The story of a wounded tree and his friend

 

We are a  monetizing species. We just cannot help putting economic value on whatever we come across. Earlier we would hunt for gold and other materials from the guts of earth. Then the desire shot through the ceiling and now we hunt for sand with as much seriousness like we did seek gold earlier. Sand is needed for the non-stop build-up to cater to our booming population and economies.

The 40-50 feet wide ribbon of wilderness between the two canals running parallel across the countryside would have a ribbon of wilderness. Desilting of the canals left a thick bedding of sand upon which trees, bushes, plants and grasses ran to take possession—free nature running to grab whatever sinewy pathways are available for its solitude serenade.

Walking for kilometers on the little footpath running through this untrampled part would give me the feel of walking through a silent forest. Majestic banyans, peepuls, jamuns, eucalyptus, a few silk cotton trees, wild flowers and bushes would shower me with greetings as they would do to any of the plenty of snakes hiding among these last hideouts.

I am walking on the same path now. It has been cleared. Sand is very precious now, almost new age gold. And sand mafia—just a front player for the invisible political-bureaucratic nexus—has taken truckloads of sand. The mighty earthmovers cut through the ribbon of wilderness to claw out gleaming fertile sands that have travelled from the Himalayas with the canal waters. The grasses, bushes, plants and wild flowers are gone. Just big trees are standing. They are big enough to somehow come out alive after the onslaught in the darkness. But they bear the marks of injuries and cuts and wounds. The greedy talons of the earthmovers would try to scrape every particle of dust from around them thus cutting their roots, bruising their barks, damaging the trunks. So as I walk on the bare sand on the broad avenue only big trees stand with their cuts and wounds.

The sand mafia is very powerful. It’s the corrupt governmental machinery’s invisible hand that works with legalized criminality in the dark of night. Heavy trucks and earthmovers work overnight carting away precious sand—gold like precious. You hardly have any say against them. Where will you go and complain? The place where you are supposed to go for redressal of your grievance is the very same place that is authorizing all this in the dark of night. The nighttime criminality is too strong for any feeble daytime legal action. I know all this and know the inevitability of things ultimately going the way as they open up before me.

I walk with sadness looking at the wounded barks, bruised trunks and bashed up roots of the trees still holding their balance. Sand is more precious than the trees. Maybe the oxygen-selling industry is waiting with gloating glee for a time when all the trees will be gone and they will monetize it as an economic model by selling oxygen just like now we have bottled waters once the drinkable waters vanished from the streams.

The huge silk cotton tree beckons me with its smile of pain and agony. They have taken away all the sand around its roots, cutting some major roots in the effort. It takes many years for mother earth to bloom such a majestic tree. It’s a big one. I remember its flowery welcome with its big red flowers during the winters. One had playfully dropped straight on my head as I walked under it lost in my poetic muse. A big, juicy, red bouquet of welcome as if the tree wanted to remind me hey how can you pass without appreciating all the dollops of beauty hanging on my majestic canopy. It was a beautiful sight. Red blooms covering a portion of the sky above my hand. After that the tree felt like a friend and whenever I passed under it I wouldn’t forget to give it a handshake by touching its trunk.

The friend is now wounded after the night battles for sand. It stands with agony. All the supporting sand is gone and a few main roots gone. It seems as if an angry shove of wind will see it falling in the battle against the mankind. All I can do is to place a healing palm against its bruised bark and seek forgiveness from the side of we humans.

        My tree friend wounded after the nighttime battle with the sand mafia

I am not a revolutionary. I am a poetic man who feels their pain. I know everything is futile against the darker actors. They are too strong. So I do what I can do. I reach the tree in the evening with a spade and with my poetic hands slowly start doing the work of a farmer. Do it—however small is your capacity—if you feel something wrong has been committed somewhere. Sermonizing and vain poetics won’t help. I begin putting sand around the tree slowly covering its exposed guts. It’s a tough work for those who aren’t into routine farming work. But I’m surprised that I’m managing it pretty decently. As the dusk starts building up and moon rises to give me company, I feel as if the tree is absorbing the thick swabs of exhaustion from my body. Believe me I could feel it. I worked for almost two hours and there is the friendly tree with its wounds dressed up. It looks happy now.

                             A little dressing done by the wounded tree's friend

I leave a gentle reminder for the sand mafia who will be arriving during the night. It’s a scrawling on a cardboard piece; an appeal by the tree that please leave some sand for me also. I know they will angrily tear it away. But at least the tree has a right to voice its case. I fix the appeal on its trunk and leave with a little less sad smile this time because my tree friend is waving a bit less agonized goodnight.

            The tree's gentle reminder to the sand mafia that will arrive at night

I am not sharing this little story just to get three or four likes from virtual friends whom I haven’t even met. That hardly matters to me, and shouldn’t matter to anyone in fact. It’s just done with an intention to be the voice of a tree’s agony. The message is more important. It’s done with a hope that someone else too will take a little step under the same circumstances. And that spadework seems more satisfying than writing an entire book. We have to do whatever little we can do if we feel the need. Because that’s our own emotion. No one else is liable to it. It’s our own duty to act. However small it might be.

    

A bike ride

 I'm going on my old bike. It was there when I was in college and was a suitable partner in a few typical youthful follies. But that was then and now is now. Both of us are rusted and greying fellows with the shine of wisdom seeping inside. 

A big truck has collapsed leaving a narrow passage for the vehicles from both sides. There is a young man struggling to maintain his vertical. Vehicles have to crawl to pass through the narrow opening. He means to have a lift. Who would give a lift to someone who can barely stand. An old tauji almost kicked him away shouting, 'You will fall from my scooter and die if I give you a lift!'. And now I find him almost slumped over my bike's handle pleading for a pillion ride. I repeat the old man's retort that I just heard. 

Who says perfectly sloshed men are out of their senses? He can at least smell the feeble traces of humanity in me. Some vibes, the way I speak or look or whatever. He must have felt that I carry the maximum probability of allowing him to get onto the bike. Before I realise he has marvelously heaved himself for a sloshed out pillion ride on my vehicle.

A snake has the instinct to bite. A farmer's first instinct in such cases would be to slap at least. I carry the same farming blood. So the first instinct is to give him a backhanded smash on the face. But then I have been trying to convince myself that I'm on the path of spirituality and the people on the path don't react, they respond. So I take a huge gulp of anger down my throat. The effort nearly chokes me, because anger directed into the guts literally shakes you up. With my anger thrashing my gut now, I try to talk him out of his dangerous plan to ride pillion in such a state. We are both putting our respective cases, me in irritated tones and he in slurred, pleading humanity-arising notes. The passage is blocked. A fat man is dying to reach his house -- most probably to get thrashed by his wife -- and honks his car horn very madly, 'O hello, you two, resolve your issues somewhere else. Why block the path?' Both of us give him a very angry look and to make his blood boil a bit more I prolong my arguments in the drunken case. But then many horns are honking so I have to move my vehicle with a load that is swaying in all directions. 

I stop at a distance by the side but he is already feeling safe, all secure, holding my back and almost slumped over my shoulder. I remind him that if I allow him a ride on my bike he will surely fall and get crushed under some incoming vehicle. 

