Habits

 Making love, a mere repetition; falling in love, a mere reputation; falling out of love, a mere repetition; doing this, a mere repetition; doing that, a mere repetition. I think we are creatures of repetition. And repetition is primarily born of habits. So most of the things we do are the results of habits. Why do we form habits? Possibly because we feel safe. And why do we crave to be safe? Maybe because we have fears. Well, then even fear might be a habit of the mind. 

The moment we allow ourselves to be driven by habits, we limit ourselves to a customised social unit, for our own safety. The society too feels safe when it sees fine creatures of habit. Habits define a safe zone around us. They breed convenience and that's why we hanker after them. They define and limit us and give us a false promise that we will be happy in that little zone. But very soon we find that conveniences born of happiness hardly bring juice and joy to life. It's dry. We still feel something is missing even though we adopt more and more habits to erect sounder structures of safety around us. 

The human spirit wants to fly. And habits are the chain. It wants to be free. But habits hold it back. When we set out to chart out our own path, we have to break the mould of habits. Habits clip our wings. They condition us, limit our potential. We have to do everything in a way that it doesn't turn a habit. Then whatever we do is an ode to the present. It's open ended and creative. We create and move on. The past doesn't drag us. The future doesn't make false promises. We flow. We fly. We live.

A little forest

 Sometime back I had thrown some tulsi seeds in a cleared-up part of a flowerbed. Little saplings grew and now it looks like a tiny tulsi forest. The beauty about lovable volition, the bhaav of love, is that it takes you above physical limitations. With pure volition of love and compassion this little group of tiny plants is as big as Amazon forest. It becomes as pure as any holy site on earth. If you can relate and feel like an ant crawling through this tiny patch of holy leaves, then you of course turn a little child wandering in a big forest. It’s only about the bhaav beyond acts, deeds, words, scriptures, holy pilgrimages. If you are in that bhaav, this little group of plants instantly turns your Gaumukh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Jerusalem or any other holy site. Right here, this very instant. A pure unconditional bhaav takes you above the limitations of space and time. Karma gets unattached from your consciousness during those moments of pure volition and you have the moments of liberation. Call it samadhi, enlightenment or any other word. Words are mere pointers.

As I stare into this little patch of green and with pure volition muse over a little insect going through it, I’m a pilgrim going through a deep forest. As I take bucket bath and chant Ganga Ma’s name with pure heart, I’m bathing in her holy stream. I don’t have any doubt about it. As I walk by a little ancestral shrine in the countryside and bow my head I know I’m having a darshan of Badri, Kedar, Tirupati. If you establish yourself in that unadulterated bhaav, Mother Existence gets everything for you right at that very spot. But we have to walk around a lot ultimately to realize and come back into stillness and divine pause at one point, that pure volition. Then you aren’t anywhere but still everywhere. Then it hardly matters where you are, what you are, what others think of you, whether you are moving or not. The small acquires mammoth proportions to inspire holy awe. The big becomes small allowing you to marvel and analyze at the level of mind. Well, that’s the beauty of pure, unlimited volition.

Digging the well of destiny

 In Chhatisgarh, an eleven-year-old boy fell into an eighty feet deep borewell. The water table is plunging down and the water-seeking holes are going deeper and deeper. The boy was stuck in the deep cavity for 104 hours. Around 500 rescue personnel worked round the clock; dug a parallel pit and a connecting tube to fetch out the boy. Meantime the boy was handed down six bananas, juice and ORS fluid. He had a snake and a frog as company all along. In the dark womb of oblivion, the primal fear rules supreme. One would love to have some company in such a dark, deep pit. So forgetting all predatory instincts and devouring orgies the snake must have cuddled the frog. The latter must also have, forgetting all fears and intriguing irritations, reciprocated with friendly croaks. It seems a bit sad that the boy couldn’t share his banana with his mates. It’s not clear from the reports whether the snake and the frog could be rescued or not. If they were not, and this is more likely given our valuation of life in human terms, then I would call it an incomplete rescue operation. Maybe with bits of nostalgic condensation they would have turned out to be the best of friends outside—the snake and the frog.

The elephant lost a human right

 So the court has ruled that Happy is not a person, he is an elephant. A court was hearing a petition whether the zoo-confined pachyderm in the US could have human rights superseding his animal rights. Had the verdict gone in his favor, he would have been released in semi-freedom in a big sanctuary. Alas, that wasn’t to be! I think all animals should have human rights and the humans, with their huge sets of ominous rumblings, will do pretty well with animal rights. After all, we are the strongest animal among the booming bedlam on earth. Mother earth is replete with the abundant sagas born of our criminal candor and odious excesses. So who else is the biggest claimant of animal rights?

Excellence and chance

 The golden boy of Indian athletics, Neeraj Chopra, has to carry our perpetually blossoming expectations born of psychotic obsession with gold on his strong shoulders. A bandana tied on his forehead, flowing locks of hair and triumphant fists present a picturesque imagination. He returns to action after almost a year since his Tokyo gold. He hits 89.30 meters at a tournament in Finland, bagging silver but more importantly, it’s his personal best. Sometimes your best gets you a silver only. They say it was a fantastic throw accompanied by his trademark warrior cry while throwing. It looked all set to qualify as an epoch-making endeavor and cross 90 meters and hit his passion mark to enter the elite group of javelin throwers. But a naughty gust of wind made the ascending spear swerve to left.

