The arrival of spring

 

The winters and the beginning of a new year 2021 saw the same busy world in its old ways. As Indians we threw cautions to the winds. We want to stick to our old picture. Change scares us and we feel safe following the rutted path even if it leads us down the precipice. Meanwhile, the virus chuckled in its hibernation.

As love is the utmost exciting and the most forgivable weakness, we just move on loving even our flaws. And that is something that makes life and living comic even among all the tragedies. As Dostoevsky says, ‘Life is full of the comic and is only majestic in its inner sense.’ We are all but a funny self-coffin makers and all this while God keeps on playfully throwing pebbles at us.

As we move on our comic path, pushed and prodded by a steely resolve and stony attitude, we need to take notice of little messages written around: Water's fluidity is its strength; air's lightness is its strength. Softness has its strength in its own way. And a forgivable weakness is far stronger than any unpardonable strength. Be mellow, be sweeter. We need more of pliability, fluidity and acceptance to survive.

And as Dostoevsky says like a saint, ‘Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to the passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.’

Take time to notice the fireworks of Mother Shakti. Her serpents are overwhelming, exciting, orgasmic and sometimes even scary. The multi-orgasmic sensation born of getting horsewhipped by destiny manifests as forgetting the so called orgasms once and for all! She plays with you like a child stomps, sprays, mauls, twists and moulds the beach sand. Surrender! Bow down! Allow Her blessings to re-fabricate your higher self. Each and every little pinch She takes to bore the hole in the soil of our physical existence is nothing but the sowing of seeds for luxuriant trees of metaphysical rewards and boons. Keep your faith. It's nothing short of revolutionary overhauling of one's psychosomatic self. At the experiential level, the feelings, thoughts, emotions and physical sensations are atypical of our otherwise mundane life. She knows better what and how to do it. Don't get overawed. Only surrender and faith will be a sufficient anchor to keep your moorings. The ship surely comes out of the shaky storms to kiss calm, bright and sunny shores of realizations that leave most of our questions redundant just like a little lamp in a dark room turns darkness meaningless just by its presence. Let Her caress you with the palpable touch of her majestically awakened self.

As Kahlil Gibran says, ‘Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth,’ Her touch is holistic. We have to feel it from many angles.

It has taken me years to come to terms with this torrential force cascading through my physical self. How I wish I had these guides with me to help me take my course. But then, it's Her choice to give me the course that I needed to effectuate my Karmic balance. Anyone reading it may have His/Her course chartered out here!

Dostoevsky didn’t lose faith in human redemption because he saw something fundamentally simple about our existence as he says, ‘In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.’ Isn’t it that when we see bad in others, that is but our own discontent within. When we see good in someone, it's only the love and harmony within our own selves. We simply project our own state of being on the walls of externals. Jaisi drishti vaisi shristi!

We have to accept that our thoughts are mere fireworks in our mind. These have nothing to do with truth. 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.

Land-mongering China appears to have achieved what it wanted. Writing for The Print, HS Panag says, ‘It is pertinent to mention that all buffer zones which are likely to be created are on our side of the LAC, denying us the right to patrol, deploy or develop infrastructure, which we had up to April 2020. Given the yawning differential between the military capabilities in China’s favor, this kind of agreement was inevitable.’

As Mikhail Naimy says, ‘The straight is the brother of the crooked. The one is a short cut; the other, a roundabout way. Have patience with the crooked.’ We have no option but to have patience with China.

The virus meanwhile is well hibernated like this big guy, a snake, that has left his old coat amid wild sweet potato flowers and gone underground for winter sleep to come out hunting with the arrival of spring.

On a brighter note, the UAE relaxes Islam with inclusive modern values of freedom of choice. It will surely turn it a heaven on earth for its followers. The blood-thirsty mullahs will no longer be able to brainwash Islamic youth to turn them suicidal and enjoy jannat with hoors after death. I bow down in respect to the UAE ruler for effecting these life-affirming, humane changes.

Have you been ditched and still feel the bruises on your heart? Well, here are some words of solace. When she loves you, I don't think she loves you, rather she loves her own purity and virtues. Your baseness is what defines and sets the gold standard of her lofty character. If nothing at all, it's still pleasant to be the building block of someone's purity. Cherish the feeling fella!

All of us have to walk through our very own dark nights of the soul to arrive at the dawn of light. What we become is decided by what (and how) we go through. Walk through your dark spell with acceptance, dignity, grace and surrender. It's not a weakness. In fact these are the building blocks of real strength of character. Walking in the darkness is sufficiently courageous in itself. I pray for all of you to come smiling out of the darkness into the light. And everything, dear readers of life, turns out to be just moon-lit fog! Just a sea of shadows, non-being, rippling against its shiny beads of being! A fleeting grey cast on a still fleetier darker cast, the latter itself a cast on further casting. Endless spools of impressions jumping from being to non-being and vice versa. Dancing particles in murky haze on the dark stage. The eternal darkness, meanwhile, now and then flashing a smile to show the matter, her teeth, to bite a fleeting morsel of being from the primordial bread of non-being. When she craves in self love to embrace herself, she entwines her milky white, lightful, slender fingers around her dark breasts and grip her own dark curves with her white arms. And the shapes zoom in and zoom out in teasing, self-orgasmic delight. Like waves, shapes merge in the shapeless fluidity. Being and non-being merge in matrimonial delight on the conjugal bed of holy union in the bedchamber of creation. Being mating with non-being to sire shapes and appearances. Shapes merely the stamp of 'being' by the 'non-being'. A canvas both within and without. Shapes, sounds, appearances and disappearances, all that we perceive certainly exist, but with equal claim by my non-existence. It's just a microcosm between Is and Isn't. A little pulse. A beat.

