The last prehistoric kingdom on earth

Far away from the Indian mainland in the watery expanses of the Bay of Bengal lies the last outpost of the prehistoric times. A tiny place where the world is still exactly as it was 50000 years ago with a few minor exceptions. It’s a little island named North Sentinel Island, a little earthen dot in the lap of sea measuring 60 square kilometers in area with an approximately squarish outline. It’s inhabited by a prehistoric tribe called Sentinelese.

Let’s call it the Kingdom of Sentinelese. The prehistoric kingdom’s population is estimated to be about 50 to 200. Its seashore is roughly 50 meters wide. It’s bordered with littoral forests which lead to dense tropical evergreen forest. Its citizens are hunter-gatherers who use bows and arrows, collect seafood, wear bark strings on their handsome black nakedness and carry daggers in string waist-belts as a mark of confidence and courage. Their homes are poorly contrived huts having leaf-covered roofs. And in brush with the other-worldly civilization they scavenge for metal that washes ashore—to them it must be just like any other offering by father sea—to make tools, spears and metal-tipped arrows with it to go for hunting pigs on the land and making canoes for lagoon fishing. Imagine they must be thinking the metal is a produce of the sea just like fish!

There is no clue about their language. It’s primarily based on lots of gesticulations, exclamations and body movements. They are happy in their world and aren’t interested in interacting with the outer world.

Their history, in our chronological terms, starts in 1771 when an East India Company’s hydrographic survey vessel, the Diligent, observed ‘a multitude of lights…upon the shore’. It happens to be the old civilization’s first brush with history.

Wars and battles are defined in proportion to the level of upheavals they carry for the geography, lifestyle and population of a particular place, region or country. So the tiny isolated place with its tiny prehistoric population has a right to term its minute skirmishes with the outer world as wars and battles because they shake the very roots of their existence.

The Battle of October 1867: An Indian merchant vessel named Nineveh got stranded on a reef off the coast of the North Sentinel Island. The passengers and the crew landed on the prehistoric kingdom’s beach. On the third day as they lazily started their breakfast, there was an assault by a group of naked, short-haired, red-painted inhabitants. It was a confident breezy assault. The Sentinelese bowmen forced the ship’s captain to escape in a boat. The defeated head of the rival army was later rescued by a brig. The Royal Navy sent a rescue of party. They took all the survivors on board. Thankfully the stranded crew had somehow managed to repel the attackers with sticks and stones. There were no fatal casualties on both sides apart from cuts, wounds and sore throats born of constant shouting and cuss words. As the civilized man departed from their primitive shores, the Sentinelese must have celebrated their first victory over the enemy coming from the wombs of the sea in their strange vessels.

The Assault of 1880: It was more organized and target-oriented encroachment by the outsiders. Andaman and Nicobar’s colonial administrator Naurice Vidal Portman—who had his own administrative reasons to scout the island falling within his jurisdiction—arrived on the shore with an armed group of convict-orderlies, Europeans and Andamanese trackers from other indigenous groups who had been brought under the yoke of ‘civilization’. It was big and a well-organized army this time. The islanders fled the scene. So that would go as a shameful defeat in the annals of their history. After days of futile search they caught an elderly man, woman and four children. So that accounts for first mass kidnapping of its citizens—given their tiny population. Away from home and exposed to strange diseases, the elderly man and the woman died but the children somehow survived. The colonial administrator sent back the children with gifts from the other world. I’m sure strange myths and legends would have spun in the prehistoric kingdom based on what the children saw ‘outside’ and the things brought with them. Maybe certain stories, including strange Gods and demons based on these experiences, do the rounds among the tiny group. Or maybe particular descendants of those returned children would claim more privileged status in the tribal society because their ancestors fought their way back from the enemy from the sea.

The triumph of 1896: A convict escaped from the penal colony on the Great Andaman island using a makeshift raft. The lone runaway landed on the North Sentinelese beach. This time it was easy for the defending army. He was easily slayed. In the coming years they successfully accomplished arrow piercings and throat cutting with odd convicts who landed on their shore by sheer bad luck. I’m sure the Sentinelese bowman whose arrows killed these unfortunate convicts must have claimed a heroic status in local myth and folklore.

In between, various British colonial administrators landed on the beach—not with the intention to rout and kill them altogether because had they wished it, it could have been done easily—with the purpose of academic research and a keen sense of curiosity, almost like searching for a new animal species in the forest. The prehistoric tribesmen would retreat into the inner parts after shooting arrows and angry gesticulations. And when the research parties went back to the other part of the cosmos, i.e., the sea, they must have felt proud of their natural fortification and would have imagined that the enemy retreated because of the fear of their arrows and spears.

After independence, the Indian government declared the island a tribal reserve for anthropological research and studies. So they are protected under the Indian law. The Indian coast guard maintains an armed patrol to prohibit travel within three nautical miles off the prehistoric shores. During their protecting patrols the Indian coast guards have taken photos of naked men aiming arrows at them. The kingdom of the Sentinelese have every reason to believe that they are continuously warding off the enemy with their sticks, stones, bows and spears who dare not come onshore to meet them in a battle. Well, isn’t our imagination bound by the extent of our knowledge? They must be having regular watch posts and parties to ward off the enemy who are their protectors in reality. If not for them there would be intruders and a little party with automatic weapons would destroy the prehistoric kingdom. But this assumption that their strict vigil parties keep the patrol parties away must have given rise to a rudimentary system of army, posts, watch parties. What a way to keep busy on the bases of imagined realities! We too are doing the same, by the way—at a bigger scale though. Who knows a far more advanced and evolved form of life somewhere in the cosmos has declared us to be a tiny reserve to protect us and watch with amusement all the savage antics going on our small place? The UFOs might actually be the space patrols—like Indian navy patrols around the tiny island to protect it—to keep the intruders away. And just like the Sentinelese are happy in warding off the outsiders, we too are beating our chests with pride for having defended our place so bravely.  

The Battle of 1974: A National Geographic team approached the island to a make a documentary. The chief modus operandi was to give them gifts to earn their trust. As the motorboat broke through the surrounding barrier reef and entered their calm fishing lagoon the Sentinelese advance guard launched a barrage of arrows. The crew but landed at a safe beach. They left behind an interesting assortment of gifts—a plastic toy car to catch the fancy of some prehistoric kid, a live pig to make their mouth water, a doll to arise the fancy of some little girl and aluminum cookware to tickle the kitchen nerves in a woman. They responded very wisely. They launched a fresh barrage of arrows. One of the arrows hit the documentary director in his thigh. The man who had hit the director proudly laughed from behind a tree. Others speared the pig and buried it with the doll. But they took away coconuts and kitchenware. God knows what will they do with the utensils! But it was a handsome victory. The Sentinelese bravado had once again saved the motherland. The brave man who had injured the enemy commander must have been given extra coconuts as war booty that day. And these little-little victories against the small parties of outsiders must have acquired the bloody proportions of pitched battles won with lots of efforts and bravery. I’m glad that they aren’t aware of million strong armies, automatic guns, artillery, tanks, fighter jets and nuclear weapons. Our reality seems to be framed on the basis of what we ‘don’t’ know. 

Famed anthropologist TN Pandit is known for his pioneer work among the indigenous tribal groups scattered over various islands in Andaman and Nicobar. Many hitherto untouched tribals agreed to his gentle, friendly touch. He slowly, silently crept into their little world and danced exuberantly with bare-breasted Jarawa tribe women. He acted as a scholarly bridge between the so-called the civilized and the so-called primitive man. The untouched tribals would dance with him, take off his clothes, examine his anatomy to find similarities between the outsider and and themselves. The Jarawas slowly got assimilated in the society. Then Jarawa women started giving birth to the babies of the settlers. They picked up clothes, dropped their bows and arrows (and their raw pride and freedom with it). Their raw dignity and freedom was gone. Many were turned to beggars or mere showpieces for the tourists to marvel at. But these are the spin-offs of modernity. The earth has to turn a mono-culture, and primitiveness chucked off from everywhere. But at least it is preserved still in a little island far off in the Bay of Bengal.

Mr Pandit led many academic attempts to connect with the Sentinelese between 1967 and 1991. He knew how to connect with the aborigines and had won the trust of many raw, animalistic tribes of the region. But the Sentinelese were the toughest to approach. They always wanted to retain their prehistoric ethos. Mr. Pandit made several friendly expeditions in 1980s and early 1990s. Maybe the fair Kashmiri Pandit definitely carried some raw prehistoric fragrance in him which allowed him to win the trust of many other indigenous tribal groups. He would leave gifts on the shore. It was a shaky love-hate contact. Sometimes they would throw away the gifts into the sea, shouting, aiming arrows, flashing their genitals at the boats reading them through telescopes from a distance. Sometimes they waved and took  few of the gifts and leaving the rest. Sometimes they turned their backs to show a defecating gesture. It was a kind of no-welcome gesture; maybe a type of message that we take a dump at your civilized society. Sometimes they would start swaying their penis, as if proclaiming their utter freedom, thus challenging the civilized man to do the same.

