The time has come, the Walrus said,
to talk of many things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
and cabbages and kings.
- from The Walrus and the Carpenter, by Lewis
Carroll
Unlike the walrus, few people can
talk of such a variety of things. I have heard Prof Swaminathan talk of shoes
and socks in Ajanta paintings, ships that sailed between England and India, the
Fibonacci patterns of leaves in cabbages, and many a king including Mahendra
Varma Pallava -the maverick who called himself Vichitrachitta, the innovative
and exotic thinker who unleashed the era of sculptures and architecture in
Tamil country. If I had studied mechanical engineering in IIT Delhi, I am sure
I would have heard him speak about sealing wax, too.
To talk about such a variety of things, one must first have an abundant
curiosity and the intellectual discipline to understand what they have to
offer. In short he must be an AtyantaKaama and a TattvaVedi.
Which he is, to our good fortune.
Our VichitraChittha Swaminathan
can not only talk about them, but talk about them in interesting ways, and
provoke the listener’s curiosity and instigate a sense of wonder.
Most Indians, unlike Isaac Newton,
stand not on the shoulders of giants, but surrounded by the wonders wrought
upon this many splendored land by innumerable generations of giants,
intellectual artistic and indefatigable. Sadly most of us see this treasure
trove not with eyes not always appreciative but sometimes ignorant, often
apathetic, even blasé. Even the curious and the restless among us, often need a
spark, a shaft of light, a steady lamp to look long and deep and absorb the
essence of such wonders, waiting to be discovered. Such a spark, a lighthouse
is Swaminathan.
The few paragraphs above are the
introductory passages to my essay on him, which will be part of the book we,
Tamil Heritage Trust, have compiled on his work and dreams, and will release on
September 8, 2019 when we salute his achievements.
Of his days in Delhi and upto the
recent period until I met him in 2009 or so I can say very little.I first
noticed him at a lecture on history at the Musiri house in Oliver Road, by Dr
Chitra Madhvan. A few months later he gave a series of talks on The Story of Scripts, about the various
writing systems of the world. It was quite a dazzling and eye opening
experience. I had only recently learnt of Brahmi from a lecture by Iravatham Mahadevan,
and had some minor interest in linguistics after having read Guns,
Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. This Swaminathan, I realized, was truly
a scholar, and a marvelous accumulator and presenter of facts.
This series was later followed by a five
part series on the Oral Tradition of Sanskrit. Not Sanskrit literature, mind
you, but its orality. What does that
even mean? He began with a long explanation about the power of human memory, and
an account of an ashtavadani, a special kind of scholar, who can do eight
(ashta) different tasks (avadaanam) simultaneously. Having established the stupendous
feats the human mind can accomplish, he went on to demonstrate that the
Sanskrit alphabet was a marvel, a logical, analytical organization of the
sounds of the language. Then followed an explanation of Siva Sutras and how
Panini used them crisply to write a grammar simply but crisply.
To say my mind was blown away at
this point, is an understatement. Jared Diamond and Kalki had done it in 1999. The
Kanchi Kailasanatha and Ellora Kailasanatha temples blew my mind in 2005 and
2006. And Swaminathan and Panini blew my mind then. If Sivakamiyin Sabatham was a paradigm shift about technology, the two
Kailasanathas about engineering and art, Swaminathan on Sanskrit was an paradigm
shift about linguistics. I started an email conversation with him about
Sanskrit and its alphabet (basically arguing that the Tamil alphabet was better
in someways and more sensible) and he responded point by point.
Shortly after this, I realized that he had started the Tamil Heritage Trust and
I began attending its monthly lectures. Then I was pulled into THT as a
potential contributor by V Chandrasekhar, for the next THT experiment, a site seminar
in Mamallapuram in January 2010. The inaugural Mamallapuram lecture was another
dazzler. Not only me, even Kalki was blind about Mamallapuram, I realized. I
made a lot of learned friends, and became a part of the THT family – it feels more
a family than an trust.
I have written earlier about two of Swaminathan’s
contributions - Powerpoint Literature and Bulletpoint Literature. He has so
much more in his repertoire, and so few of us to learn and carry these forward.
Fortunately we are growing in strength.
I won’t talk about the various
activities of THT at this point, as we do that at the beginning of every monthly
lecture. But I played a useful role, and my loooong talk on Pallava Grantham as
a preparatory lecture, was appreciated by KRA Narasiah. What a boost! Later in
2010, I borrowed Swaminathan’s manuscript about Ajanta, which was even more mind
blowing than the Mamallapuram book. When I returned it, he said I was the first
person to read it (besides his brother, the writer Calcutta Krishnamurthy, who
only proof read it).
