Crossroads leading to crosswords

Perhaps this piece could be the most insignificant of all my ravings herein. But some happenings in life are so pleasing that it is imperative that we preserve and cherish their memories. This is one such rare event.

Sat, Nov 8th 2008, 10 PM: I was preparing for a forthcoming assessment in my hostel room at IISc. When were the assessments not forthcoming at IISc, by the way? So this was a usual dreary night at the institute for me. Unexpectedly I heard someone knocking at my door. It was my IISc-Telecomm coterie visiting my room after their dinner. It seemed they had almost nothing to do that night and had come to my room to chit-chat and pass time.

I actually did not mind, partly because I was not lagging behind in my preps and also I was already mentally drained out by then. One of my friends started trying to enter into my lappy account. The password screen flashed bright in front of him, along with the customary clue.

"Cold Fox" read the clue. I had no prior exposure to cryptic crosswords, so this clue was as anonymous to the cruciverbalist as to the common man. Yet sportively I acceded to their demand of providing better clues.

It was a 5-letter word; A commercial product; Cold did not refer to the temperature-based aspect.

They arrived instantaneously upon "Vicks" - I had included "fox" to remind me of 'vixen'. I would like to move the scene to what transpired some ten minutes later. Rocket science is not necessary to guess the rest.

I was pleading with them to reveal the password! And out came a clue:

A new type of waste cloth, we hear...(6)

I had absolutely no idea of what "we hear" meant. All I could mutter was waste cloth could be supplanted by rag. Yet each of them never really allowed me to proceed in this direction. I was deliberately misled by a countless number of futile clues. Some of them threw out an inkling; others were totally dumb. 

Finally after minutes of desperation, I tumbled upon the hard reality that rag ought to be pronounced differently to arrive at the answer. It was Anurag, my guide for Post-graduation studies.

It was an incredible feeling once I arrived at the answer. The link present in each of those inklings revealed themselves to me. It was as if you had watched a intriguing murder plot unwind itself at the final minute. 

Everyday in the ensuing semester holidays, my first task in the morning was to go about solving The Hindu Crossword. Who wanted difficult sudokus everyday anymore? :)

An Unholy Mess

Back to blogging after a yawning gap of 6 months...

Today I was surfing through some episodes of KBC to rekindle my fond childhood memories of Amitabh's inimitable anchoring style and in the process, earn a wee bit of GK! And one question just confounded me and motivated me to write a blog entry.

According to Brahmandapurana, who was the father of Goddess Saraswati??

Narada, Brahma, Shiva or Krishna

The contestant was equally flummoxed then. He easily ruled out Krishna and Narada, but the rest of the options sounded equiprobable to him. Implementing the 50:50, he was left with Narada and Brahma. He chose Brahma which eventually proved to be correct.

Now it was a puzzling scenario for me. I remember my early childhood days when my mother enthusiastically taught me the relations between the members of the Hindu Divine Family. All that was told to me then was that Saraswati was the wife of Lord Brahma!

Quickly I sought the Internet for a clarification. The results I got were dumbfounding. 

"Brahma is one of the three main gods-Trimurti-of the Hindu pantheon. He is the creator of the universe, Saraswati, who became the wife of her own father, was the daughter of Brahma. There are two stories about her genesis in the "Saraswati Purana". One is that Brahma created his beautiful daughter Saraswati direct from his "vital strength" or seminal fluid. The other is that Brahma used to collect his semen in a pot whenever he masturbated fixing his carnal eyes on the celestial beauty Urvasi. Brahma's semen in the pot gave birth to Saraswati. Thus, Saraswati had no mother. 

This daughter or grand-daughter of Brahma is the Hindu goddess of learning. When Brahma saw the beauty of Saraswati he became amorous. To escape from her father's passionate approach Saraswati ran to the lands in all four directions, but she could not escape from her father. She succumbed to Brahma's wish. Brahma and his daughter Saraswati lived as husband and wife indulging in incest for 100 years. They had a son Swayambhumaru. Swayambhumaru made love with his sister Satarpa. Through the incest of Brahma's son and daughter Brahma got two grandsons and two grand-daughters."

Well... This piece could be quite galling for many of you "pure" Hindus as well I believe. While it is quite another issue if these mythological Gods and Goddesses existed at all, even to hear amorous stories involving Divine beings is certainly ridiculous. After all, who else but Gods can serve as moral teachers to the common people? From the times of Stone Age, the feeling of a God has kept people within invisible moral confines. 

The glorious teachings of Hinduism are undoubtedly unparalleled by any other religion. The divinity of such a religion should not be lost upon the up and coming generations. If stories such as this are propagted, the better and higher truths will never dawn upon the fresher minds - instead, it will simply amount to making a Holy Religion the butt of fools' ridicule.

PS: Why do quizzers even ask such controversial questions? What purposes do they solve, other than inciting irritated people to write a blog on them?