Mysuru Mallige

Mysuru Mallige or Mysore Jasmine is a beautiful flower that spreads its fragrance across for the delight of all. In the late 90s or early this century some people had used this name to a CD that circulated among the young and old with socially objectionable contents. That thing also spread under the name of the divine fragrance. A good half a century before that Mysuru Mallige was the name of collections of extremely beautiful poems in Kannada by KS. Narasimha Swamy. These poems rate among the most romantic songs written in Kannada. This songs were used in a movie by the same name with a story line with a back drop of Indian Freedom movement. The protagonist is a revolutionary fighting against the imperialists and the police are behind him. He is married,  in a typical love after marriage type of arranged marriages of India - and the songs are the various yearnings between the husband and wife when together and away.

Why this discourse about Mysuru Jasmine now? We have all been hearing about this Jasmine revolutions and the like in nations near and far. Jasmine has been the fragrance that spreads, the fragrance of Jasmine is divine and righteous by itself. It spreads and brings into it's captivity millions and millions, sooting the confusions in the minds of the masses channelling them to the common cause perhaps for the good. The fragrance can be hypnotizing. The intelligent will benefit, grow and contribute, the gullible will become a fodder for an unwanted fire.

Is this required in India? Will this happen here? Is there un-mitigable corruption - have rules been formed to keep out the educated but include the monied, is the polity divisive meant to segregate society into various strata of every type of grain so as to enable a few to rule. Are the countries resources up for sale? Are we enabling another form of imperialism?

I don't know the answers, I see that in India today money is sufficient to survive and everybody is in the process of making more and more. For some reason a homegrown intelligentsia conducive to the Indian society is absent or in hiding. Social life revolves around inebriation and intoxication. Excellence is limited to technology and finance - governance does not figure. Domestic literature is out of fashion, the most heard Indian music is from the movies, no body has the patience to go spiritual nor is it considered required.

It would be interesting to see how we age .... lest we fall to the lure of the fragrance of Jasmine.