Crossing the Mirage - Passing through Youth
BS Murthy
(Revised edition)
ISBN 81-901911-8-7
Copyright 2005 BS Murthy
Cover design by GDC creative advertising (p) ltd., Hyderabad - 500 080
Self Imprint
F-9, Nandini Mansion,
1-10-234, Ashok Nagar,
Hyderabad - 500 020
Other free ebooks by BS Murthy -
Benign Flame: Saga of Love
Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life
Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel
Prey on the Prowl - A Crime Novel
Of No Avail - Web of Wedlock ( A Novella)
Stories Varied - A Book of short Stories
Onto the Stage - Slighted Souls and other stage and radio plays
Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife ( A Critical Appriasal of Islamic faith, Indian polity 'n More)
Inane Interpolations in Bhagvad -Gita ( An Invocation for their Revocation )
Bhagvad -Gita: Treatise of self - help (A translation in verse)
Sundara Kanda - Hanuman's Odyssey (A translation in verse)
Signposts to Cross
Chapter 1 - Shackles on Psyche
Chapter 2- End of the Tether
Chapter 3 - Burden of Freedom
Chapter 4 - Onto the Turf
Chapter 5 - Respite by Death
Chapter 6 - Lessons of Life
Chapter 7 - Naivety of Love
Chapter 8 - Dilemma of Disclosure
Chapter 9 - Perils of Youth
Chapter 10 - Absurd Proposal
Chapter 11 - Crossing the Mirage
Chapter 12 - Setting the Pace
Chapter 13 - Oasis of Bliss
Chapter 14 - Busy bees in Honeycomb
Chapter 15 -Twist in the Tale
Chapter 16 - Love in the Bind
Chapter 17 -Turn for the Worse
Chapter 18 - Shadows to the Fore
Chapter 19 - Spurring on to Err
Chapter 20 - Tempting the Fate
Chapter 21 - Stooping to Conquer
Chapter 22- Fouling the Soul
Chapter 23 - Poetic Justice
Chapter 24 - Agony of Penitence
Chapter 25 - Embrace of Love
Chapter 26 - Life of a Kind
Chapter 27 - Just deserts
Dedicated to Kanna, my companion,
whom I could help in crossing the mirage of her mind.
Blurbs of the above free ebooks below -
1_ Benign Flame: Saga of Love
The attractions Roopa experienced and the fantasies she entertained as a teen shaped a male imagery that ensconced her subconscious. Insensibly, confident carriage came to be associated with the image of maleness in her mind-set. Her acute consciousness of masculinity only increased her vulnerability to it, making her womanliness crave for the maleness for its gratification.
However, as her father was constrained to help her in becoming a doctor, she opts to marry, hoping that Sathyam might serve her cause though the persona she envisioned as masculine, she found lacking in him. But as he fails to go with her idea, she becomes apathetic towards him, and insensibly sinks into her friend Sandhya's embrace, for lesbian solace.
Soon, in a dramatic sequence of events, Tara, a suave call girl, tries to rope Roopa into her calling; Roopa herself loses her heart to Sandhya's beau Raja Rao, and Prasad, her husband's friend falls for her. And as Prasad begins to induce Sathyam to be seduced by whores to worm his way into her affections, Roopa finds herself in a dilemma. However, as fate puts Raja Rao into Roopa's arms in such a way as to lend novelty to fiction, this 'novel' nuances man-woman chemistry on one hand, and portrays woman-woman empathy on the other.
Who said the novel is dead; 'Benign Flame' raises the bar as vouched by -
The plot is quite effective and it's a refreshing surprise to discover that the story will not trace a fall into disaster for Roopa, given that many writers might have habitually followed that course with a wife who strays into extramarital affairs - Spencer Critchley, Literary Critic, U.S.A.
The author has convinced the readers that love is something far beyond the marriage tie and the fulfillment in love can be attained without marriage bondage. The author has achieved a minor revolution without any paraphernalia of revolution in the fourth part of the novel - The Quest, India.