The winters are harsh and I warm my bruised self like a little frozen snake on the warming stones and boulders scattered in the Ghaggar valley. These stones always welcome me with the softest smile, support and melodious lullabies. If not for the life within a stone, life outside won't have any meaning. The soft seed of the animate lies inside the womb of the inanimate. I feel like a child in his fondest cradle. It heals. This small river gives me more reasons to be lively and joyous about life.

Cut yourself from the bubbling oneness of life and we turn into a constricted, stale, mossy representative of death. Merge yourself with the rippling song of life and we are a bubbling replica of life and living. Life isn't a static, knotted noun; it's a tantalizing and teasing verb, living, expansion, fluidity, creativity, an ongoing process.

I walk down a dew-drenched early morning foot trail and see a bunny bhai out for his dewy breakfast. I am up for the same for the same for my soul. I am but the uninvited, unwelcome guest and he is the care-not-a-damn host. He just scampers back to his house, shutting his open door bang close on my face. Shooed away with my unwelcome humanity, I move out of his area. Mother Nature has more spectacle lined up for me.

There it’s etched sharply with claws: The royal insignia, the stamp of authority, the signature of ownership, the scratches of his presence. I accept his rulership of the area. The leopard Maharaj has freshly redone the marks of his prowling residence in the area. The forest is his castle and he has every right to defend it scratchily. There are groups of kaakars, little stags, the subjects to support their king in the area. Just like you have a snake if there are mice to pay homage to him at the lower rung in the food chain, you have a leopard to lord over these little deer. These are faint foot-rails where I roam around. Hills have better roads now, so people take bikes and vehicles to travel longer distances on paved and unpaved roads. Hardly anyone walks on these abandoned foot-rails to travel from one hamlet to the other. These grey left out areas on the fringes of our flashlights are the ones where they have their tiny kingdoms and castles. Well, I am just a simple curious traveler. Hope the king of the area won't get offended and give a few more scratches of his royalty on my poor, laughable bum.

A dole out from the infinite unmanifest to the finite manifest, I am just a tiny speck of cloudy phenomenon casting its shadow in a little valley. From the unbound infinity to cosmos to solar system to earth atmosphere to this little fleeting shadow, I am simply a ripple, a pulsating throbbing through which the whole feels its own being.

I recall a thought credited to my friend who gives me a free passport to enjoy this solitude in the hills through his unqualified and unadulterated sense of hosting me in the hills. His breakfast sandwiches are fabulous. I’m even water-mouthed as I recall his kitchen philosophy, ‘For a husband, Kitchen is a better place than Bedroom to salvage his dignity, freedom and sense of individuality!’

I move on with gratitude and love for everything around. Like the mother fills up the mug with steaming hot coffee to wake up her son on a freezing morning, mother existence joyfully pours down warm sunrays into this little valley to fill it with love, life, living and translucent warmth.

 

When the sky softly kisses the pine needles with a foggy pout, you really feel it on your skin. I sing along the song of freedom composed by Mother Nature on a foggy stage with the orchestra managed by the pines, icy mountain wind and birds.

A dry tree doles out a piece of death-bed wisdom for me:

My wood is all but dead and dry,

I ought not to have a sad tear in my eye,

Nor a pining heart's sigh,

My roots are now the soil

that fuels the fresh leaves' toil

for new smiles and fragrance,

Much of what was once above

is alive now below!

And here are the sad musings of a lone pine on a weather-beaten ridge:

Where have the birds gone?

Too many of them used to roam

the sky over my head,

And play, love and make nest

at their joyous best

among branches mine,

Now my pine's soul doth pine,

Yesterday, I saw a bird couple too sad,

Are many of them dead?

Youth is exciting but it's all muddled waters. I love my grayish forties. But all of us have moments that are vibrant and agelessly exotic. Well, mine is gazing purposelessly into the floating mystique of these foggy valleys, my piece of serendipity, my small heavenly plane where I feel ageless and perpetually youthful.

When the morning sun suddenly peeks over the corner to set a blizzard of light in a sleeping vale, it triggers a shimmering light-work in the dewy beads clinging to drooping leaves. The morning mists pleasantly launch vapory fireworks, carrying the fragrant message of love, life and living. It's like the first pure smile of a baby after opening eyes in the morning. I stand mesmerized in this little bowl of peace and harmony, completely soaked in solitude, the sunbeams going deep inside to sooth my soul, the fragrant vapors percolating deep into the pores of my heart to assuage guilt, fear, anger and of course bruises and wounds it suffered and poured the same on others during the journey, and the dewy shivering glade embracing me wholeheartedly. It gives a clue and key to life. We feel at our best when in a state of expansion, as a set of a larger totality. Expand your knots of ego in such solitary corners guys. Melt in larger panorama nurtured by mother earth. One feels un-caged from a narrow, suffocating feeling that we have cemented around. Come on, let's claim our freedom that is long due. Let's pledge ourselves long draughts of freedom in this New Year. Best wishes to all you out there looking to pry open the cage of miseries, suffering and restlessness! Let the coming days see you smile more and be at ease with yourself!

In free-spirited celebratory mode with Mother Nature, I wish a sunny sojourn for the New Year that is bound to be brighter and happier for all of us. Bid a forgiving bye to the last strands of grey on the last dusk of 2020, and open your eyes to a multi-hued, vibrant, happy and prosperous first dawn of 2021! Wishing everyone a very happy new year!

