A well-timed realisation

Sometimes you have to nearly die to discover the meaning of life.

Dalit-Muslim-Tribals Vs. Brahamanical Hinduism

Pseudoism is the art and craft of using a positive emotion, feel-good verb, or a relaxing sentiment, picking its hypothetical meaning in letter, and grafting it over the mean spirit. The spirit to dominate, to manipulate, to rule at any cost, the end justifying the means. It becomes a blindfolding instrument. No wonder, pseudoism is a suitable device with power aspirations particularly. Pseudo-secularists have cashed minority fears. The stroke inexistent phobias. They want the minority to stay scared. They keep the apprehensions and insecurities alive, to turn these into votes at the election time.  Now is the turn of pseudo-nationalists. The latter create a rhetorical stage, offering people a feeling to contribute to the nation. It’s a stage set for papery heroism, where one can contribute to national glory without putting anything at stake, without any risks either. It’s a goody goody dream-world. You shout slogans, you pour hate on social media, you condone the acts of violence against your target, you claim to be more patriotic than others. That’s it. You need not do more. Shouting amidst the frenzied crowd, like it’s a picnic outing and this a new entertainment game, is all that it takes to be a nation-builder. You are supposed to stand to the national anthem before the movie starts. You do it and you are a patriot. Doesn’t matter if straightaway after that you elbow the girl in the next seat, or rub your leg against hers on the pretext of extending your limbs out of boredom. These liberties and many more. You can be a simple law-breaking chit of a human being in scores of daily routine, like violating traffic rules, passing lewd remarks at women, scattering garbage, peeing in the open. All this doesn’t matter as long as you ride the bandwagon of pseudo-nationalism. It’s very easy to fall in this trap. Who doesn’t want to keep the belief that he/she is contributing to nation building. Feelings apart, only a little section can do actually so in practice. Rest can take this sip in the meow meow on offer on the stage of populist rhetoric. This risk-free nationalistic spirit but comes at a big cost. Little do people realize that by the time they are still enjoying the echo of their slogans, they have already crossed a line to enter a zone of practiced mass-hate. They are getting trained for being less loving, less tolerant, and hence lesser human beings than they could have been otherwise. Even before they realize the slightest change, they have already surrendered a part of their good self. They are smaller than they were before. Something gets cut off from the real self. They get polarized. The vision is skewed, not open-minded exuberance required for healthy mind and creative spirit. They are just a diminished self of their former self. The society gets a fracture. It's painful. The current wave of pseudo-nationalism led by the Brahamanical Hindu resurgence has many takers, especially the younger generations. Not surprisingly. When hormones are yet to stabilize, the stage is shaking, the world is a shaky vision, they, the youngsters, need to pour out their straying energies. Papery nationalism is a suitable means. It makes them paper tigers. They are exploring. They get the pill, pick it up, savour it. It’s tasty. It’s even better than alcohol in fogging the mind into delusions. They thunder and roar against imaginative foes. They hunt down invisible enemies of the state through hate speech, by clapping stray killings here and there, by condoning acts of violence, arson and shouts here and there. Brahamanical Hindu led pseudo-nationalism is particularly trying at the communal level. Islamo-phobia is the common ground in the strategy. Little do they realize that within the Hindu society itself, there are sections that have been exploited for thousands of years by their own co-religioners. Dalits and tribals, the frozen class, with fates frozen at the sub-human levels for generations, have as much to grudge over caste-based exploitation, discrimination and humiliation, as a fundamentalist Islamist might have against other religions. Dalit-Muslim-Tribals, the super-entity which can easily identify with discrimination, have much in common in terms of discrimination, systematic second-hand treatment and exploitation. In Indian politics, there are permutations and combinations of caste and communal identities. These shift over and acquire strange shapes. The latest can be Dalit-Muslim-Tribals. Muslims safely ensconced in the trio. The lethality of Islam-phobia melting in the historical wrongs against the frozen class in the Indian society. Some strange mutant of Congress, leftists and other non-BJP regional parties can be formed. Overblown Brahamanical Hinduism, having the exploitation of its own lower society as the core, can fuel a new trend in political jugglery.

Pseudo-nationalism and the seeds of poison

So the pseudo-nationalists are nurturing hate. They are sowing its seeds in young minds. In big volume and at an alarming rate. The seeds are sprinkled on the fertile soil of social media. Youngsters are conveniently taking bites. It’s exciting like having pizza and girl/boy-friend. They are mixing it with post-modern popular culture. Quit strangely, in the pot on boil, where differences are expected to melt to a integrated mass, differences are burning at different temperatures. Hate is a convenient tool to blind one to logic and sanity. Consumed by hate one is just a part of the human being he/she is otherwise. It combusts the basic moisture of being a humane. Some core of goodness evaporates. Before dividing communities and individuals, it fractionalizes the carrier of hate itself. As the rhetorical juggernaut carried by the agents of pseudo-nationalism—as funny, quirky and politically self-seeking as the pseudo-secularists—moves on, divisions in the Indian society take even more dangerous turns. People beating those not ready to stand up to the national anthem, mobs lynching the rumored beef carriers, ABVP members attacking a literary gathering at Ramjas college where somebody might have expressed a different point of view. These are as petty and self-seeking pills of intoxication, as are the mild dose of self-gratifying sips popped in by pseudo-secularists. The sky-high stack of the fodder of division in the Indian society is always pining for the matchlock of somebody’s ambition. It then bursts forth. It explodes. People suffer, but someone gets power. Hate has been the instrument of Indian political system, as much as it was responsible for partition at the time of independence. Hate as a power-grabbing instrument has been the favorite tool of ruling aspirants. Jinnah stroked the division on religious grounds and ran away with a new country itself. Political parties have ruled the roost over decades just by stamping caste, creed, communal and regional identities through pandering divisiveness, by boosting hate, by augmenting distrust. The famed Indian diversity is always a cache of ammunition. It’s a pile of divisions lying there to catch fire and blast. Waiting for some power aspirant’s matchbox of ambition. To fuel divisions. To pamper insecurities. To turn people blind and crazy. Much as Hindu pseudo-nationalists try to sow seeds of distrust into the fiery souls of the younger generation, they hardly realize cultivation of hate cannot be compartmentalized for a particular community only. Grooming of hate in an individual changes the character over all. Its repercussions are not just limited to the targeted community. It crosses the immediate object to seep over into life generally, into interpersonal relationships, views on life. It breeds an insecure, selfish persona, who isn’t just apt in spewing out angry rhetoric against the targeted community, but who is equally bitter in dealing with people of his own community. Division by hate is a chain reaction. It consumes all. It doesn’t just stop at the first line of the targeted community. It spreads further to gobble up all at the next stages. The identity-based political parties of India but just take interest in the immediate line of division. It gets them votes. It perpetuates their goal of sticking to power. Little do they realize that by breeding a culture of hate, division and distrust they are letting loose a fire that consumes the ethos of a healthy society. It eats the basics of a strong social system. It lets loose an ever-smoldering fire that takes its toll over decades. It kills dreams. It stifles the openness and exuberance of character capable of doing good to others as much as it means for the self. Building roads, boosting infrastructure, strengthening manufacturing are as much important as a healthy society. The former are for the latter, and not vice versa. It’s high time that pseudo-nationalists realize the futility of rabble rousing in a divided house. If they really want a strong India, they should sow the seeds of love, receptivity and accommodation. Hate-mongering is terribly counter-productive. It’s as good as just to put the ruling seat under your bum. After that it evil effects go across the society, where the divisions of caste, class and creed do not matter. All suffer.       

Self-seekers

Starting with my friend's message. A metro ride this morning on her way to office:

"Started my day on a good note by offering my seat to a heavily pregnant woman....she was leaning against the pole and looking so exhausted at the start of the day....such robust young and old men, shameless enuf not to even ask whether she wud sit...they just pretend not to have seen....such small things tell u to what extent people r selfish for their own comfort....

Even other women are so insensitive....looking away so that they don't hav to offer a seat...."

Well that proves my diagnosis of commonest of common Indian trait of petty selfishness. A result of too much of population for ever falling short resources, I suppose. Everything falls short of expectations. Metros, buses, roads, jobs, bread, butter, the endless list. People just never have enough. It breeds discontentment. A sinister apathy for the cause of the fellow sufferers in the crowd creeps in. It narrows the vision. It clogs the spirit. You just cannot see beyond the small platform of your own struggle. It breeds very unhealthy personalities. Clinging to their own little grabs is the skill they get versed in over years in their lives. Then it becomes a very selfish mass. The terrible self-seekers. Incapable of grasping the civic sense of any cause that lies outside their own. People get basically so absorbed in their own world that the senses which allow them to perceive the world around don't work at all when it comes to fellow human beings. It is criminally callous. This attitude. Indians seem to be very tiny hearted. There are hundreds of little incidents daily which prove it more and more.

