पुरुषोत्तम हनुमान

मारुती किंवा हनुमान हे पुरुषोत्तमाचे रूप आहे. 

हा पुरुषोत्तम कसा असतो? तर सुंदर असतो, सशक्त असतो, आणि विधायक असतो. सुंदर, म्हणजे आनंददायीसुद्धा असतो, विकट, म्हणजे समजण्यास कठीणही असतो, आणि भीम, म्हणजे भीतीदायकही असतो. 

या पुरुषोत्तमाला केवल-अहिंसेचा मार्ग धरून चालत नाही. केवळ सत्त्वगुणी नाही, तर त्रिगुणातीत होऊन हिंसेचा तमोगुणी प्रयोगही योग्य वेळी करावा लागतो. 

मारुतीच्या गोष्टींमधलं लंकादहनाचं कथानक त्याच्या पुरुषोत्तम रूपाचं सर्वस्वी जाणीव करून देणारं आहे. 

लंकादहनामध्ये हिंसा आहे का? आहेच! भरघोस आहे! पण ती निष्कारण, नुसती नासधूस करण्यासाठी केलेली तत्त्वहीन, निष्ठाहीन हिंसा नाही. 

त्यात उन्मत्तपणे वागणार्या दैत्यांना आपल्या शक्तीची जाणीव करून देण्याचा हेतू आहे. असेच वागत राहिलात, धर्महीन वागणूक देत राहिलात, तर काय होईल हे दाखवण्याचा हेतू आहे. 

हिंसेला प्रतिकार करण्यासाठी हिंसा अंगीकारावीच लागते. त्यात वाईट काहीच नाही. परंतु आपण प्रतिकार हिंसेला हिंसेनी नाही, तर अधर्माला धर्मानी करतोय, ही समज अंगी बाणायला हवी. ही समज मनात दृढ असणं, हेच पुरुषोत्तमाचं प्रमुख लक्षण. 

मारुतीचा भक्त म्हणवून घेणाऱ्या प्रत्येकाच्या मनात ही समज घर करून राहिलीच पाहिजे. ही समज जर आली नसेल, तर आपण फक्त बलाचे भक्त ठरतो, सत्य-शिव-सुंदर असलेल्या पुरुषोत्तमाचे नाही. 

याच विचारातून आज हनुमान जयंतीला सुचलेलं हे मारुतीचं स्तोत्र:

लंकादहन स्तोत्र / पुरुषोत्तम मारुती स्तोत्र

भयाकारी हाहाकारी रौद्रभीषण जाहला 

हादरे लंका पुरी हा प्रळय अद्भुत मांडला

मत्त वैभव तोडले उन्मत्त दैत्यहि मोडले

फुटेना वाचा भयाने स्तिमित रावण जाहला ||

पुच्छ धुमधुमते झळाळे हासतो अरिकंदन

धूम्रवर्णी शोभुनी दिसतो कपीकुलभूषण

विकट हास्ये निर्भयाने पुच्छ ऐसे काढिले

तुच्छ ती लंका तयाने सूर्यबिंबा ग्रासिले ||

कोसळाव्या थोर उल्का कपी तैसा भासतो

प्रळयकारी वातनंदन दशमुखाला झोडतो 

जाळितो भुवने क्षणी अन शीघ्रचि घेतो उडी

थोर उडवुनि हा दणाणा सागरी घेतो बुडी ||

तोडिली ती वाटिका ज्यां पृथ्विजेला कोंडले

भुवन लंकेचे पुराने अग्निच्या तुडवाडिले 

थरथरे लंकापती हा पाहुनी कपि विक्रमी

गर्व पूर्णचि काढितो हा ब्रह्मचारी संयमी ||

महाबली हनुमान की जय!

The Doomed, Deadly, Divine Twins: When Heaven and Earth Trembled before the Might of Liverpool’s Apollo and Artemis

A lot of Liverpool fans of my age first got into Liverpool fandom on the back of Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard, who, in the late 2000s, were threatening to drag Liverpool Football Club back to its historic perch.

