Retrogressive?

M. S. KALYANASUNDARAM

Swami Rumination Ananda returned to India recently after wandering for about fifteen years in the Americas, China, Japan and some islands in between. As soon as the news of his arrival spread, his friends and devotees hastened to meet him. Editor Visvanathan was one of them. After exchange of greetings and the usual enquiries, the Swami asked his friend,

“What are you doing these days?”

“Same as before, Swamiji. The Weekly.”

“Doing well?”

“Not bad. Just crossed sixty. This time next year, I expect it to be eighty. And in two years after that,…..”

“Excuse me, what figures are these?”

“Circulation. What else...?”

“Sixty of what?”

“Sixty thousand.”

“My mistake. A Rip Van Winkle. So, Tamil journals sell in tens of thousands! Good. Your figure was round about t thousand in those days, wasn't it?”

“Yes, Swamiji.”

“Congratulations–to you as well as to your readers.”

“Thank you, sir. It fills me with great joy. I take these words as your blessings. Feel as if I have already crossed the one lakh mark. But you were kind enough to congratulate the readers too. What was the idea?”

“My recollection is, Visvanathan, that the stories and article, in your weekly appealed only to a select few. They were not for the common herd. That is, they specialised in bold, uninhibited deas, and stimulated a variety of thoughts; brevity was one other of their strong points, they were highly suggestive, leaving much to be read between the lines–if you don’t mind the cliche–and they were not for superficial, easy-going readers. Such people do not like a tantalising interrogation mark at the end, or a rainbow which moves on as they try to approach it and vanishes when the sun goes down. Now, since you assure me that a steady fifty or sixtythousand readers have risen to your level, am I not to congratulate the society which has thrown them up? That is all that I meant. Such progress is very gratifying. And you deserve much more than a mere congratulation, for the great service that you are rendering.”

Visvanathan was in a very uncomfortable position. He blushed and paled by turns–shamed by undeserved eulogy, and chilled by the revelations in store. To suddenly remember an urgent engagement and decamp with a plausible apology is wisdom at such times. But the hero born of Visvanathan’s magic pen twenty years ago would not have resorted to that Subterfuge. He would have faced the music. Visvanathan kept to his seat. He said, “Swamiji, it is my duty to inform you that I have had to bring down the standard of the journal, somewhat, due to commercial considerations.”

“I follow. That couldn’t be helped, I suppose. Life is like that. When discussing spiritual matters, I start in an uncompromising mood, declaring that there is no royal road for self-realisation, and scorn analogies and parables as they often mislead and side-track, or create a false sense of understanding in the listener’s mind. But I sometimes have to come down a couple of steps as a temporary help to the seeker.”

“True. But I am afraid, it is more than a couple of steps in my case.”

“Is that so? The readers refuse to climb up more than ten out of the twenty rungs in the ladder and you have to come down ten rungs, is it?”

“More or less. Sometimes my descent is more than halfway.”

The Swami smiled a smile of flowerlike delicacy and asked, “Eighteen and two?”

Visvanathan did not reply at once. There was a suspicion of a sigh.

“Is it then twenty-two minus two” Have you to run after an unwilling reader and rope him in–with offers of prizes and things like that?”

The editor’s face vied with the paper he wrote on.

Swamiji asked with great solicitude, “Why thisstate, Visvam?–this fall?”

“The magazine has to tackle the cut-throat competition and survive and grow.”

“What for?”

“What for!”

“The inescapable condition–the dire necessity–that it has to survive and grow.”

“Don’t we strive for success in any work that we take up, sir?”

“Is that necessary? Is there an unavoidable compulsion? Your duty is to stick to your job according to your plan.”

“Swamiji, you are cross-questioning me as if I am in the dock for counterfeiting of currency notes. In those days, some of us laboured hard for an ideal. And we starved, as you very well know. Now we work hard with another goal in view. And we live in comfort. The present objective is to entertain people in their spare time and broadcast a modicum of sugar-coated instruction without rousing the readers’ suspicion. They buy the paper of their own volition. I don’t pick their pockets and then throw the journal at them.”

The Swami was, for the last minute or two, gazing thoughtfully at the outspread fingers of his left hand. Visvanathan asked, with some anxiety, if anything was the matter with them.

“No, nothing,” said the other; and running his right index finger on each one of his left fingers, he explained, “As you were talking, each statement triggered off a number of diverse questions.”

“Am I so thought-provoking a speaker?” asked the editor, and laughed.