֍♠֎

Tell me a place where light and dark don't coexist? There are perpetual grey zones of creation where the opposites balance each other. In one such gray zone, on a little leaf’s corner we hold our egos about our dissecting judgments. Our ego is the weight we feel all the time. Egolessness is the cure, or at least the next milestone in our journey of evolution.

Egolessness is a state of no-mind where the individual consciousness stays free, depending on the time variable, from thoughts. This is the bridge between consciousness and super-consciousness. Inherent intelligence doesn't need thoughts, which is primarily a mind construction, to enable flora and fauna to survive. The DNA contained in a cell, thousand times smaller than an inch, can fill up thousands of books each comprising 1,000 pages. What we interpret through language and thoughts is just a tiny fraction of this vast potential sea of information lying scattered around us. It's a folly to think that we create knowledge and information. We just harness a bit of it from the limitless pools lying around.

Soul is the real substance. This physical being is just the shadow of that true self. Ironically, we grow up believing the shadow to be the substance and substance to be the shadow. It requires reverse conditioning to be truly on the path of evolution.

As I take my morning cup of coffee, a dew drop slips down the petal of a full-blossomed rose. It sounds like a tear, a tear for the black bee that came, sucked juice and was gone. Well, beauties always have their co-relating tragedies. 

All of us have some rough edges on us here or there, like this rose has its pricks. But the people who believe they love us should be in a position to understand where these rough edges come from.

It’s the lover day, Valentine Day. Love and its tales seem to have regained their footings after the Corona onslaught. Hate cuts down a portion of your potential, stopping you from being the best you could have been. Only love helps in scaling new heights of peace and joy. Wish you all a very happy valentine day!

Why do we need love? All of us are here because we have bits and pieces missing in us in this existence. Nobody is perfect. We want and need companionship to fill up those missing spots in us. That’s the primary reason we need love and companionship. However, in our quest we forget that even the person whom we expect to give us a feeling of rest, comfort, peace and repose has his/her missing sports and he/she has also sided with us in the journey for exactly the same reasons as we have. If we understand this, a lot many thorns on the love path will vanish by itself.

The winter now starts to pack its bags. Sad faced, its long unkempt locks of hair falling over its authoritative but beautiful face. It seems to have fallen in love with the place. It lingers around as if it doesn’t want to go. But it has to go anyway. I take her hand. Boy o boy, it's warm. It's not cold. At the core of its frozen self there is warmth.

As a common man I have many fears. My fears drive my faith in a protective God. I carry a prayer on my lips:

O Lord!

The sweet bugs of your love thrive in my being,

My frailties try to kill them,

My fears and insecurity keep mauling them under hard boots,

But they survive this poison and heartless onslaught.

My weaknesses light fire to burn them,

But they still rise from the ashes like Phoenix,

With every effort to tear them away from my facade,

They sneak deeper into my soul.

This body will decay and burn some day,

But they will carry on with my soul!

Beyond our impulsive reactions and reactive fear we have a choice to be reasonable. We can draw out sweet, comic juice out of very serious, sour fruit falling in our lap, and many times falling on our head like a stone. Don't live by impulse and wince with pain. Don't just allow the typical reaction of hurt, fear and anger to cascade across the established neural circuits in the brain. The rutted path of the long-trodden neural pathways is just the path to our limited self. Try to form a crazy habit to give a guffaw of laughter when you are drawn to sadness by the well-entrenched nervous network of the old self. Forge a new one. Our brain has neuro-plasticity. It means it has the property of neuro-genesis. With persistent craftsmanship one can open up new neural pathways to a higher self abloom with creativity and joy. One can draw the contours of a more meaningful and substantial life. All it needs is practice. It takes around two months to plough fresh furrows in the field of our persona and become a new version of one's old self. Land up with your creative gear in the soil of your inner self and expand with the cosmic urge to actualize the still unharnessed potential in you. All around us is the cosmic sea of creativity. Claim your portion. Try it fella, you will find yourself laughing and joyful even if the outer situation is twisting your ear. Instead of wincing with pain, let out a guffaw of laughter. And don’t miss your smile as you walk on the path. A comic strain always accompanies all situations. You have to condition yourself to spot it.

I remember Ma  as I look into the black distances of the cosmos at night:

When the night sighs like a pining mother,

Pining for that shining star that smiled

and shone on its darkish face,

And now lost somewhere in the infinite folds of the cosmos,

I feel the mother's pain,

For who hasn't been a loser in this world,

I have lost one too.

֍♠֎

The farmers have been protesting against the farming laws. The government doesn’t listen to them. It wants them to get tired and pick up their tents and get busy in the fields. Isn’t democracy about talking to the stakeholders for whom you bring legislation?

The winters gave way to spring, the spring that is supposed to renew life. But this time it came with a calamity. Millions of overzealous Hindus gathered at Haridwar for Kumbh mela and threw all precautions to winds. Faith is one thing, foolishness is quite another. The event turned out to be a super-spreader of Covid virus. Interestingly, the media didn’t jump to create a narrative this time like they did with the markaz gathering last year.

Modi is a strong leader, no doubt. But a strong leader stands on the platform of autocracy and democracy inevitably suffers. We can feel his institutional grip on our wrists now.   

