Wordilicious Word of the Week #1: Companion

The word 'companion' comes from the Latin prefix 'com', meaning 'with' or 'along with' (also seen in community, commonality, and communication), and 'pan', meaning bread. Often, simply breaking down words correctly gives a clear indication into what the words actually mean. The whole problem is often simply that the words are being fragmented incorrectly, at the wrong node.

In simple literal terms, a companion is someone you break bread with, someone you eat with.

Already, we see a shift from the meaning we are used to, i.e. someone you spend time with, someone who gives you company (another, and heavily related, 'com' word). But the rabbit hole doesn’t stop there.

Spending time with someone can be incredibly important, but many of us spend a lot of time with a lot of people we don't want to spend time with, such as work friends and colleagues who you wouldn't invite to your own going away party, let alone anything more significant. Schoolchildren and teachers alike spend a lot of time not wanting to be around each other. An applicant in an office where his form is being rejected repeatedly spends a lot of time with the clerks and officers there. Are they, then, companions? Of course not. They're barely there.

Companionship, in the sense we usually use it today, indicates a mutual desire to spend time together, rather than the physical presence of two people in the same place at the same time. But the literal breakdown of the word hints at an idea within the human mind that eating together, especially regularly, is the zenith of the pursuit of spending time together with someone. It seems that to the human mind, the activity of spending time together with someone “means” having food with them.

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Companionship as the Essence of Compatibility
Part 2: Sharing Food as a Marker of Sociality
Part 3: The Devaluation of Food
Part 4: Hospitality and the Human Need to Find Another Just Like Ourselves
Part 5: Disturbances in the Force – Lack of True Companionship in Domesticity
Part 6: Sharing Food (Companionship) as the Neurological Basis for Kinship
Part 7: We Are What We Eat: How What We Eat Affects How We Act
Part 8: A Journey in Time

Part 1: Companionship as the Essence of Compatibility

It is incredibly suggestive within the context of this piece that first dates more often than not involve coffee, lunch, dinner, alcohol, or something else gastronomical. Even the classic movie date is more about the sharing of the popcorn than about what reels are playing on the screen, and one of the most popular lead lines among men to flirt with novel women is to offer them a drink at the bar. Eating and the habits associated with it seem to reveal one's true inner nature, more than anything else.

Consider how much important stuff happens in the Harry Potter books over food in the great hall. Consider how many great scenes in the series are made and elevated by the incredibly atmospheric and lively descriptions of the foods and beverages served up in the great hall of Hogwarts. Would Hermione have thought of the excellent ruse to slip Crabbe and Goyle the sleeping potions in the second book, for instance, if they had not been their companions in the literal sense, even if not in the conventional sense? Would Harry have been able to dupe Ron into thinking he had ingested liquid luck in the sixth book without the ever-so-handy cover of a flagon of pumpkin juice? Would the character of Ronald Bilius Weasley even remain Ronald Bilius Weasley without the copious descriptions of him gorging on whatever food he could lay hands on at any given moment, and Hermione resignedly making sardonic remarks on his insatiable appetite?

A prospective couple happily enjoying a meal together on their first date can be one of the best signs that there will be a second date, if not more. It is actually a worthwhile trick to consider, if looking for a potential marriage partner, whether you would enjoy having three meals a day for fifty years or more with this human being. Sticking to the Harry Potter theme, it is worthwhile to remember Harry’s disastrous solitary date with Cho Chang, where having even one meal together seemed to become an impossible task, while his friendship and eventual romance with Ginny no doubt benefitted from the innumerable communal meals Harry had with the Weasleys, made especially significant by the noted isolation of Harry as a young child.

Consider also the very suggestive fact that P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves is accepted by Bertie Wooster as his valet right after Bertie partakes in Jeeves’s proprietary concoction of a wake-up drink, which seems to drive away all traces of his hangover and preps him up properly to face what had previously seemed like a drab day. It is not the character Bertie Wooster’s mindset that I want to draw attention to here, but rather that of the author, who thought of the entire scene from the perspective of both Jeeves and Bertie.

Comestibles, things worth sharing in the literal sense, it would seem, are intimately associated with the judging and evaluating of compatibility.

Part 2: Sharing Food as a Marker of Sociality

The act of eating draws us together. It is one of the few things that unites all of humanity, regardless of pretty much anything else. It is the emaciated stomachs of the Jewish prisoners of the holocaust, of the Indian victims of the British-inflicted famines of the twentieth century, and of the starving children in Sub-Saharan Africa in modern times that draw the attention at first glance, a healthy stomach being the first clear sign of good health and sound body. So many girlfriends and wives have lamented, often fruitlessly, that their husbands and boyfriends don’t take them out to wine and dine, which, despite literally living with the man, remains a much sought after proposition. So many soldiers have bonded over the stability of shared meals in the helter-skelter reality of war. The use of the word "company" in military terminology is quite interesting for this reason: Linguistically, an army company is "the group that eats together; that is assigned to eat together".

Sharing food can broadly be termed as the defining feature of a “social animal”, with the extent of the sharing defining the level of sociality within the species. Wolves, elephants, wild dogs, lions, whales, dolphins, and orcas are among the most well-known examples of social animals, notably marked by an absence of a ‘feeding frenzy’ when a kill is made. A feeding frenzy occurs when predators get so overwhelmed by the neuronal rush of finding fresh food that all consideration for the tribe or 'friendly others' is extinguished, and the prey becomes a wild, lawless buffet that is free for all who can get it, and barred for all who can't. Animals that exhibit feeding frenzy behavior may let their own cubs, let alone those of others in their tribe, starve while literally filling themselves up with food.

Even though the aforementioned social animals sometimes default to the factory setting of each one filling their fill, this only takes place in bigger groups or where prey is unnaturally scarce, indicating a certain level of control over the selfishness inherent in each individual’s genetic makeup. As a norm, these and other social animals are notable for their preference for sharing food with their pack instead of the one who finds food wiping it off all by itself. In fact orcas and wolves in particular are well-known for prioritizing the young and the injured among the tribe when a kill is made, while elephants and whales are known to have long memories passed down over generations and emotional, affective mental states such as grieving their dead and remembering other animals, including humans, after particularly impressive encounters.

The fact that pretty much all animals can be lured, into safety or into confinement, with the use of food, has such a banality about it that we fail to realize its immense significance. The desire for food outweighs the more basic and mutually contradictory desire to remain safe as a motivational agent, while receiving food from the big bipedal monkey establishes a bond of trust, even among purely wild animals with no hint of domestication. This is the significance of sharing food.

