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Hi, this is somebody who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street was too intimidating. Passing through the quieter by-lane 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. (www.sandeepdahiya.com)

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

The Fallacy of the Ultimate Truth


All of us have felt the heat of the very same age-old nagging clash between religion and science, both sniggering at each other, claiming to represent the absolute truth in their own ways. The religion finds it to be a formless and attributeless experience. The science, on the other hand, goes into a direction, where everything has to be logically qualified and calculated to build up hypothesis, and take us to the inviolable, flawless and irrefutable knowledge, the final frontier of logical understanding, i.e., the ultimate truth.
The problem here is that there is no fundamental entity to define the absolute truth. Whatever you think is your own invention. All we have is the cyclical transformation of multidimensional interplay of matter/energy transformations. It has infinite possibility for the things and phenomenon to be interpreted the way one wants, provided one takes orderly, sequential steps in a specific direction to invent a temporary truth, a little halt, on the energy highway. It’s a multidimensional infinite canvas, on which the scientist can draw the lines with the brushstrokes of logic and reasoning to invent a picture, just like a painter does on a two dimensional canvas. Now, just because the scientist builds a hypothesis, it doesn’t mean that he has arrived at something that was already there, existing in an abstract form to be explored exactly in the shape and form it has been found now.
The scientists are driven by a dream to reach a know-all stage. However, the more they try to know, the more they realize that the sea of the unknown has in fact expanded instead of appearing to shrink. It is just because there is no limit, no fundamental confines that will help them to gauze the extent of their reach, and feel happy about the extent covered and congratulate themselves over the less remaining domains to be covered.
There is no such thing as absolute knowledge. All we have is an approximation of the apparent facts, gathered on the basis of the level the researches we have attained. However, these attempts to understand the reality enable us to build laws, hypothesis, theories and calculations that help in channelizing the flow of energy in a closed set to ease our survival. It is mere resource utilization, just like any other species is doing at their level.
In the absence of a fundamental entity, the only recourse left is the mystical way of experiencing it. In the absence of any entity like the absolute truth, you cannot know it. If you cannot know it, you cannot say or express it, and consequently you cannot prove it. The endeavor to prove something draws on the presumption of some fixed entity. Therefore, the only truth is that there is no fundamental, absolute truth against which we can measure, evaluate something in the terminology of right/wrong. If at all there is any reality beyond all supposed truths, all our versions of approximations, it is there to be felt and experienced in totality. One pale version of truth can be the experience of that totality in which nothing is permanent and everything is getting transformed into a self-evolving pattern. In this cyclical transformation, there is an infinite possibility for things to be visualized and interpreted logically as well as illogically.
Now they say that Newton is proved wrong because his gravitational laws don’t hold in case of black holes. Einstein is holding for the time being. However, in future Einstein will have Newton’s fate because the platform of understanding and approximation will take a shape where you need more than what Einstein has offered. It only proves that Newton is not wrong. At his level, he perceived and interpreted the evolution of things and phenomenon around us. It had its practical uses and brought us to Einstein. How can you reach the right destination, i.e., Einstein, following the wrong path, i.e., Newton? Therefore, it’s beyond the concept of right and wrong because there is no ultimately fundamental law to prove one right and the other wrong.
It’s a cosmic pool of infinite possibilities, where you create your reality, your truth that practically holds on a little stage to help you and serve you like your mother serves you dinner. You systematically move in one direction on the basis of certain presumption, and even expectation, because the genesis of scientific theories lies in certain assumptions and acceptance. It is the seed of scientific approach, like a banyan seed, out of which the freshly minted version of self-forged truth sprouts forth. In fact, it’s just a fluid and expanding pool of approximate knowledge and information. There is no such a thing as truth. The set of knowledge that serves us the most, and consequently, turns dearest to our heart becomes our ‘truth’.
As the transformation of this energy is going around, we use our logical portion of brain to create a ladder on which we first fix one step then another and then still another. You reach a conclusion. This is your own self-derived knowledge, which you accept as truth. It gives a satisfaction that you have arrived home. We humans need to have fixed targets and hence this obsession of taking transient knowledge as truth, or at least the path to the final truth. So, on the highest step on your ladder that you have built so far, you proudly look around and reach a conclusion to view your knowledge as truth. All this is your own invention, not that it was something existing in abstract for someone to come and find it. You have created a little hatchling of truth from the open-ended possibility impregnated in the cosmic womb. The problem arises when we take our efforts as the nearest representative of the last truth possible.
Someone, moving from the same point, but in other direction, can have a different approximation of knowledge, leading to a different version of truth. And mind you, even that would have served us, differently though, thus giving rise to a totally different picture of reality from what we see it now. So it proves, it is not necessary that only this picture was possible where we have reached. We have this picture because the best brains visualized it to be this way. Those who proposed otherwise somehow fell short in painting or forging their version to be accepted as a hatchling of suitable truth.
