Getting used to a fraction of life only

 

In the middle of a dithering third week of a sulkish May, there has been another Covid-19 release, Lockdown 4.0. It is a far milder version of the previous lockdowns. The regional satraps, the state CMs, will get the primary power to set-up the norms in their territories.

How long people will stay indoors? So even though the cases are increasing at the rate of 5000/day to take India precariously close to 100,000 mark, people have started venturing out. They come out like half-excited, half-afraid toddlers. And totter gingerly like they are learning to walk. The precautions against Corona have been crammed to the gill in our scared brains, so they take these measures and leave the rest to destiny. We are the most hygiene conscious generation ever in our history. Let’s hope our clean hands get used to doing cleaner deeds. That will be the real take away from the adversity.

Passenger trains, metro rails and air travel still remain out of bounds, leaving people skipping and hopping within little zones to gather the scattered sinews after the storm. In fact, the storm is still blowing around as much earlier, but then we have to start believing at some point that the worst is over.

The stranded migrant workers literally revolted and pushed against the check-dam. Miserably herded sheep leapt over the fence and go bleating out their unnoticed miseries at full blast. You have to sing out your song of misery, otherwise nobody cares. They have blasted out a loud chorus of their collective miseries. To them life with or without Corona hardly makes any difference. They have hardly anything to lose. Their fistful of identity has been blown away to nameless specks in the dust of poverty being trampled under the running boots. So the sheep panicked and broke the ranks as clueless central and state governments watched helplessly.

One can stay indoors if he has something to get a sense of belonging. They hadn’t anything. Their only identity was their native soil which they had abandoned in crisis to earn a living. Now they remember the kind, old mother and run helter skelter.  Instead of staying hungry and jobless inside their shanties, they set out. All governmental measures failed as they revolted in hundreds of thousands. Many are perishing in accidents, fatigue, exhaustion and psychological trauma. We are calculating Corona losses in the stats of infections and casualties and monetary losses. Who will measure the indivisible un-chronicled tales of the agony of these destitute people? They just took a leap of faith and set out on foot to somehow reach their little hamlets and villages hundreds and even thousands of kilometers away. Untold and unmeasured miseries are scattered everywhere. 

China is as usual behaving like the rascal bully in the class, cornered for being caught red-handed, threatening those who raise voice against it with tariff strikes and flexing its military muscles at littoral little nations around the South China Sea. No need to stoop to their level in combating their menace. There is a very simple technique of irritating the hell out of China. The communist regime has 70 years of grisly skeletons of secrecy in its ideological cupboard. Demand facts and ask clearance of all the enigmas that they have built up. Train them in the art of being accountable. These will be the preliminaries to democracy. Start a worldwide movement ‘Democracy in China’. Ask them where is Panchen Lama? Ask what happened at the Tiananmen Square. Give a voice to the millions of Chinese whose forefathers perished in concentration camps with the stigma of the enemies of the state. There is no need to bay for human blood anymore. Corona is sufficient for that as of now. Luckily, China and America are busy in the cute war of firing salvos through filing law-suits. In the US, China-linked researchers are being picked up for interrogation.

The US is formulating Plan 18 to beat China over Covid-19. To gain numerical superiority, it should have been Plan 20. It involves a host of military and economic measures in alliance with China’s neighbors to tame the rampant bully. In and around the South China Sea, an embittered and aggrieved USA is encouraging Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and India to create a stranglehold against the mighty red bully by supplying these intimidated neighbors with most sophisticated weapons in its kitty. Also, about 120 countries at the WHO have demanded an impartial probe into the Corona issue in China. And how many allies China have? A few rogue states like North Korea and Pakistan. Doesn’t it speak volumes about their international standing?

Even India is in a position to fire innocuous salvos at China as it gets ready to head the WHO executive board for the next three years. Many countries are now vying for an observer status for Taiwan at the WHO meets. Ironically, those who have failed to manage the virus, and even the one that is possibly deliberately responsible for unleashing the pandemic, are the who’s who of the world health body, while a small island nation that has beaten the virus fair and square through expert management has to fight even to sit on the sidelines in the observer chair.   

We Indians have huge faith in God. Billions of rupees of holy money are lying unquestioned, untouched and untaxed in religious trusts and organizations. Why not ask God for help? He won’t mind blessing some liquidity to the cash-starved market.

Corona has shaken the social fabric in remote coastal hamlets. A fishing boat is heaving lugubriously near the coast. The fishermen are stranded as their fellow hamlet dwellers won’t allow them to return, lest they bring Corona along with the fish. Government has allowed strict local watch guards to take control of the affairs at the street and locality level. In the huge maze that India is, it’s unthinkable to manage the invisible enemy without their stern eye against any outsider in their locality.

In a hospital, a soldier has won a battle in an unfamiliar territory. He has beaten Corona. He is triumphant and rightly so. He is dancing to Bhangra tunes in the hospital corridor on getting discharged. A nurse in PPE also dances as the triumphant battle marshal to have won it for the soldier who turned civilian in the current war. The PPE is the august coat of armor in this war.

To give you a clue to how things have toppled down the slope. The world’s second largest cigarette maker, British American Tobacco claims to have made Covid-19 vaccine. Tobacco is the leading cause of lung cancer. Does it mean people need to be saved from Corona to die sometime from cancer? The only competition as of now is the race to develop the first vaccine against the virus to fetch gold out of the gloomy coal mine of Corona. This is the only competitive game going on at the moment.

Corona is really helping our security forces in managing the clamp down in Kashmir in the aftermaths of the state’s changed status. At least here, Corona seems in league with the state to help impose and further legitimize the curfew.

Media is now fed up with the cumbersome ‘always righteous’ kind of reporting that we saw for the last two three months. To be frank, media is best when there are real news and problems; but they carry over their momentum quite funnily even when there is hardly any real news and they create silly news with their ever-boiling reporting temperament.

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Pleasantly shaded and colorfully chaotic life lessons by a Child Monkey may pump some hope into the bleak portrayal of 2020 hijacked by the virus.

Well, some lives are led extraordinarily. This type of living stands out like when a frog somehow pops out of the well and croaks in chronic freedom and licentious liberation of spirit. The adventurous song of their living echoes for some time, encouraging others for the same.

Many farmers, peasant women, laborers, servicemen, male, female, young and old have completed their innings in the village. We have witnessed their life, living and death. Most of them, like yours truly, lived the same rutted way, facing the same problems, arriving at the same solutions, happy for the same things and sulking for the same. It seems like only ONE life going like a river.

From the river of sameness, of collective pains and same ecstasies, a little creature jumped out and rocked and rafted its life in its own freeways. It was no ordinary life. The reason I still recall it with perfect vividness and not the scores of farmers, who have perished during the interval, vouchsafes its outstanding substantiality in life and living. Even after two and half decades, I can see that adventurer perfectly clearly in my memory chambers. Whatever I recall and tell about the gallant has been witnessed firsthand by yours truly.

Well, he was a few months old monkey, a terribly funny, mischievous, ever-hopping little creature. At that time there was a little group of monkeys in the village. When the people found him spending time on his own, separate from the group, everybody assumed he was motherless. He may really have been a motherless monkey; otherwise, a living mother monkey won’t condemn him to this type of fate. She would have kept him stuck to her belly till the end of this world.

So this little funny faced flunkey started creating anecdotes that still chime in my brain. He was friendly and not scared of we humans. However, at the same time, he won’t surrender his freedom by hooking ownership to any particular Homo sapiens. He belonged to all and none at the same time.

There was a funnily shriveled, oldest of the old farmer named Kannhi in the village. He himself appeared like the grandest king of the simian world. Parallels were drawn and to fetch jocular fun from both ends—I mean, the old man and the little monkey—the little bundle of mischief was christened Kannhi. To give you a clue to little Kannnhi’s standard and style of living, the crudest of farmers discussed his chronicles in chaupals around hookah. He must have been terribly funny to raise the bar of peasantry humor because we farmers are ourselves nothing sort of exquisitely funny and rowdy apes.

When Kannhi felt like going for a pony ride, he would hitch an uninvited and unsolicited climb on any farmer’s shoulder. Initially, people got shocked as the miscreant suddenly was seen poking his little fingers in the ear-waxed head handles of the farmer. Then all accepted that this little errant kid has a right to come from around any corner and hold anyone’s ear by sitting on the shoulder.

In the evenings, he preferred to loiter around the main path leading to the pond. The farmers drove their buffalos to the pond for wallowing. The nuisant Kannhi knew there was hell lot of fun hidden in the mine of tomfoolery with cattle and buffalos. He would hide among the path-side bushes and suddenly come in front and jump onto the back of one of them. It would lead to a stampede as the panicked buffalos thought the God of death has arrived to drag them to hell for their sins of wallowing, drinking and defecating in the same water. I remember many such dusty stampede episodes.

One summer evening, as I was stoically sitting around the pond, waiting for my buffalo to be finally mindful of my miseries at the waiting game, Kannhi broke all tensions of life. A sturdy peasant woman was holding the rope of her Ox, as the diligent, hardworking cattle drank water, standing on the shore. Now, cows and her offspring simply detest water. They won’t be scared of even the hardest whiplash as they would panic about jumping into water and getting wet. Kannhi, fresh from a great swim and ride on the back of buffalos in the pond, had seen the little nick for another round of fun. The dripping fun-beast—he looked squeezed to invisibility with his fur all wet—walked along the shoreline. The sturdy peasant woman, who had the power to pinch down even her rowdy farmer and tweak his beard while sitting on his chest, got scared like a robust buffalo. Kannhi pulled at the rope. He looked a menacing molecule of daredevilry. She let go off her hold on the rope. Now the sturdy Ox had his life stuck in his nostrils. Kannhi wanted the hardworking beast to take a bath perhaps. Now bathing and Ox don’t match. They simply prefer a nice scrub on their coat by rough hands and still rougher metal scrubber. The ox went numb with fear. The jocular zealot was pulling the rope from the water. He seemed so damn determined to pull the ox into the water. The ox appeared to have surrendered to its fate like they do when taken to butcheries. Its eyes popping out, its muzzle flared up in fear and nostrils puffed out saliva-laden breath. Many a farmer had to run to save the poor ox’s life, as the culprit dived to safety and pop out its mocking face from among a group of buffalos deep in the waters.

