The Tottering Caravan of Thoughts

Lust has no bounds like this ever-expanding universe, so much so that hungry predators in the nobility, who had grown rabid in their lifetime looking at the famed beauty with jealousy as she conquered men of her class, dug up her grave and satiated their devilish hunger on the corpse. The pangs of lust take us to the heavens of procreative moments; they but drag us to the bottom of netherworld also when they high-jack all emotions and logic.  

The lusty Romeo, the chameleon, is red with strong heat. It has erected the ridge of lust for spreading its genes. The force of procreation is humongous. It heaves creation on the onward march. But still more powerful is the fear of death, the primal fear. If not for this, how will he survive to procreate? So he forgets his Juliet and takes to his heels as he finds me too near for the game of privacy.

Fear appears to be driving this creation. Suppose there was no fear at all, what would happen? He would mate right on my head and I would still be condescending! There would be all love around. And we would all die like flies in an open jar of honey, drenched, saturated with sweet and fossilized like insects. Fear seems to be the fuel! So why malign it? There isn't too much of a difference between caution and fear; the difference is only of degrees on the same scale. These are not something qualitatively different; there is just quantitative difference. I take caution primarily because I have inherent fears. Fear is the innocent child; caution is merely a more calculating, graying old man. It doesn't mean they have different flesh and blood. The gene is the same; just a bit staler biology in the one and some inexperienced hormones in the other. Is caution possible without the background of fear that basically prompts us to be cautious?

Abandoning his Laila, the chameleon Majnu scampers away and tries to scale the smooth plastered courtyard fence. As it slips down, it must be thinking, “How I wish I could change my species like I do with my colors and turn a lizard to climb the wall to escape this goonish paparazzi!”

So struggles he now on the compound wall and is being made to pay for falling in forceful love. He has been loitering around lustily, shamelessly following the lady chameleon that resides on the Parijat tree. He is an intruder basically and aggressive as they are supposed to be. He even took an aggressive reddish stance in front of me, taking me as the conservative grandpa of the lady who is against love on principle! But then reality struck him and he had to leave the battlefield and run for dear life to wage the war of lust and love some other time.

As the slip-shoddy Romeo tries to scale the fence, the game of love and lust proceeds undisturbed despite the chameleon and the human engaged in a tussle. Two flies are mating on the gently swaying leaf. Their unending buzzing has gone into a meditative silence. God knows what do they mull over while in that fly missionary position! No love game goes unwatched and scorned at across species including we humans. So another fly peeks over the edge of a neighboring leaf like a grimacing spy. Its eyes seem to be popping out of excitement. Lovemaking on the swaying, airy rhythms of a leafy bed and the jealous peeping Tom! The twig bearing the love bed has big thorns. The air is thus redolent with cribbing, angry warnings by the big barbs on the love-path. But do the lovers care about such pricks on the love-path? Surely they don’t. The surge of hormones serves to turn one blind to all reason as much as it propels the force of procreation. If not for this forgetfulness not too many will jump into the pit.

Corona is doing a scary Cameo with India well into scary sandpits. Our profusely baulking politicians have tremendous lung power, so they should take the fiend head on.

Dancing Lungs Cameo on Covid Tunes is what I suggest for the common people like you and me. Lung aeration and ventilation pranayama means bursts of inhalation and exhalation into lungs as per the individual's capacity without putting too much strain; focusing with an inward smile on the lungs. Be your own saintess and turn the chi energy on the fingers into your own blessings; tap with fingers of both hands on the chest with an inner smile with eyes closed. One's energy flows as per the rhythms of our emotions, so be your own healer and believe in yourself, your energy, your blessing hands. Let almighty keep all of us safe. Take asvagandha and Giloy tablets to boost immunity. And most importantly, pray for all! Giloy the majestic creeper must be shivering with fear as the entire country runs to cut its stalks to boil and drink with relish to retain immunity against the epidemic.

Don't miss the inner smile while doing this! An emotion decides whether a blizzard of energy is constructive or destructive in manifestation. For example, the same amount of sexual energy under the dark spell of lust turns one into a rapist; while the very same sexual energy if guided well through spiritual practices makes one an embodiment of godliness. The choice is always ours!

We are also scared like rabbits as of now. For too long we have been hunting everything that came our way. In Charles Dickens' lingo, we can ask the resourceful modern man, "All's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?" Now is the turn to get hunted down in return. Hope our fleeting memory will retain some of the Corona era lessons!

Charles Dickens says in Dombey and Sons: “It's when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished.” Isn’t it a gloomy stage of missed opportunities? How much we have lost in the pursuit of unchecked gain!

Then there are people playing pranks on social media. A video has gone viral. An alleged ghost is gymming on the open bulwark in a park at 2 o clock in the night. The policemen look on as the bars go swinging back and forth. A doctored video definitly! But even if it is true, why does a ghost need toned muscles if it cannot flex them in our face. At the most, it's an airy fart, trail of piss and a hideous lump of poop. It doesn't make any difference whether it appears like a skeleton or a World champ body builder!

Bagheera, named after the famed black panther in Mougali, the only spotlessly jet black canine king of the village, walks in as he finds our gate open. He walks in with surety of a nice welcome. He knows we drool over him for his majestic looks. He doesn’t need chapattis for there are enough thrown in front of him by all and sundry. He needs more affectionate words for which he has endless hunger. His stomach may not allow him to eat all that is given to him, but his sparkling yellow eyes like a panther’s have enough deep pools where anyone can dive with love and affection.

