Old Bachelor Boys and Their Changing Tides

Old bachelor boys are free floaters. They are swayed in four directions by the petty waves of circumstances, emotions, sentiments and changing winds.

Unlike the poor familywalas, who are anchored to their liabilities, tensions, pleasantries, problems and issues of children and other relations, they are voyaged instinctively by the circumstantial gusts.

I have two uncles belonging to this free-floating category.

Sometimes it can be very annoying and taxing while coping with the tsunami-like surge of their reactions, both sympathetic and irritating. But that is what being a free floater is all about.

They might lead you to the brink of craziness sometimes. For example, on occasions when, unjustifiably, you are standing vis-à-vis their relations, your relation with them is shaken precariously, because they—what else do you expect from the free floaters?—shake and sway, creating ripples around, splashing the cold water of anger, and sometimes real, unpretended hate as well, in your face.

You are left gasping for breath.

But such instinctiveness on their part should not become a lasting block of your heartbreak with them. As it stands, nothing is permanent with them.

Next time, you are sure to be drowned in the sea of sympathy and kindness. Their voices will be choked with real pain at your loss. Tears will surge in their benevolent eyes.

How can you escape being swallowed by the big tidal waves of this genuine emotion?

Such are my uncles, Uncle Jaisingh and Uncle Satbir, and such are their reactions, belonging to both ends of the emotional spectrum.

Though often problematic, it is worth savouring that emotional cocktail in the company of old bachelor uncles.

Christmas Fog and an Unhealed Wound

 December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas.

The real winter is here because we have the first foggy morning of the season—a shivering, exciting gift from the great charitable Jolly Santa.

Today, the twilight sneaked a peek through the silvery-grey, moonlit swathes of fog. Wispy waves of fog ride chillily while the great festival is celebrated all over the world.

Snow-white beard, red cap, furry coat, bag of gifts on the shoulder, reindeer sleighs—the great character symbolizes so many nice things for Christian children all over the world.

If not in the countrysides and small towns, at least in the metropolitans, the festival is celebrated with equal fervour by the new urban class, internationalized in its attitude.

“Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell” now sounds familiar from the lips of kids of all religions the world over, and it is good. After all, the children belong to all of humanity.

They like to dress up as Santa—the grown-up generous kid. Innocent flirtations, hilarity, fun and frolics.

*****

Moving on to other things.

Tomorrow, the Boxing Day Test is starting in the summer-charged atmosphere of Australia. I hope Sachin doesn't miss the three-figure mark this time. I hope he has had his fill of nineties now and will oblige us with a century further.

Recovering from the great injustice inflicted by the Honourable Supreme Court, and not even getting the time to lick my wounds, I have started to look for alternatives in the face of such gross misuse of state power.

Mine can be a classic case of turning into an anti-establishment element, but I know that in that case I will be accruing further losses because the state is too big, those in power too incorrigible.

I can write; I can't fight.

Even if I have the slightest iota of respect for myself, I should go to Bastar to join the Naxalite movement to have my little share of justice myself.

Looking at the ways in which the mightiest arm of justice was twisted into confusion by the still brawnier and more muscular strong arm of politicians, I do have genuine reasons to feel that there is no real justice under the current setup.

But it is a futile complaint because I don't have the strength to take even a single step against this wrong done to me and my batchmates by the state itself, using the dagger of constitutionality.

The way the case went in the Supreme Court, I have very strong reasons to believe that the Italian iron lady, being prompted by her chief crony in the state, had definitely something to do with it. But she will definitely have her cup of woes. Fates change in politics. Just wait and watch. Bigger political lions will settle scores for common people like us. 

The myth and cult of the Nehru family will be eaten by fast-spreading termites let loose by Mayawati for all the socially, economically and politically depressed classes. She had given enough cuts in the recent Gujarat elections to Congress and will slowly, slowly eat away the support base of the family which has, for the last sixty long years, kept the idol of the Nehru family aloft on its frail shoulders without getting any remuneration.

Curse to Congress. That's what a wounded citizen of India can do. I hope it's not illegal to vent out one's frustration against injustice. 

When the Cold Nanny Lost Her Teeth: Winters, Smog and Supermosquitoes

December 22, 2007

Winter solstice, when the sun shines over the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere, far away from the Northern Hemisphere. Right there it shines overhead in the southern part of the globe to vent out its summer fury, and here it signals the pleasant fury of winters.

But of late, during the past two decades especially, the cold nanny has further lost its teeth. The winters have been checkmated by global warming.

Thus far, we have not had a single foggy day. Now, what are winters without the real fog?

Though there has been fog in Delhi, it is carried on its tepid back by the nuisance particles of pollution, and it is smog, which disrupts airlines and further wreaks havoc with the lungs of Delhiites.

Here in the countryside, a new breed of mosquitoes—the supermosquitoes—has cropped up, which still plagues our sleep. Even though the minimum temperature raised its freezing sight to three degrees Celsius one day to wipe out the remaining bloodsuckers, but they still remain.

Since the villages don't have a running sewage system, the latrine pits dot the area. Mosquitoes have now found new breeding grounds in the covered latrine tanks. They keep in touch with the outer world through the gas pipes, slipping in and out of the stinking corridors.

These new-age mosquitoes, big and black like houseflies, courageously carry the banner of their stinginess through the nights. They have chiding sneak peeks at the noses of villagers sticking out of quilts. They bite, have heat from the breath, and dance away to glory.

Many are now forced to keep their ceiling fans on at slow speed to ward off the nuisance.

All in all, the mosquitoes have become an all-year phenomenon.

Footballs of the System: Fifteen Months Between Hope and Betrayal

December 20, 2007

I have very particular reasons to hate the Congress and Congresswalas as a class. Some might find it a political thing, but no, it is a real one in my case.

Merciless, cold, vindictive steps taken by the Hooda government have almost destroyed my career. It is an irremediable dent in my life, in my career, in the prospects of a long-due happiness for my unjustifiably suffering brothers, sisters and parents.

The state roller-coasted over us—the entire HCS 2004 batch—like a great stone crusher, a great road roller, a massive juggernaut, making dust of the unwanted pebbles of me and my fellow batchmates, crushing our dreams, the fruit of our efforts, mercilessly, heartlessly.

For fifteen long months, the Honourable Supreme Court of India—dishonourably played the game of cat and mouse with us, showed us all the possibilities of justice, and in the end, apparently in order to appease the iron lady at the helm of affairs, allowed the blinding cloth on its eyes to turn a blind eye to the pathetically suffering cause of common men, common men like me.

The Nyaymurtis, according to me, in my suffering judgment, appear like annyaymurtis without even a single moral ruffle in their souls. They gave a green signal to the bandwagon of politicians playing ping-pong with every type of constitutionality.

“The government has the power to do what it wants to do. We can't interfere with the judgment of the High Court in this matter.”

This is the summary of their happy chorus.

They don't seem to be prepared to ruffle political feathers for a little cause like giving justice to commoners. If they were so helpless in this matter, then why, in the name of God, did they entertain our SLP in the first place?

The sham show of fifteen long months could have been avoided. At least some of us, like me, perennial believers in the uprightness of the Honourable Supreme Court, would have been saved from further delay in charting our alternative plans to make a career.