One day, I was walking pensively dawn the path from the fields. I walked like a robo who is passive to the beautiful summer evening. You could expect Kannhi anywhere. He must have enjoyed a joyride on some farmer’s shoulder, so must have been returning to the primary scene of his fun, that is, village. I saw him a few paces ahead of me as it suddenly jumped from the branches of a tree. To go just like any other journeyman wasn’t in his metabolism. While we would walk simply lost in our little set of problems, he would squeeze the last drop of fun with his frail little fingers. The idiot terribly insulted me for my human commonness. Doing things as others do was the most difficult thing for him. My footsteps were mocked at. I saw him going somersaulting in front of me. A horribly ecstatic whirlpool of energy as the tiny creature whirled and hopped in an amazing series of somersaults. To be frank, I have never ever witnessed such gay abundance of free spirits in my life, never! So the funny ghost left me in peals of laughter almost doing the same on the dusty path.

By the village bus stand, there was a mossy water puddle by the road. There was a big crowd as I walked. I apprehended some mishap but then peals of laughter left me assured all was well. And fun and jestership had every right in the village as long as Kannhi was there. The scene opened as I reached. Kannhi was enjoying his life with master swimming backstrokes in the puddle. Its funny little face out of the water, the upturned funny little turtle, it expertly floated around and would have ashamed many a fish and swimming champions. People whistled and clapped. Those were the days when there was no mobile phone with people; otherwise, Kannhi would have become an internet sensation with his funny antiques.

Like the black bugbears of rascality and tomfoolery, crude farmers take liberty to urinate with as much freedom as a bear does in a forest. The peasant woman however face disadvantage in this regard. During those times, older peasant woman wore long and heavy cotton kirtles, the tedious great-skirts having many folds. In full measurements it weighed up to 5 Kg. What a feat to carry it. It but also served as the mobile toilet box. Like a peasant woman had the advantage of suddenly sitting down on her haunches right in the middle of the sandy path on the pretext of picking something or fixing her leather footwear and pee. The wet earth will give a clue to what had happened in reality. One such old peasant woman got down to sit and go for multitasking, as she fixed her papoosh and attended the nature’s call. Kannhi but couldn’t beat the temptation of taking shelter under the tent like sprawl of the huge long-skirt. The peasant woman was lucky not to have died of shock. Kannhi too got equally scared as he ran away from the scene of crime.

There are numerous other episodes when he would sit on the charpoy and rummage through the sparse silver hair of some retired farmer, pretending to pick lice and even tweak his ears. People even tried to make him learn to smoke hookah. They held him by throat and tried to put the pipe into his mouth. But he had no taste for such vices and he sniffed and even bit a few hands so that they mended their ways in this regard.

As the village women made chapattis on their open hearths, he would go and sit with so much of obedience and innocence that it could even bring moisture in their eyes. He would melt their hearts with his suffering silent expression. He went there for a piece of chapatti but would come back licking his whiskers after drinking pure buffalo milk.

These are just a few of the funny anecdotes that I remember from my personal experience. If a research is done in the village, many more people will have still funnier episodes to share.

Well, in a span of just four or five months, he lived life so enthusiastically to create so many outstanding anecdotes that their echo reverberates even after two and half decades. Meanwhile hundreds of farmers have lived and died in the same manner.

The village wasn’t lucky to have this angel of fun for too long. One day, the news of his death spread. Street dogs killed him. Perhaps they felt left out and jealous because Kannhi was drawing all attention. But I am sure, even before death the fun-loving rascal must have done something horribly funny to rouse canine fury and say a funny faced bye to this innings. He lived and died for fun and frolics. God knows, what hilarity he must be committing now in some corner of the cosmos!        

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Corona continues to rule from its elusive dimensions. Pumped by its spirit of limitless adventure, it appears to be taking pot-shots from a mysterious, elusive dimension. Work from home and stay in instructions have turned all computer technologies into a kind of social software. All we receive is the bulk shipments of our collective miseries getting off-loaded at our ports under the diktats of the little master Corona. Corporate virtues, political designs, economic patterns and personal charts and courses all lie misshapen under the luminous halo of the new sovereign who has affected a coup. Circumventing the perils of competition, all I can do is to read out a chapter from a farmer’s old, dog-eared book of spirituality.

In the rudimentary science of a peasant, matter is that energy which has slowed down from its free path of liberated flow to coagulate into a visible lump. It’s sort of speed-bump on the energy highway. Or it’s that energy which has slowed down to be visible in comparison to the fleeting invisible torrents that beat our senses. The super-paths of energy need these speed-breakers to define the path. Without this Maya, it would be pure nothingness. A void! By its very existence, matter appears like a sort of burden on the free-float of dimensionless energy. I take matter as the shadow of energy, a kind of resting stage for it. It’s a very trivial, limited dimensional stage of the dimensionless potential.

The unconsciously existing lumps of energy, the so called lifeless and tremendously slow to change matter, such as stones lie like dormant spring seeds of energy, taking years and years to transform into other forms of matter. The consciously existing lumps of energy, the so called living beings like plants and animals, are little flexible, open and closed in their own ways, reservoirs like a pool in the stream of energy. Here energy slows down at a more dynamic level. It’s a kind of transitory stage between a stone and pure, free, unbound energy. This dynamism to retain the matter, the living body, is fuelled by an inherent consciousness. Now, from stone consciousness to the living body consciousness, there is an upgrade in the dimension and level of consciousness. Doesn’t it mean that at the still upper level of energy forms, or transitory levels of material existence about which we aren’t aware normally with our limited sense perception, the quotient of consciousness will be still higher? It will become pure energy and pure consciousness at the highest level. Well, I have calculated as per my farmer’s logic.

In living beings, consciousness manifests through thoughts, feelings and emotions. These are mere properties of consciousness. How will the sunlight know of its own existence? Well, it manifests through warmth. Possibly, thoughts, feelings and emotions are the effects of consciousness. Or the ways and means of the attribute-less energy to halt, pause and feel its own warmth for some time.

What about unconsciously surviving living bodies, for example, someone in a coma? Probably consciousness stops seeing through mind, but it exists nonetheless. The ego-construct of mind stops operating, but deep down consciousness thrives in cells because if it’s driven out even from there, the body will take the shape of an unconscious matter, leaving it to decay as per the natural laws. So is coma something like Samadhi? Strictly no!

I would compare, again using the logic of my farming ancestors, coma and Samadhi with two fruits lying on the ground. One is unripe and raw and is thrown onto the ground by a storm. The other is the ripe fruit simply dropping down of its own on the soft grassy land with a musical plop. Both exist on the same plane. In the former there is trauma, a pain, a cutting short, a sorry tale. In the latter, there is the divine spontaneity of completion, harmony and grace.

In pure evolutionary terms, the path charted out for human beings is: How much of consciousness we can salvage from the matter at our disposal. The ladder, of course, goes from rudimentary consciousness born of our senses to super-consciousness to pure energy, with many other forms of material bodies attached to the heightened consciousness between our human level and material nothingness or pure energy form or super-consciousness. 

For human beings, the path of evolution goes not through the negation of our thoughts, feelings and awareness, but accepting them. A denied thought, emotion or feeling turns a ghost to torment virtually. Thoughts, emotions and feelings are the carriers of our consciousness. Problem lies if we allow them to scatter in all directions to go from nowhere to nowhere, to be caught in the same material pool, in a sort of meaningless eddies. Mother Nature has given us the skill and awareness to manage our thoughts, emotions and feelings. By practiced awareness of our thoughts, emotions and feelings, we learn how to put them on the path leading to a specific destination. We ought to read our own thoughts, feelings and emotions as much as we focus on the external things. Under the stern look of the warden, that is, the real self, they learn how to behave well. They pass out as aware citizens. Keep journeying. Keep raising the bar of your consciousness! 

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With a pantomimic expression, I take a longish look at the stamp of a tiny lesson on my love handle on my tummy. Even the tiniest imprints on so delicate parts tell bigger tales that even a fat book won’t be able to contain.

The lockdown has spared a lot of energies with us. We are just looking out for the ways and means to unleash the reserves. My brother decides to use his extra stock on an abandoned, old and archaic water cooler lying in the barn. He is eager to set it into motion again. He finds it the real creative thing after the boring spell of work-from-home software engineering endeavor to get us more and more lost in the dehumanized world of software applications. So last night he raised a plume of dust, almost a mini desert storm, sneezed and laughed triumphantly as the rickety thing was dragged out of its grave.

Like any storm, the dust-storm left a casualty also. A stinging yellow hornet nest was dislodged. These days they survive on our garbage and left-outs. Whatever is of no use to us, turns of full use to them. But then we consumerists try to salvage the last utility even from our own dumps. Since it was night, the odds were against them. They droned angrily for a few moments. One of them even took revenge. It bit him on his finger. The salvo left him with a painful wince. He rubbed his finger and then all gets back to normal. The insulted insects took to hide and somehow see through the night.

In the morning, they are seen droning around angrily. They are aggressive and come very near the target, our foolish faces. ‘Don’t just take a swipe, even if it perches on your nose! It won’t have a reason to bite!’ I set out the instruction, having enjoyed the benefits of this approach many times in life. The principle struck very fruitfully even to ward off the angry hoard of the deadliest bumble bees, the big rascals of the stinging wasp family. Their group strikes kill humans even till date. And who can vouchsafe their deadliness more than my own family, having suffered directly. My great-grandfather, a tirelessly hardworking huge farmer, was returning in the evening after a day of ploughing the fields. The pair of bullocks had spring in their step as they mildly galloped back home for fodder and rest. The bells tied around their necks chimed the verve and happiness to reach their barn as early as possible. The sturdy great-grandpa had his plough on his work-beaten shoulder. An angry nest of bumblebees attacked them with full fury. The sturdy young farmer was bitten viciously. Well, that was almost hundred years back, my grandfather being just a child when he lost his young father. His terribly swollen body had hardly any chance of survival during those days when people hadn’t seen hospitals and doctors in their entire lives.

My ancestor’s soul must have nailed it in my little brain, I mean the instructions that I mentioned above. I was once cycling in my childhood and an angry scout party of bumblebees chased me down. They probably wanted to repeat the family history. But times had changed and even farmers had started to have some common sense. I had little common sense not to take a swipe or shake my head in any way. I just kept on cycling like before. They tried their level best to find any chink in my armor, and hence earn a right to attack. They devilishly teased the hell out of me. I could feel a few sitting on my hair. My face could feel the angry whispers of their drones. I but kept stuck to my credo. Thank you great-grandpa! You must have driven this little sense in my tiny farmers’ stock brain after having learnt the lesson in a tragic way yourself. So guys non-reaction saves lives. After a kilometer or so of them seeking a reason to strike, they were disappointed and left me on my fun ride.

This morning over tea, the topic turned to hornet bites. ‘These days bees and hornets have hardly any bite in their stings,’ my brother said while looking at his finger which looked almost normal. Both of us had our own share of horrible bites of master stingers in our childhood, when a bite would bloat the face and eyes for days. ‘Poor insects, they seem to have lost the battle! Harmless hornets and biteless bees!’ I had my Buddhist consolation and musing.

