This is a place where I write what comes to mind as and when it comes. Welcome to a slice of life, seen through my eyes. Happy reading
Misery by Anton Chekov, a story I came across in a coursebook one of my mother's students had and a story I fell in love with and wondered why we weren't studying it in our English course. I have told it here for you and I hope you enjoy it!
The Bilge Master
This week's episode features The King's Jester by Rabindranath Thakur, which I have read out from an English translation of the anthology Lipika (translated by Joe Winter), which I borrowed from the exhaustive library of Sreeja Mitra, my dear friend.
Enjoy!
The Bilge Master
Jeffrey Archer is an author I have had the pleasure of meeting very briefly. I wanted to do a Jesus themed story since it's Easter. I hope you enjoy this tale! It's called The First Miracle. This is also a shout out to my dear friend Sreeja Mitra, whose birthday it is today.
The Bilge Master
DISCLAIMER: Contains spoilers for a few episodes of Rurouni
Kenshin: Wandering Samurai and Rurouni Kenshin: Legend of Tokyo, the anime
I first met Battousai the Manslayer when I was 12 years old
and I was watching TV at my grandmother’s house. Right from the get go, I was
pulled into the story and only recently did I revisit it with the mature brain
of an adult and needless to say, the anime stirred something in me which
prompts me to write a few lines about it.
The story revolves around the wandering samurai Kenshin
Himura who was an Imperialist assassin in the revolution that preceded the
Meiji era of peace in Japan and such were his exploits on the battlefield that
he earned himself the nom-de-plume of Battousai the Manslayer. However,
once the revolution ended, he sought to lay aside the name Battousai and live a
life of peace. To this end he used a reverse blade sword or a Sakaboto and he
became a wanderer, protecting people from harm. It is in this way that he met
Kaoru Kamiya who ran a dojo which taught the Kamiya Kashin style of
swordsmanship that also focused on protecting people with the sword as opposed
to using the sword to kill.
Kenshin meets a few other characters as he walks on such as
the fighter for hire Sanouske and the child samurai Yahiko as well as Megumi,
the last surviving daughter of a family of distinguished doctors. The one thing
that struck me about Kenshin’s companions is that they never called him
Battousai or Manslayer and that is the first lesson the anime taught me: True
friends will not care about your past.
Kenshin’s Battousai persona first comes awake in his fight
with Jinei where Jinei paralyses Kaoru’s lungs and Kenshin is forced to fight
him and nearly kills him. He breaks Jinei’s elbow and is about to deliver the
killing blow when Kaoru breaks free of the enchantment and stops him. The
danger having passed, Kenshin assumes his normal persona and rushes to Kaoru’s
aid. However, we get a glimpse of just how deadly Battousai was as a swordsman
and we realize that he earned that nickname through spilling blood
indiscriminately.
I was struck with the depth of the protagonist Kenshin
Himura. The two sides of his persona were so different, that it seemed as if
the battle rage changed him totally. However, at the same time, I believed that
Kenshin and the Battousai were the same person. It was not ludicrous. This got
me thinking about the fact that people are not black and white and they are but
shades of grey. Inside each of us is a dark side and a light side- a feral wolf
and a peaceful one and it is up to us which wolf we feed. This holds true for
Kenshin as well.
The Battousai persona rises in Kenshin for the second time
when Hajime Saito comes to the dojo to fight him and find out if he has grown
soft. Kenshin fought on the same battlefield as Saito and therefore is forced to
go all out and thus the Battousai comes alive again. This time the darkness is
a little blacker, the wood a little denser, the fight even more intense and at
one point, I thought Kenshin was at the point of no return. However the
intervention of the police stops Kenshin from staying in the Battousai persona.
It is then that we first hear of Makoto Shishio.
Makoto Shishio, like Kenshin was a fighter in the
revolution. However, he could not bury the manslayer persona and wants to take
over Japan and mould it in his image. This is why he must be stopped and it is up
to Kenshin to do so because Battousai is needed once again. The charm of this
argument did not miss me- use a manslayer to kill a manslayer. Jinei’s last
words to Kenshin before committing hara-kiri were “Once a manslayer, always
a manslayer” after all.
Kenshin accepts the responsibility of stopping Shishio and
to that end he goes back to his master to learn the final technique of the
Hiten Mitsurugi style of swordsmanship- the Amakakeru Ryu No Hirameki. At
first, Kenshin’s master refuses to teach him, but relents and trains him. For
one final moment the Battousai persona awakens as Kenshin tells his master that
he does not fear death, if that is what will take for him to learn the
Amakakeru Ryu No Hirameki. To this his master’s reply is to sheath his sword
and say that with that attitude he cannot learn the technique at all. His
master gives him one night to introspect and find out what he lacks and Kenshin
uses this chance- his ultimate at redemption to vanquish Battousai the
Manslayer once and for all.
Then as it is with all good vs evil stories, Shishio and
Kenshin duel and Kenshin wins.
What I took away from this anime was that sometimes we need
to face our past and learn from our mistakes in order to become a better
person. We need to face the darkness inside us and make the black parts of our
personas a part of us. We also need to forgive ourselves for crimes we may have
committed and we need to move ahead from the shadows. Kenshin Himura and
Battousai resided in the same man. In the end the man chose to be Kenshin
Himura. Was it easy? Was it hard? Is Kenshin evil? What makes a man evil? What
makes a man good? Do actions really speak louder than words? What qualities
redeem a man? And when life gives you a second chance, what do you do with it?
Are you Battousai or are you Kenshin Himura?
The Bilge Master
