Legitimate Tears

When your dreams lie shattered around you, do not cry. If you do that you do injustice in more than one sense of the term. One simple mathematical fact: Shedding tears would not help in anyway. Understood that there are scattered pieces of the diamonds you had been working on. Now they are broken, sharp and may cut through flesh if you just close your eyes and prefer to cry. Kids have a copyright over crying and rightly so. We elders can spare this copyright infringement. Just look around the dashed diamonds, your so called broken dreams. Just see the glimmer in still shapely left out pieces. The dream is the soul; it just cannot die if some hammer momentarily dislodges its outer shape. No hammer in the world has the luck to kiss the soul of your dream. Its always safe. That’s its fate. Simply. Plainly. Why cry if the thing has not died. If you do,its just like mourning the death of someone who is still alive. I think we can simply avoid this irrational act. Broken shards of your dreams are, let us say,the blood-thirsty and hard chisels. They can help you in cutting through such mighty rocks as you could have never imagined. So it is simply better to cut bigger rocks for larger prospects instead of allowing the pieces to cut through your physical and mental selves.

Storms

Storms are storms. Just storms. Nothing else.They do not have much to offer both to nature and humans. They swirl, shriek,shake and prance occupied by an illogical spirit. It is just like nature throwing tantrums. But tantrums are never substantial man; they are just a fragile symbol of something going out of loop for some moments. Look at nature, storms are just temporary, tiny speed-breakers on its peacefully laid out benevolent road of survival, sustenance and evolution. It applies to our lives as well. So when the ship of our being gets jolted by the angry winds just remember this is not the substance of your life. It lies in miles of peaceful, dreamy and majestic waters waiting to kiss the hull of your ship. Coming back to the poor storm. It is just a puny piece of funny quirkiness possessed with suicidal and self-consuming dispirited and rampant self. It dances in pain. While it fizzes and fumes, it burns in its own fire. It dies. While its cremation takes place just be a good pyre-keeper and fulfill all the rights diligently. But keep a safe distance from the fire. It is sure to die. And, more importantly, you are sure to survive to see the flowers blossoming in that very dead ash. So please believe in peace, in tranquility, in harmony, in noiseless distances waiting for you while you feel the heat of the burning aberration. Be a spectator. Be a valiant survivor. Do it for the sake of normal, undisturbed nautical miles lined up to allow the passage of your ship to a lush green island of your destination, where you can drop anchor and enjoy the stillness of life for sometime. It has to be done. Because the course of normalcy is self-sustaining,kind, beneficent, forgiving and parental. The storm just burns in its fury.Allow it to do it. Harmony, orderliness and tranquility draw life-giving sips from their own substance, from the core of their own essence. So be a good businessman. Join the latters’ bandwagon. For you own gain.

Congress Vs. Anna

Congress has derailed Anna movement to a great extent. The old hag of a party! The party and its handlers are too clever, witty and power-lorn to be outsmarted by the social worker.Anna's movement jolted it, to begin with. It was a social movement, a mass movement. Blatant corruption and nepotism had left big scars on the conscience of well-to-do middle and upper middle class of India. Fortunately these literal scars were equal, if not bigger, to the real scars of the poor masses, the aam admi who gave the Honourable Italian-born iron lady a decade to wield all powers without any responsibilities. And what did they do? They just redefined the contours of coalition politics in almost criminal manner. Shared interest policy became just a policy of blindfolding the conscience and constitutionality to allow the allies and cronies to amass as much wealth as possible. They just eyed successful completion of a full term. But at what cost? Who paid the cost? We did it man! We the struggling and toiling masses of India, silently and law-abidingly continued to add to our struggle to match the horribly rising monthly budgets.On the other end of the tunnel, our political akaas just stashed the money of our labour in Swiss accounts. It was an open secret. All of us knew what was going on. But what can a bread-earning bunch of frustrated souls do. It can just grumble. And we just grumbled till Anna gave a voice to all these harmless bickerings. Lo! The sinewy tributaries merged to form a tidal wave at Ramleela ground. It literally submerged the wrong-handlers of our well-meant parliamentary democracy. But Congress is Congress my dears! It will just stick to its ways. At any cost!Under public bombardment, the Congressites dodged, feigned nonchalance,pretended even concern; but all along the way they were up to a smart plan to change a mass social movement to a political one so that it loses its savioural social identity to become a big political gimmick like its own. They know that they can outsmart any group on the political platform. So poor Anna has been systematically dragged into the political arena where the fight is not going to be one-sided like earlier. There will be punches from both sides. Anna was fighting on a holy pedestal where even the semi-goons of Congress were afraid to take direct or indirect pot-shots. Now they have dragged him into a muddy field. The same familiar game. Best wishes Anna sahib! You are up for something new now! Good luck! But please do not feel disheartened by smaller numbers at the next chosen venue of your agitation because the sharp edge of typical tricky Congressite political wit has punctured the high-flying balloon of your ideology.