Then arrived the first soft brace of the old with the new. January 4, 1991. Perhaps it would go down as the ancient society’s brief truce with the enemy. The first touch! Very tentative though. A young woman named Madhumala Chattopadhyay was part of the scholarly expedition. Maybe they found a woman’s presence assuring. She seemed to have convinced them that there was no danger. As a symbol of ceasefire a Sentinelese woman fighter pushed her arrow down on the beach sand. A man followed by burying his weapon on the beach as a symbolic gesture of holding fire. They approached the scholarly party without their weapons. Coconuts were distributed hand-to-hand, the outsiders in their boat and the islanders in the sea walking towards the boat in neck deep waters. It turned a gift, not a charity throwaway like earlier. Maybe Mr Pandit and Ms Madhubala appeared to them having saintly touch. The islanders must have named them favorably as some reincarnation of their deities. Further expeditions without Mr Pandit were not met with friendly bearing. Maybe they still remember Mr Pandit as a friendly man from across the seas. Then the government of India closed all voluntary approach methods to reach out to the islanders, leaving them in peace to preserve their prehistoric ways. The Sentinelese army must be basking in pride for having finally defeated the enemy from the waters because they no longer bother them.  

The Sentinelese must have a name for their world, for their kingdom. That isn’t known to us. But for our convenience, an official surveying party fixed a stone tablet on a disused stone hearth to declare it a part of India. Maybe a far more intelligent and developed life form has left a similar tablet claiming earth as its territory, while all of us quibble on the small place like the Sentinelese must be doing, thinking all their existence is guaranteed because they can fight with their arrows. While in reality maybe we are merely left as a little prehistoric dot of earth for academic amusement and anthropological interest by a far-far advanced life-form.

Sentinelese expedition and exploration of the outside world (1981): On August 2, 1981, a cargo-ship named MV Primrose laden with chickenfeed from Bangladesh and bound for Australia ran aground off the island. After a few days the captain gave a distress call for firearms. It was the first organized takeover attempt of an enemy object by the prehistoric tribe. About fifty islanders prepared their boats to take over the ship. They launched the attack. Luckily strong winds deflected their arrows and prevented their canoes from reaching the ship. The thirty-one member crew held off the invaders with axes, pipes, flare guns and lots of cuss words and abuses which come very handy during wartimes. A civilian helicopter evacuated them after a week. The tribal army must have felt jubilant seeing the enemy flying away scared of their arrows in their strange vehicle. The shipwreck lay about 90 meters from the shore. Of course now it was a war booty item for the aborigines. They triumphantly got onto the abandoned vessel and scoured it for metal pieces to upgrade the next version of their modern army, the metal-tipped arrows and spears. Far away in the outside world, a dealer won a contract to dismantle the ship. This work would last for about 18 months. Maybe at this period of time the Sentinelese army was led by their bravest general so far. He must have acquired cult proportion in the society because under him they were going out to face the enemy instead of defending from their fortress. Two or three days after the work began, at low tide, the contractor saw three canoes bearing around 12 Sentinelese brave-hearts about 50 feet from the shipwreck. He offered truce over the war booty. As a signal of adjusting their claim on the vessel, which they thought to have won after a battle, he offered bananas. The brave soldiers accepted the tribute of submission and came overboard and began to take what they thought they had won after the last battle—the smallest pieces of metal scrap to modernize their army, leaving the rest for the enemy from the sea. They visited twice or thrice every month while the dismantling work progressed.

The doomsday of 2004 (Tsunami): It must have been their day of pralaya when the existence burst and a new phase started after it. There were tectonic changes to the island. It got enlarged after merger with small islands. The sea floor got raised by 1.5 meters. The coral reefs were exposed to air thus destroying their fishing lagoons. The government of India carried out aerial expeditions to provide help and assess their casualties. There must have been deaths for sure but many had survived as viewed by the flying choppers. But the survivors turned hostile and aimed arrows at the reconnoitering helicopters. I think they imagined this catastrophe as the handiwork of the enemy from the sea, who having failed in all its earlier attempts to defeat them now launched some watery attack to annihilate them.

Taking revenge on the enemy soldiers (2006): A fishing boat carrying two Indian fishermen drifted off into the shallows near the Sentinelese kingdom. They were killed, their bodies put on stakes facing the sea. It was a stronger message for the outsider enemy. They must have thought that the enemy was trying to snoop on their debilitated strength after the Tsunami strike. A helicopter sent to take away the bodies was pelted with arrows. They won’t take any chance with the enemy anymore.

The war again organized religion (2018): Chau, a trained American Christian missionary entered the prehistoric kingdom illegally without any permit from the kingdom’s unseen protector, the state of India. He paid money to the local fishermen to take him 500-700 meters off the Sentinelese coast and then continued alone in a canoe. On his first approach he received a hostile reaction to his gifts. As his diaries would later elaborate, another time they received him with a ‘mixture of amusement, bewilderment and hostility’. He sang worship songs and tried to converse with them in Xhoba (some basic tribal language spoken among the so-called civilized tribes in the Andaman and Nicobar group). They would giggle, and made high-pitched sounds and gestures. His last letter says that when he tried to give fish and other gifts, a boy shot a metal-headed arrow which pierced the Bible he was holding in front of his chest. What a clear statement! We aren’t for any organized religion here! The fishermen looking from a distance last saw his body being dragged on the shore. An attempt to retrieve his body was aborted. I think the graves of the few people like him must be serving as the proof of annihilation of the enemy who came to conquer them.

This is the history of the last prehistoric kingdom on earth. I think that’s how myths, histories and legends develop at a larger scale as well on the earth in its various parts. Our assumed reality seems to be framed by our ignorance.

Reading the book of life

 Passing through a poor locality in Delhi is always revealing. To feel gratitude for whatever God has given us, we ought to visit slums and pavements crowded with the homeless people. Then we realize how lucky we have been in receiving all that God has given us. To feel gratitude for whatever bodytype God has made us, thus blessing us with a vehicle to complete this phase of journey, sometimes visit the hospitals and see the sick and diseased. It helps us in feeling thankful for whatever Almighty has gifted us in the name of physicality.

 Alittle kid, barely 7 or 8 comes pulling the rickshaw carrier. Empty plastic cans at the back and the little lad just going almost half way down on each side to complete the paddling circle. More child bread earners washing dirty plates by a kulche chhole stall. It is early in the morning and instead of getting breakfast before going to school they are earning their bread. Littlest of kids taking a bath at a public tap after a late night stint at the eating point. Childhoodhad has withered in them. They are old before they realize. These are dhaba boys. Getting their skins hardened with heartless, unsympathetic, antisocial strains...fed by the scorns and abuses of their merciless masters. Watching them makes us feel so privileged in having parents that saved us from all this experience, who gave us schooling, shelter and made us free enough to pursue our journey. Watching the miseries around should open us to kindness. But it should open the floodgates of gratitude also for whatever we have received just by being born in relatively better circumstances. If you have a personal jet, watch people who have just cars. If you have a car, feel the struggle of those having just bikes. If you have bike, feel the test someone is going through in just having a bicycle. If you have a bicycle, see the homelss walker who hasn't anything at all. If you ever feel sorry for your poor footwear, feel the pain of someone who hasn't got even legs to wear even the poorest of a footwear. And millions will die today over the globe. So feel privileged to have this sip of life under the fresh sunshine. Gratitude is very very important. Without it we cannot groom self-love. And without the foundations of self-love we face a lot of challenge in building the citadel of love for others. All of us know it theoretically but we forget it easily. To make gratitude an essential element of our daily life we ought to look below as well, daily, to make it a habit. Look above daily to remember the impermanence of life by watching the shifting and melting clouds. And daily look below to feel gratitude for great boons we have received during this interval between birth and death. There are messages written around. Ahha, the masterbook of life! The codes of ultimate reality are written so clearly for everyone to read. Happy watching above and below--daily.

