The Arch of Wisdom

Chandran C. Devenesan- principal of MCC Tambaram was in 1974 appointed Vice- Chancellor of the newly established central university in Shillong. The first thing that he did as the VC was to pick Mr. Keshavan to be the chief of the library that was centrally established in a highly romantic palace once built by the maharaja of Mayurbhanj, and now leased over to NEH University. The library increased its stock on daily basis in every subject. But the most attractive part of the palace- turned- library was the room that was once the king’s yagyashaala . It now became the reference section with the yagya kund in its pristine totemic essence of evocation that stood by centuries of growth in India. And then there was a magnificent arch that only invited anyone who cared to enter. Prof Devenesan, in his entrée to the reference section made a small remark on the visitors’ book: Enter to Grow in Wisdom. Next day, Mr. Keshvan got the words painted on the arch and to the day I left the university in 1979, the beacon had remained intact.

Meaning of wisdom to the swarthy lad then was confined to knowing something new. The question remained, ‘what was wisdom all about?” Is it a competency to cope with the world or to run the world with deeper thoughts? Or is it to know how to give? But it was also the time when I had grown fairly wise to understand hatred, love and such abstractions that immediately follow the settlement of hard realities of food and clothes and shelter in one’s life. Fathers and uncles, whether literate or not, were all of the opinion that the ancestors were wise and that they set the conduct rules after they had tested them in the heat of their worldly experience. Wisdom, according to them was internalization and respecting those rules. What they also meant was that the particular examples could be generalized and applied under different circumstances. Such a residential application of primary socialization at home could be the basis of lasting wisdom, they prescribed.

“Man’s struggle with himself determines the quantum and nature of wisdom he acquires in his life” said the whispering sprite in a heuristic manner of its own origin and sustenance in my heart. It said so in a rather mean way; in condescension to the supposedly lofty questions that one asked even in a picayune of a life situation. Good enough. But the sprite said, no. It was precisely for this prosaic reason that I sometimes called it the inner voice. It wanted more.

Then, one day in history when I cleaned my almirah, a 2000 years old book tumbled out. I had earlier read this one sitting beside the yagya kunda when the clouds burst outside in full glory with Brihadaranayaka thunders. The all-wise chorus of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex said in unison at the end of all the fights that men and women had with providence for writing their own scripts of life:-

Of happiness, the crown and chiefest part is wisdom

And to hold gods in awe.

This is the law.

Seeing the stricken heart of pride brought down

We learn when we are old.

And yet the sprite said, No. It took me again to another book wherein the yogi poet said about Savitri: No victory she admits of Death or Fate. That was too high against the fate I suppose. On the common man mode where we are connected with the mortals, arches of wisdom stand on the heads and shoulders of those who teach, experiment, enter like Savitri at times in our lives, and make us old.

The whispering sprite comes back and says: Biggest irony of life is that it is too short to make anyone old enough to attain wisdom. The dialectic of one’s destiny and his struggle with himself eludes wisdom.

But for sure, if you have earned happiness and have given that to others too in the process of this struggle- you are sure to catch a snatch of wisdom, for they both switch places as fast and sure as death and life. Enter the world of letters to grow in wisdom, and yet, wisdom celebrates with happiness for those who can write their own script with no apology to fate; and then we turn old to be called wise.

Mr. K.L.Khanna

Student of MA (English) in 1974-76 and MA (Sociology and Anthropology) in 1976-78 at NEHU

(Currently, IIM Shillong is run in Summer Palace of Mayurbhanj Kings, which was previously campus of NEHU (North-Eastern Hill University)

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