Salutes Delhi

Salutes Delhi! You are two-eyed. But they have different visions, different dreams, different destinations. One of your pan-shots swankily zooms on the glizz-nd-glamour of resurgent India. Whether it is right-eye pan-shot or left-eye, I do not know. But yes the other eye's camera shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. Its a grizzled, murky screen having classic comicities and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis. Its Muhharram today. Many a offices are closed. It just means you can drop your purse on the DTC bus floor and still left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. So at least you could see a fee feet around you. Great solace. The air too was not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deos from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations. See when TATA offered these buses (along with the kickbacks per piece and which was more important to our rampant governmentvallahs ) the real cost of the machine was just meant to carry this type of load. The festival load. Once in a time load when people do not travel on account of holidays or some other emergency.

On this observable stage a 14-year-old man-kid jumbled into the finally justified interiors of the poor green line. Boy he was the man! Carried a pole that would tower above the poor bus if their vertical components competed. He slanted it, his small hands manoeuvred it smartly and the camel was safely in the room. The pole was the dancing axis of so mant types of cheapest kid toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhood mushrooming in slums. All fellow-riders watched him in half amuse and half irritation. Lampoons like yours truly even laughed at the free show. Anyways, coming back to this character valiantly playing its part in the grizzly black and white ever spooling movie. He rushed to the conductor seat after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the busvallaha about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. The boy-entrepreneur got DTC day-pass costing 40 rupees. Man o man! How much this kid earned to afford the pass. Anyways that is none of our concern like most of the Delhi things should not be. One fact was inescapable: the well-meant boy was well-prepared for the day. The way he had tied the muffler, the way his cheap jacket was buttoned up to the collar, the way trouser well-fitted his thin legs and the way well-cleaned shoes purchased from the road-side hawker, all these portended a good successful business plan.

One problem with new DTC bus is that its door opens too invitingly with a hiss, as if it is specially inviting you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an Advasi family raided the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulked, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the black old lady draped in a big raggy blanket shouted. God knows how many of them were! It was a collectively lampoonish unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabbed the hand-rails overhead and tried gymnastics. One of its hands also busted the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and conductor shrieked painfully. So many raggish kids carried their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dumped the gypsy spirit for a while.Their neighbours almost vomited. A sleek lady carried a toddler on her shoulder, one infant in her lap and most probably the another one inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shone from the short kurti she was wearing above the gracious folds of a dirty long skirt. It just became a thoroughfare. The conductor fought for tickets. They stood their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where were they going? Whole of NCR was their destination. It was just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with conductor acquired serious colours. And the moment it did, they just dumped themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanished from the scene. Delhi,salutes! You bear witness to the two movie-makings by the camera lenses in your eyes!

Early winter musings

Farmers are always done in...fucked in fact. Either it’s the impersonal hand of God that simply holds them by ears and smilingly makes them see the mysterious spectacle of undoing all their hard work. If God gets ready to do some more important undoings somewhere else, thus sparing the tillers for some time, Government does it from His side. Low prices hit the farmers even worse, because here they complete the crop cycle with certain dreams but return almost empty-handed from the market. So caught between these two supernatural forces, the poor farmer gets just one weather-saved and market-saved crop in four seasons. And that surplus keeps him on the path of survival. This time paddy has been fucked by the Govt.-cum-market forces. I have seen light in an old farmer's eyes, 12 years ago, when he sold Basmati rice at Rs. 2600/quintal. Mind it that was more than a decade ago. Can you believe the same stuff fetched a paltry 1400 to his son? Almost half! Meanwhile costs of farming inputs have skyrocketed. It just defies logic. Capitalism how can you leave a certain section in lurch like this. A landless farmer from my village had taken a portion of my land on rent for paddy farming. The sum we agreed upon was just on the basis of expected price of 1800/quintal. He returned from market and did as you can image. It was just a sentimental landvalla and a crying landless farmer. So I had to share his loss. But this act of philanthropy left a hole in my pocket. If market forces and the shining economy of India, for their survival, presume such acts of kindness from semi-poor guys like me, then to be hell with such a system. I think those who have lakhs of crores in Swiss accounts are better for this task. But you beat the Swami who talks of getting that money back. Another farmer, nursing the market insult, was just hatefully staring at the stunted growth of his winter tomatoes. An ex-serviceman, in late forties, this farmer has been working with all his army ethics on his small landholding. 'This country is up for bloodbath, I tell you!' he fretted. Gosh! Guys there was real fire in his eyes and practical intent in his words. 'The fuckers have stashed all the money in Swiss accounts. That’s our money man. While they cheat us through low agricultural product prices and very high cost of livelihood. The behen****s... ', sorry guys an angry farmer cannot do without gali-sali, 'have fucked farmers at all fronts.' 'Unemployment...these graduate farmers of 21st century India are not dumbos like their forefathers. Believe me man the day will come when they will just barge in Parliament and just kill the lawmakers there!' Dear-o-dear what a stormy spectacle it became. He was literally shaking as if we just had the first leader of peasant uprising from this part. Just imagine what if Anna-type movement is caught in the whirl-wind of such disgruntled hard workers! The future seems really up for some jerks and pulls.