This belief in the system of justice has boomeranged like a fatal, self-inflicted arrow through our ribs.

And where do I stand today?

Thirty years of age, yet to earn a single penny for my near and dear ones.

People will easily put my tray full of agonies in the dustbin by saying I should seek alternatives, or rather should have done so a long time ago. But what of the betrayal by the very same arm of constitutionality which is always portrayed as the keeper of your rights and dignity?

Where are my rights and dignity after all this nonsense at the highest level in the judiciary?

If the Honourable Supreme Court judges are recommended and appointed through a thoroughly political process, how can they—the poor human beings pretending to be gods, or nearly so—escape being shackled politically when the matters involved are related to the mammothly inflated egos of those who facilitated the ascension of a man from a lower judicial status to that of a judicial superman?

Why aren't there any clauses in the Constitution to put the errant judiciarywala behind bars like a criminal if proven guilty? They keep all the laws in their pockets. This fraternity to always protect, at any cost, their class interest has now spawned the gutter of illegalities ranging from bureaucrats and politicians.

Where is real justice in India?

It is a false play of justice. In reality, the political class has its unlawful say in the end through the grossest misutilisation of state resources.

They are too big boulders, bigger than the puny iron wheels of the dispenser of justice, which enjoys its worth and significance through its crushing, crunching, dusting forays over weak, fragile pebbles like me.

So, a big shame on the face of the judicial system. What else I can say after my decade long hard work being splashed into the gutter by powerful political forces? 

I now consider it just like any other petty government institution, always under the threat of being misused to settle political scores that crush the spirit of justice.

The macho man drunk with power and thousands of glasses of alcohol—I wish he were his own urine drinker like Morarji Desai—now rules in the coveted seat, claiming it as a political victory of his government over the Chautala government.

But in what way does Mr. Chautala suffer from the judgment?

In no way.

The Puffy Gullu can't even dare to touch the strongman of Jatland. So the poor liquor-guzzler, with a puffed, bloated face, joker-nosed, is having potshots at anything related to the past government. As a wronged citizen of India, seething with impotent rage, this is all I can do to keep my sanity -- call names like a cheap idiot. 

Whenever there is a rally in Haryana where his mai, his Italian mai, comes visiting, the poor idiot, the believer in feudal aristocratic democracy, fumbles for words, always falling short of ideas in the presence of Madam, his bones shaking with fear as if she will drop him from the throne for any miscalculation.

So the ever-cringing chief schemer at the state level presents her with gold-framed pictures of her late husband; ever singing accolades for the first politcal family to keep sticking to the hot seat. 

Put to smithereens by the storm, lashed by him, I cling to hope.

What hope can there be for me?

As the elections come near, I am left with no alternative other than becoming a full-time noisy worker of Chautala party.

The Honourable Supreme Court has allowed us to remain as poor footballs, being kicked from this side to that.

It would have been better had the Honourable judges dismissed the petition altogether. In that case, at least there would not have remained any further possibility for political kick-starting.

But as it is, it is one of the most depressing, ambiguous, vague, slightly open-ended judgments, leaving us at the mercy of a political shark who will play cat and mouse with us.

The Garbage Plateau and the Corridors of Boom

 December 18, 2007

By the side of Karnal Bypass, the black-bluish plateau of garbage vents out its displeasing fury quite effusively in all directions. It is breathing, as though visible in the form of bluish-black smog hovering around.

How can Delhi escape the tentacled dregs of this massive pile of garbage—a kind of garbage-child clinging to Mother Delhi to suckle the airy breasts of the capital in this mystifying zone of pollution?

Vehicles ply in four directions, the stench giving them a nice cuddly slap on the back a good hundred yards away, down or up the road.

Along the footwalks, supported by cemented side rails, dirt-cheap, earth-level business thrives in the form of chaatwala, chholewala, fruit seller, puncturewala and many others struggling and striving to carve out a foothold on the slippery path of economic survival, their feet staring down the precipitous slope yearningly. And there, in the filthy nullah of starvation, humiliation and death, beggars crawl like hand-and-feetless subhuman creatures.

In blind contrast to this gutter-level misery, there is the emotional, economic and cultural heart of Delhi—Connaught Place.

Those massive, wide rows of colonnades harbour the corridors of luxury, business and enterprise. Cultured, educated, modern Indians and some cocktaily interjection of fair- and black-skinned foreigners tap the cemented floors, the conveyor belts of business and boom.

Many an Indian now rides the belt of boom.

Offices are plush here, with calm, tranquil air, which takes you, at least for some time, away from the cluttering miseries eating into the limbs and organs of Delhi.

Here, fragrance is good.

The light shining from the glossed and glassed eyes of high economics makes everything refulgent with hopes, removes the underside darkish odor. The blinds on the windows don't allow the sun of realities to have a sneak peek at this marvellous sun of human desires and strivings.

Parking lots are crammed with all varieties of cars. Here you are charged hourly, and it takes a marvellous effort of ingenuity by the staff boys to get your car out on the road from among the packed chessboard.

Connaught Place avenues are almost always, save some couple of hours late in the night, full to the gills with cars and autos.

Beneath the colonnades, the luxurious shopfronts show you the resurgent face of India. Even a paanwala with his tiny table appears a man of consequence. Even a chhole-bhaturewala makes bucks reaching to a thousand during the day.

In the tiny glassed cubicles, the money exchanger greets the foreigners, now not with a cringing smile, rather with the pride of equality.

Perhaps the days of colonial hangover are gone. Perhaps we no longer feel inferior at the mere sight of a white-skinned foreigner.

Here, ticket-booking offices have endless streams of gentlemen and ladies to keep the smiles on the dummies and staff ready forever.

The Road to Prosperity: Wheels, Rockets and the People Left Behind

October, 2005

The district road looping around our village has always been busy. Earlier, it was busier with noise than with the rhymes of smooth traffic. It was famished for two decades and cried for tar, like a thirsty dying man pining for a drop of water in a desert. It was terribly pockmarked, and the chassis, bodies and windscreens of trucks, tractors, as well as two- and three-wheelers, rattled over it.

It was a noisy, jingling affair, like a long serpentine toy, one of those jingling ones which the kids enjoy so much. The vehicles plied over it almost cursingly.

But the commencement of this new century has brought a smooth, less corrupted, less adulterated layer for the road. Advancement and fast speed demand a smooth asphalt layer on roads everywhere in India.

There has been a boom in the automobile industry: cars, cars, more cars for the upwardly mobile, then motorcycles for the lower middle classes, then mopeds for the lower classes.

The road is now busier than ever in negotiating the frictions: the dangerous propensity of rubbing shoulders between the lesser privileged and the more privileged, between cars and motorcycles, between man on foot and the hurtling metal machines.

The road now carries an added vindictive, progress-bound, revengeful, competitive air of adding more wheels under the bottoms of progress-aspiring people; adding more and more wheels to become the centipedes of the fast track, the beaters, the victorious, the triumphant czars of the new century.