The author makes free use of - not interior monologue as such, but - interior dialogue of the character with the self, almost resembling the dramatic monologue of Browning. Roopa, Sandhya, Raja Rao and Prasad to a considerable extent and Tara and Sathyam to a limited degree indulge in rationalization, trying to analyse their drives and impulses - The Journal of Indian Writing in English.
Overall, Benign Flame is a unique attempt at exploring adult relationships and sexuality in the contemporary middle-class. All the characters come alive with their cravings and failings, their love and their lust. Benign Flame blurs the lines and emphasizes that life is not all black and white - it encompasses the full spectrum of living - Indian Book Chronicle.
2_ Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life
It's perilous penning this blurb.
It's fine when man is modest about his work.
It even affords him the aura of an invisible crown!
But what about his work?
Were it an art or craft, it is there for all to see.
What of a literary work of an unheralded author?
Well, lauding the same might raise one's eyebrows.
Failing to praise wouldn't make a 'jewel-less crown' either!
Why not see, if this is the great Indian novel.
This is the saga of the rise and fall of an ambitious man, the decline, and the decay of his conniving wife, the trials, and tribulations of their wayward son as well as the grit and gall of a spirited woman, who enters into his life.
This depiction of their life and times not only pictures the facets of ambition and achievement, intrigue and betrayal, compulsion and compromise, sleaze and scandal, trial and sentence, but also portrays the possibilities of repentance and resolution, love and empathy coupled with compassion and contribution, leading to the spirituality of materialism, and that makes it the saga of our times.
The story of a lifetime, truly.
3_ Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel
In a stream of consciousness mode, this is the self-account of the life and times of a man, who liquidates his immense wealth only to consign it to the flames.
The agony and ecstasy of his life as he makes it big in our materialistic world and the way he loses his soul in the bargain, only to regain it when tragedy strikes him makes one ponder over the meaning of success in life.
This philosophical 'novel of a memoir' is a compelling read that is conducive to contemplate about the nature and scope of human relationships.
4_ Prey on the Prowl - A Crime Novel
Even as Detective Dhruva was enamored of Kavya, whom he rescues from her kidnapper, Radha, an alleged murderess on the run, gatecrashes into his life.
But when Kavya too joins him after her man was poisoned there ensues the tussle of a love triangle, which gets unraveled in a poignant end, but not before a series of murders.
So, then who could have poisoned Ranjit the realtor, Shakeel the Inspector, Pravar the criminal and Natya his accomplice?
Well the needle of suspicion tilted towards Pravar that was till he perished with his mate, but then who was the one?
Could it be Radha under the scanner for her role in the death of her husband Madhu and his mistress Mala, Pravar's sister?
Or was it Ranjit's spouse Kavya, who owing to Stockholm Syndrome, takes to Pravar her kidnapper.
As these deaths by poisoning puzzle Dhruva, Radha avers that Kavya had the motive and the means to kill her spouse, her paramour and his wife besides the cop.
However, reckoning that when the ill-motives of the natural suspects to commit a murder are an open secret, someone with a hidden agenda might be tempted to use that as a camouflage for his subterfuge, Dhruva begins to look around for the culprit.
5_ Of No Avail: Web of Wedlock
Lured by the pitch - All marriages are made in heaven but some are delayed on earth: We endeavor to hasten them all - Priya goes to Renuka Marriage Bureau.
Scanning the prospects, when she spotted Venu, whom she slighted long ago, she rushes to him to bring about a dramatic encounter.
What brought about Priya's change of heart to seek her former suitor and how Venu responds to his old flame's fresh overtures lend suspense to their romance in this eclectic novella.
6_ Stories Varied - A Book of Short Stories
This is a collection of the author's short stories that deals with women's dilemmas in the Indian social milieu accompanied with unique denouements.
