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   The Story of Saint Poosalar: Conquest of ?kaama?
   ------------------------------------------------ 
         through Sublimation of Desire -- 
         ---------------------------------
                   ?bhakti yOga?
                    -----------

Next to Man's "mating instinct", it is his "homing
instinct" that is perhaps the most powerful passion
("kaama") ruling his life. 

Every man in the world dreams first of acquiring a
"beautiful, loving wife". It is the primal urge of
"kaama" within the human breast. But after a wife has
been won, the next thing every man dreams about is
acquiring a "nice big house" where he and his wife
"could then live happily ever after". 

This universal dream for a "home-sweet-home" where the
ideals of both conjugality and domesticity can come
together to reside in everlasting union and bliss
("kaama") --- this dream too is in fact yet another
manifestation of the Vedantic "purushArtha" called
"kaama" which all men aspire. In the 4-fold scheme of
Vedantic "purushArtha", the 3rd and 4th are known as
"inbam" and "veedu", Tamil expressions which in
ordinary day-to-day parlance mean "happiness" and
"home". None can fail to appreciate the subtle
significance behind the linguistic association between
the two. 
                    ***********

Many are the poets in the world who have been inspired
to give expression to this great twin-ideal of human
sexuality and human domesticity. A "home" somewhere on
Planet Earth that one could possess and proudly call
"one's own" is a very deeply sentimental and universal
yearning of Man indeed. The English poet Alexander
Pope defined Man's Happiness as little more than being
"bound by a few acres of land" around his home:

    "Happy the man whose wish and care
      A few paternal acres bound,
     Content to breathe his native air
      In his own ground".
                  (Alexander Pope: "The Quiet Life")

Another English poet S.Rogers waxed eloquent about the
happiness of domesticity i.e. a comely wife and a cozy
home upon a hill beside a brook running quietly
through the valleys....

   "Mine be a cot(tage) beside the hill,
     A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear;
    A willowy brook that turns a mill
     With many a fall shall linger near.

   The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch
     Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;
   Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch
     And share my meal as welcome guest.

   Around my ivied porch shall spring
    Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
   And Lucy (my wife), at her wheel, shall sing
    In russet gown and apron blue.

   The village-church among the trees
    Where first our marriage-vows were given,
   With merry peals shall swell the breeze
    And point with taper'd spire to Heaven".

                           (S.Rogers: "A Wish")

                 *************

Being "homeless" in this vast, lonely world is one of
the most terrifying prospects for Man. If there was no
such thing as a "Home" to which we could all daily
return at nightfall to retreat and to retire from our
weary, working lives, our plight would be unimaginably
sad and troubled. We would find ourselves lost in the
sheer and frightening desolation that we know envelops
all the world as it spins eternally through the dark,
cold emptiness of endless, timeless space. 

Soldiers upon a battle-field, especially, are the ones
most prone to yearn for the peace and security of the
homestead. Amidst the death and pain, the blood and
guts, the carnage and grief surrounding them all the
time while in battle, soldiers who encounter Death
almost every day of their lives are indeed the ones
who most acutely experience the pain of loneliness
that overwhelms every man who finds himself far, far
away from home. The pain of such soldierly pathos was
captured in extremely moving verse once by an old
English poet:

"Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had
lower'd,
  And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd,
  The weary to sleep and the wounded to die.

"Methought from the battlefield'd dreadful array
  Far, far away I had roam'd on a desolate track;
 T'was autumn -- and the sunshine arose on the way
  To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

"Then pledged we the wine-cup, and I formally swore:
  From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
 My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er
  And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart". 
                 
                 *************

The love and longing that every man carries within him
for a home are indeed as powerful a passion in life as
the love he harbours for his Woman. Wife and home are
but two sides of the same "kaama" coin.

A man will willingly travel to the ends of the world
to secure a home. He will go to any lengths -- beg,
borrow, steal or undertake any penance ("tapas") -- to
acquire a house. I have lived and worked in the
Arabian Gulf for well over 12 years now. Every year I
have seen plane-loads of my countrymen arrive here all
in search of fortune. I have witnessed them toiling
hard for several years. They work hard and earn much
and though thrift and prudence manage to put aside
handsome savings. And almost everyone whom I took the
liberty to ask "What made you leave your native
shore?" always had this reply for me, "To make money,
of course; make enough to build a nice house back home
for myself in India!". That stock reply never fails to
vividly remind me of one of several of my own dreams
which, many years ago, brought me here too from my
native land. 