The Lightness of Being

 Who doesn't appreciate the genius of Leo Tolstoy? Through his beautiful writing the sagely author continues to inspire millions even after a century. Undoubtedly a great human being. But his wife had a diametrically opposite view of him. To her he was the same normal, almost oppressive, husband. Does it mean that all of us are essentially the very same poor humans after we enter the privacy of our room, shed the clothes and behavioural bearing? We don't just cover ourselves with clothes. We wear multiple layers of thoughts, attitude, behavior, calculating mind, scheming intellect and maneuvering to maintain an image. This is a subtle clothing. Hardly visible like the clothes we wear. But this is the primary steel armour that we carry with us. Maybe it's necessary to wear it to survive in the struggle as a human. We have our jobs, duties, responsibilities to fulfill. There we need this subtle steel armour. But we get habituated to keep it on us, always, day and night, even within our walls. Its weight crushes relationships. No wonder we feel tired even while lying on the bed. Its weight crushing the soft petals of relationships. It challenges our own essential faith. The armour is still sitting on our chest as we enter the domain of our intimate people where we are supposed to be open, free and light. So why not go for complete disarming at least within the privacy of our rooms, in our little intimate group, with our closest dear ones? Join them as a very light being, almost naked like a baby with all your vulnerabilities, flaws, fears, insecurities, anxieties. To feel very light, to be disarmed of the heavy battle shield, to almost float in your secure, personal bubble. Drift like a cloud with your vulnerabilities within the security of your cosy bubble. Lay bare your soul open. Lift the iron chains from it. And just be. Becoming something is a necessity I know. But put it on as you come out. But stay light, open, honest, frank, see-through among the people you trust. Share your pain. Talk your miseries. Shower your ecstasy. Offer your smile. Show your tears. Present your kindness. Drizzle your pure emotions. Then one can feel the soothing solitude within the safe bubble. Make your little capsule of solitude and peace among all this meaningless crowd and intimidating chaos. It can be done anywhere with faith, love, care and share among the chosen few. And float lightly in it, like a balloon drifting to the ceiling fan's wind within a safe room. If we make it with a Lightness of Being, it's possible. Do it with vulnerable gentility, disarming smile, openness and baby-type nakedness after shedding the steel armour of 'becoming something' that we need to wear once we come out of our cosy bubble. Then go out with your behavioural clothing and perform the essential tasks and come back, put off everything and enjoy the Lightness of Being. This is the little workshop in the art of the Lightness of Being. The enlightened sages are the ones to whom the entire existence becomes such a cosy bubble. The entire humanity becomes merely an intimate, cosy bubble. They float freely without the need to become something. They shed the steel armour forever and turn baby soft. No wonder they float so restfully. That is a high degree in the university of the Lightness of Being. We the common people are in the schooling stage of the same stream. We have to pass the higher and senior secondary school exam in the art of the Lightness of Being. It's a low grade exam. It doesn't require research scholarship. It's a tiny assignment--to enjoy the Lightness of Being within a carefully nurtured little bubble. But believe me it carries the taste of the cosmic bubble. Trainee fighter pilots learn and practice in simulated indoor environment and then fly freely in open skies. If we learn the art and craft of the Lightness of Being in our tiny intimate bubble, maybe one day we will be floating free among the vast expanses of this existence.

The rainbow in a bubble

 There is hardly any qualitative difference between what goes in the sky above and what happens on the ground below. The sky shifts. It moves, it sings, it moans, it sighs. Sometimes it's relaxing and pristine blue. The other time it's gloomy, dark and dreary. Sometimes it cries and sheds tears in a torrential rain. The other time it sheds gentle tears of joy by drizzling over desert sands. Sometimes it floods with a fury. There is light, darkness, shifting shades over clouds, clouds drifting and reshaping, clouds melting, clouds forming, clouds vanishing, winds, breeze...a flow. There is something of everything in it. The same happens below...as if it's merely a reflection of the sky in the pools of earth below. There is sadness, joy, victory, failure, meetings, partings, smiles, tears, making,  unmaking, falling in love, falling out of it, birth, death...an endless shifting. The sky leaves a deep imprint of its ever-shifting shades on the earth below. See the clouds melting in the sky, watch them daily. It's such a big message written on the massive billboard for us to read and remember. But usually, we are seeking needles in the hayrack and hardly lift our eyes to read and remember the message. Don't the clouds bloom, get colors, travel and melt? They shower earth with their melted self, become flowers, perish and again become vapors. This bubble has to burst anyway to take another form. But before that it has to be. It has to live. It has to be tossed around by chance winds. It has to seek its way, its course. It has to do justice to its existence. And then it has to happily and lovingly give way to new shapes. But it can always remind itself that it was, is and will forever be in the shifting shades and shapes.

A wooden touch or soft brace of life?

I remember a talk I had with an elderly American Buddhist woman at Mcleodganj many years ago. A very ardent follower of Buddhism she had spent decades in India. The outer bearing, including the religious clothes, was pretty impressive. But she looked very stiff, cautious, even stern. I felt it was like someone going on the fathomless path with lots of calculations; following the principleless path with lots of principles. She stiffened even more as we shook hands. I could feel it clearly. It was a wooden hand that I held. I tried to convince myself of the loftiness of her soul because she had been on the formal path of religion for so long. But I couldn’t feel the warmth, kindness and smile from her persona. Maybe these emanated and I was too coarse or not sensitive enough to feel that.

I can still clearly remember the glint of pride in her eyes when she told me that she had spent years in sadhna and had been a celibate since the age of forty-five. She had spent a few years at Pune as well. The mention of Pune instantly brought great Osho to my mind. ‘So did you stay at Osho commune at Pune?’ I asked innocently. She recoiled with horror as if it was an insult to her hardcore, austere tapasya. She shook her hands and head in a vehement ‘no’ as if staying at Osho’s place would have meant a sin. O thou great Osho misinterpreted so much for all your elaboration of the naked truth as a means to nail down the illusions! Before mentioning Osho I should have remembered that she had been a celibate for at least two and half decades. It was the crest jewel of her path of renunciation. But the great Osho accepted the presence of sex in the human body and talked of its transformation instead of suppression for everlasting joy. So no wonder the celibate sadhak jumped like a rocket at the mention of Osho.

Well, sex or no sex, if you turn wooden and suspicious even at the age of seventy by the touch of a man of the age of your son it simply means you have missed a crucial link to liberation. If the suppression of sex has stiffened you, made you austere, not given you a genuine smile, sweetness of temperament or ease of being then one may need to revise the fundamentals of one’s faith.

In contrast I remember a woman from a neighboring village. A very beautiful peasant woman famed for her illustrious beauty and untamed sense of freedom regarding the basic instincts. The lore of her beauty and its exciting spin-offs had reached my ears. There were far more happy and joyful men, and very few jealous ones, having shared the unbridled sense of feminine charms flowing from her persona. There was a joke that she would occupy the best chambers in heaven for having made so many men happy.

Mother would usually won’t allow us to go into the fields taking all the responsibilities on herself. We the pampered ones had the easiest task in the world—studies. Mother must not have been feeling well that day otherwise I won’t have been there in the fields to get fodder. I was struggling to load the bale of fodder on my bike and failing at it miserably with my bookish hands. The beautiful peasant woman knew me because we shared fields across the village boundary. She walked quickly from a distance. That was the first time I saw her from close quarters. Her famed beauty was no exaggeration. She came smilingly and with a singular effort put the heavy fodder bale on the bike and tied it firmly without even putting a littlest strain on her face. What strength! She must have heard about my bookish ways. ‘These soft hands aren’t for such rough work masterji!’ she took my hand in her rough, peasant woman hands. I will never forget that touch. It was humane, strong, kind, palpable, supportive and understanding. And that friendly smile. And that naughty glint in the eyes. That color of mellowness and acceptance of life in its basic terms on her face. That strength of character in her strong farming hands. ‘And this is the woman the critics malign so much for her sexuality!’ I thought. Shyly I thanked her. She laughed and walked away to continue with her work.

The wooden touch and a full of life, sympathetic touch! The sum and summary is that beyond the debate of sex or no sex, it’s the warmth of our touch, the kindness in our eyes, an accepting smile on our lips that’s more important. If celibacy leaves you wooden and stiff even in old age then I don’t think the Gods would love you for that. And if full compliance with the basic instinct gives you a kind heart, genuine smile and ease of being then Gods won’t hate you for that.

Since we are talking about the touch of hands, it won’t be misplaced to mention His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s touch. When you hold His hand it seems the softest like a new-born baby. You don’t feel the slightest rigidity, tension, dis-ease or stiffness. It’s almost like a soft brush that a gentle breeze has with a rose petal. You feel divinity in that soft touch. Long live His Holiness!

The full game of life

 I don't exactly remember the name of that plant. But when we chew its leaves during childhood they tasted very bitter. But the bitter taste was just half part of the game. The other half presented sweetness when we drank water after chewing the bitter leaves. It was good fun. At the end only sweetness would linger in the mouth. Bitterness transformed into sweetness by water.