In the end, that wasn't to happen, but it was, for a lot of us, the last time we saw our club bare its claws and frighten one and all in the game. It was a time when Real Madrid - yes, the same Real Madrid who seem to beat us every time we play them these days - hung its head at Anfield and had it mercilessly cut off with a 4-0 defeat.

Fernando Torres, of course, got the first goal that night. He may have committed a foul on Pepe, purely in legal terms, but even 15 years later, it sure looks like the Real Madrid defense was terrified of this kid - El Niño - from Atletico.

The ball from Carragher is nothing more than a rugby punt forward, a nothing ball in a nothing area, almost confusing considering he is not under any real pressure in his own half. But, just like Nemanja Vidic would do a few days later, the Madrid defense allow the ball to bounce. Fabio Cannavaro has won the last world cup as captain, but it looks like he rushes back into position too fast, far faster than his feet can handle, because the knowledge that Fernando Torres is lurking behind his shoulder terrifies him. His wild swipe is easily evaded - he barely even connects with the ball. Pepe is dragged to the floor inside the Madrid penalty area and his hurried clearance intercepted, Dirk Kuyt taps it into the six yard box, and El Niño is there to stroke it home into the almost empty net. 

Coming on March 10, 2009, just ten days before Torres's 25th birthday, this 4-0 win at home was immediately followed by a 4-1 win away at Old Trafford, home of hated rivals and league frontrunners Manchester United, and a 5-1 home win over Aston Villa, who would eventually finish sixth that season on the back of a stellar roster and Martin O'Neill's canny man management. As scintillating as this run was, in hindsight, this rampant three-game winning run turned out to be that Liverpool team's peak, with Xabi Alonso's sale to Madrid in the summer of 2009 proving to be the first of a long line of self-imposed adversities for the club in the first half of the 2010s. It really was the perfect example of Liverpool's very best under Rafa Benitez.

Benitez had a very clear vision for how he wanted Liverpool to play when he came to England. It seemed like Mourinho had just birthed the blueprint that so many coaches would later use to beat possession-hogging, technically talented teams, but Rafael Benitez had been doing pretty much the same thing with Valencia while winning La Liga with what still remains the last non-big-three team to win the title in Spain. 

He wanted to win the ball back in midfield, he wanted disciplined, hardworking wingers who would track back diligently for 90 minutes and more, tough, tight-marking defenders in a low block, a narrow defensive shape, and a willingness to run behind the opposition's defense on the counter.

Benitez jumped on the opportunity to sign Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano, creating the perfect engine room for Steven Gerrard to gallop forward from his quasi-number-ten role. Diverse wingers like Kuyt, Benayoun, Pennant, Babel, Zenden, and Riera manned the wings – hardworking, canny, sometimes classy, and fondly remembered by the fans, but always a bit limited, and never a consistent goal threat. 

Fernando Torres became the crown jewel of this intricate piece almost from his first appearance for Liverpool. His first goal for the club came in just his second Premier League game, with the striker converting a pinpoint Steven Gerrard pass with powers that would come to mark his entire three-year stay with Liverpool: The confidence to take the ball on the run and initiate the next sequence without waiting for a second touch, the short burst of speed to get away from the defender, the robust physicality making defenders hesitant to commit to a tackle, and brutishly cold finishing ability from almost any angle.

Tal Ben Haim may not be a hall-of-famer among Premier League defenders, but Torres doesn't need a second touch to know that this one is there for the taking. He takes one touch on the run to steady the pass from Gerrard, the second takes him away from the dismayed Ben Haim and into the eighteen yard box. He is at an angle, facing Petr Cech, possibly the best Premier League keeper at the time. But he seems to have adjudged his run to perfection. Just as Cech starts to come out to close down the angle, Torres finds an open route to the far corner on the keeper's left, and slots it in with a smooth swish of his right foot (#6 in video).

The kid has arrived. 

For most of his time at Liverpool, Torres just seemed a cut above the rest. His collar out, long sleeves and long blonde hair fluttering in the wind, he moved with a quiet confidence, completely in tune with his own body and in harmony with those few minds who could keep up with his. A god among men, happy to impose his heavenly rules on the trembling, quivering mortals around him.