Swamiji joined in the laughter and said, “But that is what I expect of you, isn’t it, Visvam? I wished that I had a few fingers more.”

“May I know, sir, what those thoughts were?”

“Afraid that they would take a long time to tell, and discuss, with the possibility of more thoughts sparking off…..”

“I have time to spare. Hope you are also free. But if you are about to do some surgical work on me, I would ask for partial anaesthesia at least and bloodless surgery if possible.” He
laughed.

“Twenty years ago you would have spurned chloroform. You would have quoted–was it Gladstone who was prepared for an eye operation without anaesthetics? One finger for that,”

“True. Please go on. It is a good day for me today.”

“You mentioned starvation. Was it rhetoric or biology? There are many stages in pacifying hunger. Rice gruel, ditto with salt, a further addition of a green chilli, cooked rice, dal or curry or both to go with it, and so on. Peacock brain dish or bird’s nest soup and bamboo shoots or caviare and champagne come at the other end. ...You can earn for your week’s needs if you work two hours a day or two days a week, whichever is practicable. That is Thoreau–whom we went through together. But then you won’t get almond halva twice a day, and the famous mango-mustard pickle of the Andhras to lessen the boredom. You spoke of progress and growing prosperity. Are we agreed about what progress means? If out of a body of 2,000 subscribers, 200 who do not have the right culture and taste drop away, I would consider the body to be improved –like 200unpatriotic rice-soldiers resigning from the army (only, they won’t). If I were a first rate singer, I would sing free to a gathering of kindred souls, but not for a thousand rupees to a boorish Money- bag. ...The same will apply, more or less, to ‘success’ too. A downward curve for ideals and an upward one for sales on your statistical chart, does it show progress or -sliding? Think. …Now, about counterfeit notes. What you write, ed by right inspiration, is as much the nation’s wealth, as the Government’s paper money, ed by credit. If the ing is doubtful, it is worthless paper. If people accept bad money without suspecting, it shows their ignorance or thoughtlessness. Is it fair to thrive on money collected from an ignorant or thoughtless man? That he voluntarily throws his coin into your coffers is a misleading statement. When Sarpa Yaag was performed to the chanting of powerful mantras, the snakes crept from long distances and fell into the huge pit of fire seemingly ‘of their own accord’.”

Viswanathan was shaken and perplexed on listening to this analysis. He pleaded, “Journals could be sold at a low price only if they are mass-produced.”

“I accept this argument at the one thousand–to–five thousand stage. But beyond that, or thereabouts, my conviction is that every scheme to increase circulation raises many side issues. If the brain-energy spent in tackling them, ….”

“That’s the manager’s or Executive Director’s headache.”

“That E. D. is himself a bad and needless headache. Whenever you try to ply the oars in order to reach certain ideals, he would strain the helm to breaking point, if need be, to take the boat to, the land of High Circulation. And he will expect his salary-curve to run parallel to the circulation curve–whenever the latter rises.”

“Without an attractive circulation, we will not get attractive advertisements.”

“And without assured advertisement income, you cannot plan for further prosperity...And the Advertisement Manager will tell you, ‘Sir, of late, dry, didactic or bold stories are finding more space. As you know, most of our readers are women. They prefer action stories with bland sentiments and simple plots ending happily. If the circulation drops because of these complicated, over-subtle or philosophical stories, which strain the common reader, we would not be able to renew many of the contract orders. And once we lose good clients, it will be extremely difficult to get them ….’ Hearing that exposition, you would be forced to modify your notions further.” While he was explaining, he made his fingers representatives of further thoughts.

Visvanathan smiled and said, “Make each of those fingers speak again, sir.”

Swamiji laughed and began–“One: A millionaire was told by a friend of his that a large number of servants were working for him; he replied that, on the other hand, he was working hard to maintain all those people….Two: If the women readers heard those remarks, woe unto you...Three: I wonder how they get time to read 70 or 80 pages of printed matter week after week. In those days, my mother….”

“Then I must inform you that a woman in a middle class family normally reads–by buying, borrowing or exchanging–not one magazine, but two or three from among the weeklies, monthlies, and Sunday Supplements available to her. And when Dipavali and similar specials are published, women have to read them like driven slaves.”

“Quite so. And how do they get the time?”

“Your mother and my mother had to draw water, attend to the cow, churn for butter, grind flour, and bury themselves in a hundred chores like that. Life is easier now.”

“So we create spare time, an t en worry as to how to get rid of it. When household work gets over-soft, health deteriorates–mental health first.”