The talk then turned to our mother. A very strong peasant woman, who could walk 4 Km with 50 Kg fodder load of twelve feet long stalks of Jowar on her head, she had the softest, divine feminine heart of golden lotus and strong hands that could tame a male buffalo by holding its neck cord. But Mother had a weakness against stinging insects. We saw her crying after getting bitten by a hornet leaving me wondering, ‘How can Ma cry over a bite while she has the power to lift so much of load and tame buffaloes!?’ Lost in the fond memories of our Mom, I pointed out this fact about Mother in a little jest. She is part of everything now. I know she feels our pain over losing her. The moisture of love and gratitude in our eyes for her must also be reaching her. In her lifetime on earth, she was too soft to teach even the littlest lesson to her children even at the grossest provocation! Well, now she must be looking at us in totality, and as a Mother must be feeling like mildly tweaking our ears for all our funny flaws. So she must have decided to teach me a little lesson about hornet bites after getting irritated over my remark. I would come to know about it an hour later.

I am doing kapalbhati pranayam in an effort to channelize my physicality to get it in sync with my spirit to raise my mundane awareness, my funny baby bump in the belly undulating with efforts to manage my prana. I have eyes closed and in fine rhythm. The smile is ravaged suddenly. I wince with terrible pain. My hand instinctively takes a swipe at the still funnier love handle by the side of my belly. I have been taught a lesson in a painful way. Hornets are painful man and no surprise Ma had tears of pain after getting bitten. The rascal offending yellow stinging hornet has literally struck with full force. It seems to have fallen in Dracula type craziness after tasting my blood. I have to tear it away. Either it’s a love bite on the funny love handle or a kiss of revenge. Both mean the same if it’s a stinging yellow hornet. I am rolling in pain on the yoga mat, writing in funniest of body contortions, rubbing the raped love handle, doing God knows what type of asnas in pain. I would call it ‘Hornet-sting-asna’. The side of my belly gets a bump, as if in some asymmetrical pregnancy brutally sired by the rapist evil hornet.

Lesson has been learnt Ma! They are indeed painful and give tears after getting struck. Love you, and thanks for gently holding me by ears and still being there to keep guiding me in the lessons of life and living.   

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It was on a hot afternoon of May 25 in 2001 when my grandfather got out in nervous nineties at 2:25 PM, just four short of  hitting a ton that was driving him with a young man’s spirit though his nineties. 

I the country bumpkin, the ugly duckling, raise a salute to his carefully modulated march in his nineties and let out a philosophical fart, leaving my senses flying tart.

It’s better to have a cold war than a fully fledged hot war scattering trees, bones and earth by the raucous blizzards of bombardment. So China and America are full time busy in the cantankerous but innocuous cockfight. America is probing many a Chinese company to delist them from its stock markets. China’s foreign ministry releases aggressive statements on a daily basis in return. It releases the pent up, extra energies and assuages the ego a bit because each side can salvage brawny verbal points. Mind can invent as many victory points as possible. So what is the harm in formulating more and more.

As both the US and the Chinese try their level best to forge their truths, as all of us do, the fate of international geo-strategy hangs suspended pretty weirdly. At the grossest level of existence, 'Truth' is a little candy held tightly in the fist of the hand that is 'Powerful'! Let’s see who turns out to be more powerful to get the copyright over truth.

To keep India busy in the sweet sour cute cold war, China has been throwing chili now and then in the boiling pan of Sino-India relations by patrolling more aggressively along the rugged LAC in the Himalayas. Stones are thrown, abuses hurled in strange languages, and pushing and jostling takes place in Ladhak. Nepal and Pakistan are ever so happy to appease the Red Master. China proclaims Mt. Everest as its own. The democratically elected communist coalition—hatched by the holy land of communism itself—of Nepal doesn’t mind this diplomatic misdemeanor; rather they take it as an appeasing rap on the knuckles by the supreme aka. In a lopsided relationship, with one side almost a cringing servant and the other a bully master owner, a mild strike on the bum by the latter appears like an encouraging pat, like egging the ox to pull the cart harder. Nepal knows that China is a very hard taskmaster. So they pull the cart still harder and raise objection against the Indian road to Lipulekh pass. It’s our territory they say. To further rub salts on Indian wounds, the cringing communist head of Nepal claims that the Corona mutant from the Indian territory is more lethal and it has created immense damages in their territory. I hope he won’t demand war damages from us. The Red Master must be very much happy and would throw more Yuans in their famished pockets. A prominent Bollywood heroine of Nepalese origin gets carried by the patriotic fervor—a nice opportunity to sow the seeds of political career anywhere in the world—and supports her motherland. Many an Indian baulk with irritation, accusing her to insult the land that has given her name, fame and life’s fun game. 

Taiwan’s nationalist leader Tsai takes oath for the second term as the island nation’s President. The Red Bull is chagrined beyond limits across the 200 Km strait on the continental mainland. More Chinese aircrafts are loitering like rampaging locusts, ready to chuck out the ripe harvest, Taiwan being such a beautifully managed developed nation. She but is a gutsy lady. It’s very scary to even think about the little island’s precarious position as the mighty mainland nation acts like a land mafia, always eying the territories of its neighbors. They are even itching with communist chili to grab Hong Kong well before 2047 as per their agreement with the Britishers.

Long before the cobra raised its hood, Dostoevsky had predicted well about the great eyewash that would set the stage for the grossest misuse of power in an institutionalized manner. Looking at the seeds of communism, one of his characters in the book Devils forecasts:

‘...a final solution of the question of the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One tenth enjoys absolute liberty and unbounded power over the other nine-tenths. The others have to give up all individuality and become, so to speak, a herd, and, through boundless submission, will by a series of regenerations attain Primeval Innocence, something like the Garden of Eden. They will have to work, however. The measures proposed for depriving nine-tenths of mankind of their freedom and transforming them into a herd through the education of whole generations are very remarkable, founded on the facts of nature and highly logical.’

Well, flawless forecast by the maestro! The experiment has been hatched in China exactly like he predicted 150 years ago. The one-tenth communist cadre and their cronies push the docile and disempowered nine-tenths like a herd of sheep. Nine-tenths of Chinese are the gentlest and most docile citizens of mother earth. One-tenth are literally devil incarnation. God save us. And God save my Chinese brethren. There the best and the worst are living side by side.

O Almighty, let there be subtle strains of democratic vaccine against a diseased ideology! Cure is on the way! Hong Kong erupts again after the Corona-enforced curfew. I see a happy, healthy and restful China sometimes in future. My Guru Dalai Lama may bless His birthplace once again with a visit, and I may get blessed by bathing in Lake Mansarovar. Well, both postponed till democracy cures the dragon.

We have our very own nursery of communism right there in the heart of Delhi. JNU-type intentional untidiness—which they foolishly take as a mark of intellect and wit—gives, at the most, bespectacled morose look, guttery stench in armpits, rotten swab of wool in the navel (and somewhere unmentionable also), lice in hazardous hair and the communist bug in the soul. All that is required is disinfectant jet sprays for the body and Ramayana, Mahabharata and Gita lessons for the soul. The pro-Hindutva Vice Chancellor appears to lie in wait for the same like a leery, happy fox. 

The US, nursing its wounds and looking for ways and means to maintain its superpower status that has been shaken a bit by idiotic Corona, is pumping up zeal into its lethal most aircrafts and humongous gladiatorial aircraft carriers in South China Sea. Back home, the land of supreme individual freedom, is helping people to step out and breathe easily in free air. Any kind of restrictions on its citizens appears so unlike America. Americans love their individual freedom. Even their government can’t keep them tamed for too long. There is a drive-in theatre in a US stadium. The giant screen plays a movie. People drive onto the sports turf in their cars and watch the movie from their cars, face masks and all, and nobody allowed to step onto the turf. It appears a new game. This life itself is an ever-unfolding game. So always be prepared for new twists and take it as a game only.

A typhoon in the Bay of Bengal seeks attention by its furious winds and storms. It ravages West Bengal and Orissa to push Corona from people’s psyche in that region. The honorable PM comes out to take an aerial survey of the devastation in the east. He has stepped out of Delhi after 87 days. He looks eager, enthusiastic but drained out after almost sleepless fight against the deadly virus.

An air crash in Pakistan, killing more than 100 people, even breaks the ice between India and Pakistan and the Indian PM offers his condolences over the Paki loss. PM Modi has broken the ice. You can very well imagine the level of frigidity in the relationship between the quarrelling boys of South Asia by the fact that even a condolence message counts as breaking the ice.

Till there is a branded separate cure for Corona, the medical fraternity is juggling with alternatives. Some take Remdesivir as the wonder drug, others shout for HCQ, including President Trump who takes the latter to keep his armor braced for the Corona salvo that might be fired at him.

Afghanistan appears to shake off the dust of hardcore, unrelenting religious zealotry as it acts with common sense and turns practical to save life by cancelling state celebrations on the occasion of Eid. In any case, the holy message of Eid be better carried out in practice and celebrated in heart than in fulfilling mere rituals while carrying hate and malice in mind. Pakistan, as can be expected from the champion land of Islam, allows mass gatherings for namaaz to appease military and mullahs. Eid Mubarak to all Indians! I hope I am not breaking some patriotic vow in greeting.            

People and governments seem to have come to terms with the Corona reality. The rising statistics hardly create scary ripples down the spine. Even misery has a saturation point. Too much of it stops giving pain and suffering as its sharp fangs lose their pinch. Even misery should know the rule of moderation; otherwise it melts in the ubiquitous sands of the rutted path.

People have surged out like a dam bursts suddenly. The cases in India are rising at the rate of nearly 7000 every day. It would have given heart attacks to government, administrators and people two months ago even to think of such a figure in a day. So even though India stands as the 11^th worst affected country in the world, people and government don’t find it too scary. Most importantly, business, life, office, desires, needs and cravings are more forceful than the fear of Corona. So people, having drilled their minds about basic precautions, are jumping over the fence during this transformative stage of Lockdown 4.0, before fully melting into the freedom of normal time again. Good thing is that the recovery rate is going up in India at around 40%, with people sneezing, getting feverish, breathing with difficulty and coming out healthy again. Strange are the ways of human anatomy, a thing that is fatal to someone causes just mild dis-ease in the other.

One more thing, the cases are hugely underreported in India and so must be the number of deaths, given the shape and size of our demography and the puzzling socio-economic and cultural knots in between. It’s not possible to exactly document the Corona ravages across the teeming millions in the cauldron of poverty. Poorest migrant workers have scattered across the country, leaving hardly any trace of their pain, losses and miseries. Who will trace their footsteps to exactly chronicle the losses they have suffered, ranging from the loss of livelihood, hunger, and fatigue to death? So this portion of Corona damages stays outside the pale of Corona management.