Now he is crying. Fresh, salty, warm human tears on my shoulder. 'Koi kisi ka nahi hai brother. Sab matlabi hain. Only you are a real good man!' he muttered holding me to avoid a fall. How can you act against humanity if someone has just declared you to be the gem of a person? So I move with utmost caution, at a very slow speed, just by the road's edge so that he doesn't get crushed under a passing tyre if he falls. He sways like a long, thin eucalyptus sways to the wind. All this while he is muttering, 'Diamong hai diamond. ..this brother of mine!' I was lucky to drop him safe at the place of his choice. He walked a few tottering steps and then sprawled himself on earth, the ultimate bed. Maybe taking rest before hatching a plot to get another pillion ride. A young man, soiled clothes on account of dusty tumbles due to inebriated senses, out of the driving seat of his life. It was a sad affair. Very sad. I moved on with a little resigned shake of my head. The government knows drinking destroys countless lives. But then the liquor industry pays billions in taxes so the government is happy with the affairs. And then it's for people like me to carry dead drunk citizens to their destination.

Far away from the maddening crowd

 

This peacock has a hand-length of plumage. It looks quite handsome with it, something of rugged little stubble charm of masculinity. Full fantail is cumbersome. It keeps it tethered to the centricity of amorous passion, making it a love-haunted soul. It also means a lot of effort while flying, almost bum-busting effort. And the total absence of plumage also gives too much of a clean-shaven look to a peacock. But with this short plumage, it looks dapper smart and can fly to its satisfaction.

The red-vented bulbul is seen after two-three months. I believe it had gone visiting some relative. Maybe got bored with the uneventfulness of life here. Now it looks fresh with profound and impressionistic attitude.

A cat got onto the neem tree. The cat has no business there. So a crow, a couple of mynas, three-four pied starlings and some babblers raise such a din that it has to jump off the tree. The compendium of birdie platitudes starts a little chain of repercussions. The intimidating squirrel, which has grabbed the millet bowl all for itself after shooing away the sparrows, now runs away trippingly. It thinks the cat has jumped with a decisive attempt at its life. The fresh-from-journey bulbul gives it a nice chase over the wall top. The sparrows shout in merriment.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Little Nevaan's small world

 

Nevaan’s words during the online classes are highly censored. A little soul’s words of innocence can expose mountains of elderly hypocrisies. Childhood innocence is startingly stylized for truth. It comes from a resounding depth of purity sustained by an unconditioned and uncustomized self.

One day he is given freedom to give his uncensored speech on the topic of mother. It falls with the force of classical weight on feathery modernity. ‘Mama is very good. She does all my homework. She gets very angry also and sometimes pulls my hair,’ his rare repertoire of praising words leaves his mother teary eyed. ‘I devote my entire day for his welfare and look what I get in return,’ she is inconsolable. But then she has realized that he is free in his opinions and is swimming with powerful frog-kicks in the pool of childhood independence.

So now he has to do his own homework. His mother has said a firm no to do it for him after his sting operation. He is asked to ‘write five lines on Nevaan’. He is seen very  busy for twenty minutes with the below given essay in the middle of the page:

‘Write five lines on Nevaan. He doesn’t like reading and writing. He wants to play all the time. He wants to watch cartoon TV all the time. He wants a roomful of chips.’

That marks his little summary of paradise. This candid and instamatic write-up brings more tears in the eyes of his mother. With a lyrical fluency, Nevaan is sauntering around to do full justice to his essay.

He is seen standing in front of Labrador Tuffy, the friendly pet from the neighborhood. Labrador Tuffy barks in a friendly tone. ‘How are you Tuffy?’ he asks. The dog wags its tail and replies in soft friendly barkings. Nevaan also starts doing bho-bho in varied tones. The conversation goes for about fifteen minutes. An objection is raised against Nevaan’s barking. ‘But we are talking in his language. I tried and thought he would reply in our language. But seems he cannot do it, so I changed my language to talk to him in his own,’ he replies in a prescriptive tone.

Easy times with a few birds in a little garden

 

An asian pied starling is carrying a few feet long thin strip of light fabric in its beak as it flies to its construction site. It’s a busy world engaged in making, breaking and remaking. She has an equal right to make something as anyone around. The tiny tailorbird plays mischief and takes a snipe at the lower end. The big group of house sparrows raises a laughing chorus. A brahmani mynah shrieks with delight. A peacock looks eagerly with the stately extravagance of its colors. A squirrel scuttles around with a kind of gestural vocabulary. On a neighbor’s wall an alpha male monkey moves with a haughty demeanor. Looking at him, I realize we carry a pretty hoary ancestry.

The honey buzzard hasn’t yet forgotten about its honeyed lunch. It’s circling above in the sky, maybe staring at me accusatively as I sit on a chair in the courtyard near the tree bearing the hive. I intend to write something here, but then he doesn’t know that it’s only a struggling countryside writer. He supposes that the honeybees have summoned my services to scare him. I’m thankful to him that he is scared because if he attacks I’ll run sooner than the honeybees.

There is an eerie stillness after the ripples of birdie noise let loose by the tiny tailorbird’s adventure. The little garden around me seems capable of maintaining a sustainable and dynamic paradigm. I sit with a retrospective aura, a kind of thin-veiled misty cloud around me born of engaging self-reflectivity. All of us possess multilayered individual histories shaped by the sharp edges of irony hitting at our existence with a kind of gentle madness. A gentle breeze blows with its suggestive touches at the leaves of the trees.

On the threshold of a colorful spring

 

The spring is always waiting in the wings; like a spiky creeper looping around her cold lover. Basant Panchami, falling on February 5 this year, amounts to sowing the spring seeds that would blossom smiles in March. It’s the start of sunnier days with a balmy tonality. The seasons have an amazing, tactical flexibility that allows healthy transitions and undisputed takeovers.

The festive occasion is but a kind of setback for the honeybees. They have been brave and tried to undo the limiting definitions of inclement weather to survive for sunnier days. Sadly, their nice round hive is attacked by the honey buzzard. His beak pecks with a notational intent. The hive gets misshapen as he steals away their precious store of honey. I watch from a distance. I can feel that something is missing. Dry leaves tumble down because the big predator’ wings ruffle the branches. We humans suffer the flatness of our sweeping conclusions. To my analytical wit, the eagle is an unsober and hostile bird. My reality is that the bees are buzzing in the air with a sense of loss. But maybe their truth is something very different from my feeling.

The eagle flutters away with a shrieking note. From my linear perspective, the hive seems like an amoeba now. But then my human-born pain withers away and some unconditional truth lands in my senses like a lyrical oasis. There is always a balance in nature. Still there is something left to build the house again, to make a new beginning. There is surely some reserve to last for some more days. They just need their queen to be safe for a riveting fresh start in the spring. The rest they will undoubtedly manage, especially now when we have the February sun smiling kindly. The spring will unfold its subtle coils and will unleash many flowery smiles.

Unlike we humans they don’t complain and waste their energy in the blame game. They have a vaulting clarity in their ‘being’ in contrast to our efforts at ‘becoming’ with our limpid ambitions. Within half an hour, the tattered house is far better in appearance. It’s not smooth and round like earlier. There are irregular edges as the bees work back to their former positions. The eagle is but still circling in the air. I’m sure it has taken enough for one square meal. There are so few eagles left and a small number of beehives. Looking at such little survival games, it appears as if all isn’t lost. It’s a bit assuring.

Ghooming in ecstasy with Ghoomar

 

It's a lovely movie. Went to watch it at the newly launched multiplex at the town. Gadar 2 is making big waves because everyone wants to be a patriot these days. And the easiest way is to clap and shout at the screened versions of dusting your enemy nation in the game of both love and war. 

There was a stampede at the impressive small town mall. Black safari suits came thundering down the slow moving escalators. The world of the VIPs is too fast for slow moving steps. A big file of important looking people breezed past almost rattling my bones. I thought it was some big shot politician. Well, it turned out to be someone from the Gadar support cast. People were pursuing the VIP so it was all welcomingly cleared up as me and my friend ascended in the opposite direction. It's great to walk freely in a mall without getting trampled under busy feet. 

