Things in heaven and earth

As I, have observed earlier, it is essential for a person to be emotionally stable, possess a fit body and a contemporary mind.

I recollect in this context that my father, when someone asked him the secret behind a long and happy life, he replied "choose good parents!”

One way to acquire the ability to lead a happy, rewarding and successful life is to study the lives and times of great persons whose accomplishments and contributions to mankind have been etched in golden letters in the history of the world.

Persons whose lives are worth studying include philosophers, artists, scientists, freedom-fighters, social-reformers, historians, travelers, actors, musicians, singers, cartoonists, playwrights, writers, poets, statesmen, sportsmen, explorers, Nobel Laureates, Magsaysay Award winners and those awarded the Bharat Ratna.

Then there are the great Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle and Euclid of the ancient days, and Bertrand Russell, Gandhiji, John Paul Sartre, and Rabindranath Tagore of more recent times.

The lives and times of those, whose courage, boldness, determination and spectacular deeds have inspired mankind for centuries, are also a valuable source of inspiration.

These include Alexander the Great, Jhansi Lakshmi, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Napoleon and Nelson.
Much can also be learnt from the deeds of great men and women who fought for the rights of their peoples and won them the right to live freely and with dignity – such as Martin Luther King against the Catholic Church in England, Martin Luther King, Jr, for the blacks in the USA, Thomas Jefferson for the American war of independence, Mahatma Gandhi in India and San Suu Kyi in Myanmar.

For the youth of the Telugu speaking states, in particular, the services rendered to social and political causes by many a legendary figure, including Kandukuri Veeresalingam, Prakasam Pantulu and Maqdoom Mohiuddin are worthy of note.

In more contemporary terms, the examples set to mankind by great persons such as Mother Teresa, Annie Besant, Moti Lal Nehru, Vir Savarkar, Lala Lajpatrai, Balgangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subash Chandra Bose, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad are worth learning from.

Aruna Roy, Aruna Jayaram, is one of the most outstanding human beings that the twentieth century has produced.

I have the good fortune of having had her as a batchmate. Early on, she quit from the civil service and started working for a non-– government organisation headed by her husband S. Roy the Social Welfare Research Centre at Tilonia in Rajasthan state of India.

The outstanding work she did while working for that organisation for the rest of her life has won her laurels the world over, culminating in her winning the prestigious Magsaysay Award.

I have described elsewhere some incidents she figures, in, which occurred during our Bharat Darshan tour of India, as trainee officers.

History is replete with the exceptional contributions made by outstanding persons in various endeavors such as, the natural sciences, mathematics, the fine arts, exploration, sports and economics.

One can hardly study the works of great writers, play wrights, painters, composers, singers and musicians without being struck by the extraordinary genius they were endowed with.

From Archimedes to Einstein, from Dhyanchand to Tendulkar, Leander Peas, Sania Mirza, Hampi and Sindhu, from Beethoven to Balamuralikrishna, from Rodin to Ravi Verma, and from Shakespeare to Subramanya Bharati - the list is long, really long, It will not be a fair to attempt to enumerate all of them here.

Reading accounts of the adventures and daring explodes of great explorers like Columbus, Vasco De Gama and Edmund Hillary and Tensing will be an exhilarating experience.

The chronicles of travellers such as Huen Tsang, Fa Hein and, in modern times, Bill Bryson also make for immensely absorbing reading which, in itself, a unique experience is.

Travelling to, and acquiring knowledge of places in the world, that have been home to defining moments in the story of civilisation, or serve to portray or exhibit, interesting persons and themes, also helps develop a rounded personality.

Examples are Madame Tussaud's and the Times Square in London, le Louvre in Paris, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Ajmer Sharif in Ajmer, Shanti Nikatan in West Bengal, Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry, the Pyramids in Egyptian, Disneyland in California and the Serengeti in Tanzania.

I must reiterate that all the names of persons and places I am referring to are entirely by way of introducing the reader to the fact that there are many places or persons one needs to know about in order to expand the vistas of one’s knowledge. The list is by no means an inventory or a guide.

The reader is earnestly urged to use these illustrations to explore these of deepening and widening his or her knowledge.