Satish Shukla

American Ado: a Literary Primer Satish Shukla

American Ado- a literary primer is but bitter medicine. It may be hard to swallow- no sugar coatings- but if tried could go a long way in relieving America, ridding it of so much scum that its leading men and women have lately collected from cauldrons of unforgiving history. Its intent is to help restore to America its Emerson breath, Thoreau vigor and Whitman fantasy. Themes, arguments, admonition, provocation, polemic, blistering in places getting as hot as iron or then admiration where it is due, drawing in of America into Weltgeschehens overall perspective, couched in cultural and historical content of this neo nation, and quite a bit more not excluding literariness of the creative excursion into intellect's challenging trails should all serve one singular purpose: to help Americans realize the gulf between the promise of their great nation and the lowly practices of its banal citizen, the reason why America would not find world wide acceptance as it naturally belongs to its Groesse. The verse was written in the aftermath of Nine-Eleven, in fact a reaction of a world citizen to reactionary ways of the world's leading lights- both bin Ladens and the Bush type equally. That it happened far away from America in the deep solitudes of Himalaya, and to an Indian should only serve to highlight what measures of cognition lie within the ambit of Vedic Thought, the thing that moved the author to undertake the project, besides human heritage that the world ignores at its own perils such as World Wars or the Holocausts or the dangers posed by atomic destruction, and yet again, post modernly, this terrorism macabre. The reader will return from its readings Mississippi washen if Ganges ablution is still a non starter for the Americans.