We waited outside the screen where Ghoomar would be played. Nobody came. Possibly they thought everyone will go following the star till Delhi airport. I gently reminded a staff there about our show. He looked at me like a kabab में haddi. We stood as perfect show spoilers. His boss came and before he could even say a word i acquired the posture of a porcupine ready to take on a tiger. I flashed our tickets, my phone rather, at him declaring like a firmed up Bollywood hero, 'It can't be helped bro! You have to start the show!' He could see my Ghoomar determination. So here was a chartered screening for the two of us. After half an hour of the start, a couple stealthily crept into the darkness and they went invisible in the darkness somewhere. They have their own stories to pursue dreams and desires born of curiosity about physical intimacy in a conservative society. So I'm a bit sad to share my personal screening of the movie as a love hotel with them.

All things apart, it's a lovely movie. And the best dialogue spoken by a broken former cricketer is: 'When the destiny slams the door shut in your face, you no longer open it, you just break it!' It's a lovely little story of things going wrong despite all your efforts that you could make. It's about staying alive and try to break the unjustifiably shut door through a blizzard of karma that defies all normal human limitations. And there aren't many who relate to such tapasya because it's a shortcutting consumerist world. You run crazy after support casts but why would you stop and try to imbibe some fundamentals of making your own destiny like a stone mason slowly carving a beautiful statue from a block of stone. Because destiny is now packaged and branded for us. We just shop for it. Pay and get branded as a successful man.

Abhishek Bachchan is fabulous, shows ample traces of the great Bachchan Senior. He carries enough depth to portray an unjustifiably dumped cricketing genius. Saiyami Kher as a cricketing prodigy who loses her hand in an accident, and her world alongside, looks realistic enough in her fight and make the unbelievable believable. It's a movie worth watching. And no need to repeat praise for the legend Shabana Azmi. She lights up the screen just by being there.

The Sage and the Sand (सांड)

 

Sage and Sand (सांड) combo..Kaka Maharaj is eager to graft an almost 10 feet tall banyan tree at a place of his liking. For this a huge pit has to be dug, almost 6 feet deep. And then an entire prickly keekar tree has to be dragged to put it around the newly grafted 🌳 to save it from buffalo and goats. We both struggled for an hour and then both of us crashed on the sand, sweating like pigs. 'Age and sadhna has wore me down. And books have eaten your strength prematurely,' he laughed. So we deemed it fit to take the help of Rashe Ram in carrying out the assignment. Rashe is really happy to sweat out like a pig. He is back to his favourite task. His brother recently tried to get him a job at a needle making factory. Rashe tried his hand at the task and found it funny and not worth his talent. 'They call that work! You just stare at the wire. Just look, look, where is the work!' he informs. Now he is happy with the spades and shovels. Kaka Maharaj has a strict protocol of grafting trees. The pit has to be very deep and an entire prickly keekar has to be cut and put around for protection. It took all three of us to give our best at the physical level to get a nod of appreciation from the saintly man. When we left him standing staring at the banyan, he called from behind, 'Tagore -- he calls me Tagore due to my bookish ways -- you are a good man. But try to avoid too many books. See, today they didn't help!' Beautiful takeaway from the episode: Kaka Maharj gets his mission fulfilled and can look at the banyan growing majestically from across the river; I get the great practical advise to use more of spade and shovels and less of books; and Rashe Ram is the happiest of the lot for getting two beedies of opium from Kaka Maharaj as a gift and a full bottle of liquor and snacks to go with from my side because he won't settle from anything more or anything less than this.

Half-baked National Security

How many times you have seen the houses being attacked and burnt—except during organized riots and bulldozing state actions—by the causes outside the houses? Very few I’m sure. Most of the houses fall apart from inner dissensions, strife, frustrations of those within.

How many countries you have seen falling apart under foreign attack? There are many such cases during the world wars. But if we compare the instances of countries falling apart and failing due to inner conflicts with those due to foreign direct attack, the former will outweigh the latter by such a margin as to turn it almost negligible. Just look at the countries that are burning like hell on earth. They are the places where the fodder of internal conflicts is raging like inferno to make it veritable hell on earth.

India fell apart in 1947. Was it due to the direct attack of Russia or any other foreign power? It fell apart because the house within was on fire. The society was battered, bruised and fractured. Countries and houses fall apart primarily because there are inner conflicts. The outside factors might sometimes take advantage of that but the primary reasons remain the inner ones.

On this ground we need to reevaluate the concept of national security. It’s always heavily tilted towards tackling the external threat. Meanwhile the internal bugs that eat the foundations of our social harmony and cohesiveness eat the foundations. Much as we are trying to secure our borders and launch geostrategic games to safeguard our international interests, we need to give equal priority to the bugs that fracture our society thus imperiling the internal security.

The politics of divisiveness and polarization is one such termite that is bound to eat into the foundations of any society. It’s merely like showering love and affection on the branches of a tree while allowing dangerous chemicals into the roots. Temporary rhetoric to make India a major power outside may look catchy and might win elections but it’s building up chemicals of divisiveness and when the negative consequences will come home to roost their bloody hatchlings, the tragic history of 1947 might be repeated.

So the planning of national security must have a freshly evaluated domestic component which attempts to integrate the Indian society in a systematic, strategic way. All that the politicians do in the name of winning elections simply add to the social strife. After this, the talk of national security becomes a half-baked concept and exercise to keep busy in foreign visits and bilateral, trilateral, multilateral talks. Just like the house is on fire while the head of the family is busy in holding parleys for setting boundary fences, parking space, residential committee affairs. That is important but why not douse the fire within. Why care only for shiny clothes? Let there be exercise to make the body strong also by increasing its immunity against divisive forces.

Nurturing fears, phobias and insecurities among different communities are nothing but virus for the body. You can have QUAD and all that stuff but that seems fruitless in the face of parts of India burning due to hate mongering by the politicians. When will we have a political party that fights elections over developmental issues? All the parties seem the same old rotten lot. Meanwhile they are just making the national security issue merely an international security exercise.   

The game of maya

 

Long before a painter mixes colors on his palette, the colors are already there in beautiful flowers, verdant vales, in the sky, on the cheeks of a blushing lass, in the eyes of a newlywed bride, on the wings of butterflies, everywhere. And so are the designs, shapes and patterns in the form of ripples on water surface, in leaves, petals, sand dunes, clouds, on a beautifully scaled slithery body of a snake, everywhere.

Long before a musician makes a composition, the notes, the music, the rhythm, the harmony is already there in sighing winds, merry breeze, swaying trees, chirping birds, roaring sea, rippling brooks, in the soft whispers of dusk, in the smiling cooing of dawn, in singing nightingales, everywhere.

Long before a writer writes a story, it’s already there in the journey of a river from a glacier to the sea, in the love and bonding of species for their little ones, in the roaring silence in the forests, in the cluttering chaos in cities, in the solitude of an isolated vale in hills, in the crying corners of hearts full of grief, everywhere.

It’s already there. We don’t add or subtract to it. We are just means to an expression of all that is waiting to be expressed in a brand new form. That’s the only way for the finite truth to adopt infinite engagement. But all this is the same old wine in brand new bottles. Just shaping and reshaping around the same elemental fodder, the primal energy. No wonder we call it maya.    