The lower-middle-class couple riding on a bike, the compatible wife holding the child in one hand and the other holding the bulging belly of her husband, along with bags and packets of shopping, and the load of immense expectations and desires, goes with dangerous speed and risky nearness to accident through the spaces between big cars and trucks.

The small cars cast enviously angry looks at the big cars. The motorcycles stare at the Marutis. The Marutis give jealous daggers to the Hondas.

It is a breakneck pace. Boosted by jealousies and complexes. 

All hurtling at a furious pace to reach some unsparing life in the concrete jungle.

But this contrast between the haves and have-nots is mounting with the propensity of unsustainability. There are numerous ant-like labourers, road workers, beggars and peddlers along these serpentine paths of our progress.

It is a dangerous proposition indeed.

While the paddy, grown to full height, shows signs of yellowing around the lower end, and grains in the crowns have rice in their womb, the dangerous proximity of rising ambitions of the latter aspiring combatants goes hooting, hurtling, buzzing with blazing horns along the road, across the fields, and in cities too—in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Faridabad.

Hopes and prosperities are rocketing up with sheer vertical force.

The rocket fuel shoots up a tiny, minuscule section along with their luxurious apartments, mega malls, multiplexes, cars, computers and aircraft into the higher orbits.

The launch pad, however, is surrounded by a barren, bemoaning field crowded with masses craving for even the basic faculties of life.

The launch pad's platform is but a tiny dot on this vast, horizontally spread-out sea of deprivation—slums, rats and rodents, labour, poverty, crime, prostitution, beggary, butchery—a sea of gloom around the tiny lighthouse of prosperity.

Shadows of the shining minarets cast crosses of suffering, compromise and helplessness over the shadowy, grassy network of the teeming majority.

They look high into the man-made sun, heaven, stars, galaxies. They come in between their eyes and the real moon, which is still higher.

Crammed under this man-made cosmic world, they have lower gods, lower heavens—not needing hell, for it is around them already.

They love it for being so near, with its glitter and sheen, enough nearness to make them jumping monkeys trying to touch some finger to the bright adornments hanging down from the rich ceiling.

They hate it as well, like tiny live rogues in a sizzling hot pan.

For this inverse gravitational force makes them just helpless, puny tools, see-sawing between the earthly and manly gravitation.

Rates of property have boomed through the ceiling.

The real-estate business—the rocket—with each scheduled or unscheduled launch, makes countless souls almost crawl out of their skins to stick to it. If not able to get a seat inside, then at least to stick to some nut or bolt on the hot, shiny exterior.

Still beyond, in the famished hinterlands of states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Andhra and Odisha, the Naxalites are having potshots from too far a distance, too far for their medieval muskets, at the spacecraft of capitalism. It is like throwing darts of mud at a massive stone—ineffective.

The ideology seems almost craziness, a futility which will result in death only. They don't seem to have any future to me. Futile exercise. 

The people of the high-five class—I mean those who have climbed several profit-making rungs on the corporate ladder and thus are entitled to fill up the Page Three sheets in newspapers with their bloated, tiny world of ultra-modern gossip, fashion, house decorations, holidaying, sex and alcohol—these are exquisite people who have now started to name their younger ones after the names and characters from India's scriptural past.

The aerial view from the pedestal of their achievement is increasing in scope. In letter only, missing the spirit. They cling to ground through a few museum-kind old names, which glitter with their mythological sheen. It arouses many visions in the eyes of art curators and antique dealers.

So the great and glorified trail -- an entire tomeful of the scriptures, epics and mythological mystics -- is cut, trimmed and packaged in the form of a word to shoot the glittery, glorious future of the rich kid.

The greatness, obstructed, cut and preened to be put in an encasement, is presented to a soft, mushy life. Cut from its glorious chapter, the word is fitted into the ultra-modern chapter of a kid's book, where the only reason for its not being lost is that it is outlandish in the linguistic field where English, the mighty warrior, calls all the shots.

We have Vedanta, Harsha, Yudhishthir, Yashaswi, Dushyant, Sanskriti, etc., etc.—the names, the title heads to whole bale-fulls of mysticals of the past.

If somebody says, “What is in a name?” then he has a chance of being in the line of some indiscretion, because such names are the pallbearers of a whole era, a whole tome, a whole mythological milieu.

Stuffed inside the whole mass lies the attractive word, now living as the rich title of some innocently spoilt life.

Well, the days now have acquired a deliciously cool tinge in this late autumn. In mid-October, all the monsoonal wetness, summer's furies, winter's cold clasp, spring's helpless urge and desire—all appear to be lulled into a sort of unheeded dreaminess in which time certainly flies without any drags, if not disturbed by our seasonless breakers—that is, human intrigues and wars, ranging from the streets to the worldly stage.

The Churning Within: From Infinite Nothingness to the Creative Self

Infinity, in my humble opinion, is an absolute void, an absolute emptiness, an absolute state of non-being. But at the same time, it has potential for anything. It has infinite potential.

So it is nothing as well as everything at the same time.

And this, according to me, is the state that allows the concept of infinity to stand with our limited logical human understanding and reasoning.

Now, just like in the sea you have water all around, but there are individual atoms and molecules, and in other states of being as well, like in the solid state, you have subatomic particles getting defined by a particular atom, then atoms binding together to form molecules, and still bigger structures.

So there is a hierarchical arrangement, an inherently coded order.

Similarly, if we talk about the existence of humans in terms of our consciousness—the basic energy that drives our feeling of self or awareness of being a separate individual entity—then if we take that as the smaller constituent of our identity, it is logical that this particular little ounce of consciousness that drives my sense of being is structurally bound by a bigger arrangement, just like subatomic particles have atoms, and atoms are arranged in terms of molecules and other structures.

So similarly, at the level of energy and consciousness, our individual small consciousness, our bracketed awareness of identity, is also arranged in a hierarchy. There are bigger structures so that it fits into the overall cosmic entity, because nothing can stand in absolute isolation.

Now that also defines infinity: a state of being where each and everything cannot stand in absolute isolation. It has to stay in relation to something else.

So starting from my individual consciousness, where I am particularly, specifically aware of my unique identity, there are things which apparently separate me from others—in terms of primarily my body, then my mind, and body and mind coming together to give me other identities in terms of larger collectives like nationality, caste, race, religion, etc.

And then there are so many other individual, conceptual identities that we derive out of the collective pools of identity-making, in terms of institutions, education, cultural organisations, where I derive my own specific, smaller identity.

So this is what I mean by one's own unique, specific identity, where you are conscious:

'Yes, this is me.'

But beyond our conscious being, we have deeper layers. That is the subconscious.

Now subconsciousness is a transitory zone between consciousness and superconsciousness. Here, the overall unbound, undefined, unqualified pure potential of superconsciousness, of cosmic consciousness, mixes with the forces that drive your identity.

So this is the buffer zone.

And it gives glimpses, but it is not directly driving the cart of our life. It is indirectly, in fact, doing everything, because it is the base on which consciousness is directly supported, and immediately beyond that is superconsciousness.

So here you have your collective pool of karma, memories and inherent proclivities coded into your existence, as per your evolution, as per this particular stream of consciousness or energy that manifests you at this time.

It has a lot of coded software, you can call it.