It would be easy to overlook this in the modern era of the hyperathlete ushered in by Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, but the 24 league goals Fernando Torres scored in the 2007-08 season was a league record at the time for a foreign player playing his first season in England. 

Not enough, you say? Here's more: Torres became the first Liverpool player since Robbie Fowler in 1995-96 to score more than 20 league goals in a season, scored more goals (in all competitions) than Michael Owen ever managed in a single season, equalled Liverpool legend Roger Hunt's record of scoring in eight consecutive home league games, and finished second in the league's goalscoring charts for the season, all of this in his debut season for Liverpool, and his first outside the extremely familiar environs of Madrid, having grown up in the city and risen through the ranks at Atletico Madrid. 

In the heavily injury-ridden 2008-09 season, he scored 14 league goals in just 24 appearances - an extremely admirable ratio in the era when Ronaldo and Messi hadn't yet fooled us into thinking that 50-goal seasons were the norm. Lest we forget, he was just 23 years old when he signed for Liverpool.

His partnership with Steven Gerrard is the stuff of legends, and rightly so, because in Fernando Torres, Gerrard had found what he had lacked since the days of Michael Owen - a playmate capable of matching him blow for blow. A teammate who could not only remain on the same wavelength as Gerrard mentally, but one who could also match his prodigious physicality. In the wiry, lithe, long-haired lad from Spain, the powder keg of Steven Gerrard had found the perfect fuse to blow things up with. Steven Gerrard’s Apollo had found his Artemis.

Steven Gerrard had been heralded as a leader and the future club captain since before his debut for Liverpool, and he had already proven with his performances in the 2005 Champions League Final and the 2006 FA Cup Final that he was fully up to the task of leading this storied club to new heights. Stevie was the leader, the captain, the guardian, the lawgiver, the pathfinder. As the ancient Greeks called Apollo "agyieus", meaning protector / defender, so Kopites relied on their captain fantastic to see their team through. But Stevie couldn't do it all by himself. 

Stevie had been on his own since the heady Y2K days of Gary McAllister, Danny Murphy, Robbie Fowler, Sami Hyypiä, Michael Owen, and treble-winning seasons. Strikers like Djibril Cisse, Peter Crouch, Milan Baros, and Florent Sinama Pongolle certainly weren't duds, but none were capable of matching Stevie in his effort, talent, and execution. With Torres’s arrival, in the summer of 2007, there was finally someone who Stevie could join hands with, cry “havoc”, and let slip the dogs of war.

There was something divine about Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, that’s for sure. They seemed born to play together, Gerrard’s powerful but metronomic drumming providing the perfect foundation for Torres’s wailing guitar solos. It was heavy metal football, years before Klopp would popularize the phrase in the early 2010s.The pitch always seemed smaller, the other players lesser, when Liverpool’s number 8 and number 9 strode into the fray. They went about their business quietly and firmly. There was nothing brash about the way they played. Nothing loud. Nothing arrogant. Honestly, they didn’t even speak to each other that much on the football pitch. They didn’t need to.

This is a feature of many reputed footballing duos, but Gerrard’s passes always seemed to have that something more that Torres could exploit. He didn’t just hand over the ball to El Niño. He sent the ball over with magic already whispered into it. He gave it to him on the run – always on the run. Always a little bit to one side, instructing, or maybe aiding, Torres in going past his defender on that side.

They seemed to move as one, opposite but complementary, like the roots and shoots of the same germinating seed. They seemed to share one heartbeat, not even needing to see each other for one to know where the other was. From the summer of 2007 to the summer of 2009, Liverpool’s home ground Anfield was illuminated by these deadly, destructive, divine twins just as much as its monstrous floodlights illuminated them. 