It is thus an infinite cosmic river having the multidimensional interchanges of energy transformations. We are just like a kid sitting on the riverbank, scooping out a bit of water on the palm, and thinking I have captured the seed of the ultimate essence of things. We use our scientific inventions to scoop out a bit of energy from the ever-flowing river of energy for our transitory purpose on the basis of certain parameters in a closed system, which holds like our house weathers against a storm, and use it for individual and collective comfort and convenience. These little pieces of forged truths, basically knowledge packets holding for the time being, are the mere means of convenience.
Absolute truth doesn’t lie in a corner in the cosmos to be reached by building specific linearity in the flow pattern on the basis of little portion that we can see. An ant sees a far less fraction of this world than a human being. So in case there is a far more evolved intelligence, having multiples of senses than we have, it will definitely have a broader view of the flow and the consequent usage of it. Their forged set of knowledge, leading to their truth, will be different from ours.
Our attempts to define the ultimate reality are simply like drawing tiniest straight lines on the periphery of a circle having infinite diameter. Now, a straight line is an attempt to simplify the path, to understand, to have a view from this horizon to that. It may be convenient, but it cannot replace the total essence of the infinite arc of which it’s a mere part. The straight line bears a direct corollary to our scientific pursuits. You just create a specific linearity on the basis of self-observed, in fact, self-created laws—not that they exist as such in neutrality; these could have been interpreted some other way also. For example, you may have a night-centric civilization. On our planet earth, the nocturnal world is a minority; who knows, under a separate set of self-created knowledge and understanding, you may have a busily buzzing nocturnal world, where during the day you have just some exceptions hitting the ground to play their role.
All we have is an ever-pregnant possibility for things to adopt shape on the basis of concerted efforts that go systematically. There are all the elements that can be picked up, like Humanoids in case of earth, to reshape the channelization of this energy in a particular direction that later on establishes itself as truth in that little corner. It’s futile to treat this tiny endeavor at approximation of knowledge as the path to the ultimate facts about the laws of existence. It is beyond right or wrong. It is only about at what level a particular set of conscious beings harnesses the waters of that cosmic pool, which is ever getting recharged by matter/energy cyclical transformations.
The nature has provided us two spheres in the brain: the left portion for logic and the right one for emotions and aesthetics. Just because a scientist channelizes his logical creativity to hypothesize a picture, it should not be accepted as having a copyright to hold the beacon to understand the ultimate truth. The scientists say that they have to prove everything. How can you say that the aesthetic part used in creating something is off the mark? There is hardly any fundamental difference between the left and right approach. In one case, you want to hurtle on the cemented highway to reach the destination, while in the other you take a slow-paced recourse on foot across the countryside. A painter in using his aesthetical tools to paint a picture is just like a scientist using her logic to build up steps to understand a bit more about the cosmic web. The canvas in the latter case has infinite dimensions, out of which one can draw, with focused pursuit, x, y, z dimensions to paint a picture of practical reality.
On the other hand, the aesthetic creator of a different reality formulates her visualization using a softer version of reality that is pliable without any hard boundaries. Here also there is hardly any criterion of right or wrong. The best portrait born of an utmost concentration and a mindless scribble have their own standing in existence. Just because we find one better than the other doesn’t, in any way, mean that it is nearer to the absolute truth. But yes, it may be closer to a human face and that qualifies it to be a more acceptable version of truth. The art forms have changed from mesmerizing natural portraits to the contemporary abstract art. Can we define each other according to their relative terms to praise one as right and the other as wrong? Similarly, the pursuit of science cannot also be termed in a language like Newton was wrong and Einstein is right. The simple fact is that now we see a bit more from the self-created ladder to look at the interplay around.
The quantum physicists now accept that at the tiniest levels deep inside the apparent things and shapes around, the basic building blocks of this overall transformation aren’t permanent, fundamental entities. These basically don’t exist as they appear on the superficial level. Lot many realities surface once you have the onlooker on the scene. It gets defined in a way, more or less, where either they have convinced themselves to be, or where, on the basis of the ‘perception platform’ they stand upon, they are able to take out a little sip of meaning from the hubble-bubble fluid having many more possibilities of being logically defined, just like these set of people are doing. Just like a painter using the aesthetic energy with the help of her artistic sense, the scientists also create a different version of painting with the brushstrokes of logic and calculations. This picture is always open-ended. It is never closed and framed to contain the nutshell of truth. Its one end is always open to include the reframed shots later on. It’s a book of endless canvas sheets. There is infinite possibility to draw your portrait as per your knowledge and understanding and, of course, the systematic and institutional support.
Other intelligent forms elsewhere in cosmos must have contrived their own set of knowledge, not necessarily matching with our calculations. We create knowledge, not that it exists there to be explored and retrieved. This is the beauty of this ultimate law, that you can contrive smaller self-sustaining laws. The research is only about building the pool of knowledge and information, not discovering something that abstractly existed, waiting to be explored. It’s just one set of apparent reality fabricated with the help of individual and joint abilities to project their understanding on the screen full of infinite potential.