Spotless black dogs are rare. There must be something special about them. The Tantra mystics of Kanphata Gorakhnath sect used to carry a spotless black dog on their shoulders on their spiritual march across India. Bagheera was initially raised by a peasant woman but she allows him to rule the streets of the entire village. So everyone has a feeling of ownership about him. He roams around with majestic air of freedom. He definitely seems to have a feeling of his specialty. He is well fed, for there are many who drool over him for his looks. While the rest of the dogs howl and bicker over trivial matters, he moves around unconcerned without falling into trivial canine matters. He is cool and composed.

I remember a chilly winter early morning. It had rained overnight and fog had frozen the surroundings. Around 4 o’ clock, I was on my early morning walk and Bagheera joined me at one street corner. He walked a few paces in front of me like a confident bodyguard against darkness that appeared defeated by his majestic color. Cool, composed and perfectly poised he walked ahead of me, without taking too much of trouble in sniffing out time-killing mischief in the path-side bushes. Far away in the countryside, when I turned back to come back, he just looked back once and kept on walking into the darkness as if asking me to follow him further. I expected him to come back after me. But he being a master of his own will kept on walking. Bagheera returned on the third day. God knows what realizations he availed during the solitary sojourn!

Some food for thought, or rather thought for food! The things that we usually eat for our tongue ought to tasted, not eaten. The food that we are reminded to take for our stomach, must be eaten, not gobbled. But we do the reverse. We gobble down the things that must be merely tasted. And we flimsily taste the things that must be actually eaten! The forces on the periphery of our existence create desires that always drive us off the path, taking us into the puzzling pathways, where we end up spending our entire life and energy in banging our head against walls and moving just by chance, driven by random forces. On the other hand, there is the option of living by choice. The ability to live by choice increases in proportion to the distance we create from the outermost peripheral forces controlling our life. The more we move away from the fringes, the lesser becomes the chance factor in life driven by circumstantial winds. Does it mean that our feelings are basically flimsy means of we losing the track and the thoughts are the tack-lines meant to draw us back onto the path for safety and survival?

Beyond thoughts and feelings, Mexican Petunia smiles after months! He was Ma's favorite little plant son, dazzling with violet smiles almost all the time. She really appreciated and mused over this little soldier of smile's spirit in outdoing others of bigger brand-names. Then she left this body to be part of everything to keep her evolution in another dimension. The plant seemed to go into mourning and stopped smiling anymore. It smiles again! Ma is surely smiling and watching with a motherly muse over my follies! Love you Ma!

Nearby, the dazzling pink pout of Kiss Me Quick flower creeps out with a coquettish welcome. Her slender body creeps across the intimidating underbrush to offer a little bouquet of smile. All is well, she whispers! Love and smiles are always eager to sprout through thick stony walls, barricades and difficulties provided we have the pause to acknowledge them.

A renegade dark and grey big-horned bull is breakfasting right in front of our gate. He has defected from the famished cattle horde of Rajasthani nomadic herders and appears to have settled for an independent life in greener pastures. Well, nothing wrong with his choice if he is ok with a solitary life that comes with many struggles in comparison to a grouped life. Freedom can’t be cashed man; it has its own yardstick to measure life and living! My only concern is that he doesn't start gobbling the cannabis plants hovering above the grass. A bull high on weed looks too much for our rickety gate!

Yellow Hibiscus offers her first smile after being planted. Nothing beats the fun of helping blossom baby soft petals smile at their best even in this 40 degree plus scorching heat. Summer flowers have their own charm! They look at you with the message that even in the fiery guts of misery, there are possibilities of smiles, provided we don't lose our faith in smiles! To the hell with pandemic, here this baby smiles so winsomely even after getting fired by merciless Sun's cannon-fire through the day! Keep smiling, adversities are nourishment for being our best version! We always have the choice of cutting the soot of adversities and keep it a smiling plant and not allow it turn into a parasitic creeper suffocating us to death.

It’s a year of tragedies. Sushant Singh Rajput, the young Bollywood star, committed suicide. I would like to spare him from the only question entire India is bombarding his soul with, i.e., "Why", and offer my humble condolences. RIP brother!

Much as we condemn the act of self-termination, we ought to look into the issue of self-inflicted mortality with a fresh perspective! The issue of mental health has been hijacked by mock-sympathy on social media while millions continue to die slowly even while I am writing these lines. The topic of suicide has been bracketed so abstractly that to talk otherwise turns almost a sin by default. Corona-forced lockdown has further narrowed the escape route for those in depression.

With our limited knowledge of our physiognomy and psychosomatic build up, we have simply gone into gross generalized narrative about suicide and such psychological accidents that defy all the apparent laws of self preservation. All I can say is that we are far more ignorant about this issue that most of us think! We have to look at it from a broader and more elevated plane. The higher dimensions of perception have fewer and fewer people; hence these opinions may sound unorthodox. But that shouldn't discourage one's quest for truth. Was the path to the things that later turned truths free of barbed fence? Keep journeying! Let all of us have a nice path of self realization building up ahead! Best wishes!