Part 3: The Devaluation of Food:

1. Due to the Eradication and Antagonization of Animistic Faith

It is not for no reason that seventeenth century Indian saint Samarth Ramadas called food “poornabrahma” – “the whole of brahma / wholly brahma”, brahma being the basic material of the world as per Hindu thought. This alludes to the incredibly direct, incredibly speedy, and incredibly effective impact of our dietary consumption upon our mental state, whose elevation, expansion, and meditation is said to be the key to spiritual progress and eventually moksha, or freedom, in Indian thought. Ramadas, well aware of the panchakosha or five-sheath system in yogic thought, reminds us that food acts not only on the physical body or the annamay kosha, which is the outermost kosha of the true self or the aatman, but all the way through to the wisdom body and the bliss body, i.e. the vijnanamaya and anandamaya koshas, which are held to be the innermost sanctum of the aatman in yogic philosophy.

The same man, Samarth Ramadas, also called the act of eating ‘yajnakarma’, i.e. the same as the divine rites in Hinduism for humans and other lower-level entities to connect with the gods. This was in spite of the man being well-known for his custom of only eating food that had been granted to him as ‘bhiksha’ (alms) and with no concern for the whims of the taste buds. Incidentally, the system of ‘bhiksha’, when you really think about it, seems little more than a societally backed system of spiritual companionship, built through sharing food, and (in theory, at least) leading to spiritual progress, peace of mind, and virtuous behavior for all parties.

2. Due to Technological Advances in Agricultural Production

In the days of Samarth Ramadas, and before him, when the word ‘companion’ formed, food scarcity was not the aberration that we moderns may consider it to be. Food production was still to a heavy degree reliant upon the mercy of the weather gods, irrigation was often dependent upon unreliable river floods, the use of fertilizers was limited to supplements locally and cheaply procured to fulfill local needs, and the lack of advanced preservation techniques meant that most of the food had to be consumed locally. This made food valuable in a way that the modern mind can scarcely visualize, having grown up enjoying the benefits of the agriculture, dairy, and meat industry revolutions of the 20^th century as a birthright.

Many transactions still took place with the crop as the currency per se, with kings and rulers often taking a cut as taxation, while locally, farmers often bartered with other tradesmen with their crop to pay for their own needs. This adds another layer to the meaning of the word ‘companion’, indicating that what you are sharing is not just food, but bare, naked value, in possibly its most pure and most tangible form that humanity has ever been able to produce.

Most of the people reading this would have trouble even picturing a famine, but before the 19^th or 20^th century, most of the world lived in perfect, often experiential awareness of the disaster of famines and in constant fear of the same. This makes the sharing of food an even more significant activity. Sharing even in the absence of abundance is prescribed as the highest of high moral benchmarks in most ancient religions, built on the lived memories of several generations of observant, studious people, who figured out that it is the spirit of sharing, more than anything else, that ultimately leads to sustainably successful societies.

It is with this consideration that one should enjoy and, should he so desire, share food, and it is only with a sternly reciprocal mindset that the recipient of the sharing, the 'companion', must accept the bounty that is offered to him of good heart. It is not the mark of a good man to offer his own food to whoever comes along. Above all gifts, the gift of food has to be honored in its disbursal and consumption.

Part 4: Hospitality and the Human Need to Find Another Just Like Ourselves

The importance of hospitality in ancient culture is also relevant to the original conception of the word "companion". Hospitality, before mobile apps allowing remote hotel room bookings and food delivery apps delivering food to your doorstep, was an essential parameter in the overall 'goodness', or 'virtue', of a householder. Inability to provide food and water to a guest would rank as a dark stain on the character, or virtue, of a householder, possibly extending to his entire clan or bloodline. The duty of the householder, in a community held together by a common set of principles and rules, was not only to maintain his own household. It also carried as an essential imperative the duty to share his bounty with others, particularly those who needed it more.

So many stories, from all the different pantheons around the world, center on a benevolent god taking an earthly form and asking a poor devotee for some food to test their charity. Propitiated by the generosity of the devotee in spite of their material hardships, the god then grants unto the devotee a benefactory boon eradicating their material poverty. The story of Krishna and Sudama is of course intimately familiar to the Indian mind, and speaks to the significance placed upon the sharing of food by the ancients. It shows the significance these cultures placed on the sharing of whatever little there is, on communal partaking rather than solitary enjoyment, as an essential part of their worldview. This, to the ancients, was no laughing matter, but, sometimes quite literally, a matter of life or death.

In a way, it speaks to the fundamental need of mankind to find another just like ourself, to speak to another rather than to oneself, to juxtapose one's vision of life with another's. The supreme gods of many ‘pagan’, ancient, animistic faiths – certainly the Hindu faith – are depicted with a companion rather than alone for this very reason. Brahma has Saraswati, Vishnu has Lakshmi, Shankar has Parvati, Rama has Seeta, Krishna has his eight wives, even the hermit Narada is, on several occasions, tempted by various women.

There is a very real case to be made, though not without sufficient research and painstaking exploration, that it was the paradigm of the monogod, the often male but often genderless singular governing entity of the world, that is responsible for the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social imbalance that we see within humanity today. As of now, however, this idea remains something to ponder upon, nothing more.

In the days of lawless treachery, backstabbing, and before the holy birth of the Geneva Conventions, eating together would have also served the much simpler, more basic purpose of preventing poisoning by one party, by forcing them to share in the grub. Political meetings, weddings, and other similar conventions of distinct, different groups are lubricated most efficiently by excellent and completely poison-free food and beverages, leading to more fruitful and longer-lasting alliances, social cohesion, harmony, and subsequently prosperity for both parties.

Part 5: Disturbances in the Force – Lack of True Companionship in Domesticity

The way in which cultural norms have shifted the meaning of ‘companion’, and thus of companionship and relationship itself, to suit prevailing beliefs is most apparent in the way food is served and eaten in households with an imbalanced power structure between the two partners. 

People from India need no reminder that it is often the way for the women of the house to serve the men first before having their own fill. Oftentimes, the womenfolk are relegated not only to eating after the men, but eating only what is left following the men’s meals. If western cultures did not have this particular practice, let it be remembered that it was only because and only when the household came equipped with staff and servants of its own, which allowed the womenfolk to eat alongside the men. This apparent ‘equality’ was replaced by a stark inequality in the way the lords and the servants ate, rather than the men and the women.

It is often the case in toxically patriarchal households that men, supposedly the standard bearers of their families, the capable half of the marriage, the protectors of the whole house and clan, are served first, as befits their stature within this way of thinking. It should not be too hard to spot a causal link between women not having a place at the table alongside the men in the dining room, to women not having a place at the table alongside the men in the living room, to women not having a place at the table alongside the men in a conference room.

