The Ashes
By DWIGHT GARNER
Published: May 18, 2008
There have been good novels about living in the post-9/11 world (Ian McEwan’s “Saturday”, pretentious ones (Don DeLillo’s “Falling Man”) and sentimental ones (Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”). But sorting through the pile of so-called 9/11 novels is a sad exercise, one that grows more pointless by the day. They’re all 9/11 novels now.
NETHERLAND
By Joseph O’Neill.
256 pages. Pantheon. $23.95.
Related
'Netherland,' by Joseph O’Neill: Post 9/11, a New York of Gatsby-Size Dreams and Loss
It’s impossible, though, to stop scanning the horizon for something else — the bracing, wide-screen, many-angled novel that will leave a larger, more definitive intellectual and moral footprint on the new age of terror.
Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland” is not that novel. It’s too urbane, too small-boned, too savvy to carry much Dreiserian sweep and swagger. But here’s what “Netherland” surely is: the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell. On a micro level, it’s about a couple and their young son living in Lower Manhattan when the planes hit, and about the event’s rippling emotional aftermath in their lives. On a macro level, it’s about nearly everything: family, politics, identity. I devoured it in three thirsty gulps, gulps that satisfied a craving I didn’t know I had.
O’Neill, who was born in Ireland, raised in Holland and now lives in New York, seems incapable of composing a boring sentence or thinking an uninteresting thought, whether he’s writing about dating (“We courted in the style preferred by the English: alcoholically”) or the darker stuff that keeps us awake at night, like the nuclear plant just up the river (“Indian Point: the earliest, most incurable apprehensions stirred in its very name”).
O’Neill’s prose glows with what Alfred Kazin called “the marginal suggestiveness which in a great writer always indicates those unspoken reserves, that silent assessment of life, that can be heard below and beyond the slow marshaling of thought.” And O’Neill knows how to deploy the quotidian fripperies of our laptop culture to devastating fictional effect. There’s a moment in “Netherland” involving a father, the son who has been taken from him, and Google Earth that’s among the most moving set pieces I’ve read in a recent novel. The father hovers over his son’s house nightly, “flying on Google’s satellite function,” lingering over his child’s dormer window and blue inflated swimming pool, searching the “depthless” pixels for anything, from thousands of miles away, he can cling to. O’Neill’s novel is full of moments like this: closely observed, emotionally racking, un-self-consciously in touch with how we live now.
The plot in “Netherland” runs on two tracks. The first tells the story of a family. The narrator, Hans van den Broek, is a Dutch-born equities analyst (he compares himself, in terms of influence if not infamy, to Henry Blodget) who lives in a TriBeCa loft with his British-born wife, Rachel, and their son. When 9/11 forces them to flee farther uptown, they end up living, almost by accident, in the shabby-glamorous Chelsea Hotel, and it is there that their marriage slowly cracks apart.
Rachel wants to take their son back to London and her family. He’ll be safer there, far from George Bush and the United States, a country she has begun to think of as “ideologically diseased.” Hans, unsure of his feelings, starts to believe he is “a political-ethical idiot.” O’Neill writes beautifully about what it sometimes felt like in the months after 9/11, when you couldn’t attend a dinner party unless you were intellectually armed for hours of bitter debate: “For those under the age of 45 it seemed that world events had finally contrived a meaningful test of their capacity for conscientious political thought. Many of my acquaintances, I realized, had passed the last decade or two in a state of intellectual and psychic yearning for such a moment — or, if they hadn’t, were able to quickly assemble an expert arguer’s arsenal of thrusts and statistics and ripostes and gambits and examples and salient facts and rhetorical maneuvers. I, however, was almost completely caught out.”
What Hans and Rachel are trying to avoid, he tells us, is “what might be termed a historic mistake. We were trying to understand, that is, whether we were in a preapocalyptic situation, like the European Jews in the ’30s or the last citizens of Pompeii, or whether our situation was merely near-apocalyptic, like that of the cold war inhabitants of New York, London, Washington and, for that matter, Moscow.” It doesn’t matter. Rachel and their son are soon gone, while Hans stays behind in New York.
The book’s second story line, and perhaps its more resonant one, is about the solace Hans finds in the vibrant subculture of cricket in New York, where he is among the few white men to be found on the hundreds of largely West Indian teams in the city, teams that fan out, in the hazy summertime, across scrabby, lesser-known public parks.
O’Neill seems to know all there is to know about this sport. He writes about it with casual grace, describing, for example, the cricket batsman’s array of potential strokes: “the glance, the hook, the cut, the sweep, the cover drive, the pull and all those other offspring of technique conceived to send the cricket ball rolling and rolling, as if by magic, to the far-off edge of the playing field.”
The cricket these men play is, they realize, not quite the game they fell in love with back in the Antilles. The New York fields are too small, and not well tended. Here is more of O’Neill’s lovely writing about the game: “This degenerate version of the sport — bush cricket, as Chuck more than once dismissed it — inflicts an injury that is aesthetic as much as anything: the American adaptation is devoid of the beauty of cricket played on a lawn of appropriate dimensions, where the white-clad ring of infielders, swanning figures on the vast oval, again and again converge in unison toward the batsman and again and again scatter back to their starting points, a repetition of pulmonary rhythm, as if the field breathed through its luminous visitors.”
O’Neill cracks open a teeming world on the fringes of Manhattan, and through it we witness the aspirations of countless men who otherwise are invisible to wealthy Manhattanites. (“You want a taste of how it feels to be a black man in this country?” one character asks. “Put on the white clothes of the cricketer. Put on white to feel black.”)
