A thought for the day,

The good thing about going away is that one can always come back!

Vishnu Mathur.
Arunachal Pradesh,
November 25, 20213.

The Swami

Swami Sharnanand

Swami Sharnanand once said if a person cannot even serve a glass of water to the thirsty that person cannot become free and attain ‘.Nirvana’. He was certainly a liberated soul. The only great saint I had known personally. One has read about many saints and seers in India,read about their wisdom and visited their Ashrams and have gained a certain spiritual strength, but knowing Swami Sharnanandji Maharaj as he is popularly known,  was a great personal boon  for me and my family. He was our family Guru so to say. My father first met him in Pushkar in the early nineteen forties on the behest of his close friend. My father was very impressed by the saint but then somehow lost touch with him. Then suddenly one day when he was travelling in a train he heard someone calling out his name from the other part of the compartment 'Mathur'. My father was surprised to find that Swami Sharnanand, a blind saint, had recognised his voice from a distance and  had even remembered his name after a brief meeting many years ago. That accidental meeting established a lifelong bond between the saint and my family. This was before my birth and I am told that Swamiji as we all fondly called him, first visited our house in Ahemdabad in 1944 the year I was born. I would like to believe that that has perhaps something to do with my closeness with Swamiji or maybe it was just a coincidence. But one thing is sure that even if one does claim to be a great spiritual person time and again the great saint has come to my rescue if not in person but certainly through his goodwill and wisdom.

He was a wandering monk and never stayed in one place. He visited people who invited him and stayed with them in their homes for a few days and moved on. He used to   say that a saint should not stay in one place for more than four or five days. But he was in touch with his disciples one way or other and they knew where to find him. Hrishikesh and Vrindavan in U.P. were his favourite places. And then as the number of disciples increased, at the behest of some close disciples he established an ashram in Vrindavan in the mid nineteen fifties under the aegis of Manav Seva Sangh, a charitable trust. His disciples built a house on the adjoining plot which was later called Sant Kutir as he did not want to live in the Ashram and nor did he want to hold any of the official positions. Then more things happened and some more Ashrams came up with the help of his disciples in Jaipur in Rajasthan,  in U.P and in Ranchi which is now in the state of Jharkhand.

Swami Sharnanand‘s method of teaching was very simple, down to earth and direct. He never took recourse to pompous words or quoted great scriptures to make the disciples understand their problems. He had a one to one way of dealing with his disciples, very personal very intimate and full of love. There was no distance between him and his disciples even if they were meeting for the first time. For example, he would tell someone in distress “Kuch Mat Chaho” in Hindi which roughly would mean, don’t wish for anything sorrow will disappear or “Beman Ke Ho Jao’ meaning thereby keep a neutral mind and mental agonies will go away. He did not put disciples to difficult task of doing some great tapasya or mental task. More than anything else he put people at ease in a way that just by talking to him half of their problems would disappear. He was like a therapist who could ease away the pain in no time; he was like a counsellor who could give simple and practical advice which one could practise in one's day to day life. More than anything else he was a family to so many who knew him in his lifetime. He would regularly reply to the letters people wrote to him asking for his advice and meet visitors any time of the day and night if need be. His discourses which he gave from time to time were recorded and have been published in  a book form. His lectures are also available on CDs. He dictated books on a variety of subjects to his prime disciple Devki Maa who faithfully wrote and edited them before publishing them. After his lifetime Devki Maa took over the task of spreading Swamiji’s wisdom by travelling across the country and by preserving his wisdom by reinterpreting his lectures in her own way.This she continued till the end of her life. All the books and recorded lectures are available with Manav Sewa Sangh and the information is available on the web about his life and teachings for anybody who is interested.

There is an interesting anecdote about him which reveals his attitude towards life and the nation. It seems Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, had invited him to Rashtrapati Bhavan as Swamiji had also taken part in the freedom movement as he believed deeply that injustice has to be fought. The President told him that as political leaders they knew what was ailing the nation and knew what the solutions were but were unable to carry them out. He asked Swamiji how he would look at this problem. Swamiji told him: "If there is no compassion in the heart, nothing can be done." What he said is something that today's political leaders have to seriously consider.