It has a deep pool of memories, information, data, which defines this particular identity of yours at this phase of life.

And beyond that, of course, is the overall sustaining cosmic sea, the absolute voidness, the perfect nothingness, absolutely full of the fullest possible infinite potential that is churning out these manifestations in the form of everything—from galaxies to microorganisms here on Earth.

The beauty of looking within is that every spiritual tradition, every path that aims to take one closer to the real meaning of life or the real self, talks of going within, getting into a pose, looking within, recognising the higher self within oneself.

They mean becoming, first, more and more aware of the enveloping subconscious around your consciousness—the buffer zone between superconsciousness and your consciousness.

The more you consciously start going into the bigger zone of subconsciousness—which, they say, opens up when we are in deep sleep—the more that conscious grip begins to loosen. Because the practical requirements of our day-to-day life, and the consequent insecurities, fears, ambitions, everything, bracket us into too tight a corner. Because of which we feel the typical restlessness that we talk of, that we feel—all of us—that typical vague, throbbing restlessness that is always there like a shadow, irrespective of where you are placed, what you have created on Earth, whether you travel in chartered planes or you are walking on foot.

That shadow is more or less universal with human beings.

As we consciously release that narrow confine and enter the zone of subconsciousness, we may find that much of that vagueness, that vague restlessness, that inherent state of dissatisfaction and discontentment, irrespective of what we achieve, what we do, what we receive, is born of the jumblement of energies in the transitory zone.

Here lots of information that defines our conscious identity is going around randomly, and it is here that the cosmic void, the super-entity enveloping the superconsciousness, is trying to create a kind of energetic, informational churning which finally gives rise to your identity as an individual. Just like after churning milk, you have butter. But that churning goes on and on in our subconsciousness, which is the collective pool of so many of our experiences, memories, the entire coded information of our endless journey from the unknown to this point. Since it is going around so randomly, it is going around so forcefully, as if it is trying to actualise its full potential, as if it is not happy or satisfied with the butter that it has produced after the churning. 

So the more we go into it, the more we look into the bigger pool of subconsciousness beyond our consciousness, the clearer it becomes to us, because it is a broader platform. It is not a little prison anymore.

The moment you become aware of even those random thoughts, energies, which have been driving your impulses, instincts, making you behave and feel in so many ways that you later feel guilty about or simply don't like, and the more you go there and just stand there as a witness, those random thoughts, emotions and energies which are swirling around our consciousness start getting stabilised.

And the more they stabilise, the more they are in harmony with the surrounding layer at the still higher hierarchy—that is, cosmic consciousness.

So the more we go into our subconsciousness, the more stabilisation there is, the more it comes into synchronicity with the absolute potential of absolute nothingness.

And this, they say, is about becoming enlightened, about having a channel with superconsciousness. And they say it gives absolute bliss and joy.

And the possibility is like this.

Just imagine somebody walking out of the narrow confines of his six-by-six cell in a prison, in utmost isolation, his identity defined by the stone walls, narrow confines, and just the miserable me.

If that person is taken out and suddenly left alone in beautiful mountains, lush green forests, milky streams, cool breeze, birds chirping—it means he is allowed to enjoy life as part of a larger collective.

Obviously, he will feel liberated, let out of the torture of narrow confines.

Now the question arises: how do we stabilise our ever-churning subconsciousness, which keeps producing those vague shadows of discontentment, irrespective of what we do or what we achieve?

In my opinion, there can be a very beautiful technique of doing this.

It is about going into the zone of creation.

Because when you are creating something, be it writing—writing of any genre—or any type of art, be it painting, sculpture, pottery, anything, when you are 100% in the moment, in the present, only then are you in that creative phase as an artist.

It means that when you are thoroughly engrossed and absorbed in the beautiful, joyful spontaneity of that moment, which is not being pulled in two directions by the past and the future, you are on the platform of the subconscious. And it has a big amount of information, data, energy and potential which you can draw out.

So as you are working, when you are writing, or you are producing some piece of art, or you are making anything which drives your passion, you are giving a more specific shape to the random energy which is swirling to seek out a passage in your subconsciousness.

You are giving it an opportunity to acquire a specific, concrete shape, because this is what it has been seeking, and this is what each and every particle of this universe is looking for—expansion in more and more and more specific forms.

So the more we are giving channels and outlets and avenues to the random energies, the whirlpools and swirls and cascading waves of so many past experiences which we have gone through, the more these energies find expression.

When we are making, when we are allowing ourselves into the joyful throes of the Creator, we are little means and tools of Father Creator—call it God, the ultimate cause, in whatever form you want to recognise it.

Those random swirls of energy, those deep whirlpools of memories, those cascading waves of numerous thoughts, emotions, linked to this particular pathway of evolution that has manifested in you, get an avenue to spend their energy and acquire a specific shape.

And the moment it acquires a specific shape, there is relative stability—from a volatile state to a more stable form.

So as an artist, you are providing your boiling energies in the subconsciousness—energies of all types, just piling up to burst forth, just like lava bursts out from huge chambers of unspent thoughts, emotions, feelings, countless experiences related to this particular pathway of evolution.

They are boiling in a destabilised form to acquire a more stabilised shape.

So as an artist, you are giving them a platform to come out and acquire distinct and hence relatively stabler forms.

And when the enveloping entirety around our consciousness—that is, subconsciousness—becomes stabler, it is a more suitable platform for superconsciousness to have direct communication with it, because there is no big differentiating buffer zone between the overall cosmic entity and subconsciousness.

There is still a difference, but the contrast is not too hard.

The contrast is not too big.

And when there is not a big contrast between our foundation, that is our subconsciousness, and superconsciousness, it means we are in more harmony and synchronisation with the absolute state of non-being.

And being in harmony and peace with the absolute state of non-being, our 'being' also feels the utmost rest and peace that, they say, lies there in each and every ounce of this cosmic energy.

So that is why people feel so calm and joyful after meditation and following spiritual techniques.

So, as a humble seeker on the path, I would request you to try to give more specific shape to what lies in your subconscious.

Yes, this world requires practicalities.

You have to take care of your needs, of your family's needs. You have to aim for your dreams. You have to make careers. You have to go into business as well.

Do that.

But never, ever ignore doing and making and crafting your higher self in the zone of your subconsciousness.

If you are giving yourself a larger and bigger and stronger foundation, then the rest of it that you make on the worldly stage will be a logical product of that strength, that inherent inner strength in your subconsciousness.

When you are making the worldly life out of the stabler self it will be nice and joyful. Of course, it is the input-and-output rule.

And the manifestation will be still better.

A Distant October of Old Hearts and Ripening Fields

October 2007

Tau Ram Singh is no more, the square-built old farmer of about 85 years, who saw money almost raining down on his clan, thanks to the blessing hand of Lord Kuber, through the clouds of mushrooms so honestly cultivated by his grandsons.

He died in Brahmamuhurat.

The day before, he had gone to Sonipat, as had been his norm during his post-farming days. He was a genuine well-wisher of my family. Losing him means we miss the support of an aged, blessing heart.