Childhood Skirmishes

 

We are just the carriers of whatever already exists in the super-conscious folds of mother existence. We are the tangible expressions of the so-called best and the worst and the scores of lukewarm concoctions of goodness and badness falling in between. Observe the game of survival among various species and you will see what we humans term as greed, fear, villainy, thuggery, stealing, almost everything is available in its impulsive, instinctive form in nature. So as humans I don’t think we invent all these. We are mere more tangible expressions of the same traits. That’s why they say hate the evil, not its carrier. But that’s for the Gods to be so evolved in their consciousness as to root out the evil, in a detached manner, by killing the carriers, without having any personal feelings against the carrier in carrying out the duty of dharma. Rama and Krishna did the same. They bashed up the bullies, thugs and villains of their times without bringing the element of hate and anger in their supremely stable mind.

All of us have our very own set of people who create in us the age-old elemental emotions of love, hate, anger, jealousy, greed, lust and many more. Yours truly is no exception to this. There was this big class bully who triggered fear, anger and feeling of revenge in me. He drew sadistic pleasure in intimidating the so-called brightest boy in the small village school. When you are up against a bully the first impulse is to counter him at his level, that’s force. He was a big boy. So I would go into fields after the school and do push-ups to add bulk of muscles to my not so impressive body. After a couple of months, my thin arms tightened a bit but the appearance remained the same. Moreover, it was affecting my studies so I dropped the idea. I accepted the status quo. If you cannot manage the bully, avoid him. So I put my tail under my legs and would change my direction. Nothing shameful about it. He was three times my size. Even Krishna ran away from the battlefield once and came to be called ranchhod.

Now that leaves us with the irritants whom we can manage. There was this foxy guy who would start seething with malice at my merest sight. I well remember that I hadn’t done anything at all to deserve that type of antipathy. Maybe it had to do something with the past life. Maybe he found me in bed with his wife in the last birth and still carried that well-deserved hate for me without any apparent cause in this birth. He was the kind whom I could easily carry like a piteous puppy and dump in the village pond at the filthiest spot. So naturally he was a back stabber. He would talk ill of me, all the time. Said that I never return people’s comics, cheated in the exams, stole money from my father’s pocket, had no understanding of topics so just crammed the books, and (the heights of infamy) had molested a girl.

I kept on avoiding the possibility of dumping him in the pond. Then one day I got enlightened about the funda of life. You have to deal with the rascals whom you can manage. So I tracked his movements and got hold of him in absolute isolation. I took him by his collar and kept him held against a tree trunk, his toes barely touching the ground. I will never forget that shriek of wounded pride, and uncontrollable anger. I got spellbound and kept him like this for almost a couple of minutes. Then I opened my fists and he dropped like a ripe fruit. He started running with the most alarming call ever to get me murdered. ‘I will tell uncle!’ he shouted. Father carried a very hard hand for errant kids like me. So I wasn’t left with any option. I outran him, got my arms around him and jumped into the pond with him. Then he got forced bathing. I would keep his head down in the water and when I drew him out, out of breath, shouting at him, ‘If you go and complain to my father, I would drown you here in the pond!’ I drew a forced promise that he wouldn’t complain. Thankfully he got the message. Then it became a tacit understanding that I wouldn’t use physical measures and he won’t use his lolloping tongue against me.

But I could see that he carried that malicious dislike for me. Of course I hadn’t given him any reason to dislike me a bit less. No need to repeat that I wasn’t a saint, nor am I now. We were growing up playing nonsensical cricket in the wasteland outside the village. I considered myself an all rounder cricketer. All his hate for me had taken a cricketing avatar now. I would be bowled out by the oldest crone in the village who hadn’t ever thrown a ball in her life. My delivery might be sent for a six by the oldest grandpa in the village who had never touched a bat in life. But when it came to him I suddenly changed. When I came to bat he would insist to throw the ball. Then suddenly I would turn into Virender Sehwag and would hit sixes of his spin bowling which he threw with a fast bowler’s action after running from the boundary. He would beat his head in desperation. When I bowled he would insist to take batting, indicating to the boundary, meaning he would hit me for a six. Then with him standing at the opposite end, I would turn into a fierce West Indies bowler. Mostly I would scatter his wickets. Maybe he was playing with too much hate and hate of course saps us even of the little talent we have. After one such humiliating tumble in the cricketing duel with me I saw him crying piteously behind a heap of bricks. That was the time I seriously doubted he may commit suicide one day, writing a long accusing letter against me, sending me to jail and grinning triumphantly from above in the skies. I wasn’t loving and kind enough to allow him to scatter my wickets voluntarily or allow him to hit sixes by bowling loose deliveries. I have never been that saintly. But the fear of going to jail because of his looming suicide allowed me to avoid bowling to him or batting against him. Then he would boast that I had started to fear him as a cricketer.      

A Shopper Dog

 

The village has enough space, at least at the fringes where it melts in the farmlands, for the liquor-lovers to sit on the ground after the dark and get done with a quick wining session. The dining part would be later covered by brawls within houses and outside. Usually they take it neat and clean. Sometimes, on special occasions, they get something to eat along. The dog that we have already mentioned always howls is seen coming with a polybag in its mouth. It seems to have taken it very seriously, holds it with a serious purpose as if it will help him in beating the pangs of isolation and alienation among the groups of stray dogs.

There is something inside the bag and a single knot holds the secret. The way it trots with its grocery in its mouth, it appears that the dog is sure the contents are nothing short of gold from the standards of the canine world. It seems a little bundle of longing, joys and pathos. Our pursuits are usually centered around the little bundles that hold the source of our caprices and hallucinations tied in multiple knots in the bags. So the dog has every right to take its possession very seriously.

It looks lonely but somehow magnificent with its object. The booty holder seems to be on lookout for a suitable place to open the parcel. With extraordinary delicacy, it sneaks under a tractor trolley parked in the street. With fertile imagination and concrete capacity, it opens the single knot after a spell of dexterous pawing and mouth pulling. The first item it draws out is an empty disposable glass. The second is a plastic case for food delivery. Its lid is tight shut and inside there is some curry redolent with spicy prospects. But the little disposable tiffin’s lid is beyond the water-mouthed maneuver of a dog. The retriever of this precious item is busy, giving it all in its capacity for this value-driven approach to add to the taste buds on its tongue. Meanwhile, a female dog comes stealthily from behind. Nicely gets into position and pees with meditative effortlessness on the canine shopper’s shopping bag. Some of her friends, looking hard-nosed and thoughtful, curiously stare from a distance.

His shopping vandalized, the offended shopper whines angrily, gives a spurt of howl and runs after her to teach her a lesson. Her friends then escape with the provisions to play with it and scatter the contents in the street to add to their part in the chaos around.

Grandfather's Googlies and Bouncers

 

Grandfather was named Pohker. Later they added 'Master' to it because he turned out to be a teacher, an unorthodox phenomenon among the work-brute peasantry, almost equal to a snake turning white among a den of black Cobras. The inspiration for the name being the Hindu month of his birth as per the lunar calendar. He was born on a date roughly falling in January, in the lunar month of Poh. The event must have taken place in the winters of either 1904 or 1905, he was never sure about it. Those were the times when they grew up watching and marveling at the rudimentary flying objects, the ancestors of modern planes. They called them something that would roughly come to be translated as cheel gadis or kite carts.

I would consider myself very lucky in one regard. I always thank God that Grandfather never played cricket in his life. There is a rigorous acceptability for hard words in peasant families. The peasants carry a heady attitude that prowls like the ramrod straight arm of the marching soldier. The addicted frenzy for rough words takes even the children in its grip. Habits are merely transferred across generations, after all. So the children in peasant families have tart tongues. Breaking the restraining ropes of etiquettes, they speak back upon their elders. With a strict guardian’s rigor, the elders have still tartier fists and kicks to sum up the equation. At least that was how it was while we were growing up. And still worse during the preceding generations.