Bitter situations are simply half part of the game. If we keep ourselves limited to the bitter part of the game, we would turn a grumpy, cynical and cranky person. It means we have lived just one half of life. Like a passive stone mutely weathering due to environmental elements. But if we take some steps to be a part of the other half and drink the water of patience, gratitude and understanding then sweetness follows. Then bitterness becomes a prelude to sweetness. It then becomes a full life expected of a human being. Then we are a flower blossoming by absorbing heat, rain, storms and dust and transform these into a sweet smile. 

Life will keep throwing its bitter situations. That's its nature. If we just react to these situations we become a sour, unhappy person. But if we respond by taking cool sips of patience and gratitude then sweetness defines our persona despite all the bitter experiences.

Dancing parrots and sulking crows

Have you seen beautiful, colorful birds courting their lady love? They dance, spread their amazing wings and tails in fabulous patterns and let out the best of vocals to attract and woo their lady love. With a negligible exception it’s the males who go into a great eye-catching show in courting the female. There is a thrower of charms and there is a receiver of those charms. So much for the scheme of this polarity!

That amazing range of play-acted maneuvers (under the impulse of hormonal throw of energy) is not what the male persona is under ordinary circumstances. They are an exception; just an ecstatic throw of mood and attitude to catch the female’s attention. These are momentary sprouts. They don’t define the normal traits of a common bird in its day-to-day life. For the rest of the time they are simple birds, doing normal things just like any other bird of the species. And I don’t think the female birds mind that. They are lucky that they don’t have memory like women to remember all this dancing.

The restless male energy is always looking for rest in the silent pools of receptive female energy. She too is looking for the wearied runner to walk home and rest in her receptive folds. It gives a meaning to her life. It fulfills her. It saves her from the restless void, the procreative emptiness brimming with the potential to manifest and create new life forms.

There is hardly any difference between a colorful bird pirouetting in dandy mode using the tail and wings and singing best songs and a man wooing a woman. At the peak of hormonal storm he jumps to fulfill all the columns of female expectations. That’s natural. But that’s not what he is in normal state. He is a normal guy otherwise.

Under the patriarchal system the man has convinced himself to be far superior to the woman. It’s factually very-very incorrect. There is a deep-seated acceptance of his inferiority and to cover that the system of patriarchy was built up. And to justify his patriarchy construct, he is trying his best to fit in the chauvinistic slot from as many angles as possible. When he covets a woman and goes into the process of wooing her, he adopts an emergency ploy to appear the best in all slots. He is helpless and it’s all about bright colors, bright dance, bright song, best attitude, best look, best behavior, best hobbies and much-much more. Truth and genuineness take a backseat. Falsehoods creep in long before we even realize. And where falsehoods creep in, miseries entail in good measure.

O thou poor dancing bird and the still poorer man! But a lady bird can be duped. The dandy can afford to be normal after the deed is done. But not so with a woman. She has a brain and a nice memory. She remembers the entire range of colorful somersaults that you have been doing to get her hand. And that becomes her benchmark to assess you. Now how long you will maintain the crest of your best version? Of course you will come down to a normal self as the fever comes down. Then you appear such a poor guy, almost a cheater who pretended to be what he isn’t usually. I think a woman can be more forgiving if she accepts that the poor guy was simply doing a wooing dance like a bird in the Amazon forest. He is simply throwing his message to have a partner. The content of the message isn’t what he is in reality. It’s just a catchy title to draw attention, like an eye-catching book title and its cover. The title might appear attractive but the story is usually mundane, very-very common.

The bird cannot be dancing forever at the best of its colors and the best of songs. Naturally it will become a common bird after the energetic storm is over. The beautiful parrot turns a boring crow. But brother, why did you try to be what you are not. You gave your best in wooing her and that raised the bar of her expectations. And expectations breed disappointments. She expects you to be the very same beautifully cooing and majestically dancing parrot. She is right in sulking over the dull crow cawing boringly by her side. 

The irony is that we get habituated to take the wooing dance as the primary characteristics in an individual, i.e., we take the catchy title as the story itself. Isn’t that a mistake? The excitement and thrill that one gets out of the bird dance is addictive in nature. We need to learn to be comfortable with normal people around us. We need to give respect and love to the ordinary humanity. Sadly we hold high expectations from people. To fulfill those heavy expectations he is all valor, grace, dignity, bravery, stability, unqualified giving and masculine handsomeness; and she is all receptivity, feminine grace, support, acceptance, care and share. Both sides trying at their best. Effort beyond a limit breeds artificiality. This artificiality then ends up in stumping each other. After all, how long will one keep jumping at his/her best? Ultimately we have to get grounded. The boring normalcy sets in. The dreams vanish. The colors fade. The songs turn to ugly croakings. Angels turn to dark angels. Then both sides part ways. Look for new partners, expecting the thrill of wooing exception to be the everlasting normal. No wonder most of us are a series of broken relationships.

That’s why it’s advisable to be just normal, the real self, even during the phase of courting a partner. Stay as you normally are. Honesty is a highly undervalued trait in the modern society. But primarily it’s the sole trait that decides whether we are carried as a miserable junk into the cemetery or a peaceful corpse looking at whom not many people get scared. I remember the face my mother after she had left her body. She looked angelic and so beautiful in her eternal sleep.

If someone accepts you with your dull colors, weird dancing and hoarsy songs that relationship has a better chance of survival for a longer time. Truth always serves well in the long term. It may appear to let us down in the short term, giving us little-little disappointments and let downs. But it saves us from major collapses in the long term.

One may wonder why this guy is preaching about relationships. Yours truly tries to speak from his own experiences. Experiential knowledge is very near to truth. I did my own set of fabulous dancing for seven ears—just once in life and with one person only. I can feel myself almost boasting about the fact. It simply means I have to clear more webs from around my eyes to see more clearly. It’s wise to learn from one’s experience.

Using my creativity I built up a grandiose avatar, almost like a shining angel, and became the crowning prince in her big eyes. In flying too high I burnt my wings. So couldn’t afford to fly anymore after seven years. When I landed on the plain of normalcy she felt cheated on witnessing my normal colors and mundane songs; her dreams broken, her shining angel merely a common person like anyone around, no longer able to maintain her beautiful dream. There was a normal crow cawing around her. But I’m happy that these are the days of women empowerment. Confident, self-standing, glamorous, with a smile to kill and eyes that could intoxicate a dozen men with a single glance, I saw her flying away with a beautiful swan who was flying on seventh heaven to fill up the slots of her expectations. ‘You idiot, you too will fall one day!’ I cawed from the ground. Even as a pretending spiritualist I am happy that he too fell within a couple of years. I take it as mark of victory for having flown more than him. I’m not bothered about other men but at least I viewed him as a rival.

Normal cawing has its own benefits. It taught me poetry. There were emotional storms in the tea-cup which I amply cashed by forcibly trying to be philosophical in nature. Lost love, or for that matter any type of loss, is invisibly preparing you for many other gains in many forms. There comes a day when you actually feel gratitude for those losses for what you late became. You realize that those losses were meant to make you what you are today. So I respect the past without any grudges, but I’m far happier with my present and give due credit to all the experiences I went through.

I also realized that maybe I had punched far-far above my weight in wooing and actually winning her. But how long you will keep the arena clear of rivals if the girl is such a head turner that there are at least a dozen men dancing to her tunes with their tongues out? To match her big aura I too had acquired larger dimensions like a porcupine spreading its thorns to look more imposing. All said, as a man I take full responsibility for creating those expectations. And as Buddha said expectations breed sufferings—at one end at least, if not both. Most importantly, I’m happy for her. Why should men have all the fun? The women have been subjugated for too long and they have lots to cover up in enjoyment and normal fun which we the men have enjoyed so far.

Thankfully, I seem to have spent all the wooing fuel in one go. Wise people don’t need to repeat the same experience to get the same lesson again and again. As far as beautiful girls are concerned, I am able to impersonally appreciate them like a flower, with a pleasant detachment. I connect more to old women with their motherly aura and saintly faces carrying the majestic wrinkles of age. Maybe losing my mother is a far bigger weight on my soul than losing the woman I loved.

These days, while watching the colorful birds dancing and singing in the documentaries to woo their ladies I become very conscious, even embarrassed. I cannot blame them. All of us are birds in the same way. But I always wag my admonishing finger and mutter, ‘Son, take care! You will have to pay for this!’

