Bound feet, mutilated genitalia and clipped wings

Women had to fight a long battle to reach the level of swimsuit and the leisure of swimming. Buried under multiple layers of yards of skirts, great-skirts, bonnets and gloves any attempt to lighten the burden was taken as a sign of doubtful morality. During the Victorian era, the swimwear was more cumbersome than what the modern woman wears in sub-zero temperatures. It was not until some decades back that female swimwear became something of a legitimate leisure activity. Mind you, the man had been doing the same since the conceiving of the so called civilization.

The most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, granted voting rights to the contributors of its development only in 1920. The first semblance of democracy dates back to ancient Greece. In England the roots date a good thousand years back. So the voting right came at least 1000 years late.

Men were flying planes for a good 30 years when the first females cracked the hard shell of cockpit glass and broke though rocky minds to set wings to the flight of their dreams.

Education and intellect, the timeless right of the men, let loose its first showers of knowledge and empowerment on women just during the last fifty years. The history of knowledge and its pursuit date back 3500 years. Even now it’s just in infancy in many parts of the world.

Female genital mutilation, removal of some or all of external genitalia, to tame the so called presumed rampant sexual desires in women. The sexual freedom that man enjoyed, taking it a moral act for him and immoral for her. It was his rightful pleasure and her sin. Now  the chains are breaking. A long battle to go for though, because sex for man is natural. For the woman it is still a scandal.   

In China, for one thousand years they bound women’s feet since early infancy with dozens of feet long strips of clothes to check feet growth. It was for the famed four inch feet, the symbol of docility, tameness and civility, of being gloriously feminine. They bent the toes inwards and tied layers of clothes to crush and break the bones slowly and painfully over the years to keep the feet from growing beyond four inches, the limit after which a woman became almost unacceptable and uncivilized and shameful. Women hopped like unassertive, vulnerable creatures. It was the walk of a willow switch swaying to spring breeze to arouse the men. They wore silken embroidered baby shoes over bound feet. Inside flesh rottened and sores festered. The famed Chinese beauty with bound feet of a baby did service to the patriarchy for 1000 years before the practice stopped in 1920s.

In my state of Haryana, we have 7000 village settlements. In my memory of the last 20 years, there have been 5 honor killings in my village. The girls’ crime was just as simple as pursuing--once in a lifetime--a freedom which any men or boy does every day throughout their lives. They fell in love. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody does. The only difference was that they allowed it to blossom. Survival and chastity meant subduing it the moment it sparked. Otherwise it was an unpardonable sin. The punishment death ordained by society and ignored and looked over by the state. Their sin? They went out with a boy, talked to him, went to some eating point with him, and thus brought this shame to the family. The society would expect hit-back from the disgraced family to salvage honor. And of course they did. A quiet strangulation, a still quieter cremation, and a quietest society. Gone. She earned it, everybody seemed to agree. Taking 5 honor killings per settlement during the last 20 years, the traditional society of Haryana has progressed with the killings of at least 35000 honor killings. Now when I see the freedom enjoyed by boys and girls, enjoying innocent pleasures like talking to each other, going for coffee and burgers and movies, I realize it has been a silent revolution. There are unnamed, unseen martyrs. I count them to be 35000 in my state during the last two decades.

The bloody wheels of exploitation are taking women further to the next milestone in their journey.          

As the human juggernaut moves from brawn to brain, there is an inevitable shift in gender roles. The traditional muscle-dominated bastion of males is melting. It’s more about smartness and management now wherein females are better placed to excel given centuries of biological traits sharpened in managing things despite greatest odds.  

All things go in circles. In the beastly fight to survive in the jungles, we started with an all male dominated scenario. Now we are moving towards parity and equality in gender functions in making a society and driving the economy and pulling the technology. On further progression on the path in the circle, the role of women will overtake that of men. And rightly so. They have earned it. It has been a bloody battle for thousands of years.

Harmless hornets, biteless bees and beggar peacock

Large yellow paper wasps, one of the stinging hornets, defended their nests with a single-minded determination. Stinging winged chivalry! Attack! Their primal instinct! Well that was almost three decades back when we ran helter-skelter as the winged yellow striker, twitched its antenna, its dull black points of eyes stared before striking. Children cried with pain. Next day a joker with a swollen face would provide free entertainment.

So much so for the wild instinct! There were still remaining some traces of wilderness in the countryside. Wild is what? It’s just to be natural. But then having turned the wilderness upside down, trading it with the civilized onslaught, we humans are restlessly marching ahead. There is a stampede and many species are getting trampled in the dust below. The wilderness gone. Most of the species have lost their footing as the terribly over-bloated and glutinous super-species, man and womankind, firmly hold the reins of the chariot of nature. Everything has changed. The wilderness vanishing, so is the mundane ‘wild’ streak in birds, animals and insects. It’s a tamed world in tamed humanized environs.

Coming back to the yellow foe of our childhood. They held their positions, defended their share in nature, struck lips, cheek, nose and forehead to defend their fortifications. The punished swollen face of the linage of Homo sapiens bearing a testimony to the fact that he is not the only claimant to the cakes of Mother Nature. Things have come upside down since then. As the human juggernaut moves on, mowing down the last traces of wilderness, species are losing their primal instincts, just to buy some more time before the inevitable extinction. It’s an acceptance, a sort of death-bed time’s letting go of any signs of further struggle. A final surrender, a soulful resignation.

The yellow hornet doesn’t bite now. Somehow stealing out some niche in the not so impressive corner of the house, where they are not a blot on the household decorum, surviving there like some beggar on the pavement, they simply don’t bite. The sentinels don’t rush at your nose even when you raise a cobweb cleaner in the nest’s direction. The instinct of survival seems to have taught them a lesson that they cannot afford to mess with the bi-pedaled torch-bearer of the onslaught on nature.

I commit the error of still linking honeybees to the notorious chivalry of those comb-defenders we witnessed during childhood. They don’t bite anymore. Forget about flowers, they have to run greedily for the semi-arid shoots of acacia. It’s scorching heat and honeybees buzz around the water bucket. It’s man’s offering. It’s no wild stream bordered with wild flowers where they can lay claim their share of nature and defend their fort. The bucket is man’s creation. So they don’t bite. They sense that it’s man’s beneficence and kindness that they are still surviving. I put my hand among a swarmful of honeybees stuck up around the corners of the bucket. Nostalgia strikes. I still remember those bites and swollen limbs. Well that is history. They just fly away. In a struggle to grab the last survival sips in a world that has no place for them anymore, they have forgotten to strike. The confidence is gone. They don’t have any rights anymore. That’s what happens when you just survive and not live. Only woman and mankind are living, others are just surviving. They will definitely become extinct. Then it will the human’s time to struggle, survive and get extinct. (Before that of course humans will desperately try to artificially replace whatever nature, in combination with countless other species, has bestowed them with. The stage is getting set for the evolution of a new species—some unthinkable woman-machine combination.)

The peacock, a riot of colours, is in double mind. With its cute eyes it stares at me. The wilderness in it is admonishing of a danger. It takes a step back. But where can it to fly back to. It’s a migrant in the village. The countryside is saturated with insectsides and pest control chemicals. So there is nothing for it to feed upon there. I understand its helplessness. So take some more steps forward with chapatti pieces in my hand. I know it’s hungry. It won’t fly away. The peacock has accepted its fate and so have all others. Except humans, of course.

The Old Moon and the Imperiled Landscape

It was very cold and the time was frozen around half an hour before the morning twilight on January 13, the day celebrated as Lohri; a day before Makar Sakranti on the full moon next day. The pallid rays of a pale moon had grown old so soon during the last hour before the morning twilight. The night had been chilly, clear-skied, frosty and fogless: an exceptional January night, not in chill, but in being clear certainly. The moon, just a day away from its fullness, had been exceptionally bright.

Nightlong, almost near the peak of its rounded beauty, it had fulfilled its luminous duty. Its milky beams over-rode the pointed shafts of light from the distant stars. After all it was his world; the stars had their own at mammoth astronomical distances. The moon was thus the brightest, bulbous star, eager to brush out every strain and tainting, shadowy tar. Its beams spread like snows over the sleeping horizons into the sleepy distances and languorous miles.

