“Argumentum Orinthologicum”[1] @ IIHMR University

[1] The title is inspired from a short tale by Jorge Luis Borges “Argumentum Orinthologicum”. https://www.christopherculver.com/translations/ornithologicum.html. The narrative plot of the short piece takes its cues and draws on select passages from the great Sufi treatise- The Conference of the Birds (Manteq at-Tair) the best-known work of Farid ud-Din Attar, a Persian poet who was born at some time during the twelfth century in Neishapour (where Omar Khayyam had also been born), in north-east Iran, and died in the same city early in the thirteenth century. His name, Attar, is a form of the word from which we get the ‘attar’ of ‘attar of roses’ and it indicates a perfume seller or druggist. Attar wrote that he composed his poems in his daru-khané, a word which in modern Persian means a chemist’s shop or drug-store. https://www.sufism.ir/books/download/english/attar-en/bird-parliament-en.pdf

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The flower laden gracious cluster of kachnar trees, the link between the steadfast earth and the rolling skies, welcomes you daily with a fresh carpeting of their fallen flowers, tender light green sepals and shining luminous petals that have so many hues of pink. This is an important ‘hotspot’ for the angelic winged boarders and us lesser mortals. One of the sought after perches, this gently sloping bridge over the culvert is a site of reveries, daydreaming, prognostications and musings. This cluster is the oldest among kachnar plantations, so told Ram Karan, whose team had maintained for years, these sloping courtyards of green lawns with their rows of kachnar and neem tress.

Just the other day upon my return from the morning walk took a detour to reach the place. I was greeted by the soft chirping of sunbirds and the promising company of a group of yellow legged green pigeons perched at the top waiting for the first beams of sunlight.

Whether they are the deep inverted meaning of a zen koan or an ingenious Persian pun, or even a soul stirring sufi melody, these mystical traditions gently coax you to a way of understanding moving reality, complex and elusive. They open a pathway that has at its core, diffractive logics, non- linearity and intrinsic indeterminacy of phenomenon.

Once upon a time

“THE BIRDS, of all Note, Plumage, and Degree,

Birds of all Natures, known or not to Man,

Flock'd from all Quarters into full Divan,

On no less solemn business than to find

Or choose, a Sultan Khalif of their kind,”

(Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of Birds)

One of the pressing reasons why these birds assemble is because they feel every other creature worth the name has their leader, king, chief, and what have you. The leader is presented as an essential prerequisite to a worthy and fulfilled life. And soon there flowed a plethora of argumenta ranging from “…ad antiquitatem (the argument to legacy or tradition), plenty of ad hominem (argument directed at the preferred person), ad populum (argument or appeal to the public)…” and much like the human world, the avian world too had its share of “…ad ignorantiam (argument to ignorance).”[2]

[2] https://www.philosophicalsociety.com/logical%20fallacies.htm

The avian diversity of the micro ecosystem of the IIHMR University becomes its vivacious best as the winters set in. Wagtails, silverbills and redstarts, join the resident rufous tree pies, magpies, shikras and the squads of partridges, lapwings and pigeons.

Their ballistics and deft movements, be it the proud strutting of partridges or bold yet watchful steps of lapwings or catwalks of flamboyant parrots showing off their splendid plumage, this intense avian traffic embeds its imprints on terra firma of IIHMR. The rustlings of metallic flute like interludes of rufous tree pies that punctuate the silence or the melodious liquid notes of an orator magpie, nasal cheers of tiny arboreal passerine sun birds and oriental white eyes, shrill shrieking calls of young shikras, the clucking of pompous partridges and many other sounds not easily heard by us mortal men imbue the built environment of the IIHMR University with their aromatic and harmonious sonic ecology.

This fragrance that induces its intoxicating trance engulfs you to create a very effective ‘bracketing’, in the phenomenological sense that allows us to suspend our judgment of the natural world, of our Cartesian cogito apparatuses that are so busy processing the usual cacophony of meanings, of perceptions and proclaimed ‘truths’.  The cerebral certitudes dissolve to give way to a serene feeling of stillness that so evocatively demonstrates the ontological inseparability of intra-acting agencies. That any materialization of specific phenomenon only resolves this indeterminacy partially is a realization that lies at the core of quantum physics. As Karen Barad, biographer of Niels Bohr and professor of philosophy, feminist studies and history of consciousness argues, “…nothingness is not absence, but the infinite plentitude of openness.”

Perhaps we should let emptiness speak for itself. Musing on such questions of infinity, justice and freedom I got off to get back to the D Block quarters to get ready for another day.

On returning to the housing quarters I encounter a Hoopoe. The same familiar sight with its spectacular crest lowered and forming a spike of feathers. Its inquisitive glances and leisurely gait wheedle you for delving deeper into the phenomenon of mattering. 

In Attar’s magical tale the Hoopoe finally tells the assembled thirty birds who have undertaken the painful journey in search of the Simurgh, the king of birds, realize finally that they themselves—being si murgh, "thirty birds"—are the Simurgh. This is the most ingenious pun in Persian literature, expressing so marvelously the experience of the identity of the soul with the divine essence, of self and leader.

The ‘chronotope’ (intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships) of the robust built environment of the IIHMR University has in its bosom layers of meanings. The original ones, soaked in frugal and rustic life practices, being crafted by the harsh sand strewn and water scarce landscape of Churu and assiduous academic routines followed at no less a place than the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore of the John Hopkins University got bolstered by dexterously produced fortunes of capital far away in Kolkatta. 

This prodigal reservoir of non- human eco system engages with rapid surfeit of logical fallacies of argumentation to unveil the rational ontological categories of time, space, and subjectivity in order to ascertain the omniscience and moral finitude of the quest for a leader who would propel the humanscape into a higher synchronization.

The calm solicitation to ‘logical reason’ of argumentum orinthologicum is not towards an exterior representational logic, as in varieties of objectivism or constructionism but rather an interiorized sublimation, an inducement to consummation of self. Mysticism and its routines apart, at an everyday level, it propels you towards tempering an academic destiny that could rightfully aspire to a galactic status. The experiential symbol of birds and their flight has long been seen as a pliant and dynamic ascension to a higher order of reality. The endeavor of seeking and producing knowledge assumes a human dimension that has a ring of esotericism and is pragmatic as well.

Finally it would not be out of place to remember the words of the great Persian sufi master Farid-ud-din Attar that envelope you. 

“But while you live

You blithely acquiesce in smug comfort

Abandon such self-love

And you will see The Way that leads to Reality”.