“Why? Is reading so bad?”

“You have described the material available for reading. Should not strain the brain, and must be suitable for being forgotten the next moment! The letters must move like ants under the eye, the clock must be chopping time into seconds, and thus a day born from the womb of eternal future must slide down into the eternal past, with the least damage done to the thinking process...Do not think, please, that I am needlessly hard on women. Men are no better. The morning’s paper rakes up so much of Pappa’s attention, that Mummy is afraid of reminding him of purchases to be made, and Sonny of asking for some help with his arithmetic. Neither does most of what he reads, leave any impression on Pappa, unless it be connected with crimes and scandal. In the evening, the card-room in the club is a veritable opium den. As a matter of fact, bridge could be reduced to a finite, though large, number of mathematical formulae. If the major patterns are exhausted, there is no novelty left. There is novelty or variation only if one plays, knowingly or otherwise, illogically or highly speculatively. And the present interest of the game lies only in that. If electronic robots play the game, only one end will be possible for one pattern of deals if the rules are observed. A variation and point of interest will be introduced only when there is partial breakdown in the apparatus–like a wrongly printed postal stamp having a fabulous value placed on it…Sometimes, the maker reduces us to a despicable state; but more often we reduce ourselves to a worse condition.” He looked sad-on behalf of mankind. 

“I always thought that ‘Philosophy of Leisure’ was a highly progressive notion–I mean,….”

“It is–if filling and not killing leisure is the objective.”

“It is strange, sir, that you who have seen American Sunday Supplements ten times as bulky and with twenty times the circulation as in our country, with a much smaller population there….”

“If we read in the day’s paper that there is virulent cholera in Amritsar, we say, ‘How sad’ and pass on to the next item. But if a part of our own town is afflicted, we bestow more thought to it, the actual thought, of course, varying with the individual.”

“So it all reduces to relativity. Whether it is the material world or the thought world or the emotional world, sir, we cannot be sure of which is real and which unreal.”

“That, which is, is.”

“Meaning….?”

“Our ancients had one word sat to stand for ‘existence’, ‘goodness’ and ‘truth’. Thinkers like Sartre,….”

“True. In that case, what will you have me do?”

“Nothing, Visvam. Am I so unworldly?”

“If you had no worldly wisdom, what advice will yougive me, sir?” asked Visvanathan laughing.

Swami Rumination Ananda thought for a while and said–“You have become a jet-plane or perhaps a sputnik. I remain a pedestrian. So it is difficult to establish rapport….At the rate, that the printed word–to which people attach more value than called for–is pouring out of the machines, we are like cattle which do not get the leisure or the restful mood to chew the cud. I have in mind a cow which stole into a green field, knowing from bitter experience that she was doing a punishable act, and greedily gobbled more than she normally needed. Perhaps the constant fear of the likelihood of being chased out and beaten badly, made her eat more and also caused the secretion of undesirable gastric juices. Whatever it be, her stomach got bloated and she died in a few hours. When she was ripped open by a butcher who was after her hide, and all the undigested fodder was thrown out, the stench was unbearable for two furlongs around….What I would like is–a good monthly when I am eagerly waiting for it. A number of wholesome stories and articles and poems to suit different tastes in it. Time enough to re-read what appeals to me, and talk about it with kindred spirits. One or two novels or plays in a year. Not chance finds–pearls on a dung-heep–but deliberately and skilfully developed creations. Suitable for re-reading once in two or three years. With form and content to ensure survival for fifty years at least. Like good mango pickles which the more you chew….”

“I follow. But my fingers, as you have perhaps observed, are loaded with objections. That apart, you cannot stop literary inflation by law. What other remedy do you suggest?”

“A slow medical remedy could be administered by the educational administrations. But those bodies are, unfortunately being run by patients suffering from this same disease, mostly. The second remedy is surgical. The readers have to be the surgeons. But that is very unlikely. The third method will be for the abscess to ripen and burst open. In all likelihood, that iswhat would happen. And there will be an ugly scar.”

“And the immediate action for me...?”

“None. Keep on with the present programme. It may help to cause a revulsion in the mind of the reader who is fooled now. In the mean-time, let us see what action-form today’s talk of ours takes after Time plays on it for some months–or years.”

“Very well, sir. As you suggest, some solution–I mean, an aqueous solution–has been prepared. When the water evaporates, crystals will form. Let us study them and use them if possible….You have been very kind, I am grateful to you….Namaskar.”

“Namaskar.”