Well, that shows all we have in our capacity is to give our best throw. But the results are sometimes decided by the circumstantial, chancy winds. Sometimes the dangerous drafts of adversarial winds cold-bloodedly kill our throws. We primarily throw to challenge the adverse winds. Sometimes the winds turn favorable as well and give us bigger returns than we would have achieved otherwise. The moral of the story is that we shouldn’t complain about circumstantial winds. Give your best throw. That’s all that counts. If the petty treacheries of adverse winds rob you of your gold, believe me if you have given your best, you won’t be a mere helpless hayloft, you would be at least a respectable wreck. And that’s all that matters, not silver and gold.

Move on but look back sometimes with gratitude

 I think we can avoid abusing the things that keep us alive, that give us this day, that shape our life (in whatever shape it might be). Whatever the texture, shape and structure, it still is our life. It's still a flower (even if it's badly mauled and ruffled by circumstances) and it still belongs to the genre called 'life'. And the manifestation as a 'life' is an incentive by default. We are manifested and still get a chance to evolve and manifest more. A blade of grass manifesting its life in famished desert sands is as important as a luxurious devdar in rich, salubrious, rainfed hills.

This body, parents, siblings, friends, partners, deities, everything in fact has been responsible for this life that we see defining us at the moment. Irrespective of what we think of them presently, didn't they touch our lives positively and meaningfully when we needed them or crossed path with them? Please recall that spark and excitement when we initially met them!

We meet people on the way and move on and meet new people on the way. That doesn't mean the ones left behind were bad and the new ones arriving in life are better. They are equally good or bad. Everyone is equally imperfect but even with their imperfections they have something to offer to us and we to them, which shapes one phase of the journey. They are the ones who get us to a point of being positively touched by the newer people.

If I judge those who were left behind, it would be like condemning the lower steps on a ladder after getting to the higher ones. Would we have reached the top step--for example, reaching a stage of finding an ideal soul mate--if not for those nice lower steps, those nice people with whom we broke up in the past? The relationships are like a ladder. It's a journey basically. Different people that we meet are beautiful, strong steps on the ladder that bear the weight of our feet and help us take the next step. And we are just the same to them. We too were low at the time when we met them and that's why we stepped on that rung and found it helpful. So did they.

All steps, lower and higher, are equally important. All the people we connect with, all relationships, all situations and experiences are various steps on the ladder. The problem is that we judge them vertically like a ladder standing upright, in terms of high and low, good and bad. Life isn't a vertical ladder. It's multidimensional in nature. It unfolds in layers. All the people that we meet are equally high and low at various points. So honor the people that came along the way. They have given us this life as we see it now. We can avoid abusing these various steps on the ladder of life.

Acceptance of the uncontrollables in life and gratitude for what is done (ignoring what wasn't done) save us from abusing the things, situations and people who have helped us live one way or the other. Respecting them is as good as respecting life.

Most importantly, dear readers, always remember that there will always be more and new people, situations and relationships to help us see that life simply goes on. Good and bad will always come our way. But we have to ensure that we celebrate the former more than we sulk over the latter.

Just do it!

 The things which ought to be simply done, should just be done. Otherwise, their shadows linger in the mind. They grow heavier with the passage of time. This invisible weight is heavier than the stones we see around. Simple, harmless acts of appreciation, of enjoyment, of helping someone cross a stream are better done and closed with a full stop. It’s better for a healthy mind. Otherwise, they linger like conspiring shadows over our conscience.

A missed chance of being good will definitely cast a shadow on our mind. An effort to help the self in being good, on the other hand, will hardly leave any unbecoming imprint on our conscience for pinching reflections later.

Only goodness has a legacy and a future. Hypocrisy and meanness are just bad examples and leave repentance most of the time. To do good is instinctive for a human being, it’s however another matter that we stifle the urge most of the time. To be bad, on the other hand, is not intrinsic to our nature. It is wrongly reflective, a miscalculation, a tragic bypass of the instinct of goodness.

Nurture the seeds of the instincts of goodness. It’s a simple practice. It gives peace of mind, clear conscience and makes the journey enjoyable. Avoid it and you carry the burden in your mind.

Happiness

It’s basically we who repel happiness away from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set it as a goal too far down the line in future. Some house, some grains, some accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the years, and set up a wall between us and happiness. And happiness keeps on getting more and more distant from us. I will set up a home and then be happy. Happiness delayed. And then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between happiness and us. Relentlessly we just push on. Happiness stays thus a distant goal. Never to be achieved. We make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we die. Huge immortals they are. In pushing for them, we die. Separated from happiness that could have been the greatest gift of life, had we not pushed it away from us.