I wish he was still there when something came out of our hugely belated results in lieu of our hard work, because he would have really liked it. Like our own grandpa, he lived life fully, worked tirelessly in the fields during his heydays, saw his four grandchildren making a fortune through mushroom cultivation, and, of course, two big houses in the making, with lakhs and lakhs of rupees spent on them.

He was friendly. He loved going to meet his favourite people, the people who respected him and welcomed him in front of their doors. He had had his goodly share of heated tantrums with his granddaughters-in-law, of course. He threw obscenities in his liberal paternal way, and showered kindness on whom he thought he must. The sturdy farmer would shake with bone-shaking laughter while sharing guffawing anecdotes.

Many a time he seemed to be running out of patience with my success that always appeared 'yet to come'.

“When will your time come? I'm afraid it will come when I am gone forever,” he exclaimed once.

And I convinced him that he would be around when the results of my doings would start coming forth.

But the man is no more.

His loss is redeemed by a few facts: he lived up to a ripe age and died without getting bedridden. He leaves behind a happy and prosperous big family. He leaves behind fond memories in the hearts of those with whom he spent his old days, taking great pains in reaching up to them, if they, like me, the rooted one, did not go to him.

A good life. He definitely passed the test.

May God bestow peace upon his soul.

*****

Benazir Bhutto, the lady in exile, has returned to Pakistan, but all does not seem well for her political future. The ceremonial march of her convoy was greeted with deadly explosions, killing 140 and injuring scores of others.

The attackers are believed to be from among the teeming terrorist groups, ranging from the Taliban to the loyalists of the late General Zia-ul-Haq.

Pakistan is bleeding too profusely now for any humanistic eye to see it through the narrow, stilted, bracketed vision of history, wars, geostrategy, animosity, religion, fundamentalism, terrorism, etc.

But still one cannot escape being caught by the accusative snares laid by the sufferer against their madly supposed and imagined  archenemy India. 

Pakistan, the nation which for 60 long years fed hate into most of its institutions, which slowly percolated into the quiet, walled alleys of its society, now bears the recoil.

If you dig holes for others, there will be a day when you yourself will fall into one of them.

Those who managed this bloody programme are a tiny section of the whole population of Pakistan, yet for their deeds the entire poor, common, mundane, helpless mass gets branded with fanaticism, jihad and terrorism.

Wishing a bloody consequence upon one's enemy is too short and puny, temporary and farcical a dream, simply for one reason: if our neighbour's house is on fire, you are always in danger of being caught by the angrily lolloping tongues of the fire, because it needs more and more fodder from the surrounding areas.

So the best means of security one's own home and hearth is to help quell the source of the scourge.

India is too big, brotherly, progressive and tolerant to always think in the narrow terms of going gaga over others' fires. We ought to believe, we ought to behave, in a manner befitting our status.

The world has shrunk too rapidly now to permit us to treat the problem in a limited, petrified, single-issue persona. We have to think and devise in a broader, accommodative, calculating, futuristic manner.

The more we help in getting our neighbourhood stabilised, the better chance we stand of pursuing our dreams of developing India into a developed country, playing a big international role, taking up responsibilities as a global power.

Afghanistan is still burning. Communists are on tenterhooks in Nepal. The military is going back on history in Myanmar. The LTTE in Sri Lanka. Bhutan needs support for democracy in its womb, which makes it a very tough task indeed.

*****

In the second half of October, here we have Dussehra, the famous festival of Vijayadashami.

No specific victories for the day, except that I helped my brother, Amit, whom we call Tina, in clearing the field of the last patch of drying jowar, so that oats, barsham and wheat can be sown during the upcoming winter season.

While you put the drying jowar to the sickle, it never gets undone without giving you a few nasty cuts to your fingers and palms, however coarse, calloused and hardened the farming hands might be.

For such a purpose, mine are almost virginally soft, because yours truly is basically a writer and reader. Yet I did the job to the part-time farmer, part-time student's satisfaction.

Now, the part-time farmer and part-time student happens to be my brother.

If you earn a few drops of perspiration with farm work in the late morning, the cool mulberry shade becomes far, far more enjoyable than an icy shelter amidst the hot June desert.

I earned a few, and enjoyed the latter effect as well.

Customs related to Dussehra have almost died in this part of the world. It has now become one more holiday, whose arrival is applauded by school and office goers. But the poor date this year falls on a Sunday, so the school kids even hold a grudge against the festival for losing its effect on a cool Sunday without adding to the latter's charm in any way.

So they look forward to Diwali, which fortunately doesn't fall on Sunday this year.

Elsewhere, in the Supreme Court, the judges are still roosting over our civil-service case. The case was closed with a reserved verdict on August 30. I don't know what more they want to know which escaped their scrutiny during the year-long proceedings.

They are well and high. They must be knowing better. We can't even say anything against them. They can easily put anyone behind the bars, especially the poor and the unprotected who can't spend money on legal proceedings. 

But one thing is clear: the cause of justice has been hugely, irreparably dented during these three long judicial years since the case has been pending, denying us appointment forever.

It needs hell lot of hard work to get into the civil services. Then you face this. This is harassment. Plain and raw. Illegality in legal corridors. 

Such delays only purport that the judiciary is beyond the laws of the land, almost.

So one more Dussehra goes without doling out the little piece of concretisation of the faith behind the myth and legend of the festival. The myth: The victory of the good over the evil. I can't see it happening anywhere in fact. 

The stepmotherly hand is roosting over the illegal hatchers.

The finality, the reality, is too big to raise a voice against it.

*****

Farmers, at least a section of all those who have sown the 1121 sub-variety of the famed Basmati rice in the district, are to gather for a protest and petition to be forwarded to the state government, which in turn ought to forward it to the Centre. And for this, the starting point is to arrive with the petition at the District Commissioner's office.

A fortnight ago, there was a stock-market-type boom, buying and surge in the prices of the 1121 paddy variety. With an average acre producing around 20 quintals, it was expected to fetch anything in excess of 40,000 rupees.

Since this variety is sown about three weeks earlier than the real trademark Basmati, the patrons of this subsidiary jeered with joy at such high returns, which the real branded Basmati would barely hope to match in the coming weeks.

But then the euphoria crashed like the Sensex.

Export was stopped, docks thus dried under the dumped weight. Traders, piqued over such high prices, argued that if the namesake Basmati was selling at such high prices, the prices of the real one would burst through their trading roofs.

A case was thus put up before the legal luminaries.

The price has now crashed.

It is the moment of triumph for the heralders of true Basmati. They gloated over this ill fate of the 1121 paddy variety.

A farmer is the worst enemy of his fellow farmers, as they say.

They will let themselves be cheated by the Baniyas in the mandis. They will forgive the government for all the major crimes against their interests and hard work. But when it comes to things between themselves, they spare no nonsense in hitting each other on the head as hard as possible.

So while the poor 1121-wala farmers gather before the DC office, some real Basmati-wala farmers are heard gloating:

“The fools should be lathi-charged. They must return with their dhotis torn.”

While the worms of despair are eating into the hearts of 1121-sowing farmers, the seeds of hope are sprouting in similar chambers inside the real Basmati-wala farmers.

“The longer the logjam continues, the better the conditions for the stalled market. Our Basmati will then touch the 5,000-rupees-per-quintal mark,” they muse enthusiastically.