I could wax on about this particular goal ad infinitum, but seriously, watch Torres's goal against Newcastle at Anfield in the Premier League in the 2007-08 season (#2 in the video, although of course I encourage you to watch all ten). The cheeky clearance from Xabi Alonso from inside Liverpool's half sees both Torres and Gerrard around the center circle, facing each other, Gerrard looking not at the ball but at his teammate to see where the ball was going to land, scanning their territory together in perfect harmony. Torres nods the ball down to Gerrard and takes off to Liverpool's right hand side around his man marker. As if acting on the same impulse, Gerrard plays the ball into the left hand side with his first touch. Barely a second later, Gerrard and Torres have both moved fifteen yards in the opposite directions, stretching the Newcastle backline and creating the perfect opening for Torres to run into. Gerrard knocks a left foot pass, a weak foot pass, mind you, fifty feet into Torres's path, and it looks like a simple tap-in for the boy from Spain. But lo and behold, what's this? Torres doesn’t take a touch. He lets the ball run, in true appreciation of the weight on the ball from Gerrard. The keeper, expecting El Niño to go for the finish straight away, dives at his feet and is evaded. Torres, who, remember, has still not touched Gerrard’s pass, goes round the fallen keeper, and then slots it into the Newcastle net expertly through desperate retreating defenders. A true vintage goal, it was the zenith of the Torres-Gerrard partnership. 

Some psychic connection, some fault in the stars, definitely existed between the two. Possibly it was that same divine providence that robbed Torres of his inexhaustible self-belief seemingly the moment he signed for Chelsea, some higher power reacting with a thumbs down emoji to the shocking move.

It was a shocking downfall, from being an inspiration for club and country to becoming a lost, rejected, clueless idiot wandering around the football pitch not because he really wanted to be there, but because he was getting paid to be there. Perhaps it was Hera’s wrath finally catching up to Torres's Artemis, just as it caught up to Steven Gerrard's Apollo in the form of that inevitable, cruel slip at the back end of the 2013-14 season. It seems as good an explanation as any. Liverpool fans certainly have just cause to hate Fernando for the way he left. But at the same time, and perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, it is important to remember what he was at Liverpool.

Many people see football as an idiot’s game, a brainless pursuit for jocks whose legs work faster than their minds. Some sad souls even see football as nothing more than a TV show, a commercial milking cow to be exploited to its full. But really, football is just like any other human endeavor – a pursuit of perfection orchestrated by imperfect individuals, operating in a dynamic, ever-changing reality, who can come together to produce moments of breath-taking brilliance, even magic. As in life, there are moments in football when the Gods do seem to be watching … and perhaps surreptitiously fiddling with the events to suit their fickle wants and needs. Fernando Torres was a blessed child at Liverpool – a pure, chaste, merciless hunter. He didn’t score for the money. He didn’t score for the records. He scored because it seemed to be the only purpose of his existence, his raison d’etre. He scored because it made him happy. He scored because it was fun.

You can propound footballing theories and pursue footballing philosophies all you want, but if you, your team, and your fans are having fun together on the football pitch, you are probably doing something right. Oftentimes, if you are having fun on a football pitch, that is all that really matters.

Fernando Torres was not doing much more than that at Liverpool. At Liverpool, Fernando Torres was just having fun.

©Tanmay Viraj Tikekar

March 22, 2024

Pune, MH

A Day in Bijapur

The first thing you notice while traveling from Maharashtra to Karnataka is that the buses are much less deadly in the latter. And the roads smoother. And the scenery nicer. And the fuel prices lower. But I digress.

I rolled into Bijapur around noon, and booked a room in Santosh lodge, opposite the bus station. The rooms are clean but cramped and there's no generator backup, but a room w/o TV is a good deal at 250 Rs/night (300 w/ TV).

In the evening I went out to see Ibrahim Roja and the surrounding monuments. Visited the Jod Gumbaz (twin domes) and the Taj bawdi on the way. The latter was a stinking mess of filth. To put it mildly. Once used as drinking water to all of Medieval Bijapur, the bawdi (well) is now filled with slimy, murky water and chocked with trash. The Jod gumbaz is much better maintained but is used more as a picnic spot thanks to its surrounding lawns.