Hans’s guide through this alternative city is Chuck Ramkissoon, a talky, street-smart Trinidadian who is alive in ways Hans is not. Some of Chuck’s business practices are shady (he runs an old-world “weh weh” gambling ring and intimidates his rivals), but he’s a Gatsby-like American dreamer as well, a man who hopes to build a world-class cricket arena in Brooklyn.
Chuck wants to make a killing on his cricket center, but he also has bigger ambitions: he essentially wants to save the world. “All people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket,” he explains. “What’s the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match. Cricket is instructive, Hans. It has a moral angle. ... I say, we want to have something in common with Hindus and Muslims? Chuck Ramkissoon is going to make it happen. With the New York Cricket Club, we could start a whole new chapter in U.S. history. Why not?”
Some of the best parts of “Netherland” are Chuck’s rambling political and cultural monologues, delivered as Hans drives him around the boroughs. (Ostensibly, Chuck is helping Hans prepare for his driving test. Unwittingly, Hans is Chuck’s chauffeur, shuttling him to some of his least tasteful business dealings.) The book’s few lesser moments occur at the Chelsea Hotel, where a cast of eccentrics — including a man who wears angel’s wings and a wedding dress — are asked to carry cheap metaphorical freight.
Chuck’s vast cricket plans don’t pan out, and he vanishes under murky and ultimately grisly circumstances. Did he kill himself? one friend asks. Another responds: “You idiot! Chuck isn’t a suicide guy! This guy has more life inside him than 10 people!”
“Netherland” is a bit like the wily and ebullient Chuck Ramkissoon. It has more life inside it than 10 very good novels.
Posted May 17th, Deosaran Bisnath
Read First chapter at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/books/chapters/first-chapter-netherland.html
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Pen in One Hand, Cricket Bat in the Other
Pen in One Hand, Cricket Bat in the Other
There are no longer any Staten Islanders in the Staten Island Cricket Club, one of the country’s oldest. The members are from places like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, St. Vincent and Grenada. There are just two Europeans; one of them, Joseph O’Neill, a 44-year-old Irishman who grew up in the Netherlands, was educated at Cambridge but has lived in New York since 1998.
That Mr. O’Neill in his other life happens to be a novelist is a matter of indifference to most of his teammates. They’re more interested in him as an accomplished batsman, a sure-handed fielder and a decent off-speed bowler. He’s also handy at contributing articles to the club bulletin.
He has clung to cricket, he said recently, because it’s his “athletic mother tongue,” and to learn baseball, say, would be like taking up a foreign language. Even if he became proficient, he wouldn’t get the jokes or the poetry.
The other European on the team is Raymond King, an Englishman who works for Verizon and has played with the club for 20 years after being turned down by a team run by the British Consulate. “I get more from chatting with these fellows than I did with my fellow Brits,” he said recently. “I love hearing the stories of different parts of the world. No matter what our religious, cultural differences, the love of cricket overcomes all that.”
Mr. O’Neill’s new book, “Netherland” (Pantheon), identifies the Staten Island Cricket Club by name, though not any of its players, and there’s a long description of Walker Park, the club’s home ground since 1876, a bumpy, crabgrass-ridden expanse just a block from the Kill Van Kull. It’s bordered now by tennis courts, a baseball field, a children’s playground and, beyond a chain-link fence, some Victorian houses that are occasionally bombarded by cricket balls, little red meteors crashing through front windows or cratering into flower beds.
“Netherland,” Mr. O’Neill’s third novel, is the story of Hans van den Broek, a Dutch investment banker working in New York, who after the 9/11 attacks finds himself exiled to the Chelsea Hotel, where, as it happens, Mr. O’Neill lives with his wife, Sally Singer, an editor at Vogue, and their three sons. (They make a cameo appearance in the novel, a “family with three boys who ran wild in hallways with tricycles and balls and trains.”)
After Hans’s British wife leaves him and takes their child back to England, he finds solace in an unlikely friendship with a Trinidadian wheeler-dealer named Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreams of starting a pro cricket league in New York. And he finds a second home in the subculture of New York cricket, a world at once exotic and familiar to him from his own cricketing days in The Hague.
The idea of publishing a novel in the United States about cricket gave him commercial qualms but not artistic ones, Mr. O’Neill said in an e-mail message. “You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations,” he added. “And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.”
New York cricket is “bush cricket,” one of the characters in the book complains, played on wickets of cocoa mat instead of grass and on weedy, substandard pitches, where to score a run you need to bat the ball in the air instead of elegantly along the fast ground of a proper pitch. But it has a charm of its own and is played with unusual devotion, in remote corners of the city, by a surprisingly large number of people unable or unwilling to shed their cricketing heritage.
On a recent Saturday morning Staten Island played a “friendly,” or informal, match against the Cosmos, a Queens club with a number of Jamaican players but captained by a Guyanese, Ashmul Ali. The players took the field clad all in white. (Many of the Staten Islanders were also wearing the club sweater, a sleeveless V-neck embroidered with the motto “Lude Ludum Insignia Secundaria,” which means “winning matters less than playing the game,” or something like that.)
The umpires strode out, wearing floppy hats and white jackets that looked liked lab coats. And the president and tutelary spirit of the Staten Island Cricket Club, a tall, courtly Trinidadian named Clarence Modeste, bowled a ceremonial first ball, taking a running start and tossing a straight-armed lob at the stumps. Mr. Modeste’s exact age is a club mystery. All that is known for sure is that he was born before World War II and is old enough to be the father of everyone else on the team. His best bowling days, in truth, are probably behind him.