*****

Let us now move over to a bit of talk about the heart.

Heart attack is emerging as the biggest killer in the countryside. Even in the rural areas where people's lives are dominated by hard work in the fields, the nemesis has now started to pick up its victims across all age groups and all weight categories.

The news of a hale-looking farming man in his mid-thirties being checkmated by the first cardiac attack now no longer comes as a surprise.

People now have been forced to accept the bitter reality that death is nearer than ever.

Looking at the number of heart-attack cases around in the countryside, one wonders whether the organ, the mythical storekeeper of all the emotions, the soft, sensitive, the soft susurrations of art, culture and history, is on the warpath.

Or are these the death pangs of the rapidly obsolete organ during the heady rush of modern times ruled by reason, ignoring the softer heart?

Traditionally, heart, the organ, has meaning at two levels: in letter and in spirit.

Literally, it is the organ which pumps blood to keep the system going. But this is not what we have known the organ in the chest for.

It is the definition in spirit which makes it the king organ of human anatomy—the keeper of love, truth, empathy, honesty, kindness, spirituality, vibrant emotions.

But all these are becoming the poor tools of laggards in these ultra-reasonable, headily competitive, mammothly materialistic days.

So, shorn of the mythical sheen around it, this lump of flesh is going to snooze with more and more frequency.

It is not that, in increasing the frequency of its collapse, it will be successful in punishing human beings for their treachery.

They are evolving too headily, with the pumping of reason in their arteries and veins.

As per the law of evolution, the next generation will learn to live heartlessly.

Maybe the deaths of the heart are an indication of its rapidly upcoming extinction in modern physiognomy.

After all, in this concrete, solid, material-ridden age, what is the need of a poor heart with its dregs of vibrating images, celebrating emotions, unnecessary pricks of conscience, which are speed breakers on the path of progress?

So the system is getting overhauled.

The heart is getting extinct slowly, slowly, with the passage of each decade.

The Slim Towers of Prosperity: A Two-decade Old Letter from a Changing India

Naomi Canton writes in Hindustan Times, dated October 28, 2007, and after reading her first-person account of India, there is a trigger that pushes me to write a response.

Dear Miss Canton,

I read your first-person account of India, HT, October 28, 2007.

The exotic East has always appeared alluring to the street-smart, practical, adventurous West. Maybe for a long time, the East, and especially India, served as an extensive museum abounding with marvellous antiques.

But then globalization is such a strong force. It is a great leveller, like a mighty bulldozer. It has levelled up the pleasant variants of sweet, sweet differentials blooming in different nooks and corners of this world.

This mighty wave of monoculture will perhaps eventually end up painting the entire planet in the same commonly accepted shining colours of capitalism, cars, ultra-modern utilities, language, lifestyle, etc.

The process seems irreversible.

The globalization train is being led by the West. We Indians, and practically the entire East, have always been good passengers on this train to modernity. We might squabble among ourselves, closeted in our noisy compartments, but when it comes to the journey itself, all of us seem to have made up our minds to follow the planet-chugging rigid line of steel.

It is no wonder, then, that you found India, at least the urban centres, emerging as the Xerox copy of ultra-modern cities in the West.

Definitely, the boom and bustle of the cities' urban economy has burst through the ceiling. Indian cities are buzzing with swarming tentacles, immense stores of pleasantries, but also sufferings and even miseries in their corridors.

Yet these are islands of prosperity, and these are an eyesore to the famished, historically spread-out masses across the length and breadth of the country.

Now things have acquired such a shape that after enjoying world-class facilities in an urban centre, one moves just a few dozen kilometres into the countryside, into the tent of reality, and one is awestruck by the contrast in the fates of the classes and the masses.

The churning between vertically surging classes and the horizontally slumbering masses is happening across sharp, clearly defined angles.

If the towers of prosperity rise too high on a little space, with a tiny section of affluent people in them, then there is every danger that their weight might become the symbol of envy, exploitation and misery to those who live under the towers' underprivileged shadows.

I am not over-exaggerating the danger, knowing fully well that the process of capitalization is as real as any other natural force. But the way the haves are being enabled by the modern system to pile on and on to the slim towers of prosperity, in blind contrast to the base-level, earth-clinging, dirt-licking humanity around them, they might, after some time, having abandoned all hopes of a rise for themselves, get on with the task of digging into the foundations of the towers of prosperity.

So the shining slim towers need to broaden their bases in order to sustain themselves, and consequently accommodate more and more humans in the surrounding, supporting, lesser towers around them.

I do write, or rather try to write, and quite simply I'm seeking readers.

Once you write, good or bad, you also want to be read. Seems natural. 

I have written a novel. I just send it to anyone whom I think might read it as a piece of work, throwing some light on some hidden surface.

I am forwarding it to your email box.

Hope you will enjoy the piece of write-up.

November musings from the distant past

November 4, 2007, Sunday

Yesterday evening, General Pervez Musharraf declared Emergency. Islamists on the prowl in every nook and corner were cited as the prime factor, judicial interference led by the resurgent CJP Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry being the other.

So while the democracy-aspiring rest of the world laments and regrets the imposition of martial law on this uneasy neighbour, who is always creating troubles for us, the lights ditheringly go out, armoured vehicles take position before important buildings, the Constitution is disbanded, private news channels go off air, and internet and telephone networks are jammed.

There are deserted streets.

Nawaz Sharif is lamenting over his woes in some foreign land, the brave lady launching a cautious diatribe. She can't be over-offensive because the General at least allows her to step on the soil and do a bit of politics as well.

The rest of the world is humming with some ugly anticipation for the situation to take some more exciting turn, making it newsworthy for others. Because who, after all, is worried about the other's house on fire in real earnest?

So the military once again shows that it is not eager to go to the barracks for some rest. Rather, it wants to be there at the top, at the helm of affairs.

November 12

There are people who are egotists. They find most of us—or look down upon us with a frown—as juniors in skills, calibre and intellectual capabilities. Their chin is drawn uncomfortably inwards in their constant efforts to look down upon the lowly placed fellow human beings at the lower planes.

Then there are utterly humble guys who always find themselves lowly placed in comparison to the esteemed superior beings who hover more confidently at a higher plane. These pusillanimous guys stumble while walking, always ogling, chin drawn upwards, to see the shining suns above.

Also there are some guys, though they are a tiny minority, whose incisive impulsivity cuts down the larger ridges to their own level and enlarges the smaller ones in order to put the whole society on the same level-headed plane.

As they say, every type of excess is painful in the end.

The same applies to the above three categories. It robs them of the dynamism which activates the shoots and saplings in our personalities.

We should try to avoid falling into any category.

Our mind's eyes should have the dynamism to stare upwards respectfully at the superiors, look confidently at those on the plane coinciding with ours, and sympathetically and supportively at the lower ones.

This dynamism of our sight propels us forward in a pleasant variety of ways.

Basmati, Sachin and Two Million in My Inbox: A December from Another Time

December, 2007

It has been a good agricultural season for the farmers thus far. Rice varieties across the spectrum have fetched them anything between 25,000 to 55,000 per acre.