The beautiful countryside was lying in sleepy abundance under the chilly, milky blanket with slumberous pride. Everything was open to the celestial torch with nothing to hide. Cold-basking fields were huddled under their croppy sheets. Above was gloating the marvelous moonshine. Wheatlings stood bow-headed in reverence with dewy crowns fine. The marigold flowers were frozen in kissed silence by the milky showers. The flowers happy to surrender their colours to the lover’s mysterious smiles and disrobing powers. White pea flowers boasted their augmented whiteness. Aha, such dolefully beneficent had been the moony brightness. Even the trees did not appear merely dark specters lurking shadowishly over the horizon. They appeared boats of foliage floating in a misty sea.   

In the background of such a brightly lit stage even the sky seemed earth-lorn. Through the milky transparency, its bluish-dusky veil lurked and through it only the brightest stars smiled and showed that there was a world beyond as well. Scattered in the docile swathes of this moon-baked countryside, the villages seemed as mammoth ships silently floating in the white wavy sea of light.

At this moment the moon was well past its prime, as if in shining too bright, to use the full charms of a fog-free night, it had committed a harmless crime. Its setting quarters lay in the north-west, from where it was eager to move for some rest. Its strength and vigour had drastically plummeted down. Paleness eating into the guts of its plump milky brightness. An old, setting moon, away from the youth’s boon. Dislodged of its shiny crown, it ogled with a meek, even irritated, anguished, helpless frown. Its sheen was rapidly fading out. Its yellowish pale rays almost eager for a wailing shout. Glumly it was fading over that reddish-brown sandy undulation carrying fields, furrows and crops on its gently unfolding dome. The shiny fruits born of sweat-drenched hours by the farmers in its sandy loam. Accusingly the moon threw pale, protesting shadows in the south-east. There urbanism, consumerism and crass commercialism blatantly, proudly held its seat commanding metropolitan, capitalist feast.

The area had been earmarked for some development project. It now being defined by a tiny space bound in a map issued under the state government’s gazette notification. A mischief by the developmental hand. Ever eager to bulldoze over the nature and turn it into uncomplaining, lifeless sand where lustrous stones will be built over the nature’s burial. Heartless, wanton and depraved! But the nature has no oratory to baulk the words. It but repays in kind.

This pale, mournful moon was preparing to set soon into the misty gloom of the twilight. A new bright sun of consumerism and commerce will be ascending to its dawning height. And the soft natural delicacies will scamper with fright.

Those reed stalks which swayed to the cold shove of a gentle breeze without any greed appeared to say good-bye to the moon. The latter plummeted down further with a bloated face and a sigh. Its pallid face grimacing with a painful nostalgia. Its fading, setting rays tainted with a peculiar dullness, the death, the demise, the oblivion. Its oblong teary face looking down at the landscape. Sleepy fields, beneficent swathes of wastes and fallow lands.

Mighty lessons were taught here by nature to itself and all. The farmer going to the fields with his gear. Those long, painful and oftentimes fruitless days subsided when the sun’s eager rays looking at the sweaty trove and the shirt’s hoe. Where the long, brooding nights arrived like the deeds accomplished. Where the failures galore but the hard work was never a bore. The failures defined the success as the losses stood just as a testimony to the profits. Where the hopes, aspirations and desires varied with the changing hues of the weather. The farmers pawning everything for the feathers in destiny’s crown. Gold forming immaterially—or minimally at the rate of a dust speck for tons of sweat—in the toiled soil reddish brown.

All this will be gone. The moon was also dying with a moan. This charming mystery of the landscape: why hardest labour fetches minimal returns; why a bit less harder toil results in a soul-satisfying speckful of return that seems the wealthiest load. All these beautiful, aesthetic, curvy, circuiting strings, the mysteries of the landscape, of destiny, of the see-saw battle between happiness and suffering, between pleasure and pain, between penury and sustainable as well as gluttonous gain, between life and death, between a smile and a tear, all will be lost.

Everything will be gone for a direct, straight, materially penetrating needle of surety: the commercial, unflinching and fixed use of the landscape in a concrete form where profits will boomerang in proportion to the short-cuts; where compromised humanity, ideology and conscience will not face any ifs and buts; where there won’t be any sweet scent of labour which will be replaced by mechanical, greasy, muddy panting of merciless competition and mad grab; where concrete blocks and apartments will replace these wondrous solitudes and petalous platitudes basking in unrestrained, free, natural air; where sheaves, stalks, straw and reeds will not sway to the breeze, but blank, rigid, ironed towers will stand mutely, inflexibly to the nature’s cooing calls from increasing distances.

Now the sorrowfully yellowing death rattle of the setting time was arriving with a finishing chime. There on the opposite horizon, the day opened a window to sneak a peek at the imperiled room of the night. Wispily, there was the twilight with its mixed day-night delight. In its mysterious lap, the old moon met a slightly premature death, slumped as it feebly, freely into the silvery sea of the mist hung over the tree-line. Slithered it into the sea of death and plunged into invisibility.

The twilight mischievously winked with its unfaithful, teasing look, asking favours both from the night and the day. The old moon was gone with its last ray. And the soon-to-be-doomed panorama, unmindful of the fatality in wait, came out of its dewy slumber. A crane’s clarion call cree…ked over its yawning bosom. The sun prepared to cast its first ray. The fields got up for another hard farming day.

White blood and soldiers of peace

Please read this with a smile on your lips.

You may be in bad mood having argued with your husband or boyfriend. You may have been struggling to find the dress you are looking for in your messed up wardrobe. You might even be running around the house to meet multiple assignments to manage children and your presentation still not finalized. Wait, please do all this with a smile! It won’t disturb your schedule in any way. It’s a humble request like I ask you to take a harmless sip of water even if you don’t feel thirsty at the moment. A reasonless smile can be taken as simply as you merely take a sip of water.

Did it? Now please be honest and tell the relief it got you. A smile to the self, without any calculation, without any reason, without any expectance of results and rewards, miraculously makes you feel better. Instantly! Isn’t it wonderful? Do it and you know instantly what I mean. It’s like a corner of dark cloud on an overcast, freezing day parts and a life-soaked shaft of light falls over you, transporting you to blanketfuls of warmth and solace.         

Laughter is the best medicine, they say. Laugh to the capacity of your guts, but please don’t underestimate a smile. In strange ways it’s is therapeutic to the ever-wheezing, fretting and fuming brain machinery. It simply, without any exuberance and pretentions, releases tension and stress from the whirring machine that your brain is. It’s a coolant like you have in your car engine to stop it from burning red with fury.

Hush away your neutral face expression. Being expressionless is as good as bearing a wooden head. You can smile even when you don’t have to. It is contagious. Other cells in the body cascade down the message of well-being. It’s such a positive force. Smile is not just a cute expression around the lips of a cool person. It carries a healthy dose of happiness. Just curve your lips wherever you are right now, be it driving, walking back home after a stressful day in office, sitting alone in a cafeteria over a mug of coffee, jostling in a crowded metro, tucked in your bed, watching your favorite programme  on TV or talking to somebody. And you instantly get your medicine to be better. For free, girls! Grab it.

Quite wonderfully, you need not have a reason to smile. As the muscles around the corners of your lips get into an imperceptible crease taking your cheeks for a delicate contortion to make you look still better, you immediately feel a release of anxiety and stress from the heated chamber that our brain is. Simple fact is: when you smile, even when just doing it out of simple aloofness like somebody told you to have one more sip of water even if you aren’t thirsty, you let loose a healthy trail of endorphins into your blood. This chemical is a carrier of happiness. It’s as much potent, happy and healthy you feel while running.

If you carry the molecules of smile around your lips, it sends out positive vibes about your personality, that you are happy and firmly in saddle and in control of your life. It helps in interpersonal relations. It oils your professional pursuits. There are too many rivals in this unsparing competitive world. With a face inclined to smile, you will have some less rivals head-butting you in the game that life is. More importantly, every face in the world is incomplete without a smile. Even the most beautiful face can still go a notch higher with a smile.  