The issue of migrant workers’ miseries has finally roused the dormant political turtles, who were sulking for the last two months, their neck withdrawn into the hard shell and the morose face lost under the cover. So the political opposition has finally something to croak about and the very same ear-busting debates have started on the news channels. Little does anyone realize that there are scores of poorest migrant workers—who waged the most lethal battle of their lives in reaching their home states, jumping over the lockdown fences, falling, getting wounded, walking hungry, sick and ill, injured and many perishing on the way—quarantined in tarpaulin sheet tents without any basic facilities and left to fend off both Corona and hunger on their own. The fire is too far from the political citadel. It doesn’t burn the august occupants of the castle. It warms their spirit and lights their stage to go into politicking again to create fabulous careers out of the rutting miseries on the ground.

Here is a gleaming golden fact out of the mangled remains of the global economy. It should also be taken into the parameters of economizing, profit and loss theories. There has been the biggest fall in the levels. Give some credit to Corona man! There are bitter lessons it has taught us. The plot is written in poignant phrases. A father is carrying his children in baskets tied to a pole carried over his shoulder. He has miles to cover in the sweltering heat. A tribal couple, bored with lockdown, decides to dig a well. The well is 15 feet deep and 5 feet across. Like a cute pair of sand beetle they wheedle out earth for ten days to reach waters for their tiny kitchen garden, their goats and a few swigs for other people in the dry land around them. 

All of us have to fight for our own stories and be our best version. This little girl takes firm steps, pedaling her way to stamp her signature on the fleeting currents of existence. The 15-year-old Jyoti Kumari etched her new identity on the slate of miseries. Lockdown saw her stuck up in Gurugram with her injured father. Their home is 1200 Km away. She pedals to glory in 7 days, carrying her sick father on the carrier behind. The Cycling Federation of India Chairman has said that if the gutsy girl, an eighth standard student, passes the trial, she would be taken as a trainee at the state-of-the-art National Cycling Academy. Adversities flow between the banks of opportunities. We just have to force our way to the bank or perish downstream like a dead tree bough. 

And what do I do as a common Indian while all this is happening? I smile and take lessons from a beautifully blossomed red hibiscus smiling with little red bulbs of life against the background of cracks in the wall. Although there are cracks in life, she but smiles softly and whispers an assurance: ‘Don't worry, all is well!’

The tiny rose bud would have surely perished, if not for our tiny moisture of love that saw it being placed in the shade of a tree. The sun is firing on all cylinders at last to take the belated summer to its peak. The temperatures are over 40 degree Celsius. The bud blossoms to be a beautiful rosy lass and sprinkles her smile in the hot eddies of the pining sandy swirls. A smile is just one breath away, provided we give it a chance. Even in the fiery pits of burning summer, a blossom awaits our cool, caring shade to smile for life and living. I enjoy the smile of the sun-shaded rose. And when the afternoon sunrays come to kiss the shy, shaded beauty for a brief flirtatious moment, she opens her heart and gives a full smile. Guys don't miss to smile even at those who mean to rob you of your smile. Our own frown eats our smile, not other's intentions. After some time, the youthful full blossomed rose starts graying and a little bud opens just under it, shaded still further by the mother rose under the shade of a tree. Proud, protective Mama and her smiling angelica! Kindness leaves a sweet trail. Invest a few emotions of kindness and wait for the results.

Let China and America continue in their fight to save humanity from their own perspectives, I do my common man’s duty to sweeten my immediate mundane surroundings. A bucket of water lies under the tree shade. Hundreds of honeybees throng with a buzz to suck water and regurgitate it in their hive to save their larvae from a painful boiling death in this heat. To undo bitterness, we don't have to turn bitter and fight it. All it needs is to give sweetness more chances. Each and every honeybee saved means a sweeter world.

Dostoevsky states in Devils: ‘Forgive me for sins voluntary and involuntary. By sinning, every man has sinned against all other men, and everyone is at least in part to blame for the sin of others. There is no such thing as an individual sin. However, I am a great sinner, and my sins may exceed your own!’ I take the onus for my individual sins as the contributors to others’ sins and do penance by looking at the selfless service of these little insects. Many of them perish to keep the hive buzzing. As parents, humans also do the same by the way. Let’s hope, we enlarge this family feeling to include more humans outside our families and then all of nature around.

A buffalo brays loudly. It must be thirsty. We farmers are very much obliged to them. They have been our lifeline. Moreover, a buffalo can take one to heaven also. Yamraj, the God of death, roams on a buffalo, and so does an enlightened sage like Paramguru Lao Tzu. Both take us to heaven in different ways. Yamraj does the deed like a tough peasant, Paramguru accomplishes the deed like a caring mother. I recall countless buffalo rides in childhood. Some were Mom type sympathetic and carried with affection and care. Some were nuisant and jumped, hopped and scattered their behind like the evil belle dancer to topple the rider like a coconut falls from the tree. Well, with buffalo being almost a living Goddess to my people, you can very well imagine our culture. Our culture is agriculture basically. And we have such pointed rough edges to our persona that nature appears to keep us to puncture bloated egos with our farming fangs.

Aha the image of Paramguru Lao Tzu on His buffalo! It makes him a father figure to me, not simply by his philosophy that I admire so much, but by his buffalo-riding look that instantly creates a niche in my heart. In case of we farmers, a buffalo has defined our lives the way gold has defined the lives of the trading community. A buffalo is almost a family member to unleash brotherly affection when in good mood and lynch with a switch when in bad temper. Well, but it is never one way show. Buffaloes too have had their mood swings and the resultant bruised bums, broken bones and toppled carts. Hail buffalo for He carries my Guru!

As we are busy in the little kindergarten of life, a team of scientists has observed that ‘a fountain of high-energy particles erupting from the ice’ in the biting cold of Antarctica may in fact be a solid evidence of a 'parallel universe'. The standard model of physics might be swashed away. It resembles to a unique phenomenon known as ‘upside-down cosmic-ray shower’. On the surface, it looked just a cosmic ray, like one sees in a reflection off the ice sheet. However, it wasn't reflected. Keep your hold on your logic; it seemed as if the cosmic ray was coming out of the ice sheet itself. Another Googlie from Mother Nature!

Dear physicists, stretch your imagination as much as possible. It's a never ending spool of energy. It won't finish. You will always have the cord in hand and still more to come. Keep pulling for fabricating more convenience of life that you proudly name as ‘science’. Beyond that, be advised to kindly abandon the illusion of hitting the last mystery. Keep pulling, forever.

As all of us set out again to claim our portion of freedom after the Corona hiatus, a philosophical fart tarts my senses. Long before we release our kite to fly for freedom, we tie it with the bondage of string. Before we set out to liberate ourselves, we enslave ourselves to dogmas, faith and beliefs. Is there any difference between what we take to be freedom from what we know as bondage? Don't worry guys; I have mild symptoms of Dostoevskian mental diarrhea. Relax! Don't catch it yourself. Haaa haaa!

You can very well estimate my situation by reading the following excerpt in Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky: ‘Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?’ Hope you got the clue for my mental diarrhea.

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The vendor’s auto laden with fruits and vegetables is chugging with a shaky drooling sound at the tiny village square. A monkey chides and grimaces at the cornered Homo sapiens and escapes with two bananas. But he doesn’t eat them with the typical hurry and greed of a thief on the run. He claims a well-calibered ownership of the provisions in his hand. The pink-bummed ruffian carefully sniffs at the stolen fruits as if doing a thorough chemical analysis. The expert lab in his brain gives a clear signal and he peels them and eats with relish. Emboldened with the fruit giving him instant energy, he stalks a woman who has her purchase in a polythene bag. The broad daylight robbery is avoided as a man runs to help her.

Question arises why did he go for the sniffling analysis of the plundered property. Surely the message has been circulated quite well among the simian population of the village. A couple of days ago, two broad-backed, thick-bummed, pink-balled rascals paid the price for not doing a thorough sniffing analysis. They had enlarged their domain of chronic mischief to include even tasting the skin on human calf muscles. These two stood out as the main plot-hatchers who probably thought they can do a coup and scare the humans away to have the entire village to themselves. Nothing wrong with the intentions by the way. They have a right to do whatever we humans do. But we are smarter than them. The drugged bananas found them out of senses sloths on a porch. They were nicely packed in a gunny sack and disposed off to a far off place.

The rest of the simian populace seems to have learnt a lesson and they have agreed to go for a chemical analysis of whatever we bigger monkeys offer them.

In a nearby town, my friend has a sorry tale of simian wrongdoing. Tortured by their ever-breeding ways of both progenies and mischief, the locals gave a contract to a professional monkey catcher. He but turned out to be too smart for both the monkeys and the humans. He would drug them with fruits, gather them in sacks and dispose them in the dark of night at a nearby town. Now, the townspeople there also had given him contract for the same. Here also he did the same and offloaded the fainted offenders at the former town. The business went smooth. But this continuous drugging left the simians very irritated and aggressive. During the lockdown, these aggressive and drugged monkeys literally ruled the streets.

That friend of mine was brushing his teeth bent over the sink. An irritated rascal, in lugubrious high spirits, jumped from a height of one story and landed straight on his head. Poor fellow fell headlong. The offender ran away screeching with glory. ‘A monkey has a lot of weight man!’ is all that poor fellow can muster up with his jolted senses. On another occasion, his mother paid a big price for breaking the lockdown curfew. Poor auntie walked with apprehension as she crossed the deserted street now ruled by the monkeys. Can you believe it? Look at their guts. They pinched her down and sat on her. She was just an ounce short of having a heart attack. People ran to save her and salvage Homo sapiens’ pride. Luckily she wasn’t bitten.

In the same vein, let me tell you something about a buffalo high on cannabis leaves.

There were lots of rains during the last winter, taking the short-lived, effervescent Indian spring well into April. So much so that temperatures have been lenient, pushing the real north Indian summer into the latter half of May. This and the fact that lockdown saw very few people scampering around gave the cannabis plants full freedom to encroach every nook corner in the village. Suitable temperatures, sufficient rainfall and less human footfall, that's what the plant of artificial pleasure needs to mushroom around.

Wine outlets were closed for almost two months due to the lockdown, so many a people took recourse to chewing cannabis leaves as an alternative to beat their boredom with life. They chewed like goats absorbed in the greenest pastures. Mother Nature is always kind; even if she has to punish us mildly, she keeps lollypops also to bring a smile to the crying errant kid whose ears she has just twisted. So she gives cannabis growth at every nook corner in this phase of pains and miseries.   