This basically is an infinite screen, where we can project our own set of realities. The one that gets maximum acceptance to serve the highest of the lot comes near to shake hands with the so-called truth. And there is no limit to this filming. It can go forever. We can hardly afford the luxury of having this feeling that OK this is the final point and beyond this, there is no possibility of creating more viewpoints out of this cosmic fluidity. This fluidity has infinite dimensions where you can, propelled by the best brains among us, create a picture, a set of knowledge that we treat in terms of being near to truth or otherwise. It holds as long as it serves us. It allows that incessant flow to be molded and channelized in a way so that it takes a suitable form. So the mystics just emphasize on ‘experience’ instead of ‘knowing’. The best way of using logical creativity lies in the use of resources, instead of seeking the final frontier of truth.
Aren’t we merely a bit more sophisticated apes in our language and contrivances to use resources to survive? They do khee-khee; we have a bit more distinct, sophisticated khee-khee. They use resources within a clump of trees; we do the same over a bit broader stage. There is hardly any qualitative difference. So truth as such is not human-centric, just like this existence isn’t. It simply cannot be. All the species have their own truth forged by the best brains and brawn across their generations. So all the debates and words, books and scriptures fall flat when it comes to represent the ultimate truth. Simply because there isn’t any. All we have is an ever-shifting stage. We try to gather foothold on this shaking stage and that momentary stronghold, enabling us to stand and survive, appears like an imprint of the ultimate reality. Words can get anything under the sun except conveying the so-called ever-sought ultimate truth. These can pacify ego, bestow commendable oratory, can help you build an impressive career in corporate, politics or as a social reformer, but they hit off the mark when they claim to have a copyright on the ultimate truth. Simply because there isn’t any. This statement itself might come nearest to the biggest truth.
Now, we have lot of issues about global warming, destruction of flora and fauna, forest fires, and more and more problems. We are scared that earth may not remain suitable for humans anymore. Existence is not bothered about such issues. However, we are entitled to be anxious about it because we have created it. It’s natural for us to hold this wish to stay at the level where we have evolved to. It’s a pleasant nostalgia. Dinosaurs are no more by the way. During their time, they also ruled this planet. Hope you get my point!
When the mother planet no longer remains suitable for maintaining our current physiognomy, the primordial flow of energy will take recourse to introducing artificialities into the human system so that it copes with the changed climate. When it becomes totally unsuitable for the mankind to survive here, it will take recourse, with the help of the further use of this interplaying energy in the infinite pool of resources, to further building on all the groundwork that has been done to paint a still bigger picture of reality, enabling the humanoids to settle on other planets. To mother existence, it hardly matters that in this little corner of the cosmos, where some particular, incidental cyclical transformations have resulted in this type of temporary screen on which the mankind is playing his self-created picture of approximate knowledge.
Even if earth gets blasted suddenly, simply its matter/energy will be sucked into the cosmos. It will spread across the quantum field. It may get clumped with other celestial bodies. Will it even make an iota of difference to the biggest picture in the cosmos? To us, of course, it matters, as it means a sudden swipe at our reality that has been forged over millions of years generally, and particularly during the last few thousand years when the mankind took more concerted efforts to forge a truth that is humanoid-centric only. However, on the cosmic scale, even now many stars are breaking and new ones are getting formed. Does it concern us?
You move methodically, you build your hypothesis, use logic, equations and calculations, all this while moving on a ladder that you have created. It’s not that this is the only path that could have been chosen. Just because you are moving in that direction, it doesn’t prove that it is the only path. You can reach the summit from all around. Some channel appears more convenient, the pre-existing suitability leading to a momentum building up, some initial steps walking over the grass, leaving foot-tracks that later turn into paved broad highways of our advancement. Nonetheless, there are adventurists also. There truth lies in scaling the peak from the most treacherous and risky path. So just that a sense of safety helps you arrive through the so-called conventional path, a commonly accepted approximation of knowledge passing off as truth, it cannot deny the existence of titillating paths for many whose priority isn’t merely the safest path. They paint their picture in totally different colors. It means that the present picture, as we see it, wasn’t waiting for us to come and make it what it inevitably was supposed to be. This transient energy could have been molded into other realities also. The selected brains, who can forge the picture ahead, will continue doing so from the platform of the already done work. But all this has nothing to do with the absolute knowledge, the self-sustaining, self-surviving, self-holding and ever-shifting ultimate picture. Somewhere in the ever-pregnant womb, we just cash on the tendency to paint a stable picture, carrying the genes of the ultimate law, to create tiny field channels to water our fields to survive. So this mere fight to survive ought to be avoided from being termed as the path leading to the absolute truth.
The mystics feel these traces of intuitive wisdom and emphasize to sense and experience it. The scientists say, no we have to understand it using our logic. But logic needs words, and words are incomplete, contrived by us only to convey what we see and perceive, so the debate turns endless, and will remain open-ended. It only proves that there is no final point to be reached.  
Finally, of all the humanoid churn-outs from the infinite broth, the emotions bordering on positivity, love, care and compassion are the brightest gems. They define the soul of our entire endeavors to paint a better picture. Hold you paintbrush confidently. You owe it to mother existence to contribute in forging a better truth.  