The Ibrahim Roja ('Roja' means the tomb of a male Muslim) is befitting of the status afforded by the Archaeological Survey of India. It consists of the Roja on the left and a mosque on the right, surrounded by lawns. Situated outside Bijapur's city fortifications, the Roja was built by Ibrahim Adilshah as a would-be tomb for his then-living wife. Building a tomb for a living wife was considered a display of love back then but times have changed; do not try this at home. As fate would have it, Ibrahim passed away before his Begum and became the first occupant of the monument.

Ibrahim Roja

The Ibrahim Roja

The passage down memory lane...

On my way back I paid a visit to the Malik-e-Maidan (meaning 'master of the battlefield' and known in Maharashtra as 'Mulukh Maidan') cannon. 14 ft long and about 5 ft wide (it almost reaches my shoulder!), this 55-ton leviathan was originally used by the Bahmani army against the forces of Vijayanagara at the battle of Talikote. It was brought to Bijapur by 10 elephants and many oxen and men. Its mouth is engraved with a crocodile crushing an elephant in its jaws, representing the Shah's victory over the south Indian Hindu kings.

The fearsome Malik-e-Maidan

Saba-Dome Gigante!

Legs crying out for a breather and hunger starting to rear its head, I returned to my room after satisfying the latter with some jalebi and a plate of delicious roadside chicken.

Backpacking Journal Karnataka #1

Solapur is situated bang in the middle of the flat, featureless Deccan traps. It's hundreds of miles from a mountain range in any direction, and there is very little forest cover. The upshot of it is that it's very hot and very dry. Apart from drying laundry very quickly I couldn't think of any silver lining to that. The most interesting place in the city is the bus station, where rickety buses leave for the Hindu temples of Pandharpur and Tuljapur, and Bijapur.

Pandharpur is the destination of the famous 'Waari' tradition of Maharashtra. Thousands of devotees flock to Pandharpur in the Hindu month of Aashadh to seek the blessings of Vithoba, Maharashtra's interpretation of Lord Vishnu. The waari tradition was established and reinforced by the 17th-century saint-poets Tukaram and Eknath, and the annual march is still going strong 400 years later.

For history buffs, Tuljapur arguably holds an even greater allure. King Shivaji worshipped Tulja devoutly and had the temple rebuilt after it had been desecrated by the Bijapuri commander Afjal Khan.

Unless you are a devout disciple of Vithal or Tulja, give these temples a hearty miss. The Tuljapur temple in particular consists of a ridiculously long wait before you barely see the idol and are immediately rushed out by the temple's rude priests. I have been told there are certain communities in Karnataka that walk all the way across the border to Tuljapur, but I guarantee they don't take as much time doing that as I spent in the long queue at the temple.

The riverside temples of Pandharpur

Gods don't interest me, but I felt like bowing down before their long-suffering devotees, who happily wait in line to catch but a glimpse of their saviour. It is a necessity of the times that the line be kept moving at all costs, but it's despiriting to see the rush for just one glimpse of a god described by saint-poets as the one who greets his devotees with a heartfelt embrace.

Beggars are a much more frequent sight in both temples than the idols themselves. It is another oddity of the human mind that we need more entreatment to feed the living beggars than to offer food to the lifeless idol. We would rather wait in line for an hour to catch one glimpse of an idol than spare a penny for the needy and we would rather pay 10 Rs to have our shoes kept safe in a cloakroom than to buy some much-needed food for a helpless beggar.

The next day I took a bus to Bijapur. Karnataka had a lot to live up to.

दोन मिनिटात । परब्रह्मभेट ।
दिसे का रे नीट । मुख तरी ।।

दोन मिनिटात । मागणे गा-हाणे ।
देवासी सांगणे । कसे तरी ।।

दोन मिनिटात । हललीच रांग ।
कावला श्रीरंग । विटेवरी ।।

Aurangabad: Shadows of a Distant Past

There was a time when Aurangabad was the epicenter of the Deccan Plateau. There was a time when it housed Mughal nobles, and was the headquarters of the Mughal movement across southern India seeking to eradicate an annoyingly rebellious Hindu king called Shivaji.

Only brief glimpses into that time are possible now in the urban jungle, but when you only have two days in hand and a bike, the glimpses are enough.