During the Roman times, there used to be a slave official designated ‘Auriga’. He was chosen for his infallible trust and loyalty to the leaders. One among his many duties was to stand behind the military general, place the crown of laurels on the general's head and whisper ‘Memento, homo’ softly into the hero's ear. This Latin phrase means ‘remember you are only a man’. It was supposed to curtail the leader's ego and arrogance. Great power and success is the trapdoor for ego and arrogance. The ritual was performed to remind the rulers that egotism causes dynasties to fall.

Modi Sahab you are a great ruler no doubt about it. But I take the role of Auriga and whisper ‘Memento, homo’ in your ears which have gone deaf to the plight of millions of farmers who are protesting against the new farm laws. Please listen to their plight, they are also your subjects!

In April, the nasty Tsunami of the pandemic’s second wave built up. All warnings by the expert groups and scientists were ignored. Life chugged ahead believing the worst was over. And the disaster struck.

Lost in many personal and collective challenges, I sometime look into the deep folds of the night sky to get some footing, to avail some anchor support to row the boat of life despite all the storms around.

In the fathomless distances of the cosmic darkness,

somewhere my real self shines dreamily.

It teases me from far.

Its rays reach me now and then.

And before the undying dawn settles on my face,

the star is again lost in the impenetrable cosmic clouds.

 

There are parallel waves of agonies and ecstasies pervading around. It’s a seething whirlpool of happenings: A kind of paste of contradictory things, emotions, thoughts and feelings.

A dove-eyed gazelle,

Deep in a forest,

Steps on a dry leaf,

It murmurs with pain,

A thin crackling sound

and it falls apart.

Far away in a concrete jungle,

She has a sadistic smile on her lips

and steps over his heart.

The leaf in the forest

voices the shattering blast

of a broken heart.

A plum ripe fruit on a branch,

It grabs naughty simian attention,

A playful snatching pull,

And the fruit goes off at its prime.

Far away, death sharpens its scythe, chuckles heartlessly,

and harvests a young life at its peak.

A pale old leaf surrenders

to the painless pull of gravity,

And swirls down to ecstatic oblivion.

Far away, an old man peacefully

takes his last breath in sleep.

 

On a windswept cloudy day in the early summers, when the trees are shedding loads of cold beaten leaves, I also shed loads of painful past like a smart snake shedding old, boring skin and glisten with new coat to set out hunting again. I try to hypothetically sharpen my talons as a huge blizzard of individual and collective miseries creeps into our lives.  

I'm as good or bad as anyone around. I am simply a work in progress to be a nicer human being with a higher consciousness. But then such sweet realizations get easily washed away by the torrents of happenings in one’s life.

Still, being true to one's intrinsic nature is no weakness. If you happen to be a person dominated by feelings, don't underestimate your heart. Feelings have longer roots to one's real self. Thoughts are utilitarian ripples on the egoistic surface. They have their utility though. Mind is just a faculty that has the potential to create something out of life. But still it's a utility, a skill. Heart is what we are. Controlling mind breeds a healthy outer life, which surely supports peace and joy inside. Nurturing heart gives us a joyful inner life. Mind is predominantly a trigger mechanism operating basically on our fears. It's merely a tool to survive, but not us. Go guys go, have a pleasant joyride with your feelings and use mind for survival in the forest that life is.

Feeling the pain born of relationships, emotional turmoil and all the related stuff? Well, it's never about holding people, it's always about holding ourselves properly. If we hold ourselves appropriately, we come across healthy relationships as well. Others are always the side effects. The main thing is us. When things are not manageable at the emotional level, because emotions are sublime and intangible, take a grip of the situation at the physical level. Holding the horns in a fight at the physical level is relatively easier because physicality is tangible. When one is feeling in gutters, give a best shot at your physicality, go into narcissism through yoga, walks, gym, do all and more. The physical exercises cut on cortisol, the anxiety hormone which takes us into the gutters of depression and emotional turmoil. If we try to handle things at the emotional level, or through emotional dependence in relationships, we are missing the bulls eye because emotions hardly have any tangibles. We just kick around blindly and go further down. Work out a fabulous physicality regime involving multiple streams. It will boost dopamine and serotonin in the brain. These are the wellness and joyous hormones that will beat the pain of memories. As a healthier and happier person, we draw better life circumstances which include better people also. Long before we allow others to hurt us, we have already belittled our own self by not actualizing our real potential. Stay on course for continuous self improvement. There is no better tangible, and easiest, and which is firmly in our grasp, battleground than a sweet battle at the level of physicality.

The IQ fundamentalists please shut up! When we fall down, it's not our extraordinary and special talent that sees us through. It's the plain old spirit of perseverance—the common man's ubiquitous heap of normalcy. At whatever level you are busy writing the story of your life, keep yoked to your mission like a diligent ox guys. And the furrows of your very own life and living will follow.

Dump all preconceptions about breaking galaxies with the shining supernovas of eye-blinding heroic traits and feats. Be the proud little man who keeps working on his small-time mundane qualities with persistence and passion. And then you become the joyful sovereign of your little world.

Don't worry if you don't have the elite sprinter's lungs and leg muscles to win the 100 meter race and reach the podium to see your success through other's eyes. Nurture endurance in spirit and strive further and push harder in the slow-paced marathon of your very own life. Choose your own pace and the miles to go and give it all that you have. Sweat out to get a thumps-up from your own soul.

Hey all you regular guys like me, stick to your little mission very hard. And you and me have as much chance of reaching the finish line as any other naturally talented guy has. Believe me on this! In the long term, grit is more important than smartness and natural talent.

