Ulysses and Lotus Eaters

Say No To Merger…

We will look at the possible merger of the Praja Rajyam Party with the Congress in a while but let us start this blog with a look at Odyssey, the equivalent of Ramayana in Greek mythology.

I have four brothers: one of them calls himself a pragmatist. But he is worse than a pessimist. The saying goes that the optimist looks at the glass half full and the pessimist, half empty. My brother suspects that there is poison in the glass; sometimes, he believes there is no glass at all and that it is his hallucination. He is worse than a pessimist.

Odysseus and Penelope

When the Greeks went to war with the Kingdom of Troy (the famous Trojan war), and returned victorious, King Odysseus, the greatest of them all was missing. It turns out that his ship (and those of his fleet) floundered on the high sees and went through a lot of hardship – all of which was narrated with great élan by Homer in his Illiad. Odysseus returns after 18 long years (which is kind of similar to Ram’s vanavas).

Meantime, Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, was under pressure from suitors, who according to custom were eager to marry her and take over Odysseus’s kingdom (Ithaca). They said she had to choose one of them because Odysseus must be dead by now. According to modern law in most countries, if a person is missing for 6 or 7 years, then his property can be passed on to the legal heirs. In those days, a wife was part of property; a legal heir is a suitor whom she chooses.

The story goes that she told the suitors that she was weaving a wedding dress and as soon as she finished that she would choose one of them. She, apparently, weaved by day and unweaved by night, and kept the yarn thing going for all those years. Also, when people brought news to her of Odysseus being reported seen or heard of in some strange island or kingdom along the way, on his way back, she is believed to have shown pessimism on those occasions, saying – No, I don’t think he will ever come back (although she believed in the heart of hearts that he would return one day, and so kept on weaving and unweaving her wedding dress).

Penelope was afraid that if she acknowledged optimism, the perverse Greek gods will somehow try to screw her happiness. Sorry to bring in a personal note here, but my brother, the worse-than-optimist, is like Penelope; he seems to believe that if he wishes something to work out well, the pervert gods will screw him.

But God is not pervert: he may not be omnipotent, blah, blah, but he is benevolent.

Lotus eaters

Tennyson wrote two contrasting poems: Ulysses and Lotus Eaters. Ulysses is another name for Odysseus, the Greek hero aforementioned. After returning to his kingdom, Ithaca, according to Tennyson, he feels bored with the humdrum of running the country – meting out unequal laws unto a savage race – and leaves the burden of ruling the country to his son Telemachus (who is able, says Ulysses, in his own way), and marshals his men for new adventures.

Lotus eaters, the other poem, that contrasts with the spirit of adventure shown by the aging Ulysses, talks about the island of lotus eaters Ulysses/Odysseus comes across on his voyage on the way back home. The lotus eaters sit all day idle, chewing what seem to be stems of lotuses (maybe magic mushroom of a bygone era?) They don’t work (god knows how they get food and other necessities of life. But they are cool. They are, in a word, not go-getters. The lotus eaters are, basically, come-what-mays.

Well, I need to spend a whole blog on this Ulysses vs Lotus Eaters business, later…

Say No To Merger…

Everyone in the Praja Rajyam Party seems to be eager for a merger with the Congress. But my considered opinion is that Mr Chiranjeevi should desist from the temptation and hold on his own. The PRP is a big entity, with a large support base and a vote share. By itself, it would be in a better position to dictate terms to the Congress: an electoral understanding is best for PRP. Of course, the Congress and Madame Sonia will put a lot of pressure on Mr Chiranjeevi to merge his party with Congress.

Mr Chiranjeevi would do well not to yield to these pressures and keep his party as a separate entity. I don’t know if this sane advice will reach anyone’s ears within the PRP, but if it does, I should consider my blog to have more than served its purpose.