On the sidelines, near the Walker Park field house, a slate-roofed Tudor-style building, players and onlookers sipped tea and nibbled Parle-G biscuits from India. They cheered, hollered and called out to those on the field in the lilting accent of the islands, the clipped vowels of Guyana, the lyrical syntax of Hindi-inflected English: “Well thinking, guys! Well thinking.” “Nicely batted!” “Lovely cricket — lovely!”
Passers-by took little notice. But if they had, they would have seen an odd and captivating little trace of empire: windmilling bowlers, batsmen in white leg pads, fielders chasing down a bouncing red ball — former colonials playing Britain’s game in yet another former colony, one where cricket has all but disappeared from the collective memory.
Mr. O’Neill led off the batting for Staten Island, hitting some nice cuts and sweeps, a couple of long balls, even a delicate backward slice before being “run out” after scoring a disappointing 21. He was picked off base, as it were, trying to eke out a run where there wasn’t one, and afterward he was taken aside by Habib Rehman, one of the team’s top batsmen, who was keeping score.
Mr. Rehman drives a yellow cab in his other life and is so devoted to cricket that he has been known to play late at night with his fellow cabbies, under parking lot floodlights and using a tennis ball.
“I saw you panicking,” Mr. Rehman told Mr. O’Neill. “When you bat, you have to make sure patience is the key. Just play him and wait.”
“Panicking!” Mr. O’Neill said, smiling. “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say that I made a reasonable but erroneous judgment.”
The match was played under a set of streamlined rules known as Twenty20, intended to end a contest in three hours or so, and, eager to score runs early, the Staten Islanders instead dug themselves into a hole. The second batsman was bowled out almost immediately. A little later, the captain and wicket keeper, Don Sakhichand, returned, shaking his head, after also being bowled out. “I honestly couldn’t tell you what happened,” he said.
After just 17 overs (the cricket equivalent of an inning, roughly) the team was all out with 117 runs, a very meager score to defend. And things got worse when the Cosmos came to bat.
Mr. Sakhichand had devised a dubious strategy of sending out his weaker bowlers first and keeping what Mr. O’Neill called the “more fearsome” ones in reserve, and it immediately backfired. Balls went wide (scoring an automatic run for the opposition), easy balls were muffed by fielders, and several hard-hit ones crashed off the fence for automatic 6s. The first two Cosmos batsmen retired voluntarily, and after just 11 overs, with only one batsman out, the club coasted to 118 and an easy victory.
Some of the graybeards on the sidelines nevertheless found something to complain about, as elders so often do, in cricket as in any other sport.
“These guys, they don’t know what running is all about,” one man said. “These youths, their minds are taken up with other things.”
The man sitting next to him agreed: “Young men — them lazy!”
Mr. O’Neill made light of the loss, saying that it was early in the season; there was another, more serious match the next day, and some of the players were eager to get home to their wives and families. A little earlier he had explained: “When I met my American wife, I presented myself as a cricketer. I didn’t want to have to have any retrospective discussion. All these guys are in the same boat; it’s a negotiation.”
He added: “But these guys are my family too. If I were to get hit by a truck, they are the ones who would be there for me.”
Deosaran Bisnath
May 17th, 2008
There are no longer any Staten Islanders in the Staten Island Cricket Club, one of the country’s oldest. The members are from places like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, St. Vincent and Grenada. There are just two Europeans; one of them, Joseph O’Neill, a 44-year-old Irishman who grew up in the Netherlands, was educated at Cambridge but has lived in New York since 1998.
That Mr. O’Neill in his other life happens to be a novelist is a matter of indifference to most of his teammates. They’re more interested in him as an accomplished batsman, a sure-handed fielder and a decent off-speed bowler. He’s also handy at contributing articles to the club bulletin.
He has clung to cricket, he said recently, because it’s his “athletic mother tongue,” and to learn baseball, say, would be like taking up a foreign language. Even if he became proficient, he wouldn’t get the jokes or the poetry.
The other European on the team is Raymond King, an Englishman who works for Verizon and has played with the club for 20 years after being turned down by a team run by the British Consulate. “I get more from chatting with these fellows than I did with my fellow Brits,” he said recently. “I love hearing the stories of different parts of the world. No matter what our religious, cultural differences, the love of cricket overcomes all that.”
Mr. O’Neill’s new book, “Netherland” (Pantheon), identifies the Staten Island Cricket Club by name, though not any of its players, and there’s a long description of Walker Park, the club’s home ground since 1876, a bumpy, crabgrass-ridden expanse just a block from the Kill Van Kull. It’s bordered now by tennis courts, a baseball field, a children’s playground and, beyond a chain-link fence, some Victorian houses that are occasionally bombarded by cricket balls, little red meteors crashing through front windows or cratering into flower beds.
“Netherland,” Mr. O’Neill’s third novel, is the story of Hans van den Broek, a Dutch investment banker working in New York, who after the 9/11 attacks finds himself exiled to the Chelsea Hotel, where, as it happens, Mr. O’Neill lives with his wife, Sally Singer, an editor at Vogue, and their three sons. (They make a cameo appearance in the novel, a “family with three boys who ran wild in hallways with tricycles and balls and trains.”)
After Hans’s British wife leaves him and takes their child back to England, he finds solace in an unlikely friendship with a Trinidadian wheeler-dealer named Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreams of starting a pro cricket league in New York. And he finds a second home in the subculture of New York cricket, a world at once exotic and familiar to him from his own cricketing days in The Hague.
The idea of publishing a novel in the United States about cricket gave him commercial qualms but not artistic ones, Mr. O’Neill said in an e-mail message. “You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations,” he added. “And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.”