Grains of Truth

There doesn't seem to be a universal truth. If at all it exists, it is still lost in the infinite cosmic spread. All we have is the scattered grains of perceived truths. My truth, your truth, his truth, her truth, their truth. Bits and pieces of truth, picked up for convenience, for suitability. Truth is a mundane piece of daily utility, as much suitable as the food we take as per our body types and socio-economic circumstances. Forget about the most justifiable of truths. The most we can do is to get an average of all truths, a mathematical average, a common truth. But my truth can be false for someone else, and vice versa. Truth and falsehood, recurring shadow and substance. Sometimes falsehood is the shadow. Oftentimes truth is the shadow. But they are always nearby. Touching each other like the shadow clings to the substance. Both have their suitors simultaneously. Someone holds the substance for support. At the same time someone takes shelter in the shadow to cling to his utility.

Jat-Muslim combine in Haryana

As much as Congress meant corruption, BJP means 'bhai chara bigado'. The latter has to aggravate social tensions in the Indian society. India's has been a highly segregated society. The caste system created a highly compartmentalized society, so much so that the exploitation of the lower castes passes off as a God-ordained system of lower and higher karma. India is at least half a century away from a casteless society. It will not be possible before that to rid Indian society from this ancient scourge. Simply because democracy here and the political parties set up on caste and communal lines need the system of discrimination to survive ad excel in politics. The BJP thrives on polarization, the oldest mantra with rulers. They divide along any line of separation visible. Like in UP, where it is Muslims and Hindus, in Haryana they have smartly allowed Hindu society to be divided as Jats and nonjats. They are eyeing 74% of nonjats. February last year the govt didn't do anything to stop Jats from destroying properties of nonjats. They wanted a violent episode, an episode of loss of life and property and most importantly Bhai chara, to keep the fire of divisiveness among Jats and nonjats burning. Jats have now literally become Hindu-Muslims of Haryana, almost hated by nonjats enblock. BJP's shock tactics of dividing society means at least I am far more moderate than earlier. With corruption Congress tainted the very soul of Indian democracy. Let's see where polarizing forces let loose by BJP take us. It can be far more lethal for Indian society. One more thing, Jats may find bonhomie with Muslims of Southern Haryana. Both have there own set of real and imaginary woes against BJP. It will take the total Jat-Muslim combine above 30%, a formidable force. The politics of pupulistic rhetoric, BJP's trademark, may not find many takers in Haryana because the most suitable section culpable to be swayed by sentimental rhetoric, the Jats, given their ever-on-the edge temperament and raw attitude, is feeling left out in the opposite corner in BJP's scheme of polarization.  

The women of France under Nazi shadows

There is crime and there is punishment. The crime, full stop. It's a criminal act. A lethal abstract. It cannot be reversed. Spinning out of hate, lust and greed, and all the wrong colors of the soul. Punishment cannot right the wrong. There is hardly any redemption. Punishment is a poor instrument of deterrence, and most often it fails even in that. Going above the man-made instruments of punishments, we have the divine system of justice. For crimes, where man-made system of justice fails to deliver redemption, we expect the divinity to set it right. But what of mass crimes? What of Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, religious and racial genocides? The equation of right and wrong loses its meaning. These are the black holes. They suck any semblance of justice. It spins in its own gory world of hate and blood. No light of justice escapes. It's just a dark monolith, a crime. A massive wrong. Forget about mankind's justice, even the wildest stretch of faith in divine redemption fails to get even an iota of justice. Does it mean that the mass crime stands unredeemed? Forever. Does it just keep casting its shadows over the present, creeping into the future, almost forever. Just waiting to be redeemed. And forgotten finally. Or forgiven more suitably.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. A song of humanity amidst mass crime. A ray of hope for the lost. A redemption for the innocent millions who were wiped out because they attracted the greatest affliction of human mind, someone's hate. A depiction of human hate and lust for power in Nazi occupied France in second world war. France is virtually menless. Men are in prison. Women hold the baton of life. They have to keep love alive in their wombs. It's loss and loss everywhere. And monstrous brutalities. They have to hide fistful of love, of humanity, of forgiveness deep inside their tortured selves. It will be required to rebuild life after the devastation. All major destruction is caused by the criminal acts of men. It's for the women to pick up the scattered pieces and again make a home for man. For a husband, for parents, for children, for brother, for sister.

It's a dark cloud hanging over, taking their smiles away. They are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers. But only in memory. The males who identify them as such are missing. They have to survive. When they can no longer fight to save their bodies, they fight to save their souls. For future. For the victory of humanity over monstrosity. For their men. To give them fresh lease of life, food, shelter and the strong love of a woman, if at all they return after war. Forget about redemption. The survival of love in a woman's heart for her man, despite all the wrongs to her body in his absence, is still a better right then millions of wrongs by criminal souls. It is here that the question of redemption becomes irrelevant. Like a small lamp drives away millions of particles of darkness with its tiny flicker, The women of France keep the torch alive. Beacon of hope, of love, of a possibility in times to come, an urge to relive the moments that sound farther than wildest dreams, In the backdrop of Nazi holocausts, they move silently, unheroically, carrying love in their eyes, hopes in their laps and seeds of humanity in their womb. Read this masterwork by Kristin Hannah. It might help you in being a still better human being. A more loving person .

Random Reflections

Soul is the real substance! This physical being is just the shadow of that true self. Ironically we grow up believing the shadow to be the substance and substance to be the shadow. It requires reverse conditioning to be truly on the path of evolution.

^^^^^^^

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!

*******

Ordinary beings possess extraordinary potential to win against odds, to jump over hurdles, to smile over tears, and, most importantly, to be happy when there aren’t enough reasons to be. They are the faceless constituents of a massive commonality. They are surrounded by a swiping generality. They are coloured in the monochromes of mundane reality. Still they are special. We have to acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary people. I see heroes and heroines in my simple characters. They fight, and oftentimes fail, but write a little passage in the infinite book of life: an ordinary life that was lived substantially. On the small stage of life, they live very intensely. Somehow, the world would not be the world that is still beautiful without their contribution. They heave humanity onwards in its march to some better destination.

******

Of all types of death, including by disease, accidents, ageing, death born of someone's hate is the worst. Hate-born death slaughters the core principle of being humans. It strangulates the the basic constituent of our collective consciousness to survive individually as a part of the social set-up, a literally must-have for our identity as much as oxygen is must for our biological survival. Hate has potent carriers. It breeds death with the weapons of religion, caste, creed, race, ethnicity. From Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, to modern day ISIS slayings, hate wreaks the worst form of death. Death born of hate is the very negation of the meaning of life.

Traders of Divisiveness

Indians basically behave like a group of famished rats crammed in a small cage having lesser grains and more hungry mouths. It's a poor mass of squabbling souls. Chaoitic, noisy, errant and blatantly oblivious to the advantages of orderliness and peace. It's basically a fight, a mere existence, just survival. The air is full of insecurity, suspicion, anxiety, jealousy, negative complexes: as many dark shades of human behavior as can be expected in a situation defined by few morsels and many hungry souls. It's a twilight complex stretched between need and greed. Ever unmet 'need' is even riskier than 'greed'. With massive population and scare resources, need always lurks even more prominently than summer noontime sun. When need overrides the particles of air that one inhales day in and day out, it goes into one's guts, it suffocates the higher self buried deep inside. The pollutants of ever-persistent need dehumanize the self, narrow the vision, suffocate creativity and limit sentiments.

Thanks to the universal applicability of the concepts of marriage and having a male heir for after death salvation, India is full. Crammed to the gills. Overpopulated to the extent that the core of individual philosophy is solely defined by the fight to survive. It makes them, the people--both individually and collectively--self-seeking. They cannot see beyond the basics of life. Of making a few well defined ends meet, at whatever cost. In such a mad rush breaking the rules becomes the rule itself. That's why Indians are so comfortable in flouting all the norms that go into making a clean, humane society. They run, they fall, they side step, step on others, pinch each other down. It's basically a mad race.

With so many hands grabbing the same basics in the same little plate what can you expect. They just identify themselves with their lower selves, the ego, defined by fears, insecurities, complexes and jealousies. The stage is so small that they don't have the opportunity, or the will, and consequently the ability, to get connected to the higher self, the stage of consciousness about one's role, responsibility and duties as a contributing entity of the larger, collective environment. This attachment to the lower self makes them terribly self-centered. It's a mass apathy. As long as they get the survival crumbs to pamper their lower selves, they care a damn about any self responsibility. They allow themselves and others to violate any socio-legal norm. The offshoots of such behavior include spitting anywhere, defecating almost everywhere, flouting traffic rules, tendency to take short-cuts to reach their little journey to meet the same puny destinations, grease palms of government employees, take bribes whenever possible, molest women, commit petty crimes, shout at the top of their voices for pettiest of things and over littlest of issues, and last but not the least take any short-cut to reach the smallest of a goal.