A lot of inner work has to be done to support the outer work. Only those in suffering and pain themselves become the source of sorrow to others. The fire within has to burn the carrier's inside first before spreading its effect on others. Happy people hardly cause sorrow around. Observe the fiery pit inside, the primary cause of one's sorrows. If we become aware of its burn, we will stop blaming others for our miseries. Others are merely triggers for the fire to flare up more viciously at the most. It helps to remember that all our so called miseries of life are primarily born of our inner condition rather than the life circumstances and the people around.

Most of our well-deliberated choices, sufficiently calculated decisions and properly groomed actions are in fact mere outputs of habits. These are nothing but well packaged habits. So work on fresh habits that will rebrand you, giving you a new vision, goal and purpose in life. It’s only about creating a greater meaning out of life. Create yours.

Most of us are tired and bored of being our own self. The 'self' seems almost a prison and we are always rushing out to beat our self-loath and boredom by connecting with people who we assume match our personality cast. These people to whom we rush to beat our boredom are but our opposites because who would go and enter the same prison one is trying to get out. So when the connection and relationships also don't dilute the feeling of self-loath, we put the blame again on the outside forces, people and circumstances. No relationship will work as long as we are bored being ourselves. The problem is always inside, our ego but would always try to dupe us by putting it on the people and life circumstances. To be a friend to anyone outside, one has to share a beautiful bonhomie with one's own self. You have to smile within to laugh genuinely with others. You have to be comfortable with your own being first. Only then others will feel relaxed with you. The inner turmoil, restlessness and stress of just being the way we are takes a big toll on what we make of our life outside. The way we feel, think or act is the cause—not effect—of all the shit we find outside in our life. The cause lies within. The externalities are mere effects. And solutions start with causes not effects. So if the game of life isn't nice outside, accept it as an effect of something wrong within. To be a smiling friend to others, first learn to be friendly with your own self.

Charles Darwin rightly maintained that 'zeal and hard work are ultimately more important than intellectual ability'. So go out with passion and zeal and conquer your summits.

The spring was sowing the seeds of summer-time calamity, but a poetic mind dances with romance of the spirit.

The Spring's traces last,

Hot summers approaching fast,

Languid notes in the air,

A solitary bird's forlorn chirping

for its musical share,

Drowned in stillness

this late morning bright and fair,

Sky's dull blue,

Spread with some mystical clue,

But a smaller world is there,

The overall lethargy cannot reach where, —

In its self-defined world

in a corner tiny,

The luscious wild flower

still stands brave and shiny!

Nearby I see some flowers in the garbage dump: Rag pickers, the poisoned flowers of a stanching garden. Will they blossom and give fragrance? No! They will be mucking, hard-pressed, tainted and corrupted souls. They can't help it. Toxic sewage seeping into their roots will just manifest as the sour, bitter fruits to go along the simple cause and effect rule.

I try to look around and find out where we have missed the train. It's suitable to know what's wrong with the world. But the problem is the wrong has become so ubiquitous as to shadow the right to a degree where the former turns perfectly normal. You then feel helpless and resigned to a collective miserable fate. To survive in such times one has to have the skill to accept the wrong as the right. Even my philosophical idea that ‘the manifested is merely an illusory shadow of the un-manifested’ is no consolation in the face of the wrongs written so profusely on both sides of the path.

We are entitled to a feeling of victimization and its co-passengers sorrow and sulk. If despite best of your effort—I repeat 'best', i.e., 100%—things still don’t go your way, then you have the right to 'sulk' or the privilege to feel 'low'. There is nothing wrong with availing this right now and then. A pinch of self pity for a moment might give you substantial boost when you come out of this pit of feeling low. But if even this momentary low feeling, which is nothing but like a lacerated soldier lying on the battle field, eying the sky and waiting to get up again, disturbs your near and dear ones, then it’s better to abandon this right to feel low. One has to prefer the duty to feel 'high' over the right to feel 'low' because if not more it keeps those around you normal.

֍♠֎

What is common among Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Indira Gandhi, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and scores of declared and underestimated dictators? Well, irrespective of their political approach, they shared the huge commonality of being very strong and powerful leaders. They were bigger than the entire system they were part of, bigger than the institution itself. Ironically, when a part proclaims to be bigger than the whole, calamity strikes inevitably. No wonder, there were mass sufferings under them in proportion to the clout they had built up. Given this, do we need too powerful leaders? In the contemporary political scene also rhetorical, powerful leaders have brought mass miseries to their people, simply because they just don't listen to anything apart from their own ego-saturated mind. I am very much scared of too powerful leaders. Their strength is derived from tears in too many eyes. After a time, they look like scarecrow to create panic among the people on the street. Blissfully silent, meek and affable Manmohan Singh Ji creates nostalgia now. We felt freer. I am sure he would have spoken less and done more to handle the pandemic’s second wave that slaughtered millions.

The media shirks from truth these days. It has turned a narrative-churning machine of the government. At the grossest level of existence, 'Truth' is a little candy held tightly in the fist of the hand that is 'Powerful'!

Among all the pandemic-time mayhem and the gallons of horrific news pouring from all sides, on the 19^th of May Ruskin Bond’s birthday created a sweet childhood nostalgia taking us to easier times and relaxed situations. It’s an honor to wish you happy birthday Bond Sir! You have turned 87, now please give us at least 13 more such occasions and hundreds of more stories in the meantime! There have been times when a simple line by you has lifted tons of weight from my soul. The simplicity of your words falls in straight line with absolute Truth.