New York cricket is “bush cricket,” one of the characters in the book complains, played on wickets of cocoa mat instead of grass and on weedy, substandard pitches, where to score a run you need to bat the ball in the air instead of elegantly along the fast ground of a proper pitch. But it has a charm of its own and is played with unusual devotion, in remote corners of the city, by a surprisingly large number of people unable or unwilling to shed their cricketing heritage.
On a recent Saturday morning Staten Island played a “friendly,” or informal, match against the Cosmos, a Queens club with a number of Jamaican players but captained by a Guyanese, Ashmul Ali. The players took the field clad all in white. (Many of the Staten Islanders were also wearing the club sweater, a sleeveless V-neck embroidered with the motto “Lude Ludum Insignia Secundaria,” which means “winning matters less than playing the game,” or something like that.)
The umpires strode out, wearing floppy hats and white jackets that looked liked lab coats. And the president and tutelary spirit of the Staten Island Cricket Club, a tall, courtly Trinidadian named Clarence Modeste, bowled a ceremonial first ball, taking a running start and tossing a straight-armed lob at the stumps. Mr. Modeste’s exact age is a club mystery. All that is known for sure is that he was born before World War II and is old enough to be the father of everyone else on the team. His best bowling days, in truth, are probably behind him.
On the sidelines, near the Walker Park field house, a slate-roofed Tudor-style building, players and onlookers sipped tea and nibbled Parle-G biscuits from India. They cheered, hollered and called out to those on the field in the lilting accent of the islands, the clipped vowels of Guyana, the lyrical syntax of Hindi-inflected English: “Well thinking, guys! Well thinking.” “Nicely batted!” “Lovely cricket — lovely!”
Passers-by took little notice. But if they had, they would have seen an odd and captivating little trace of empire: windmilling bowlers, batsmen in white leg pads, fielders chasing down a bouncing red ball — former colonials playing Britain’s game in yet another former colony, one where cricket has all but disappeared from the collective memory.
Mr. O’Neill led off the batting for Staten Island, hitting some nice cuts and sweeps, a couple of long balls, even a delicate backward slice before being “run out” after scoring a disappointing 21. He was picked off base, as it were, trying to eke out a run where there wasn’t one, and afterward he was taken aside by Habib Rehman, one of the team’s top batsmen, who was keeping score.
Mr. Rehman drives a yellow cab in his other life and is so devoted to cricket that he has been known to play late at night with his fellow cabbies, under parking lot floodlights and using a tennis ball.
“I saw you panicking,” Mr. Rehman told Mr. O’Neill. “When you bat, you have to make sure patience is the key. Just play him and wait.”
“Panicking!” Mr. O’Neill said, smiling. “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say that I made a reasonable but erroneous judgment.”
The match was played under a set of streamlined rules known as Twenty20, intended to end a contest in three hours or so, and, eager to score runs early, the Staten Islanders instead dug themselves into a hole. The second batsman was bowled out almost immediately. A little later, the captain and wicket keeper, Don Sakhichand, returned, shaking his head, after also being bowled out. “I honestly couldn’t tell you what happened,” he said.
After just 17 overs (the cricket equivalent of an inning, roughly) the team was all out with 117 runs, a very meager score to defend. And things got worse when the Cosmos came to bat.
Mr. Sakhichand had devised a dubious strategy of sending out his weaker bowlers first and keeping what Mr. O’Neill called the “more fearsome” ones in reserve, and it immediately backfired. Balls went wide (scoring an automatic run for the opposition), easy balls were muffed by fielders, and several hard-hit ones crashed off the fence for automatic 6s. The first two Cosmos batsmen retired voluntarily, and after just 11 overs, with only one batsman out, the club coasted to 118 and an easy victory.
Some of the graybeards on the sidelines nevertheless found something to complain about, as elders so often do, in cricket as in any other sport.
“These guys, they don’t know what running is all about,” one man said. “These youths, their minds are taken up with other things.”
The man sitting next to him agreed: “Young men — them lazy!”
Mr. O’Neill made light of the loss, saying that it was early in the season; there was another, more serious match the next day, and some of the players were eager to get home to their wives and families. A little earlier he had explained: “When I met my American wife, I presented myself as a cricketer. I didn’t want to have to have any retrospective discussion. All these guys are in the same boat; it’s a negotiation.”
He added: “But these guys are my family too. If I were to get hit by a truck, they are the ones who would be there for me.”
Deosaran Bisnath
May 17th, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
GOPIO Trinidad & Tobago INDIAN ARRIVAL SEMINAR
GOPIO Trinidad & Tobago’s INDIAN ARRIVAL DAY SEMINAR & AWARDS CEREMONY,
Saturday May 10th 2008, from 3 to 7pm,
at DIVALI NAGAR, Chaguanas. TRINIDAD
Presenters from Guyana, Suriname, Mauritius, India, and Trinidad. FREE, OPEN TO ALL.
Call 687-7529 or 314-1456. E-mail GOPIOTT@gmail.com
.................................... DEOSARAN BISNATH April 18th, 2008
Saturday May 10th 2008, from 3 to 7pm,
at DIVALI NAGAR, Chaguanas. TRINIDAD
Presenters from Guyana, Suriname, Mauritius, India, and Trinidad. FREE, OPEN TO ALL.
Call 687-7529 or 314-1456. E-mail GOPIOTT@gmail.com
.................................... DEOSARAN BISNATH April 18th, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
RAM NAVAMI
Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram
May Sri Rama who is as effulgent as a million suns and who is adored by the gods and devotees, protect you all!
May the blessings of Lord Rama be upon you all!
Thanks to all who sent YouTube URLs. Please continue to send them and share with others.