You name anything and Indians will not disappoint you in flouting the norms. All because they inherently and instinctively connect with the lower self. Out of all these huge mass of self-seekers, the most potent ones become the politicians. They are the best self-seekers who have hardly any restrictions, moral or legal, to stop them from meeting their desires and destinations. No surprise, the small self-seekers deserve only bigger self-seekers to lead them. There is no need to comment about Indian politicians and their oft-used tools of dividing society on caste, communal, regional and class bases. Indian democracy functions on divisiveness. Individually Indians are very low in self-esteem, creativity, guts, courage and enthusiasm, so they identify themselves with collective identities in the form of caste, creed, religion and region. This tendency is smartly used by the traders of divisiveness, the politicians.

A Small World around Her Feet

Her beautiful bluish eyes were sparking with reflections from swift torrents of the Ganges. Standing by the support posts of Ram Jhoola, the huge suspension bridge in Rishikesh, she took a deep view of the spiritual panorama like she had so many times since her arrival, believing the place to provide her spiritual succour, a food for her ruffled soul.

On the steps below an old Sadhu was washing brass image of Nag Deva in the sediment laden waters of the Ganges spiritually ebullient in the rainy season. She marvelled at the way his frail fingers, charged with devotional fervour for his beloved god, were busy in creating a shinier visage for the Godly metal. He seemed to be lost in a musical prayer; the rhythmic ripples in the holy mother chanting songs for him. His frail body, long locks of hair and beard all busy in devotional unison. Swiftly flew Ganga Maiya with the crop of its erosion work in the Himalayas.

With the enthusiasm of a spiritually spellbound foreigner she took a snap and the flash of light seemed to have disturbed his prayer. He stood erect holding the rag with the help of which he was using the abrasive power of the sediments to make his faith shinier and newer. The talisman of his faith was shining in the sun. The flashlight’s noisy whisper distracted his devotional work. In the distance a conch shell blared with devout urgency. He looked at her and a faint smile surfaced on his lips lost in rag tag beard. It then changed to laughter. The bearded laughter was a peculiar one and made her uneasy. People’s voice, music in the temples, dull vehicle sounds, incense and spiritual fervour sashaying over the breeze riding Ganges torrents all appeared to have stopped for a moment. She was clad in an Indian way, kameez and salwar, and looked resplendent with her curves and angelic features. For a fraction of a second he stood like a hypnotised soul.

Uneasily she moved onto the great bridge devotionally named Ram Jhoola. Vidhut followed her like a quadruped and taking a pity on the invalid she stopped. A local guide had translated the invalid’s story for 50 rupees. The invalid beggar was born with limbs that just allowed him to crawl on the four. He was born at ‘Pili Bheet’ she tried to recall the name but missed. He was 20 years of age now and had left home a good seven years back to sustain himself on all fours, while the more important bipeds scampered over him across the narrow swinging bridge that swayed over the majestic sprawl of the Ganges below. He spent his nights in the verandas of dharamshalas, making it a point to stick around as long as possible till he was kicked out along with the dogs. When his luck struck best, he even landed with 100 rupees at the end of the day. After hearing his translated story, she had given a nice blue 100 rupee bill as she took a snap, and he had taken it as the modelling fee. After all he was special. As she walked up to him he expected another modelling assignment. But she passed with the best smile ever possible that took him off all his fours.

The devotional world on both sides of the Ganges carried on among the bathing steps, temples, rest houses, dharamshalas, ashrams and bazaars buzzing with religious items.

For a whole month the rain Gods had been dripping in their pleasant fury. Even though it was not cold, still after so much of water and dampness it is desirable to have sunrays.

“For the last one month so much water has fallen over us that I feel like a fish permanently relishing the sea!” a saffron clad babaji, flaunting his English commented as he looked sideways while crossing her on the bridge.

She was tempted to look back but knew the risks a beautiful white woman carried in this part of the world, and quite contrary to her open nature she did not turn back. Such looks, simply born of curiosity, are misinterpreted very easily as green signal for a fling. She thus avoided the trouble.

The incense-drenched world on both sides of the great river appeared slowed down and subdued by the rains. Deep foggy clouds did endless rounds amidst the surrounding little vales and very easily found pretence to unburden themselves of whatever water they carried. From the surrounding ridges, water was perpetually slipping down to copiously feed even the tiniest sub-tributaries of small rivulets further feeding moderately big rainy drainage and the latter finding their way to the big river.

She needed this type of small place solace, far away from New York where the big world had piled up enough restlessness in her to go footloose. A chain smoker she had not smoked even once since she arrived here a week back. It was nothing sort of a miracle and she was looking forward to add many more such soothing miracles.

She loved this seemingly ancient world and more so in this antique shop. It was fragrant with anciently aesthetic fragrance. There were old paintings, saucers, sculptures, brass tortoise, frogs flat on their bellies, dogs, puppies, candle stand, carved silver vessels, a huge cone (God knows for what purpose), lizards, scales, compasses, trays, tumblers, beautiful vases, lamps, chimers, the oldest gramophone she had ever seen, horse riders, Gods and Goddesses, soldiers, crockery, Victorian trinkets, copper bronze and silver coins, a big painting by a Britisher, a Harappa type of violinist sitting on a chair, lamps of various shades, a marble mermaid, horse bust, electroplated punch bowls, an old rusted gypsy pan, old time watches, and so forth. She tried to observe each and everything. It was a pleasant mess. It was more exotic than her city-cramped senses could afford to see, forget about buying. She started taking pictures.

The attendant chided in her broken English, “If all take photos who buy!?”

She was embarrassed and to avoid further embarrassment bought an old replica of a boat. She also wanted to buy the British period copper bugle but found it too big and abandoned the idea.   

As she came out she met the gaze of that very same Sadhu whom she had seen washing the bronze God in the sandy waters of the river. His face bore a strange look. She got the pin-prick of scare and lowered her eyes to sneak past into the jostling crowd in the narrow bazaar street. She was apprehensive. She knew the risks the foreigners faced in India. But possibly it was incidental and probably the woman in her was exaggerating the risk. She had many muddled thoughts in her mind as she again found herself lost and spread out in the unknown world of agonies and ecstasies.

****

Sitting by a small roadside tea stall the old man in ascetic robes—but real earthly self of worldly needs clearly visible through the charity-expectant look—was asking for a packet of biscuits. With a fistful of coins he had purchased himself tea and retrieved a bit of honour, but to carry his will further, i.e., tea and biscuit both, he still needed the favourite aid of asceticism, i.e., asking for alms.

“Can’t see, lost my specks, now who would take mercy on an old man like me?” he pleaded.

Oh thou holy place! So many disbanded, discarded, and obsolete human beings take shelter in your teeming streets laden with religious fervour. Incense, chanting, charities, soul-salvaging rituals, flying locks, saffron robes—it’s a world in itself catering to the needs of as many as they dump their poor selves here. In between mother Ganges washed away littler, muck, and sins without any complaints.

Somebody bought him a biscuit packet and the religioner opened his worldly identity. “I’m from Pushkar in Rajasthan.”

He was on a month’s tour to the orphanage here. However, arriving here he might have calculated his chances better at this place than home because it literally won’t even raise any issue in his family if he didn’t return at all.

“Let me see if there is a man of God who can get me specks!?” he quaked in pleading fervour, trying to pull the strings of devotee’s salvage-seeking spirits.

“You are asking too much maharaj! It’ll cost about 100 bucks, so you should ask in instalments, collect your money and then buy to see this beautiful world!” a fat gentleman mused.

“There is a place but from where you can get one in charity,” another person wrote hastily an address on a chit of paper and the old sanyasi proffered a blessing over his head. 

This world is a little merry-go-round thing. The very same person who had taken the pains to write the address of a charitable organisation found the old man trying to invoke kindness in devotion-smitten souls walking over Ram Jhoola. “O men and women of God, can’t you spare something for my stomach treatment. It pains...day in and out. They say an operation is required. Please-please I die daily of this pain. God will bless you with pleasures unimaginable if you help me relieve from this pain!” the sonorous notes of his pleading voice mixed into the cool breeze blowing over the waters of the kind, cleansing river.

The address giver moved towards him with a meaningful smile. The charity seeker but was unmoved and stood solid with his present version of need. “It’s not that I just survive for free. I work as well. I wash brass utensils of that big temple over their!” before the gentleman could start with some lesson in morality and ethics of charity, the old man put up his defence guard.

“You had told me that you’ll directly go to the charity shop, get your specks and leave for your home!” the gentleman seemed up for some jest with the old man.

“Yes I’m gathering fare to reach the spot you mentioned. And to get money here you have to have a good reason, so this stomach ailment,” the old beggar was trying to salvage some respect.

The gentleman gave him 20 rupees and asked him to take a shared auto to reach the place before it closed for the day. Possibly he wanted to accomplish one pious deed in the day at any cost! He literally shoved him to the auto stand and deliberately hid himself around some corner to see the old man’s chain of action.

The old sanyasi was suddenly spellbound and looked at her feminine majesty as she passed at a distance unmindful of the gaze that was anchored on her with particular interest. The hiding gentleman could not hold it anymore and came angrily chiding, “Tricky old man, befooling people with need of specks and here you have all eyes for that beautiful white woman!”