This incident happened while I was a college-going rebel. Grandfather was considerably old at that time, in his late eighties in fact. He had a sharecropper for onions. Grandfather stocked his part of the produce in the barn, waiting for better market price. But the rains arrived before the better market conditions. The barn roof leaked. Now rottening onions will allow you to give any diabolical interpretation to the domain of bad smells. The stinking onions will eat your nerves. His preservationist plans gone haywire, he was required to sort out the rotten onions from the sound ones to protect himself from a total loss. So Grandfather needed an assistant to sort out the sellable onions from the stanching heap. I was forced into the assignment.

Rotten onions carry a swashbuckling charisma. The bad odor comes leaping and lunging to eat into your nerves and suck at the last traces of gentlemanly streak in you, if any. Grandfather, his olfactory senses dulled by the advanced years, got into the job with almost a curatorial instinct. But to me the pungent encroachment into my nostrils was darkly evocative. I kept grumbling my dissent as my hands ran through the gore of decaying onions.

I was sitting at a distance of say twelve feet from him in a corner of the barn. With a calculated familiarity with old-age born wisdom and patience, Grandfather kept his cool despite the whirlwind and spark of my igniting words of dissent. Probably he thought that even a single good, intact onion would be a nice bargain by keeping cool despite my waspish comments. He looked refreshingly restrained in this avatar.

Grandfather possessed strong-looking, lean legs and still steelier nerves. But very few good onions on one side and a big heap of rotten ones on the other, growing bigger with each passing minute, forced him to change gears in his demeanor. His hopes nosedived and temper rose. We were mired to our elbows by this time. He became aware of the enormity of his crop loss. So he did what he had postponed for so long. The cannon then burst to my igniting promptings. He hit back. He used his not so useable onions. The vollies were hurled. But his canon shots ended as monumental, metaphorical and spectacular failures. He missed all punitive attempts. Like an impish oaf I ducked, using all the experience and agility born of village games. The pulpy, squashed onions hit the wall behind me.

I can only thank God for the absence of cricket in Grandfather’s life, that there was no cricket when Grandfather also played games as a boy. Otherwise, his throwing skills would have found the target to good effect. Getting a stinking squashed onion on one’s face is too big a punishment for any crime. Isn’t it?

Little Nevaan's World

 

All activities are a playful game to Nevaan and everything a toy. A little heap of woolen socks nicely washed in fragrant detergent, for example. He is doodling on the wall. Childhood is always eager for a bear hug with sweet, little, innocent mischiefs. It’s a dreamscape entirely in a different dimension that unfortunately we forget as we grow old, as thinking mind makes blatant transgressions into the flowering treescape of pure heart.

As he doodles, he seems one of the utmost summiteers of unbridled creativity. His lines are snaking through the established shapes and designs to chart out fresher domains on the canvas of childhood. We elders are extensive on rhetoric but puny on content. But boundless is the childhood’s content. It’s like riding the wave crests glowing on a full moon night. So, as he rides his shiny waves, paddling his little doodle boat with a chalk piece, he hits the shores, so needs more space to keep rowing. He needs wipers to keep enough clean space for his compelling and hypnotizing artistry. The fresh laundry serves a better purpose than what it would do in shoes. The wet woolen socks clean the walls really well.

I am jogging in the yard but my effort to still stay in workable condition is nothing more than a cat and mouse game to him. He leaves the wall clean and catches onto the piece of play offered by a middle-aged man trying to stay in shape. I am the cat so I have claws scratching my back. I am yet to overcome the shock of being a mouse then I suddenly realize I am a thief because the game has suddenly turned into police and thief. I get pounded on my modest bum as he tries to catch the thief who is trying to sneak away from the arms of law. Then he is a boxer decimating an opponent who is just shuffling around the arena. Then all and sundry games follow that he can think of on the basis of all the information he has gathered from watching cartoon programs on television.

Sab gol mol hai

 A little frog is croaking and jumping in a little rain puddle. ‘Why is it dancing?’ I wonder. Probably it’s very happy, I get an answer as per our own equation of happiness. ‘But why is it happy?’ the skeptic inside again tries to get an explanation. ‘It’s happy because it’s dancing,’ this isn’t my idea. It has landed from a higher plane. Things just exist in an unqualified, unconditional state. The ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’ are mere cognitive consequences of the neuro-transmitters cascading in the brainy matter. Within its exclusive zone of happening, everything is cause and effect at the same time. Imagine two points on a circle. Each point leads as well as follows the other at the same time. And their journey can be endless on the circular path. Cause breeds effect; effect sires new causes. Creation sows the seeds of destruction; and destruction conceives creation. Everything is round about. ‘Sab gol gol’, as a mendicant friar exclaimed by the Ganges. A big sunya. Here nothingness breeds everything; and everything sums up to be nothing. It’s just a mammoth humming, buzzing, vibratory drama. Play your tunes well and dance like the little frog. To be happy and joyful is a matter of choice. Food, clothing, career, hobbies are what make one feel better and happy. So isn’t happiness a choice? Choose what makes you feel better. Now, who says happiness isn’t a choice? Beyond philosophies, simply choose what makes you happy.

Grandpa and his bull

 

Grandfather was distinguished as a methodical peasant. As a former teacher, he carried infesting zest for studies, so education counted as his first love. He may as well could be taken as a knight in shining armor, holding his educative torch among the peasantry that was blasphemously ignorant of the importance of the books and knowledge. His love for mathematics was evocative and fulfilling. When it came to farming, he carried the same calculated, measured approach as that of a teacher.

At that time, he was an energetic man in his seventies with the withered athleticism born of a life spent in making destiny by using both mind and hands. He still managed to handle a big ox in his cart. It indeed was a huge task to keep it well behaved. By the look of it, anyone could agree that it wasn’t forgettable mismatch between the bull and the owner. Grandfather would churn out intriguing novelties to keep his stamp of authority over the big beast. But despite all this, Grandpa looked a David controlling the Goliath. The beast was always well short of any adjustment and accommodation on its part to keep the cart on the track. However, the rough and rowdy beast could pull unbelievable load and that convinced its old carter to keep his faith in it. Grandfather was compelled to keep himself alert with his heightened guesswork to tame the bull’s starry tantrums.

Sometimes he had to pull the rope all the way to lie flat on his back on the cart to stop the behemoth. But most often even that would be found insufficient to reign in the beast’s chivalry and eccentricity born of its raw strength. On the way to the field, the bull obeyed within decent limits to Grandfather’s instructions. It moved with some traces of ease, with somewhat jerky consistency. On the way back, but, the urge to eat fodder in the barn was so high that the animal would put itself on autopilot. During those moments, Grandfather looked like a helpless pilot with the machine forcing itself into autopilot mode. Grandfather’s lynchings, shouts, shrieks and cuss words fell on deaf ears. However big the load to be pulled, it would run so freely as if the cart was empty. As a punishment, Grandfather would invite others to dump their fodder load on his cart but that proved ineffective as a counter measure as the cart had its load-bearing limits. The bull didn’t seem in a mind to consider things in terms of the load in its cart.

Positively, it was quite decent on autopilot. It wouldn’t barge into anything or anybody provided they kept a distance, so there was no serious mishap and Grandpa would ride his cart up to late seventies. After that he further went to the fields for another decade either on bicycle or hitching rides on other’s carts.