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Why does truth pinch most of the time? Simple! Because it is no chocolate, sugar candy or mellowable sweetie-pie lump of ice cream. It is hard, sour, iron ball guys. It has pinching rough stony edges to its surface. Come into contact with them and they will take a few flakes from your skin leaving a red or purple bruise depending on the intensity of truth contained in it. Now the question arises, 'Why does it almost always leave a grimace on our face instead of a smile?' The simple fact that all of us almost always rub cold shoulders against this ironed ball having thorns for our soft skin, proves on fact: that we are not subjectively inclined to accept the objective reality as it stands in abstract. But does not that mean that we have moved poles apart from truth and its manifestations while going on the path of individual and collective improvisations at the subjective level. May be the reason for our success in emerging at the top of food chain in the game of 'survival of the fittest' is that we have institutionalized ourselves to negate and defy, and do without, certain basic truths that form the core of creation and nature. Nothing wrong with that! It, however, is paradoxical that most of these scions of truth--against which we have always been taking cudgels--form the core of our moral, humanistic, religious, spiritual and aesthetic vision enshrined in preach books. Strange!

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Early winter mornings are fresh even in the polluted and dirty sections of NCR. Heavily encumbered sectors in Noida do have their share of early-morning charm as they try to find out the order and symmetry meant for them in master plans. They cannot see much among the defecating, exciting, commercial, crash and crying hulla-bullo going around. The buildings are semi-daunting: a curious mix of residential-cum-commercial styles. You see a bit of house, a bit of manufacturing unit, a bit of service industry, a bit of business, a bit of exploitation, a bit of comfort, a bit of pain, a bit of life and a bit of death. It is a self-absorbed world, a cesspool, a whirling system drawing so many survival-lorn masses from nooks and corners of India. They live identity-less here. The enterprise thrives here. The malik goes smirk in his big car. The labourers go pitifully, deeply shackled by the duties and falling bodily and mental notions of being a human--and how can you expect to be Ganga-clean if you eat, drink and sleep at the very place where others and you defecate and procreate at the same time. You find a kid left alone in this non-caring world. A small sack on his back. The rag picker. He has manly eyes and a kid’s stature. When you are left alone so early in your life to enjoy or suffer life on your own terms, you just become one of the thousands of flies fighting for as pace on shit and sweets with the same relish. You just know one side of life--survival. By any means and at whatever cost. And what does this survival produce: stunted, frail. sick, dehumanized, spiritless multitudes who just add to the census sheets of India. But they serve a purpose. They carry the shining tag of economic boom and growth on their frail shoulders. They survive by any means. That is their biggest achievement. The widow, the prostitute, the raped girl, the mad women(carrying the sex toy for so many frustrated and hungry souls). They beg, pickup rags, sell their diseased bodies, operate tea stalls, try to pick out the moments of the day while someone ignores the cancer warnings to buy those poisonous sashes carrying gutka and tobacco. They even cock a snook at the great plans in the plan books for this great Delhi suburb, the pride of Uttar Pradesh. They just settle down at any place in between the industries. Their tiny hovels,a curious world of dwarfs. But they live as tall people who sleep and fuck proudly in congested hiccuping afraid air and bring about additions to their world like ant swarms. You will see their holy places as well. A drop of gangajal in the sewage nullah gurgling with puss and bacteria of uncaring humanity. The mandir stands nonchalantly. It’s Gods having forsaken it. It was never accepted as their earthly shelter at all. Anyhow a poor man's God is no God at all. It has been proved. The mosque minaret too sulks over this majestic swarm lost in a terrifying fatality just somehow holding onto faith like their broken spirit holds onto their more broken bodies. A mere purposeless appendage. They have their open shit plots. The stench too overbearing and thus fighting to retain its status and repel any encroacher coming with a non-shit purpose. Just imagine what will be the garbage dump site of this bigger garbage pit—it is literally a hell hole. It but serves as the playground-cum-business-cum-schooling arena for the orphans, half-orphans, bastards, urchins, nameless boys and futureless girls. In this hell of a hole, a fat pig brushes its shit-smeared muzzle against the holy mouth of a robust bull chewing the half-shit fodder and lying at ease in this kaliyuga playground. Well, well...you just have to pass through just one street and get the gist of life in these perilously throbbing veins. The blood is poisoned. The organs are diseased. What is its future? May be even God does not know. Probably, He is not concerned at all. And why should he be! Because He is the king of heaven. Why should He have any business with such hells?