Ok, accepted that you are darn attractive and you take good care of yourself. You wear stylish clothes, have matte foundation, lip gloss and eye liner in the safest reach to support your charm. Wait, there is something freely available that can instantly take you to be the most adorable princess around. Just elongate your lips horizontally, very softly, allowing your cute cheeks to delicately undulate. It’s a smile lady! It’s the best tool on your dressing table. No beauty is perfect without a smile.

Apart from the glowing star that you become with a smile, the symbolic derivates are even more important. You look caring, empathetic, trustworthy, better leader, dependable companion and easy going. Apart from the glorious take-aways mentioned above, a smile increases white blood cells which make you stronger. Hidden inside your soft, considerate and caring persona topped with a smile, you become a strong and confident persona inside. A smile just digs the foundations of your firmness physically and mentally. It goes deeper and deeper.

Have a frown on your face and see the results. Even the liftman won’t salute with enthusiasm. Well before it oils someone’s insecurity, it harms your own system by increasing the toxics which generate stress and anxiety. With a smile you are more approachable and sociable. And opportunities have this tendency, like water has of flowing down to the lower levels, to rush after such persons.

The people in the world might be banging and clattering to beat and surpass each other for self aggrandizement. But still a cute soldier shielding his face with a smile instead of the iron mask of fretting rigidity and grimace is more welcome. This world will still be competitive but it won’t be a bloody fight and broken teeth and broken bonds. It will be a pleasant game. It will be beyond winning and losing. It will just be. Try this in office, at home, in trains. Just smile to yourself. Simple! It’s a cozy, comfortable bulb that you light up. After dispelling the gloom from some corner of your soul, it will spread into the shady zones into the beings of those around you. And they need it. This tiny flicker emanating from you can become a beacon of hope for someone who needs it.  

Forget the awkwardness and tension that strikes you due to the challenges thrown by situations. You might be waiting for your interview, your heart beating violently. You might be terribly inclined to lose it because the queue in bank isn’t moving. A frown will not make things go easy for you. But a smile can. Try this now. You will feel the effect.

For a change do something without any logic. Just smile!

Be a superwoman and world beater in your own ways

Don’t do everything just for money, rewards, recognition, name and fame. As we feel, most of our doings are just blind pursuits for something more important expected at the end of the doing. Doing thus becomes secondary, the outcome. The reward takes the centre stage, and everything before that turns a stale, perspiring, frustrating struggle. The process of doing becomes traumatic. By subjugating the process of doing to the unknown outcome in the future, we pawn the happiness and intrinsic satisfaction, which simply doing could have been, against the shifting, blinding mirage on the hot sands in future. Try to make doing primary. It’s like casting the chains away and lightens your burden. Not only it will light up your soul, the outcomes, whether you care about them or not, will just follow with a bang. If you do something just for some specific outcomes, it’s not doing, rather it’s some barter against the drops of your sweat. It’s labour, a menial work, mere slogging. You are not the master. Just try to do a few things without caring for the material and social rewards. You will know that you own the act of doing. It becomes pure and unadulterated. You own it and you are the master of it. Once you master something, given the potential human soul has, the byproducts will drop like sweat autumn windfalls, ripe, without any effort. That is the cascading effect pure doing does. There are hundreds of posts on this blog. I write not for viewership stats or adsense money. My reward is the numerous trophies I gather while simply writing. I write because I love doing it. There is no bigger reward than being able to do something you really love and like doing. A very small publisher trusts me and publishes my books. He likes my writing and invests some money to publish my books. I help him to the little extent that I don’t take any royalties. My books sell in just hundreds of copies, rarely touching the four figure mark. And even for that I don’t expect any royalty. Still I write for months to complete a book. Simple thing is I just love doing it. As I work on my books, without any restraints on publisher- and commerce-ordained limitations, I feel like flying in an open sky. It’s like being a painter having a completely empty canvas and possessing all the options to experiment with colours and shapes. This is what you get, the rewards, your breath of freedom, your space and your happiness. Every moment is like holding a big trophy. And believe me, if you immerse in doing something just for the sake of doing it to the core, you warp space-time continuum to the tune and frequency of your doing, and rewards follow, whether you accept these or not is another matter. Most importantly, the doings that bring instant soul-sweetening sense rarely give you money and material rewards. Helping a stranger, who has lost her wallet on a crowded platform, with a hundred rupee bill that can help her save hell lot of trouble; stopping to take an old hand and help him to cross the road; taking a stranded stray puppy out of the drain; a smile from an unknown face just because you did only this much to keep the elevator door open, helping her to catch onto the precious moment, etc., etc. The feeling you get instantly is sufficient to overpower any vanity of earning millions and getting gold medals. Most importantly, such small, small doings help you hone the humanity in you. Just like you pump iron in gym to harden your muscles, such little, little acts of just doing without expecting any rewards will hone the muscles of your conscience. Goodness can be practiced. It can be made a habit. Begin with such small things where your egoistic, self-driven work flow won’t revolt to begin with. Very soon you will turn out to be the best of a human being. And who is a good human being? Well, basically she is happy.

Cancer and Tumors in Earth

You run after a thing, struggle and toil for it to the chronic pain of your bones, and much deservedly you land up at the destination. You have achieved your thing. It’s the time to cherish its worth, its value for you. It’s time to celebrate and pause and allow the feeling to sink in. What value the victory carries if you cannot even spare the time and pause to allow the feeling seep into the perspiring pores of your skin, taking cool calmness reach to the limits of your soul. But it almost never happens. The pause, the rest is ever elusive. You achieve your target and the thing turns out to be valueless. The things, goals and destinations that you get and achieve and reach become almost valueless the moment you nail it. It’s always a struggle for the future. And it’s never living in the present. The dream value, which was earlier carried by the things and destinations where you stand now, shifts again to some another milestone in future. So again we drop our present and run after the future. The futile chase: the mirage keeps on shifting on the hot sands of our bloodied battle. And we run, madly, trampling the things and the moments which are the only possessions we have in reality and could have enjoyed, and rush for future, for things in mind, in the form of ever-escaping criteria of values, goals and destinations. No wonder, we never live our present by enjoying the victories and rewards our sweat has fetched us. We abandon the real rewards. We trample the true trophies of the present. You get the thing and it loses its value. No surprise that we feel so deprived, poor, cheated, underachieved and unhappy at the end of the journey when we fall. We hate any talk of pause in life. Little do we realize a restless run results in a fatigued, huffing fall at a time when legs cannot carry anymore and eyes fail and heart gives in. A run or a walk is well managed with intervals of pause and rest at the milestones we cross. It reinvigorates you for the next leg of the journey. Pause is blissful. It gives you the beautiful gift of accepting your present. A man, an animal, a vehicle, a civilization all need pause at intervals to maintain the journey, to save a fatigue and burnout. Unfortunately that is what we are not doing. Individually and collectively, we are headed down the precipice. The mad onslaught of modern civilization, with its plunder of natural resources and unchecked technological growth, needs a pause, for survival, for continuation of the journey. We are far advanced down the technological lane. Let’s pause now. First allow the horizontal spread of the utilities and benefits to the poorest of the poor. Let’s put a pause on population growth rates, exploitation of natural resources, scientific spurts and industrial productions. The modern civilization has gone too far with its unchecked growth. Unchecked growth is self-destructive. It’s nothing but cancer. The planet is carrying a cancer now. It needs to be checked. Let there be a pause, please. 