Saturday, August 24, 2019

A Matricidal Tale of the Biggest Sinner

The August rains wreak havoc across many parts of Asia, uprooting millions who stay closest to earth. These hapless masses, occupying just a tiny shelter and a few cattle, have hardly any role in degrading the pristine slopes of their natural armour and in corroding ecological immunity, still they suffer the most. The behemoths, whose rapacious juggernaut rapes the natural resources, hardly get affected directly. The geography of a plush cocoon in a high rise may save them, but the stinking, suffocating atmospherics of an asthmatic earth, with lungs hardly functioning without trees, will come to lay its evil, chuckling grip on their plump neck-tied necks. Let them have air-purifiers, as they may brag about it. But how many times you will have your funny oxygen toy with you. Will you use it even while shitting and fucking? Well, if you do, then poor plunderer let me remind you that you make yourself a prisoner.
The naked, raped slopes fall crying testimony to their rape and plunder. The spiteful rivers cry out the tale of mankind’s scourge. The glaciers fall with the majesty of grand old men killed by their own grandchildren out of criminal neglect. Many species become extinct and the last of them take a final breath with a curse in their eyes for the man and his kind. The grandest trees fall telling another tale of agony and tragedy. It’s mother earth’s big, loud, pinful cry, you damn fools. 
Mother Earth’s lungs are burning. As the fresh, verdant, lively, life-giving woods get charred to lifeless ash, the mankind has taken one more step toward the inevitable doom. The lungs of earth, the Amazon forests, supplying 20% of the total oxygen to the mother planet, are turning to smouldering char and dead ash. Nobody seems to be bothered. It hardly qualifies as serious international news. The golden haired boss of the world and a small, plump Romeo, bursting at his skin’s seams, shaking hands to take a break from their respective follies pleasantly startles the planet. The message reaches everywhere from the hungriest bellies in the remotest hamlets in Africa to the well-fed rats in the gutters of the financial mega-hubs housing the dens of lies, conceits, exploits and plunder. But the lung of mother planet burning and collapsing hardly qualifies to be a news-studio worthy beat.
The modern civilization appears to be too solution-oriented. It believes in grafts and transplants. It’s taken as a hallmark of technological prowess. Isn’t it funny? I mean just having to pursue solutions for the follies that we are knowingly committing. It’s outrightly fatalistic. It just fights the evil-effects of the well-proposed and efficiently implemented policies and plans. Why doesn’t it just show innovation in being with the natural mechanisms that support human life? Why does it put all human potential in first deliberately destroying its overall home and then use institutions, NGOs, armies, research institutes, medicine, innovation and planning commissions to plan on a bigger scale to undo the self-inflicted harm? It is simply as fatalistic as a snake eating its own tail to survive. The poor thing assumes that it’s moving on the path of survival. Little does it realise, it’s progressing on the trail of its own annihilation.
So, as the news channels and those who matter waste their lung-power in school-boyish scuttles and slips, the pristine flora and fauna in the most luscious natural part of mother earth burns to lifeless ash. To the land-monger modern civilization, a clear path is more important than a clump of trees. The issues of trees and environment are left for the future generations to handle as they deem it fit. Basically, we are showering the so called parental love and care on our children to leave them suffering in the concrete gas chambers a few decades down the line. There cannot be a graver and more short-sighted version of self-seeking love.