And now on a serious note. Retain your simple colors, ordinary steps and normal songs while wooing a partner. If he or she accepts you with your normal stuff that’s well and good. If not, give it a damn and laugh at all the artificially jumping lover-birds—ranging from birds in documentaries to the people around you—and go giggling about this funny game.

A slim sliver of hope

It’s an angrier world than ever. There are wars, violence, blood and gore. A very insecure world it is. Trust is falling apart. Faith lies sidelined and charlatans misuse trust and faith for parochial motives. The states are arming themselves with more and more deadly weaponry. There is a stampede for supremacy and one-upmanship.

Violence has been deeply institutionalized in the society. The states, intelligence agencies, shadowy players, business mafias, cartels, religious fanatics and many other actors have been covertly and overtly using institutionalized violence to further their interests.

Its effects can be seen in the society. Relationships are falling apart. The people are lonely and depressed. It’s a very unhappy world. And a very dangerous spin off surfaces: the individualization of violence. The stand-alone shooter mired in his lonely, unrelated world. Someone marooned on the island of pain. He too launches war, goes out with a sophisticated weapon and shoots innocent people out there for mundane activities of life.

There is so much of collective mistrust, hate, insecurity around. The lonely individual absorbs his share of fear, phobias and suffering from the air around. Then he goes for a blast. It’s a culture of arms. Imagine sophisticated weapons in the hands of lonely, anguished, depressed individuals. An unarmed depressed man might go for verbal assaults or fist-work at the most. If you are equipping him with sophisticated armory, you are providing predatory talons to his lonely suffering and anger. Isn’t it an aid in crime? Give him back his faith and love in humanity that he has lost, not arms.

The arms industry is running the world. They are the ones who finally decide which country gets bombarded or what innocent blood is shed in which part of the world. They are very dangerous people. The lethal-most traders they are. To them an ant squashed or a human murdered hardly makes any difference. They are sadistically addicted to blood and gore. It’s simply business. Commerce. To sell more grains you need more hungry bellies. To sell more weapons you need more wars and murders. And a violent society serves their purpose well. A violent society will have more violent leadership. There will be more wars, more blood, more butchering. So they are happy with the scenario of lonely, depressed human hunters.

Ironically, we started as hunters of other species. Now hardly anything is left to hunt in the jungles. So we are hunting our fellow humans—just for the sheer mad fun of it. Nobody is safe anywhere on earth. Anyone can be killed by anybody over anything in any part of earth.

Is there any chance of redemption? The scenario is very bleak but there is a slim chance. Almost hundred out of hundred mass shooters, bloodthirsty dictators, warmongering leaders, fanatical religious heads, mafias and other evil incarnate are men. The statistical truth is we ‘men’ have failed in managing earth. So let’s try with ‘women’ for a change. Let’s have more and more women in leadership positions. Yes, it will be a far more chatty and gossipy world but that is still better than blood and gore that we see around.

The spring's last day

It’s the last day of March and the month of spring leaves a soft, languorous nostalgia. There is a deceptive, denotative simplicity in the manner the trees, apprehending the boiling and beguiling summer, are shedding leaves to get a light-clothed summer look. Although there are still some honeybees, gloating with sensuousness, singing librettos to raise the spirits in the source of their food, yet the flowers are losing colors. The spring still holds its oblique ambience as is proven by many butterflies that flutter among the engaging crosscurrents of this brief interval between cold winters and hot summers.

The mornings have big dewdrops on the grass and the pathside shrubs and weeds. Under the rays of the rising sun these shine as culturally illuminating and beautifully layered pieces of marvel.

Hit by the unyielding whip of love and passion—inevitable for someone as young and handsome as he—the oriental magpie robin seems forlorn after diving in the unfathomable depths of love. Given its young age it’s yet to come to terms with loneliness. Its multivalenced sensitivities will gestate, germinate and grow as it matures to learn the value of solitude in old age. Its love affair seems to have been very short-lived. After wooing him with her oeuvre of feminal charms—catching him in the pools of lean, taut, bustling desires—she flew away. After parting from the honored custodian of its heart, the forlorn lover is now left to sing sad love songs. Going along the shading and layering of painful emotions, it’s sitting on the dry branch of a completely dead neem tree. The sadness inside maybe makes it feel comfortable in sitting among a matching surrounding.

This bird is a very bubbly imitator of notes. Its dynamic dialogues surely cross many birdie social interfaces across various species. That makes it seem a very confident little bird. However, as of now among the sadly dead canopy of the neem tree it’s singing the songs of loneliness. A male house sparrow is sitting silently just a foot away from the sad bird trying to overcome the post-breakup melancholy. Possibly the sparrow is trying to learn the amazingly varying notes so that he too can use the skills in wooing the best-looking girls of his species. Who knows, there might be another reason also. As of now the dashing magpie robin is letting out trilling notes. Maybe the sparrow thinks that a few girls of his species will get duped into taking this great song to be his composition and turn his fans. Well, irrespective of the reason they maintain their positions for almost half hour, while the sun turned hotter as it moved up the horizon. By the way, the magpie robin still comes to the little clump of trees in our yard to rest for the night.

The hosting parijat tree has gone crazy and is shedding its leaves quite madly. Possibly the magpie likes its nighttime resting house bearing a sad look of loss and paleness befitting its lonely state.

It’s the start of the harvesting season and the sparrows have gone. They have plenty of grains in the open fields to feast upon. The parijat has plenty of button-sized pods, the seeds of its fertility. It will stay almost withered till the monsoons arrive. It will then throw away its seeds with orgasmic delight. And then it’ll wear bright new shiny green clothes, a kind of celebration for an annual cycle completed, a kind of fulfillment of its natural duties.

A rufous treepie has delayed its going back to its home in the Himalayan foothills. Let’s hope it realizes that it’s getting late and flies for its little dale in the hills because the silence there awaits it motherly. 

The warrior baby

 I would say Maira is already a hero, just at the age of one-and-half years. A premature baby during the challenging Covid times, she was pushed onto the stage of survival, a mere 1,250 grams little baby after just six-and-half months of pregnancy. She braved the toughest tests in the NICU for the next two months. After a week of her birth she got intestinal infection in her barely formed intestines. A very critical and extremely risky surgery followed. A part of the ruptured intestine was removed and there she was with the end of her small intestine serving as rectal outlet by the side of her stomach; such a tiny life facing a very challenging medical process called stoma. It was traumatic to see such a little baby struggling for life and that too right from the beginning.

Further complications followed. Her lungs would collapse. For the lungs bronchoscopy she had to be shifted to Delhi. The shifting was almost fatal for a newborn that had spent all her time on earth at the ventilator in the NICU. The farmers had blocked the road. ‘I cannot give you a guarantee that she will be able to survive this journey. But there is no other way. This is her sole chance at life!’ the doctor appeared to have almost given up. Literally chained amidst the tubes of the ventilator in the ambulance, she not only survived but would breathe of her own after a few days. But it was all pain in its raw, naked form; her tiny body ravaged by the scalpels and syringes to save her.

The waste around her stoma was acidic and would almost burn her soft skin. Then the stitching around the stoma started to give away. Just one stitch, miraculously holding itself on her skin, kept her away from the further bearing the trauma of getting it redone and the resultant extra surgery, more cutting and tearing of her barely formed skin. As she labored for her rapid, hard-fought breaths to keep swimming in the perilous sea, the stitching looked horribly close to come undone. So each labored heave of her tiny bloated stomach was as close to death as it was to life. But she held on.

A premature baby is at the risk of developing eye issues as well. Due to all these early infancy issues and trauma, some blood vessels in her little eyes ruptured, leaving little stains on her retina. It required multiple lager treatments to keep the retina from coming off causing total blindness. Well, she passed the test again. ‘Her eyes are totally safe now!’ the doctor gave a good piece of news after long, tortuous weeks. In the hospital she earned the status of a tiny hero for her ability to swim across the storms. The entire staff took a liking for her and she passed the test with flying colors; the discharge day coming like an emotional valedictory function.

At home, for the next eight months it was almost a tapasya by her well-caring parents to keep the body clean, to save her skin from infection around the stoma. The next surgery to correct the digestive system by connecting the small and large intestines to make her excretory system normal was done by a God’s child, Dr. Roberts of Bangalore. He did a miracle and within a month Maira became a normal child like anyone around. But she had seen so much in life which most of us don’t go through even in our entire lives.

Throughout the year, as her tiny body fought against death, we kept banging at the gates of God’s castle to have mercy on our little princess. Our prayers, fasting and pilgrimages seem to have helped the little hero and the medical staff in wading through perilous wasters.

