A poor Hindu with his Choti swotted away

On this Hanuman Jayanti, April 8, when the biggest, brightest and the nearest to earth since 1948 super moon tries to dispel the dark like a night sun, PM Modi has followed the age-old Indian principle of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, meaning this entire earth is one family, by allowing drugs to the countries most in need of it including the US. As a 14% bigger and 30% shinier moon blazes in the night sky, the temperamental US President has praised his friend Modi through a happy tweet, where he also mentions Hanuman Ji and Sanjuvani Booti. Indian Gods are acquiring a global status. Of course, we need a Hanuman and Sanjivani Booti to tame the rampaging Rakshasha of Corona. I think, Modi will not only manage the affairs in India, he will emerge as a world leader post this crisis, when there will be a spate of critical rethinking about our collective priorities and certain ‘wrinkles’ in the fabric to be smoothened and ironed out by hook or crook.

Elsewhere, you have the foot soldiers waging pitched battles against the pandemic. Spirituality seems to have gone into hiding with the pious crowds vanishing from Haridwar streets. Gods appear to have abandoned we poor humans in this needy hour. A burly policeman has decked up as the fearsome Ravana, the demon king. He dons a huge fake mace, an elfish crown and intimidating handlebar moustache. He is thundering and hollering death threats into a microphone if someone dares to step out. ‘Corona is my Yamdoot, he is roaming around to take anyone loitering around unnecessarily!’ he lets out thundering peals of laughter, sufficient to push the hiding devtas still deeper into the Himalayan caves.

How I wish we had followed the Gandhian philosophy of fulfilling ‘need’ not running after ‘greed’. Now we have been taught in a hard way. A super-luxury carper maker is making sanitary masks, again proving the fundamental point that it’s primarily about fulfilling needs, and saving it from falling into the clutches of greed.

People have been torn between duties defining their responsibilities and emotions defining their personal life. In Indore, a young doctor, fighting in the front line against the deadly virus at one of the most affected places in India, has isolated himself from his family. He has to save patients by being with them. But he has to save his family also by not being with them. During his off duty time, he has set up his house in his car. His family and little kid can at least see him from a safe distance in their balconies.

Rigid looking cops have, surprisingly, lots of creativity which is blooming forth in the crisis. Gujarat police comes out with a Corona band. The lead singer is a handsome young sub-inspector. He can go into making a nice actor from the looks of it. They sing beautiful Corona safety songs imitating the composition of popular Bollywood songs. Those romantic songs by celebrity singers and bands hardly hold any appeal as of now. The Corona band is ruling the charts.

We are all into this. It’s a collective punch at our conscience. In Taiwan, people are lining up to donate to help Corona patients in Italy. Full of gratitude and compassion, they have already collected more than 3 million USD. They still remember those testing times 75 years back when Italian priests had built hospitals in Taiwan ravaged after the Second World War. Now they repay that kindness with lots of love in what can be safely called Third World War. Long ago was shown the act of kindness and now it bears fruit. An act of charity seldom goes undercoated. You can say, the seed of kindness, once sown, rarely dies. It has to blossom up. It seems to be almost a natural law.

From all we can see, we have solid reasons to suspect that the Chinese communists have a lot more role to play in this than it appears. I won’t be surprised if it comes out into the open that it’s a lab-engineered virus, a biological weapon. This and what Markaz Jihadis have done in India leaves me quite flummoxed out of my senses. I even get a poetic outpour:

The rabid Chinese communist thugs,

And fundamentalist Islamic bugs,

Will tatter and tear

the majestic carpet to bloodied rugs,

Don't take their bait,

Don't engage them in hate,

At level theirs don't fight,

For it'll be devil's delight,

Love is the sole remedy against the bug,

Go, give them a sweet hug,

Goodness lies in every human heart,

Only on the surface bad doth dart,

May be they will realise,

It's the only harmless weapon

to cut the devil to a decent size,

Civil disobedience against

the Chinese communist thugs,

A loving embrace

to the blinded suicidal Islamic bugs,

Only this will quell the doom,

Or be ready for the devil's boom!

The real Corona has its genesis in a deadly ideology. World peace and harmony in future depend on whether we are collectively able to dismantle that ideology or not. The outside world cannot directly inject a remedy. That would be catastrophic. It can only help within limits. The real antidote is democracy and the people caught in the grip of this ideology have to fight for it themselves for their own and world peace. Sanitize the real ideological bug driving Covid 19. It’s high time to systematically neutralize the real ideological virus driving Covid 19.  

One may wonder, why would nature allow such agents to get such evil ideas and ambitions? It simply is a reflection of our own atrophied selves. The Chinese and the Jihadis are simply the sour fruits of the tree that we have all sown and nurtured. They are the tools for the inevitable consequences to occur. Even the consequences need a medium to operate through. They are simply the part of the same recipe that has gone further sour. Punishment comes in this or that form.

Surely, Mother Nature is angry! As the last of millennial old Baobabs fall in Africa, Mother Nature seems to be withdrawing her blessing hand from us:

Not all is well,

Another Baobab fell,

The millennial old sages,

Mother's blessing arms for ages,

They now bid a sad bye,

Her blessings withdraw with a sigh!

Every adverse situation is counterproductive. You see Himalayas shining in their crowning glory from the farfetched dusty distances down south in the plains. Yamuna has bluish waters after ages. In Delhi! Can you believe it!? All is not lost buddies. A more beautiful world is waiting to welcome you as you come out of this troubling phase!