Friday, August 23, 2019

The Real Prison

You know what, institutions are the mammoth whirlpools, which suck individuals into their all powerful innards. By institutions, I mean the systematized, soulless machinery to achieve dark, power-hungry, ambitious motives—even though a lot many of them pass off as the needs to run the world. The institutions of despots, dictators, mafia, business magnates, hidden heavyweights pulling the strings, the intelligence and spy agencies, politicians, NGOs, and many more. These are the black holes that absorb their own light, hence keeping them hidden.
Those who operate there lose their souls, their sense of right and wrong, as a strange sense of ennui grips them, making them sleepwalking jombies. The institutional juggernaut reaps its crop, while the individual clogs, levers, pullies, nuts and bolts just perform their duties mechanically. Institutions have strange hypnotic powers to put vibrant hearts and independent minds to put them under the magic wand. The constituents operate like lifeless bottles on the conveyer belt in an assembly line in a factory.
Even stones change to, slowly though, to the cooing calls of season and weather over decades. The institutions do not. They adapt though to the changing circumstances. However, the core philosophy stays the same. And long after the cog is retired, and regains a fraction of his soul, and sees the grease on his hands, only then he realizes what he has been through. Now he can listen to his heart. Now his mind can help him see beyond the factory wall. It does not, but, change anything in the world. Nor it can even if the retired cog tries. All it gives is a guilty bruise to an ageing heart and a sad feeling that life could have been spent better beyond the walls of the institution. 

Ajit Dobhal in Afghanistan


In order to consolidate the non-military Indian rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, the suffering soil of the lost paradise there needs Indian boots now. Modi sahab listening! Modi chacha ji, it will help Tau Trump also. He is very cranky and pissed off right now, especially after the Greenland fiasco.
Well, the Indian PM is now well known, in fact famous world over, for doing lot many things, which we see happening for the first time. So, why not Indian boots in Afghanistan to restore the rule of law there? It's not that it will help Afghanistan only. It will directly help India in Kashmir also. Violence in Afghanistan and Kashmir share a subtle anatomy. I don’t think there is any doubt about this poignant chemistry. Just peel off the upper layer, use some common sense, and there you see the bitter juicy reality.
So, why not go into the den itself to contain the scourge. A little icing on the cake, it will cheer up Tau Trump also. He is very moody and unpredictable. You may find him having Iftar with Imran Khan if you leave him alone to suffer with this irritation. Modi Sahab listening? One more thing: by having Indian boots in Afghanistan, you get a strategic location to twist both the right and left ears of the naughty all-rounder boy.
History gives a little opportunity now and then. There is a little opening for India to consolidate its position now—after all that rebuilding efforts within our limits, which unfortunately Tau Trump finds almost inconsequential to the puny extent of just building a library somewhere in the war torn country—by redefining its association in Afghanistan. Tau Trump is willing presently. He seems to have bitten more than he can chew, so needs munching jaws to support the mouthful. If irritated further, who knows, you may have, God forbid, naughty all-rounder boy's boots there, which will be worse.
I know the skeptics will sound a warning about the irresolvable puzzle that Afghanistan is, suitably giving Russian and American examples. But aren't things managed finally by someone? The Indian PM, being an astute human resources actualizer, can definitely count upon Dobhal Sahab. The modern version of Acharya Chanakya has definitely more to offer than assignments like managing Post-370 Kashmir. Modi Sahab count upon him to manage Afghanistan with Indian boots in the once paradisiacal country.
If the whole idea still seems too preposterous and unworkable, go there at least as goddamned UN peacekeeping boots. Graft the American led NATO forces with a UN peacekeeping mission. The boots will remain the same, with the addition of Indian boots of course, and it will not create a paper revolution in India by the opposition. Moreover, beyond all the stratagems, the poor country needs a peacekeeping force only.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