In our extended family, auntie has a well fed, pampered and docile buffalo. The bulky creature is gentle and well behaved. No wonder, auntie treats it like her daughter. But then these are testing times for all of us. New problems surface with effortless ease presently. The docile daughter too takes an off from her well-groomed domestication etiquettes. She feasts on wild cannabis plants for a change of taste and gets a high. The affable, gentle daughter gets drugged and misbehavior unspools. The black beauty gets naughty and plays truant. Poor auntie was pinned in a corner, not exactly with the intention of hurting her critically.

Even a buffalo has her version of playing mischief after getting high on substance. Auntie was holding the horns and the buffalo pushed and prodded with enough force to scare her out of her wits. However, the mischief was surely purposely short of really harmful force to avoid breaking bones.

Auntie's other pet, Labrador Tuffy, thought the buffalo is going to kill his godmother. He pounced in defense and pinned his teeth onto the offender's hind leg. The buffalo felt insulted. Her drugged light bantering spirits withdrew to allow raw anger to surface. She must have felt terribly insulted on being treated like a substance addict by the canine moralist. The aggrieved buffalo chased the dog around the compound with the intention of killing it. The poor chap panicked and got onto the fence and jumped. It is seen limping now. The buffalo too carries her battle scar on her hind leg. Thank God, animals forget and forgive! Had they possessed memory like we humans, it would have turned into a long standing bloody feud.

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Is it a fire-spitting dragon or just a fat, flabby and jolly Bania?

In pre-independence India, the people of trading class, Banias, were the stock markets, banks, treasurer, economists and much more, all rolled into one. Just a few households in every countryside settlement, they were the crown of the economy sitting affably on the head while farmers and laborers sweated out like ant swarms.

Caste and communities were not straightaway imposed on people randomly. These got ingrained with different attitudes and personal traits over generations. A farmer took pride in being called rough and rowdy that pacified his ego and he defined life in terms of keeping his temper and straightforwardness at the tip of his nose perched over moustache brimming with attitude, even if it meant surviving like a beast in the rough and gruff of a hard peasant life.

Some took pride in fighting and made it the illustrious element of life that validities one’s existence. They turned out to be Rajputs, the warrior clan. Others took menial jobs, probably finding these to be easier and less hassled, and came to be dumped at the bottom of caste hierarchy. Another matter that over a period of time these came to be cemented identities decided by birth and the social system fixed them as mighty disadvantages since birth. So the base sunk deeper and deeper into the pits of deprivation and miseries. Here we are concerned only with the way it started, not about the pains that ail the present time disadvantaged castes.

So casteism evolved as a sort of social Darwinism at play. In the same vein, Banias defined life in terms of gold and silver coins in their coffers. Their sense of worth, dignity, respect and over all identity came to be centered around money and the ways and means to pile more of it in their heavy metal chests set in lime and mortar fort-like lakhori brick walls. A Bania won’t mind ill manners, abuses and disrespect by a rowdy outlaw type farmer as long as the latter was indebted to him in his red-cloth bound account book that had the chronicle of many generations of indebtedness jotted down by his pen. From that standard, the farmer was simply a poor devil hopelessly indebted to the money lender. As long as the farmer kept pawning away his buffalo, grains or anything worth the appreciating eye of the moneylender to meet his emergency needs, his bad behavior hardly counted in the monetized version, since it didn’t carry any price to the Bania. A farmer would keep grumbling obscenities under his breath, the Bania but would keep smiling and speak with sugar-coated words, all the while fully having a feeling of the foul words. To a well-meant spider the bickering of trapped flies hardly matters for anything.

The Banias kept lathaits, the muscled criminal type stick-wielding guards, their sticks well oiled and muscles twitching with wrestling pit acrobatics and push-ups. In between, the fat, flabby Bania chuckled good naturedly. He never intended to use the power for the sight of blood and broken bones. Never means never! Fighting wasn’t his domain. Trading and making money requires peace, gentle words and an ever-smiling countenance. A farmer would be the first to lose temper and a Bania would be the last. Well, that set up their antipodal positions on the economic ladder. The farmer used brawn and toiled all through life, thinking his rugged misdemeanor and arrogant attitude was all that mattered to define a human life. The Bania used brain and minted gold from the mine of peasantry’s drudgery. Nothing wrong at any end; just the difference between hard work and smart work.

Looking at the almost unused resource—rarely used and thus almost redundant—the stick-wielding group of outlaws, it appeared nearly unnecessary expenditure because trading was the theme not intimidation. It was primarily a symbolic force more for self defense because if you go belligerent you will kill the hens that lay eggs for you. To a Bania it only meant that the rowdy farmer would keep his anger to the limits of cursing and foul words, sometimes even to the extent of these reaching his bodyguards’ ears. They won’t pounce till the farmer actually attacked the Bania. This possibility was rare because a symbolic force can at least stop the attacker. And if the situation developed to take the unlikely scene of a real physical fight, the Bania would in fact continue laughing in a jolly manner and ask his men not to attack and allow them to use force within the limits of repulsing the attacker only. The Banias indeed have had legendary patience. No wonder, Goddess Lakshmi, loves their peaceful households. The farmers have legendary uncouthness and the Goddess avoids their humble abodes.

The real threats to the Banias from the gangs of robbers—although always present theoretically yet farthest in practice—was more of an exception, since it happened just one or two times in the entire lifetime. For the rest of the time, the Bania was happy to be circled by his restful symbolic force and treated the peasantry like petty truants whose tantrums had to be tolerated to keep them there in the system of economy to continue raising their multi-generational debts. A Bania ate his bread out of his patience and smart work. A farmer did his on the basis of his hard work only.

China is that typical Bania. It has to earn profits and do business at any cost. It has a well-oiled army just like the Bania had his gang of muscle-men, who lazed under the sun most of the time. It cannot afford to kill its trading prospects by getting belligerent in the real sense in the form of a bloody battle. I mean they may bellicose and create rhetoric like hell but they will surely fall short of an actual war; simply because they cannot think of losing their trade. With your priority to trade and make profits at any cost, you can’t be a belligerent hardcore soldier, however hard you may try. Money has its tremendous soothing effect on one’s senses.

The Chinese are the smartest Banias on earth and smart Banias never fight in the real sense. They just put up a mock show of aggression to keep trading. Even while investing the biggest sums of money in their military, the Chinese government basically thinks in economic terms. The economic and trading implications of maintaining a huge army, that’s the credo. A keen sense of trading automatically smoothens out lot many pinching edges from one’s persona. One’s craving for profiteering allays the beast aside and puts precaution on the front. To be a really bloody fighting soldier one has to first be a non-trader, a loser in economic terms. The Chinese Red Army is the former and genocidal suicidal factions fighting in the Middle East are the latter. You can calculate their economic worth. The Chinese calculate their defense expenditure as one of the overheads in the scheme of economy, where the armed strength and its symbolic visibility on the surface are more in symbol than in substance.

The current flare-up with India across the Himalayan borders is a bit more than trading this time. Cornered by allegations over Corona, China is now engaged in these skirmishes to create dustier scenario of a war time situation so that Corona issue gets diverted a bit. Well, armies these days play more of symbolic role than they do actually on the battlefield. In fact, they are more useful in quelling internal dissent than in wading off external threats, which again are exception like an outright attack on a Bania by a robber gang that happened once or twice in his life time.

America keeps it army for all these and something more also. Something extra! Well, that makes it the superpower. About that extra, we will talk some other time.

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Well too much is happening on the empty stage ranging from lost trains to aggrieved pythons.

If at all there is something like Lockdown 5.0, and surely there will be, it will be primarily left to the people’s individual sense of safety and security against the virus. People have rushed out and so are the cases that are surging at the rate of 7000 every day. These are official figures. One can very well imagine what the exact picture is among the millions of the poorest laborers on the way back to their native places. Definitely the infection rate is very high and many cases go unreported, and so do the deaths.

On a positive note, the majority of people are getting cured and success against the virus is more of a routine in the individual battles. But the virus carries far more weight psychologically than its real ravages on the body. The cash-starved government has recognized it and asked hospitals to discharge non-critical patients just after two days of treatments. The people know rest of the self-quarantine manual, medicine and precautions against the virus as much as the qualified doctors do, having crammed the same for three months while sitting idle at home.

A friend had to travel from Delhi to Goa in car to drop his relative who has got a job appointment. They had stocked their food and were on the road for three days. All along he saw endless trails of poor migrant labors walking beaten, burdened with their miseries, wounded, hungry, starved, carrying the remnants of their urban dreams in gunny sacks, their children kow-towing bravely, their little steps taking the miseries head on. These are the miles long signature lines of miseries that appear to have taken a lot of credit from the government in having managed Corona efficiently in the country. It goes without saying that the issue of migrant laborers could have been handled in far better way. There will be political repercussions. The Congress must be gloating water-mouthed like a crocodile as the beaten and starved wilder beasts continue on the longest walks of their lives. What will encourage and help them to come back to the cities again? What will the cities do without them as they stand on the blood and toil of these intangible and unsung pullers of urbanism? Perhaps hunger and poverty will draw them back as quickly as sheer panic forces them to flee. PM Modi will need a vast amount of oratory and gallons and gallons of poultice to balm the aggrieved hearts. If that is not done, the Congress enters the fray as a credible contender without any effort. That is the irony about Indian polity. Miseries of the masses are the seeds of opportunity for the political parties by default.

The railway men seem to have lost their typically rattling alertness as the engines cooled their exhausted innards, bogies rested their wheels and the endless entrails of rails slept peacefully after more than a century of relentless search. When the signal for getting back to duty comes in the form of a few Shramik trains taking the migrant workers to their homes, they show signs of restful hangover and perform comically. A Shramik train bound for Gorakhpur reaches Rourkela! Poor, moneyless, foodless and waterless laborers must have felt like tortured inmates being taken to concentration camps having gas chambers.

India fires a cute salvo in the cold war against China. Two of its parliamentarians attend the swearing in ceremony of the Taiwanese President, thus giving a semblance of recognition to the island nation. As can be expected, the red dragon spits still cuter salvos and asks its troops to enjoy still more solitary climes a bit inside the Indian side in Ladhak. PM Modi sends more troops and the armies are staring at each other. The war of eyes!

In MP, masked bride and groom exchanged Covid-19 free certificates before garlanding each other to start their matrimonial innings. Corona has come in between many a hug this season both authorized by law and unauthorized scandalous types. It has beaten romance like anything. Romance has withdrawn in its shell like a sulky old tortoise, but is sure to hit back with vengeance during the latter half of the ear.

Few domestic flights have taken to the skies with a jittery shake of the aircrafts like a sleepy bird shakes off lethargy from its fur and stretches its wings to start the day again. The metallic birds deserved some rest after decades of endless flights in the skies. The cabin crew walk along the scared aisles like astronauts packed in PPE kits on some inter-planetary mission, where there are hazards at every nook corner along the curvature of space. A lot many air passengers in India think that staring at beautiful female cabin crew members actually compensates for the airfare more than the service itself. Such passengers will surely think the ticket is overpriced for the stale glamorless service presently. I hope they won’t demand cabin crew in bikni once things get normal to make up for the loss on eye-feasting gluttony.