Roaming the planet to look for something which is safe in your pocket

Hi, this is somebody who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street is intimidating with the added risk that I may well forget myself after being lost in the crowd. As you walk in the crowd, the monotony and anonymity takes over. You lose the charm of life in doing the same things others are doing. You don’t feel the kick in solving the same problems using the same old, oft-repeated methods. The solutions also are boringly the same, the results also the same. And happiness ever looks at the farthest end of the planet or even beyond. The long and winding chains of the preconditions to be met, before you trudge nearer to the ever-elusive happiness, are spooling on and on: the dangerous mathematics of infinitely long factors and functions of happiness. I will be happy if I top, then you top, ok let me grab the best job, you get it, ok let me be the best CEO, you become one, then more. Then your children have to be the same or even more to take you to the still elusive dream of happiness. More money, more power, more prestige. Then there are others in the fray who can turn you unhappy even after you have overturned the records set out for yourself. There is no stopping. And hence no happiness. The problem is if your happiness is not within you from the beginning and lies at some goal-post in future at a distance, there are millions, trillions, zillions and even more open-ended factors that affect, mathematically scuttle your chances of a win. Forget it. It’s futile chase. The more we run after conditional happiness, the more we push it away from ourselves. The fundamental mistake is that we expect happiness to be the fruit on the tree of our efforts, i.e., the result, the fructification. No, it simply isn’t. It is the root of the tree of our endeavors, where we begin from, which lasts from the beginning to the end. If it’s not in the beginning, forget it, it won’t appear later. It has to be there before you begin. And the state of being happy can be habituated. Practice it as a daily routine, like you pump iron to tone your six and eight packs. Nurture the habit of just feeling happy, causeless and reasonless. Just smile when you are alone. Please try it and you will know what I mean. It lets loose a cascading effect driven by the hormones triggered by the movement of the muscles around the corner of your lips. Try it. Close your eyes and just smile. Unconditionally. You will feel how comforting it can be just to be happy. The fruits will follow later as you slog it out in the battlefield. It’s a simple verb, being so, a simple act, a solacing function. We but treat it as an intimidating noun in the future, interpolate it as success and achievements, the fruits at the end of the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel. It but is the lamp which is within you when you are in the dark. The path to happiness can never pass through the stages of unhappiness and struggle. It’s the present in continuation. Remove all future components from the equation of your happiness. So passing through the quieter by-lane, not stomped and nudged by the teeming crowds, I intend to reach a solitary path, laid out just for me, to reach my destiny, to be happy primarily, and enjoy the fruits of being happy.  All in all, I just practice the art of being happy unconditionally. 

Cancered farmer and beggared peacock

There is an addition to the diminishing bird life in my village. As tractors take angry mechanized burps, cattle bellow, buffaloes bray, still-remaining house sparrows tweet, rest of the pigeons coo, irritated crows croak and pigs snort, the peacocks add their voice to the rustic humdrum. The peacocks scream, is it a mating call, or distressed plight, I’m not sure. I don’t think our national bird, occupying a lofty position in the rule book, likes humans as such. It’s a punishable offence to kill a peacock. But the killing should be direct, specific, with the proofs of blood and slaying visible at the spot. However, indirect killing, the slow killing over a period of time, in the form of loss of habitat and introduction of poisonous inputs in the farms, goes unpunished--as usually with slow crimes which unfold over a period of time, losing the track of crime and the perpetrators spreading over a whole group of society and institutions.  

So they risk their lives to enter the human habitation. It’s a forced migration. A feathered riot of colours, they are the latest beggars from the species who can no longer sustain for themselves and look to the man for survival. Irony here, it is the same man who has grabbed their share from the nature. But then the robber can very well impersonate as the philanthropist. It massages the conscience for a mushy-mushy feeling. So the peacocks look forward to get survival crumbs here. The nature is dying, so how will its offshoot, this feathered riot of colours survive under the onslaught. They prefer to run on their paws in a forest. But that is perilous in a village street. Dogs chase them, cats lay around predatorily and urchins throw stones. So the peacocks with multi-hued splendour of their trains have to heave their huge feathering from roof-top to roof-top, looking out for grains and chapatti thrown by their enemy to salvage some punya from the basket of sins.

Their trumpeting peehoo goes vain like rest of the species’ role in making nature what it was and brought mankind to this level. The peacock even holds the copyright to the best of colours that we humans boast about in our designs and aesthetic portraits. But the poor thing doesn’t have the in it to encash the royalty born of this copyright. Its metallic blue, bluish-green, iridescent greenish blue, bronze-green, black and copper markings and glossy green shading is no longer a wonder for the modern man. It does not create awe anymore. The long train made up of elongated upper-tail bearing colourful eyespots is just a pattern on a bird.

Whenever there is a chance for courtship, the train is raised into a fan and shaken to impress the females. Love in times of war. There are risks of being caught and preyed upon. At least the male attracts some iota of appreciation due to its colours. Poor peahens, on the other hand, with their greenish lower neck and duller brown plumage hardy get noticed. If there is a crumb to be thrown, people prefer the peacock and shoo away the unattractive female.

The land under cultivation, where they forage for grains, snakes, lizards and small rodents, is under poisonous assault. That land is no longer for them. In fact it is not even for the farmers—in the medium term. With population blast, decreasing land-holdings, increasing costs and decreasing returns, the farmers delve deeper into their pockets to buy more killer pesticides and poisons. They just cannot afford to lose a crop. A season’s loss and their fate go down the drain. So the survival comes at huge costs of injecting insecticides, pesticides and weedicides. The poison not only kills the small world that sustains birds like peacocks, it enters the ground water and goes into the food chain as well. The cases of cancer in the village are on the rise. The numbers are far more than the cities ill-reputed for life-style diseases born of pollution and lack of physical activity. The farmers die of slow poison, three or four every year due to cancer. The peacocks roam around the village with their screams. It’s an ominous shriek. The world is but too busy to survive in the short term, even if it comes at the cost of slow-death some years down the line. 

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The parrot and the old sparrow

After a long, hard and wearisome journey, the parrot realised it was no longer possible for him to fly anymore. The sundown was imminent and along with the great fire ball his willpower was ready to surrender and call it a day. His wings tired, his temper losing its balance, and his beautiful colours mired in the hard journey’s perspiration--although it was winter--the parrot landed on a branch.

It broke his heart, this inability to continue on his march to the lowest set milestone for the day. But then it had been a very tough, cold, stormy day. There was no sunlight during the day. When at last the sun prevailed over the icy chaos, it was the time to call off its duty and light the other world.

The winter was at its peak. And anxious, drooping, panting was his beak. With every precious moment left of the day, the saffron slanting rays were melting into misty bays. More emboldened, the cold was creeping up. Its pinch was becoming bold to take everything in its hold.

With sad eyes the parrot ogled at the setting sun. His run had been too long and taxing. He had long forgotten the flight’s fun. Where was that fleeting, winged pun? With each breath and laboured purr, restlessness crept further into his perturbed fur. Each moment passed, pinching him with a realisation of loss and failure. With each mile the journey had become a drag. The vigour and energy, which had lifted him with brag, were now dumped in a deep pit, from where it was not possible for him to retrieve even a bit.

Then even the last ounce of strength was hit. He was fighting to save himself from a fall. After all, he had so many miles to go. The height of his flight was becoming continuously low. Finally, he bowed before the eventuality and anchored his feathery weight on a branch’s restful bait. Halting, but, didn’t bring the relief it should after a long march because he still had far, far to go.

“Merciless, frost-fanged will be the night!” he thought to his misery’s delight.

As the warmth vapoured off his body, shudder crept over with incremental ease. Anxiously he ruffled his feathers as if to loosen cold night’s siege.

“Where to spend the cold night?” he pondered from dejection’s highest height.

Everything appeared alien, uninviting and antagonistic in this freezing twilight. The night moved closer with a scary chuckle across the gray shades of the twilight. The night so near! It again put him on his toes. He realised the importance and utility of the remaining traces of the day.

He looked around like the feeble truth emanating from a sad couplet. For miles and miles everything appeared surrendered to the gloomy pal of a freezing, imminent night. All woods looked solid, unwelcoming and creviceless, without that niche that can become a bird’s hall. His despair and agony touched another peak.

His sad reverie was broken. He heard a muffled, breaking-free, old, juvenile chuckle. It was an old sparrow. The greyish patches in his fur long put under time’s harrow. The oldie was flapping its feathers in a water puddle. So old and bathing in such freezing winter’s hold! The young parrot’s senses went into a chilly huddle while staring at the scene in the puddle.