Maira is my niece, my younger brother’s daughter. Now at one-and-half years, Maira is an enquiring girl, ready to start the journey on her doddering little legs and have her say with her learning tongue. Passing the critical tests is a good way of beginning one’s life. She is already a winner, having gone through so much which most of us hardly have to bear in our entire lives. Coming out of the fire, she is perfectly entitled to her favorite phrase ‘yekyahai’ (meaning what is this) mumbled with a slippery flow, a slurry drawl, pointing out anything from a grain of soil to planets in the sky. She has to know each and everything about the planet that made her literally walk through the river of fire to entitle her a journey here.

I think she is the biggest enquirer on the earth as of now. She is perfectly aware of the fact that she ought to know each and everything. It’s a big, testing world and you have to say a firm ‘NO’ to rule out misinformation and other’s manipulation of your life beyond a point. She is a big-time nay-sayer and shakes her tiny head sideways in robust denial of everything you propose. I think that the tiny lady is very sure of her version of things. I well remember the only time she meant to agree to my proposition. It was about the beauty of moon. It was a really shiny and beautiful full moon on a clear winter night and even she had to agree as she forced herself to affirm and put up an effort to slightly mover her head up and down in appreciation of the celestial beauty.

The cows are outside the house, so the entire world out there is ‘cow’. She points at the yard gate and sweetly mumbles ‘cow’. It means ‘please take me out of the house to see the wider world over there’. The buffalos, donkeys, in fact all quadrupeds are ‘cows’ to her, with one exception—hathi. There is a stuffed toy elephant whose trunk she has bashed and chewed to twist it sideways, even nibbled out a portion of it. So she knows that at least hathi isn’t cow. I hope she won’t expect a real hathi to have a twisted, nibbled trunk like her toy. Thanks to the mauling she has given to the stuffed hathi’s trunk, she recognizes the elephants very well, so much so that even a weirdly contorted ginger piece makes the sense of hathi to her. She doddered, fell, crawled and walked few cautious steps to me and showed me the best hathi in the world. Upon my soul, it looked like an elephant.

The cat is miau-miau. Imagine the plight of the babbar sher, the king of the forest, when he too is dubbed as miau-miau by the little angel. So the ruler of the forest with its regal mane is condemned the fate of a measly pussy cat. All the big cats in the picture books are poor miau-miau. The simplicity of a child’s version of things. I think the lions, tigers, leopards and cheetahs ought to realize that they are mere cats of varying sizes after all. The dogs are bho-bho or bhau-bhau. All my attempts at correcting her through mollycoddling words like doggy or puppy have been spiritedly denied with a firm nay-saying movement of head from left to right and right to left. ‘Bho-bho,’ she says and stares at me pretty hard and I meekly accept it.

We have introduced yours humble truly as tau to her, meaning her father’s elder brother. From that referral and perspective, she calls everyone bearing an elderly visage, even the people in their eighties who are entitled to be called great grandfather, as tau. It’s a cute belittling of high ranks.

Out of all the canine fates, condemned as a single entity named bho-bho, one dog stands out, a brown and white robust female street dog that sits in front of the gate for warm, ghee-smeared chapattis. She has a firm objection against stale, dry breads. Maira has come to know that this particular dog is Bhui (something denoting brown color) not a mere bhau-bhau like the rest. So Bhui is something more than a measly street dog.

As her little tongue is slowly trying to chisel the linguistic monolith to shape the phonetic figurines to finally carve distinct words, phrases and sentences, she has very simplistic tools to cut the phonetic complexities. So the portly hippopotamus in her picture book is a puny ‘hee’ only. Ask her to pronounce any troublesome word, she picks up the first letter and smartly completes her assignment. So as per the simplifying rule of a little child ‘Pani’ is just ‘Pa’. So any oxymoron-adcdefz is simply ‘O’. And we still wonder why children are so happy. It’s simply because they know how to simplify things.

For many weeks she was confused between Cow and Tau because of rhyming similarity. So when I would carry out her request for an outing, i.e., Cow, which is a buffalo in reality in most of the cases, she would stare into my face, as if in confusion regarding which one is the real Cow or Tau. Or both are same? Why then this one has no horns and tail and moves with two legs missing? Well, these are the queries she has to find out for herself as she grows up.  

The other day we shot a family video wherein all of us can be seen gesticulating like kids in brightest spirits. She is all attention and stares hard into our screen avatars and then seems confused. She first looks hard at the person on the screen and then scans its real version in 3D on the real stage of life, trying to make out how come the same person is inside the mobile and outside at the same time.

There is a trash site in the yard where we collect broomed leaves, little rappers and other dry discards for the day. This heap of dry waste is her treasure hunt site. Here is a big world to explore with her slow, cautious, unsteady steps, each fall training you to get up again and move on. She sneaks away to her treasure site and salvages some broken cup handle, a button, or some plastic fragment and turn very possessive about her discovery. After that no amount of cajoling or sweet persuasion or irritating instructions would be sufficient to help the discard regain its former position. She has her own sense of what is entitled to go to join her treasure site. So I have to regularly fetch my toothbrush, hair oil bottle and comb from the esteemed collection in the yard corner.

Here is a little unit of life learning the art of living on her shaky steps and lovely blurry shortcutting phonetics. She wants to impress me with the fact that she is responsible now and does household tasks. She sees the elders running around with things in hand and seriousness on their faces. So now it makes some sense to her that to be grown up means basically to move around with things. So all the grocery jars, bottles, cosmetics, kitchen utensils, buckets, brooms, mugs are having the pleasure of interchanging places thanks to her busy schedule of shuffling things born of a keen sense of duty and the art of learning to be busy.

The other day the dustpan was in the little temple shrine in a corner in a room and the Shivlinga was found at her favorite treasure-hunting site. I’m scuttling away to do something but she spots me the idler. She is very busy in rearranging the house as usual. ‘Baithja’ she invites me, orders rather, to sit on a peedha, a popular low stool quite popular among the peasantry. There I’m obediently sitting, corrected and made to do the things that really matter. She then walks to a tomato basket and brings one, hands it to me and goes back for another errand. So my hands, then the end of my chador are full of tomatoes. Then she observes more important things that have been misplaced by the elders, peas. There they land at the most suitable place, that’s me, one piece at a time born of each of her visits. Then the potatoes arrive. The urgent task slowly builds up. She already knows that we are a disorderly lot and is trying her level best to salvage some order among the chaos.

Tiny teeth are emerging on her little gums. It gives her the grin of the most mischievous imp. Beyond all feelings of shame and inhibitions born of self-consciousness, she shows her funny little irregular upcoming teeth and puts to shame all we elders’ sense of consciousness about looks and efforts to be what we are not.

Little Maira loves sweets, buffi being her favorite expression to give heed to the sweet tooth. The moment she mumbles buffi, she sees our taunting reaction. So she now thinks better of it. She has a way out now to have her sweets and receive some respect as well in its wake. She is well aware of the fact that ‘pasad’—standing for prasad—is something that is held in high esteem. So when she wants to have her piece of laddoo, burfi or jaggery she says ‘pasad’ asking for the holy thing.

She has very sweet ways of using her slow-motion time in her little world. As I eat, she picks up the boiled peas from my plate—one of her favorites in eating and playing—squeezes the little boiled balls in her fingers, drops them onto the ground, stomps over them to add to the culinary delight on the open pan of mother earth, picks her preparation very delicately, cautiously, gently, sweetly, with greatest considerations for my nutritious requirements, and offers them to me. Of course, I have to eat them which makes her smile with a motherly satisfaction.

She has a confusion about the sun and the moon. The moon was first introduced to her, she being allowed to ogle at it with her wonderstruck eyes. On a fine full moon night she mumbled her favorite phrase ‘yekyahai’ and on being told that it was moon she has moon as one of her favorites in the sky. So the sun is day’s muun. They are both the same just giving different shades. During the day, with her eyes narrowed and the face drawn with discomfort against the light, she faces the sun and points out ‘Muun’. Beyond the tormenting dualities, there is a mix-up of hot and cold—she calls both tata, that’s hot.

It’s an ever increasing stage of life to take a bigger hold in her tiny fists and cover a larger distance with slowly steadying steps. As a post-modern child, she has to assert her rights on the TV as well. I’m watching sports, she arrives and demands ‘mote’ which I helplessly hand over.  She points it towards the screen, pressing key x, y, z and all and informs me what is worth watching from among all the idiotic things the elders waste their times upon. It’s ‘motu’. So cartoon binge watching isn’t far away.