The meaning of ‘companion’, in this social context, is often turned into little more than ‘attendant’ or 'servant', as someone who spends all their time in service of as well as in physical proximity of their higher, more glorious master. The difference between these two meanings is brashly buried under the monument of “custom” or “tradition”, right on top of the pile of debris where the worldview that thought of the word in the first place, used to stand.

No one knows the reason for these ‘traditions’ or ‘customs’, because quite literally, there is none – the supposed reasons and the resulting inequality were invented post hoc to justify social, psychological changes driven by unchecked forces that were possibly unplanned and possibly even without malice at the time. But acknowledging one’s own ignorance can often invoke fear and hence anger, a reaction sadly familiar to many downtrodden wives all over the world.

Where women are not afforded the primary purpose of companionship, i.e. the respect and love that comes with a place at the landlord's table, how can they be expected to offer the secondary purpose, i.e. to be there for the man in sickness and health, happiness and tears, hale and sun? How can worthwhile company be sought in the absence of the basic, definitional act of eating together?

To lighten the mood a bit, it is worthwhile to note that Queen Victoria, the monarch of the UK during its most glorious years and, as such, one of the most powerful people in the world during her reign, and well-known to be a woman, was also well-known to be a terrible mealtime host. The elaborately dressed and plated food of her era came and went entirely in accordance with her own whims. Queen Vicky was not only served first at the table, but was known to be a rapid eater with no consideration for whether her ‘companions’ had gotten their fill. This sometimes left her courtiers and even her own family members ruefully looking at the retreating plates of food that had been approved, consumed, and dismissed by the monarch before they had even had a touch.

Part 6: Sharing Food (Companionship) as the Neurological Basis for Kinship

Eating together on a regular basis – companionship, in the literal sense – seems to be a staple of happy marriages and relationships. The mutual respect afforded by the act may play a solid role in bringing and keeping the two parties together, and preventing them from drifting apart. Where women have a place alongside the men at the dining table, place is also usually kept for women alongside the men at the living room table, and at the conference table. The importance of who you eat with is also seen conspicuously in other expressions like “eating at the kiddie table”, indicating that eating alongside the grown ups is not a divine right but a privilege to be earned. Eating at someone’s table can be a high honor or a grave insult. It is important to note that Queen Victoria was not known to implement the same table manners in the company of her beloved husband Albert as she did when eating alongside those she didn’t consider worthy of affection or consideration. Prince Albert got more than his fill, don’t you worry about him.

Could it be that the oft-romanticized image of a family throwing away the gadgets to eat together is more than simply an old people’s whine but plain, hard, psychological fact staring us right in the face in these times of isolation, depression, panic attacks, and frozen meals for one? 

Eating food together may well be what defines a 'family', in the neurological, psychological sense. The tendency of pet animals to nag their human for not just their scraps but their main menu, and the parental bonding that takes place among animals when feeding the young, are examples of this selfsame phenomenon. For abandoned young birds and animals, the big bipedal monkey keeping them secure and well-fed may genuinely occupy the brain space dedicated to the parent bond, making the human caregivers truly ‘family’ as far as these animals are concerned. The heart-touching stories of inter-species parenting that we often see on Instagram are also the result of the same phenomenon, with the significance of the sharing of food being such that anyone you share food with is, on some level, considered ‘family’ by your brain, with more frequent communal eating further strengthening this neural connection.

Part 7: We Are What We Eat: How What We Eat Affects How We Act

It is important to remember that we, as living breathing human beings, are basically one big digestion tube, with the rest of the organs plying their ware around it and to its ends. From mouth to anus, we are a single unbroken tube, backed up by the spine and reinforced by all the vital organs around it. Various parts of the digestive tube play a participatory role in speech, respiration, cardiovascular function, blood health, urination and excretion, and endocrine activity, while the microbiome of our guts affects our behavior and mental states in such mundane ways that we remained blind to their very presence until not that long ago.

Humans are also deuterostomes, which means we begin our life as a tiny little anus, developing out of it, rather than developing out of the mouth towards the end. It may well be the case that knowledge of this phenomenon led to or added to the conceptualization of the muladhar chakra in yogic thought, which literally means the chakra that provides 'original, first, radical (root-like) support". Five of the seven chakras of yogic science lie right along the digestive tract, with only the ajna and the sahasrar lying without. The digestive system interacts with all of these, making it one of the most influential systems within the human body, alongside the cardiovascular-respiratory complex and the neural network.

This interconnectedness of the digestive tract with the whole of the rest of the body makes this long tube worth more than its weight in gold.

Modern science has not yet been able to figure out who or what it is, precisely, that controls our behavior. We know the brain is involved in it somehow, but beyond that, we really have very little clue about most of the things that go on in our own body. Feel free to verify this from your doctor, if you think I am exaggerating. We are only now beginning to figure out the myriad ways in which our gut microbiome interacts with the rest of the body, with the vast majority of its contribution still being very much a mystery. It is only now that western medical science is starting to see food as the first line of medicine rather than as a completely separate domain, and it is still miles away from recognizing food as the core of what we become, i.e. purnabrahma, as Ramadas put it.

Perhaps, then, the worldview that sees food as ‘wholly divine’ and compares digestion to holy rites to commune with the high gods, deserves another look-in.

Part 8: A Journey in Time:

1. The Shifting of Standards and an Unprecedented Generation Gap

Words like 'companion' take us back to a time, which to the mind is the same as place, when interpersonal relationships – not individual growth – played a dominant role in determining a person's social standing, and sharing was built into the fabric of society as an all-encompassing value. The popularity of Nordic concepts such as 'hygge', along with several other spellbinding customs and traditions that are well worth an entire afternoon's wikipedia surfing - take it from me - in modern culture points to an invisible longing for a return to communal times; times built on the need for society being acknowledged as a primal evolutionary drive that has served humankind from well before speech and imagination gave us incredible powers that truly drove us ahead of the rest of the animal kingdom.

The main problems with times of plenty are not those directly, linearly caused by the abundance, but those caused by ignorance or forgetfulness of the natural difficulty of life. It is not the diabetics and lung cancer patients and supermorbidly obese individuals who are the heralds of the artificially propped up modern bubble of abandon and plenty, but those who forget that it didn't always use to be this way.

This latter category is often used to a different set of standards than pretty much the entire rest of humanity that has prospered and flourished on earth throughout time. Their self-serving nature, and the resultant fall into depression, anxiety, and the likes, is valid behavior given their parameters - the parameters that they are used to. You can tell kids born in 2015 that there was a time when telephones were big and static, but they, having grown up with smartphones as their standard, will not be able to picture this at all. They may believe it, they may listen to all your stories about it, but their mental model has been built with satellite-powered smartphones, not grounded landlines. It is not really fair to criticize a generation for not living up to standards that have changed between the time they and their parents were born, particularly if the parents themselves have forgotten the true meaning of the standards and cannot demonstrate the same to their children through their own behavior.