The Mother

Vivian Richards: “Test father, One Day mother and T20 their children” One of the greatest cricket players of all times has a big point here. I but beg to differ a bit slightly, or may be not so slightly. My common man’s corrected version would be: “Test mother, One Day father and T20 their children”.
Test is the genesis, the prolonged furnace in which the real cricketing destiny is forged. So shouldn’t Test be called the mother? Given her soulful, bordering on most selfless version of love seen in nature, contribution in formulating a new life, involving emotional and physical contribution before conception, and later in the form of irrigating the new seed with her own blood, and still later in 24 by 7 care and concern, when her own individuality melts and takes the shape of that little vulnerable life, doesn’t she stand closer to the prolonged cricketing game of agonies and ecstasies spread over the five day version of the game? So Test definitely is the mother! I have no doubts. Ask mother earth, how much of divine stillness and poise is needed to allow a new seed to sprout from its earthy womb!
Father is the One Day version, definitely. He is moderately rash, adventurist and huffs and puffs for a day. No wonder, his contribution might seriously come close to only one fifth of what a mother does for her children. No insults meant for all the fathers out there. But kindly have a close look at the story of your children’s rearing up, and you will realize the mothers have been out there like a slowly smoldering warmth, keeping the tiny shapes with the prolonged glow of her care and forever-existing duties. Fathers have a privilege of playing, tiring though, swashbuckling one-day innings and hot blizzards of fiery spells of bowing and rolling dives in the field. It has but its concurrent fun, this play of brawn and show of spirit. But the classic contours of a mother’s travails are spread out over a broad time and space, like some elegant tussle at the Lord’s on some autumn evening. Her efforts touch the horizons and mix with misty insignia of godliness.   
Well, no issues about the children being the vagrant, rampaging, arrogant, disobedient, running off the line T20. Effervescent, unorthodox, fiery, revolting, as many mishits as hits during the funny adolescent idiosyncrasies. We can spare our words from elaborating on the evident jocularity.

The Angry President

An angry Trump skipped lunch and like a pissed off kid raising a ruckus about going to school cancelled his Denmark holiday. Not being able to purchase a future's prime location, and present's last hideout away from the mankind creating concrete jungles (Greenland), to change its status from nature's estate to real estate, I hope there aren't broken windows in the White House. An angry businessman is scary man! It's understandable, there can't be a bigger loss for a businessman. My sympathies with him for his mood getting spoiled. And God save the dining set, bedside mirror, housekeeping staff and even officials in the office. All of us are mother earth's kids. But the tantrums of the fattest bully among the famished mass of we poorlings can be very testing. I pray to almighty that there is a surge in President's business to make him forget about the loss!

From booming, buzzing colonies to sad, solitary couples

It is a cool late August morning and a lot many hominids are having hasty breakfasts before catching onto the bandwagon of survival through the day. This little Indian yellow wasp, unfortunately maligned with a pinching adjective ‘stinging’, is not breakfasting on the dry bark of this dead Marwa plant.  With the unhurried ease of an artist, it’s scratching away little bark crumbs to use these in making its paper carton galleries to lay eggs and start the process of life from its end. In the slow-paced, unhurried smaller world, they use pollen crumbs and dead bark pieces to build their umbrella-shaped nesting hives, the little galleries to shelter eggs.
Well, it’s a sad tale from colonies to couple. Earlier, during the times when they stood a chance to stand, or when humankind wasn’t too imposing, they thrived in colonies and valiantly defended their citadels. The days are gone. Humankind’s heart has shrunk and his pest control arm has expanded well beyond his home and hearth. It now covers every nook corner of earth. So the colonies are out of question these days. All you have is just a wasp couple—he/she seen in the video and the partner taken flight to lay the foundation somewhere—sneaking like thieves and set up a little nest in some inaccessible part somewhere around overhangs, porches, eaves, attic corner, barn, porch shed, some abandoned ceiling, railings or door-frames. More than the artistry, it is about theft of temporarily stealing a little space somewhere. Just a tiny bulb of nest and a few eggs. All that is left of the maligned stinging nest. A little unbecoming projection at the risk of swatted out by the gentlest touch of a cobweb cleaner.
There will be many who feel like rapping my knuckles for speaking for the stinging wasps. Well, do they sting for pleasure? Let somebody come barging uninvited into your bedroom and then watch your own sting. Just because you hold man-made pares of the property doesn’t justify your sting, just like it doesn’t biggest wars for space and resources over earth.
Nature has a place for them. They pollinate flowers and control many insect species. Now don’t look at the insect species controlled by the wasps as the primary villains. They in turn must be controlling something else. In the two-way scheme of things, every species receives something in lieu of what it gives back. We have but turned the tables. We have re-calibrated the natural instinct to give back also. It’s a mad rush to take as much as possible, without willingness to give back anything. No wonder, we have raped mother earth. With newer and newer techniques to plunder resources, we are giving back long, long tragic tales of ecological degradation, extinction of species, wars, diseases, strife and unrest. Well, the list of our give-aways is endless on the negative side.



