Museful Dumplings on a Cold-lashed Day!

And dear brothers and sisters, here goes the winters caravan. Definite signs of climate change! Unprecedented fires somewhere, and icy blizzards at other places. Here, in north India, it’s unprecedently frozen.  

Homo-sapiens beat other species of the genus Homo to rule and crowd the planet to its last guts. Wait fella wait, great are the ways of evolution. Evolution doesn't end with Homo-sapiens. It's but a brief coma, a tiny pause, a cute little interlude before the juggernaut takes on further. Artificial intelligence will sow the seeds of almost a different type of species of the genus Homo. The great AI will do us what we did to other species in manipulating nature and depriving them of their natural rights.

It seems almost inevitable: the doomsday scenario born of unchecked ambitions of the Homo Sapiens. But all nightmares and fears melt in the gentle heat of real-life stories played by people like Lata Bhagwan Khare. They are the ones whose grand spirit still throws a silver lining across the dark clouds.  

She hadn't anything. Well, not in the terms we are used to evaluate possessions. Age wasn't on her side. She was 65. Poorest of the poor, the biggest disadvantage! But she had wealth, a big mountain of it, in terms of subtle intangibles. She had courage and conviction. And most importantly, she loved her husband. They were a simple farming couple in a Maharashtra village, happy in earning a day’s wage and look forward to another hard-worked but peaceful day. When you learn to stay happy and joyful in the present, life turns a string of shiny beads. Past doesn’t pinch you, the future doesn’t scare you. Life but will have its share of tests and challenges. So, like all of us face, they also faced one. The 70-year-old farm laborer fell sick. The treatment meant almost that much amount which the poor couple hadn't seen in their entire life. But she, a life-long equal partner in his life and living, was sure that she had to save her husband at any cost. He may die, like all of us will one day, but not on account of the unavailability of medical treatment. When people far younger and far more privileged would have lost hope and surrendered to desperation, she saw chance at life in the Marathi headlines on a greased local daily paper piece she was using to hold the samosa they were eating. It announced a big price for the winner of a Marathon soon to be organized. And the old woman with a young spirit ran a marathon, barefoot, her sari tucked with determination, her naked feet bleeding, and the mocking jeers of the spectators who took it as a comic act worth their cheap entertainment. Very few have the depths of soul to feel the mammoth struggles going inside a fellow human being. The woman won. Beyond the story of laurels, to her it was simply a matter of money beyond the finish line so that she could help her soulmate during his fight against the disease. Enjoy the story of this courageous woman. A story of love basically! Bask in her glory!

Let’s pump a bit more warmth into the frozen bones and eyes that seem to have lost hope through a bit of talk on ‘soulmateship’. I know we have an overestimated view of our own validity and suitability to be an idealistic soulmate, provided we come across someone suitable for our pre-existing suitability to be a soulmate. Sounds a bit egoistic! In practical life, soulmateship is fabricated and carefully formulated with conscious effort. Soulmates are delicately worked upon relationships. We presume that we are a package and wait for the destiny to make us meet our soulmates. Well, guys it doesn't work that way. Soulmates are made. We never meet someone as soulmates. Don't expect to meet yours. Love, that initial attraction and biological pull, is just the first step. After that it's a long way to a careful walk on the road to turn someone's soulmate. Beyond the categories of caste and class, soulmates like Lata and her husband are what substantiate all about life and living. With such little realizations, greatness is just one step and one breath away! Claim yours today itself!

Well, we can discuss a bit more about love which is supposed to be the bedrock of any relationship in cluding that of soulmates. I just point out a bit of advice to all those into the business of soulmateship. Hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is! You may ask, ‘How?’ Well, I give my feeble light on this. Take it if you find it digestible.  

See, love and hate are almost the shadow of each other, just a thin line between them. In fact, they may—ad they do on a routine basis—interchange. In fact, the love—hate combo fuels each other. Beware, ‘indifference’ is what kills the soul of a relationship. When the person doesn't matter anymore to you, not even worth hate, that is when a relationship dies. So, indifference is the opposite of love, not hate because even with hate, there is still a possibility, indifference kills all prospects. Don’t allow indifference to creep in. It’s the termite for the institution of soulmateship. Beyond the Love—Hate chemistry, the sole purpose of being human is to consciously try to evolve spiritually. And your love, beginning from self and those who are near to your self, is the ladder to take you there.

