I felt more and more curious about it. I had read Geeta- its translation in Hindi and also one by Dr. Radha Krishnan the ex-president of India, but never before had I seen such simple rendition of the shlokas in simple English- and that’s what my wife’s grandfather had written about it in the preface, but still how many people had read it? Even my father-in-law had kept it as a book of reverence to adorn his table, but I doubt if he ever opened that book and read it. I asked him to give it to me, for taking along with me on the ship I was joining. Incidentally the Captain on ship that I joined saw it lyin gon my table. He had been brought up with strong Hindu values and he expressed his desire for a copy of the book, which I gave him, hoping that I will get another one from my father-in-law.
After signing off when I returned to India, I asked my father in law to give me another copy as I had given the one I had to the captain onbaord my ship.
But I don’t have another copy he said. That was the last one I had.
I was in contact with that captain who followed me on facebook as he liked my writings. When he wished me through and e-mail message on my birthday, I told him why I wanted the book I gifted to him back, or else I told him to scan the book and send me as a file attachment, which he promptly did.
I was happy that I had the book with me and I could get it printed, as I had a desire of bringing a fresh print of the book and give that to anyone who wished to have it.
After many months when I opened the attachment, I found only some pages haphazardly scanned and attached with the e-mail. I wrote to the captain again. About a year had passed since we had communicated and the book was lost again, buried somewhere in the discarded heap at his apartment in Hong Kong. He being a very busy superintendent in a shipping company could hardly be getting enough time to sleep, but despite this, he replied to my mail and promised to find the boome and do the scanning himself. He regretted having given the job to his office help. He proved true to his words and one day, I was thrilled to find what looked like the whole book scanned and attached.
Many years had passed since I first gave the book to the captain, Ravi Srivastava was his name. And now I had the png scans of all the pages, but as the book itself was very old, the scanning was even worse. The only way, I could reproduce the book was to rewrite all the stanzas by reading from the image file open infront. It was easier said than done for a person like me who may be having as many as thirty or more projects in the pipe line.
But the technology has been advancing at a rapid pace, especially to help the laggards like me. So, I came to learn about Google Lens. Aha! it was like a magic wand given to me by someone. I needed some such tool for converting all my hand written notes, my work in Hindi, my mother’s bhajan and many other projects I have a mind to produce. Still the task was difficult- And then I came across ChatGPT, and here I am now reproducing the book.
Many thoughts came to me while working on the book. The original book had pictures from the epic of Mahabharta incorporated at strategic places, but since the book was published by some local press in Ambala Cantonement the quality of print was very poor, and especially the pictures were too grainy to be revived by any of those AI tools avaialble to me, but there is ChatGPT my friend, always ready to help. I know we will find some solution to this. As such now I have the softwares like Canva and Paintshop, so I will now definitely add the pictures to bring the book to its original beauty.
I myself don’t have the ability to even comment on the work done by Shri Daya Ram Mohan, what to speak of saying something about the verses themselves. When I tried to include the Sanskrit Shlokas, along with the transliterated text along with the verses recreated by the author, as they were not there in the original version, I found the task quite daunting, and I had to turn for help to ChatGPt because the author has reproduced 684 verses against the original seven hundred Shlokas. If you go through some interpretations and the translations available on the internet, you find that some of the shlokas are clubbed together. So, it was impossible for me to match the english rendition with the corresponding Sanskrit shlokas, and I had to once again turn to ChatGPT for help. I also decided to take help and guidance from my sister, who has helped in translating many books Hindu scriptures , and works of great preachers from Sanskrit to English and she is taking classes on the understanding of Bhagwat Gita for RamaKrishna. Who could a better commentary on the book of wisdom, I thought- and then the idea of including short descriptions with the shlokas for better understanding of the deep, meaningful verses occured to me.
One Last Thing
I am excited about the outcome, and my pleasure has increased manifold as the book is nearing completion, but one last thing still needs to be attended to. With the preface of the original version was a pictures of my wife’s grandparents. I have tried many of the modern tools for improving the quality of those pictures. I haven’t been successful yet but I hope, soon I will find a solution to it and then I will announce about my readiness. Till then- Namaskar