Part 3: Diary of an unknown SriVaishnavan travelling thro' America

[Guest guest]

(continuing from Part 2)

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Dear friends,

 

On a bright, sunny day in spring (March 20th '04),

just as the beautiful winter snow was beginning to

gradually melt across the expanse of the University of

Connecticut, two good friends from a distant, 30-year

past of mine -- my two old school-mates from Chennai,

India, Syed Nawaz Ahmed and Prof. Narasimhan

Srinivasan -- they took me around on my first ever

tour of the inside of a famous university in America,

a country which by then I was convinced surely

deserved to be acknowledged foremost as "vidyA-bhUmi"

(land devoted to learning) rather than as

"bhOga-bhUmi" (land of pleasurable

self-gratification).

 

My first impression upon entering U-Conn was a certain

sense of hallowed 'gravitas'. It was a Saturday, a

weekend, and the campus precincts remained largely

unpeopled and quiet. There were only a few score

students and faculty cheerily going about their

business but otherwise everyplace I looked appeared

wintry and serene. Strangely, to me it felt a bit like

entering into the wide and sacred spaces of the outer

concourse or "prAkAra" of some giant temple back home

in India. It was the sort of feeling I've often felt

creeping upon me on rare occasions (when there are no

raucous crowds of pilgrims that usually throng) inside

the massive front-yard of the Varadaraja Temple in the

great "divya-dEsa" of Kanchi...

 

The sky cleared and the air became crisp as we quickly

took the tour of U-Conn strolling down the paved,

tree-lined pathways and past sprawling blocks of

buildings, one following another, each housing a

faculty, a separate academic discipline. There were so

many of them I soon lost count of the numerous

branches of learning and research to which I later

learnt U-conn was host. The buildings all looked so

stately with architecture so typically New England --

quaint but very imposing.

 

For a good part of the next hour, a virtual parade

passed me by -- libraries, stadiums, labs,

auditoriums, tennis and basket-ball courts, dorms,

cafeterias, lecture-halls... As I witnessed the slow

stream of grand academic sights I could'nt help

falling momentarily into a private reverie: "So here

it is, the great American university!" I thought to

myself, "Here is one among America's many great

temples of learning... (America's own version of

"divya-dEsam-s)! Here is a fabled American

knowledge-centre! Here is one of those

knowledge-nurseries from where some of the world's

greatest ever ideas in modern science and technology

have sprouted. Here is where some of the loftiest

discoveries and advancements in contemporary history

have been born! Here is where the largest number of

Nobel Prize heroes and laureates have come from! Here

is where the best of mankind's minds from all over the

world seek to come, to live, to dream, to dare, to

work and to achieve...".

 

As I took in all of the campus, for the first time

perhaps in life, and in a moment of reflective

clarity, I understood truly what is really meant when

it is said there is rare Joy, a certain indefinable

air of romance and adventure surrounding all academia.

I at once understood why poets and the wisest men of

this world all speak of the university as a sacred

institution, as the 'Arcadia of Academe', as a

veritable spring-board, indeed, from where the human

spirit, through abstract thought, can hope to soar

skyward and reach the celestial spheres even...

 

Quite instantly, the grand opening lines of the famous

Sanskrit "stOtra" of Swami Vedanta Desikan (which he

had composed in praise of the God of Gnosis,

"lakshmi-hayagreeva", the Supreme Deity of Knowledge),

came to my mind:

 

"gnyAna ananda mayam nirmala sphatika kritim

aadhAram sarva vidyAnAm hayagreeva upAsmahE"

 

Where there is true "gnyAna", as Swami's lines clearly

suggest, there is always unbounded "ananda" too. True

Knowledge is true Joy. They are merely two sides of

the same coin -- the coin of human spiritual

experience that God mints as legal tender in his own

divine treasury, His eternal Kingdom.

 

In a place of learning, such as a great university,

where highest human effort is expended in trying to

advance the frontiers of Knowledge, there is indeed a

nameless but real Joy, "Ananda". It is impalpable but

it is certainly there in the air.. it verily envelops

the atmosphere. To use the AchArya's apt choice of

expression, it is "gnyAna ananda mayam"...

 

*************

(to be continued)

 

Rgds,

dAsan,

Sudarshan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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