For me and my wife Lakshmi, who had not met him in person, he has been a great source of inspiration and time and again in times of crisis he has been a beacon of light which indicated the way to the shore.There is this story connected with Swamiji about our marriage. Before my marriage when my parents were pestering me to get married  I told him that I will only marry when I meet a person of my liking and not marry in the conventional way of ‘Band Baaja Baraat’ and may be just have a simple marriage. Swamiji was very forthright; he told me, “Where is the need for a even a simple wedding? When you meet the person of your choice just bring her to me and I will pronounce you husband and wife.” That did not happen because he passed away before we got married but we did visit the Ashram in Vrindavan. Although Lakshmi did not believe in swamijis, she was curious because she had heard so much about him from me. So we went to the Ashram to be in Sant Kutir and Lakshmi said that she experienced an extraordinary sense of peace there in that small room.  He sure would have blessed us as we are still married and have survived the highs and lows of life!

Vishnu Mathur 

 Nov. 2013

The Static Shot

Train Arriving at the Station (1896)

The first 'film' of moving images was a static shot. One single shot made the ‘film’. There were many such first films around the world. One of the most memorable images is of the single shot film was called “Train arriving at the station’. The camera was placed at the end of a railway station looking at the entire platform and the railway track where a train arrives and stops. A few passengers get down from the train with their bags and walk away. The shot holds on till most of the people go out of the ‘frame’. End of the film.

More than hundred years have passed since the inception of moving images, movies, film or cinema whatever avatar of the moving images you may like to call them. Cameras have evolved in so many ways and so have evolved the whole craft of film making and the static camera has moved long ago on various moving platforms, on trolleys, dollies ,cranes and many other vehicles to follow the actors or to capture  a piece of action or just circle around the earth. The camera can reach anywhere on a moving gadget which can be operated with remote control to follow an action anywhere on this earth and the near universe through satellites. And we can look at life in whichever way we like and whichever manner we like. But the static shot has remained where it was. Static. Where it is locked on a static platform, looking at a given view in front of it, dispassionately. Looking at a piece of action, silent or talkie, with actors or without actors, looking at a landscape or the sky, just looking. Static shots  often bring a sense of relief after a hectic session of the camera moving in different ways following a piece of action or just reflecting the restless state of the director’s mind with some exceptions of being used by creative directors to build a lyrical sequence to reveal something hidden somewhere. More often than not the camera movements are arbitrary and are used just because they are making ‘movies’! Once Satyajit Ray when asked by a journalist why he had so many camera movements in his film Charulata said in jest because he had just acquired a new trolley!

Many great films and film makers come to one’s mind when one thinks of the austere static shot. One thinks of the Hindi film Mughal E Aazam arguably the best Hindi film ever made in ‘Bollywood’. The film is a celebration the director’s faith in his content; so much so that he hardly felt the need to move his camera except to capture action or a dance movement. The presence of great actors like Dilip Kumar and Madhubala in front of the camera was enough to capture the attention of the audience. In a particular love scene, a particular shot holds on for almost three minutes while the lead actors barely exchange three dialogues and in which Dilip Kumar blinks just twice. It needs faith and conviction in one’s work for a director to render a scene in that manner. More often than not directors have restless camera movements in their films because of the severe anxiety that the audience will get bored if there is no movement in front of their eyes. Hence the camera movement.

                                 

The great Japanese film maker Yasujirō Ozu and the French master of cinema Robert Bresson were great exponents of the 'quiet cinema’ who celebrated the static shot to its sublime utility. In fact, Ozu was famous for his low level static shots and virtually made all his films with static camera positions. An undeterred conviction in one’s rendering of a given reality. This is not to profess that to use a camera movement is a sacrilege but just to bring the attention to the fact that the camera faithfully records a given reality in front of it. The comprehension of the audience will depend on how convincing the content is that is put forth by the 'auteurs' of the film and not by how dazzling the craft of the film is. Of course, this proposition is not applicable to films made essentially to distract the audience from a given reality, creating a make-believe world goading them to believe that they have experienced something new, while not providing the means to understand that experience.

Great exponents of cinema use the camera to see what is there in front of their mind image and not falsify a given reality even if its purpose is to entertain. A static shot can be the mirror of the director’s mind and reveal how one looks at life. As the Zen Master Tenno once told his students “When you look, just look; if you wonder about it, you won’t get the point.”

                                                       

Vishnu Mathur,

October 14. 2013.

Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952) Film by Ozu