"Pardon
me, do you have a minute? Then I'll tell you a story you probably haven't heard
- one about a hero from another planet. … The sensational plot of Avatar,
which now has columnists and bloggers wearing out their keyboards, was committed
to palm leaves thousands of years ago in elegant Sanskrit lettering."
MOSCOW: Pardon me, do you
have a minute? Then I'll tell you a story you probably haven't heard - one
about a hero from another planet.
He's handsome and has dark blue
skin, thick black hair, yellow lines on his forehead and a fearless heart,
has descended from the heavens and has found shelter with a lost jungle tribe. He quickly
becomes more attached to the forest-dwellers than his alien kin, and decides to
stay with them forever. The tribe lives amid deposits of a precious mineral,
but considers it simply rubble.
The previous relatives of our
hero, the haughty sky people, were angry with the forest-dwellers due to their
attachment to the land, and so try to destroy the entire tribe - along with the
defector. Defending his newfound people, the hero flies on monsters, establishes
a connection with the beasts, and speaks in code to trees that can grant
wishes, and which grow at the foot of a sacred mountain.
But the central inspiration
of our heroes' life is the forest king's beautiful daughter - who initially
rejects him as childish. But she is forced to teach him the local customs
and soon falls in love with him, meeting him secretly at night and tying her
life to his.
And then … Pardon me, what's
our hero's name, you ask? Yes, he was sometimes called an "avatar." But … But how do
you know? No, he's not a disabled Marine. Our hero is a cowherd. … Unobtanium? One moment, if
memory serves, the precious mineral of the story is called "cintamani"
- a kind of philosopher's stone that can convert lead into gold. No, there
are no colonels mentioned in the story.
IMAX? … What are you talking
about? I haven't been to the movies since October. I just returned from India,
where for three months straight, I floated down the Ganges in a kayak. My
friend told me the story one evening around a campfire. No, not James Cameron.
My friend from Mumbai - his name is Jay Kumar Ohm. He's a mean kayaker, by the
way. What's that? The name of the hero? What? Nah, definitely not Jake Sully.
Absolutely sure. I even wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. The hero's name is Krishna - to his friends, just
Kanha.
[Editor's Note: According
to Wikipedia, Krishna is sometimes considered an avatar of Lord Vishnu, and at
others he's an independent deity, supreme in his own right.]
* * *
According to Hindu legend, 5,000
years ago, a Vedic sage named Vyasa
composed the Bhagavata,
a chronicle of the acts of Krishna's avatar on earth. Combining deep philosophy
with Hollywood-type action, the Bhagavata epic became the leitmotif of
Eastern spirituality, art, drama, sculpture and poetry, as well as
architectural masterpieces like Angkor Vatu.
It turns out that the sensational plot of Avatar, which now has columnists
and bloggers of every kind wearing out their keyboards, was committed to palm
leaves thousands of years ago in elegant Sanskrit lettering. There, the
blue-skinned avatar of Krishna flies the giant Garuda to the noble tribe
of Vrajah, which lives in the forest of Vrindavan amid precious ore
of "cintamani" stone. There, the sacred Govardhan Hill hovers
above the ground where the Tree of Wishes grows, under which Krishna's new
tribe hides from an "air attack" by his sky brethren. That is where beautiful
native girl Radha
lives - whose love of Krishna fills the ancient legend with life and meaning.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
But James Cameron need not fret. In contrast to modern playwrights and science fiction writers,
Vyasa is hardly likely to sue for plagiarism and seek redress for copyright
infringement. Besides, to his credit, Cameron openly admitted to borrowing the
name of the film and the blue color of the Na'vi from sacred Hindu texts. It was due only to the regrettable delay in the invention of 3D-cameras that the ancient epic’s conceptual semi-twin became reality millennia after.
Perhaps for some, the film is
all too real. In a recent article headlined, "Audiences
Experience AvatarBlues," CNN reported incidents of mass
depression and even suicidal thoughts among Avatar fans.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Movie fans are obsessed with
the theme of being reborn into another life as a blue-skinned Na'vi on beautiful
Pandora - images that now torment them with unrelenting déjà vu - delightfully
familiar, yet agonizingly out
of reach.
Without disputing the
possible underlying psychiatric causes of "Pandoramania," Bhagavata Purana
offers a different, unconventional explanation: the inability to miss that
which you have never personally experienced. Just like, as the ancient epic
insists - and Socrates would surely agree: To feel a yearning for a world of
the beauty and integrity of Pandora, the dull reflection of which is Earth, would
only be possible if all of us, including Cameron, had emerged from its actual prototype.
Although surreal,
the point of view of the Bhagavatam leads one to a consoling diagnosis:
the "Avatar blues" isn't a mental disorder, but an awakened nostalgia - "a longing to return, in thought and reality, to one's past, one's
homeland, one's family or friend, or to something lost or past." And by
indulging in this longing just a little … who knows? Perhaps the ancient sage
was right? And perhaps, kayaking down the river of my life to its source, I
will at some point open my eyes amid wish-granting trees, hovering mountains
and a noble tribe led by a blue-skinned hero - and will remain with them forever.