Wednesday, August 21, 2019

The Real 'Wrong'

Well, most of us commit our wrongs with a sense of duty, a sort of commitment, in a kind of frenzied sense of occupation. If not for this, so many of us will not be found ready, almost instinctively, to go the wrong way rather than volunteering to do something good. So, the ‘wrong’ seems to have its justification born of those perceived duties by the doer.
A hierarchy of sieving then decides not so common from the common-most crop. At the first level of filtration, the finest wire-mesh allows majority of the mob of wrongdoers trickle down into the dustbin of petty wrongs on the smallest stage closest to earth in crowded slums, stinking nullahs, mucking markets and laboring beehives, where the fight for survival saps most of the energy, leaving very little escapades of and on in frustrated minds. The bigger, fat, rascally particles stay above on the screened, perforated platform and engage in bigger wrongs on a more substantive platform.
Now, the second level of sieving takes place among the thicker rascal-heads, the bigger baddies, or the plumpier daddies of the trade. The holes in the wire-mesh are bigger than the previous one. A lot many foolish gallants topple down, so many die, get beaten, imprisoned and clobbered down to survive at the second tier of wrongdoing. They slide down the screening holes at the second tier and settle for bigger wrongs than the lowest mass. As expected, the still thicker ones get a chance to play the wrongdoing game at the next level. Here, the stakes are higher. The risks involved are bloody, but so are the returns, which hit the proportions of jackpots.
To qualify to stay above the screening mesh at the third level, the thickheaded pebbles, veritable stones, quibble, use brain as well as brawn, and mostly utilize the muscle of the toppled down smaller particles at the level immediately below, and the ignorance of the ant-swarms at the bottom.
In this final sieving, the biggest mafias, cartels and powerful politicians stay afloat to rule at the apex. Now they decide what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. All other versions of right and wrong at the lower rungs lose their meaning. There, at the lower orders, murders, rapes, felonies and thefts come to be mere stats in the law and order book. These are mere social problems and hardly matter as long as these don’t shake the foundations of the state, i.e., interests of the ones qualifying to be filtered at the highest sieve.
One can commit a murder on the lower rungs and still be considered a foolish nonmalignant element. However, if a sound brain, even in the frailest and most non-violent of a body, raises a verbal assault against the wrongdoers at the apex, he then becomes the most lethal anti-state, malignant criminal. The state is basically not bothered about the marketplace cacophony of petty criminalities like someone cutting somebody’s throat, or someone raping, plundering, beating or shouting abuses. These are local-police station worthy petty, minor pardonable wrongdoings. These in fact are the cause of creating the bread and butter for a whole damn law-keeping department. The real ‘wrong’ is the ‘wrong’ that shakes the confidence, or throws light, or exposes, the machinations and stratagems of the biggest rascals at the top. 

Dove in Love

Dove in love.
Impatient he.
Teasing she.
Airy swirls.
Hugging frills.
Breeze free.
Passionate spree.
Almost a fight.
Soul's delight.
Love.
Dove.
Love.


Saturday, August 17, 2019

A sombre dusk and a dandy lad/lass

A dawn of faded blue, grey, dark, pale orange and rusted silver. Nature holds the ultimate copyright on colours, shapes and phenomenon...