Even to a tired body, dejected mind and subdued soul, advice comes very easily.

“Hey such a cold night is waiting! Take care it doesn’t become death’s baiting! Old fellow you must take care and should not extend your dare to the extent of catching cold, fall sick and lie on death bed!” the warning came with ease from his beaten, sulking self.

The old bather, the fun freak, stopped in the middle of an ecstatic shriek. But within an instant his seasoned enthusiasm regained its footing. Again the old punster squeaked and chirped to match the huge heaves of happiness sashaying across his old turf.

“My old coat has enough room for the water to turn to warm vapours and shun and beat the death’s creepers. Each moment has to be lived like a full day before I fall asleep forever. Before that I have to live, and fear nothing, worry about nothing, and get everything that can be drawn from each and every moment. I have to milk the time’s udder totally dry bro!” it tweeted, whistled and made a frenzied display of dancing in the muddled waters.

The old sparrow had raised a storm: a riot of happiness; a cascade of mirth. In between he paused and pantingly opened his beak to fill his old lungs for more life, more vigour and more strength. The young, beaten, subdued and defeated parrot looked on from the branch. It appeared silly and illogical to him.

“What could have happened to make this oldie so happy?” he wondered.

With his saggy, drenched feathering, the sparrow heaved his old bones to fly to him for a hearing. The moment he landed on the branch, he brought scaring, exciting, adventurous jolt of mirthfulness. The branch shook with the force of his liveliness. The young parrot tightened his claws and ruffled his feathers to maintain his perch. He was hardly done with it when a vigorous pat landed on his left tired wing. The old sparrow’s right wing landed with a casual, supportive and friendly force. Again the force of the old bones jolted the tired young bones.

“Tired!” the oldie asked.

“Yaa,” the parrot could manage a weak squeak.

“Well, most often we get more tired in the mind than the body,” the oldie puffed up his chest, ruffled his feathers, and twitched his tail to rearrange his gear.

There was a little shower on the parrot. He shook with a sense of cold and moved away a bit. The distance between them was too little for two strangers.

“New to the place, hummn,” the seasoned native of the land asked the visitor.

The branch was still swaying with the inertia of the vital last drops of life in the old sparrow’s body. The newcomer insecurely, apprehensively, worryingly gripped the wood. A cold night and darkness was all playing in his mind. 

“Where are you flying to?” the oldie asked softly, suppressing his enthusiasm, feeling the parrot’s discomfort.

“I have to go far. Shouldn’t have stopped at all. But then my wings gave in,” the parrot sighed, traces of defeat and loss all strewn over his green.

The sparrow gave an assuring, comforting smile. “During the day, do your best. Night is just and just for the rest. No flight can last forever. Rest is not stopping. It’s just the beginning of another league in the journey,” there was mystic calmness in his old, dim eyes.

The parrot looked at him and sighed. He wanted to say so much about his trials, tribulations and unmet goals and scattered ambitions. Too much was striking inside to pour out. He preferred to keep quiet.

“Why sit here and ponder over the path which you can’t even see in this impending dark? Dear I have no family and live in my palatial hole in the trunk of a banyan. Come with me, my place is at your service!” The sparrow spoke with the grace of an old patron.

There was almost no choice for the parrot. In the hot pursuit of another mile, he had missed many a nice shelters on the way during the evening. Little did he realise that one has to stop. Stopping isn’t a defeat. It’s biding time for the victory. And when his body and the day’s last rays both gave in, stopping was enforced. He had to stop and now take the option that presented itself. He thus followed the old sparrow to his wood-hole. The latter whistled all the way, chirped songs and hummed notes of strange happiness.

“What makes him so happy?” the parrot following the sparrow again wondered.

They sneaked into the cosy, warm confines of the sparrow’s wood-hole. It ran deep and appeared perfect for the best sleep. There was a nice bed of softest sinews. The sparrow’s raw, bursting enthusiasm had turned to a palpable silence, contentment and restfulness which pervaded the wooden abode.

Outside, the weather turned as bad as possible in a single night. A horribly chilly, stormy night. No light for miles in sight. A furious rainstorm lashed the tree as if to uproot the earthy shackles and set it free to fall. But the tree was strong. After all, it was the choice of such a seasoned player, the master who knew the strength and fragilities of the woods. The banyan withstood the deathly throng.

“I live here all alone, but in constant company of my peace, rest and happiness,” the old host spoke with half-closed eyes, resting his slightly crooked back against the wood.

“What makes him look so happy, no longer in pursuit of anything?” the guest again wondered.

“Though memories and reminiscences sometimes sneak in through my door to moan over my beautiful, active, youthful past. Darted when I fast. Wooed damsel sparrows with mischievous finesse. Raised families, driven by my instinct’s pull,” there was a loud thunderclap outside and the narrator stopped.

Lightening struck somewhere. It shook the earth. A sinister flash of lightening sneaked into the shelter. The parrot shook with fear. The sparrow laughed and assured him of safety. He had seen many such storms.

“The storms aren’t there to kill. They support life, even though it may not appear on the surface. I have seen it. Most of our fears are phantoms,” he chuckled.

The parrot listened. He again made himself comfortable.

“Well coming back to my past that sometimes sneaks in to disturb like this lightening did to you now. Age then caught with me. Most of the beauties lie at a distance, teasing you to run after. My eyes but no longer see them. Feeble eyes you know! When I completely shut them off, my eyes, they even sense the death’s blood-thirsty hound. So I open them and just be myself. Me with my weak eyes. I just see the small, dimmed world sprawled in close proximity to me,” the old host paused and pecked his saggy feathering with his blunted beak.

“So his happiness is a compromise with his disability and old age,” the guest thought.

“You know what,” the host broke the parrot’s chain of thoughts regarding the compromise resulting in a forced happiness. “To justify a well-lived life, when the force of youth is on your side to propel you towards your goals, the conclusion, the slowdown has to be also well-managed, well-paced, voluntary, not an accident. Ending is as important as beginning. With an accidental, aggrieved ending the essence of the beginning and build-up gets lost,” the sparrow’s slow-paced words again dispelled the parrot’s just derived theory of enforced happiness born of old age and weakness.

The parrot’s body was aching and he would have fallen dead asleep, if not for the question that was puzzling him to the extent of forgetting the pains of his fatigued self.

“So I live happily as the tail-end of a great life lived. The force of beginning, starting, acceleration! And the path of letting it go, losing the pace slowly, gracefully, receptively. The deceleration.  Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop finally. It can give as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the final rest. And during the slowing down phase, the time becomes slow, the world is a small puddle around your feet. You live like in a dream. A slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months, months like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, one can live a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode,” the old sparrow coughed a bit, and then with a smile, telling his guest that all was well, took a pause.

A sudden grip of sleep would have drawn the parrot into a deep slumber but then he heard the words again. He driven and lynched by the starter’s force; the other one leading the rickety carriage to its stopping shelter. A journey completed by two characters. A life lived by two characters, separately, but summary being of just one life. A beginning and an end. The latter part was so comforting that it appeared to seep into the turbulent phase of his own first leg of the beginner’s state.

“Enjoyed I the choices that fate sieved for me. Just grabbed my share. Now I pick up and play among those things and chaff discarded that remain unwanted above as the fine particles, much in demand trickled below. But it’s great fun I tell you. In youth we just think that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. Life can be equally enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and twigs. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone,” the old host, away from the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where faintest traces of warmth touched his old fur before moving into the cold darkness.

The majestic slow down, as important and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning. The source, the beginning, and the slowdown, and the end. A cycle.

“And try even to get bold against this winter’s hold,” the oldie chuckled, patting his faded fur with the end of his wing.

“Has he achieved all he wanted in life to make him so happy?” the parrot wondered.

“During youth I flew majestically high to beat the cold with my blood’s warmth. Now wisdom swarms. I don’t go out in the storms. I just go along the gentle breeze’s pace. So I find ways to brightly light my days with these feeble rays. In this cosy wood-hole of mine, drunk I’m with my age’s vintage wine. I know that I may not go out of this hole to ride softly on time’s back at some dawn. When death will pick up the pawn. Leaving this old fur and feathering engraved in this wooden niche. But it doesn’t make me sick. That time hasn’t yet come. And I have the leisure of stretching moments till then to the capacity of my old bones. Also, that sleep doesn’t appear different from the ones I enjoy now,” a gripping calmness emanated from each word he spoke.