Unbelievable.

As prices hurtle towards Mount Everest, this similar gallop shown by agricultural commodities does save them from getting too far behind while corporate India hurtles furiously on the fast-wheeled machine of consumerism and capitalism.

Though the farmers' lurching carts and tractors can't whiz past with the same impetuosity, they have enjoyed a ride—fast as per their rickety, slow-paced, nondescript parameters of earlier.

So the Basmati has been sold at 2,800 rupees per quintal on average.

On the back seat of a night bus, I met two young farmers returning from the market. They were drunk. Jolly well, prattling like schoolgirls, for a good reason, I think. After all, the rice had fetched 2,873 rupees per quintal. More is lying in the fields, they said.

“Today we will have a great time in the fields,” they prattled coarsely, one of them smirkingly drawing the fellow passengers' attention to two bottles of English liquor.

But for so many ecstasies, there are agonies as well.

And the agony amongst agonies is that Sachin is still yet to get over that bad habit of getting out before completing the three-figure mark.

In the ongoing second Test at Kolkata against Pakistan, he was batting aggressively, masterfully, and just when the feeling was vaguely sinking among the packed crowd that the maestro would not deprive them of a treat this time, he got out on 82.

This year he has given us almost dozens of 80s and 90s, but then it is considered a failure if you happen to be a Sachin Tendulkar.

The maestro needs to do something about it.

This nation guzzles on his centuries.

Otherwise, we feel starved.

Internet, getting faster and faster, digitally pumps more and more adrenaline and blood into our mechanising systems while we hurtle away to glory in the present century.

We never had such open, almost unlimited, all-pervasive, efficient means to communicate, get knowledge, process it, store it, manage it, manhandle every bit in the world.

No doubt it has done wonders in bringing instant flash to the realisation of our dreams.

But then, like any other technological device, this thing is a double-edged weapon as well. Those who intend to harm society in some way take up any technological innovation with as much acumen as those for whom the thing is really meant to be.

Yesterday at the cyber café, when I opened my email ID, my heart missed a beat.

I took the message in letter, missed its prankish, treacherous spirit. For me, for no fault of mine, it sounded so genuine.

It was a message from an International Promotional Lottery.

I had won more than two million in a draw among the other emailers. Registration of the society was written. It looked technically perfect. Telephone and fax numbers of the dignitaries concerned with the thing were there.

I was required to make a claim to the agent by giving him the file, batch and draw numbers mentioned in the email.

With my heart missing many a beat, all gullibly, I jotted the information down on paper and forwarded it to the required agent.

Like an instinctively drawn flea to a piece of sugar, I was glued to the first message in the inbox.

After all, the dream of making such big, fat moolah in one go is so strong that it paints almost all of us in the same grey, exulting paint.

A toy-shaking kid, oblivious of all the higher, more intricate realities around us.

And then the realities unfolded, because it was too unreal to be real.

There were twenty such messages, all informing me of my incidentally hitting against bigger and bigger treasure troves. Even though almost fully understanding the fundamentals of such junk mails, I kept on sleepwalking under the initial spell of that initial push and responded to most of the emails.

It was done in almost two hours.

During this time, I forgot the concrete, realistic, rational things—surfing for literary agents and job sites.

One guy claimed to be some official from some ministry in China. His only reason for being interested in me was my status of belonging to some other place than China. He wrote that he had some nice business proposal for me.

But the offer of one from an investment company in Africa busted through the tiny computer cubicle in the café.

He informed me that one billionaire had died heirless, and since he had invested millions of dollars in their company, the treasure was lying unclaimed.

Through some divine intervention, he had chosen me to lay claim as the legal heir to the late rich man.

“All the documents have been prepared. All that is left is for you to lay claim to the treasure,” he wrote.

Well, all in all, a great place for such flabbergasting, interesting fables.

They bombard your mailspace with such impetuosity that it takes many minutes before you have slain the greedy ghost to the dustbin.

But then, who knows? You might end up sending some genuine piece of luck, some treasure, under the all-destroying mace—the simplistic mace decimating all the perfunctory pieces of unrealities.

But then the only way left could be either you read all of them, or none, and move on to more pinching realities.

*****

It is well over three months since the Supreme Court judges have been laying eggs over the judgment.

Now every person with decent common sense is entitled to have some suspicions and make some claims without the fear of moral or constitutional wrong: that all is not well even at the loftiest tower of the Indian judicial system.

The judges have not announced any intention or reason under which the process could have taken so long.

We have every reason to believe that the government is using its all-pervading power to delay the judgment.

Not only are we getting killed, but killed in a halal manner—a blatant cat-and-mouse mockery.

It is as if they want to show us that they not only have the power to deny us water, but they have the power and immorality of making us run after it like a mirage in the desert, to make us run to our death under the fatal illusion of a final spring of water.

The judiciary thus acts, in my eyes, as a subsidiary arm, mercilessly, of the mighty state.

I don't blame the state.

But when the state comes to mean only Mr. Hooda in Haryana and the iron lady forged in Italian mold now ruling in Delhi, then you are always under the risk of being put upon the tormenting scaffold, the chains of legalities tied around you.

The state now becomes the multi-armed centipede.

Even if you get yourself lucky enough to be mollycoddled by one arm, another one will, at some other place, stab through your soft flesh.

For who are you, if not a soft-fleshed caterpillar? If you can't become the hard-shelled constituent of the state, you might cling to some arm for protection or favours.

But how long?

It can't last forever.

In fact, seeking favours with one, you make so many enemies around.

The Hydra and the Anthill: Two Faces of a Troubled India

December 8, 2007

Sonia Ben cries, “The merchant of death! The merchant of death!” spreading the highly infectious virus in the communal badlands of Gujarat.

Overall politics being the game of self-righteousness and self-justification at all costs and whatever the consequences, the sari-clad iron woman of Italian origin, the new version of the Iron Lady, could well be politically justified in continuously raking up the cremation dirt to bring to life the Godhra ghosts. All is well in love and war, they say. And her love is politics. On top of it, it's electoral war. 

So the high-voltage campaign in Gujarat for the State Assembly flares ahead. But she and her funny state leader can't beat Mr. Modi in his chosen field of expert polarization, and in an effort to beat him with his own stick, they too get many bruises themselves.

Mr. Modi might be justifiably or unjustifiably reviled by the liberals, media and intellectuals—that is not the question—but we can't take away his USP under the all-swiping broom of any literary criticism.

Unlike the so-called pseudo-secularists, Mr. Modi makes almost no pretensions. Unlike them, he makes no bones about his reservations about the minority. Unlike them, he flares his religious identity directly, matter-of-factly.

So I find him very true, inside out, unlike the Congress people who stink with schemes and always pretend, and would always do so many things in a different way from what they say on the surface.

And this unambiguity, this sincerity of purpose, is liked by the masses in Gujarat.

But while the sari-clad woman of Italian cast and mould frets and fumes, does she ever give a thought to 1984?

Mr. Modi, the powerful man of Hindutva, marches ahead with his anti-Muslim juggernaut. This is his strength, and he is entitled to take it for his advantage. Just like the Congress tries to take advantage through Muslim appeasement. Fair and square. 