****

Vidhut, the invalid from birth, had a sort of office on the Ram Jhoola, crawling on all fours, wearing chappals in his hands and another pair tied on both knees of his malformed little stumps of legs. As the devotees came gazing into the majestic torrents of the holy river, he pulled at the strings of their conscience, coming as a means of their salvage, a means of drawing God’s blessings by being kind to him. Crawling like this in the spiritual path of the pilgrims he daily earned 80 to 100 rupees. These days he visited his family very rarely.

Pili Bheet in Uttar Pradesh was a totally different place and his parents almost satisfied with God’s verdict to have him at the holy site as an instrument of Godly blessings for the luckier chunk of humanity. Yesterday he had a strong sense of purpose in life and rented a room for rupees 400 a month. He felt like respecting himself more, and draw more respect from the dharamshala caretaker who had kicked him out the previous day.

Once again her angelic face was gathering all these interesting tit-bits from him through another paid translator, a local street urchin who had picked up smatterings of English to get some pocket money in the bargain. The Ganges was creating stormy ripples below the mighty suspension bridge drawn from corporeal to the incorporeal. A man with puckered face watched with jealousy and interest.

“I have helped him many times, saved him from the policeman who try to drag him off the bridge. They in turn hit me with batons. I still carry the mark!” desperately he tugged at the local interpreter’s shirt to translate it for the Madam and get some attention on him for being good to somebody whom she liked to talked to.

“It’s a fracture. You must have got it while stealing something,” the translating boy just snubbed him in rough Hindi and shoved him away.

Surely, Vidhut was in news among the beggar group on the Jhoola.

“These white people are so strange that she might even adopt you and take you as far as America, the heaven!” one of his fellow beggars was creating the celestial world of luck beyond imagination.

And of course Vidhut hated the particularly interested stare of the old beggar from Rajasthan whenever she passed along. Had he approached her like any other beggar then it would have been normal. But the old Rajasthani was particularly drawn to her persona and still did not go for what is expected, i.e., alms or charity, but simply looked from a distance. It convinced him that the old man was drawn to her in a hateful way. And he cursed him for that. 

****

If you are a foreigner and happen to be at some pilgrimage place, you are then supposed to enjoy the devotional and spiritual fervour of the place, however tedious the exercise might come to you. The experience is, however, recommended.

After the Satsang organised by Swami Ramsukhdev ji Maharaj, in which innumerable chants and hymns and preaching interventions passed over her bent head, she was wearing her shoes crouching on the ground. A truly, we mean really religious persona decked in religiosity for the visual delight of it, priestly hand moved and was placed on her head with all the showers of this and the other world. She was awestruck looking up at his religious make up. It was amazing and impressive from all corners of this world.

“Are you from England?”

“No Maharaj I’m from America,” she had learnt to address the people attired as such with this word.

“Need a place to stay? You can stay here at the ashram. A very nice room!” he pinched slightly at her arm, straightway driving a strange intimacy.

She got to the immediate fringe of some vaguely lurking danger. The Ashrams vied with each other in having more and more white skins staying there for more impression and more gains in more than one form. It was a big industry to cater to money and carnal desires. She was shocked beyond apprehension and found herself going along with him. Now he was becoming more and more direct.

“This Godman is a ruffian...bastard...Has fun with girls staying at the ashram,” again he pinched at her arm mischievously, his voice now shaking with some fearful, natural passion.

She was scared beyond all her limits, even scared to scream loudly, after all these people are revered even more than God. She had seen hundreds falling at their feet since her arrival.

“You know we as humans should love each other. Oh, you don’t know how much I have liked you since I saw you. I’m blessed to have your company,” he was becoming more direct taking her shell-shocked state to be her consent. Or had she been drawn into some trick of hypnotism?

By now she could feel the pangs of lust effulging from his holy robes. But she was scared even to say something, forget about shouting. Vidhut just lunged forward in his dusted world, straying around like a puppy among the stampede of the bigger world above.

“Maharaj, maharaj...this life is wretched...I won’t let you go of your holy feet, bless me...I’m a worm and die every minute, please, oh please...” he was squirming like in fits and howling so piteously that even dozens stood around to have a look.

She regained her senses and just took the fraction of a moment to sneak out of the place, but not before looking into those dull dark eyes of the invalid, knowing fully well that he had done it deliberately to help her sneak out of the difficulty.

****

As per the norms of the society set up according to the appearances, we have to call him a lunatic. Her attention was drawn by the oddity of his forlorn situation. He was sitting on a heap of stones and a rimmed paramilitary hat perched safely on a towel wrapped around his ‘lost somewhere’ brain. To add more to his otherworldly attractiveness, he had wrapped a polythene sheet around him as if to guard his identity about which the bigger world wasn’t concerned anymore. Much to her surprise he somewhat positively responded to her accost. Saggy beard around the jaw-line moved to faint vestiges of smile on his face which appeared that of a Sikh. The smile seemed like an iota of appreciation for the swathes of sympathy on her beautiful features. He was eating soybean seeds from a packet. Sandals picket out from somewhere; a little school-boy’s tie; a sweater; a bag full of empty bottles and packets—it was all that remained to him in this world. In his pockets he had a torn diary and a pen.

“What is your name...name, name!” she treated him like a fellow human being, emphasising on ‘name’.

It was like talking to a stone, to something, to some empty bottle in the garbage pit stinking with all the muck in the world. We are sure he had not been called so particularly for long with such specific attention. He even got scared, getting into that evasive action to avoid a hit on the face. But then the beauty on her face was too assuring. His petrified eyes groped into the depths of her blue eyes. Sanity lurked deep from the unfathomable well of his miseries.

“M...M...Meer Singh!” his eyes closed under the impact of the push he gave to his crippled mind to draw sense for this beautiful creature from the outer world.

The way he had responded he seemed a case of somebody who had lost human sympathy rather than his mind.

She could recall Vibhut so particularly emphasising the place he was born to the translator. People carry the place of their birth even more importantly than even their names.

“Where are you from?” she was trying to make him understand the question more through gestures.

He kept on muttering some name again. Perhaps he was telling the name of the place. Since she was not aware of the local names any guesswork in that direction was of no use. He was trying to say the same word with a huge effort of his salivating mouth. Having failed to go any more, he gestured with his finger towards his head and finally like the dreamy world of an opium-fed man, he circled his finger over his hand to indicate he was mentally crippled. He had conveyed his identity.

“Education, education, studies, studies, books, school, school...” she held onto the iota of sanity that the anchorage of her sympathy had caught onto from across the unknown dark gloomy sea of his oblivion.

“Matric!” the effort found spittle dandling across the tufts of beard on his chin.

Again he circled his finger over the hat. Well, that was his identity now.

Possibly, drinking had something to do with his mental disorder for he picked up an empty cold drink bottle and muttered, “Bad, bad, hicc!!”

His eyes contorted with fear and he was looking now at something behind her back. Scared herself she looked back and was terrified beyond imagination. So it was not incidental. That smile by the riverside when he was washing that idol and that appearance by the trinkets shop, it wasn’t just simple coincidence. He but seemed even more scared than she herself was. Realising this, her fear turned more of a curiosity. The man stood there with folded hands. Before she could even react she saw Vidhut crawling up from behind and he straightway lunged into the old Sadhu’s legs, misbalancing him and toppling him on all fours. He was shouting like anything, raising a scare, drawing people’s attention, trying to save the princess from the danger that this old bad man, more beggary than anyone else in the semblance of saffron religiosity, presented. Vidhut was crying as he hit the man and clawed his face. The lunatic man also got up and unnerved by a strange sense started stomping the ground like an angry ape. He too started beating the old man with his hat. It was a real melee and before the people got together to disentangle the three of them, Vidhut had shown enough crawling clawing heroism to thoroughly roughen up the old man who was shaking and crying with convulsive sobs.

“All I wanted was a photo with her, hai hai send this rascal to jail, this crawling villain has shaken up my bones, police-police, is there any...is there a God-fearing man to take side of this old Sadhu who has been unjustifiably beaten up, hai hai, look at this worm who wriggles around the firangi woman!” he pointed to Vidhut.

She had already left the scene. People saw them going together. She was walking at a moderate pace and he crawling as fast as he could manage. Many tourists clicked a picture of this beautiful moment. There was mud across the narrow path. She put all her strength to lift his mud-smeared body, getting herself soiled in the effort, and put him to the other side. People applauded.

Somebody cheered, “She might have even fallen in love with him, these are crazy people, white people, expect the most daring from them!”

Broken Smile

Monsoon was here to foster environmental harmony and rekindle human spirits. All the colours available on a painter’s palette were on display on the vast canvas of the sky. The spectacular skylark clouds approached as the harbingers of rain. The sky’s apron was dark grey when it was drizzling; it turned silvery grey when gentle showers turned to heavy downpour. Clouds low and high; clouds in different cottony sculpted swathes; in different sizes and shapes. In the mornings when the sun lurked around the horizon these reflected a golden sheen; in the forenoon when the sun was curtained by high veiling of clouds, the lower bluish-grey fabric reflected half the usual brightness. In the afternoon pale grey handed over the baton to most exciting interplay of cloudy colours in the evenings. The atmosphere washed of its linen during the day, now the setting sun virtually changed these vaporous hangings into a vast kaleidoscope of colours. Baleful of clouds and colours in the sky’s lap.