Outside, the storm was tossing with a self-ravaging fury, consuming itself, jolting everything around, breaking, snapping wood. The banyan was but sturdier beyond any storm’s destructive lust. It stood firm as if the calmness from the old sparrow’s restful soul was seeping into the wood, giving it strength.

The parrot had been in the hot pursuit of the orchards beyond the forests, deserts and ocean, where fruits of unheard sweetness lay more abundantly than the grass below, where the sweet cooing female parrots, of unparalleled colours and beauty, seduced youth to the pleasure’s farthest end. His happiness lay too far. How can he be happy till he got all that he desired?

“The pitcher of desires no longer exists. I dropped it long time back, realising its weight. If you have it, the desire to have it full can be a real pain, I tell you. Even if you kill yourself to fill it, and suppose you succeed, still there is no escape from the torment. Then the fear of losing it strikes. So where is the rest? I have been having beakfuls of fun. No storage, nothing. But I’m happy. It won’t be possible hadn’t I been happier earlier. To die happy, to happily slow down, one should have been happier earlier during the blasting stage,” the old sparrow tweeted and whistled as if recalling the happier times.

“This old fart must have hit gold during his youth, and now he is just rolling in happiness as a pensioner, munching the leftovers,” the parrot thought.

“The sinews holding life to my body have become weak and almost bloodless. These will not feel the pain of cleavage. It will be just like an autumn leaf being painlessly windblown into the oblivion. In this tepid existence of mine, between hot and cold, warmth and coolness pervade over my old bones in some pleasant, vague proportion. Pleasure and pain seem to have lost their specifications. Neither both exist, nor they are dead altogether,” the old sparrow looked at the guest.

The parrot appeared restless even in this cosiest of a safe hideout. How could he be? A bigger storm of unhappiness was raging inside.

“How come you look so subdued and sad?” the sparrow asked. “Have the conditions been so bad to rob all the real charm and leave the colour on the feathers and soul so dull and poor?”

The pain inside broke all check-dams of restraint and the parrot spoke out.

“Though I’m young but the spirit seems to have sung the last song of life. Too much has been the pain and strife. My courage appears to have run dry now, although the colour on my feathering holds somehow,” the parrot stopped and sighed.

Outside the storm touched a newer peak. The wind screeched. Rain lashed. Lightening struck. Some tree nearby fell with a huge snapping, cracking sound. The parrot shivered with fear. The sparrow calmed him down.

“When just a hatching, father was gone. Grew I up hearing mother’s moan. The paternal sun thus never shone. However, the biggest consolation was the mother’s caressing, preening, feeding beak. Ate I fruits at love’s supreme-most peak. As the sole nestling, I was fattened on her love’s labour daylong. And then went to sleep hearing her lullaby and song. Aha! Sweetest dreams came with a throng! My whole existence was tethered to her maternal pole. The brightest attractive-most star sole!” there were tears in the parrot’s eyes.

He was lost in his mother’s memories. The sparrow looked on sympathetically.

“Under her great grooming, colours on me came bright. Lavishly my green and red flashed as I fluttered and flapped for my first flights. Unbelievable was the pride and compassion as her souring soul’s maternal shades touched the brightest heights. In her eyes I saw a new light. How marvellous was the sight!” the parrot smiled and then stopped as if some painful recalling stabbed the smile.

“Alas, her incorruptible love of yore was arrowed by the fatality’s shot. Again cupid’s arrow came hot. I became a past, ignorable and with rot. She was now in another spring of love. Incipient love for the future in her womb, I was the past buried in a tomb. I thus became an orphan although my parents lived. After many cries and anguished, aimless flights bereaved, life’s burden with my soft feathers I heaved.  Young and handsome, I flew with time’s oblivion and balm. Intoxicating is youth’s charm,” the parrot paused.

There was a smile. The sparrow nodded knowingly.

“Inevitably I fell in love. Heartfully I cooed with my beautiful lady. Those love-drenched days when the heart was ever ready to sing an ecstatic ditty! Such abundance and happiness was in my kitty. So sweet, silent, mirthful and unencumbering were those acceptances of nuptial responsibilities. Those watchful, eager, searches for hollows in tree trunks for our nest. Tirelessly we looked around for the best,” the aroma of sweet memories raised the pal of gloom from the parrot’s face.

The sparrow beamed as if dabbing his old beak in the sea of happiness.

“Guided by the love’s brace, we found our place. In that comfortable, safe hole, nothing else but we had all the muse and role. Our identities melted into each other’s. How proud was I when I became a father!” the memory suffused the parrot with fresh gust of energy.

The parrot stood, flapped it wings and preened it fur with it luscious red beak. The sparrow too got onto its old claws and stretched his wings to unstiffen his body.

The parrot’s voice had a strained note now. “I will not become like my parents, I thought. I will not be ensnared like they were caught.”  

Some traces of that determination still seemed to raise his spirits for a moment. “So I clung to my possessions with youthful pride. Alas, the inevitability arrived with chide. In full bloom of youth and colours, whole of my brood flew away. My lady-bird came to be infatuated under someone’s cooing sway. It was another fine day when she bade adieu and flew away,” sorrows ran through the parrot’s fatigued, sleepless body.

The old sparrow too sighed and stretched his wings.

“I embodied all forlornness. The loss was glaring in my face. Monstrously unremedied! So I decided to leave that place. And my sulking wings did brace to take up the longest possible flight from the place where such pains and unfaithfulness abound. So flew I as if pursued by fearsome-most hound. For many days I have been flying, my soul aching and wings crying. I won’t stop till I reach the place where happiness is not checkmated by such tragedies,” the parrot looked outside through the opening.

“Why should we enter into something and love somebody so completely if it is bound to go into gutters? Isn’t all such temporary dives into life’s stream all futile and vain? Aren’t we just mere cogs in the hands of those inevitable, unstoppable machines of fate that make us cheat on each other, abandon the once loved ones and more?” the parrot had burning questions coming out of his aggrieved self.

The old sparrow, full of wisdom, the undisputed king of his life’s small kingdom, looked with solace and simplification of age. Perched safely where youth’s dilemmas and puzzles no longer haunt with their pinch and rage.

The sparrow said, “It’s like a flower ruing and ruminating over other blossoms because its beauty will not last forever and will go to the glooms. Dear, it’s not we who are the ends, rather the beautiful phenomena like love, marriage, procreation that decide the trends. We are just means to these beautiful ends and destinations. So become a tool uncomplaining, tilling earth without any expectations. It isn’t that love exists because we do love someone. Love is the primordial sea without any limits of space, time and individualities. It’s we who sweeten a few moments of life with it till the full stops arrive with a stopping hit. Do we procreate to cling to procreation throughout life? No, we are made to procreate to become unselfish means for the propagation, for handing over our batons, to perpetuate these beautiful phenomena of love and relationships. We do not leave behind an offspring, but a possible instrument which may come in handy for the sustenance and survival of those very precious moments that got us the taste of love, happiness and friendship at their best. If we recognise it, our spirit gets a solacing rest. If not, we get caught in an acrimonious net. We cry and put up a bet that I completely loved her and became the cause of young lives. It was I who caused that buzzing in those hives. But such limitations would have been meaningful had our survival been unlimited, or say our immortality was uninhibited. But our journeys are to be ended. So just cherish those moments that you tended. If you cling to this stream of these phenomena like these are your inheritance forever, they then become a drag around your neck, making you a prisoner behind the bars,” the sparrow stopped and jerked his fur as if trying to find some last trace of such bondage.