The purpose of this series is partly to fix that: To bring the standards back where they used to be.

2. The Importance of Jargon

The words that we use in the English language today come straight from Roman Italy, Charlemagne's France, the Germanic states of the Holy Roman Empire, the several and glorious revolutions and wars of France, the exploration of North America, the forests of Central America, and, of course, good old England, which has itself undergone innumerable changes in its geographical, social, political, economic, religious, and ideological makeup over the years. Just to illustrate the timescale of what I am talking about, Christianity, which ruled Britain for the longest time and still holds deep ties with day to day life in the region, hadn't even formed yet when the Latin-speaking Romans landed on the Celtic island of Great Britain.

Tracing these words back to their origins doesn't just satisfy idle linguistic curiosity, but takes us back to those times: Times when everything was scarce, everything was made by hand, by a human person, who you were probably expected to invite to lunch the next Sunday, where you would use your own ground wheat to bake your own bread to share with your companion, as you discussed the malfeasances of the local bishopry, the quizzical turn of the weather hurting the harvest that year, and the impending war with one of your territory's several covetors or one of your king's several rivals. When to build a home meant literally just that, when food couldn't be transported long distances because it would spoil, and food cooked in the house had to be consumed by nightfall because while Prometheus had given us fire, he hadn't given us refrigeration yet, and preservation was limited to certain techniques and certain foods only.

If we use words from the corporate boardroom on the football pitch, or words from the theater at family dinner, or words from the opera at our Friday night drinkout with our buddies, we know we run the risk of miscommunication, misunderstanding, and resultant strife. And yet we continue to use words from the virtue, honor, and glory-obsessed Romans, the grandly imperial British, the strangely quixotic French, the passionate but articulate Germans, the reckless American pioneers, brave generals, poor peasants, popes and bishops, kings and queens, their subjects, and the servants of their subjects alike, with no regard for the risk of the message getting lost in translation, only to end up crying and miserable because ‘nothing makes sense anymore’ and ‘the world is not what it used to be’.

The nativity of language means that every time and place, every setting, every culture, has its own jargon, a unique set of words and root sounds that express specific intentions and emotions that may not travel at all beyond the confines of their birthplace. A new culture, especially one as antagonistic to the ‘shackles of tradition’ as the modern liberal culture has shown itself to be, needs either a new lexicon or the humble willingness to align with the true connotations of the existing lexicon, which go well beyond political divisions and ideological factions.

To stand on the shoulders of giants lends us greater vision, while forming a new column of giants, built from scratch, gives us the freedom of pioneers, of explorers in uncharted lands. But to stand on the shoulders of giants while denouncing all that they represent and stand for leaves us with nothing but erosion of that which held us aloft quietly all this time, and with nothing to show for it.

Adios for now, and for god’s sake have more meals with your loved ones!

Next week, we will be taking a look at another 'com' word - Comfort. Be warned, though - it might just turn out to mean exactly the opposite of what you have been taught it means. Until then, fare ye all well!

© Tanmay Viraj Tikekar

22 Apr 2025

tikekar.tanmay@gmail.com

Welcome to Wordilicious Words of the Week: Intro and Mission Statement

Hello, and welcome to Wordilicious Words of the Week:

Many words in the English language have had their meaning transmogrified, sometimes into perversion, over the two or three hundred years since modern English established itself as the language du jour. This series of Wordilicious Words of the Day is a humble attempt to fix or rediscover the meanings of these words. 

It is important to remember what we mean by the words we use. One man's uncommon can easily be another man's bizarre, or even grotesque, another man's regular can be another man's normal, and yet another man's happy can be another man's glad, or even joyous, or exuberant, and there would be simply no way to know which is which, unless we hold on to the root meanings of words, the meaning they were meant to have in the first place.

Vocabulary is a far bigger tool than most people realize.

The tonal differences between the original meanings of words and their present-day application, or between the multiple shades of a single sentiment each expressed in separate, distinct words, may not seem like much, but these small differences can build up into hideous misunderstandings on not just the interpersonal but also the intrapersonal and social scale.

How else is an individual to build up and maintain a healthy dialog with oneself if all the words he's using are wrong? How else are the ruled and the rulers to maintain a mutual trust if they are both saying different things than what they actually mean? Supreme executive power, as Monty Python put it, derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

How else is a guru to connect with a shishya, if all the words he's using feel like not just a foreign language but like an alien language to the pupil? The same applies to basically every human relationship, as communication with words referring to things rather than the things being right there to point at wordlessly is pretty much the only USP of humanity over the rest of the natural world.

Over the coming weeks, I will try to put up one Wordilicious Word per week up on my blog. This is meant to be a linguistic connoisseur's look into the live, breathing nature of language, and what it refers to. The weekly rather than daily nature of this project is so that I can delve into the details of not just the word's origins, but the social, psychological, and material conditions at the time the word was formed, giving us a helpful window into what the people who first said the word may have actually meant when they said it.

As I write this piece, Google has given me a stern reminder of what I am fighting against by providing the definition of "connoisseur" to be "an expert judge in matters of taste", a most horrible definition that is not only divorced but distastefully antagonistic to the word's original meaning, which can be derived from other related words like "reconnaissance", "cognition", or "cognizant", and is meant to be something akin to "someone who likes to get to know (things)", "someone who likes to explore and find out new things", "someone who appreciates knowledge (possibly about a certain subject) for its own sake, as a pursuit of passion, not of scholarly interest".

As is often the case with progressivism, the process-oriented, active, dynamic part of a word is left behind, leaving behind an incomplete end result in the form of the pungent-smelling definition, "someone who definitively knows (things about a subject)". The word "amateur" has also undergone a very similar, fairly tragic trajectory, and will of course be covered in the coming weeks.

In the next week, we will be starting with a still-beloved, still fairly meaningful, but slightly derailed word : companion. Look forward to it!

From Bias You Came, And To Bias You Have Returned: The Story of Modern Feminism

The story of modern feminism is a tale of betrayal, duplicitousness, and envy. As Brutus and Cassius, envious of Caesar's command over the heart of Rome, murdered him under the pretense of being his friend, so too has modern feminism (by which I mean third and fourth generation feminism) backstabbed first- and second-generation feminism, renouncing its ideals, perverting its values, and forgetting its purpose.