She is innocently unaware of the haggling dualities of life that keep the elders’ minds in constant firmament. Bored with life on the ground, she authoritatively points to the terrace saying ‘upal-upal—upal meaning upstairs. And after enjoying the little things of life that presently make a meaning to her—all birds are chia, all cats and monkeys are mere pushu and a flag that inspires her to mumble Om-Om because there is flag on the temple top, so all the flags including the national tricolor are mere Om-Om to her—she points downstairs again giving the instruction of ‘upal’ asking me to take her downstairs. Isn’t it a glorious equanimity? As they grow, we train them for puzzling differentials through education and customs, spinning a web of opinions and judgments and when the spider gets caught in the complexity of its own design, it hankers to achieve that very same non-dual state of mind through meditation and unlearning all that has been deeply drilled into the mind.

A shiny red chili grabs her attention. She picks it up and with her sweetly unsteady steps walks up to me. I’m having my lunch. She cutely puts the fiery red eatable in my plate and eagerly looks at me, expecting me to eat her gift and explode with taste and clap and say thanks to the kind giver. Well, maybe she wants to see smoke gushing out of my ears and eyes. She has enough experience of cartoon programs to know the relationship between red chilies and smoky ears. These cartoon networks turn the children wise a bit too early.

Red, ripe tomatoes are very much playable. She knows where they would serve best apart from the frying pan. It’s the chairs, and more so under some seat cover or cloth, maybe to protect them from harsh winters and help them sleep better. I have dangerously come close to sit upon safely sleepy tomatoes and make fresh tomato sauce under my bum on a few chairs in the house.

Well, little Maira now wants to be in charge of the affairs. Dragging the broom around on her exploring sorties is her favorite task. So this time when she asks for goddi, she prefers to keep her jhau with her. The broom is heavy for her little hand, but punching well above her weight she is determined to hold it dangling by her side as I support her on my arm.

I’m eating and there she stands, holding a bathroom slipper in her hand. There is some space in the plate and she is looking ahead to fill that puzzle with the great item in her hand. I have to be very quick in removing my plate to avoid the footwear from becoming a part of my menu. It offends her and she cries quite angrily.

As the days progress, innocence driven by curiosity takes a planning shape. She points to the potty seat. Her mom is happy that she will now learn toilet skills. But Maira is smarter than her mother thinks. She sits on the seat and demands cartoons on the mobile, which is happily granted under the assumption that it’s a suitable reward for her voluntarily not doing her potty in a diaper and thus avoid all the haggling of washing and cleaning. Maira composedly enjoys her show on the potty seat. There is no sign of potty anywhere near. It turns out to be a trick to lay hands upon the cartoon show on the mobile.

She is a translator now. One morning she wakes up announcing to the world that ‘cow’ is actually ‘gai’. ‘Cow-gai, miau-miau-cat, bhau-bhau-puppy,’ she informs us.

It’s going to be a world of likes and dislikes. She prefers catchy songs koka-koka and paya-paya and raises her finger in bhangra celebration.

I find her mumbling car-car pointing towards the vehicle. We get inside. There is no key. She knows that a car without its key is no car, so keeps pointing towards the missing key, ‘kabi-kabi’ she reminds me, i.e., chabi.

It’s a great sight to watch her doddering steps acquire a bit more surefootedness. She falls lesser now on the way to her mission and gives long monologues in her own language putting in between a few words she knows. She now tries to climb the stairs all by herself, holding the railings, eager to become self-sufficient in going out and upstairs. She has now added to her knowledge about me and calls me tau Chhuppi, the latter linguistic pearl standing for my pet name Sufi. The tongue in its untrained free stage, but acquiring slight edges as she practices her words, imitating us, making cutely weird shortcuts over their complexities. That’s how life starts for a toddler, acquiring more control and the resultant sophistication. But the touch of her tiny fingers—untainted of any deeds, good or bad—is healing. It’s the touch of life, of just being; a soul’s selfless reaching out and touching you on your cheek, lips, nose or brow. Close your eyes and recall a child’s touch on your face. It’s pure, unadulterated energy. It seeps into you. A child will pay you back with its godly blessing, in the form of its touch and a smile, in lieu of all the cares and concerns undertaken by the elders.

Now, it’s a world of combination of choices. ‘Matar,’ she points out. I offer her a little boiled pea seed. She shakes her head in a firm ‘No’. ‘Roti,’ she says. I offer her a little piece, crushing it between my thumb and index finger. It also is met with a firm denial. Now, I realize she needs both. I make a combo of matar and roti and she gladly accepts. She is thus joyfully growing up with her slowly steadying steps, each step distinctly marked by a shrill ‘pee’ by the whistles installed in the soles of her tiny shoes. Each step a landmark, a reward celebrated by the sound.

She knows to survive one has to stand on one’s own feet. One fine morning, all fresh and looking beautiful for a new adventure, she crawls up the open staircase, falls, gets a bloody lip but finally reaches upstairs to greet me as I work on my book.

She knows it’s a big world outside there beyond the compound walls. I find her trying to open the gate standing on her toes, her little fingers bracing the heavy latch. But then she sees me and knows the value of human resource mobilization. She takes my hand and asks me to open it, walks out, looks back once before moving on to see a bigger world.

She knows the value of make-up as well. Me and my brother are brushing our teeth with a nice tooth powder. She asks both of us to sit on our haunches, dabs her little fingers in the powder on our palms and carefully smears our faces with the white powder to give us the fantastic make-up of handsome native chiefs of the red-Indian tribes.

She eats guava like a bulbul, no greed, with ease, leaving innocent needy marks on it with her little emerging teeth. It’s not like a grown-up’s clinical finish that shows greed. I have seen the guavas pecked at by the bulbuls in the little garden and those markings look exactly like what Maira leaves on the fruit she eats. 

It’s an open canvas for her to stamp her choices and preferences now. Here comes her first full sentence of all three words. ‘Chia neeche aao!’ she commands a starling that goes quite close above our heads as we play under warm sunrays on the terrace. Then follows the longest word, a few days later, spoken in the sweetest of a slurred effort. ‘Pigeon, pigeon,’ I’m pointing out. ‘K-boo-ta-ll,’ she corrects me.

She has now taken her first run in the game as well. I’m playing cricket for her with her little plastic bat and a rubber ball. She takes the bat from me, swipes at the ball and is seen running to the wall end. Only then I realize that she has scored her first run in the game of life. Of course, TV has a big role in preparing children for future. She has seen us watching cricket on TV and knows probably it’s about hitting and running. Let almighty bestow her a joyous innings in the game of life!

She is a champion of female rights already. The late winter has flowers in the little garden and a few butterflies hover around. I am lost in poetic muse. I feel a tug at my pants. Maira is struggling with brooms in both her hands. Her little fingers tightly holding the handles, she has dragged them from a far corner. She has a task for me in her mind. Why should ladies have all the fun with the brooms? Even the men should taste it. ‘Udhal, udhal, jhaau!’ she guides me to the part where there are some guava leaves scattered on the ground. She instructs me to clean the place. There I use both the brooms to clean the yard to her satisfaction.

It’s her ground now to run after the butterflies in the garden. It’s her sky now as she tries to catch the floating traces of smoke in the air. And hopefully it will be her world to fulfill her dreams and lead a joyous, healthy life. She has earned it at the cost of lots of sufferings right at the beginning. 

A special tea

 Naresh and Kaptan surpassed other students in rousing the teachers’ ire at the village primary school. The consequences aren’t hard to guess. The teachers thrashed the students on principle, most of whom considered anything related to books literally an embodiment of evil to be hated with the full force of soul. The beatings and thrashings were highly ineffective in the scheme of making the students love or like anything related to studies. At the most, it turned student-teacher relationship in the bracket of intrinsic animosity. The students played mischief without fail and turned brave-hearts and thick-skinned. Just an odd one, like yours truly, terror-stricken with the cane and nurturing his pusillanimous heart, would cram the lessons and he would inevitably emerge as topper in the class. Just don’t fall into the mischief, keep your conduct praiseworthy and very soon you will be walking up the carpeted stairs of achievements and glory in the little, depilated schoolroom; your future waiting to rise to the height of impressive ivory towers.

However, the teachers should have known it better than asking these two rowdiest—and hence the most thrashed—students to bring tea from the little teashop at the small bus stop by the road at a distance from the school. Well, they went all happily, thoroughly thrashed in the previous period. On the way back, with tea kettle and glasses in their hands, the duo felt the urge to drink tea. They had a cup each, in consequence of which the tea fell short. The emptiness born of idiocy in the head is a huge playground for the innovation of mischief. The village pond with its green smelly water offered its help. They washed the glasses and poured an equal amount of green slimy water—having a great spicing of buffalo dung as the big animals wallowed in the pond, cuddling the chew with pride and prejudice—to bring the beverage’s mark in the kettle to its former level. The pond being the favorite place of the buffalos; they just love to defecate in the water after heartful swimming.