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Always there are easiest of routes to the toughest of destinations. Every hard situation has the softest of a solution. So there is no hard problem in the real sense. Our solutions make them so. When in the face of a tough situation blame your solution not the situation. Isn’t life all about taking smart short-cuts to beat the puzzling array of problems randomly cropping around us? So be the solution provider. Behind most complex of a phenomenon there is amazing simplicity. Read that. Those cute fundamentals will tell you that every situation is a living being. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only. Listen to these delicate murmurs and it will help you in breaking hardest of superficial, outer cores.

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For the lovers of freedom, responsibilities sound as prison chains. Responsible people on the other hand find themselves squeezed in a tight corner by responsibilities which do not allow them to enjoy freedom. The question is: Are freedom and responsibility inherently contradictory in nature? Is it really possible to make them complementary to each other by melting the contradictory edges? 

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HOLLLAAAAA!!!!!!

For good people its very difficult to enter a relationship and still more difficult to come out of it! For bad people its very easy to get into a relationship and still easier to come out of it!  

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I think it always (without exception) helps not to lose your temper. When you lose your temper, you not only deprive somebody’s chances for more happiness; you in fact deprive yourself of the same. So why fall in the trap of such a bad bargain. If nobody gains anything out of it (except perhaps that hypothetical and flimsy enemy of ours, called “ego”) why invest in such a loser scheme?  —Sandeep Dahiya

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May be there is a fixed quota of suffering in the cosmic account book of karma to be doled out to the humanity. If that be the case then feel proud for bearing the heavier load from the destiny’s side, while so many others trudge ahead with unjustifiably lighter weights on their shoulders. Feel proud that God considers you as a tough guy capable of handling the issues on the wrong side of the fence. While you sweat it out with the larger issues, possibly your each and every step paves the road for some easy stroll by a frail fellow human being. Just carry on mighty guys! No use in browbeating now! You have been chosen for breaking the tough nut so that many a weak teeth can munch survival crumbs.    —Sandeep Dahiya

Chanakya

Machiavellian manager believes in the principle 'the end justifies the means'. Very smartly such an individual follows the principle: 'I will do anything necessary to achieve my objectives. 'Such a manager runs after this credo like fish swimming in the waters. With every breath he inhales the tendency to manipulate others and force them to perceive things in his terms. Utterly self-serving and duplicitous, the Machiavellian manager is made for success during these not-so-good times. The cold hard steely rationality in him reaches a peak to become almost amoral. Ever driven by these tendencies such a manager engages in more political behaviour than anyone around. The mind is always ticking to plan such schemes as will allow him to take advantage of others. Well, believe me I speak from personal experience. Each and every bit of this write-up bespeaks a thorough lynching by the Machiavellian hunter. It's a manager in Engage Learning! Gosh! Inherently spiteful, his designs are just meant to achieve certain objectives like a computer. There is not the least bit of human element. Haa...haaa just visualize the keema being made of a soft flesh like me by such a heartless, stony juggernaut! Buddies, just count your stars lucky that there is just one such Dhananjay Pandita in Delhi and that too is playing all his cards in the basement corridors of Engage Learning. He has inhuman, brown, snaky eyes. They just monitor the basement to strike poisonously at anything not matching his designs. God, this man's mind ticks 24 hours a day to plot, plan and do away with everything to his dislike like weeds in a farm. Well, well, well....this modern pseudo-chanakya will do such insidious things that people have been led to terrorism! Are yaar, I do not mean gun-totting explosives-laden ones. What I mean is that such an individual will force you to pick up guns against the real you...the real good self...pump bullets into you softer flesh to become better equipped in surviving in the mud. Ohoo this man serves a good purpose yaar...never thought about that earlier.