What is true of the expatriate worker from India in
the Arabian Gulf is perhaps true to a much lesser
degree in the case of other Indians who too have
ventured out to other far-flung parts of the world in
search of a fortune. Still it is true: at the end of
the day, they all simply want one thing in life --"To
build a nice big house back home one day in India
where I and my wife can live happily (ever after)!"

Such is indeed the awesome power of attraction and
attachment("kaama") for a house that a man will want
to move the tallest mountain or cross the high sea for
one!

                  ***************

The complex feelings of "kaama" associated with one's
home are nowhere as clearly manifested than in the
extraordinary behaviour of a person immediately after
he has proudly secured his earthly abode.

For millions of those living and working in India --
all the 1 billion-odd teeming humanity in that vast,
blessed country -- building and owning a house has
nowadays become something of a national obsession.
Getting a  house is a "lifetime dream". From the day a
young Indian couple marries until the day it owns an
"apartment" (or, better still, "an independent
bungalow"), the couple virtually "eats, dreams and
breathes 'home, home and home'". 

>From the day the young couple eventually owns one
(thanks to the mortgage-loan that the "friendly ("main
hoon na!") "housing-bank" advertising itself as a
"dream-merchant", advanced them) until their dying
day, the young "home-owners" are usually as deeply
infatuated with their house, and as deeply engaged in
continually beautifying and embellishing it, as they
are with each other. And what extraordinary ways
indeed such love ("kaama") for the home manifests
itself!

Some "dream-couples", for example, dream of turning
their "beautiful new living room" into that "perfect
hi-tech home-theatre that we'd both always wanted in
life --- replete with "Bose-speakers and Dolby-
projection systems with hi-resolution flat-screen
wall-mounted LCD" (whatever that means!). Now,
whenever I meet such effusive couples, it has never
ceased to intrigue me why someone would want to take a
hefty 20-year mortgage to buy a nice big-house only to
then turn it into a stuffy domestic cinema-hall!

Then there are other couples whose love for their home
makes them want to proudly turn it into an art-gallery
of sorts. They will show off their "lifetime
collection" of antique pieces and objets-de-art. Jade,
porcelain, china, crystal etc. from exotic parts of
the globe, as well as all manner of bauble and
frippery from the remotest corners of the world, not
to mention a few imitation Monet or Picasso reprints
thrown in for effect.... all these will find a pride
of place on a shelf-rack in their brand new
drawing-room!

Then there are some couples who will use books to
elaborately ornament their homes. Walking into their
homes can often be an experience only somewhat less
awesome than entering the sprawling reading-rooms of
the British Museum Library. You will find
floor-to-ceiling shelves all loaded-up with books and
tomes of every sort on every possible subject in the
world. Hard-back, paper-back, leather-bound,
vellum-wrapped books, collector's editions,
dictionaries, encyclopaedia, best-sellers; fiction,
travelogue, biography, history, popular science,
poetry, drama.... you name it, you will see it all
there in their living room all stacked up in shiny,
freshly varnished shelves.  

There is yet another type of "kaamic" feelings for a
home that exhibits itself in human behaviour. Many
couples these days are inspired by what are known as
"environmental concerns". Besides subscribing to those
great global causes for which the worldwide
environmental organization known as "Greenpeace" today
fights, these couples choose to voice such concerns at
home too by turning the private living spaces of their
home into a bold 'environmental statement'. Nothing
gives them greater pleasure than letting everyone
walking into their house discover that the host and
hostess are both such great "lovers of the earth's
forests" that they've willingly brought large chunks
of it right into their bedroom even. Walking around
the house you will notice that much of their living
space has been converted into make-believe tropical
rain-forest bottled inside a mini-greenhouse. Indoor
plants, vine, orchids, rhodendrons, bonsai, ivy,
potted-cactus, Amazonian creepers, Japanese
cherry-blossom.... all these you will see right there
swirling around the sofa or settee you are seated upon
while you converse with the proud couple sitting
happily hand-in-hand before you, reminding you once
again of the old English verse above:     

  "Around my ivied porch shall spring
    Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
   And Lucy (my wife), at her wheel, shall sing
    In russet gown and apron blue".

                    **************

Thus, so intense and pervasive indeed is Man's love of
his earthly home, and indeed so deep his attachment to
it, that his feelings of "kaama" for the house that he
loves to call is his "very own" lasts for an entire
lifetime. It is what you might call "a passionate
love-affair"; one that survives and endures time... as
long, in fact, as the one for his spouse which neither
wilts nor fades "until Death do them part".

                 ****************
                 (to be continued)

Regards,
dAsan,
Sudarshan    













                
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