Classical feminism, by which I mean first and second generation feminism, says that women must be allowed to do the things they want to do, provided there is no greater, big-picture risk generated by the admission of women. If a woman wants to play football, for example, she must be allowed to play football, to the best of her abilities, and without undue hindrances. If a woman wants to study physics, she must be allowed to study physics, to the best of her abilities and without undue hindrances. This used to be the feminist position. I would have been - and still am - a feminist by this definition.

By the 1990s, this had gradually turned into a scenario where women didn't have to adjust to the way a certain profession had always worked, but rather the other way round. If women were uncomfortable with it, it was the profession that had to change to cater to them, because after all, isn't that how the world had always worked?

When a woman requested something, was it not a chivalrous man's duty to do the task for her? If a woman had an inconvenience, was it not a manly man's duty to sort out her problem? If a woman broke down crying at something a man said, was it not the bad bad man's fault for "making her cry"?

Everyone somehow chose to forget that this was supposed to be a movement of women who were expressly trying to refute the traditions and traditional stereotypes of women, and using said stereotypes to promote the movement should have negated the point of the movement.

It was this doublethink that laid the groundwork for all that has come after. Were women to be treated as truly equal to men, which would mean granting them both the privileges and duties of men, or were they only to be termed as equal to men while de facto being treated as the fairer and weaker sex they had always been considered to be? It is this duplicity that lies at the core of present-day feminism. 

When feminism was all about allowing women everywhere they wanted to go, only the women who actually wanted to go somewhere got on the train. This benefitted them personally, this benefitted their chosen vocation in the long term, and this benefitted the whole of human society, because genuine talent and passion was no longer barred by the nature of one's genitalia, and the social and legal changes enabling the same didn't take anything away from whatever existed of the vocation before women were allowed in.

When the generation of women who had fought for equal rights, the women who had fought for the right to compete on merit in the first place, faded out, it was replaced by a generation who saw that competing purely on merit with men was not a sustainable endeavor in many cases, at least if you weren't prepared to make the kind of personal choices and sacrifices that these men regularly had to make, and if you also wanted to raise a family of your own, which still remains primarily a woman's job due to the reality of basic principles of biology.

The fact that the previous generation of women had in fact worked for a living while raising children, and done both things reasonably well, was again conveniently forgotten. The fact that they had worked harder than their male colleagues to achieve these contrasting life goals, because they wanted to achieve them, was conveniently swept under the rug.

Instead of working harder to make their own lives easier, this generation worked hard to spin the presence of female (and other minority) colleagues as a Good ThingTM in itself, and the dominance of men as a Bad ThingTM in itself.

Most women (and men, for that matter) were happy to work low- or mid-level jobs for steady money rather than sacrificing everything else in their life to advance their career. But the focus had shifted from women having equal rights and privileges as men to everyone having equal rights and privileges as the richest and the most powerful in society, most of whom happened to be men, because they were the ones who were more likely to sacrifice a family for the sake of more money and power, the ones who were more likely to have the ruthlessness to rise to the very top of highly competitive professions.

Despite the majority of women falling in the same socioeconomic bracket as the majority of men at the time, these men were equated with the richest and the most powerful men on the basis of gender, and the perverted argument was formed that it was "men" - not "a very specific subcategory of men" - who were the richest and the most powerful, that it was "men" who were unfairly holding on to their money and power, that it was "men" who were holding women back, not the choices and priorities of the women themselves.

It was not enough that women were now allowed to go anywhere and compete on equal terms with men in all matters. The generation that was happy to compete on merit was gone, and the new generation was more interested in seeing men lose than in seeing women win. The problem statement for feminism was shifting from "there aren't enough women" to "there are too many men". It is this very sentiment that grew into the tangled-up jumble of "intersectionality" that we see today.

The philosophy of first- and second-generation feminism was revolutionary at the time, but it was rooted in a constructive, positive, productive desire to work hard for oneself, to retain one's own agency and independence, and to "make something of oneself", as elderly people often put it. On the other hand, the philosophy underlying third- and fourth-generation feminism seems driven by resentment and envy of others who have it better. While first- and second-generation feminism never argued for the negation of other people's rights and freedoms, third- and fourth-generation feminism is rooted and entrenched in precisely that. While the former was constructive, the latter has consistently shown itself to be - in theory and in practice - a destructive force.

This is a fundamentally different approach to feminism that many classical feminists, men and women, have been unable to stomach.

From women demanding the right to compete with men on equal terms, feminism was now shifting towards getting women the right to compete with men on favorable terms, unequal terms. Whereas classical feminists were arguing for women's right to enter the pitch and play alongside the boys, modern feminists were now fighting for the right to have the pitch tilted in their favor, all the while proudly flying the cherished banner of gender equality and women's rights that masked their true intentions ever so well.

This moved feminism away from equality of opportunity, which had removed prejudice and bias in hiring and firing, at least in theory, on to equality of outcome, which necessitated bringing prejudice and bias back, because reality doesn't work on humanist principles and organically attaining equal outcomes for all is literally impossible.

The fact that humans are born organically, not manufactured synthetically, became such a problem for feminists that they resorted to their default setting of covering their eyes and screaming at the top of their lungs. True to form, everyone once again chose to forget that this was supposed to be a movement designed to open a locked door for women so that they could then do the rest on their own. True to the doublethink at the heart of modern feminism, everyone lined up to solve the problems of these empowered, emancipated, enlightened women for them.

Suddenly having women in your workplace was THE thing to do. The world's intellectuals all agreed that since the feminists had cried and screamed pretty loudly, there must have been a valid cause for their crying and screaming, and that valid cause must have been the fact that men still dominated some professions. The fact that the feminists weren't crying about the professions that women dominated over men was just further proof that it was male dominance that was the problem. If you were not a feminist, you were suddenly not cool anymore. Feminism and progressivism suddenly became universal gateways to social acceptance, political success, and even business opportunities.

And just like that, feminism was no longer about allowing individual women to do what they wanted, about allowing individual women to go where they wanted. It was now about putting women in places that made their superiors look good.

In barely more than one generation, modern feminism has somehow managed to revert society to a time where women are judged not by the content of their character, but by their gender alone. Exactly what classical feminism had fought against all those years ago.

In the world of modern feminism, women are seen not as fully fledged, upstanding human beings, but as accessories to raise your own social standing. Supporting women regardless of circumstance, clinging on to the label of "feminism" regardless of its contents, is what makes you a Good PersonTM in the world of modern feminism. All the other metrics for assessing the "goodness" of a person are discarded in favor of this singular universal parameter. If you are a feminist, you are a Good PersonTM, regardless of everything else. If you are not, you are a Bad PersonTM, regardless of everything else.