RANG DE CHUNARIA - Anup Jalota (celestial):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgxIb7y1eRs
Ram Bhajan (fantastic):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLAHyAjC540
Mann Mein Ram Basale (delightful):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGu0GiHlR5k
Aisi Lagi Lagan (magnificent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glVmvcG-9AY
Hanuman Chalisa (wonderful):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzVBd9FOhzY
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=Kc5S_9aRjL8
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare (uplifting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYGEM19cUk
Hare Krishna!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5mYsTGjP_Y
TERE TAN ME RAM MAN ME RAM (fabulous):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMZHFLHHxKQ
Maha Mantra: Hare Krishna Hare Rama (enchantnig):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GohCT7WG5W8
SUMIRAN KARLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WXRwDUKBS8
Sri Rama Stuti: Sri Rama chandra kripalu (captivating):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQLIQ9FimzA
RAMANAVAMI
By
SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA
Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram
SALUTATIONS to Lord Rama, an Incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who is measureless, who is of the nature of pure Consciousness and bliss, who is the consort of Sita, Master of Sri Hanuman, and the Lord of the three worlds, who took His birth at His own will in order to establish righteousness, destroy the wicked and protect His devotees.
Ramnavami or the birthday of Lord Rama falls on the 9th day of the bright fortnight of the month of Chaitra (March-April).
Rama was the Lord Hari Himself, incarnate on earth for the destruction of Ravana. He was well accomplished, beautiful and endowed with royal marks. His glory and prowess were unlimited. He was peerless on earth. He was free from malice. He was gentle. He was the protector of all His people. He always addressed them in gentle words. He never used any harsh words even when somebody provoked Him. He held sway over the whole world.
Let Sri Rama be your ideal. Ideals are remembered and adored for the purpose of adopting them in your own life. The Ramnavami celebration or the Vasanta Navaratri every year is an opportune period for us to saturate ourselves with the spirit of Lord Rama. We love and adore our ideals because we express thereby our yearning to unite with them. In our worship of God it is implied that we should be virtuous, good and perfect even as God is. Hence the wise instruction: "One should become divine in order to be able to worship God". One cannot be a real worshipper of Lord Rama unless one makes an honest attempt to grow in the virtues that the Lord represents. On the other hand, worship of Lord Rama is itself the surest means to develop such virtues.
One who approaches Sri Rama with love and worshipfulness becomes large-hearted, pure in spirit, good-natured and dispassionate in thought, word and deed. A true devotee of Lord Rama is His representative, with His power and His knowledge.
Lord Rama was the prince of the Ikshvaku race. He was virtuous and of manly strength. He was the Lord of the mind and the senses. Brave and valiant, He was yet gentle and modest. He was a sage in counsel, kind and sweet in speech, and most courteous and handsome in appearance. He was the master of all the divine weapons, and a great warrior. Ever devoted to the good and prosperity of His kingdom and His subjects, He was a defender of the weak and the protector of the righteous. Endowed with numerous wondrous powers of the mind, He was well versed in all sciences--in military science as well as the science of the Self.
Deep and unfathomed like the ocean, firm and steadfast like the Himalayan mountains, valiant like Lord Vishnu, He was the joy of Kaushalya. Though fierce like fire on the battlefield, He was calm like the cool breeze of the Mandara Hills, patient like Mother Earth, bounteous like the god of wealth and righteous like the lord of justice himself. In the pains and the griefs of His people, His heart swiftly sympathised with the sufferers. In the festive scenes which held them in joy, He like a father, shared their joys. By His honour and heroism, as well as by His gentleness and love for His subjects, He greatly endeared Himself to the hearts of His people. Such a great person was the Lord Rama!
Lord Rama was the best of men with a sterling character. He was the very image of love. He was an ideal son, an ideal brother, an ideal husband, an ideal friend and an ideal king. He can be taken to embody all the highest ideals of man. He led the ideal life of a householder to teach the tenets of righteousness to humanity. He ruled His people so well that it came to be known as Ram-Rajya, which meant the rule of righteousness, the rule which bestows happiness and prosperity on all.
The noblest lesson embodied in the Ramayana is the supreme importance of righteousness in the life of every human being. Righteousness is the spiritual spark of life. Cultivation of righteousness is the process of unfoldment of the latent divinity in man. The glorious incarnation of the Supreme Being in the form of Lord Rama has exemplified the path of righteousness. Let mankind follow His footsteps and practise the ideals cherished by Him, for it is only thus that there can be everlasting peace, prosperity and welfare in this world.
None but the righteous can be truly happy. None but he who has the correct sense of duty and the will for its implementation can be said to live worthily. One must be imbued with a definite conviction about the supremacy of moral principles, ethical values and spiritual ideals. These ought to guide one's day-to-day actions and serve as powerful means for the culture of the human personality. That is the purpose of life. That is the way to Self-realisation. That is the message and the mission of Lord Rama's Life on earth.
To a devotee, Sri Rama is not simply a good and a great person, but God Himself. Rama was the son of King Dasaratha of Ayodhya, but He is also the divine omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient God. The destruction of the ten-headed Ravana signifies the annihilation of the mind or the ten senses. Worship of Lord Rama is worship of the all-pervading Godhead Himself. Read the prayers offered by Mandothari and Brahma in the Yuddha Kanda of the Ramayana. They refer to Rama as the one Creator of the universe, the God of all, the Ruler of the universe.
Devotion to God is not a simple emotion. It is the result of intense dispassion and purity of heart and attitude. You should strive your utmost to possess the good qualities that are extolled in the Ramayana and exemplified in the life of Lord Rama. Otherwise, emotion may rise up in you temporarily to a kind of ecstasy, but you will not experience divine consciousness thereby. Devotion is a fruit which ripens gradually through the processes of self-restraint and virtue. Without intense dispassion there can be no real Sadhana for Self-realisation. Only after detachment from the world of things, is it possible to attain the Supreme Godhead. Remember this.