*****

Elsewhere, the Supreme Court judges are still laying eggs over the judgment.

I wish them a large flock of chicks on the hot seats of power and privileges.

The judiciary has to lay eggs and hatch chickens for the system, which in turn brought them into that seat after that incubation period of favouritism, reference and recommendation.

I don't find too many faults with the poor fellows, for the feeling of obligedness is just too natural. Expecting them to fulfill all the roles and responsibilities chartered out in the constitutional papers would be too much and most impractical thing during these times of pleasant reciprocities.

So let them lay eggs and hatch chickens in the coop of corruption, nepotism and cronyism.

God bless them in their productivity.

*****

After all, the system is a hydra-headed monster. It has so many glutinous mouths and bellies with mammoth appetites. In order to sustain the life in its innards, it has to eat its own refuse.

It eats what it throws out—the excreta.

Doing something for the solace, succour and justice of a few hundred odd job seekers would be in a hugely losing disproportion to the pampering of some souls in the high seat.

After all, this recycled excreta will oil so many machineries at the higher levels.

They have to oil their apparatus; let them do it.

The ineffective curses of our innocuous souls are mere ignorable mini-storms in some teacups. Even the rectum burps of politicians are more effective in raising some issues.

Even if, in future, shackled by some unavoidable constitutionality, they do read out the verdict of justice, that would be doubly ironical.

For by doing that, they would lay bare the hypocrisy of the judicial dictum: justice delayed is justice denied.

The damage has been done irremediably.

Any judgment can't undo it.

God bless the esteemed judges.

*****

December 9

Bania is a short, black, bad-skinned guy, a typical representative of the labourer class, most of whom have got nice constitutions to begin with but which degenerate over the malnutritioned and semi-starved days over the years to give them the look of a semi-filled, wrinkled bag.

He is a third- or fourth-generation scion of migrants from the East.

This coming from the East entitles them to a new identity, almost a caste name—the Purbiyas. In the villages around here, you find a few families of these Purbiyas. In the caste hierarchy, officially they are Lodhi Rajputs.

During their earlier days, they showed a definite fruity proclivity, for there were enough mango and berry plantations. But now they have adapted to fruitless agriculture, a cropy monoculture—almost entirely wheat and rice, with a smattering of vegetables.

They take land on yearly lease from the landowners and sweat it out across the season to defy hunger through their tiny plots of vegetables and marigold flowers. In between, they take up jobs as manual labourers.

Across the oft-repeated rut, the similar path, Bania's widowed mother found herself a storehouse for a lot of troubles during her old age. Her daughters had gone away in marriage, while her two elder sons had taken up separate, relatively well-off ways with their own families.

The widow was given one lakh rupees by the obliged two elder sons to ward off hunger with the money's interest. Being the youngest one, Bania Purbiya also got 50,000 rupees as his entitlement.

They married him off, made a little house for him, and after seeing the old matron plus one lakh rupees, the young bride with her few pickings as dowry, and Bania plus 50,000 rupees, they started etching out separate destinies on the new path.

A glossy black boy was born to the young wife, who showed all the signs of not reconciling herself to her fate with the perennially opium-smoking husband.

He did work, but only enough to get his little bit of cannabis and local wine, nothing to save for her pouch.

Thus the domestic crisis skyrocketed. Her family filed a case with the police alleging dowry harassment and domestic violence.

Under pressure, Bania's kith and kin were forced to go for an out-of-court settlement, which took away half the amount he had received from his brothers, much of the rest having been lost in the opium-drawn chariot of hallucinations.

He could be seen with his infant boy in his arms.

To run a household, you need more than the nominal monthly interest on one lakh rupees, so the diabetic mother started withdrawing money from her account to keep the rats of hunger at bay.

Meanwhile, the search for his second bride was opened.

But as an assetless and landless devotee of intoxication, and a divorcee, the second wife meant spending half of his remaining money in purchasing a bride from a poor family somewhere in the East.

He purchased a wife, which of late was becoming a business of sorts in Haryana, where the sex ratio had taken such a nosedive that many eligible bachelors were left in a lurch.

But then, in India, one tale of sorrow and misery most often loses its heartrending poignancy under the shriller gleam of the hot sun of another tragedy.

So, as per the mathematical law of ever-aggravating misery, Bania was found to emerge as an eligible bachelor to some starving family having many daughters in a slum in Delhi.

The middlemen, the matrimonial sharks who bring about the consummation of relatively high-end and relatively low miseries, found a Muslim bride for him at a price.

Crowded in a shanty, it was a family on the brink of starvation—a large troupe of siblings and their widowed mother.

When the gods of your religion have abandoned you to such a terrible fate, you quite deliberately—or perhaps you are simply left with no choice—cling to any sinew of any type and any hue.

So the eldest Muslim girl became a Hindu bride without much hassle. Her husband had at least a brick house, and that too in the uncongested countryside in a village in Haryana.

The half-Hindu bride thus found herself lucky to spend her days under a pucca roof.

What Bania did in his drunken and opiated state appeared tolerable in comparison to the terrible dramas of that shanty environment in a Delhi slum.

As a young girl, she was supposed to be married. Getting married to a Hindu was less embarrassing than not getting married at all.

Moreover, in the ever-bulging swathes of misery in which millions wallow like gutter worms, where the black sewage mud of misery paints them into casteless, classless, religionless masses, who cares about the fine dress codes of religion, ritual, pride and all?

So this poor worm came out of the nalla, and the wretched husband appeared tolerable.

Her little siblings came to stay for extended periods, as though they were on vacations and tours, even though their errant brother-in-law never spoke to them a single word in a normal tone.

He swore filthily at their sister in their presence.

The tiny troupe wandered through the uncrowded village streets as though they were on a tourist sortie.

Then a girl was born to the Muslim bride of the Hindu miser, who continued to work merely to get his intake of cannabis and alcohol, his mother withdrawing her money to meet the family's ends.

Then a triumphant tragedy struck the impoverished household.

A few weeks before her daughter-in-law was to deliver her first son, the old matron, a diabetic, got her thumb injured on the rusty edge of a hand axe.

Infection started.

Poverty most often makes you unaware of the perils born of a happening like this.

So, within days of the child's delivery—a triumphant arrival—the diabetic old matron got her hand amputated from the elbow.

Her old-age stock, invested by her two elder sons, was now worth only 8,000 rupees.

Her younger son's family now numbered three, and a few more might come unless there was some godly intervention.

A stump where a fully working arm used to be.

A meagre 8,000 rupees where there was once a soul-satisfying sum of one lakh (a financial landmark in poor households).

A few more mouths to feed.

The worms of addiction, fatter and stronger than ever in the family patriarch's heart.

A story of plain misery.

But think of the fact—even this tale of sorrow might sound like a tale of calm and boon if put in juxtaposition against a still poorer one.

And there are bound to be many such stories, for this is poor India, where every misery is being robbed of its sympathy-arousing aura by the dint of a still larger pool of suffering.

And in these swarming anthills of pain and deprivation, what it all must be looking like, I just fear to imagine.

I shudder.

And this shudder brings me out of my sulk and makes me feel like a pampered king.