During his this particular bull carting days, once he was busy picking out weed from the wheat crop. I was given the task of holding the ox’s rope as it grazed on the field divides. I had the strictest instructions to hold the rope very tightly. The bull ate peacefully for fifteen minutes or so but then suddenly realized the allure of the barn fodder. I was then pulled by the rope like a little bundle of fodder.

There were just two options: either get dragged to the village or leave the rope. Thinking wise beyond my years, I let go off the rope. Grandpa was now running behind us. He made a desperate lunge at the rope trailing behind the escaping animal. He missed it given his advanced years. I had let go off the rope and that counted as a cardinal sin in the restrictive farming religion. The bull can be pardoned because it has no concern other than eating. But me letting go off the rope smacked of gross inefficiency from human standards.

Grandpa stood aghast as the bull smartly ran away to hit its muzzle in the barn a good two kilometers away. He seemed undecided over which direction to pursue as me and the bull took to opposite directions. He thought it wise to dispense a bit of justice on the spot itself, so followed me. I would have beaten him in run any day if not for that fall in the water channel. Grandfather gave his favorite palm-swash at the back of the head—well he feigned the strike in a way so as to scare us, but in reality it severally ruffled the hair as his palm went grazing past the nape—and I ducked. He missed it. It wasn’t his day that day.

Thinking wise with his mathematics-loving mind, he started slowly on the march back home, a distance of two kilometers, to get the bull back so that the cart and the fodder could be taken to the barn. I vanished into the countryside of the neighboring village. I knew exactly what to do. I postponed my arrival at the house till the arrival of Father from office at night. That was the time when Grandfather kept a low profile. True to the norms of their conflicting generations, both father and son kept a distance and muttered their dissension for each other only indirectly from a distance. A divided house serves as a chance for an opportunist like me. I silently sneaked in. Grandfather could just give cold stares at me. To rub salt on his wounds, I turned extra affectionate with Father that night, so that the last traces of taking me to justice on the next day would vanish from Grandfather’s mind.  

A perfect saint

 The least a drop of water in the sea can know is solely about itself. The most it can know and feel is about the entire sea. There is a potential for the infinite coded in the finite. The drop may feel it has boundaries just like you, me and all of us feel we have the boundaries of this body separating the self from others. This feeling is bred by knowing, the thought, the intellect, the ever calculating and segregating mind. Maybe this creation is helpless in knowing and feeling distinct identities at different points across its infinite spread. Maybe that's how it can exist. A pulse of uniqueness throbbing at each and every point. And universality merely a sum total of all that it contains. A drop is a drop but it's the sea as well at the same time. Our hand is a hand but the body as well simultaneously. An individual soul is a soul but the cosmic soul as well. 

Now the question arises why do we put so much emphasis on merging the individual identity with the universal one. Does a stone feel the same urge? Or a tree? Or even the animals? Why do humans have to be so crazy about merging their individual identities with an overall singular self? The reason is obviously we aren't comfortable with being what we are. Why do we run out of a house? Do we run out even if it is all cosy, safe and comfortable? Mostly we run out when it's on fire. Most of us are houses on fire. Ane the fire is born of the fodder of an untamed mind that knows how to keep us busy with imaginary fears and insecurities. Most of us aren't running to embrace the divine entity for sheer love. We are simply running from our own burning house and interpret it as love for god. We are simply drowning seamen clutching at the straws to survive somehow. And religions, scriptures, gurus, ashrams, gods, deities are the coast guards running with their life boats and life jackets to salvage us out of the choppy waters. How many people actually drown in the sea necessiating a rescue operation? That's a miniscule prospect. Mostly it's the choppy waters in the minds and we run and shout and wear life belts of faith, scriptures, meditation, ashrams and what not. Of course that helps as a kind of emergency measure. But that's what it's, just an emergency measure lying outside you. How long you will keep bothering the poor guys for rescue? They also need rest for their salvation. Aren't we stalling their liberation by keeping them anchored to the emergency rescue operations? 

Mind your own storms in the minds dear brothers and sisters. It's primarily about mental strength. And meditation and other systematic tools definitely help us. But they remain the poor old tools till we realise that ultimately i have to be comfortable with what I am. There is no standard for change, no brand image of holiness apart from a living being feeling comfortable in its skin like a tree does in a forest. There is no end to scriptures. Words are words. Infinite number of words have been added in the series, including mine as I do so now, but the same questions remain from the times when the words were written on palm leaves to the modern digital books. Have the questions been solved? No. And with artificial intelligence on the scene now we can produce so many words as to load entire moon with manuscripts. And even then the questions and quests will remain the same. Yes these help us in feeling busy. 

The most restful and eased up person i have come across in my life is Rashe Ram. People view him as a simpleton only because he doesn't suffer from the disease of untamed mind and its overthinking. He does what most of us do. He eats, he works to earn a decent living, he goes for a dump, has sufficient lust to pacify the hunger of three or four peasant women, he speaks as much as it's required to carry him through the day, he can lift weights, can work like a bull in the fields, knows the value of smile as he does whenever i come across him, knows the value of love, gratitude and respect. I treat him well and he is the most welcoming person i have ever met. He knows the value of money but isn't greedy. All he needs it to be just sufficient for his ration, beedies, booze, and just a little bit to buy small gifts for his girlfriends from the poor community. He knows the significance of conscent in a physical relationship. He told me categorically that his main principle in taking a tumble with a woman is that she has to propose it first, after that it's his duty to make her happy. And a few of them are very happy indeed given his male buffalo type libido. He has a few pairs of soiled clothes. He is just happy to cover his handsome African tribal kind of huge body. And each day he goes into a deep samadhi at night. He sleeps like a log,  a perfect dreamless sleep. I once asked him about dreams and the way he looked at me gave me sufficient clues to the fact that he doesn't have much knowledge in the domain. So isn't it a samadhi every night? Honesty is ingrained in each ounce of his cell. Leave him at the work site and come in the evening to look at his work. It will be as good as if you had been standing there over his head to monitor. I once put an entire assortment of extra household provisions in front of him and he just took a dented aluminium cooking pot, saying his mother needs it. He didn't even look at the rest of the items. Just like a cute sparrow taking a beakful of grain and flying off leaving the rest for other claimants. He knows what it means to love unconditionally. I saw him saving a little puppy from a big dangerous dog. He got bitten in the effort. Isn’t it saintlines? A being at perfect ease with himself and free from the choppy waters of uncontrollable mind. Does he need gurus and scriptures? They may spoil him at the most. And i think the infinite must be very happy over this finite part of Him. So Rashe is someone whom i consider to be near perfect saintliness in my little experience on the path. He isn't caught in the choppy waters of the mind.

A beautiful practical meditation for the old to dig real gold

 It's for those who are blessed to get old and see a gentler world through their dimming eyes. Grandpas and Grandmoms, this is the age to move slowly, look kindly, smile unreservedly, slow breathing, gentle movements. And of course dilution of the identity, of spreading, of becoming granddad and grandmother to everyone around instead of being defined as granddad or grandmom to a particular x, y or z. Spread your identity to merge with all. It will be a beautiful losing of the defined self. A lovely dilution, a cosy merging into a bigger dimension. And hopefully it will bring a painless, gentle drop like a ripe fruit.

The evil is within, not out there

 As long as you can spot 'ego' in others. Beware, it's a reflection of your own. How can you spot something outside that isn't already in you? It's a beautiful practice in self awareness. The moment you get any negative impression about someone, instantly go within yourself and look for the genesis, the source of that feeling. It's within you. The other person is what he or she is. The feeling is our very own. The others are just screens on which our inner self is projecting its stories. Only an egoic frequency in us will chime with a matching one outside ourselves. All judgements, all prejudices, all irritations, all anger, hate, jealousy they are all in us. If not for their roots in us we won't see their flowering in others. I have my own share of all this. But now i genuinely feel that the source lies within me. And this realization itself is a nice start.