Devotion has absolutely nothing to do with age, caste, creed, position or sex. Generally, the worldly-minded people say: "We will practise meditation and devotion when we retire from service." This is a serious mistake. How can you do serious Sadhana after squeezing out all your energy in working? How will you be able to practise the strict Yogic discipline in your old age? Is there any certainty in life? No, the spiritual seeds of discipline and devotion must be sown in you while you are young, while your heart is tender and untainted. Then only will it strike a deep root, blossom forth and bear fruit when you become old and retire. Only then can you bravely face the god of death and meet him with a smile!
I shall tell you the means of attaining the final release from the great cycle of births and deaths. Devotion to Lord Rama is a great purifier of the heart. From devotion arises knowledge. From knowledge comes the realisation of the pure Self. Knowing this perfectly, one goes to the Supreme Abode and merges in the Supreme Self.
Without first developing devotion to Rama who is the Self, who lives in the hearts of all beings, who is all bliss and who is peerless, how can man cross the ocean of worldly life which has sorrow, pain and misery for its waves?
Do thou therefore worship Lord Rama who is Vishnu and the consort of Sita who is Lakshmi. Abandon all foolishness and enmity. Take to the service of Lord Rama.
The Lord is extremely fond of those who have surrendered themselves to Him. He has given this promise in the Ramayana: "To anyone who once takes shelter under Me and solicits 'I am Thine', I bestow fearlessness from all beings. This is My vow".
Even a great sinner who is full of evil qualities and who is fond of other people's wealth, is freed from all kinds of faults that pertain to worldly life if only he remembers the Lord always. He attains purity and goes to the supreme abode of the Lord.
The Name of Lord Rama is the greatest purifier of the heart. It wipes away all one's sins. Not only this, but it wipes away the sinful tendencies as well. The Name is sweeter than the sweetest of objects. It is the haven of peace. It is the very life of pure souls. It is the purifier of all purifying agencies. It quenches the consuming fire of worldly desires. It awakens the knowledge of God. It bathes the aspirant in the, ocean of divine bliss. Glory to Sri Rama and His Name!
O Devotee! recite His Name, sing His glory and serve His Lotus Feet. Enthrone in your heart Lord Rama of dark hue, whose image is reflected in the heart of Lord Shiva. Blessed is the pious soul who uninterruptedly drinks the nectar of Sri Rama's Name which has been churned out of the ocean of the Vedas, which removes the impurities of the Kali Yuga or the iron age, which lives constantly on the lips of Lord Shiva, which is a sovereign remedy or unfailing specific to cure the disease of worldly existence and which is the life of Mother Sita.
Ram-Nam burns ignorance, passion and sin. With or without knowledge, correctly or incorrectly, when the word "Rama" is pronounced it showers a rain of good upon the devotee. Sri Rama is Brahman who takes one across the ocean of worldly existence. Rama is one in across whom the Yogis sport, that is, the Self within.
Lord Shiva tells His consort Parvati: "This Ram-Nam is equal to the Lord's thousand Names, or repetition of the Mantra a thousand times".
I call this the anti-gossip tonic. When you find that you are wasting your time in gossip, repeat His Name several times. You can make up for the time lost, and the mind will be slowly weaned away from the habit of gossiping.
Sri Rama is also a wish-fulfilling tree. He will bestow upon you whatever you want! Just read what Lord Shiva further says:
"The seat of all good things, the destroyer of all impurities of this age of darkness, purer than purity itself, the food for the journey of aspirants on the path to salvation, their only resting place, the very life-breath of virtuous men, is the Divine Name of Sri Rama. So say the sages".
On the auspicious Ramnavmi day take a firm resolve that you will repeat Ram-Nam with every breath and that you will endeavour to lead a righteous life.
Ramnavmi is one of the most important festivals of the Vaishnava sect of the Hindus. However, even those who adore Lord Shiva celebrate the occasion. Some observe a strict fast on the day. Temples are decorated and the image of Lord Rama is richly adorned. The holy Ramayana is read in the temples. At Ayodhya, the birthplace of Sri Rama, a big fair is held on this day.
In South India the Sri Ramnavmi Utsavam is celebrated for nine days with great fervour and devotion. Those talented in the art of story-telling narrate the thrilling episodes of the Ramayana. The Kirtanists chant the holy Name of Rama and celebrate the wedding of Rama with Sita on this great day. It is an extremely colourful ceremony, highly inspiring and instructive, too.
O beloved seekers! time is fleeting. Know the value of time. Time is most precious. Utilise every second profitably. Do not procrastinate. Abandon all idle gossiping. Forget the past. Live every moment of your life for the realisation of the divine ideal and goal. Unfold your latent faculties. Grow, evolve and become a superhuman or a dynamic Yogi. Struggle hard and reach the goal of life.
May you all attain the final beatitude of life through intense devotion towards Lord Rama! May you live immersed in the ecstasy of divine love! May Sri Rama who is as effulgent as a million suns and who is adored by the gods and devotees, protect you all! May the blessings of Lord Rama be upon you all!
Aano bhadra krtavo yantu vishwatah
"Let noble thoughts come to me from all directions"
- RIG VEDA
Deosaran Bisnath
__________________________________________________
May Sri Rama who is as effulgent as a million suns and who is adored by the gods and devotees, protect you all!
May the blessings of Lord Rama be upon you all!
Thanks to all who sent YouTube URLs. Please continue to send them and share with others.