In Hong Kong, a pair of Pandas is seen naturally mating after 10 years. Meanwhile, the experts and zoo authorities tried their level best to artificially stimulate love between the sulking pair for a decade. It bore no fruit. Now, with the peeping Toms gone, and Mother Nature whispering mischief into their ears, the hearts of these cute giant Pandas bloom in privacy, and the flowers of lovemaking drizzle down. There seems to be some gain, in lieu of all this Corona pain! Well, of course, we have to learn to calculate that gain beyond our strictly human-centric economic models.  

A peculiar situation has built up here in the local agrarian society. Wheat harvesting is staring at the farmers’ worried faces. Already inclement weather has chucked out a major portion of the crop. To make it worse, the migrant Bihari laborers have gone to their native places. The local labor, the low caste Hindus who bear the ignominy of sarcastic undercutting by the high caste born, can pull a few strings now. They are quoting 300 Kg of wheat and an equal amount of chaff fodder for one acre. On top of that, the otherwise aggressive and abusive farmers are forced to use courteous words when talking to them to save any offence. Even then the local labor is hardly sufficient to harvest even a portion of the left out crop. So the modern day farmers have to toil like their grandfathers did in the field to salvage at least that much of what that would stave off rats of hunger from their stomach in the coming year.

Alarming news! A tiger has fallen prey to Corona infection in a US zoo. Far away in my village, the common quail is letting out its alarmist repetitive notes of ‘pakadleo pakadleo pakadleo’ ‘catch, catch, catch’ as if it’s shouting from the side of war-mongering Corona. I would prefer phonetically similar sounding ‘Kapildeo, kapildeo, kapildeo’ as a eulogy to the famed Indian cricketer. ‘Pakadleo, pakadleo, pakadleo’ turns the situation still more alarming, as if it’s egging on the devil Corona.

There at a distance, a kala teetar, black francolin, is more dignified in its burst of four-worded calls ‘Dekh Ram Teri Kudrat’ ‘O Ram praised be thy creation’. A Muslim would prefer ‘Subhan teri Kudrat’. In fact, ‘teri’ and ‘kudrat’ are so indisputable and clear, as if spoken by the human tongue, that even fundamentally divisive Hindus and Muslims concur at least on this. Or you can say Muslims are more comfortable with ‘kudrat’ being an Urdu word. ‘Teri’ stands neutral.

A male cuckoo is voicing the song of passion for the rapidly fading spring, which hasn’t augured well, at least for the human world. The female’s sound isn’t melodious and sonorous. It’s an excited burst of squeaking notes. Still the most irresponsible mother in the birdie world gets the sweetest of a lover. The male cuckoo lets out honey sweet, sonorous notes which ride the crest of excited spring air to play around many an ear. Her luck, what to say!

I can’t see light at the end of the tunnel after the current lockdown phase comes to an end on April 14. The way things are aggravating, it will surely be extended. My hair has grown wildly to give me the look of an old porcupine, which is shivering for life under an elephant foot. It’s better to look a man-handled ape instead of walking into some Corona infested saloon. I aim for an Einstein look. But then after a time my head looks like a worst caricature of the spiked corona ball. I can’t bear the ignobility of sharing a look with this devil incarnation. I decide to get it done, I mean the hair job. My brother gleefully awaiting the opportunity to give experimental furrows on my head is the only option I have. My trimmer, which has furrowed the crop on my chin, must have been feeling sadistically elated to taste unchartered waters. My niece is eagerly looking forward to some entertainment amidst the Corona boredom.

I politely ask him to give an all-swiping clean off job, knowing fully well that one doesn’t need much of an expertise in swatting the entire crop in Toto. I have accepted my fate. The trimmer buzzes around my ears, with the elated notes of my niece giggling, as he decides to try some hairstyle first. You dare not, I warn. He hardly cares. The first furrow is already there. It’s a point of no return. Despite my repeated admonishments to do an all-clearing job, he takes his styling job too seriously. Everyone wants to learn newer things during the lockdown.

How would you feel if someone tries to force a look of a dandy on your grand daddy face? I have an inkling of what they are up to. They are trying the cock-type spiked look of an adolescent boy in the neighborhood. I can feel the sides getting cleaned. My reverie is broken by my niece’s uncontrollable giggle. They are done with style number one. They hold the mirror to my face all this while trying their level best to convince me that it’s fine and looks normal even for someone who has crossed forty. They put up a mock show to be damn serious. They are trying to convince me to say ‘yes’. I am mesmerized by my old cock-crested look. My reactions gone numb. Far away from all reactions, I feel like searching for some oddest new reaction to this.

I then break the reverie and come with my only possible reaction. All this while, they have built hope that I may agree to their proposal and give them everyday entertainment, not just this fleeting sadistic pleasure at the moment. I give it all in expressing my resentment. Their hopes are tossed out. ‘An all-clear job is best for you idiots!’

They have the prey again in their clutches. I am helpless. They try a few more styles and leave me literally a rakshasha. Ultimately, when they can no longer carry on with experimentation, they try to do what should have been done right in the beginning. Now, I plead to at least get a well-managed clean job instead of giving me uneven furrows here and there. They hold me with such authority. I feel like an errant kid getting punished. Then they declare it is done. My choti, the signature of my sanatan dharma, of me being a Hindu is also gone under the deft strokes of ebullient enthusiasm. They have forgotten to keep a little patch of hair on the crown of my head, as a mark of respect to my highest chakra. Scandalous! Heresy!

In the Corona communalized environment, I pray I won’t fall into the hands of over-zealous Hindu mobsters who will penalize me, mistaking me as a baldy Muslim without the trademark Hindu Choti. But then I will hold out another trademark insignia of not being a Muslim! Heehee!!