He liked this particular interplay of cloudy colours in monsoon skies: scarlet, purple, chocolate, orange, reddish orange, yellowish, and numerous other combinations. He often marvelled at the interplay. He mused about the unknown painter. Nature. He knew it was nature.

He stayed alone and even on nights did not miss the shades of dull white and black. In mid-September the monsoonal sojourn extended into autumnal sultriness of retirement like he felt about himself at this stage of life. And on this full-moon night, fluffy white lumps of milky clouds shone against the background of rain-washed bluish dark sky lit here and there by the brightest stars. The moon shone at the acme of its shape and brightness. He had companions in these beauties of the night. Staring into the distances of the night sky, he felt related to some destiny somewhere at the farthest end of the universe. Gauzy, lacy, transparent fabric of these clouds was drawn like a curtain; and when it passed over the moon, the full-faced beauty smiled through the veil like a shy bride at his excited bachelor self. A sort of lunar rainbow! A silvery hallo around the celestial beauty, fading into yellowish band, followed by a purple one. The night too had colours. He was happy while spending sleepless nights on his solitary terrace. On fluffy, broken cloud pieces, the moon threw yellowish and purplish dye as these fleeted forward driven by easterly monsoon winds. These and other such spectacles were his playmates for old age.

The much-pampered Chau Chun, as big as a leopard cat, fed on his affection and full-cream milk, was snoozing in his lap. It was afternoon. The sun must have been halfway across the perpendicular and the western horizon. A dark sheet of cloud hung horizontally, passing the sun just below its lower ring. Caressing the cat on its sleepy head, he heaved a sigh and looked at the spectacle and stopped for a moment in telling the story to the sleeping cat. A fountain of light burst down like a bright column of stage-light. The easterly breeze carried very low fluffy dark-grey clouds. Against the brighter upper background these appeared smoky puffs of a steam engine. As these passed the bright column of the sun’s flashlight their smokiness became prominent. The unmindful pampered cat did not mind interruption in the story. He was telling the stories of his life. The story of a leopard that came his way while he was walking in a mountain forest.

“You go your way and I take care of my path,” he confidently instructed the big cat, purporting to brag to the little cat and admonishing the little one not to mess with him.

During his heydays he had the guts to look straight into the eyes of a leopard without showing any signs of fear so that the big cat just moved away. He gave a loud burst of solid laughter as he concluded the story and started another about the bullying monkey whom he had reprimanded like a little child and the monkey had just retreated shamefaced.

He really liked his cat and believed in its ability to sense the paranormal. He was equally fond of its lazy sleepy ways. “If cats do not sleep for so long, their predatory instincts would chuck out at least some of the species!” he proudly explained sometimes to the neighbour. 

It was a musty autumnal twilight. A desultory breeze blew across the Doon Valley. Day’s white and night’s black mixed to produce standard grey of twilight. In the yawning despondency, the thickly wooded Himalayan foothills, tiny ridges, rilled vales—a teasing bonsai of the mighty Himalayas—stood in tired silence. A big, vertical column of cloud stood alone in the sky like a skyscraper. The sun had dived deep beyond the hillocks; and this cloudy tower seemed to stand on its toes to have a look at the day’s eye. The upper reaches of the cloudy column still reflected the faint ochre of the downed sun. It thus hovered over the tall strands like a big bulb. But then the sun dived still deeper below the horizon and the fluffy vapours handed over their last sheen to the folds of the autumnal night.

Chau Chun slipped out of his hand and he saw it crossing the compound wall and jumping into the forest’s welcoming greenery.

“Haa haa sala hunter! Can’t help it. Feed him the best malai in the world, he but still needs to go on nocturnal forays!” he laughed at the feline creature.

Many times the big cat just slipped out only to come at day-break next day with more love and more pampering at the master’s feet.

Situated in a broad bowly depression at the foot of mighty father’s Shivalik hills, the little nature’s cove had Mussorie facing in the north at the crest of high ranges like a proud queen. Crisscrossing the tiny villages and hamlets the road circuited along the scattered peace of the area. Jakhan, Johri, Sinaula cradled in the lap of this bowl basking in impregnable peace. Along the road there were little general stores, tailor shops, mostly run by womenfolk, surprisingly little doctoring shops of registered unregistered medical practitioners, and PCOs. The rural community as you moved into the forest away from the main Mussorie road looking cosily safe in self-sustaining mode, and what is more important living in peace. Clouds got a full chance to vent out their rainy ecstasy here upon the welcoming canopy of broad-leaved sal forests. One would feel blessed by the atmospherics when enclosed by the wispy, dense, foggy strands of stratus and nimbostratus clouds stuck up in a little spur and thereby losing their essence in melting, surrendering abundance.

This little heaven, starting from Rajpur road at Jakhan, didn’t give even the littlest clue to the veritable peace and tranquillity lying undisturbed a couple of kilometres into the forest and tiny hamlets. He was moving into this peace. Vehicle noise from the road to Mussorie died after him. He was headed to the forest. He walked with a limp. He had carried a scar on his left leg for the last 20 years, non-healing in nature and asking him to live another day with reinvented determination, take one more step at the cost of more pain. More than the pain in leg, his heart was aching. Chau Chun hadn’t returned.

Tiny tidied neat homes, bungalows of retired army officials, local faces showing mild mongoloid features, undisturbed flora and fauna, it was all spread around him with the sense of normalcy like you expect on any day. But Chau Chun was not to be found.

“O Sahab...O Sahab...for God’s sake don’t walk so much!” he was harked at from behind.

With a resigned sideway glance he looked at the follower and slowed down for the person to catch up with him.

The follower was a very strongly built stocky old man. Now he was a peculiar mass of muscles mired in ageing pulp. From looks and the way he wore his clothing anybody would have dubbed him a lunatic. However, it wasn’t really so. The concern that he showed for the limping man belied all such possibilities. He was carrying huge sacks in both hands. His right leg tied in a rag was badly lacerated. With stony nonchalance to his condition he was carrying on his march towards his destination to the next hamlet. He knew the sahib. On more than one occasion he had received some retired ware as a mark of the kind man’s large-heartedness.

The old man took a vow to find Chau Chun even if it meant looking every nook corner in the bushes of the forest around. The master but knew that nothing sort of a personal search will satisfy his aching heart.

He walked on calling Chau Chun, Chau Chun. He wanted the cat back at any cost. He just couldn’t afford to lose this axis of his fatherly affection. The sky will lose its colours if he didn’t find his pet, a family member rather. He searched and searched, and returned all tired with the fatigued rays of the sun at the day-end.  

It was raining at night and he couldn’t sleep. Unable to stop himself he set out in the dark to find the listener to his stories. It was windy and a gust, not showing any respect to the elderly, blew away his umbrella, leaving him open to the storm’s fury.

The next day found him sick and the wound still worse. In semi-consciousness he was telling the stories of his youth, when he had been healthy and was not alone because he participated in the mundane mad race. His muffled words. Nobody to hear. Not even Chau Chun.

A Hybrid Dream

He was in the seventh standard in the nondescript village school. One sultry afternoon, the class was yawning over the dead leaves on the sprawling ground surrounded by one-storeyed building around. The air was still, and so was time. The social science teacher was perhaps the only one to hear the sagging voice of a standing student as he tried to go through the chapter as well as the period. He was reading aloud a chapter from the political science book.

“Civil Services!” the burly teacher stomped his stick onto the ground, and many a student came out of the siesta, especially those at the far end of the rows.

The students came to their senses. “It’s the highest job in the country!” he informed. “You can become one!” he accusingly pointed towards the one who was reading out the chapter in his moderately shrill voice.

Nobody in the classroom raised a suspicious eyebrow. Why? He after all had been the class topper since they remembered. Shackled by the ignorance and absence of real competition, they thought this ‘intelligent one’ could outwit anyone with as much ease as he did in class.

That was the first time he heard about the much coveted civil services. Sometimes he had heard his father, a government employee, referring to words like IAS. However, his teacher’s proclamation did not leave a significant mark on his student soul. He was just a good student, nice and obedient, who at least would not prioritise wallowing in the pond with buffalos over doing his homework. Only this much! He simply knew that good students sit over their books more than they play errant after the school hours. They work really hard and cram up homework—even sometimes not understanding any bit of it—in order to keep people labelling them as the first student. In fact, they are extra eager to carry that tag at the cost of cut in their childhood fun and floridity.

Without much trouble to his numero uno status in the class comprising farmer’s children, who cared more for anything else in the world except studies, he cleared matriculation. It was a very good first division and top position in the school with a percentage of 78. He was surprised when most of the villagers said resignedly he is good enough for a top position in the district. But then he will do better at the next level, they concurred. In that small world, they had come to believe in his numero uno position at any level, irrespective of the bitter realities of the harsh competition in the larger world.