RANG DE CHUNARIA - Anup Jalota (celestial):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgxIb7y1eRs
Ram Bhajan (fantastic):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLAHyAjC540
Mann Mein Ram Basale (delightful):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGu0GiHlR5k
Aisi Lagi Lagan (magnificent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glVmvcG-9AY
Hanuman Chalisa (wonderful):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzVBd9FOhzY
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=Kc5S_9aRjL8
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare (uplifting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYGEM19cUk
Hare Krishna!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5mYsTGjP_Y
TERE TAN ME RAM MAN ME RAM (fabulous):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMZHFLHHxKQ
Maha Mantra: Hare Krishna Hare Rama (enchantnig):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GohCT7WG5W8
SUMIRAN KARLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WXRwDUKBS8
Sri Rama Stuti: Sri Rama chandra kripalu (captivating):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQLIQ9FimzA
RAMANAVAMI
By
SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA
Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram
SALUTATIONS to Lord Rama, an Incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who is measureless, who is of the nature of pure Consciousness and bliss, who is the consort of Sita, Master of Sri Hanuman, and the Lord of the three worlds, who took His birth at His own will in order to establish righteousness, destroy the wicked and protect His devotees.
Ramnavami or the birthday of Lord Rama falls on the 9th day of the bright fortnight of the month of Chaitra (March-April).
Rama was the Lord Hari Himself, incarnate on earth for the destruction of Ravana. He was well accomplished, beautiful and endowed with royal marks. His glory and prowess were unlimited. He was peerless on earth. He was free from malice. He was gentle. He was the protector of all His people. He always addressed them in gentle words. He never used any harsh words even when somebody provoked Him. He held sway over the whole world.
Let Sri Rama be your ideal. Ideals are remembered and adored for the purpose of adopting them in your own life. The Ramnavami celebration or the Vasanta Navaratri every year is an opportune period for us to saturate ourselves with the spirit of Lord Rama. We love and adore our ideals because we express thereby our yearning to unite with them. In our worship of God it is implied that we should be virtuous, good and perfect even as God is. Hence the wise instruction: "One should become divine in order to be able to worship God". One cannot be a real worshipper of Lord Rama unless one makes an honest attempt to grow in the virtues that the Lord represents. On the other hand, worship of Lord Rama is itself the surest means to develop such virtues.
One who approaches Sri Rama with love and worshipfulness becomes large-hearted, pure in spirit, good-natured and dispassionate in thought, word and deed. A true devotee of Lord Rama is His representative, with His power and His knowledge.
Lord Rama was the prince of the Ikshvaku race. He was virtuous and of manly strength. He was the Lord of the mind and the senses. Brave and valiant, He was yet gentle and modest. He was a sage in counsel, kind and sweet in speech, and most courteous and handsome in appearance. He was the master of all the divine weapons, and a great warrior. Ever devoted to the good and prosperity of His kingdom and His subjects, He was a defender of the weak and the protector of the righteous. Endowed with numerous wondrous powers of the mind, He was well versed in all sciences--in military science as well as the science of the Self.
Deep and unfathomed like the ocean, firm and steadfast like the Himalayan mountains, valiant like Lord Vishnu, He was the joy of Kaushalya. Though fierce like fire on the battlefield, He was calm like the cool breeze of the Mandara Hills, patient like Mother Earth, bounteous like the god of wealth and righteous like the lord of justice himself. In the pains and the griefs of His people, His heart swiftly sympathised with the sufferers. In the festive scenes which held them in joy, He like a father, shared their joys. By His honour and heroism, as well as by His gentleness and love for His subjects, He greatly endeared Himself to the hearts of His people. Such a great person was the Lord Rama!
Lord Rama was the best of men with a sterling character. He was the very image of love. He was an ideal son, an ideal brother, an ideal husband, an ideal friend and an ideal king. He can be taken to embody all the highest ideals of man. He led the ideal life of a householder to teach the tenets of righteousness to humanity. He ruled His people so well that it came to be known as Ram-Rajya, which meant the rule of righteousness, the rule which bestows happiness and prosperity on all.
The noblest lesson embodied in the Ramayana is the supreme importance of righteousness in the life of every human being. Righteousness is the spiritual spark of life. Cultivation of righteousness is the process of unfoldment of the latent divinity in man. The glorious incarnation of the Supreme Being in the form of Lord Rama has exemplified the path of righteousness. Let mankind follow His footsteps and practise the ideals cherished by Him, for it is only thus that there can be everlasting peace, prosperity and welfare in this world.
None but the righteous can be truly happy. None but he who has the correct sense of duty and the will for its implementation can be said to live worthily. One must be imbued with a definite conviction about the supremacy of moral principles, ethical values and spiritual ideals. These ought to guide one's day-to-day actions and serve as powerful means for the culture of the human personality. That is the purpose of life. That is the way to Self-realisation. That is the message and the mission of Lord Rama's Life on earth.
To a devotee, Sri Rama is not simply a good and a great person, but God Himself. Rama was the son of King Dasaratha of Ayodhya, but He is also the divine omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient God. The destruction of the ten-headed Ravana signifies the annihilation of the mind or the ten senses. Worship of Lord Rama is worship of the all-pervading Godhead Himself. Read the prayers offered by Mandothari and Brahma in the Yuddha Kanda of the Ramayana. They refer to Rama as the one Creator of the universe, the God of all, the Ruler of the universe.
Devotion to God is not a simple emotion. It is the result of intense dispassion and purity of heart and attitude. You should strive your utmost to possess the good qualities that are extolled in the Ramayana and exemplified in the life of Lord Rama. Otherwise, emotion may rise up in you temporarily to a kind of ecstasy, but you will not experience divine consciousness thereby. Devotion is a fruit which ripens gradually through the processes of self-restraint and virtue. Without intense dispassion there can be no real Sadhana for Self-realisation. Only after detachment from the world of things, is it possible to attain the Supreme Godhead. Remember this.
