Do not count the number of people who have worked / working (including the staff at the cafeteria, the security postings) at the National Museum in Delhi. Do not count the people who come there to do research. Then, among the rest of the people who entered those premises, I must rank high up for the number of visits to that place – say two dozen over the past ten years?
A frank admission. I am an inveterate museum goer. Be it Mount Abu, Udaipur, Jaipur, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C, New Orleans, Dade City, Florida (a small town of no more than 1,500 houses), Nashville, Tennessee, Chicago – if I have been in that city, you bet I have been to the museum. And planetariums too!
Perhaps I like to live in the past or among the stars. But, it is more likely that I like to live through the past and live in the vast.
Every time I go to the National Museum, it almost feels like a pilgrimage. Though I have walked alongside the exhibits of the Indus (Harappan) Civilization dozens of times, I stand there and read through everything and take in the scene fully. I immerse myself.
It is not that I remember much after the visit. The feeling is intense in that moment. I get goose pimples when I ask myself, “Do you believe that that urn contained the remains of one of the ancestors of humanity? Perhaps of yourself?” Having read Richard Dawkins’s books, I cannot but say yes. That is spirituality for me.
There is a room that has boards showing the development of the alphabets of most of the Indian languages, from crave scratchings. Some things are just amazing. The letters for sound ‘A’ as it is written in Sanskrit and Tamil are derived from very similar cave scratches, and I am not joking. Same for the sound ‘KA’. The lineages are shown down the centuries. Some of them metamorphosed seriously whereas others have remained true to their ‘original’ form. Our letters of the alphabets appear to be ‘descendants’ of forms that may have been or at least seem to have had common ancestors; no different than ourselves, in human form.
There was a time, long ago and when I started visiting the National Museum, I used to feel special pride when I saw sculptures that carried tags saying “Chola 9th Century AD” or “Kanchipuram” and such. I can honestly tell you that such feelings have mercifully abandoned me. Now it is unadulterated joy upon the realization that mankind had gone through these steps, no differentiations at all, and I am here.
I had the same feeling when I was at Gangotri and Yamunotri some years ago: “This is the land that had cradled my ancestors; it is holy because of that and for me that feeling need not be mediated through Gods and Goddesses, of rivers and mountains. Now, I am here.”
When I enter the room for “Satavahana” or “Kushana” dynasty at the museum, it matters to me that they followed the Maurya dynasty, though somewhat geographically shifted. It helps me trace humanity’s development, in a layman and naïve sort of way. But that naiveté occasioned by distance is mine and mine alone, and I value it. I do not need lessons from an expert to feel the pride. Perhaps experts can help fix rungs on the ladder that could help reach closer, but I am happy where I am. The same feeling pervades me in every room of exhibits.
The museum helps me reach out to my ancestors in my own way. That is spirituality. I do not need to do any special oblations.
It is most disheartening for me that I cannot enjoy the night sky, situated as I am in the light-polluted metro of Delhi with the air also polluted. But, when I was at Gangotri, I went delirious looking at the sky and identifying constellations; the last time I did that was when I went for a weekend trip to Lake Cumberland in Kentucky about 23 years ago. While skiing was good during the day, it was better lying down on the deck in the night looking at the sky. That too was a moment of spiritual realization, to appreciate that our minds have developed naturally to question why stars glitter, indeed why stars at all, and find answers, however tentative they may be. In a sense that was an outdoor museum for me!
Now, one may understand why I visit and revisit museums. It is spiritually energizing for me.
Raghuram Ekambaram
A frank admission. I am an inveterate museum goer. Be it Mount Abu, Udaipur, Jaipur, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C, New Orleans, Dade City, Florida (a small town of no more than 1,500 houses), Nashville, Tennessee, Chicago – if I have been in that city, you bet I have been to the museum. And planetariums too!
Perhaps I like to live in the past or among the stars. But, it is more likely that I like to live through the past and live in the vast.
Every time I go to the National Museum, it almost feels like a pilgrimage. Though I have walked alongside the exhibits of the Indus (Harappan) Civilization dozens of times, I stand there and read through everything and take in the scene fully. I immerse myself.
It is not that I remember much after the visit. The feeling is intense in that moment. I get goose pimples when I ask myself, “Do you believe that that urn contained the remains of one of the ancestors of humanity? Perhaps of yourself?” Having read Richard Dawkins’s books, I cannot but say yes. That is spirituality for me.
There is a room that has boards showing the development of the alphabets of most of the Indian languages, from crave scratchings. Some things are just amazing. The letters for sound ‘A’ as it is written in Sanskrit and Tamil are derived from very similar cave scratches, and I am not joking. Same for the sound ‘KA’. The lineages are shown down the centuries. Some of them metamorphosed seriously whereas others have remained true to their ‘original’ form. Our letters of the alphabets appear to be ‘descendants’ of forms that may have been or at least seem to have had common ancestors; no different than ourselves, in human form.
There was a time, long ago and when I started visiting the National Museum, I used to feel special pride when I saw sculptures that carried tags saying “Chola 9th Century AD” or “Kanchipuram” and such. I can honestly tell you that such feelings have mercifully abandoned me. Now it is unadulterated joy upon the realization that mankind had gone through these steps, no differentiations at all, and I am here.
I had the same feeling when I was at Gangotri and Yamunotri some years ago: “This is the land that had cradled my ancestors; it is holy because of that and for me that feeling need not be mediated through Gods and Goddesses, of rivers and mountains. Now, I am here.”
When I enter the room for “Satavahana” or “Kushana” dynasty at the museum, it matters to me that they followed the Maurya dynasty, though somewhat geographically shifted. It helps me trace humanity’s development, in a layman and naïve sort of way. But that naiveté occasioned by distance is mine and mine alone, and I value it. I do not need lessons from an expert to feel the pride. Perhaps experts can help fix rungs on the ladder that could help reach closer, but I am happy where I am. The same feeling pervades me in every room of exhibits.
The museum helps me reach out to my ancestors in my own way. That is spirituality. I do not need to do any special oblations.
It is most disheartening for me that I cannot enjoy the night sky, situated as I am in the light-polluted metro of Delhi with the air also polluted. But, when I was at Gangotri, I went delirious looking at the sky and identifying constellations; the last time I did that was when I went for a weekend trip to Lake Cumberland in Kentucky about 23 years ago. While skiing was good during the day, it was better lying down on the deck in the night looking at the sky. That too was a moment of spiritual realization, to appreciate that our minds have developed naturally to question why stars glitter, indeed why stars at all, and find answers, however tentative they may be. In a sense that was an outdoor museum for me!
Now, one may understand why I visit and revisit museums. It is spiritually energizing for me.
Raghuram Ekambaram
2 comments:
I understand your museum-passion. It is the same passion that propels me to read history books. Recently while I was in Kerala I visited a bookstore of DC Books, the best Malayalam publishers, in order to buy Mukundan's latest novel. But I ended up buying three books one of which is "History of Kerala and the Caste System", a highly scholarly work. That is my spirituality. Knowledge is my spirituality. I remember writing 23 years ago to a private guide supplier that I was disappointed with their notes because my "Faustian quest for knowledge" was not meant to pass exams. The supplier wrote me back saying they would refund the amount. I did not respond. But I had made a point.
In short, my spirituality is my quest for knowledge. I guess you seek something of the same sort in the musuems.
Matheikal, thanks for endorsing that there are enough varieties of spirituality. My spirituality is to seek amazement at the way things are, coming about and the way things could go. Honestly, I cannot look at anything of the past without trying to connect it to me, in the present.
Thanks again. Hope you enjoyed this post from me, of a different kind.
RE
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