Life

Contradiction is inherent in nature. Positive–negative,acidity–alkalinity, dark–light are all manifestations of a homeostatic balance. You know stars are held by this same dual, contradictory nature. Gravitational force pulls the molecules to the core; at the same time super-temperatures force the molecules to stay away from the core at a feasible length. The stars smile and shine just because of the contradictory chemistry of these two opposing forces. Remove either of them and the star meets its death. Remove gravitational pull, the star will explode as a supernova. Remove the escaping force born of high temperature, the star will suck into its own core as a black hole. So survival means a fine zone in the twilight of creation and destruction. Natural laws apply to humans as well; they hold the same validity if we treat an individual as a system. A human life is a wonderful phenomena sizzling like a shiny star in the twilight of humility and pride, altruism and selfishness, good and bad, faith and atheism, etc. So greatness lies not in casting off one side of this undercurrent. It lies in just tilting your balance just a bit on the side of so-called good aspects in the pair. Why? Because we are social phenomena as well, apart from being the natural ones. Our consciousness equips us to shine and survive like a star–but with a definite purpose. The purpose of general well-being; of helping others in maintaining the same balance of survival; of contributing proactively to the overall balance hung between two contradictory frames. We can contribute more than our natural states have defined for us.Believe me! It works. Just help someone in need. It can be a tiny bit. You will feel yourself elongating your natural self a bit to the positive side. This is being human.

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Individual is for the social system; social system is not for the individual. System is always larger and will prevail when it comes to protecting its common interests in opposition to the individual ones. If the individual finds the system suffocating and intolerable then he has to bow out of the system and take natural state of freewill in jungles,which is just going backwards and denying the evolution of culture and socialization. ‘Individual will’, mind you, is always determined by the ‘general will’. Perfectibility of individual is not a totally hypothetical concept altogether. It is attainable. Man can give a full throttle of individual freedom on the platform provided by the social system. He has to obey certain laws nonetheless. There is no chance for him to escape the arena. To play the game and win it, you have to stay in the ring with your status of a social player. The system is too big. If he attempts an escape, it becomes a suicide morally, socially, physically. The attempt to escape is futile. Just by taking birth on this earth, the individual surrenders his right of a totally free individual will. He has the irremovable tag on his conscience, on his physical self, on his convictions: the tag of a citizen of the kingdom of social system.

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Guys, individual freedom has always remained a fundamental ideal and belief since historical times. However, it is not to be achieved by casting off all society and civilization or by going back to a so-called 'natural state'. The perfection of man, his freedom, his liberty, his happiness, and the growing mastery of his own destiny, all are dependent upon a clear understanding of certain laws of nature and society. We have to accept that both nature and society have worked according to these laws to enable us to get the idea of this so called 'freedom'.So pursuit of the interest of baby should not turn us blind to the interests of the mother.

Stringless Kite

We can fly and rise higher only if we are tied to certain responsibilities and commitments; our freedom-lorn spirit tamed to an extent by social conventions, individual values, family setup, the sweet-sour tides in our offices, etc. But most of the time we find it as a drag on our real enjoyment of life. We just feel how great life would be without all such traditional stuff. But guys tell me, can a stringless kite fly?The kite flies because there is a string pulling it to higher skies. It also tries to negate the limitations set up by the string. It shakes its head in negation. OK! What happens when its dream to be string-free become true. It just takes a few ecstatic circles in air and falls onto the ground. Those free dives of its dreams prove to be its death dives. We are the stringed kites fella. We fly and rise high only because our destructive passions and traits are tamed and tied by a string. So love your commitments, your responsibilities, and your struggles for small small things in life.