Coming to the more mundane wheels of life. Even in the frozen lanes of December end  streets, there are hot tempers and frayed attitudes. I am too common of an Indian to add to the noisy Chorus about NRC-CAA that has jolted India. in any case, the opposing notes from both ends have turned it into a defeating Blizzard. I am more concerned about my little issue. We haven't had electricity for the last 8 days in our village. To the hell with both the opposing armies on the NRC-CAA battlefield! All I want is restoration of electricity, so that I can continue reading with my 12 books that I am reading simultaneously. My stock of candles is gone. Inverter supply shrieked before calling it quits. I just want electricity. And most of you also need the basic necessities of life. So kindly leave the battlefield my bruised, bloodied and lacerated pro and anti NRC-CAA soldiers and come back home to find out if there is flour in the bin, light in your bulb, drinkable water in your pot, sewage channel in your street! Come brave hearts come! You have participated in the historical battle, created enough history. Now return with pride and loads of prejudices. And see the littlest things that also need your benevolent look. Come home o my brave soldiers! All I need is this f***ing flicker in my dead bulb so that I can read my books at night!

Beyond the pitched ideological battles, this lonesome tree marvels at the humans’ ingenuity in fighting over fiction and be totally unaware of the facts. The lonesome peepal! It’s left out as an insignia of the past. All around you see the brown guts of tilled earth, where not even a single blade of grass isn’t allowed without the distressed farmers’ permission. Just 40 years back, the lonesome peeplal had a big family of trees around him. But then man-born greater needs, call it greed, arose. The farmland now creeps over the horizon like a deadly parasitic creeper. Let's see, how many more misty dusks remain in its destiny?!

Under the peepal, a mighty truth is written on the soiled stage of life. These are the beautiful feathers of a bird, scattered as the aftermaths of life and living. The scythe of time reaping the harvest intangibly, everywhere in all directions. Colours melting back to seep int the womb of mother earth for another step in the corridors of creation! Nearby, in the grayish black swathes of a cold, frozen afternoon, a former colony of weaverbirds hangs like corpses of once alive dreams. The cycle gone, the caravan moved ahead and the remnants! An abandoned colony melting into the greyish dusk! Humans got any message?

Not far from the lonesome peepal, among the grassy waste outside the main village habitation, he has set up his very own colony for his son, daughter in law and a noisy brood of grandchildren. All this is complemented by pigs, goats and poultry. A world in itself. Sube Valmiki was young when we little ones hopped over the banyan’s branches. Now it's a grandfatherly sage, so is Sube Singh and me a greyish fatherly figure marveling how swiftly time flies!

His sparse beard and thick moustache is snow white. His multicolored woolen cal and shiny red blanket make him stand out as a milestone as he smokes hookah sitting on his charpoy in front of his little world surrounded by wasteland and tufts of bunchgrass which have been decimated by the frost. 'You are turning into an old sadhu!' I tell him. He welcomes the compliment with a disarming smile. As a child, I remember him as a sturdy youth working for us on some house repairs. Now I am a greyish middle aged man and he is acquiring the golden shades of old age. He has settled outside the village in a world of his own. His grandchildren play with more verve and enthusiasm even than his little goats. His pride possession, Moi Rani, the lady pig is tethered. Her long rows of shiny teats along the udder a hallmark of its feminine fecundity. 'She is our offering to Moi Mata! We keep her for non commercial purposes!' he says. Well, i understand that she is a sort of offering to a local goddess. But I cannot understand fully. 'Non commercial' doesn't make much of a meaning to me. Does it mean her sons and daughters also go along the same way? Most probably not. That would be taking one's faith too far! At the most, it may mean she will not be sold for some bucks in the pocket, and won't be slaughtered to add to fun and funstry on some celebratory occasion. Her pedigree i suppose is beyond the deity's protection. Anyway, they don't think that deeply. And that is why they can have a real laugh!

He has even a pet raven. A feat in itself in taming a wild bird known for its claim on independence and gaukish  husky kawing! He had chanced upon it under a tree, a mere meatball, waiting to become something’s meal. He picked it up and showed astute mastery and common sense in parenting it. The bird flows to enjoy freedom in free skis but acknowledges its gratitude by coming back almost regularly and sit by him.     

Raven

in cuddling heaven!

Its irritable kaw-kaw melting into bearable notes,

Its erstwhile black monochrome, ewwe!

Glowing now with a likeable hue,

Love is the best form of truth and beauty,

Take it as your conscious humanoid duty!

