more please visit the event website.

All I Ask Is That Each Book Be Read! (A Poem)

Arvind Iyer — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:08:29 +0000

All I ask is that each Book be read!

The Word, to the pious, comes from God…

To others, it’s just in Man’s mind bred!

In sheer disbelief, though you may nod…

All I ask is that each Book be read!

Reduced to writing in earthly ink,

These are heavenly decrees it’s said.

When it means the world to us, some think,

All I ask is that each Book be read!

“There is but one Divine Decree!”

By this call were countless armies led!

Before a preaching or killing spree,

All I ask is that each Book be read!

In dead silence under mystery’s shroud,

By unread Scripture is hatred fed!

Before rousing rabbles in the crowd,

All I ask is that each Book be read!

What was wisdom in a bygone age,

Our modern mind may view with dread!

Viewing with Reason’s eye every page,

All I ask is that each Book be read!

-Arvind Iyer

September 8, 2010

Slideshow: Celebrating Everybody Bake Jesus Day Around The World

Editor — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:46:36 +0000

Everybody Bake Jesus Day was celebrated on July 3^rd, 2010, to protest the Spanish government’s violation of musician Javier Krahe’s freedom of speech. The event generated enthusiastic response on faceboo k. Scroll through the slideshow to see how folks around the world commemorated the day.

Andrés Tonini

Angelo Stephan Hart

Patches67

Ajita Kamal

Brett Schock

Chris Haye

Ele DeLampshade

Gordon Little

Kathryn Seed

Lucio Andrés Miñones

Luis León Cárdenas Graide

May Aristizabal Deep

Mihaela Dumitriu

Monica Beliţoiu

Willem Pretorius

Ryan Deame

Sérgio Ribeiro

Pampa García Molina

Pablo Flores

Anabel Merchán

Odin Zeus McGaffer

Videos:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nirmukta Wallpapers and Print Size Posters For Free Download

Bala Bhaskar — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:38:10 +0000

Wallpapers: Click on image to view and download full size wallpapers.

Print Sized Posters: Click on image to view and download full sized posters.

The wallpapers thread on the forums can be found here.

The print size posters thread on the forums can be found here.

Atheist posters from a previous post can be found on the forums here.

All images are available for free download and use under creative commons license. All artwork is by Bala Bhaskar.

Aren’t You? Atheist Posters by Bala Bhaskar

Bala Bhaskar — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 01:39:11 +0000

These posters are inspired by an excellent interview by Dawkins for a news channel. What was different about this interview was that as soon as the interviewer said “….you are also an atheist”, Dawkins retorted saying “Aren’t you?”. This took the interviewer, who was actually quite well-mannered, aback, and started the trend of assuming people are atheists unless stated otherwise.

These images are presented free for download under Creative Commons, Attribution.

Bala’s work is being discussed further at the new Nirmukta community forums here.

I That I Protect : A Poem by Nalini Hebbar

Nalini Hebbar — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:23:39 +0000

Alone into this world I am born
With no name to call my very own
The womb that fatefully shaped me
And the eyes that lovingly peer at me
Are the ones that give me my identity
The ‘I’ that I so protectively preserve.

There is nothing in my world
That I don’t do for myself
Much more that I ever do for others,
Before the mind’s eye ‘I’ appears
In the long line of I’ s I’m just another I
Selfishly promoting my human cause.

Doing just what I want to do
To make it just the way I want it to be
Ahead of other I ‘s in the human race
Working hard to overtake and conquer
With a cuss here and a shove there
Maybe an occasional elbow in the ribs.

I work shrewdly to earn my money
To feed my family and my pets
I safeguard my home and my assets.
Hard-earned-free-time and my money
I invest on those racing ahead of me
On the social ladder I wish to climb.

I selfishly demand and help enforce
Ethics that protect my things and me
I choose the lesser of the evils offered
To stay on the right side of the fence
I condemn the ones who cross the line
Because that looks good on my résumé.

I now question my altruistic hands
Do I help because helping feels good?

Is the human in me basically selfish,
Or is every human born selfish?

Where am I going on this selfish path,
This path that always leads back to me?

Ambiguity : A Poem by Nalini Hebbar

Nalini Hebbar — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:33:50 +0000

The universe is and will be

No mystery lurks in far away places

Wisdom changes, it changes you

You see different, you see new

All that’s there is here right now

Here and within deep inside

A mind it is that wanders beyond

Into the world and space without

A lonely journey amid shadows

Finds and fosters unseen friends

Destiny and doom both need a face

To thank and curse as life unfolds

The universe is and will be

No mystery lurks in far away places