Congress

I was just packing my common stuff to join the duties of Subdivision Magistrate when the Congress Chief Minister in Haryana got loose motions over this tiny 'coming to power' and used all his majestic powers to piss at the hard work of all we batch mates. After being a first-hand witness to all the Congress-like corrupted ways of judicial manipulation, I came to Delhi to earn my livelihood in the ruff-and-gruff of private sector. Lo! Hee…hee Gandhi-Nehru genies would not leave me in peace. In Delhi it is a local Congress pimp of criminality. Why he turns out to be my enemy? He is my landlord's enemy yaar! So he takes revenges by forcing down nails into the new tyres of my old car....Congress....U just make a staunch anti-national element! Guys please throw these goons out of power because if they get another chance, I fear this law-abiding common citizen of India will end up as a terrorist! So save country, save humanity and save this common man! Pleeeeaaasssseee!!!!!

Congress

I was just packing my common stuff to join the duties of Subdivisioanl Magistrate when the Congress Chief Minister in Haryana got loose motions over this tiny 'coming to power' and used all his majesticpowers to piss at the hardwork of all we batchmates. After being a first-hand witness to all the Congrelike corrupted ways of judicial manipulation, I came to Delhi to earn my livelihood in the ruff-and-gruff of private sector. Lo! Hee…hee Gandhi-Nehru geenies would not leave me in peace. In Delhi it is a local Congress pimp of criminality. Why he turns out to be my enemy? He is my landlord's enemy yaar! So he takes revenges by forcing down nails into the new tyres of my old car....Congress....U just make a staunch anti-national element! Guys please throw these goons out of power because if they get another chance, I fear this law-abiding common citizen of India will end up as a terrorist! So save country, save humanity and save this common man! Pleeeeaaasssseee!!!!!

Huummnnn!!!!

Coming through a lower class locality in Delhi was revealing. Alittle kid, barely 7 or 8 came pulling the rickshaw carrier. Empty plastic cansat the back and the lad was just going almost half way down on each side tocomplete the circle. More child self-bread earners washing dirty plates by a kulchestall. It was early in the morning and instead of getting breakfast beforegoing to school they were earning their tit-bits. Littlest of lids taking abath at a public tap after a late night stint at the eating point. Childhoodhad withered in them. These were dhaba boys. Getting their skins hardened withantisocial strains...fed by the scorns and abuses of their merciless masters.Well Delhi hasso much to cheer about....but far more to ponder about sadly.

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Thank God life is not just a smooth road, takingus uninterestingly to a plain destination! Guys be thankful that it ispot-holed and bumpy. The vehicle of our life gets jolts and jerks which are in factthe lifelines for our material being. It tests the vehicle of our being. Thelatter responds and this see-saw battle releases energy for the engine of oursurvival. So guys if your road appears bumpier than others, just feel thesea-storm of energy your system is creating not just for your own survival butfor the common cause of creation and survival at the universal level as well.As a struggler you contribute far more to a great unseen cause than it appearson the common plain of our material existence.

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There are times when our long-held beliefs sound untrue. It is however just a smoke-screen. If we just project our hands over our eyes and try to look into the haze with a bit of more focused look, we will see the faded glow of the sun of reality. It not only consolidates the beliefs very close to our soul, but allows more perspectives to our struggle to see through the cloud. Long-held beliefs are generally true. Their mere survival around the epicenter of our being authenticates their validity. Temporary ones just glow for a short time and fade out in jerks. So do not allow you long-held beliefs to die or fade out during the periods of crisis. Believe it or not, they are like life-belts tied to our endangered selves during the sea-storm.

