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Then there are different types of
applicants — couples, single persons (never married, divorced
or widowed) and people from different faiths. Their concerns are
also discussed. A chapter deals with single parents and
adoption.
There are case
studies that can guide a person from the initial stage of
deciding to adopt to actual adoption and its aftermath. The case
studies, culled from counselling sessions, cover different
scenarios and legal possibilities. These stories, narrated with
names and other identifying information changed, illustrate
situations a person is likely to face before, during and after
adoption.
Asvamedha
by Subhash Kak; Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi; Pages 71; Rs 195.
 Asvamedha yajna
is known in Indian mythology as a way to establish the authority
of an emperor over vast territories. A consecrated horse,
accompanied by a strong armed escort, is left to roam free for
one year and whatever territory it covers becomes the king’s
domain. Anyone daring to oppose this doctrine has to face the
might of the king’s army. The epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata,
describe this yajna performed by Shri Ram and Yudhishtira. While
the yajna of Ramayana is widely know for Ram’s confrontation
with his twin sons, Lav and Kush, the Mahabharata episode in
which Arjun tastes defeat at the hands of a young man who turns
out to be his own son, is not so well known.
The purpose of
Subhash Kak’s work is however, not to narrate mythological
events. He explains different aspects of the ritual and gives
different definitions to the rites involved in it. Even if it is
not clear if the consecrated horse is ultimately sacrificed, he
puts a different interpretation on the animal sacrifice involved
in the process. He asserts that the ‘sacrifice’ is a
symbolic performance and does not involve actual killing, and he
quotes various Vedic texts to prove his point.
He maintains
that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata only give a fragmentary
account of the ritual. A chapter in Mahabharata is devoted to
Yudhishtira’s Asvamedh but very little is said about the
ritual itself. Ramayana, he says, glosses over the ritual in a
few verses. Kak describes Asvamedha and its symbolism to explain
different aspects of the Vedic sacrifice system. He asks several
questions and also gives the answers.
The Truth
(Almost) About Bharat, a novel
by Kavery Nambisan; Penguin
Books, India, New Delhi; Pages 133; Rs 150.
 This is a
reprint of the author’s maiden novel first published in 1991.
Her subsequent novels — "The Scent of Pepper",
"Mango-Coloured Fish" and "On Wings of
Butterflies" — have won considerable acclaim.
The protagonist
of this story — Bharat to his mother, Vishwanath to his father
and Tarzan to his friends — is a medical student who lands
himself in a mess trying to uphold the cause of low-paid mess
servants and is suspended by the college authorities. Not having
the nerve to tell his mother about the punishment, he sets out
on a countrywide journey on his motor cycle, which brings him in
contact with a variety of people and gives him a varied
experience of life.
He meets a
tender-hearted bandit who advises him to go back and complete
his medical course. Then there is an eccentric but competent
doctor who keeps three wives and their children at three
different places and is happy with the arrangement. He meets
corrupt policemen who think nothing of robbing a poor
six-year-old boy who is trying to make a living by selling
titbits on a push cart. He sees children surviving on crumbs
picked up from dirty rail tracks and a juice seller who lives on
juiceless orange pulp. There is a widow who has buried her
husband in her backyard and reads poetry regularly at his grave,
convinced that it makes him happy.
The young medic
is fascinated by a Kerala beauty who keeps pestering him to go
back home and picks up enough courage to propose marriage to
her, only to learn that the girl has a husband and also a child.
Back home, he
decided to return to his medical college, apologise, as had the
others who had joined him in upholding the mess servants’
cause, and get back to his studies. But before that he has to
put the lives of his estranged parents in order. He persuades
his father to accompany him to Agra and meet his mother for a
patchup.
This tale of a young man’s
eccentricities and the strange characters he encounters holds
the reader’s interest best when Bharat describes (in first
person) the quirky people he comes across during his journey
across the country.
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ADOPTIVE
parenthood is not very popular in India although childless
couples resort to various means to get a child. Some of these
methods are rather bizarre and often involve acts that are
violative of the law. Yet adoption does not always cross their
minds.