While 'Ilaa's Ire' contrasts woman's lot of the day with her eminence in the Vedic Age, '201' Qualms" depicts her predicament, torn between personal loyalty and citizen's responsibility.
As "?" addresses woman's marital stress in an alien land, 'Cupid's Clue' is about her acting on rebound in her native place.
Even as 'Autumn Love' lets woman discover the marital void in her life, 'A Touchy Affair' makes her amenable to her man's other woman.
Just as 'Love's How's That' inflames woman's old flame, 'A Hearty Turn' brings her innate lesbian leanings to the fore.
If 'Love Jihad' bridges lovers' religious divide with a secular plank, 'Tenth Nook' creates her marital gulf on the materialistic ground.
While 'Eleventh Hour' is about woman's lust for love, 'Twelfth Tale' underscores her zest for power.
7_Onto the Stage - Slighted Souls and other stage and radio plays
This is a compendium of the author's Indian stage and radio plays:
"Slighted Souls" is a poignant love story set in rural Telangana, beset with feudal exploitation of the downtrodden dalits. Besides forcing the dalits to toil in the fields as bonded labor without impunity, the land owning doras had no qualms in reducing the womenfolk of this ilk as sex slaves in the gadis, which leads to an armed resistance engulfing a young couple.
Men at work on Women at work" is a tragic-comic episode depicting the fallout of sexual harassment at the workplace in the Indian urban setting with its traditional cultural underpinnings.
"Castle of Despair", built on the slippery ground of man's innate urge for one-upmanship, portrays its facade of falsity on the grand stage of human tragedy.
The radio play, "A Love on Hold", lends voice to the felt anxieties of a man and a woman as their old flame gets rekindled and the dilemmas of possession faced by the couple in a conservative cultural background.
8_ Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A Critical Appraisal of Islamic Faith, Indian Polity 'N More)
The sublimity of Muhammad's preaching in Mecca and the severity of his sermons in Medina make Islam a Janus-faced faith that forever bedevils the mind of the Musalmans.
This thought-provoking work, besides dissecting the anatomy of Islam, steeped in the Quran, seeks to depict the psyche of the Musalmans, shaped by the proclivities of their prophet, vicissitudes of his life and the attitudes of his detractors, which the mechanism of their umma perpetuates.
More to the point, aided by "I'm Ok - You're Ok", the path-breaking work of Thomas A. Harris and Roland E Miller's "Muslim Friends - Their Faith and Feeling", this book, for the first time ever, psycho-analyzes the imperatives of the Muslim upbringing, which has the potential to turn a faithful and a renegade alike into a fidayeen.
Also, apart from delving into the ironies of the faiths that affected the fate of the peoples, eclipsed the cultures of communes, altered the course of history and afflict the politics of the day, this book examines how the sanatana 'Hindu' dharma came to survive in India, in spite of the combined onslaught of Islam and the Christianity on Hinduism for over a millennium.
This book is for those who wish to be aware of the follies of their faith and the foibles of others to lighten the burden of dogma and reduce the baggage of prejudice postulated in its thirty-four well-structured chapters.
Also, besides providing a panoramic view of the Indian history, this thought-provoking book appraises the way its political leaders made or unmade the post-colonial India.
Possibly in a new genre, this free ebook is a book for our times.
9_ Inane Interpolations in Bhagvad-Gita (An Invocation for their Revocation)
The Manusmriti, the social doctrine of yore, and the Bhagvad-Gita, the spiritual tome in vogue that lay down the discriminatory dharma (duties) of the four social classes (castes) have been the bugbears of the Hindu backward classes. However, to their chagrin, of late, as the latter is being mindlessly promoted even though the former was constitutionally debunked, they began advocating that it too should be dumped in a dustbin.
Ironically, the improbability of their progenitor Krishna, the architect of the Gita, relegating his own ilk to the social margins failed to dawn upon these that Gita supposedly slights, even to this day! Thus, their intellectuals, instead of seeking to reclaim their priceless heritage, albeit after ridding its interpolative garbage, tend to rubbish it a la throwing the baby with the bathwater, and needless to say they must ponder.