That moment 13 years back is etched in my memory like stone engravings. It was the monsoon season. I went on a pilgrimage on the Mussoorie ridge to reach your famed ivy-cottage window. You were busy writing, looking into the mazy distances in the valley. Standing under your window, I harked your attention and introduced myself. ‘Come sometime when I am free!’ You quipped with a mischievous smile. I will surely come back to ask, ‘Sir are you free?’ And have a cup of tea with you.

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On a sandy beach we explored each other's depths. The sea warned, 'Don't reach too deep. In the innermost guts there is lava, like in me!'

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There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliant, swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our share of truths from this sea that will be suitable and complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, our perception of the world, our vision of the world and the people around.

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Sin is something your soul will feel. Crime is something that the law will judge. It's important to know how much of sin a crime carries or the vice versa.

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To arrive at a conclusion we use the tool of judgment. We simply pick out fault in others, the grey shady areas, and give a summary condemnation of someone. Ironically, that person is more than what we have chosen as the witnesses against him in the fault basket. He has bright areas beyond the dark spots chosen by us. No wonder, our judgments are blind and nothing more than tools to salvage our pride, vanity and ego.

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Our routine habits are simply means to our mundane ends. These are little silly idiosyncrasies only. But some of them stand out more prominently to breed envy, anger, hate and malice. These are the bedrocks of vices. And vices are an end in itself.

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Happiness is a fable. We have fabricated it to tolerate our own self-inflicted unhappiness. It's merely a make-believe title to a story whose every phrase speaks of the opposite.

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Our attachments, expectations and desires are the source of fear in us. We are afraid of losing what we have. And belief in external powers who can save us is nothing but a projection of our fear and phobias. Drive out fear from your every cell and you no longer need the concept of God in the clouds. You become one yourself!

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If Mother Earth stands any chance at all, it lies there if we treat each day of the year as the Environment Day. Everything less than it falls well short the least redemption.

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The lies that we tell others are just a fraction of the lies which we tell to our own selves. Self-told lies are our fog spray that we sprinkle to keep the sun of truth in our soul hidden and allow us to embrace our pretending, fake self, our ego. All this feeds on the lies that we continuously tell ourselves.

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We have crossed another milestone. The manmade materials now outweigh all life on earth. Every twenty years we have doubled the weight of our concrete buildings, roads, warehouses, factories, vehicles, etc., taking it to 1.1 tera-tonnes. The weight of the living biomass has halved and stands at 1 tera-tonne.

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The only victory in life is mere 'survival'.

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Sometimes it's not that important to understand as it's to simply listen.

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If we allow hate in our heart, making it a kind of weapon, ultimately we end up shooting our own selves with it.

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Only the terribly guilty conscience will look at things through the moral-immoral dichotomy. Things are neither moral nor immoral. We simply jump from this side to that just to help us keep believing in our very own meaning of life shaped by our circumstances. A person caught in the quagmire of moral and immoral is kicking to reach nowhere but self-doom. A clear, transparent conscience will look at things without the tag of either moral or immoral.

Beyond the prism of morality and immorality, all of us have at least the choice to improve upon the worst in us. The littlest step away from the worst in us may turn out to be the biggest step of our life.

And most importantly, don't hold any grudges about anyone or anything because in the end all of us are mere travelers on the highway who just accosted a fellow journeyman or woman, said hi, hello, or exchanged words and moved on the path of our destiny. Coming across fellow travelers on the path is merely incidental. It's not the destination. The destination is always for the lone self.

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Serial killers get serially killed also. It's just own-contrived karma.

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I respect promiscuity as long as one is true to it and accepts its multiple colors from the brightest to the darkest. It's a rollercoaster ride and has ups and downs. Ups are sustained by downs. Love yourself as you are and stop blaming others as the breakers of your destiny. I'm an ass but I don’t blame others for being an ass. I am a proud maker of my own self. I know my emotions are my own braying and not someone’s chorus song.

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Ecstasy that is born of witnessing someone's 'downfall' is no ecstasy. That is a misconception. If we feel pleased over someone's pain, that is our own frustration pouring out in its sadistic garb. As an ass, I am fully sure that despite all my flaws I would be the last person to gloat over someone's pain and suffering. I just say certain things matter of factly. I wish all those who are having a tough ride all the best. Better days inevitably await all of us. Keep rowing. It's solely in our own hands to row out of storms. All of us have our own storms to beat. Briefly a hand or two may join us, but finally it's our own hands that carry us through. Even family members are mere co-travelers on the path, what to talk of friendships and relations. These are brief hi hellos as we move on the path. If I carry malice in my heart as I move on the path that would be too much of a burden. I carry a smile for my past, an ease for my present and hope and optimism for the future. And of course a prayer for my co-travelers. Yes, I get brief hiccups of vices like anger and hate, but these vanish the moment they strike me. I am proud of my elevation that these don't take a permanent hold in my heart. Not for anyone for any reason. And I wish for a time when even these brief strikes vanish.

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I wait to see my 'make'. Wishing to see someone 'break' would be an insult to my beautiful eyes that almighty has blessed me with.

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Lost in the sweet-sour shades of some pleasant as well as painful memories, I look back to reclaim the sand that has slipped out of the fist. But the scene left behind by me has been deftly stolen by the winds from the other direction. The stage seems excitedly full of new characters. With a sad smile I turn away and look ahead. Across the sandy veil of the dispirited horizon, some cool shades are visible. With slow steps I move ahead, hoping for an oasis. Well that's life fella, we have to set out anyway.