In the world of modern feminism, it is not important to promote those who have earned it, regardless of their congenital characteristics, but essential to promote based on congenital characteristics. Classical feminists had humbly thrown prejudice and bias in the trash can, where they belonged. Modern feminists dove head-first into that same trash can, cursing at the classical feminists for throwing away such a powerful weapon in the first place, and emerged clutching the bundle of biases to their chest like their own suckling baby.

In the world of modern feminism, someone who promotes a competent woman and fires an incompetent woman has to be hated because he has not promoted both of them, because the gender of the two women trumps any argument about their competence.

In the world of modern feminism, a man who promotes his female subordinates to use them as an ornament for his own social standing, as decoration for his own personal monument, as gender candy to attract the social butterflies, is a bona fide "male ally", but someone who expects his female subordinates to earn their promotion through merit, through achievement, is a toxic patriarchal abuser. 

As with all other forms of bias and prejudice, this hurts everyone and everything.

The women who get promoted to positions beyond their ability due to the rules of modern feminism often have no real interest in getting there in the first place, their bosses don't really want them there, their families don't really want them there, their colleagues don't really want them there, the profession as a whole certainly doesn't benefit from having incompetent and uninterested people at the top. Nobody is happy, and yet everybody is happy. Nobody has what they want, and yet everybody has what they want. Nobody is equal, and yet everybody is equal. It's magic! Stage magic, not real magic, but still.

The difference between something being "allowed" and something being "enforced" is not a trivial one by any means. In fact it is quite literally the difference between liberty and despotism. The non-triviality of this change is being brought to the fore more and more as the carefully isolated bubble of modern feminism inevitably clashes with the fundamentals of the reality of our world. In a way, and very much in retrospect, classical feminists will be thanking the "trans" movement for making the ridiculousness of modern feminism obvious for the whole world to see. But it goes a bit deeper than that.

How long is a thing the thing if it is continuing to evolve all the time?

The Ship of Theseus has nothing to do with this question, incidentally, though it may feel superficially comparable. The Ship of Theseus is an interesting thought experiment precisely because the ship's parts are replaced with identical parts - not different ones. If the ship's oars are replaced by an internal combustion engine, then the ship self-evidently stops being the thing that it was before, no philosophization needed.

In what sense is modern India "the same as" the "India" that Alexander the Greek encountered, even though it carries the same name? 

In what sense are modern football clubs "the same as" their own 19th-century avatars, when, in most cases, literally only the name has survived unchanged through the decades?

Similarly, modern feminism is feminism in name only. In other words, it is not feminism at all. It is cowardice, greed, and envy masquerading as compassion, tolerance, and inclusivity. To paraphrase Shakespeare, bullshit by any other name would smell just as disgusting. And you know what, the Bard was right - it does.

Through the years, everything but the name of the feminist movement has changed. The name, the brand, has been carefully preserved as the only valuable part of the entire movement, and no longer means what it meant a hundred, or fifty, or even twenty years ago. It is false advertising to promote feminism under the garb of gender equality and justice and liberty for all when the product these days is actually a nasty, stinking mixture of misandry, irresponsibility, and lack of accountability.

The classic storytelling trope of an evil doppelganger, who uses his nominal similarity with someone else to wreak havoc in their name, has never been more real than with modern "feminism". 

To truly defeat the evil doppelganger in movies, though, either the loved ones of the one being impersonated need to be able to use a gun and know exactly how to distinguish the original from the copy, or the one being impersonated himself needs to finish the job and deal with the consequences later. Both options seem rather far away right now.

Classical feminism is not dead. It is alive in all of us who see character, not appearance, when judging someone. Classical feminism has been enslaved, like many other things, by the perverted monstrosity of modern feminism. But truth will eventually out, and recent political trends around the world show conclusively that modern feminism and its ideological offshoots are being rejected by more and more people, who are instead rediscovering the stable, balanced, reality-based values and principles of classical feminism when dealing with gender-related issues.

Top-down impositions of ideology have never lasted for very long throughout human history, not anywhere, not in any period. It is bottom-up revolutions that have always produced the best and most durable outcomes, and bottom-up revolutions, like everything that is meaningful and worth preserving in any society, begin with individuals standing up for what they believe in. 

That is all that I can ask of anyone, really, regardless of which side of this debate you come down on. Regardless of whether you come down more on the side of classical feminism (as I have defined it in this piece) or modern feminism (likewise), I can only ask you to remain honest with yourself, and truly examine your beliefs, so that if you are ever forced to stand up for your beliefs as an individual, without the comfort and security of group concordance, you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that what you are fighting for is what you actually believe in.

The question of what freedom really means is intrinsically related to the entire history of feminism, but on the personal scale, representing what we actually believe in, rather than representing what we have been instructed to represent, is really the full extent of freedom that we are capable of. 

As for me, I will always come down on the side of competence, hard work, and personal accountability, not groupthink, identity politics, and jealousy. But what I can assure you is that I will live out these values just the same in my own personal life, when no one else is watching, as I would represent them in front of other people, regardless of whether they agree with me or not. If you come down on the opposite side of this debate as me, I seriously hope you can say the same.

Fin.

Tanmay Viraj Tikekar

08/03/2025

गांधी, सावरकर, आणि Tyler Durden

लहानपणापासून उजव्या विचारसरणीत, हिंदूनिष्ठ वातावरणात वाढल्यामुळे मला सावरकर नेहमीच जवळचे वाटत आलेले आहेत. म्हणवून घ्यायचंच तर मी स्वतःला "सावरकरवादी" म्हणवून घेईन. पण उजव्या विचारसरणीत जी गांधीविरोधी मानसिकता साधारणतः असते, ती मला कधीच पटलेली नाही. 

"केवळ गांधींनी आणि गांधीवादानी भारताला स्वातंत्र्य मिळवून दिलं" हे किती अंशी खोटं आहे, हे गांधीवादी म्हणवून घेणाऱ्यांना कळणार नाही. पण याउलट, गांधी या राजकीय व्यक्तिमत्त्वापलीकडच्या मोहनदास गांधी या माणसाचा द्वेष पण माझ्याकडून कधी झाला नाही.

आपल्या डाव्या - उजव्या मतभेदांमधे आपण गांधी, गांधीवाद, सावरकर, आणि सावरकरवाद, यांचा इतका गोंधळ करून ठेवलेला आहे, की त्यातून नीर आणि क्षीर वेगळं करणं अवघड होऊन बसलेलं आहे.