Lanky lad/lass--Parijat
Well, with painful pruning, which hurt my conscience and his/her body as my pruner did its job, my friend will at least won't blame me too much after looking at himself/herself. A fantastic tree model he/she appears. A gorgeous adolescent! Nutrition of monsoon season and my jimming instructions have put it on the path of developing a well chiselled tree body. He/she appears like a tautly proud and confident NCC cadet. All the best! Grow to be a firm soldier against pollution and ecological degradation!





Friday, August 16, 2019

The story of love between a thorn and a rose

Monsoon wedding. The husband, a prickly, stern, hardwooded acacia; the wife, a mellowy, soft, delicate, juicy, heaet-shaped leaves attired embracer Giloy (Tinospora Cordifolia). She covers her beau's hardy ruggedness. He spreads his hardy self for her soft, supine creepy lovenotes to climb high and kiss airy swirls of the monsoon season. All of us are just parts of a larger beauty, mere contributors to a bigger picture. No life stands in isolation. All are contributing characters on the largest canvas where Colors, shapes, panorama keep moving in a circulatory fluidity, giving rise to stories, anecdotes and episodes. Feel the mammoth river of Life flowing around your apparently distinct self. Spread your wings. Enlarge your vision. Broaden your heart. Embrace more of life and living. It gets you freedom from the chained self imprisoned in narrow confines of illusions, ignorance and a block in the smooth flow. Claim your liberty!

A little story of an abandoned nest

An abandoned home waiting for mother nature to dissolve it into a different shape. A masterwork of tailoring by the tiny Tailorbird by stitching three leaves to make a cosy home. The interiors have strong webby framework of buffalo hair and cotton. How do I know these are buffalo hair. Haaa haaa. I do. We know know them with more familiarity than even our own crop on our head. Grew as we wallowing in the village pond where buffaloes swam, defecated and urinated with an utmost sovereign ease. Haaa haaa. I can even recall the taste on my skin, including the tongue part---haaa haaa sorry to disturb too pilished tongues--as we played in our acqua playground. Well, leave it...
Coming back to the little abandoned home. A little sugary sweet lump of love and care that arranged this texture. A new life flew out successfully, as I myself bear witness to at least one hatchling taking on to its first flight out of the tiny cluster of trees.
So the sweet home will be dissolved, recycled and change to a new pattern. It's a long and winding story to the ultimate home dotted with little little temporary homes where love coos in finest, delicate most tunes...

The ultimate cocoon of the penultimate camouflage caterpillar

Case moth, a camouflage caterpillar, on its leaf eating sortie on my guava. This chap makes a silken cocoon around it and attaches tiny twigs around it. And then moves like a little cylindrical wagon of firewood. Amazing. But of course poor leaves have a different tale to tell. Well, he should not be deprived of such hardworked breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner all put on the same plate. Babblers though happen to have this feaster on their own lunch table. The cantankerous kings of the quarrelsome birdie world, make lot of noise while undoing the protective wood wagon and gather their own food from something which was gathering from someone else. So now the case moth has a sorry tale to tell. Ask the babbler. It definitely will have many of the same genre to tell. Well, this sad touch in the story is simply our mental projection created relatively to a so called happy touch. Beyond our mental  projections, there are simply stories in nature, cyclically interweaving their threads to make one singular entity, the ultimate case moth, the final camouflage...

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

A glimpse of the ultimate truth

A glimpse of the ultimate truth at dusk in my village:
On the infinite canvas in the sky, He, the ever-creative artist, paints one mural after the other. Gives a fleeting vision of the ultimate truth. Of transience. Of ever transforming shades. The creator doesn't hold onto the fleeting shades. He allows these to dissolve into newer and newer frescoes.
PS: Ravinder bhai has provided a higher dimension to my emotion through his translation. So cannot help sharing it on the main post with much thanks to him. He is rapidly evolving on the path of self realisation. May almighty allow him to stand face to face with the ultimate truth. Here goes the translation:
वह, एक रचनात्मक कलाकार के रूप में, आकाश के अनंत चित्र-फ़लक पर , एक के बाद एक चित्र बनाता है। एक अंतिम सच्चाई के रूप में क्षणभंगूर दृश्य देता है । क्षणिक भंगुरता का  । कभी रूपांतरित होते हुये रंगों का । विधाता इस लगातार बदलते क्षणिक रंगों को रोकता नहीं है । वह तो  इस घुलते हुये नए से नए बनते भीतिचित्रों की अनुमति प्रदान करता रहता है -----आभार सहित प्रोफेसर रविन्द्र कुमार