Devotion has absolutely nothing to do with age, caste, creed, position or sex. Generally, the worldly-minded people say: "We will practise meditation and devotion when we retire from service." This is a serious mistake. How can you do serious Sadhana after squeezing out all your energy in working? How will you be able to practise the strict Yogic discipline in your old age? Is there any certainty in life? No, the spiritual seeds of discipline and devotion must be sown in you while you are young, while your heart is tender and untainted. Then only will it strike a deep root, blossom forth and bear fruit when you become old and retire. Only then can you bravely face the god of death and meet him with a smile!
I shall tell you the means of attaining the final release from the great cycle of births and deaths. Devotion to Lord Rama is a great purifier of the heart. From devotion arises knowledge. From knowledge comes the realisation of the pure Self. Knowing this perfectly, one goes to the Supreme Abode and merges in the Supreme Self.
Without first developing devotion to Rama who is the Self, who lives in the hearts of all beings, who is all bliss and who is peerless, how can man cross the ocean of worldly life which has sorrow, pain and misery for its waves?
Do thou therefore worship Lord Rama who is Vishnu and the consort of Sita who is Lakshmi. Abandon all foolishness and enmity. Take to the service of Lord Rama.
The Lord is extremely fond of those who have surrendered themselves to Him. He has given this promise in the Ramayana: "To anyone who once takes shelter under Me and solicits 'I am Thine', I bestow fearlessness from all beings. This is My vow".
Even a great sinner who is full of evil qualities and who is fond of other people's wealth, is freed from all kinds of faults that pertain to worldly life if only he remembers the Lord always. He attains purity and goes to the supreme abode of the Lord.
The Name of Lord Rama is the greatest purifier of the heart. It wipes away all one's sins. Not only this, but it wipes away the sinful tendencies as well. The Name is sweeter than the sweetest of objects. It is the haven of peace. It is the very life of pure souls. It is the purifier of all purifying agencies. It quenches the consuming fire of worldly desires. It awakens the knowledge of God. It bathes the aspirant in the, ocean of divine bliss. Glory to Sri Rama and His Name!
O Devotee! recite His Name, sing His glory and serve His Lotus Feet. Enthrone in your heart Lord Rama of dark hue, whose image is reflected in the heart of Lord Shiva. Blessed is the pious soul who uninterruptedly drinks the nectar of Sri Rama's Name which has been churned out of the ocean of the Vedas, which removes the impurities of the Kali Yuga or the iron age, which lives constantly on the lips of Lord Shiva, which is a sovereign remedy or unfailing specific to cure the disease of worldly existence and which is the life of Mother Sita.
Ram-Nam burns ignorance, passion and sin. With or without knowledge, correctly or incorrectly, when the word "Rama" is pronounced it showers a rain of good upon the devotee. Sri Rama is Brahman who takes one across the ocean of worldly existence. Rama is one in across whom the Yogis sport, that is, the Self within.
Lord Shiva tells His consort Parvati: "This Ram-Nam is equal to the Lord's thousand Names, or repetition of the Mantra a thousand times".
I call this the anti-gossip tonic. When you find that you are wasting your time in gossip, repeat His Name several times. You can make up for the time lost, and the mind will be slowly weaned away from the habit of gossiping.
Sri Rama is also a wish-fulfilling tree. He will bestow upon you whatever you want! Just read what Lord Shiva further says:
"The seat of all good things, the destroyer of all impurities of this age of darkness, purer than purity itself, the food for the journey of aspirants on the path to salvation, their only resting place, the very life-breath of virtuous men, is the Divine Name of Sri Rama. So say the sages".
On the auspicious Ramnavmi day take a firm resolve that you will repeat Ram-Nam with every breath and that you will endeavour to lead a righteous life.
Ramnavmi is one of the most important festivals of the Vaishnava sect of the Hindus. However, even those who adore Lord Shiva celebrate the occasion. Some observe a strict fast on the day. Temples are decorated and the image of Lord Rama is richly adorned. The holy Ramayana is read in the temples. At Ayodhya, the birthplace of Sri Rama, a big fair is held on this day.
In South India the Sri Ramnavmi Utsavam is celebrated for nine days with great fervour and devotion. Those talented in the art of story-telling narrate the thrilling episodes of the Ramayana. The Kirtanists chant the holy Name of Rama and celebrate the wedding of Rama with Sita on this great day. It is an extremely colourful ceremony, highly inspiring and instructive, too.
O beloved seekers! time is fleeting. Know the value of time. Time is most precious. Utilise every second profitably. Do not procrastinate. Abandon all idle gossiping. Forget the past. Live every moment of your life for the realisation of the divine ideal and goal. Unfold your latent faculties. Grow, evolve and become a superhuman or a dynamic Yogi. Struggle hard and reach the goal of life.
May you all attain the final beatitude of life through intense devotion towards Lord Rama! May you live immersed in the ecstasy of divine love! May Sri Rama who is as effulgent as a million suns and who is adored by the gods and devotees, protect you all! May the blessings of Lord Rama be upon you all!
Aano bhadra krtavo yantu vishwatah
"Let noble thoughts come to me from all directions"
- RIG VEDA
Deosaran Bisnath
__________________________________________________
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Chaguanas, largest English-speaking city in the Caribbean
Chaguanas, Trinidad
Deosaran Bisnath
deobisnath@yahoo.com
Deosaran Bisnath
deobisnath@yahoo.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