His teachers liked him, so did most of the people around. The reason? He was thin, docile, slightly better than average looking, and enclosing himself in these boundaries—almost never allowing himself the littlest transgressions like many others of his age—he just crammed what the teachers demanded. Looking at the standard of the rest of the students, even the teachers’ demand from him was not that high. They just expected him to stand first in the class, because to them he was an ideal student ready to take up the simple challenges thrown at him in that small almost uncompetitive world.

However, studying non-medical at the senior secondary school at the district city, he found himself continuously slipping down from his former position. It was a bigger and more competitive world. Reason? The unmindful and ever-relaxing science teacher at the village school hadn’t taken the trouble to load their (and his) young minds with anything related to science. All they had done was to be asked to read the next chapter by themselves and learn the solutions to the problems all by themselves, no explanation whatsoever. Starting from a scratch and still cramming and not knowing many things, he managed to pass senior secondary with a good first division. He had not scored any position in class and there were many who had scored over him.

Much to his surprise, again those who knew him said the score did not showcase his true potential. Reason? They never found him doing anything un-studently.

“Science is too limiting!” some luminaries came forward with their protective suggestion. “Open him to the vast vistas of arts and humanities where 2+2 is not always equal to 4.”

He thus did his graduation from a college where everything went right except for education; a place where only a decent studently behaviour could fetch the honour of a topper.

Again the teachers and fellow students provided him his favourite position. Somehow, he was always far from the real big bad competitive word. So always, some way or the other, came to occupy a position that made him the darling prince of the little dimly lit cave. Beyond was the bigger world with its higher parameters of excellence. Alongside, he had an interview for the NDA, the patriotic National Defence Academy. He had crammed well to clear the written part, but thanks to all his limitations, he was totally out of wits during the four-day gruelling session including psychological and physical tests to access the personality. Returning as a loser and still confounded over the ways of sophistication in the bigger world, they still patted with sympathy, “It’s due to the corruption that prevails in the selection process!” “Army job is just for average students. He’s an excellent student. A cut above the ones who just serve in the army. He is brand cut for the civil services,” others concurred.

His father, who had spent more time in reading books than anything else he had done, was a big fan of his habit of sitting over books for long hours. Similar were the proud sentiments of his grandfather, a former teacher. “Failure does not count much, as far as you are working to the farthest limit of your sincerity,” the wise old man told him many times. Being a good student was more important to them than succeeding every time. So it did not create much ripples when he fell short of good two percentage marks off first division in graduation. People simply had not lost faith in him. He had come to be taken as beyond all such little considerations of just marks and all.

“Forget about your marks! The IAS does not require you to score first division at the graduation level,” the whole lot around him egged on the sulking student. So without knowing much about the nitty-gritty of the toughest battle ahead, over-confident and a bit diffident by now due to excessive confidence put by others and lack of knowledge of the real ground position, he declared from the tiny study room on the upper storey in the village that he will clear the IAS from there itself; without equipping himself with an MA degree or coaching from one of the so many institutions in Delhi.

Optional subjects were to be chosen for the toughest exam in the country. He mulled over his level of calibre and intellect, and Philosophy stood out to be the natural choice as one of the optional subjects. The funny limitation of his perception came to surface an year later when he fell headlong at the first hurdles and lost one precious (out of the four) chance in the bargain. It was simply as good as fighting for just three chances as a general category candidate. They sympathised, “You failure does not mean your unsuitability for the job. It’s just that you missed coaching. That’s it!”

The moment others showed confidence in him and there he was involuntarily being drawn into another misstep. The reason? He thought that there is always one sure way to reach the next sub-target. However, the modern times are such that each and every step needs coolest of a smart calculation, objective deliberations and consultations from as large a group of well-wishers as possible. Cocooned in a lonely world, basking in self-inflicted glory, he rarely consulted anybody to expose any bit of ignorance he was wallowing in. So of course, quite naturally, he did not know the ground realities of the coaching quagmire spread out in Delhi. He simply read an advertisement in a newspaper and like a lamb walked into the den of some academic lion, who easily decided that he should take history as optional for the prelims, simply because the teacher himself specialised in history, apart from his repertoire of most of the subjects falling in the humanities domain.

Later, cramming historical facts in a class of 20 odd students, he and another fellow from Assam were the only two who qualified for the gruesome mains stage. Preparations for the mains involved another optional subject, general studies and essay. The teacher too liked his spirit, but despite best of his intentions the old man could not help him except boosting his already full quota of confidence. Still against all odds, it was a good performance. He just fell a whisker short of qualifying for the interview.

“You have definitely all that needs to be a civil servant. It was just that bloody coaching institute’s resources were not enough to guide you properly. Go to such and such institute, they churn out IAS like you have the chaff cut from the cutter,” the educated lot from among the little world of farmers suggested.

The coaching was expensive though. Then there was lodging and other little expenses. He was thus furiously drawing into the not-so-deep pockets of his father. His father was retired from the services as he slogged it out for the third time in Delhi. The lump-sum cheques did not stay in the family patriarch’s pockets for too long. He remoulded the house; married the eldest daughter who had reached marriageable age long time back; another daughter waiting for marriage; younger son doing graduation; and the pride of the family having a go at the UPSC in Delhi. It was their little world and he the pole star of all their expectations, the panacea for his father’s disappointments in his utopian world. The family patriarch sincerely believed the lives of all siblings will change for the better forever if his elder son became an IAS. He was preparing himself to forego thousand other miseries in life so far, only if this success landed up in the family.

It was his third attempt in as many years. This time he stood up to the people’s expectations and qualified for the interview for the most coveted job in the country. The surrounding countryside in a diameter of 10–15 kilometres around his village gave a rapturous applaud like a deciding goal had been scored in a football world cup final. It was the last year of the old millennium, and the world in that countryside was famished for such academic glories, so people were very much eager to grab whatever landed up in their poor plates. A good proportion of these illiterate, semi-literate peasants, low clerical job holders, and police and military people believed he had already become a District Collector.

The last but the most crucial hurdle was still upface. The chairperson of his interview board was a former defence secretary, TK Banerjee. The five-member panel was surprised to find so much of confidence in this rustic guy. So in their subtly invasive ways, they tried to gauze the depth of his confidence. It was just a thin layer that he had forced upon himself and like a pack of cards he gave in. The qualities for the coveted post involve maturity of opinion, diplomatic conversation, behavioural sophistication, and so on. So once dislodged from the safe scaffolding of his confidence, he babbled miserably and gave shaking, stuttering one-sided imbalanced views to the burning issues of the day. The result was that again he had taken a longer, tiresome circuit to his failure. All this against some pinching facts: He had scored 53.4% in the written (a very decent score) and just 38% in the interview. But then failure too has bitter-sweet rewards, especially in the UPSC. It carries such a big name that even interview discards are taken with some respect of sorts. He too had many that came his way except the selection. “Don’t forget that you are still left with one more chance!” people just won’t lose hope in him. Needs are multi-fold in the countryside. People just look with the reverence of a devotee, if there is a chance for somebody to hit big and rid them off the rural miserable shackles. Everybody had his or her share of expectations from the lucky go guy. He was simply supposed to be a panacea for all the maladies.

This time he took a break in the sequence of years after three years of slog out. He tired himself out amongst the big heap of exam material collected over the years. Now it was a multi-pronged strategy keeping in mind all the three stages of the examination. Having crammed syllabus many times, he felt like a master of his subjects. The risk at the prelims stage did not occur to him even once. Life is all about the jolts that we get when we least expect. Shock exploded on the family’s head. They had almost mortgaged their well-being against their civil services expectations. Now the full-stop had been slammed against their flowery sentence. It ended up meaning a big tragedy. His father could have literally died of the shock. It was unbelievable. Failure at the first stage and that too in the all crucial last chance! Unbelievable! Too cruel on God’s part! The mourning lasted for weeks.

As they say nothing goes waste, the failure this time brought many tragic sufferings and songs from his sensitive heart. Of and on he had been writing poetry during the grind and grill of the exams. The predominant element was of loss, deprivation, failure, tears, and still more. He showed these suffering cooings to his father. His father still wanted to stick to his dream of his son making big. The father’s literature-loving soul that considered the artistry of the written world to be the highest in the universe went gaga over these outpours. He declared that India was full of civil servants and every year they churned out more. How many poets and artists it produced? It can be counted on fingers. Poets and writers were thus more esteemed, loftier species. They thus again salvaged their next dream. Perhaps we have to set up and improvise our dreams; otherwise it becomes difficult to survive.

“Your failures have squeezed your soul to draw out creative juices!” his crestfallen frail figure tried to pump courage in his weak body and the son as well.