Looking at miles long queues in front of liquor outlets, a maulana is justifiably miffed. ‘Why not allow the mosques to be opened for 15-20 minutes when you can have crowded 2-3 Km long queues for wine?’ he has a logical question. Just that the economy of a crowd in a mosque gets beaten by Hindu drinkers who pump bucks full of money into the system. Faith is yet to be monetized directly for our common senses to understand it the way the price of a candy is understood in terms of rupees; indirectly of course it drives the biggest business on earth, religion.

Trump has hailed HCQ as a wonder drug against Corona and he himself is taking it on a precautionary note. The WHO finds it not suitable for the patients and so officially bans it. Probably they want to advertize some drug taken by Xi Jinping. But the secretive regime there won’t allow even the type of food taken by the top communist functionaries behind the iron curtain to be known to the outside world.

The errant kid surfaces and allays many a speculative theory. Kim Jong comes out after playing hide and seek amidst Corona confusion and appears ok. His disappearance for a fortnight was so effective an international news item that it pushed even mighty Corona from the centre stage for a couple of days. He did it on purpose. The fat lad seems to love being in the limelight. Any day we expect him to start firing rockets again. He actually behaves like the street urchin type crony of the local head criminal, acting in this capacity as a crony of China to keep the area in turmoil, unsettling the plans of the neighboring countries by firing rockets. He just loves fire-cracking and cackles with laughter like a fat chubby boy. But what villainy hides inside the chubby fat!

Saw a video clip in which a smart hyena cunningly snatches away a deer from the grasp of a python. Poor python! It had worked so hard to tame and suffocate the prey in its coils, a back-breaking effort I tell you. Ironically, eating the prey, that is so much easy for the rest of the species, is far-far more tiresome for the reptile, in fact far more weary and tough than even killing it. The hyena just jumps and hops smartly to run away with the booty. The python actually appears like the ever-toiling and sweat-boiling working class that breaks its bones in digging the foundation and erecting the structure, while the smart select few run away with the real exploits. And when blizzards like Corona come, they decimate more of the pythons (who are least responsible for the happening) than the hyenas (who are primarily responsible for the storm).

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After the terrible rainstorm at night—that blessed the parched land with holy water apart from satiating the summer time thirst of the rough handwritten draft and notes of some book in future, smudging and bloating the words like soaked almonds, apart from allowing many other books to drink some water—the beautiful hibiscus appeared shaken and jolted. I was plucking old withered flowers and by mistake plucked two unopened buds also. I place them gently on the flower bed. Youth has its moment and indomitable spirit. It has to blossom irrespective of the killing strike. They retain their spirit and blossom up like they would have on the plant after some time. Beautiful flaming red smile holding the grainy antenna of friendliness in the middle. If buds don't mind being plucked unripe accidentally and still smile, I don't have any reason to sulk on spoilt script and water sodden books. In any case, it was my mistake in both cases: plucking the buds unripe and leaving books carelessly at a place where they too would get tempted to get a rain bath.

Nothing happens suddenly at a fixed point in this creation. Infinity won't be possible without an ever-occurring transition having a stream of points as we know them. There is a handover, a sort of takeover. Physical death also doesn't occur at a point as it seems to us. There is still life in the buds to continue running the show of smiles and living. In case of human death, nails and hair continue growing for 13 days on the corpse after the moment of death as we see it on the surface. It means it takes 13 days for all the life force to leave the last of cells.

Well, talking a bit spiritually is no derogation to our material self however matter oriented we might be.

Samadhi is no domain strictly of those full time into spiritual practices. People across the world, belonging to all domains of life ranging from beggars to billionaires, artists to aristocrats, in all cultures, religions and geographies have experienced the touch of divine, the state of bliss, Samadhi. The kundalini shakti inspires different people to manifest their realizations in different ways. Take a look at Dostoevsky for example. Do you think it's simply a writer speaking? No, it's someone who has tasted divine, his kundalini shakti pushing him into the zone of divinity, Samadhi. Just that Samadhi has been hijacked by esoteric cult practices that present religion as a lucrative business practice and a purveyor of the state of Samadhi. To me Dostoevsky is as good as a Himalayan mystic when he says in his work, Devils, wherein he lays down a firm foundation of the Dostoevskian Samadhi:

‘There are seconds — they come five or six at a time — when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It's something not earthly — I don't mean in the sense that it's heavenly — but in that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect. He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear and unmistakable; it's as though you apprehend all nature and suddenly say, 'Yes, that's right.' God, when He created the world, said at the end of each day of creation, 'Yes, it's right, it's good.' It . . . it's not being deeply moved, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything because there is no more need of forgiveness. It's not that you love — oh, there's something in it higher than love — what's most awful is that it's terribly clear and such joy. If it lasted more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and must perish. In those five seconds I live through a lifetime, and I'd give my whole life for them, because they are worth it. To endure ten seconds one must be physically changed. I think man ought to give up having children — what's the use of children, what's the use of evolution when the goal has been attained? In the gospel it is written that there will be no child-bearing in the resurrection, but that men will be like the angels of the Lord.’

 

At the strictly material front, there isn’t enough steam left in the tottering economy to go for another costly blockbuster sequel, Lockdown 5.0. So for economic redemption, they are going for Unlock series. Phase one of Unlock gets on the way from June 1. Thankfully there is enough heat that we expected will bake the virus. Well, it hasn’t helped us in any way. The virus is as robust as ever. It still marches victoriously with a no-nonsense approach.

Fed to the guts with privatism, the soldiers will come out of the trench, cautiously avoiding the Corona booby-traps, looking this way and that way like a scared hare lest the sniper shot travels through the hurts, lungs rather because the Corona bullet slays lungs primarily. One cannot win a war by forever hiding in the trenches. Living itself means taking calculated risks.

The market in the town appears shaken terribly like broken palm fronds on a cyclone struck coast. It will take hell lot of courage on the part of even the most money-crazy trader to come out of the trench and start with the same relish for money, especially when people run to wash hands after touching currency like it’s a sin. It will surely take a few months for things to get normal. The train has been completely derailed. It ran too fast and for too long. Nature intervenes to insert a pause.

Dostoevsky said, ‘Stupidity is of as much service to humanity as the loftiest genius.’ We have lost the trail of our glorious stupidity while imprisoned at homes. The driving force of our civilization, our fabulous puzzlement of stupidities has paused and so has the chugging, huffing, steam-spewing engine of progress and development. This mad rush defines our being alive. Without it we hardly appear like human beings. We look more miserable without our miserable rut of life. A sort of addiction we have. 

Political croaking is swiftly overtaking the Corona chorus in media now. Well, it reminds me of a particular political system. Which political system do you think is inherently the enemy of true life and living? Some clues to the answer: They are the sworn enemies of freedom and individuality; they are the rascally advocates of a glorified mediocrity; propagators of an abominable shallowness; and the dark angels of some grossly hypothetical equality minus individual freedom and dignity.

Tell friends, tell! I hope most of you have guessed it right. They prune the roots of individuality like one does with the potted oaks. The roots are repeatedly cut to keep the bonsai alive, stunted, well below the full blossoming mark to avail a subservient species. Communism does the same.

The population in China is QR-coded like they are lifeless products stuffed in a swanky mall. This kind of digital surveillance allows the authorities to scan each and every aspect of the citizens’ lives such as where did they go, which transport they used, what they wore, what they ate, with whom they went, how much they spent, etc., etc.

All the US—the land of individual assertion to optimize the full potential—needs to take an edge in the cute war is to puncture Huawei’s tentacles over the global communication network. The speed of the red car will slow down with one main wheel getting punctured. Keep your missiles safe and fire phrases like Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights, Uyghur Muslims, Panchen Lama to name a few. A political system strictly defined by the sanctified lines in the red book gets terribly ruffled by disturbing phrases which appear sacrilegious to the biggest hypothetical dream trapped in the tiny funny book.  

Ruskin Bond says, ‘To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beast.’ How will such stunted spirits laugh? In gross standardization for the base level cut down equality, how will mercy survive as an emotion? Mercy thrives in an environment of freedom. The ever-watchful state system might create material prosperity but it quashes the spirit and breeds misery of the spirit. And miserable spirits hardly can be merciful. Does it mean communism is basically to dehumanize people, to make them nearer to animals than what we know ourselves as Homo sapiens?

Ruskin Bond: ‘It's unlucky to call a tiger a tiger. My father always told me so. But if you meet a tiger, and call him uncle, he will leave you alone.’

Well, given the arrogance and attitude of all and sundry that I see around, everyone should be addressed as ‘uncle’ by me. I find them adorned with the majestic pride of a tiger. But the problem arises with the men in late thirties and early forties. They are the real claimants of the title of uncle, but the moment someone addresses them as uncle, I mean tiger, they turn a rampaging bull, ready to trample the insulting fellow to death.

Corona you may keep spreading the guttery stench, I have feathered fragrance in my little garden. An emotion can be far stronger than tons of muscles and physicality. Spreading the fragrance and colors of the land of paradise amidst the burning plains of North India, Kashmiri Gulab! It has delicious smell and its pink color and paradisiacal smell outshine the deadliest blaze of summer sun.

The Juggernaut of Corona has left soot, saplings, plants and trees trampled all along the way. We cry over the loss of mainstream trees and crops. There are wayside weeds also that might be inconsequential from the point of view of our economy, but for Mother Nature they are as good as any high value cash crop. In the mainstream demography, the stateless citizens, the wandering nomads, are like wayside worthless weeds. They too have their share of loss, just that their loss is almost no loss on the economic scale.  

Out of movement, out of petty trade, out of steam, the gypsy caravan is stuck up at a place for the last 3 months. Of all other deprivation and drudgery, they sorely miss their only right, the right to move. These are the intangible losses that would never be counted among the category of Corona losses by the mainstream society.

In the 500 years since they took a vow never to settle down at one place after their leader Maharana Pratap lost to Akbar, these nomadic iron smith tribals have moved on the fringes of the mainstream society. They didn't compromise with their freedom and said a firm no to Akbar's offer of a settlement. Meanwhile, the modern civilization contrived rockets. As change is inevitable, the gypsy rate of change is pleasantly swooning. The ornate, wooden ox cart is now being slowly replaced by the bike rickshaw. The jostling civilization scattered around is pushing and prodding them a bit harder to force them to move faster on their endless path.

