Bhaja Govindam

I was thinking about grammar, when I remembered this song called Bhaja Govindam, written by Adi Shankaracharya. It's a very popular song among Tamil Brahmins, and M S Subbalakshmi's rendition is like carnatic porn in Mylapore. ------- The wiki entry reads: There is a story attached to the composition of this Hymn. It is said that Shri Adi Shankaracharya, accompanied by his disciples, was walking along a street in Varanasi one day when he came across an aged scholar reciting the rules of Sanskrit grammar repeatedly on the street. Taking pity on him, Adi Shankara went up to the scholar and advised him not to waste his time on grammar at his age but to turn his mind to God in worship and adoration, which would only save him from this vicious cycle of life and death. The hymn "Bhaja Govindam" is said to have been composed on this occasion. ------- I think there are two kinds of grammar - one that is useful or essential in communicating nuance and meaning, and another kind which serves no purpose but to project the speaker as elite. Socially, if I write chief as cheif, people will look down upon me, and there is shame - in school, college, workplace, social dinner. I have spent so much time in situations where either my grammar or the other person's grammar is poor, and yet we could communicate and feel so much joy in mutual understanding. I would feel far more shy and fear of making mistakes with grammar, when I'm in a social setting with many people, all judging each other. Grammar is like clothing - some of it is essential as protection. The part of clothing which covers shame - like bras and underwears - I never understood the purpose even as a kid. Because it's merely shame, and patriarchy when it comes to bras. Why should society (both men and women) condition one gender to feel shame and cover their chest while the other gender doesn't feel this? So for me the underwear and bra are examples of clothing which appears essential in modern life, but are human inventions serving no purpose but to establish social control. The equivalent social status argument in clothing is how in most settled societies the clothes you wear signals information to the world. For example, in Rajasthan (I was told) you could recognise many things about individuals based on the style of head gear. Even now, in modernity, dressing is used as a signal to society - to show wealth and status primarily. A lot of the things that people wear serve no functional purpose but to show off something. People often say that I dress for myself. Most of the time I feel that it's a lie. With no camera, with no one around you, if you're living in a remote hut somewhere in the mountains, if you'd still dress up as frequently as you do with people, camera and society around you, that would qualify as 'dressing for myself'. There is a need for social acceptance - if we step out naked in most places we'll be in jail, which I think is stupid. Beyond legal conformity, there is a need to show off, which I think all of us have to varying degrees. When it comes to grammar - whether I say "You and I" or "I and you", really it doesn't matter. When I see words with characters which are not pronounced at all - I wonder why they exist there in the first place. Many years ago I was speaking to a Vietnamese person about their language, and told them how the tones are really hard. So each vowel could appear in 6 different tones. My friend responded saying that if you learn and understand the language, each vowel with a tone is like a unique vowel. Only for foreigners who don't understand does 'ma' sound the same in six different tones, but for the Vietnamese each tone = unique character. And my friend went further - in Vietnamese, one word written in one way means only one thing. Whereas, English has the same word mean many things, like the word 'right' for example. It's not what one would call logical or reasonable. When I look at Vietnamese, there is hardly any useless rules of grammar to be learnt by rote memory serving no purpose, like say, gendered objects in Hindi. Of course it helps to have good grammar in society. It helps to get into fancy education and jobs and social networks. In that sense it's like Ambedkar saying that Gandhi could afford to walk around naked and looking poor. So in utilitarian terms, it's good for kids to learn grammar, even if it's useless, because the world judges us by that. When I was young I used to think that people should like me as I am, and not for external superficial things, but I was really stupid and hypocritical. I was judging women basis these things without acknowledging it, yet I found it offensive if someone else did it to me. Now that I'm back to bachelorhood, I realise very clearly that people judge you by what you wear, and the grammar you use. I see how people treat me differently when I dress smartly, and when I'm in old, loose wrinkled clothes. Sometimes I do dress to manipulate - like if I'm travelling to unknown places I always get an army cut and a clean shave, to project an image which says 'don't mess with me'. I wear nice clothes to weddings and other places where I want to be favourably judged. I use flowery grammar too, to establish my credentials. So I do all the things that I rant against. It just means that I'm a little aware of the stupidity and irrelevance. I'm conditioned by popular media, movies into attraction for certain things which I know are superficial and stupid, and there are limits to how much and how quickly rationality can overpower conditioned behaviour. In my opinion, the focus should be on experiencing life in every moment fully, immersing oneself in the present. We will naturally then have things to speak, listen, share and communicate... and often we'll have complex thoughts which cannot be expressed without grammar, and for that we will learn and reach for the essential grammar for crisp, precise communication. The biggest issue I have in terms of fundamental approach is what we put first - in school, we learn alphabets and grammar without any idea why we are learning, just trusting the elders that it will be useful somewhere someday. Kids struggle and resist, because it's unnatural. I feel that the experience or activity or subject should be at the center, and grammar should be on the periphery - kids should not even feel that they are learning grammar, like they don't feel that they are learning to say 'appa' or 'amma'... I observe how kids learn before they go to school and 'can be taught' or 'made to learn', and I think that's the right way. I feel like we should only create the situations and environment to facilitate learning, and all real learning is experiential, and the kids will experience it themselves and learn. Writing in structured forms invented by other people is itself unnatural, and requires breaking of the child's will. Here the key is to make the learning useful in some way - if the kid quickly sees that learning alphabets helps me communicate in fascinating ways, and if communication is a cherished activity, that's the carrot to entice kids to go thru the drudgery of learning alphabets and grammar.