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Sometimes the godly scheme requires us to swim upstream against the current. Don't feel bitter at seeing others floating easily downstream. You the able-bodied have been chosen for the task because you have the muscles in your willpower to go upstream. This selection of yours is the reward in itself.

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There are just dozens around us who have achieved more than us at the cost of far less struggle than us. But there are millions who have nothing like us, even though they struggle thousand times than us. The numbers involved in this simple mathematics should make us proud and satisfied with whatever we have achieved and got in life. There is a thing called gratitude. It automatically absorbs a lot of pain.

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Love leaks out of my body, drop by drop. Her cuts are incurable...the non-healing holes....the ever-existing outlets for the mellowness inside to seep out and turn stones!

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When there is a storm around you, I mean a nasty sea-storm churned out by circumstances, whining like a dog won't help. Nor will the majestically brave lion's roar to tame the storm help you. It's better that we try to swim to the best of our humble capacity and leave the rest to the unknown forces. But believe me even the burning core of the nastiest storm ultimately embraces the cool ice block of a genuine effort!

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In the mist-veiled silence of a dream, I sleep-walked into the crazy grasp of a thorny bush. Hee hee, we just need a prickly bite to see the reality!

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With sand grains grasped in my hands, fleeting clouds in my heart and enforced philosophies in my head, I set out to win the kingdom that never existed!

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Creativity is merely a side effect of adversity. Since adversities are numerous in number, creativity by default is very cheap and cost effective. Grab your share of it.

 

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They were busy winning over Bengal, meanwhile Corona effortlessly, without meeting any resistance, won over entire India. The second wave’s mayhem started in April. The catastrophe would beat even our wildest imagination. Forget about government and administration, all we could do was to pray to God to survive.

Even in the face of glaring failure of governance, they had their hyperactive supporters who defended the mighty leaders. Those who grab power to run the world are evil; their blind followers, andhbhakts, are stupid; and the rest including you and me, who really fuel and nurture the evil and stupidity in the former two, are simply cowardly ant-swarms.

Isn’t the mankind's basic tendency war, tension, strife and suffering? Peace is simply imposed against our will. Those who can cash on this confusion are eligible to rule over us.

The critics of Them, justified of course in your intentions and reasons, here is a word of caution. They are down under the weight of the pandemic, which has exposed their hollow jingoism, but they definitely are not out. As the saying goes, a King is a bad enemy, a worse friend, and a fatal family relation. So stay rooted while you criticize Them. They will hit back at the level you are, wherever it may be, anywhere you placed, using the hierarchical powers suitable for your position and standing to push and prod you again into the hole. They may not do much to take us out of our miseries but They will surely hit back. I have no shame in accepting that I am scared of writing or saying even a single word against Them because I know They always hit back at their critics. They have the power and they expertly mean to use it against dissent. That is the hallmark of powerful Kings. Power has a natural disposition for misuse. Here at least They are subservient to the concept of power. Power has its blinding power over Them. So my dear angry, cantankerous birds, take a pause. The fear of corona and the fear of Them are both essential to stay alive and safe. So play it safe, don’t go overboard in your criticism. Lastly, pray, pray and just pray for all of us. We the common subjects of Them have no oxygen, no vaccine and no hospital beds. All we have is our prayers. So let's pray for each other. Let's use all our power of emotions to keep our boat afloat.

Political choice is always about the lesser evil. In a bloody fight among the power-hungry evil minds, the helpless voter has the only choice to opt for the lesser evil. But even the lesser evil proves incapable to fulfill the tiniest dreams the masses have.

Great power always brings mass suffering in its wake. When BJP obsessively talks of Congress Mukt Bharat, they actually mean opposition-less rule. And opposition-less rule is almost synonymous with dictatorial rule. A healthy democracy is the churning result of a seesaw competition between equally strong parties, who try to excel on the issues of development instead of flimsy rhetoric which have no say in alleviating mass miseries. Do religious wars give us oxygen when we die like gasping fish on the roads? Do grand temples and sky high statues give us hospital beds when all we need is a simple few days of care to avoid death?

Why is America the strongest democracy in the world? It's because there are two equally strong parties who actually fight on the issues that really matter. Hope the current Indian government learns some lessons from the mass suffering in India and gives us common necessities of life instead of communal opium and an intoxicating, false, blinding and rhetorical sense of nationalism. Please learn to listen to those who differ with you. Don't just build a narrative to condemn them as traitors! Please learn to listen! There is a world beyond wining elections at any cost. Sometimes costs are too high. Great rule might be about great power. But grand and glorious rule is about taming that rampaging power to make it a slave instead of allowing it to sit on our head and be our master.

The official Covid death figure is just a tip of the iceberg. In the vast countryside thousands have perished without even getting tested, speaking from my own experience. In village Titoli of Haryana, district Rohtak, 40 people died in just two weeks. Officially most of them are non-Covid deaths. In my own village, about 20 people died within a month and most of them are counted non-Covid deaths even though they had typical Covid symptoms. But we know the bitter truth. Majority of the cluster of deaths in villages and localities are because of Covid. Once we win over this pandemic, an independent enquiry will have to establish the exact loss of lives. They can't hide the figure to escape blame in future. We need truth so that our future policies are human centric, not fake jingoism. Test kits are faulty. There is a huge scam going there. People die of routine corona symptoms and the tests come negative. It's terrible. Presently only prayers stand between life and death.

Among all our miseries, we are continuously missing the point that it's a biological war, a sort of third world war, launched by China.