Something on Kundalini

 Some talk on Kundalini based on my experience. 

https://youtu.be/DlZMnk4gbuM

Kundalini talks

 Link for my views on Kundalini. 

https://youtu.be/QmYe05Jx6q8

Physiological aspects of the myth of kundalini

 Dear esteemed readers, here isa link for my discussion about Kundalini. 

https://youtu.be/w7tlePtbEy0

 

A glimpse of the ultimate truth at dusk in my village:

On the infinite canvas in the sky, He, the ever-creative artist, paints one mural after the other. Gives a fleeting vision of the ultimate truth. Of transience. Of ever transforming shades. The creator doesn't hold onto the fleeting shades. He allows these to dissolve into newer and newer frescoes.

PS: Ravinder bhai has provided a higher dimension to my emotion through his translation. So cannot help sharing it on the main post with much thanks to him. He is rapidly evolving on the path of self realisation. May almighty allow him to stand face to face with the ultimate truth. Here goes the translation:

वह, एक रचनात्मक कलाकार के रूप में, आकाश के अनंत चित्र-फ़लक पर , एक के बाद एक चित्र बनाता है। एक अंतिम सच्चाई के रूप में क्षणभंगूर दृश्य देता है । क्षणिक भंगुरता का  । कभी रूपांतरित होते हुये रंगों का । विधाता इस लगातार बदलते क्षणिक रंगों को रोकता नहीं है । वह तो  इस घुलते हुये नए से नए बनते भीतिचित्रों की अनुमति प्रदान करता रहता है ----

आभार सहित प्रोफेसर रविन्द्र कुमार

Real Karma

 One of my favorite slokas in गीता. To be stable like a stone in the fluttering petals of life. To be stationary even while walking and running. To be silent even when speaking. To be the immovable chetna as the screen of mind plays the interesting film of life. To be the emptiness inside all that appears solid and filled up. To just 'be' among all the waves of 'becoming' surging around.  To be beyond creation and destruction, life and death even in a battlefield. To firmly hold the reins of the horses of sense perception as the chariot goes over the ground smattered with blood, gore and corpses of the mundane survival game. To be the spotless blue above and beyond the shifting shapes of clouds.To be alive and dead at the same time with each inhalation and exhalation.

Mother Kundalini

 The primal source of energy driving the primal matter...the ageless, infinite stream...the feminine half of the ultimate unity...the spark of cosmic agility...the force behind apparent creation and destruction...the Shakti holding the essence of Shiva...the spark of life inside a rock...the mover of galaxies...the exhaler through bursting stars...the inhaler through blackholes...and the divine cord that sustains the phenomenon which creates the sweet illusion of me being me.

A simple, little world of marigolds

 

My marigolds put up a brave face against harsh January to keep the banner of life and hope flying through their smiles. Now the beginning of February has better prospects for more smiles. They aren’t showy and fragrant like fresh jasmine or magically alluring like dew-laden rose, but still they have enough in them to bring some traces of halcyon days among this gloomy winter. With their virtues and valor, they lit up the corner in my garden with their subdued smiles. An almost sunless January couldn’t subdue their smiles. It’s a world where we have decimated smiles in the wilderness across the planet. Our civilizational pursuit of El-Dorado has seen us fluently frittering away the pulsating aesthetics that mother nature had decorated along our path.

A few flowers remain, that too in the little gardens of almost obsolete people who still love flowers, who still somehow try to hold onto the majestic sinews of mother nature. Somehow wading through the broiling, intriguing corridors laid across the monochromatic hues of the modern landscape, they carry a fistful of earth and a flower smiling on that. Their rarity means they have become a treasure in their own ways.

My neighbors peep over the walls pretty greedily. This little clump of yellow, maroon and orange marigolds is drawing them like nectar-hungry drones. Any day I prefer my marigolds for the honeybees only. It’s soul-pacifying sight to see the bees gathered over the table of frilled petals for a sumptuous sociality in lazy, hazy afternoons. The flowers open their hearts to the guests with an unerringly courteous smile. A month away from the spring, it seems like a thin ration line for the honeybees. But the human bumblebees want the nectar of God’s blessings by offering flowers at the feet of idols in the temple. It’s symbolic ritual by the way. I thing the Gods will be happier if you offer them your love and smiles and leave these few remaining flowers for the starved honeybees. Sadly, we have taken our materialistic pursuits to the extent that we won’t leave any corner for them at our house.

There seems to be an impulsive scheming going around. The consumer culture is galloping by leaps and bounds with intriguing ingenuity and flawed imagination. The consumer culture is compelling, thrilling and free-flowing in its hypnotizing sway over our senses. The Godly courts are under heavy bombardment of demands by the citizens. We are always seeking more of the consumer items that would give us an edge over our neighbors. And flowers come to our mind when we set out to appease the Gods to turn the tables in our favor.

Well, my simple request to people is please forget about flowers on the altar if you don’t have a place in your balcony, garden or whatever space available that can have a flowery smile. My little bed of marigolds is rapidly vanishing under the reaping tool of faith. I feel sad for the bees. Isn’t it better to have lively flowers at homes—that makes them temples in themselves—instead of dead flowers at altars?

Millet Musings

 

Different things mean differently to various parties. There are some grains of millet. Some sparrows eat seriously; some play and eat both; some quarrel and eat; and a few do all of this plus intimidating others. To the squirrel, it means temporary ownership of the property. It perches smartly among the grains and shoos away the sparrows. The doves don’t have much use for the tiny grains but they make noise and try to stamp their docile authority. The crow has no use of it but sits in surprise as the sole owner for some time before getting bored. The doves pick a few grains from the ground among this scuffle. The cat eyes all of them as lunch items from the nearby flowerbed. It’s a really hectic business. There is an understated simplicity in these tiny dollops of happenings momentarily surfacing from the ethereal vistas of the ultimate reality.

Grandpa's Cycle

 

Grandfather rode his archaic Atlas cycle till his late eighties. Apparently innocuous and toothless, he had a sharp mind and still sharper willpower to hit a century of years like his favorite Sachin did on the cricket field. His classic old cycle and his frail but athletic figure presented an epic profile when you observed them slowly moving on the dusted path of life. Both seemed steeped in antiquity but you would never fail to feel the delectable charm of a pair honed by vintage years. The cycle would give panting, creaking and groaning sounds in response to his slow, easeful paddling. Maybe his joints also creaked but any sound in that genre was shadowed by his metallic companion.

I remember my first lesson in cycling at the age of twelve. With me sitting on the crossbar in front, a fodder bale at the back, Grandfather heaved the cycle at the age of eighty or a bit more. To learn cycling first you should know how to properly occupy the passenger spot anywhere possible on the cycle. That was Grandfather’s advice as I tried my best to behave to the best of my capacity, juddering like an infantile passenger, trying my level best to score good marks in the art of sitting on a cycle. For a long time I was having his warning muffles above my head, ‘Don’t hold the handle too tight. Don’t try to steer it this way or that!’ Then we fell down. He plonked a hand-smash at my nape, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to try to steer the handle. That’s the rider’s job!’ he exposed my grand profanity.

Three years later, we were coming in the similar manner with the slight adjustment that my still older grandpa was sitting in front as I plodded ahead with much sideways shaking of the front tyre. Grandfather forgot his own lessons in the art of being a passenger on a cycle. Not a fault of his, the frustrating cascades of my lurching paddling were sufficient to make him forget his own set of rules. No wonder, Grandfather hardly trusted my ability to see us safely home. So I found him involuntarily trying to control the handle.