God: Beaten and Banished

God comes to me in my dream (or was I awake early in the morning, I am not sure) and says, ‘Seem to have gathered lots of guts these days fella. U no longer cringe before me like earlier. Don’t pamper me through daily worship anymore. Why have you changed all of a sudden son?' 'No I haven't changed Old Man! My present is born of those penanceful meditations I did before your stony avatar for years on end,' I said softly. But God was visibly irritated. Even at this early time in the morning, when all His statues and stones were being bathed with milk, dahi, scented with perfumes, getting redecorated for another hard day in office. 'No you have certainly changed!' His tone harsh. 'No Sir! Earlier I was just doing my duty like a helpless beggar. Constantly haggling, bickering with you. Bombarding you with relentless questions from across the fragrant smell of incense. Darkness spread around me even though the lamp of my faith lit by me flickered and tried to light my path and show me the way out of my pathetic situation. But there I sat like a donkey on its dirty ass....floundering...falling....running helter-skelter,' I had almost tears in my eyes. 'So you think that was in vain!' God was still terser this time. 'No Sir...no plz....for heavens sake...don't jump to such early conclusions...It’s humanly to make such a judgment. I mean that my present shape was begotten only on the anvil of those very moments. At least I considered right and wrong parameters while I sat before thy Scriptures. And spending a lot of time in Puja saves you from putting you head in earthly shit. It gives you the heavenly fragrance and a dream to get blessings by you.' 'Mark your words well fella...you seem to make comments on me....,' His eyes had started to burn now as if I was some demon on my path to shake the religiodom and His status. 'Plz mighty father...plz...am I worthy of disturbing you so much as to make your eyes fiery like this,' I pleaded remembering well from those TV serials when supernatural powers of Gods burned the daityas to ashes. Humans are humans after all. If those very Gods whom you have been trying to appease for so long show you eyes instead of giving their blessings straightaway to prove their powers, then you feel irritated. Well, my dear human beings don't think that I commit a sin here. I just prove my human status by getting irritated with God for showing such a human tendency. So I also got my own share of humanly fire in my eyes. 'Mr. God I was always right in my suspicions that even your powers have been diluted during the present Kaliyuga age. You too are afraid of the bad ones who cock a snook at you and never ever put feet in a temple...nor spare even the least time for you out of their immensely fruitful time in worldly success and pursuits. You just act to scare weak ones who are ever pleading by your temple gates. And now you get offended with me because I too have been gaining some irreligious muscles.' Dear o dear, I never intended to speak in such hot terms to my once0-dear-God. But his humanly behaviour facilitated my becoming a bit overconfident of my newly gained worldly muscles. Here I threw a challenge to him. 'Do u have the guts to even disturb the sleep of Mr. ---(sorry cannot name the fellow because I fear him even more than the God I am arguing with) who has been to nasty things till a moment ago and is now spread out as a robust stud....can u…,' God became even angrier. His facial expression told me man. I got a bit scared. Man is still more fearsome these days. At least God is supposed to have some limits to indecency. With man you just cannot take the chance. 'These days you just scare weaklings who throng your citadels in the blind hope of getting redemption,' my courage was dangerously hurtling towards a pernicious peak. His hand tightly squeezed the thunderbolt he was holding. OMG! Sorry have been used to blurt out this latest crazy phrase about him, the God! So in order to avoid sounding to plead I stopped it somehow from escaping out of my scared guts. But then if God is really God then he is not supposed to be aware of all these slangs doing rounds on earth. ‘Oh My God’ I won’t say at any cost. So I took my chance with OMG in a low, half-afraid voice, staring at the supernatural weapon in his hand. 'OMG!!!' I blurted in a strange voice. Lo man! Even God gets his moments of self-doubt. His grip loosened around the weapon. I took my chance. ‘That is not justified God…it just isn't done…you wander around to clobber human beings with this mighty weapon of yours. Be a man when you are dealing with man,’ I baulked. Like a real man he dropped his demon-slayer. I salute you man! Everything is fair in love and war, they say. All love lost between us, we had war staring us. Believe me I would have preferred to fight him as God instead of a plain human. But anger takes us in strange directions. Out of his majestic, divine aura he jumped out like a worldly being...ready to crush me like a worm. Having flexed my muscles I had no chance of a retreat. Self-respect man...it has to work even if it gives you a few broken bones. 'Well, I hope his ruffled soul will be satisfied ones he gives bone-rattling blows. After all, at the core he is still God...cannot be demon and murderer,' I counted my hopes on this presumption. Man...he was still powerful...even in manly avatar! He gave such a nasty blow in my groin. I cried foul, ‘This is not allowed man.’ Really he was the man…in pain I called him such. In terrible pain, I gave a swipe at his legs. God is God after all man...it takes few really serious blows to even think of hitting any of his other parts. He was agile like a cat. 'The God of cats!' I cursed meaning to hurt him through words now that I had failed to do with my blow. By non-God! That was self-injurious! He roared like a lion and gave such a feisty blow in my ribs that I fell like a log. Element of surprise! That’s what I was thinking while his proud figure approached me. I pretended to be faint. His vaunting figure approached me, prodded my body like a cat pawing a dead mouse. God as a man you are not omniscient, I mused. He was standing oblivious to my plans. 'Yes God when you decide to come down for man to man duels…be ready for humanly surprises as well,' I pounced up like a still better cat and hit him as hard as I could. God grimaced with pain. In that momentary phase of a temporary victory I mused, 'God...the painless, attributeless entity...now feel what it means...the pain...feel the feeling to be a human being!’ But even in his humanly avatar you cannot keep God in that position for too long. He fired on all cylinders. Do not worry humans…I too gave a valiant fight. For his 10 mighty blows I gave 1 mild one. For his big blood-drawing gnawings at my skin, I gave at least visible bruises on his holy skin. But God cannot be a murderer man...he just cannot. So my presumption was OK. 'I will force you to commit a sin of murderer!’ I was adamant. He was thinking that after some time my pains will force me to plead for mercy. 'He will be the same tamed devotee,' he must have been thinking when he degraded himself to the status of a common human being just to satisfy his ego. But I was a tough nut to crack. Knowing that he cannot kill me, I took my guts to extreme and clung to him like a mad dog. I clung with so much force that the only escape route for him would have been slaying me right there. 'You fool why do u want to die at my hands?' he sounded pleading. 'God why in the first place you should have so much of time to disturb early in the morning a former daily puja paaath vaalah of yours? At least I had stopped haggling you with my beseechings. I had decided to take care of my own interests by developing a few muscles. And this you find irreligious1,' I blurted. 'But this is wrong path son,' human-God became a bit emotional. Damn it, wrong path, if this is wrong then who is right there in the world presently. All successful people are doing this Mr. God! He let me go and sat brooding in a corner. His hair disheveled and the Godly aura totally missing. Scratch marks faintly visible on his face as a testimony of his worldly war. I also brought up my bashed up bloody body and came to him. I appeared smashed and meshed up at the physical level only; he but sounded meshed more seriously at many higher levels. My heart melted for him. The invincible God sitting so dejected in the corner of my filthy room. 'Do not be so sad God!' I consoled. 'If a weak and helplessly pleading-before-you-worshipper is better than a muscled social lion ready to take on this world on his own terms, then I need to seriously rethink my new-found logic.' 'No son...you are within your rights to take on this world on your on terms...I should not dictate terms in this regard. Anyways now I do realize that humans no longer need me to lead their lives in the modern times,' he was teary-eyed. 'Yaa Old Man its better that you leave we humans to decide our fate on our terms now. And do not feel dejected. You started all this and for thousands of years you have been taking so much of pains for your creations’ cause. You need rest now old man.' 'Ya you are right man, I am no longer required. A weakling like you gives me such a tough fight. I fear if I continue meddling in you peoples' affairs then some real bad one even might slay me some day,' he realized. So without caring for this world anymore he bid adieu to take rest somewhere in cosmic cave and I stood there as the first person having the knowledge that it indeed was a Godless world now.                 

