UG for Universal Giant?
Deccan Herald, Sunday, July 21, 1991
By Shekarpoorna
We Indians have a weakness for talking. If the speaker is an acknowledged guru, the listeners are intoxicated by his words. We are not embarrassed when we become emotional on listening to a discourse. People would break down and cry while listening to the late philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurthy (JK). There are many who cry even now, just listening to his speeches on tape.
Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurthy (popularly known as UG) also talks like JK. The similarities don't end here. Their faces have a striking resemblance. Both of them choose similar idioms. Both share a Theosophical Society background. In the course of time, both rebelled against it. But while JK spoke calmly, UG gets provoked easily. He is loud and informal. In fact, he even becomes angry when you try to discuss JK with him.
When JK was alive, UG had said about him: “In the early days, he didn't have a huge organisation like he has today. It was a small, simple organisation publishing a few books. He did a little travelling and public talking organized by some friends That was it.
“But now it is a limited concern, a growth industry like any other business. This kind of organisation he has now, with world-wide real estate holdings, boards of trustees, vaults of insured tape recordings, millions of dollars, all run counter to his basic teaching, which is that you can't organise the truth. He shouldn't be building an empire in the name of spirituality.”
UG's anger was logical and justified. When I met UG recently the talk veered round to JK's book, Freedom from the Known, and he said: “Freedom from the known has become known. That is known. Nobody can be free from the known through the help of Krishnamurthy, much less from his books. No, no, thank God he is dead. …”
Can I quote you, I asked.
“Definitely,” he said. “There is much more I can say in the same vein.”
The house in which UG stays in Bangalore is called Purnakuti, as if to bring spiritual associations to mind. But UG is not one to stay in any place for a long time. He has been described as a “homeless wanderer”. He visits India in summer every year. Purnakuti is on a road bustling with traffic. When I went there I learned that Chandra Shekhar, who was the Prime Minister then, had come to see UG at the same place four days earlier.
Several others were already there. UG was reclining on a divan in the manner of Sai Baba. His clothes were neither fully white nor saffron. He was talking to a person (a doctor?) about the comparative merits and drawbacks of allopathy and homeopathy.
UG was saying that all medical systems were restricted in their application. The body, according to UG, has to be kept in its natural, essential state … Not that one should refuse to take medicine.
UG has been saying things about God, salvation, enlightenment that he has said before. A few minutes later, I heard UG saying he preferred the popular qawwali to the music of Ravi Shankar.
Chandrasekhar, UG's friend who owns Purnakuti, had returned from his office when we came down from the first floor. He showed us two books which contain conversations with UG: The Sage and the Housewife by Shanta Kelker and Thought is Your Enemy, edited by Frank Noronha.
The first book is priced at Rs. 98 and the second at Rs. 88. Chandrasekhar also has video recordings of all television interviews with UG broadcast abroad.
Chandrasekhar showed us a video documentary on UG, produced by a foreign TV company. The interviewer, the well-known psychiatrist, Jeffrey Mishlove, has conducted the interview with great enthusiasm. “There are better cassettes with me. Come, I'll show them to you,” Chandrasekhar said and took us upstairs again.
The question-answer session was still on. In a glass shelf next to UG's bed, we were shown a whole set of UG cassettes. “We have only a single copy of those … So we don't lend it out,” Chandrasekhar said.
Frank Noronha, an IAS officer who works in the Prime Minister's office and plays UG's host in Delhi, was with us when I interviewed UG. The afternoon was hot, and noise from the traffic very loud. The air cooler added to the din. The interview was conducted in UG's bedroom upstairs to avoid the noise. Excerpts:
On music: Classical music is more technical than light music. All music is exactly the same. What, after all, is music? It is the space between two notes and melody. The same is true of languages also. If you do not know, or if you do not translate what you are saying, all languages sound exactly the same. So we have been taught how to space these notes and the tunes. See if there is melody or not… So that's all I'm saying…
On noise: Most of the time that noise that is out there… I will never reject that noise. It does not mean that I will sit there all the time to prove that it really doesn't matter whether I listen to the traffic noise or some popular music. If I find myself here probably I'll listen to whatever is going on there and here…
On choice: I'll listen to light music, although I don't understand Hindi. I don't mind listening to Hindi music. But (film director) Mahesh Bhatt is my friend; he was telling me the cassettes of his recent film, Ashiqui, were a mega-success. I don't see his movies. He drags me, forces me to see some of his films… I saw them in bits and pieces.
That movie's music for some reason I couldn't stand. For that matter I cannot stand Hindustani music… or any classical music. If it is a question of two channels telecasting Beethoven and rock-and-roll music, or some popular music, I would prefer the latter… So what's wrong with it? What I'm saying is, preferences are very natural…
On emotions: I am not involved emotionally. It is a choice. You can also say that it has emotional content. So if somebody is singing something and if a dog is barking, I wouldn't run away from there and come here to listen to this music. And if something that is demanding total attention, it doesn't have to be a sunrise or a sunset, a red ray is demanding my attention, I wouldn't bother to look at the sunrise or sunset, you see.
That way all music is beauty. What is beauty? Beauty is a frame… Otherwise there is no way you can appreciate beauty… doesn't mean the absence of beauty is immensity and all that kind of thing. Everything pertaining to response happens to be very mechanical.
Emotionally, we respond to an extent only. My listening is just like this tape recorder recording without bothering about correcting or rejecting. Exactly the same way, the listening mechanism is interested in listening to whatever is going on there.
I've never in my life bought a ticket and listened to any music anywhere in any part of any country.
Our conversation did not touch on enlightenment, moksha or religion. UG must have felt we were talking about inconsequential things. “I don't know why we are talking about these things…” he complained.
“There is no need to talk only on spiritual lines,” I said.
“No, no, this is also perfectly alright,” he consoled himself.
Frank Noronha came with me till the gate. “UG has affected (influenced?) me. That is why I have been able to come to this level. He was the one who told me to take the IAS exams,” he said.
I wanted some more information on UG. In fact, he had desired not to speak of his life or his mystical experiences. Noronha asked me to go with him for these details. I went. He took out xerox copies of interviews with UG, clipped from various newspapers, and two black and white photographs.
I read a snippet from UG's talk with Mahesh Bhatt which had appeared in the Indian Post. “Mahesh, give me some ideas how I can free myself from this whole mess. If you are my friend I want your help. Nothing should remain after me, nothing. I don't want any individual to see anything in my name or in the name of any organisation…”
Do you know UG's height and weight, I asked Noronha. He didn't. He rang up Purnakuti. I don't know who picked up the phone. I was stunned by the reply.
“Height?”
“Skyhigh.”
“Weight?”
“Universal.”
But UG's passport says he is 1.63 metres tall. He weighs 63 kg.