An appeal to the Honorable PM by a scared common Indian:

Dear PM, we have lost so many elders, middle aged and young lives—far far more than what the official death figures would have us believe—in the first and second waves of the pandemic. The experts are already warning, like they had earlier, that the next wave may hit our children. If you fail to avoid that catastrophe, history will judge you very severely. Kindly pause your dream of making Bharat a Vishva Guru. You will be hopefully still the ruler of Bharat for the next three years, so we are all but helpless in beseeching you to learn the skill of listening. You speak so well. But there is a thing called listening also. Please work on this skill. We don't want the status of the master of the globe. We just need the assurance that we will no longer die on the roads without oxygen. We would certainly clap with you as our rover lands on the moon, but before that we have to stay alive. Give us the assurance of basic medical facilities. Please help us restore our belief in life and living. The ultra nationalist magic potion, the hallucinating pill of religious superiority, and the blinding opium of jingoism and rhetoric fails in the face of manageable crisis. It may help you to get votes, but it doesn't help us at all when all we need is a simple bed in a common hospital to survive. Please rule India as a different and changed person for the next three years without bothering about winning elections at any cost. India doesn't need a Congress-mukt environment. We need an environment where people don't die like worms. We need a system where we don't have to survive with fear and insecurity. Please change for the better. Otherwise, the next pandemic wave will see us crying over the bodies of our children. And those tears will never forgive you or the system you lead!

The Western media finds it so easy to lambast India as a pandemic victim, pouring more of scorn and less of concern over our suffering. However, they lose their reporting spirits in condemning China who is actually the perpetrator of this pandemic. China is too powerful now. And reporting truth is inversely proportional to power. So China goes scot free and India that's hugely damaged gets further bashed up. But don't worry, we have the oldest spiritual values on earth. We will bounce back like never before! This is our dark night of the soul. The rising sun of a new day will see the best version of India.

All of us lost something and someone in the second wave. I lost my dear friend who hosted my creative rest and repose in the hills. It’s a big wound in my heart. Rest in peace my friend, my brother! You were too pure to stay for too long in this mrityulok and left us for a higher dimension of life. And we the sinners left grieving for you, our prayers not sufficient to keep you with us. You were the sweetest person I have met. Your absence leaves a permanent aching hole in our hearts. With your pure persona you rapidly winded up the tangled coil of karmas and leapt over to a higher dimension of existence. Farewell to your physical form my friend! But I know you feel our feelings and smile over our follies driven by our limited sense perception. May almighty grace you with utmost bliss in His abode!

How cunningly they change the narrative! Hundreds of thousands of corpses floating in the Ganges are a living testimony to the present government's mismanagement of the pandemic. Then comes the Ramdev bombshell on allopathic treatment and the counter punching by the Indian Medial Association. The entire country forgets the corpses and starts bellowing nationalist songs through ayurvedic medicines and traditional therapy. Such smart asses are custom made for ruling the fools. And the sage King of boiling nationalists gets a smile of respite in lieu of his tears. His internet paratroopers, who had gone into a shell under the shock of the corpses, are out and croaking again. Defense of the Baba is a prelude to their soon to arrive vehement support for their sage King. Changed narrative: allopathic treatment is the monster, not government's mismanagement of the pandemic. See, it's all about the smart narrative they build up. Setting up smartest and cunning most narrative is the stepping stone to power. It's never, never, never about public welfare.

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Beyond the ravages of Corona, I'm life. Walls and dead ends can't stop me. All I need is a littlest foothold, a smallest chink and a tiniest hope to sprout forth. I am the energetic seed of all the matter around. To me a crack is also a new track to proceed on the journey. The show has to go on brothers and sisters irrespective of how many pandemic waves we have.

All of us have to move on our journey till the moment it coincides with a little happening in the untouched, unmoving majesty of some virgin forest, where an old, pale banyan leaf snaps the last sinew of its twigged bondage and flows down to enter the slumberous folds of the dusty bed prepared by mother earth.

On the path we have choices all the way. If we choose to pursue our feelings all the time, we would become self-annihilatory cats running in circles to chew their own tails.

Don’t get overawed by this creation around. And for God’s sake, don’t take anything too seriously. It’s a little story of nothingness. Existence manifests as creation. And creation is a virtual game in which a cat chases its own tail in circles. It is both predator and the prey at the same time. It's both creative and destructive. In fact it just is. Our limited sense perception gives us a fragmented dream in which manifestations appear relatively, like hot-cold, joy-pain, here-there, and so on. The sense of relativity is just one of the characteristics of the universal consciousness. It's just like I know that I know something.

It doesn't matter where you come from, what matter is where you go; and more importantly how you go.

As for me dear readers, in the calm core of my wind-lashed, stormed self, some unmovable shadow defines the substance of my being; I, but, have been running miles after miles, chasing mirages to find my identity.

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Above all, life and living prevails over all gloomy shadows. When the pandemic’s second wave was wreaking havoc around, a tiny flower blossomed in our family; my niece was born on May 20. Surely the evil Corona cast its dark shadow on this new blossom. She arrived premature just at 6.5 months. As all of us waged a struggle to survive, the little angel braved all odds and faced intestine infection and the consequent surgery, lungs complications, eyes laser treatment and scores of other issues. Within the two months of her birth, the little Devi went through so much of pain and suffering that most of us don’t go through even in our entire lives. And she walked through the river of fire to hold the baton of life. She smiles now. May almighty bless her with countless beautiful smiles in a long, healthy and prosperous life!