Skip to main content

Two kinds of Paradises

A view of Sawan's library


Libraries are archives of longings. Both the writers whose books are stored on the racks and the readers whose souls delve into those racks are dreamers of sorts. Books belong to people with infinite longings.

The death of a library is very painful to those who love books. One of my beloved libraries was killed in 2015. Who would want to kill a library that was pulsating with life and that too young life? Such questions have become redundant in India, especially after 2014.   

One religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] killed the library I’m speaking about here. It was Sawan Public School’s library in Delhi. The entire school was killed by a godman and his followers just because they wanted to create parking spaces for devotees. I have narrated that story in detail in two of my books: Autumn Shadows and Black Hole.

Writer Borges was of the opinion that Paradise would be a kind of library. What else can Paradise be for those whose hearts are restless until they rest in wisdom? The irony about the death of Sawan Library was that those who promised Paradise to devotees killed it.


There are two kinds of Paradises. One belongs to genuine questers, those who read, meditate, and dream. The other belongs to those who follow some guru blindly. These blind followers are the most dangerous people on the earth. They have committed the most gruesome crimes like burning heretics, hunting witches, crusading against god’s enemies, gassing helpless people in concentration camps, lynching perceived enemies on roads…

The devotees of the RSSB godman killed a school and its library with some vengeance. They had already encroached upon acres and acres of reserved forests in the same region earlier. The Hindustan Times dated 30 Apr 2014 reported that RSSB had occupied no less than 123 acres of forest land in Asola-Bhatti region (where Sawan Public School also existed). There were reports earlier about similar landgrabs in other regions too by this same cult. This cult has an entire township of its own in Beas, Punjab where the government is utterly powerless because they have their own rules and regulations there including a meticulous traffic system. A few months back, the Times of India reported RSSB’s landgrab in the eco-sensitive Aravali forest in Haryana.

It’s no surprise then that they get an entire school demolished. Landgrabbers can never enter the real Paradise.

In May 2015, Sawan Public School’s library was razed to ground by mammoth bulldozers. Shakespeare and Shelley, Ramchandra Guha and Salman Rushdie all lay tied together by jute threads and were eventually carried away by scrap dealers.

I am told that the entire place where the school stood is now mere wasteland used as parking area for the godman’s devotees who come to listen to his sermons once or twice a year. These devotees must be entering their own versions of Paradise on such occasions.

I have retired to my village, to the land bequeathed by my forefathers where no godman will ever have entry. I can listen to the sobs that underlie Hamlet’s soliloquies in peace now. I can feel Shelley’s West Wind on my cheeks. I can contemplate on Zorba’s rustic wisdom with the music of cicadas among my crotons. My own Paradise.

Sawan Library

xZx

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    ...and the final paragraph reveals that you have dreamed, searched, and found your own particular paradise on earth. That is all that is needed! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But I do worry occasionally about these religious organizations that keep deluding people as well as government and even the environment. And the way they pretend to be custodians of public morality.

      Delete
  2. This is a most touching writeup indeed. Was touched by the manner in which you have described the anguish of losing the library. The school, unfortunately is more and the dreams of children snuffed out rather rudely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was catastrophic. The cult also manhandled staff who questioned them. It was impossible to believe that religious people were doing it all.

      Delete
  3. I cry everytime my mind comes across the name; Sawan. There destruction is inevitable. I just hope I have the greatest role in it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear sir each and every word in your blog is true and heart touching. We have seen all this with our own eyes how a great institute was razed. Can never forget the brutalities of those people.

    ReplyDelete
  5. In the end, like the final paragraph of your post, each one of us has to sift through mountains of lies piled onto us by society, religion and politicians to find our truth, our paradise. Therein lies hope.
    I assume (based on my limited knowledge) that throughout human history seekers of paradise (such as the cult mentioned here) have bulldozed wisdom, poetry, philosophy and literature to make way for their needs. And yet, words, books, lovers of books survive to heal and inspire a new generation.
    I feel sorry for the lost library. And can't believe this sort of behaviour is not only tolerated but encouraged in modern India.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Even the ruling AAP MLA and minister for education refused to help us fight the case. Votes matter to them.

      Delete
  6. Find out the Top Fashion Trends Browse & Shop The Latest Essentials Ready-to-wear, bags, luggage Shipping worldwide.

    STUDIONAFAY
    STUDIONAFAY Facebook
    STUDIONAFAY Instagram
    STUDIONAFAY Pinterest
    STUDIONAFAY Twitter

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r