गांधीवाद पटत नाही म्हणून उजव्या विचारसरणीचे पुराणमतवादी हिंदू बरेचदा मोहनदास गांधींमधला शुद्ध भारतीय (Indic) परंपरेतला ऋषी पाहायचेच नाकारतात, आणि सावरकरवाद सोयीचा आहे म्हणून सावरकरांच्या बुद्धीची पूर्ण धग अंगावर न घेता, जाणतेपणी कच्च्या घड्यासारखे राहून "हिंदुत्व, हिंदुत्व" करत बसतात.

गांधीवाद आवडला नाही म्हणून गांधीच नाकारायचे, किंवा सावरकरवाद सोयीचा आहे म्हणून अर्धवट, निवडकच सावरकर बघायचे, हे दोन्ही उत्तमतेच्या नियमांत बसत नाही. 'उत्कट भव्य ते ते घ्यावे, मिळमिळीत अवघेचि फेकावे', असा साधा नियम या बाबतीत रामदासांनी घालून दिलेला आहे. कुणाचे आहे ते महत्त्वाचे नाही, काय आहे हे महत्त्वाचे, असा साधा सिद्धांत आहे.

गांधीवाद नाकारायचा तर जरूर नाकारा, पण आधी गांधी आणि गांधीवाद दोन्ही समजून घ्या, मग नाकारा. सावरकर पत्करायचे असतील तर जरूर पत्करा, पण आधी सावरकर आणि सावरकरवाद दोन्ही समजून घ्या, मग पत्करा.

डाव्या विचारसरणीच्या किंवा गांधीवादाच्या सद्यपरिस्थितीतल्या अनुयायांना सुद्धा हे लागू आहेच. जसा उजव्यांनी गांधी समजून न घेता गांधीवाद नाकारला आहे, आणि अर्धवट सावरकर समजून घेऊन त्यांना आपलं म्हटलेलं आहे, तसाच काहीसा प्रकार डाव्यांनी "vice versa" केलेला आहे. सावरकर नाकारायचे असतील त्यांनी जरूर नाकारावे. पण समजून उमजून नाकारावे. नकळता नव्हे.

गांधींनी भगवद्गीता वाचून त्यातून "गांधीवादी" अहिंसेचा, भौतिक अहिंसेचा अर्थ कसा काय काढला हे मला तरी अजून कळलेलं नाही. पण गांधींना पाठीशी घेऊन लढणाऱ्यांनी गांधी भगवद्गीतेला पाठीशी घेऊन लढत होते, हे विसरू नये. भगवद्गीता, एकूणात सनातन परंपरेची शिकवण म्हणजे मुळातच काहीतरी जुनाट, बुरसटलेली, निरुपयोगी वस्तू हीच ठाम समजूत घेऊन बसलेल्यांनी गांधीवादाचा टिळा लावू नये.

अटल बिहारी वाजपेयी यांच्या एका प्रसिद्ध भाषणात त्यांनी म्हटलेलं आहे, "सावरकर माने त्याग. तितीक्षा. तिलमिलाहट." आता यातलं कुठलं विशेषण मोहनदास गांधी या माणसाला लागू होत नाही, हे मला तरी कळलेलं नाही.

रूमीने त्याच्या एका कवितेत म्हटलंय, की बरे आणि वाईट यांपलीकडे एक उघडे माळरान आहे; तिथे मी तुझी वाट बघतो आहे. तसेच गांधीवाद आणि सावरकरवादांच्या पलीकडेही एक मोकाट माळरान आहे. हे माळरान आहे Fight Club मधल्या ओसाड, उदास Tyler Durden चे.

ज्यांनी Fight Club हा चित्रपट पाहिलेला नाही, त्यांना मी तो बघून यायला १३९ मिनिटांचा ब्रेक देतो. ज्यांना पिक्चर माहिती आहे, त्यांनी पुढील वाचावे.

Tyler Durden, गांधी, आणि सावरकर या तिघांचेही उद्दिष्ट, इप्सित, इष्टदैवत एकच होते - स्वातंत्र्य. त्यांच्या भोवतीची समाजस्थिती मोडून काढायला, बदलायलाच हे तिघेही उभे ठाकले होते. Tyler ला materialism ची गुलामी जाचत होती, तर गांधी-सावरकरांना ब्रिटिशांची. Tyler ची गुलामी पूर्णपणे मानसिक होती, तर गांधी-सावरकरांची (प्रामुख्याने) भौतिक, हा एकच महत्त्वाचा फरक. येनकेन प्रकारे "स्वराज्य" मिळवण्यासाठीच हे तिघेही लढत होते.

गांधीवाद आणि सावरकरवाद जर खरेच परस्परविरोधी असतील, तर स्वतंत्रतादेवीच्या या पाश्चात्त्य उपासकाला, म्हणजेच Tyler Durden ला, त्यांपैकी एका गटात टाकणे सोपे झाले पाहिजे, नाही का? 

Fight Club मधला Tyler Durden तुम्हाला गांधीवादी वाटतो की सावरकरवादी वाटतो?

Fight Club साठीची जागा जपण्यासाठी हॉटेल मालकावर चुकूनही हात न उगारता त्याचा मार खाऊन त्याला दमवून, शरमिंदा करून नमवणारा Tyler गांधीवादी, की सावरकरवादी?

स्वतःच्या वरिष्ठासमोर स्वतःला रक्तबंबाळ करून घेऊन वरिष्ठाला त्याबद्दल गोत्यात आणणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी?

स्वतःची सिद्धता तपासून पाहण्यासाठी साबण बनवण्याच्या रसायनांनी स्वतःचा हात स्वतःच भाजून घेणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी?

नव्या recruits ना दिवसेंदिवस घराबाहेर, ऊनपावसात, खायला अन्न व प्यायला पाणी न देता उभं करून त्यांची सत्त्वपरीक्षा बघणारा, आपली तत्त्वं त्यांना अंगवळणी पडली आहेत की नाही, याची पुरेपूर पडताळणी करून मगच नव्या recruits ना Project Mayhem मध्ये भरती करणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी?

नव्या recruits नी पहिल्या दिवशी fight club मध्ये भाग घेतलाच पाहिजे, मार खाल्लाच पाहिजे, म्हणणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी? लढून हरणारा नव्हे, तर लढायला घाबरणारा खरा निरुपयोगी, मागे हटणारा खरा निरुपयोगी, असे सांगणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी? नव्या recruits नी मार खाऊन खचून न जाता त्यातून स्वतःला घट्ट बनवलं पाहिजे अशी अपेक्षा धरणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी?

नव्या recruits ना समाजावर त्रयस्थपक्षाकडून (third party) लादले गेलेले नियम मोडता आलेच पाहिजेत, पण fight club चे नियम मोडता उपयोगी नाही, असे सांगणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी?