Friends and Foes

My time slips out of my pocket and takes vicious circles around me. Its horrible whizzing leaves me in a maddening frenzy. I run around and around to catch it. It leaves me dizzy...drunk....dead. I open my eyes to find it still buzzing around like a nasty bug. Well..I will definitely try to get my buddy time safely in my pocket.

Time now runs back...fastly in reverse mod. I run out of my present skin to catch up with it. Well both of us might crash into a muddy gutter. or worse into a bottomless well out of which it might b impossible to come out!

Well fall into a gutter any way...nd come out like fools...muddy...dirty. Grinning at each other. He blames me and I him. And then we fight. He is worth hi ba*** this time buddy of mine. Fool pinces me down where my nose has no business to be in..into a shit. I plead for mercy. He lets me go. Bt man see what you have done to me!

Man u r no longer my time, I say. I hve nvr been anybody's, the idiot beams. Bt I thought u were my buddy. Dnt cry red-nosed fool, he consoles wiping the shit off my face. Anyway I am nvr fools and weakling's friend. At the mst I can e a slave. I like strong masters not soft buddies. I am paranormal..those who lynch me most..i like the most.

Well this is a revelation man. Time u fool. now i give u what u deserve most. A hard punch..and that too on ur nose and make it meshed up even more than mine. I do the same...hard..bloody. It staggers falls down...gets up slowly.. embraces me nd says..oya man u r worth ur ba***.

Now we walk forward. Tired...dirty..shit nd blood on our faces. V can no longer run..only walk with failing strength. He supports me and I support him. Well forced to support each other. We hesitate...initially support each other with cold hearts. A fight is after all a fight man...it takes time to forget bloody noses.

U fool why in the first place u escaped out of my pocket to run wild like this and that too in reverse mod. It grins...wiping blood and shit off its face...I put out my hanky with sympathy...It gets teary eyes. U were killing me man, it weeps. U were jst busy flaunting ur status that time is my best buddy and doing nothing in practice. So jst felt like giving u a hard run.