Poetry is too soft and wispy for the modern time’s cackling phonetics. An endangered form, it needs to be supported by the poet’s own vocal cords and pockets. The father thus did not dither from contributing a significant amount from his own pockets on the publication of his son’s book of verses. Again these disjointed English words created huge ripples in the countryside pond. A book and that too in English! Well that was too much for the simple farmers around who croaked endless accolades like frenzied frogs in monsoon-fed pond. Eulogies did not stop pouring in for months. If we put the economics of the venture out of the way, he got everything out of the investment. Illiterate people just gleamed over the glossy cover page of the thin volume, holding it like a precious diamond carved by somebody whom they always expected to hit the top. Those who could join letters to make words, meaningful or otherwise, termed it as the work of a genius. Hardly anyone could draw out meaning of these utterly subjective and mournfully abstract, reflective outpours. The more they could not understand it, the more he earned laurels! So the next target was well set up for him to become at least a nationally recognised writer.  

His fourth and final attempt to breach the impregnable fort of the civil services having been turned a disaster, it was a veritable anti-climax to the historic struggle. The indefatigable academician in him was blown off its feet by the shock waves. He still could not believe that he had fallen at the first hurdle after reaching the interview stage in the previous attempt. Despite all reasoning, it was inexplicable and not acceptable at all. Still the chapter had to be closed now. Countless times the family was lost in the sea of gloom whenever the thought raised it head. And it did quite often. The more his sulking silhouette found him in a pensive, suffering trance, the more he wrote poems. However, very soon he realised the commercial unreliability of this panacea to his soul, his escape route from the deadly reality that was still too close to his sensitive heart.

“Try more, you have it in you to be a writer!” his father’s ever-supporting baritone voice was like silver lining to the darkest cloud he had ever encountered.

Now when the glorious sun of the civil services had set for the first time, the people, at long last, seemed to be getting rid of their obsession of their big dream about him. He even felt that they were ignoring him with his failure. Far from the limelight, and slogging out like a sullen donkey, he wrote a big one, a work of fiction. The typeset itself hurt his father’s financial interests still further, but given his taste he bore this literary bruise quite happily. Very soon he realised that finding a publisher is far onerous than writing the best book in the world. Within a couple of years, the enterprising and proud search turned into a desperate scramble.

However, the doors to the civil services had not been tight-bolted completely. Just a couple of lucky days from the final date of submission, some well-wisher told him about his home state PCS examination. Like a weary veteran, he cleared both stages of the written test. Nonetheless, at the interview stage the board’s constitutional discretion ensured that nobody got selected except for the ones who managed to walk the political path of seeking blessings. The range of marks from as low as 5/75 to as high as 72/75 did not leave anything in the candidates’ hands and made it an all about manoeuvre of those sitting in the corridors of power. This stage was ‘make or break’.

The PCS is such a muddy river ridden with mighty crocodiles, putting one at risk—while seeking selection—whichever way one might decide to place an escaping foot to reach the opposite shore. Given his studious ways and almost nil political manoeuvring, he got minimum possible marks in the viva voce despite being one of the toppers in the written examination. People condemned his apolitical approach in not placating the bigwigs at the helm of affairs.

“Seeking political blessings for selection to the PCS is also a part of the examination,” they tried to put some smartness into his dull hardworking head.

“From interview to the final selection you require the best of your 99% effort, and 99% of this 99% is political lobbying,” a successful candidate from the previous batch tried some prudence with him. “Since they gave you almost fail marks in the interview, you need to work double hard to muster up pass marks on the loyalty chart of those in power!” he was soundly advised.

He did not get his mark-sheet of the failed attempt for the next six months. During this period the newly selected batch was consolidated and cemented into legitimacy. He meanwhile again rummaged through the syllabus because the notification for the next year’s examination had already appeared in the newspapers. Then one day his mark-sheet stealthily crept in. Twenty out of seventy-five in the interview. Even twenty-five would have fetched him at least an HCS allied post. Taking lessons, now more than his studies he was thinking about the invisible manoeuvring to pile up his score in the viva voce column. Appeasing the CM was the easiest way out. The literary purpose arose to draw out again from his father’s famished pockets who was by now nursing his conscience against him for the old pensioner had been forced to beg a private loan to get his second daughter married a few months ago.

With cooing literary stars in their eyes they self-published a book. It was a political dedication and it worked more than his studies across endless hours into the depth of nights. However, the favour by luck in one compartment was undone by a mis-stroke in another. Before they could join the state assembly was dissolved and elections were announced. When the opposition formed the next government with unbound vigour, it got busy in whitewashing all the rights and wrongs of the past government. The last government had been doling out jobs in thousands. “They are cheating the youth!” the present destiny-makers had shouted from their opposition benches. Now was the time to undo the former’s doings. Many recruitments were scrapped and quashed. Like a cowering herd of goats the PCS batch took shelter in the judicial precincts. They pooled money to engage the best lawyers in practice. At considerable costs to their struggling resources they just got dates after dates. Who stands a chance against a belligerent government in such a high-profile case!? Nothing was progressing. Their fates had been sealed in some unknown invisible judicial quagmire. Every new dawn brought new rumours. Everything changed except for their fate. Even standing against the rumours became a gross challenge. It was a terrible vacillation between hope and desperation.

They didn’t know that High Court functions as part and parcel of the state government’s machinations. This reality was to unfold slowly over the coming months and then years. The government supported some disgruntled unsuccessful candidate in filing writ against the recruitment. The selected candidates were made a party to the case. Like a petty criminal he got his summons for being selected to the PCS. It had started as a tragedy and was now turning farcical. He celebrated his thirtieth birthday as a ‘would be junior civil servant’ as still the most optimistic of those around him continued to believe in the goal. For months he had been explaining that they were on a constitutional safe-footing. However, as the spool of law kept on upturning the endless thread for months and then years he had to stop this explanation.

“We’ll surely be called for the job! But when? Even God does not seem to have a clue to it!” was his favourite refrain now.

Yes, we missed something! During the time he was waiting for his appointment, he was still writing. Nursing his injured conscience, subduing impotent anger, trying to escape the stranglehold of helplessness and consequent depression, he would say, “But I cannot waste any time. I have to utilise every moment!”

As the months piled up into years again people forgot him and his civil-servantship. It had been years now and in between they raked up memories sometimes. The case was as good as forgotten. It was better to forget it. The long wish seemed to have been buried very deep in the ruff and gruff of circumstances.

“Well son, here it might come at last!” his father seemed to say sometimes through the fading zeal of ill health and broken dreams.

Providence had not been kind to the old man. He had numerous memories to feel beaten by the greater forces beyond his control.

The fallen prince of the village was ultimately forced by failing financial resources and creeping requirements to take up the job of a content writer in a company in Noida. Past thirty and as part of the team of fresh graduates, he sometimes wished for the stroke of luck in the form of positive order from the court, or call it the government’s nod explicitly or implicitly. He was in a lonely corner suitable to reflect over success and failure. He had a sour trail of experience behind him that allowed him to reflect over things, particularly the topic of success and failure, from different aspects and angles. The perennial query staring the face of humankind, the question of our role in shaping our destiny, or fate’s invisible tentacles moulding us like a lump of clay into something predetermined, pricked him in its irritating acrimony.

“Whether we create circumstances; or circumstances create us?” he was mulling over the question, after being tossed by incidental waves and his particular efforts to reach a specific destination, and now churning out mundane words for online marketing portals and websites as a content writer.

A corporate job requires you to be a mini-politician. You have to manage the affairs. Just sincere hard work can put you in a tougher situation than the circumstances born of almost no work. Despite his tireless efforts, because he was just master of written words and worked hard, he had a long trail of failures. He now had this hesitatingly vouchsafed assurance that he would get his appointment later or sooner in life. Looking at that would-be-success he found himself in a twilight zone where the paradoxes intermingled like day and night; where contradictions seemed mixed up in a vague, mysterious but somehow explicable mixture. He kept his PCS hope alive while busy in the rote rut of churning out as many similar-sounding words as possible from 10 to 5 in the office. The dream drew inspiration from another dream his younger brother had while the initial setbacks to the PCS were shaking the ship of his destiny. His brother dreamt that he, the family prince, was standing in a row of PCS officers and when he saw the profile he could see him as a grey-haired, middle-aged man. Jokingly, they used to say that he will be a PCS officer well past 40 years of age.

His brother, in the eyes of their father had destroyed his career. There were enough chinks in his armour of careership that seemingly bore witness against him during charges and counter-charges.

“Despite being decently talented—he had scored 77% in B.Sc.—you are utterly, callously careless, complacent, uncompetitive that ruined your career even before it started!” the frustrated father voiced his agony, trying to latch onto some hope at the younger son’s end, while the elder one seemed to have been taken in by the mundane forces of survival.

His younger brother bore all the best habits of a decent boy, had not picked up any wrong manner, strictly moral in all senses of the term, but surprisingly landed in a cocoon of impassivity after graduation. Right after graduation he had cleared the entrance examination for Masters in Information Technology from a prestigious university, but was lethargic to go for counselling for he simply had not checked about the results. At the turn of the century when the IT sector was a hatchling to become the behemoth that it later became, it would have been a fine start to career in the IT during the boom and bust that followed. He had asked his friends to find out about the results which they never did and he missed the bus. Of nice stature and fine height he was drawn to a career in the army; and appeared nine times for the SSB interview. All retired army officers concurred he had all it requires to be a commissioned army officer. Success however mysteriously eluded.