स्वतःमधल्याच अशक्तपणाशी स्वतःच भांडणारा, आणि त्या भांडणातून इतरांना तेच भांडण करण्याची प्रेरणा देणारा Tyler गांधीवादी की सावरकरवादी?

या प्रश्नांची उत्तरं मला तरी (असंदिग्धपणे) स्वतःची स्वतःला देता आलेली नाहीत. तुमच्यापैकी कुणाला निःसंशय एका गटात Tyler Durden ला टाकता आलं असेल तर मला तुमच्याशी बोलायला नक्कीच आवडेल.

Tyler ला materialism पासून मुळातच स्वातंत्र्य हवं होतं, तर गांधी आणि सावरकर दोघांनीही materialism मधल्या "materials" चे symbolic महत्त्व ओळखून स्वदेशी वस्तू वापरण्यावर आणि विदेशी वस्तू नाकारण्यावर भर दिला होता, हा या तिघांमधला समान धागासुद्धा मला मजेशीर वाटतो.

मग गांधीवाद आणि सावरकरवाद जर खरेच परस्परविरुद्ध असतील, तर Tyler Durden ला दोनातल्या एका गटात टाकणं इतकं अवघड का व्हावं?

विदेशी वस्तूंची होळी करणारे सावरकर आणि स्वदेशी वस्तूंचा पुरस्कार करणारे गांधी जर Tyler Durden च्या जगात जन्माला आले असते, तर कोणी काय केलं असतं? Tyler जर भारतात १९व्या शतकाच्या उत्तरार्धात जन्माला आला असता, तर गांधी झाला असता, की सावरकर?

Tyler Durden "गांधींचा" की "सावरकरांचा"?

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०२/१०/२०२४ ला सुचलेला आराखडा आज कुणाचीही जन्म/पुण्यतिथी नसताना संकलन-संपादन करून प्रकाशित करत आहे. यामध्ये गांधी वा सावरकर कुणालाच कमी लेखण्याचा हेतू नाही, हे मजकूर वाचला तर लक्षात येईलच. याउलट भारतीय मनातल्या स्वातंत्र्याच्या संकल्पनेच्या या गंगा-जमुना ज्या एकाच पर्वतधारेतून उगम पावतात, त्या पर्वतधारेतून सिंहावलोकन करायचा हेतू आहे. तो त्याच दृष्टीने वाचावा.

- तन्मय विराज टिकेकर, १२/०२/२०२५

गुरू शमा भाटे दिग्दर्शित 'परंपरा के पदचिह्न' - एक अनुभव व अभिप्राय

मला माझ्या दहावीत घडलेली एक घटना अजूनही तशीच आठवते. नॅशनल डिफेन्स अकॅडमी, अर्थात NDA ची पासिंग आऊट परेड पाहायला आम्हाला शाळेतली मोठी मुले म्हणून घेऊन गेले होते. परेड आमच्या समोर आडव्या लाईनीत उभी होऊ लागली. आत्तापर्यंत प्रबोधिनीत संचलन केलं होतं, पण इथल्या संचलनाची शिस्त वेगळीच आहे, हे कळत होतं. 

एक एक करत सारे जवान आमच्या समोर लाईनीत येत गेले, आणि त्यांच्या त्यांच्या जागेवर सगळे आल्यावर त्यांनी एकदाच शेवटचं लेफ्ट - राईट वाजवलं, आणि जागच्या जागी उभे राहिले. त्या शेवटच्या एकसंध लेफ्ट-राईटच्या आवाजाच्या शिस्तीखाली आमची, आमच्या आसपासच्या बाकीच्या प्रेक्षकांची, अगदी लहान - लहान मुलांची देखील, बडबड एका झटक्यात थांबली. खाणारी तोंडेही क्षणभर चमकली आणि गप्प झाली. वामनाने जसे दोन पावलात तिन्ही लोक व्यापून टाकले होते, तसेच इथे या नव्या राष्ट्रसंरक्षकांनी दोनच पावलात आम्हा सर्वांच्या मनाचा ठाव घेतला होता. तिसऱ्या पावलासाठी मस्तक झुकवण्यापलीकडे काही उरलेच नव्हते. उत्तमता इथे सशस्त्र दुर्गेच्या रूपात असुरांचा वध करायला तयार झाली होती.

काल (०९/०२) गानसरस्वती महोत्सवातील शमा भाटे दिग्दर्शित 'परंपरा के पदचिह्न' नृत्यप्रयोग पाहताना पुन्हा पुन्हा मला जवळ जवळ अठरा वर्षांपूर्वी पाहिलेल्या त्या एका लयीत पडलेल्या जवानांच्या टापा ऐकू येत होत्या. त्या टापा जशा दुर्गेच्या, रणचंडीच्या होत्या, तशा या टापा होत्या शारदेच्या, सरस्वतीच्या. शिस्त तशीच होती, पण इथे युद्ध होते ते केवळ अमंगलाशी, असुंदराशी, अनुत्तमाशी. इथे झेंडा नव्हता. आपले लोक ओळखायला गायन - वादन - नृत्य कलांना झेंडा लागतच नाही. दाद जायची ती जातेच.

नृत्यप्रवण तबला मी फारसा ऐकलेला नाही, म्हणूनही असेल कदाचित, पण काल चारुदत्त फडक्यांनी वाजवलेला तबला मला तरी वर्षानुवर्षे आठवत राहील. इतक्या सफाईने ते तालाचे वजन पलटीत होते, इतक्या विविध मार्गांनी समेला शोधत होते, की नवनवोन्मेषशालीनी शारदेच्या या पदन्यासावर जणू शंकराचा डमरूच साथ करतो आहे, असे वाटावे. 

शमाताईंच्या रचनांची मूर्ती सशस्त्र युद्धसज्ज दुर्गेसारखी न दिसता शिवप्रिया पार्वतीसारखी मंगलमय दिसत होती, प्रशांत भासत होती. शत्रूच्या रक्ताने माखलेली नाही, तर एका आंतरिक प्रकाशाने उजळलेली वाटत होती. तिचे तेज प्रकाशदायी होते, चटके देणारे नव्हे. तिचा आवेश सुंदर होता, भीतीदायक नव्हे. तिच्या सौंदर्याला तिच्या तपाने कमी केले नव्हतेच, तर अनावश्यक, असुंदर, अनाठायी ते सारे जळून गेल्याने तिच्यात एका तप:पूत तेजस्विनीची मूर्ती लकाकत होती. तिची एकेका मात्रेने - नव्हे, एकेका मात्रेच्या अंशा-अंशाने भरत जाणारी मूर्ती मनात आत्ता सुद्धा रुंजी घालते आहे. 

- तन्मय विराज टिकेकर, १० फेब्रुवारी २०२५