Back home in my yard I have a little more reasons to smile over the frozen time. Rajnigandha (Tuberose) smiles at long, long last! In fact after 1.5 years! It appeared to have lost interest in life, living and smiles. Looked just a faded, forlorn bunch of grass in the pot, waiting to be cast away for some better, more attractive flower. Little did she realize that I have the patience of a grandfatherly sea. I put away any idea of any replacement. Lo, here she reciprocates with a lovely little bouquet! It's soooo fragrant! It seems to say a gentle sorry for the delay! No worries baby! Better late than never! Even long delayed smiles are better than any other alternative! Keep smiling? Nearby is the Reddest Rose. Pouting heavenward as a passionate kiss from mother Earth to the Sky, with loads of love of course! When the sky melts and goes down on its knee to kiss the petalous hand of mother earth! A holy kiss! The daughter of the yard, Hibiscus, has charted her journey from a pleasantly uncouth toddler to a lithesome, curvey, confident young woman. She has delicately touched the peak of her youth...vow...what a journey! And how can I ignore the indomitable spirit of the garden cactus!? Her forefathers braved the desert sands to bloom. She carries sturdy, hardy genes. Her flowers stay for months. Amazing. Mercury hits the bottom, but they stay unperturbed! These are five-petaled little red marvels that continue to kiss night frost and faded sunrays with same enthusiasm! Little wonder they stay for weeks after weeks. Glory be showered upon thou Garden Cactus. You beat the thorny ignominy to blossom up a flowery smile. All you need to have a flowering smile is to overlook the thorns. All of us have pinchy edges to our persona that pierce soft skins around. Accept your own thorns. Forgive others for having the same. And all you have is a bouquet of victory for all..smiles...smiles...smiles! And this Parijat showers love like a crazy lover! A fragrant heap of love is found every morning under it after the frozen wet nights. I give her an ounce of my care. She multiplies it thousand times and showers me with heavenly drizzle of scented dumplings. Thank you darling!

Outside in the streets, a group of migrant Bihari laborer is moving in this cold to reach the construction site where they are employed currently.

Their dreams frequently suffer a break,

They are but the ones who help others make!

An old woman is walking behind them. She is going for morning rituals at the temple. Devotion is the easiest means to realize the Ultimate. But out of millions and millions of hardcore devotees, how many qualify to be real devotees? Not many, I suppose! Simply because the majority of our devotion, in the form of rituals, prayers and beliefs, falls in the category of a deal with the object of our devotion. The moment your devotion becomes free of your 'deal', you take a quantum jump into realizing the hidden truths lying at every nook corner.

In a nearby chaupal, idle men are baulking in endless debates! Who says women are talkative? Have a look at them! They can beat any number of women in chatting on non-issues days after days, years after years. After a life-long war with words how many of us realize the real meaning of knowledge and information?

True knowledge, I suppose, is just coming home with the realization that all the information fed in our neural network is only a means for survival, a mere tool like a chair to sit upon. It also sets up the course for unknowing and unlearning, and the consequent swiping the screen clean, to be in sync with the intangible, but ever manifesting, intelligence in its undivided form. Logic, words, knowledge and information are mere chisels and hammers to chip away the mind-created stone from the huge rock of our assumed self, ego, and carve out a dimensionless entity. So one's logic though can't take you to the Truth, but it can at least help you in avoiding the tricks of the false. So guys pic up your tools, but remember they are nothing more than a stonemason's instruments in his rucksack as he moves to his stoneyard.

From the ones who sound most affable to the ones pounding your nerves with obnoxious ferocity, all of us are equally distant from the most presentable best 'truth', simply because there is no absolute 'truth'. The only absolute truth may be that there is no absolute truth. The so called truths are merely flimsy bubbles floating in the sky. So guys glide freely cocooned in the bubble of your truth with only this much caution that you don't crash too often into other's bubbles floating around. This is what good and bad might be all about. Otherwise, this existence does not even care what this hypothetical talk is about the absolutes, sin, piousness, etc., etc.

When my own voice starts disturbing me, I douse it under the all-overpowering notes of the great mystic Osho. The rats of my mind go to sleep. Today, I remember  him telling me:

‘Freedom and equality are two opposite conditions. If you want to maintain equality, then freedom can't be sustained. If you cherish freedom, you have to forget equality. People can be cut to a tailor-made size of equality, but it won't be possible without taking their freedom from them. You can't have equality other than in jail. And even inside the jail, if there are some elements of utility and convenience, inequality will creep in. So the jailor has to be stone like hard and unsparing in approach to manage perfect equality. Complete equality is possible only in a state of perfect subjugation and control. It should be so tight that nobody gets a chance to be unequal to anyone. So if communism takes control of earth, the entire planet will turn into a mammoth jail. Communism can't succeed without jail.’