Nearby, the sunshine gets strangulated and caught in high-tension electricity wires and mammoth metallic banyans supporting them to pin a hole in the skies, the wings of these free birds catch fire and they try to fly away and drop one by one.

The nomadic cattle herders who wander around with their hundreds of famished, huge-horned, bony cows now set out with tottering steps like the creaking water wheel over a dry well. How did they even survive while no movement was allowed? The cows scraped dry grass out of dust on a wasteland. Their dung lies littered like jackals poop, so small and miserable. The herder has a flaming red huge headgear, almost a crown of thorn. His gypsy shirt tightly squeezes his slim torso and the windblown dhoti sways like the torn, raggish pal on a lost ship. There they go escaping the desert sands, the nomadic herders from Rajasthan. Dust here means better pastures to them. How I wish we get used to be contented with what we have!

There has been torrential rain quite unexpected for the season bringing down the temperature to 30 degree Celsius maximum from 46. The honeybees take rest from their death-defying attempt at fetching water to cool the hives. Mother Nature has spewed enough water for two days at least. So they don’t return just out of habit. Theirs is a world that is strictly defined by basic needs. We humans nurture habits out of basic needs, which quickly leads to our typical greed. 

In a forest, a honey badger is devilishly tenacious. An elephant may surely crush it like an ant, but the little stubborn rascal will stand on its way till the last breath; a jackal flip-flops among cowardice, caution and cunningness: Two extreme characteristics in two species. A group of lion cubs tests their skills in the game of rope pulling. Unluckily for the poor python, there was no rope in the forest for the contestants. So they used a python instead! As a common man I feel like being pulled in all directions by the smarter species. The poor migrant workers returning on foot on their hundreds of miles long march of misery is the mammoth, fat python that is now being pulled and hunted by the political hunters to get bellyfuls of political pie.

In a tribal hamlet in Gujarat, far away from the maddening crowd and its still madder Corona offshoots, an old tribal woman drags a huge Kobra. A jittery forest official is lucky to shoot the scene on his mobile. She holds it inconsequentially like it’s a junk piece to be dragged out of the habitation. She walks like performing daily chores, holding the poor devil by tail, the latter clueless about what to do and what not. She drags it across the street without even looking behind. The deadly snake throws its hood in desperation along the crowd. She then simply throws it away like an unwanted unusable piece of old rope. The toothless wisdom of a grand-mom: A rope and a cobra are the same as long as your fingers don't discriminate between the two while holding!

Since the start of the Lockdown blockbuster series, there have been 5 occasions when mild earthquake tremors hit the Delhi NCR. Corona forces us to stay inside the box, and mother earth then shakes it to see us toppling out like scared mice. Five mild tremors in such short time doesn’t portend well. Geologically it may mean a big earthquake is waiting in the wings in the area. Moreover, crores of locusts are hovering in the northern skies like the nefarious enemy drones to chuck out crops. God knows what else this 2020 has in its store to stump us!

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In June we try our level best to regain the lost tune. Isn’t this existence ridiculously strewn with self-preserving creepers? Corona has as much right to thrive and propagate as we have. Trying to muster up our well-shaken strength of conviction, it’s the time to face the stark reality. Elusive transparencies again goad us. The fabric of life from which most of us draw our meaning and purpose of living is too hefty for us to put off just like that. It’s no throwaway, puny pushcart. It’s the mammoth scaffolding of our civilizational march across many millennia.

So the Covid numbers seem to be losing their relevance as we get onto the usual mode. Forgetfulness is the mother potion of survival and sustenance. Memory is merely a convenience. We don’t basically survive because we can remember the good; we survive because we have the capacity to forget the bad. We overcome the deaths of near and dear ones and cross over grieving traumas. Animals forget far too soon and hence even though they may have the physiological pain, they hardly suffer. Plants and trees need not even feel that instantaneous pain. That is almost unadulterated consciousness. We have a relatively longer span of carrying our pains in memory and hence suffer. But when it comes to moving on, nature has given us enough capacity to get into the whirlpool of survival once again.

So despite 6.5 million Corona cases, and still rising rapidly, and 400,000 deaths world over, other words, issues and phrases are toppling Corona from its few-month old chartbusting reign. India swiftly crossed 200,000 cases without making much of scary hoopla about it. Earlier, as we touched 100,000 mark, a massive wave of panic got built up casting gloom over the entire country. However, with recovery rate almost 50% people seem to have taken it as any other illness causing discomfort and even death. Soon it will be business as usual. For a while, it appeared all of us have learnt pervasive, lasting lessons to redirect our manners in more sustainable ways. The pause was forced. However, with the whirlwinds of modern life picking up again, leaving everyone hurrying and scurrying again, the lessons are already tossed to the winds. Those lessons actually sound too poetic, artistic, aesthetic and impractical and hence valueless. I am sure, despite terrible losses, it will be the business as usual very soon.

In America, Corona got dislodged by a nasty racist incident. Forget about Corona and the USA-China feud building up, the lethal virus of hate and insensitivity in one policeman has unleashed something similar to the Corona mutant entering the human body and wreak havoc. Malice, hate and anger in minds are as lethal as Corona. The virus of hate, lying in incubation in the human mind for long, was incubated during those tragic 9 minutes as a white, empowered policeman sat with his knee forced upon a helplessly face-downed man of color, the latter forcing muffled sounds ‘I can’t breathe!’ The policeman was forcing his duty beyond any kind of legitimacy. The poor disadvantaged man of color was losing whatever little he had, his life basically. The man dies and riots, arson and plunder get unleashed across America. When one wrong triggers a wave, many wrongs emerge at various fronts, muddling up the situation where right and wrong lose their meaning altogether. A cornered China gets a chance to hit a few punches in return. New spots always put the older ones in background. All we can do is to retain lessons, but given our great faculty of forgetting, we lose the thread and the new pages of resolutions get lost to the heaving huffs of winds. 

Creeping civilization! To be an ultramodern successful creeper, we usually use our tendrils like tentacles to reach the wall of our goals. Our tendrils and tentacles latch onto the softest sinews, even if that means killing and suffocating the tiny offshoot that needs help and support itself, on the way to hit our post. Sometimes I think, after witnessing the rawest elements of nature, this creation is imbued with self interest, and our pretty human selfishness is just a portion of the infinite force of self-preservation that we see around. What do you think?   

What is Good and what is Evil? Good means God to most of us. I want to love God. To love my God, I, but, have to hate Evil. I love wanting God, even though I know wanting in excess is always bad even if it is about God. I love God, but to love God, i.e., good, I have to hate Evil, i.e., bad. I want God. I prioritize my want to be good over all other states despite numerous pulls in the opposite directions on the practical stage of life.

Why do I have the need to love God? And to sustain all this, I need the anti-god in me. I love the anti-god in me, otherwise why would I retain in me the desire to nurture the sense of good. I need hate to keep reminding me that there is a thing called love. I need my devil to love my God. We always need the unrighteous polarities to keep our dreams of wanting to love pious polarities. Words simply flummox me, eh. I get caught. And then I throw stones at the devil to keep my urge to throw flowers at my God. Little do I realize that my pious hymns need my hateful hiss at my sins to glorify them as some godly divinity.

Puzzling words, always failing to convey the ‘real’, leaving the expression incomplete! Was there any perfectly complete sentence that carried the sense of expression to the ultimate? We should feel that it's about 'experiencing' life, not just 'knowing' it. We know too much, and knowing is just on the surface, leaving us bobbing restlessly like fishermen’s net-line floaters.

To feel we have to dive into the depths and forget. Let’s hone the art of forgetting to take huge bites at our sense of ego, and become a sort of self-eating shark. It will help us sink to the bottom of experiential embrace, a kind of amazing restfulness. When I get such experiential embrace by mother existence, a mammoth mountain, a huge panorama, a little flower all acquire the same beauty and significance irrespective of their size. The moment overpowers the senses and gives a sweeping feeling as if there is nothing more to know, a sort of Samadhi.

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Hi, I’m Jasmine, a little flower in a tiny garden in a modest house. I have a message to pass. Or do you think I smile for nothing? I have a sweetly whispering tales to tell! Or do you think I have such nice scent in my petals for nothing? But sweet tales are of no use these days; even children are being taught to be rugged puppeteers to create their own unique miracles. So I would, for the time being, prefer to give an invidiously yawning message. These are not my own reflections, these are inspired by a dew-drowsed rose last night, an old one, who ruffled his old petals to unfurl the tale of mankind’s doomed destiny. 

The summer has fire in its heart-kiln. Hottest dusty winds swerve and swirl with an all-consuming passion. Temperature creeps like a restless climber to boil all and everything. The sun shoots off billowing streams of sorrowful rays to soak the last ounce of moisture to appease his current mistress, the unsparing summer. The weather’s torturing squeals tame even a bull that pants with thirsty foam on its muzzle.

I know Corona has had full-fledged orgy leaving you guys caught in devilish bewilderment. I but have the indefatigable and irrepressible grain of the Holy Spirit. It still lies at my petalous core because I have retained some room for it to keep it thriving, unlike you guys who have stuffed yours to the gills. The grain of Holy Spirit stands firmly forthright. Otherwise why would I smile with a spirit so deeply exuberant? I am not bothered much about the nightmarish twists and angry shoves of the noon-time hot wind that builds up with a barraging crescendo.

Amidst all this groaning commotion, I stay unmindful of the garish and grotesque, and always stay mindful of the opulent aura and nostalgic contours of the fresh sips of early morning cool breeze. It caresses me with luxurious swags. I have a single-pointed—unlike the multi-pronged memory of yours—sharp memory that helps me recall all the treasure of my good fate, while the testing noontime passes over my petals with a gibberish squelch. Unfavorable time with its tendency of criminal confiscation can’t erase the songs in my heart which the cool early morning etches on me with its hurryless, sweetly crawling pen.

You may have an eternally rampaging brain, but where is that eternal equanimity of the soul which even a tiny flower like me is blessed with? You are firmly in the grip of the riotous renaissance of your passions, but do you have the time even to get a genuine spiritually suffused and nectar-imbibed smile like I possess? Your rapier sharp reflexes, born of your insecurities, have turned you the ruling supernovas of the earth. But restless journeyman, mind thy faltering strides and the fanatic noose hanging down the line as a kind of primordial penalty for rising too high and sinking too low at the same time to be the ugly emissary of some evil, spurious speedster. Take care, thy condemnatory encroachment is continually coiling around your own self.

You guys are superbly theatrical with your eloquent arguments. You are energetically resourceful and proclaim your resounding resourcefulness. But can you even smile with this feeling that you are light-headed and unburdened of some insurmountable restlessness? Can you ever be free of the guilt about the longly repressed real self? Isn’t all your so called growth and development a mere flailing of arms at the unbreakable bars of the perpetual prison?