It turned out to be a special tea having some exquisite taste, as if the tea-maker had come across some unknown condiments to suddenly uplift the taste of his tea. All the teachers said it was unique. Only one of them said that there was too much ginger in it. The errant duo would continue getting thrashed for their revulsion to studies and continued to fetch the special tea. Thenceforth, mention tea and both of them jumped to their feet with a weird pertinence and would hand over the tea kettle with an acquisitive air as if they had a great role in the tea’s special taste just by being its carrier. Then one day the destiny created a chance to remove the streaks of ignorance over the teachers’ minds in the matter and one of them saw the real reason for the specialty. The enemies were assailed; the entire staff, invigorated with extra-special diet from the pond, jumped upon the culprits in highest earnest and thrashed them to their revengeful heart’s full contentment. 

The small world of a little boy

Nevaan is up for a hearty spell of laughter and he is putting a big effort to laugh louder than the cause and capability of his five-and-half years old lungs. I have been telling him some words of wisdom like we elders tell the kids. Now I realize maybe my words are the cause of his hilarity. So in order to justify his much-labored laughing I also start putting extra effort, bringing more buffoonery in my words and manners. Then he stops suddenly. ‘Mamaji, don’t disturb me! I’m laughing at something else,’ he informs me. The comic color instantly vanishes from my face. Like a beaten joker whose jokes have failed I leave the scene and look back after going some paces. He is laughing even louder now. ‘Mamaji, now I’m laughing real laughter. It’s real laughter. You look funnier when you aren’t trying to be funny,’ he throws a bright light on hitherto hidden gem of my personality.

Nevaan is inspired by a chef’s program on television. So he is reading out recipes and alongside making foodie castles in air. It’s a make-believe mouth-watering heaven of aloo-mutter-paneer-karela-lauki-subzi-pizza-burgers-cheese-sandwich. ‘This is my recipe for the best food in the world,’ he says. The name sounds otherworldly, or maybe classy. ‘So it must be super-costly?’ I ask. ‘Yes, not less than ten rupees!’ he brags. ‘But don’t you think ten rupees is too small for such a grand delicacy. It should be at least ten thousand rupees,’ I suggest. He thinks over and says, ‘Ok, ten thousand rupees then. But you have to give ten rupees also.’ Well, he is more familiar with ten rupees. That’s what we call being more practical.

Going with his relaxed ways, he reads very slowly. It seems his little tongue finds the words heavy. But there is a list that turns his tongue into the swiftest horses in recitation. It’s the laminated menu of a restaurant. Out on a dining night he fell in love with the masterpiece and we had to pay the owner so that he could carry it with him. Now this is his Bible, Geeta, Vedas all. The list unleashes waters over the tongue and removes the hesitating rust and there he catapults full force into narration. Samosa-kachori-dhokla-aloobada-bhajibada-breadpakoda-pohajalebi-rabdi-pavbhaji-chholebature-tikki…. It goes like the latest Vande Bharat train. Mothers are mothers. ‘How I wish they include a lesson on menu and recipes in the syllabus. He would beat all in that,’ hi mother sighs.

He has watched too many ghosts on cartoon networks and feels there are phantoms in dark rooms. He has to get his toy from a dark room. So he is all sweet words of request to me. ‘You are afraid to go alone in the dark,’ I tease him. He sits on a chair and implores me to go and get it. ‘No, I’m not scared, I’m just a bit more lazy. That’s it,’ he clarifies. So being lazy hurts one’s ego a bit less than being called a coward.

The washroom is in a corner in the yard. So he has to mend his ways after dusk so that the offended elders would not say ‘no’ to escorting him to the attendance of nature’s calls. But being a reformed boy from dusk to bedtime is too much. So he has to find some solution. In the morning one day I see him walking to the main gate with chalk piece in hand. I observe stealthily from across a corner. He has perhaps found the key to beat his fear of ghosts. ‘Bhoot! NOT IN!’ he has tamed the ghosts with the instruction on the gate.

The vacations are over and Nevaan is going back to his place. We are waiting for their train at the platform. An old man approaches and starts playing with him. ‘Give me money,’ he says. ‘I don’t have any money,’ Nevaan replies. ‘Then give me your shirt,’ the old man chuckles. I give him a coin on behalf of Nevaan. Now the old man is blessing the little boy and offering him the same coin. Well, neither Nevaan nor the old man is interested in a mere coin. Hard times. A coin has lost even its symbolic value. The poor coin is back in my pocket. There it requests a ten rupee note to take leave off my pocket and change its master. The old man is now satisfied as per the latest begging norms. He is a poor man from Rajasthan wandering on pilgrimages with little bits of charity money on the way. ‘He looks like my grandson,’ he compliments Nevaan in lieu of the ten rupees received. 

The lightness and heaviness of being alive

There is a marvelous lightness in ‘being’ alive. And a heaviness also that is beyond the dimension of the matter. The extra dimension of sentient life in matter (we may call it soul for simple reference) makes the matter very light. The same matter without this energy, or call it soul, feels weightier.

The birds are very light. Hold a living bird in your hand and you would marvel at its weightlessness. How can such a feathery thing accomplish such airy dances and sing-song chirpings?

A babbler entered the fenced yard. It seemed a suitable plan on the bird’s side to seek safety because it couldn’t fly. Maybe it was a sick babbler. It sat there on the ground sad, silent with a drooping beak. It would hop for a few paces and then rest. It sat near a water puddle and took a few beakfuls of water. I tried to feed it with a dropper but it won’t eat anything. When I held it in my hand it felt so light, just a winged representative of the air around.

It came in the morning and died in the afternoon. I found it in its eternal sleep in the flowerbed. As I picked it up for giving it a dignified burial I could feel weight this time. So there is a mystical type of lightness in being alive. Maybe the soul has a floating quality to make the matter feel less weighty while it’s in the body. The soul gone and the same mass feels heavier.

Maybe the soul is always acting in reverse to the forces of gravity, always looking upwards for expansion, always trying to expand and go up, trying to evolve into a higher dimension. Just like the lifebelts keeping the body afloat on water. Maybe that’s why it feels like to be in a cage, I mean that vague sense of being trapped, that niggling sense of something missing. Like air trapped in a balloon, floating the body around. And once the tendency to float, the inclination to expand, the urge to evolve—represented by a particular soul—is gone for a free float (before getting trapped again) the mass that remains behind feels weightier. Like a balloon would weigh more after getting deflated and the air gone out.

It’s marvelous that just one breath keeps us alive and afloat, keeps us in the category of the lightness of being. Maybe the soul is just a breath. But look at its divine component of ‘the lightness of being’! We can easily lift a live being. Lifting a corpse is far weightier proposition. The floater is gone and the stickler is left behind. Just one breath gone and we have a piece of relatively heavier matter. One breath in and we have a far-far lighter being.

So we have this iota of infinite freedom and expansion trapped in this body. It’s always trying to float freely, like the air in a balloon taking it in different directions. But that is the irony with existence. To manifest, the component of absolute freedom has to be trapped in the confines of limited ‘matter’.

But why do the free-floats, the individual souls, again get trapped in the body? A spiritualist once told me that all the surrounding air around us is full of free-floats helplessly, even jealously, looking at we the embodied ones. They look like jealous children at the embodied ones. Probably we love and hate the prison in almost equal measure. A kind of addiction to being something. And to be something you need a body. Body is acquired, then what. The one that acquires the body, the cosmic representative of ultimate freedom (the soul), has the fundamental inclination and urge to be free. It breeds a type of endless love-hate relationship.

What is ultimate liberation or freedom? Maybe it’s the state of a free-float when it no longer feels jealous of the embodied entities. When a sage quits the body in complete freedom, without fear, without any attachment, without any desire or expectations, he goes for a cosmic expansion, so large that it can no longer be trapped in a confined body. Because a fragmented individual disembodied entity cannot beat the greed of getting trapped again unless it becomes a part of everything that’s there. The wholeness cannot be lured to be confined to limited ‘somethingness’.  

Maybe this is what they mean by getting ultimate liberation by feeling all and everything within you. With this unqualified trait acquired all that is trapped and non-trapped feels within you. Like free air feeling the trapped air in a balloon as a part of itself. So it won’t feel inclined to be trapped in a balloon to feel its existence.

So this body itself is the gateway to break the final barrier. It’s the portal to enter that unqualified state of absolute freedom. That is why they say being born as a human is a blessing because we arrive qualified to pass the final test. Best of luck for the examinations of life!