And here they were, the brothers, in a position to talk about luck, fate, destiny, and hard work. Talks can bury the deepest scars. These can even make life appear purposeful even in the face of endless gloom. These can even raise hope for the future. Talks help life in moving on. Talks are rewards sometime. 

S:The mystery defies all explanation. Do we create circumstances that in turn prepare the outcome for us, or are we just poor products of our circumstances?

A:I think it’s we who create the circumstances. Good or bad one must have the honesty and guts to own up the bouquets and bricks with equanimity. The logic is as simple as this: you get flowers if you sow them, and prickles if you plant thorny seeds.

The younger brother started from the assumption of himself believing in the doctrine of ‘man creates circumstances’ because the little negatives of the charges against him regarding career stood self-explained. Everybody knew he had the talent, but just had been strangely complacent, almost criminally negligent—as his father often accused him of—in not using it. These bitter accusations and chidings of the near and dear ones made the point clear that he had almost destroyed his career.

S: No, no it simply can’t be that simple. If it was that simple then the world would have been either turned into heaven or burnt in hellish fire. Why? Because we have either good or bad plans. But it’s not so. Life as a whole belonging to the whole humanity seems grinding in a paradox. And while it gasps in its multifarious ways we get an open-ended riddle. The very reason that the world is neither heaven not hell proves that we are not the makers of our circumstances in all our sovereignty. There are some factors. Human destiny does not operate on the physical science principle of input of energy and output in some form. Between our endeavours (good, bad, whatever) there is a zone of inexplicable circumstances that most of the time mould our effort, or influence in such a way that the outcome is sometimes good, bad, inexplicably tragic, tragically tormenting or heartfully ecstatic, and so forth.

A: I just give 10% to this so-called unseen hand in moulding our destinies. But for 90% of the rest we are responsible.

S: It’s not the question of quantifying it. We can’t compartmentalise circumstances and efforts separately, for these operate in a single field, in an inseparable domain. It’s just like putting 10% ink in 90% of water. The combination changes the colour. I’m not for the one or the other. I just look at them working concurrently, simultaneously, still retaining their separate identities. It is simply a great mystery. Take for example, how many things are under our control in pursuit of a goal and how many aren’t that either help us or let us down. Suppose you are preparing for the civil services. Even the very act of preparation is bound by certain conditions that could have very easily been otherwise. After all not all of us prepare for this examination. A particular set of circumstances guides and motivates us. Who knows a different set of circumstances would have motivated us to become a doctor, an engineer, or not any of these at all, like you have chosen not to be any of these. Even one’s birth in a particular set of circumstances is beyond our choosing and is quite inexplicable. Let’s come back to the preparations for the civil services. Guided by some chance idea, some intuition, some calculation either in your own mind or some of your peers, you choose 2/3 of syllabus and focus on it, considering it to be most important. Now whether you get topics from this chunk or not isn’t in your control. Suppose you get the topics that you had prepared well, what you write during those three hours would be still bound by certain external forces beyond your control. Given the same information level, you might write at different levels of legibility and level of expression. It we move further into the incidental play of circumstances, I’d prefer to call it beautiful or chaotic interplay of incidental hits of various factors. The chance factor predominates visibly, invisibly. It arises at the time of evaluation of the answer sheets. I’m more particularly taking the example of social sciences (for in physical science there is 2 + 2=4, but even without this factual parameter there is great scope for subjectivity), there are chances that the write up might or might not match the evaluator’s frequency. His mood—destructive, constructive, positive, negative, happy, sullen, and many other swings—are the externalities that decide your fate.

A: At least in my case I’m thoroughly convinced that I mis-planned or didn’t plan my career. That was the blunder I committed in cold blood. Earlier I used to think that it was unfair on their part not to select me in the SSB, but now when I come to recall all those blunders I committed during the interviews my rejection appears credible to me.

S: These were no blunders at that time. These were just limitations bound to you by your circumstances. These might have been blunders in the eyes of the selection panel just as you consider them to be now. Had you known these, you would have definitely avoided them. But you didn’t know. Do you think, you are solely and wholly responsible for your blunders that I term as simple limitations imposed on you by the circumstances beyond your control? No, because it was not you who committed these mistakes. It was a young human being—a product of circumstances—styled by your schooling, the environment you lived in, the foundation that these factors have provided you, and these in turn depend on varying circumstances, and this goes on and on linking perhaps all of us on earth in a mysterious shackle of circumstances. A giant rippling wave carrying causes, effects, good and bad in it, crests and troughs of shaping destinies, highs and lows. You were circumcised by your limited, mediocre schooling, carefree rustic society, and family where expectations seem to fulfil the job of career development.

A: It’s a horrible theory. By this logic even the most heinous crimes do stand free, for it’s not he who commits a crime but the circumstances that made him such stand accused in the dock.

S: Well, in a generalised form, good circumstances and good effort if happen to meet at a good time, at the cusp of productive chance, results are good. And if the reverse or the combination isn’t right we see a struggle; as for the crime, hasn’t somebody well said, “More than the sinner the sin is abominable!” This sin here is not only a noun; it is a whole phenomenon of negative circumstances linked in an interminable chain of cause and effect across globe or perhaps beyond. So more than the sinner, I pity the circumstances and the pathological agents that create such circumstances.

A: It means you purely support the idea that we are the products of circumstances.

S: Helpless puppets...made to dance on the stage of life! No, no! I didn’t say that either. I just realise that there are enough examples to substantiate both assumptions. Quantity-wise one outshines, but quality wise the other inspires further. Furthermore, if the cords of circumstances had been totally under predetermined hands, we would have either reached the goal of universe or God would not have needed to create us at all.

A: But there can be two ways. Either the circumstances are fixed as per a pattern of premeditated destiny, or these occur haphazardly. The latter would rule out the possibility of the existence of God. Well, returning to the question. I think these are just opinions and analyses of success and failure. The victorious, in order to increase the stature and sheen of his achievement, will say that tiresome and unflinching effort definitely fetches good results; we are the makers of our destiny. The failed ones, on the other hand, will try to repaint the black colour on his face, blaming it on the adverse circumstances, luck or bad luck as you have it.

S: No, we just can’t confine these two tormenting facts to mere reactions of two particular set of people on the outcomes of their efforts. In that case you forget to mention the people who have experienced both. In fact most of us face the fluctuation of both things in life. It only means these coexist in some mysterious combination. My initial effort to prove the existence of uncontrolled circumstances was just to bring you down from the singular stance of ‘man creates circumstances’; it was not even to nullify your hypothesis. It was just to convince you that the thing is open-ended both ways. Both things do intermingle in such a manner to turn it sweet-sour and sour-sweet game that life is.

A: Then what is the way left out for us stuck up between these two incalculably heavy grinding stones?

S: Hope, expectations and desire of some favourable draw in your favour shouldn’t hinder your practical, labouring foot on the path of your goal; while the tireless, sweating, heartful slogging on the path of your goal shouldn’t make your eyes dreamless of good luck as well.

A: Just like you! Kept on slogging, walling up one breach after another of your limitations and flaws. But this toil didn’t stop you from pulling at God’s apron whenever you found time for rituals through your hymn-reciting entreaties! Luck! Both ends achieved. Well, maybe you are right. Life is too broad a thing to be underlined by one statement or the other. Maybe both provide us a track of existence on which we can chug ahead. Well, wish you all luck for your final set of circumstances! Wish the circumstances take such a draw in your batch’s favour that your earlier result declared by the State Public Service Commission is authenticated by the court!

S: I have done my lot as circumstances allowed me to. With my limitations and capabilities, I’ve just tried to improve while furtively trying to draw from the pool of my efforts and the binding sinews of circumstances around.

Mr. K arrived on the scene. A silent slogger, he had lugubriously moved ahead on the path of his career without hurrying and without facing any perceptible troubles. In a cool and simply calculating manner he had become a software engineer. A man of moderate and amazingly balanced calibre, most of his finely pulled out cards had fallen in his favour. He had just moved ahead without any dissipation and burning of unnecessary energy.

A: What do you say of him? Did circumstances bless him, or he stoically went on creating them?

S: Oh...my? As many stories as there are people on earth. All with their varying interpretations. Just to keep the sanctity of what we have agreed upon, let’s please close the chapter; otherwise it’ll boom out of proportions. It has taken a lot of work by our tongues to fish out some meaning of the riddle. Now involve someone else with his own specific story and it will again change colours. The chameleon!

K:A... you have done that course in software science.

A: But who cares for distance courses?

K: I’ve just got a promotion. Now I’m in a position to recruit you as a paid apprentice in my company. Within a couple of years you will be earning a decent salary...if you work hard!

S: Here he arrives with a load of good circumstances for you.

And they laughed heartily.

That’s life is. A string of fragmented dreams, falls, runs, talks, agreements and disagreements. It goes on. Unmindful of victories and failures. In its constant, permanent swipe, it takes away the varied, impermanent dust scattered around. Under the broom we rumble and tumble and make noise. Of agonies more often. Of happiness sometimes.