You are everything and I am nothing. I am a tiny speck of the formless and relationless love. I have the golden reminiscences of the slow-moving remotest wilds. I smile fulsomely beyond the teasing tussles of the cringing anarchist who is foredoomed to end in the failure’s meat grinder because he churns his own ill-fate by pulling strings this way and that way to break everything in two, in pleasure-pain, light-dark, love-hate, etc., etc.

I am deep in the docile domesticity of just being what I am; the pulsating dynamics of the eternal light flood through my petals. With your copious consumption and arrogant aloofness, you loop around your desires’ dragnet and kill the spirit of the forests. ‘Animism!’ I coo even at my modest most enthusiasm. ‘Humanism!’ is all you can manage even at your best. My worst is still better than your best. Engaged in your piercingly protracted struggle, you may proclaim self-righteousness in your own courts, but in the eyes of the supreme colorist, you are nothing more than a perilous pimp of criminality. Your self-created Gods and Goddesses are nothing more than goblins and elves of fairy tales.

With my silent spiritual reflections, beyond the drag of expectations egging one to write permanent lines on the shifting sands of time, I enjoy the flourishing inspiration of my soul. And sorry, I turned condemnatory like you guys for some time! Now forgive me and inhale the olfactory nectar that I offer in full humility!

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With a foreboding sense hung timidly in the air, street dogs find it a sumptuous setting to pour out their traumas and terrors suffered at our instance. One particular doggy chap has carved out a unique identity in the locality. While the rest of the street dogs in the locality are lost in the same old canine ways, standing out almost as an inconsequential common noun, this spotted red and brown champ stands out not for his color (as they usually get christened on the basis of color in India). This one has a fabulous perseverance. He has stuck to his point among all the chaos. It has won him a well-branded identity.

His unique persistence in the vocalization of his needs, wants and fears puts him in a separate league. Among the riotous canine chorus buzzing with interesting vocals including purring, yodeling, snarling, screaming, barking, whining, growling, howling, sighing and groaning, this fellow maintains the same tempo. He sticks to his copyright tone in all situations from the best to the worst. He piteously whines, whimpers and howls, accelerating his sad, heartbroken song in the given order.

Barking is synonymous with being a dog. They just love barking. God knows whether it’s out of anger, joy, fear, need or frustration. While the rest of them are in a merry chorus, as we humans get jittery during Corona times accompanied by dozens of mild earthquake tremors in the Delhi NCR, indicating all is not well under the earth, this brown-white dirge singer has his own ludicrously howling composition. It appears as if he is offering his doomsday song well in advance. While the rest of them go into long spells of yodeling and barking in varying joyful notes, as if they can smell the soon to break fault-line underneath, this champion vocalist but stays on his same old frequency. While the rest of them are shouting ecstatically, we can pick out this one’s piteous howls as if he wants to spoil their game.

Offer him a chapatti, its anxiety and god knows what pains spurt out through a sad whine that beats even the customary dog’s tail-wagging on being offered food. So the moment you offer it a chapatti, it will start eating but give you a guilty feeling as if you have given it something very bad in taste. It whimpers, whines and then lets loose a screeching note of howl in gratitude. May be he is not comfortable with anything at all in the canine as well as our human world around and goes cursing. Eh, the perennial naysayer!

Growling also is the sovereign right of a dog. They assert their arrogant dogliness through it. What dog is that which doesn’t growl? This one doesn’t. He can’t even if he tries. Because the moment he puts pressure on his vocal chords, the muscles appear to have stuck up at one place to give the same very old whine, whimper and howl. Suppose some skinny outsider dog enters the locality and all the natives are barking out their machismo spirit at full speed, and there being almost no danger as the skinny outsider cowers in the street drain, this champion participates in the defensive force with his full-hearted wretched howls, as if he is on the side of the pinned down outsider. In this he unsettles many of his companions, who give a break to their lungs and actually stare at him to find out if they have bitten their own buddy by mistake. His lowest of a rumble automatically catches onto a sad song of pain and cries.

When a weirdly dressed gypsy hawker enters the locality, the dog squad gives more pressure to their coiled tails and set after barking in a line after the hawker nomad. He doesn’t mind their barking. He walks confidently, thinking of himself a majestic elephant who isn’t bothered about barking pathetic dogs. They on their part think this strange one will have a share in their chapattis and ladies so needs to be thrown out at the earliest. The nomadic hawkers hardly bother about barking dogs. But even he is forced to abandon his detachment from such mundane settlers’ ways and look behind carefully, his ears picking the piteous howling cries among the proudly ringing din. May be some aloof and unattached gypsy will also start crying after hearing these sympathetic notes. Wonder of wonder, the poor fellow actually believes that it’s barking as can be seen from its taut coil in the tail and proud bearing during the citadel defense. It can’t help if it comes out as a whimpering, irritating howl. May be some unique vocal filter has been fixed by nature to do some experiment.

The rest of them have a wide range of vocals to vent out a range of emotions from the best to the worst. But this one’s joy, sadness, curiosity and of course frustration are all expressed in the same crying tone. His groans give a clue to his discontentment with life. Suppose a dog fellow approaches him with the intention to play, this one reciprocates with his own innocent intention to play. But how will he stop his sad howling. Those playful sighs again come out as piteous scary whines and whimpers and the fellow leaves him, accusing him of being a habitual crier.

Amidst all his teary whimpers, he is a loser in love game also as can be expected. During the mating season, the dandies break many a moon to woo their sweethearts. This one also, driven by his biological instincts, tries the same. But the lady runs away during the foreplay itself as his pining moans start with piteous howls as if she has just pierced his heart with her paw. You have to believe me on this. I have actually seen it happening. Otherwise, why would I be interested in maligning his character on a public platform?  I call him Rotdu, habitual crier, by the way.

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Even the saints, priests, gurus and faith healers have jumped off the stage, leaving us on our own to salvage both our faith as well as material well being. With temples and places of worship going empty, we can try to be our own saints to bless our own selves as a stop gap arrangement at least. Of course, the people of religion will be back with a banging fury, firing sermonizing salvos on all cylinders, to reclaim their turf. But to do that they have to survive. Corona is too small to be spotted and swatted away by their patron deities.

Coming back to the issue of being our own saints. Usually, we link energy with the physical force, manifesting primarily through what we accomplish with the movement of our limbs and body. No wonder, moving a little stone from the ground appears a real task to us—with the force used and the effect present before our eyes—while a thought of lifting a mountain on our finger-tip qualifies as a wishful, negligible thing. In the latter, there being hardly any interchange of energy in the strictly cause and effect sense. Nonetheless, the real movement of energy in the latter, although imperceptible on the surface, is more than the former. In any case, lifting a stone itself is somehow guided by our thoughts.

Thoughts create more powerful channels of energy than the visible physical channels through our body. And emotions heave still more bundles of energy at the still more subtle level.

At the grossest physical level, energy cascades under the guidance of our thoughts. It follows our attention under the guidance of our mind through its reining forces of thoughts. Thoughts create their paths on the terrain of our emotions. The moment we realize, feel and actually accept that our thoughts and emotions are far stronger channels of passing energy than they appear, we take a quantum jump on the path of higher consciousness and self-realizations. From a mere creation, we jump on a stage where we are offered the possibility of a creator.

The feeling of anger itself is a massive surge of energy. It’s like the wild fire out there to annihilate everything. A feeling of love again is a bundle of the same amount of energy, but here the fire doesn’t burn, it lights up to show us more of life and living. Same applies to all the negative emotions (that leave us feeling unwell) and the positive ones (kissing our bruised selves with a healing touch). Positive polarities of emotions are uplifting, negative ones plummet down. The force is the same. The energy movement is the same. The destinations are but different. In the one we create, in the other we destroy.

Our straying thoughts and boiling emotions create puzzled webs of energy movement across our psychosomatic built up, leaving us a helplessly, restless and unwell piece of wreckage bobbing on sea surface, helplessly exposed to the winds from all directions. The webbing gets so complicated that it gets entangled in itself. No wonder we feel completely lost. We become the fisherman who gets entangled in his own net.  

A well-guided cleansing of these energy blockages can really set us free from our own created boulders of puzzlement, pain and sufferings. The nagging restlessness that we feel is usually nothing but the knot where our thoughts and emotions have stuck up. The moment we decide to be responsible for our thoughts and emotions we put ourselves on the path of healing. Primarily all of us have to show the biggest kindness to our own selves. First we have to be the healer of our own selves. We have to smile at our own selves. A smile has far more force than we ever realize. We have to smile at our own selves. We have to be first our own saints capable of blessing our own being with a healing hand on any restless part in the body. The blockage melts.

Next time you have some upset in the body, just be your saint, close your eyes, and tap that part with finger tips, with an inward smile visualizing breathing in and exhaling through the same part. Alchemy of love gets unleashed. The disordered crests and troughs of the energy waves get pacified under the soulful music of your fingertips, the carriers of your chi energy. We actually function like an electric welder, mending the discordant waves with our torch of energy dripping from our fingertips. It will sound miraculous to you, but believe me nothing is miraculous in nature. Then gently rub your hands clockwise and anti-clockwise on the same part, while retaining that inner smile blessing that part where the cells gave restless signals as the energy patterns went out of the loop. The realized ones have purified their emotions to the level to do it for many like you and me. We can be at least our own little saints and healers. 

The realized sages are known to accomplish so many things just by casting serene look at the face of the devotees. There are three levels of purification: body, mind and emotions. Complete purification at all three dimensions enables one to accomplish deeds with energy movement merely though thoughts and emotions, just like we common mortals do by taking many physical pains. An unadulterated emotion, beyond the shadow of self-preservation, and honeyed with all-consuming compassion, does what people find miraculous. In reality, nothing is miraculous. Given the limitless potential of the energy dimension in the cosmos, miracles are impossible. In a nutshell, everything is possible. Physical dimension is merely like walking on foot to reach Bombay; the mental dimension is like boarding a train to Bombay; and the emotional dimension is like taking a flight to Bombay. Beyond the judgmental talk of which one is superior or inferior, it’s merely about the choices we make and the resultant utilization of the energy potential.

A jumbled up desire can create a rapist; a well direct sexuality on the path of spirituality can turn one a sage. The same amount of energy is consumed, and the difference is what we know as heaven and hell.

Accept that our thoughts and emotions are purely our own constructs that we try to impose on the external factors. This acceptance wins half the battle. How to start cleansing and purifying our thoughts and emotions? Well, enough has been said about it on the subject by far more elevated souls than me. So anything I say will be mere repetition. However, I can say one thing with reasonable surety—after having practiced most of the paths across religions—the Taoist practices are immensely effective in clearing energy blockages born of habitual thoughts and emotions over the years.