“Liberate fella, liberate yourself! Just be a journeyman who understands that young flowers on a plant, young soots on a twig do not lessen themselves or the spring in not ruing over their wispy autumnal fall. They inculcate phenomena. They help perpetuate nature. They sustain the amazing natural gifts of love, beauty and bloom. They also served in a similar way, made some new ray, very feeble though, to defeat some gloom in some shadows,” the oldie’s dull, watery eyes sparked with hope, with satisfaction, as lightening flashed and reflected in his eyes.

The parrot was at long last feeling the vibes of happiness and rest that comes with acceptance of simply doing the duty and completing the task with full heart.   

 “So the only way to remain happy is just to be happy, no matter what the circumstances are?” the parrot had his doubts.

The old host chuckled, tweeted and cleared his throat. The visitor was near the point, although still with his doubts, which was natural.

“Yaa just be happy, no water what!” the sparrow lowered his voice as if in cadence with a divine mantra.  “It’s basically we who repel happiness away from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set it as a goal too far down the line in future. Some house, some grains, some accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the years, and set up a wall between us and happiness. And happiness keeps on getting more and more distant from us. I will set up a home and then be happy. Happiness delayed. And then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between happiness and us. Like frustrated human log-movers, whom I see in the forest, we just push on. Happiness stays thus a distant goal. Never to be achieved. We make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we die. Huge immortals they are. In pushing for them, we die. Separated from happiness that could have been the greatest gift of life, had we not pushed it away from us.”                                          

The long fabric of the stormy night was slowly melting over the banyan. Outside, stormy chilliness was fleeting before a promising twilight. Chances were there for a day bright. Clouds parted from the face of the sky. The parrot’s spirit’s appeared to cut through the shadows and soar high.

Holding onto the visitor’s traces of hope, the old host tweeted, “The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like I do store some grains for the harsh winters, near me, in the safest part of my house. It has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Living for a day. You can be happy if you set your happiness free from the chains of your lifelong dreams.”

The parrot smiled. It was the dawn of truth.

The wise oldie continued, “You should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily, separated from the natural state of happiness that could have pumped our life with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free of the chains of goal-setting and placed it free from those unreachable spots in the future.”

The parrot stood erect like a disciple in front of his master.

The sparrow raised his voice as if carrying his old furred body over to the peak of realisation. “Let happiness be a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it in the condition we are in, or it just eludes. Keep it with you while you fly. It will boost your determination to fly high and far.” 

The sparrow was beaming with such rest and repose, as can be given by being happy unconditionally.

The peaceful oldie looked out with hope. “The day today will be warm and sunny. The dawn promises sweetest honey. Youngman, I’m in hurry to go out of my hole, and play my chirpy role in the great stage set around. My feeble soufflés and dim light in the eyes are enough even for the down-hilly afternoons.”

The parrot looked on happily, deeply drinking the sips of solace and comfort pervading the wood-hole.

“You go high because the forenoons are there for you with their multiple hues. Go, so that you don’t rue over the day aimlessly lost. Do justice to the old spirit of your host. Take some lessons from my soft feebleness. It will boost your courage. Take clues from the manner in which I make a day out of my night! And top of all, decide to be happy before you take flight!”

The old sparrow came to the parrot and patted him with his faded furred wing. The parrot lowered his head in gratitude for a great lesson taught. Thanking the host, the visitor flew away into those swathes of promise, where new life, new love, new aspirations and new relationships held sway. But all that was secondary, in future and to be worked upon. More importantly, he was happy in the present. He had decided to keep happiness as a routine, like eating fruits and flying.

2117 AD: An alien research on earth's ruins

Since mankind’s occupation of the earth, by beating rest of the species through his main faculty, brain, everything has changed, from wooden wheels to spaceships, Gods to just weather phenomena, except one thing, happiness. Situation is the same. In fact, modern man is far unhappy than the ancient one. Simple reason is the use of logic and science for creation and destruction at the same time. One step forward, one step backward: Life and death overlapping. Where will we go? The net result is zero. So we stand at the same place where we started from. Medical research is doing wonders to beat mortality, overcome diseases, lessen pains, and increase the quality of life. One step forward, accepted. But then the destructive face is no less on innovation. Nuclear weapons which can wipe out whole of the earth, chemical weapons, missiles, warships, guns, bullets. One step backward. You make deadliest weapons to take as many lives as possible. Then you contrive the best means to save lives through bullet proofs, bunkers, shelters, helmets, surgeries and medicines. Ease of life through modern utilities, one step forward of course. Destruction of environment, one step backward. Doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. It’s simply going nowhere. It has been just hot pursuit. Ever since we surged ahead on the path of civilization, it has been always a rampant, mad rush to go ahead, at whatever cost. There has never been a civilazional pause, a hiatus, a break to ponder over, to think about the costs we have paid. A look back and around and calculation of the future. All civilizations nurtured the relentless thrust, to march on, with full force. Mind you, march on and on, the storm, the fire, these cannot go forever. Such hot-pursuit race cannot sustain itself. It has to come to an end. It’s as per the law of science. If you run forever, you will collapse. So one has to stop somewhere. Unpaused progress ends in a disaster. It just isn’t sustainable. In genetically ingrained and socially ordained hot pursuit, have we ever thought of contriving means of systemic pause and rest, for ourselves, for countries, for this planet itself? Only rest, peace, calm and love are sustainable, because these are not burning with the fiery energy. So before we continue rampantly and dive headlong into the abyss across the precipice, cannot we learn to devise civilizational pause, when this planet earth gets a holiday, for some time, its lungs getting a lease of life, its freshwater bodies getting lesser pollutants? Just like we have carbon cut quotas, cannot we have population cut quotas? It will help. It will save the earth from human ant-swarms, who will ultimately eat the environment itself that sustains them. Cannot everything be slowed down at regular intervals to save the critically exponential stats from nose-diving into deathtrap? Long before a superior, antagonistic extra-territorial life overpowers us, or a rogue planet crashes into the earth, or sun explodes, we will surely destroy ourselves long before any such eventuality. And when that happens, some alien researchers will sigh with wonderment, looking at our ruins and archaeological remains, much like we marvel at the ruins of ancient human civilizations such as Harappa, Egypt and Babylon, and think and research about the causes that brought about the downfall. 

A Dive into Freedom

The new item number is just too juicy. Voluptuous moves. Raunchy notes. Suggestive lyrics. The choreographer, the lyricist and the music director have done full justice to her curves. Everyone has had their own set of visualization of her while working on their parts in the musical number. She gyrates in half thigh-length tight gold-threaded dhoti and beaded choli. She has perfect figure, finest curves, very charming features and flawless skin. And millions gasp for breath.  

One thing goes missing in all this glamorous show. It’s her innocent laughter and child-like simplicity of mind. When she smiles, it’s a pure soft outburst of merriment untouched by any trace of malice and shrewdness. When she laughs, it also is pure like a child does when amused at a small, simple thing. But this unsophisticated self is covered up by her dazzling sex appeal. Even if it shines at all, people prefer to ignore it. They have more important things to gloat over, to quench the hunger of mind, the famed Indian hunger of opposite sex in the mind, beyond all outside taboos and evil talk of dirty acts like sex and all.

She has earned quite a bit of name in the industry. She gets interviews now and then in the mainstream media. On such occasions she is her usual unsophisticated self. However, the person on the other end seems on guard, like peeping over a fence, guarding himself from some strange reaction inside. And all the onlookers know and understand the inhibitions running inside the anchor’s head. They hardly seem to listen to her for their minds are somewhere else.

Even the skimpiest dress covering the barest minimum seems to irritate the masses. For each artwork of dance by her watched on the YouTube, they go back to the gray zone on the Internet and draw out ghosts from her past. Yes it satisfies the lust in them, those clips where they can see the whole of her. Not even a shred of clothing. They gloat over her curves, the act, the ejaculations, have theirs and come back to watch her feisty item numbers.

The ink of her past appears too dense. More than the density of the ink, people seem to just hold onto it. They simply don’t want to forego of the image. It gratifies the most overpowering sense, sex. Her item numbers just fan the fire even more.  

It has been a massive effort: the journey from hard porn to soft porn.

The roles she gets, apart from the item numbers, involve sex, glamour, intrigues and extramarital affairs: the sociable, bridgeable sexuality unlike the naked rampancy of outright naked game.