It turned into a motley mix of forces in opposite directions. ‘Grandpa you said it’s the rider’s job. Now why do you apply pressure to steer the handle?’ I breathlessly protested over his headgear. ‘Yea, but that’s only when the rider knows to do his job properly,’ he angrily countered. He followed his observation with an expert maneuver to avoid the cake-cutting ceremony of a fresh lump of dung on the way. I pulled in a different direction. The tyre cut through the dung heap as a celebratory cake-cutting of the event to follow. We were a heap of cycle, humans and the fodder bale. ‘Why did you pull it while it was my job?’ I complained, scared of the colossal discharge of his seasoned farmer’s reflexes. ‘Because you were not able to!’ he shouted and feigned to smash the back of my head with his teacherly palm but stopped short, possibly realizing his role in the little accident.

After that we simply walked to our home. As a punishment, I had to pull the fodder-laden cycle, a tough job for a slightly built boy. I was sweating profusely. ‘It gives a nice practice to manage the handle,’ Grandfather tenderly consoled. He was slightly limping after the fall. So I was lucky not to get his favorite palm-smash at the nape. He was but luckier—in not getting a fracture after crash-landing from a cycle in his mid-eighties. So that was a close save.

The illustrious past of a liquor-lover

 

His wife may give an outraged sniff at this, and rightly so, but the simple fact is that Munsi is the number one liquor-lover in the locality as of now. ‘He is of No Use!’ is the public and private opinion about him. He but is not comfortable with standing out as an ungentlemanly emblem and cheekily, vehemently in fact, denies this belittling charge. Cutting through the teeth and tentacles of the not so flattering status, he elaborates through his slurred speech how he was the most layak among his siblings during the childhood.

They kept buffalos and the calves born in poor peasant barns had very high mortality rates because there was hardly any milk left for them. A kind of tortuous starvation it was for the little ones. With the calf gone, the buffalo ma would have problems in lactation. Tau Dayanand, of grand vision and pioneering conscience, had a nice solution to the problem. So even though ninety percent of their calves perished, there hardly was lactation problem among the buffalos. The process of milking ran smooth. Munsi stood, crouched rather, as the proxy calf for all the buffalo mothers grieving the loss of their kids.

A special calf robe was devised for him. Made of dark, coarse blanket, it gave him a nice calf look as he was paraded first in front of the buffalo that walloped him with slimy affection and licked him profusely. He was then made to crawl to the udder side and mock a hungriest calf’s suckling at the teats. Getting to the pulsating vibrancy of motherhood, the buffalo would then get ready to fill the bucket with a magical sweetness of temper.

However, it wasn’t a cakewalk all the time. In bad mood, and smelling something fishy in the business, the buffalo would sniff at him loudly, prod him playfully, even pushing with a mild punishment, which is too much for a human child. He would get kicks also sometimes as the lactation phase entered the late stage when the buffalos deny the supply of milk.

‘I was the backbone of our economy during those famished days. If not for me, they would have starved to death!’ he proudly elucidates his credentials that are presented to nullify the ‘of no use’ status bestowed upon him. He then proceeds to guzzle the remaining liquor bottle with pride. 

Conquer your fears

 I sought the lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. [PSALM 34:4].

Well the key lies in peeling off the layers of fears, layers after layers. Starting from the plain fears of insecurities born of material world around us. Then of emotions and thoughts born of our relationships. Then the raw brutal fear of death. Observe your fear in its various avatars during the day. As and when possible. Keep an eye on your fear. This awareness of it, this realisation that it exists in you is its antidote. Under the light of persistent awareness the darkness of fear vanishes. Keep a stern eye over it. It's natural to get fearful many times during the day. Main thing is one just need to be aware of it. Getting fearful and not knowing, allowing it to get deeply embedded in your soul is fatal on the path of liberation. To know that you get fearful is itself a step on the path of liberation from sufferings born of our fears. Be aware of it. It should never be allowed to go unobserved once it has shaked your system. Keep a watch on it. And finally it will pack its bags and say bye to your psychosomatic system. Best wishes all you brothers and sisters on the path of conquering fears!

Shiva and His Naga

 Indian mythology is full of beautiful fables and interesting tales. Now they have very mystical meanings if we analyze them, interpret them as per the higher laws of the bigger dimension defined by high vibrational frequencies. I always wondered why do they depict Shiva with a naga, mostly a black cobra, around his neck. My individual interpretation is something on the following lines.

A snake is one of the most perceptible creatures on earth. Their entire body is in a position to perceive things to a level that is almost impossible to even imagine for we human beings. For example, suppose there is a snake in its hole and there is an earthquake thousands of kilometers away. Now there is a high possibility that the snake will perceive the tremors because it is so sensitive to even the softest reverberations coming across its body. We humans have almost a primal fear when it comes to snakes. Just think of a snake and you get goose-bumps. When we come across a snake it can perceive the fear in us. It can perceive and feel the change in our blood chemistry because when we get excited, get fearful our blood chemistry changes and the breathing pattern also turns abnormal. Now a snake is so perceptive and sensitive as to feel the slightest disturbance in the vibrational frequency and chemical change in anyone or anything around. Even if we don’t show any outer sign of being afraid, but are scared inside, it can perceive the biological or chemical changes in our bloodstream. It then reacts to that fear.

It is commonly believed that wherever there are meditating spiritualists the snakes really like their company. Maybe they feel comfortable among those higher energies emanating from the yogis. I have read stories about meditating ascetics in the forests and as their mind goes into that state of equilibrium, that equanimity of temperament, that balance of mind and the consequent lessening of fear, a snake (especially a cobra) really likes those waves of higher frequency.

In the neighboring village there was a realized soul, Narayan Maharaj. He left this body about 25 years ago, but people accepted him as an enlightened human being. He used to meditate a lot when he arrived in this area as a young wandering ascetic. He used to meditate in a little scrub forest in the countryside. In his memoirs he has clearly written that when he would meditate there was a black cobra that would continue moving in a circle around him and that continued for at least five or six years. So it proves that a cobra has a special liking for those who are spiritually evolved or who are on the path of spiritual evolution because there are certain biological changes as a result of the spiritual practices, which create a kind of divine atmosphere where there is no fear, where the snake loses its instinct of fear and biting. In this divine little space around the meditating yogi, in the spools of unqualified love, he tells us that he saw opposites melting and getting unified at certain nights—a snake and a mongoose playing like children; a little fox and a fearsome wolf playing on the grass nearby where he had set up his asana.  

I think the reason they show a naga around Shiva’s neck is that Shiva being a realized soul, a supreme  being who was hundred percent established within himself, so there was no fear and the snake would find him just like a warm rock during cold winter days, where it could relax since there was no fear, no change in that great yogi’s blood chemistry  or emotions or thoughts or energy field. As established as a rock he was. A live rock! So a snake would be near lord Shiva the way it would prefer to crawl on a rock. According to me, the main purpose they show Shiva with a naga is that he was a supreme personality that was hundred percent realized and established like an unmovable rock within his human body; there was no turbulence either in his emotions or in his body or in his energy field and a snake would be so comfortable around his neck as it would be relaxed on a rock during harsh winter days in order to soak the warm sunrays. The adiyogi established his chitta in all forms, to be like a living rock, a supreme fluidity inside a supreme stability. And with someone so blissful why won’t a naga fall in love. It abandoned its fears and biting instincts. And there we have our beautiful Shiva with a naga around his neck.