We used to meet the evenings of the
last Saturdays at Gandhi center in Thakkar Bapa Vidyalaya, to discuss future
programs. While most suggestions focused on art, sculpture, architecture, music,
literature, etc., I suggested science and commerce, like astronomy. He
immediately responded by asking me to give a talk on astronomy; and even gave a
book to start my research. If I thought Sanskrit had a lot in linguistics, its
astronomy and mathematics just blew me away.
My father Rangarathnam was ill, he
suffered from mild dementia for a couple of years, but in the last few months
of 2010 he really suffered. He was hospitalized in September, eerily on the
anniversary of my mother’s death in 1981. My dad survived, but was put on
severe restrictions including feeding from a Ryles tube, via his nose, rather
than his mouth. It was devastating. Then on October 5, he just passed away. The
next day, I joined Nagupoliyan Balasubramanian’s Sanskrit classes, which he
just started, perhaps to the shock of some friends. The next month was spent
preparing for the astronomy lectures, and the next hundred weekends learning
Sanskrit.
Sanskrit and astronomy helped me
cope with my father’s loss. Swaminathan served as a father figure. So did Balasubramanian
and Narasiah…. I lost one father, and these three took their place in a fashion
which I can’t explain in words. One thrill and amazing opportunity, was to
spend a Teacher’s Day, giving a talk to the teachers of a school, with these
three gurus in the audience.
Later in October, Jayaram and I went
to Hyderabad with Swaminathan and his wife Uma. With my Hyderabad friends
Balaji and Bina, we had arranged two of his talks on Sanskrit and Music. Balaji
was my roommate in Texas and later, colleague in Microsoft. When we went to
check on them in the train, Uma mami spotted us and returned telling her husband,
“The children are here (குழந்தைகள்
வந்திருக்கா).” (I was forty. Some child!) But
that’s how she saw us. My first Astronomy talk in November went better than I
hoped (and also, very very long).
By this time THT had become
established, and steady. In December 2010, Swaminathan was requested to conduct
a tour of Mamallapuram by the ASI for the local panchayat school students, and
he invited myself, Ashok Krishnaswami and Selvam to accompany him. I went from
student to guide practically overnight. Later in December, we also accompanied
him to Pudukottai for a dream project of
his, Project Sittannavasal, along with VSS Iyer and Kanaka Ajita Doss. We met
the Collector, discussed a few things, saw Sittannavasal, Kodumbalur, Kudumiyan
Malai, etc. In January, we went to Ajanta and Ellora. We had frequent, almost
weekly gettogethers in my house in Kodambakkam, discussing and showcasing
photos of Nageshvaram and Pullamangai, Ajanta, a plan to curate a series of TED
talks, record some TED like talks on Indian art, and a whole host of projects, several
of which never came to fruition.
 |
With Walter Spink,
Fardapur resort, Ajanta |
He introduced me to artist Maniam
Selvan, whom we visited, and who talked raptorously about the scene in
Sivakamiyin Sabatham, where Paranjothi crosses the mountain ravine. Chills! He
took me to meet publisher Vellayampattu Sundaram and later interview him. I
missed a chance to meet Iravatham Mahadevan. Then we went to chat with Narasiah…
 |
| Uthiramerur |
Jayaram and I went with the Swaminathan
and Uma mami to Uthiramerur and Kanchi, including my first guided visit to
Kailasanatha temple. Swaminathan was a kid in a candy shop. A couple of years
later he asked me to give a talk on the temple. Then he introduced me to Dr
Nagaswamy and asked me to prepare a lecture about his selected works.
There are several stories more to
tell. But I wonder if these personal remembrances would be of interest to
anyone but the two of us.
I’ll wrap up with a couple:
conversations with him. He kept telling me a few times that Indians were
empirical while Europeans were analytical. It took me a long time to understand
what he meant; I don’t entirely agree, but my God, what a bold and brilliant
statement. The other is a question he asked – Is there an Indian way of thinking? It took me many years to
understand what an enormously loaded and sweeping question he was asking. And
no one seems to be engaging him in this conversation. Or even contemplation.
Our most recent large intellectual
engagement is with Vilayanur Ramachandran, who stated in January that two
persons he admires are William Jones and Swaminathan. And that he hopes that
Tamil Heritage Trust can be a new Asiatic society. What could be more
delightful, a more fitting cap in the feather of our Vichitrachitta?
பேராசிரிய சுவாமிநாதனுடன் ஒரு நேர்காணல்
நம் விருந்தினர் - பொதிகை டிவி