Also, it is high time that the Gita-class stop laying store by the self-aggrandizing verses in this Vyāsa's classic, evidently inserted by their progenitors that came to bedevil the Hindu spiritual integrity and social harmony. Likewise, the grumblers of the dalit desertions must see the need for setting the Hindu house in order to prevent the fractious poaching by the Church, if not to facilitate the 'hoped for' return of the prodigals. So also those who take pride that Hinduism is the only religion that reckons all faith as true, should be concerned about the 'in vogue' Gita that belittles some of their caste fellows. Besides, this work beckons the feminists to reckon the second of the two interpolations from it cited in the cover image that degrades them in unspeakable terms.
This 'overdue' work, may lead the 'denied' Hindu castes as well as the favored folks for an objective approach to the in vogue Bhagvad-Gita which could dispel the misgivings of the former and the delusions of the latter, thereby bridging the Hindu emotional gulf with its abridged book that restores its original form. Whether or not one concurs with its propositions, this original work could be of interest to the students of logic and reasoning as well.
10_ Bhagvad-Gita: Treatise of Self-help
Bhagavad-Gita is the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue' - William von Humboldt.
In this the beauty of the Sanskrit slokas is reflected in the rhythmic flow of the English verse of poetic proportions even as the attendant philosophy of the Gita is captured in contemporary idiom for easy comprehension.
Though it is a matter of consensus that Bhagvad-Gita in the present length of seven hundred slokas has many an interpolation to it, but no meaningful attempt has ever been made to delve into the nature and extent, not to speak of the effect of these on the Hindu society at large.
The moot point that has missed the attention of all, all along, is that if the Sudras were to be so lowly in the Lord's creation, how come then the Gita's architect Krishna, His avatar, and Vyāsa, its chronicler, happen to be from the same lowly Hindu caste fold. Moreover, is it not absurd to suggest that either or both of them had deprecated the station of their own varna (caste) on their own in their very own Gita?
The methodical codification of interpolations carried out here puts the true character of the Gita in proper perspective. Identified here are hundred and ten slokas of deviant nature and or of partisan character, the source of so much misunderstanding about this book extraordinary, in certain sections of the Hindu fold.
In the long run, exposing and expunging these mischievous insertions is bound to bring in new readers from these quarters to this over two millennia old classic besides altering the misconceptions of the existing adherents.
11_ Sundara Kanda: Hanuman's Odyssey
Whereas Mahabharata's Bhagvad-Gita is taken as a philosophical guide, Ramayana's Sundara Kanda is sought for spiritual solace; many believe that reading it or hearing it recited would remove all hurdles and usher in good tidings! Miracles apart, it's in the nature of this great epic to inculcate fortitude and generate hope in man for it's a depiction of how Hanuman goes about his errand against all odds.
Besides, it portrays how Seetha, on the verge of self-immolation, overcomes despair to see life in a new light? With rhythm of its verse and the flow of the narrative this sloka-to-sloka transcreation of the canto beautiful of Valmiki's adi kavya - the foremost poetical composition in the world, Hanuman's Odyssey that paves the way for Rama to rescue his kidnapped wife is bound to charm the readers and listeners alike.
Interestingly, as the following verse illustrates, this epic was the forerunner of the magic realism of our times - "Gripped she then him by shadow / Cast which Hanuman coast to coast, Recalled he in dismay then / What Sugreev said at outset / That one fiend had aptitude / To grip its prey by mere shadow."
On a personal note, my paternal grandfather, Bulusu Thimmaiah-garu, like many in his time, was a life-long practitioner of Sundara Kanda parayana (the epic's daily recital in part or full), whose spirituality could have providentially guided me in this, rather an effortless, trans-creative endeavour.