As I rode into Aurangabad, customarily got lost once and eventually found the hotel I was looking for, It was nearing noon. The ride to the city had been marred by the clutch wire giving up and me having to replace it in a tiny town, but all had been well otherwise. I booked a room in the Lonely Planet-recommended 'Tourist's Home' hotel near Aurangabad rly station.

I dumped my riding gear and sack in the room and, changing into the casual cap-n-camera attire, started off towards Ellora. The road towards the cave complex passes through the town of Daulatabad, which houses the famous fort. Jutting out of the mountain like Rivendell's galleries, the fort looked disappointingly small, but held a distinctly imposing charm. It was too hot for a proper climb, so I (coward, I know) left the fort for another time.

The cave complex has vast amounts of parking, which costs Rs 5, and there is a Rs 10 entrance fee (for Indians). I didn't get a guide, since I was strictly on a budget (and I have a certain amount of knowledge of Hindu mythology), but if you are with a group, getting one is recommended. The complex is meaningless if you don't know what the idols are, and professional expertise of mythology is a welcome addition.

It is also recommended to buy a booklet describing the various tourist spots around Aurangabad. It costs Rs 70, and numerous hawkers all around the complex are all too eager to convince you to get one. For once, it is worthwhile to succumb to a typical touristy lure, since the booklet contains valuable information about the sculptures in Ellora as well as the Ajantha caves.

The caves are scattered in a fairly linear fashion, going leftward from the entrance. A few caves are relatively bare, with just a few reliefs on the walls, but many have distinct idols. Popular scenes include the gods Vishnu and Shiva. Depictions of Shiva dancing the thunderous 'tandava' dance in his 'Nataraj' form is quite popular, as are monuments of various other gods, and animals such as elephants and lions.

What boggles the mind, though, is not necessarily the various depictions, but the sheer size of the whole construction. It is a testament to the power of the human mind, working incessantly to carve volcanic rock into something so spectacular.

Some of the farther caves only fill up in the evening, and are a popular and relaxing spot for an afternoon siesta, the silence only broken by the occasional honking of tourist buses or screeches of swallows and hawks.

The road between Ellora and Aurangabad is littered with countless sugarcane juice sellers, a common streetside refresher particularly in Maharashtra. The scorching April sun had taken its toll on me, and a couple of glasses of virtually pure sugar did a lot to lift my spirits.

My evening meal turned out to be a surprisingly good roadside biryani, bhel, and the everpresent sugarcane juice, on Aurangabad's Station Road. The delicious biryani cost just Rs 30, and I got a whole freaking leg piece! What else could a man possibly want?

The next morning was dedicated to Bibi-ka-Maqbara, a monument built by one of Aurangzeb's sons in memory of his mother. The road leading to the famous monument is, though not the worst I've ever had, in a state of disrepair, and passes through areas that could really use the monument to bring about some development.

The site itself is carefully looked after, and charges the same Rs 10 for Indian tourists as the Ellora Caves. It is a deliberate copy of the more famous and more beautiful Taj Mahal in Agra, and though the inferiour quality is unabashedly obvious (plaster walls, for one), it has a certain unique charm. Unlike the Ellora Caves, a guide is quite unnecessary here, since the buildings are clearly marked and described with placards, and the Rs 50 is much better spent on another plate on the aforementioned sumptuous biryani.

It doesn't take up a lot of your time, and in just over an hour, I was getting ready for the ride back home in my hotel room.

The hotel I stayed at lies very close to Aurangabad Railway Station. It has a helpful staff, clean rooms, convenient location, and a rudimentary restaurant. Double rooms can be booked for Rs 400. Short of a homestay, it is the ideal choice for the budget traveler.

Aurangabad deserves an extended stay, because it is impossible to properly enjoy Ellora, Devgiri, and Ajantha, the three biggies of Aurangabad, in one weekend. The Lonar crater lake, about 140 km from Aurangabad, is one of the very few large crater lakes in the Eastern Hemisphere, and is also worth a visit. A week-long excursion to this city of the Kings can't come soon enough.