She knows hers is a humongous task. The road from being a porn star to a so called normal film star is riddled with countless obstacles. Sexual zealots fire bullets from both sides. She belongs to the lust in their ever-greedy minds, so she just cannot escape like this. They have to hunt her down.

Only she knows the amount of effort she has put in moving from full porn to semi porn. It is like traversing poles at the opposite ends. From being a naked stone in full public glare, you walk down as they run after you, and you struggle to cover yourself with normal human sensitivities of respect and being treated like anyone around. People somehow resent it, throw jibes and try their best to keep their goods to gratify their lust.

She has to dilute the dark ink of the past. Wipe it altogether and write a new identity, to feel normal like any other star in the industry. From porn to semi porn. She wants to go further. She is an artist. She is working on her acting skills. She wants the normal roles like any other actress around.  But she cannot enter each and every brain to wipe the past there, allowing them to see her present and appreciate her art. The directors, who approach her, have ready-made, predetermined formula of a feisty woman, the woman for whom men fall, creating ripples around, of sex, murder, extramarital and scores of lusty intrigues.

There are trolls as well, the social media crusaders, who yank reputations to shreds, pour their boiling scorn and burn the images from safe heavens. There are abuses, lewd remarks, pasted links of her online porn clips, gross invitations and still more. She no longer takes then head on. She simply blocks them. But the words haunt her for long hours during nights when she is practicing acting skills.

With the big, bossy judgmental world buzzing around, she sometimes gets judgmental on herself. Finds herself at fault for getting into the porn industry to begin with. But wasn’t that the launch-pad for crossing the jarring atmospherics of anonymity, escaping her adolescent nightmare of just getting sold by life without leaving any mark, and that too with such flawless skin, exotic features and dreamy contours?

The art of sex! It was a wild river, toppling the mountains and their biggest boulders. Ruthless. Like it will never stop. But beyond the fury, at the end of falling over a huge cliff face, in the slow-swirling waters of after-fall majesty, the man lying sprawled, spent under her, she laughs so innocently, with such unassuming vivacity that it instantly changes her persona from manhood slayer to a simple vulnerable girl. Even in her movies now one can see that innocent trill, like a little bell around the neck of a mountain sheep. A little jaunt on the green slope and the whiffs of tinkling carried by gentle air down the valley.

This little insignia of her vulnerability, this tiny pause in the journey of the stormy, heaving waves is missed by almost all the spectators. Almost half of the men who constitute the audience of her present movies have masturbated some time or the other watching the porn clips involving her as the temptress sucking away all lust from the planet. They own her in that part of their brain. The want the sensation to remain stuck in their groins. They fight to stop it from sneaking into the aesthetic corridors of art and beauty. The image, the customary stimulation is too much, too strong. It flashes in their minds as they watch her in movies now. They expect the same gratification. They look at something else, the character, and a different movie is playing in their minds. The more she tries to prove her acting credentials, the more they delve deeper into the Internet to grab handfuls of lusty morsels to satisfy their hunger.

With hard porn blazing in their minds, they are as much as comfortable till her roles are on the margin of soft-porn.

She is in the office of a famous director. She has the word that he is finalizing the cast for his upcoming potboiler. For the last two months she has been working on her acting skills with a famous acting school.

“Well, it will be too revolutionary to put you in the cast. The role is too, too….,” he hesitates.

She shifts uncomfortably in her chair. She can literally feel what is he thinking about at that time. The magnetic force of her past is too strong for her to completely escape out of its orbit.

“The role is too mainstream for you,” he says firmly and winks as if to convince himself of his logic.

“I have been working very hard for this role. Please take an audition, of any duration, of whatever intensity required for the character,” she tries to stay normal.

“Oh, audition. You know it’s more about suitability for the character. You know, all actors have certain affinity for the role they are most suitable,” he is driving it hard.

“But it’s not fair. I deserve a chance to be tested. I, I…,” her determination is melting, the typecast of her past is too strong.

“Why work so hard to bruise your beautiful skin on a path that is new to you. By doing the kind of roles that you have done so far, you have earned name, fame and money. You rule their hearts like none of the actresses around,” he laughs and looks lividly.

“But, you know…,” he cuts her mid sentence.

“Ok, you can spread more pleasure than you think. Let’s have an audition,” he leans back in his chair and his eyes bore into her bosom.

“You know it’s a huge budget film. A make or break for many. It’s not that easy as you think,” he knits his brows and appears damn serious.

“Yaa I understand. But at least accept me as one of the competitors. I can prove myself. Hope you watched my last movie,” she sits erect in her chair like a thorough professional.

He doesn’t remember anything except the feisty dance on a raunchy number. Her curves swirl around in his imagination. He has closed his eyes and takes his memory still further. Away to the fantasy world of naked, unprohibited revelry. He recalls the minutest details of her anatomy. The shade of pubic hair, the genitalia, like so many others, still different, her rampant foray into sucking out all pleasure and spit triumphantly, and that innocent trill of laughter.

She is surprised, watching him with eyes closed for a long pause. She breaks the reverie.

“Sir, you know…,” she draws him out of that other world.

“Hmmm!” he appears a bit irritated. “You know it will be too revolutionary,” his brow-lines are drawn taught.

She doesn’t say anything. He is in his fifties. A strong man. He gets up to take out a file from the rack by the wall. He is aroused. She can see it. It’s protruding. He doesn’t want to hide it even, as if wanting to convey the message. She feels insecure, even sad and looks resignedly. On an instinct she adjusts her knee-length skirt as if to protect her.

He gets back to his chair. He is more relaxed now, possibly knowing that his arousal has been seen.

“You know it’s a fight. This world of actors and actresses. Specially for big banner movies. It requires talent, skills, luck as well, connections, image and even personal history,” he stops for her to absorb the bitter truth.

“You know ambitious young actresses go to any length to grab the top spot. And of course there are gentlemen who welcome such dedication,” he smiles, staring deep into her bluish brown eyes.

“Well. I, I am ready for …audition,” she mumbles.

“Then go for the audition,” he stands up.

He has already unzipped himself and the audition phallus is out. It’s an open invitation. A simple give and take. A short audition and the role for her.

He seems helpless. He is shivering a bit out of sheer excitement and the raw adventure. He has transposed the dream onto the plain of reality. It’s like grafting himself as the male character in all those plays of naked flesh.

Just the mere sight of it fills her mouth with the typical taste of it. She has done it many times in the past, with such gripping greed and madness that it felt like she was out there to drain all masculinity of its coffers of thirst forever.

He is shaking and imploring her to drain him out of his misery, of his frustration born of unquenchable thirst.

“Come on! After this there is no stopping for you. You will choose your roles,” he is gasping for breath.

There is a chance for her to be an actress, a real actress like anyone around. It’s tempting. She is holding the armrests tightly. But something holds her back. She has been working too hard, late into the nights to push herself further to come out of this soft-porn mould. And the deal seems like going back again into the past to redeem future.

She has a struggle ahead she knows it. She is determined to face it. She is not ready to go into the future with the life-support of the past she is cutting from her life. It seems unjustified, even unethical to both the past and the future.

She gets up and turns around the table to approach him. He is on the verge of fainting, with all those wildest fancies just about to clutch him into heavens of ecstasy. He feels her touch on the protruding phallus of his life-long hunger. Helpless he surrenders and closes his eyes.

He wakes up to the taut sound of his trousers’ zip. She has safely put his strayed self into the safety of his pants and closed the doors on it. He cannot believe it.

“Do you even know what are you doing! It’s over for you!” he flies into a blinding rage.

“Yes sir, this project might be over. But not all is lost for me. I have a struggle ahead and would prefer to work over months, even years, instead of taking five-minute short-cuts to reach there. That will take me back to where I started from,” she is very calm, and looking at him with unoffended eyes.  

She comes forward again and shakes his hand very politely and professionally and backs away. With even more politeness she closes the door behind her. There are tears of pride in her eyes as she crosses the floor. And a new wave of determination pervades her beautiful curves.