The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like we store some grains for the harsh winters, near us, in the safest part of our house. It has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Just being and living for a day. Separate being from becoming. You can be happy if you set your happiness free from the chains of your lifelong dreams.

You should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily, separated from the natural state of happiness which could have pumped our life with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free from the chains of goal-setting and placed it unchained from those unreachable spots in the future.

Let happiness be a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Do everything as a happy person; instead of doing the deeds to become a happy person. Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it in the condition we are in, or it just eludes us. Keep it with you while you fly. It will boost your determination to go far and high.

So the only way to remain happy is just to be happy, instead of slogging it out to become happy later. Fellas, kindly decide to keep happiness as a routine, let it take possession of your present, like a monkey eating fruits and the birds flying. All in the present. Now. Just being. Simply being happy.

Watching a movie with a renunciate

 KAKA MAHARAJ 

Kaka Maharaj, who has been staying in a hut by the canal, is comfortable in holding three satsangs with me in a month. That is the time when we share, discuss—and even debate—about our versions of truth. He remains tethered to his hut and avoids contact with people who he thinks carry too much worldly subjects within themselves which disturbs his sadhna. Once a month, he takes a solitary footpath to reach the temple outside the village where an idol of his guru is installed to pay homage on purnima.

He hadn’t visited the nearby town for more than a decade and seemed set to avoid it forever. But then he paid a little worldly price for holding satsang with me. He adores Dada Lakhmi Chand, the legendary folklorist from the area. A little test of his adoration: Suppose he is just about to break your head with a brick and you just happen to say ‘Dada Lakhmi Chand’ and he would stop to listen what you have to say about the Shakespeare of Haryana. I spotted this chink in his armor and enticed him to the town. It was a feat in itself.

There was a biopic movie on Dada Lakhmi Chand shown at the newly constructed swanky, posh mall in the town. Ask him to visit the sansar of town and his weed-lit red eyes would throw daggers at you. He may even throw some object at you. So I suitably rolled the invitation with the name of his hero. As a result, he didn’t jump at the mention of ‘town’ like he would have normally. I could spot my chance and built my orchard around the great folklorist. I built up an imaginary world extolling the virtues of the biopic in highlighting the great Haryanvi poet. The result was that I could convince him to watch a movie—unimaginable—at a big mall. He who doesn’t find the idea of even a television set in a house too becoming for a healthy life and living! He agreeing to watch a movie at a mall! That shows yours truly can fruitfully bargain with hostage takers as a profession.

On the appointed day I drove him to the town. He was dressed in a pair of kurta-pyjama that was lying buried under a sack for almost a decade and was surprisingly safe from rats.

(The rats would cut even his plastic jars and steal his meager supply of grocery that keeps him alive on one frugal meal a day. I have seen big rats scampering across the grassed ceiling of his hut. ‘They even jump at me when I’m sleeping,’ he once told me. ‘Maybe it’s a message from your guru that you aren’t supposed to sleep,’ I remarked. ‘Well, maybe!’ he seemed in agreement with my casual jesting remark. A monitor lizard once stayed near his hut and then there won’t be any rats. Kaka Mahraj considered it a friend. But then one day when he was meditating the lizard crawled onto the head of its sadhak friend. Kaka Maharak wasn’t aware that it was his friendly lizard. He swiped his hand and it panicked and jumped. The lizard must have thought that it was an attempt at its life. ‘It jumped and ran but stopped at a little distance and looked back. We looked at each other for a long pause. Then it went away. I never saw her again. It was my fear that startled her. This littlest ounce of fear has to go from the body of a sadhak. The body shouldn’t move even a little under such circumstances. I knew I had failed in my sadhna. So I cried that day,’ he told me.)

Now, coming back to the movie-watching trip. He found the town changed beyond recognition since his last trip. ‘I cannot find the old town anywhere!’ he exclaimed. It was understandable. The world around his hut has remained the same. It’s the same canal with the same flow of water. The only change he can make out is that the little saplings he had planted are big trees now. That’s the parameter of change for him. He looked startled and intimidated by the booming urbanization. Imagine a person who stays in a grass hut being taken straightaway to a showy mall! He was tentative and unsure on the slippery floors. The elevators, lifts, showy shop-fronts, food aroma from the food court, the humming of humanity, the glitz and glamor and among all this an old saintly man. He seemed lost among all this. He towed me like a little child follows an elder in a crowd. The scent of modernity in the mall hit him hard. It was completely opposite to the free natural fragrance around his little hut.

Inside the theatre, he sat like an alien trapped in a hostile environment. But when the movie started and a few folksongs from his hero blared and bombarded the eardrums he looked a bit amused. Then the folk-hero’s life history began with his birth. It was too much for him. ‘All this is a big lie! How do they know all this happened like this? It was more than a hundred years ago. This is fake! A funny drama!’ he shouted in my ear. I was thinking of making a respectful exit from the darkness. But he understood. ‘I know you like it. So watch it. I’m going to sleep,’ he assured me. Then Kaka Maharaj folded himself like a baby in the womb and slept off. His guru his mother. His faith the safe womb. He could actually sleep in a cinema hall where the music would rattle your bones. After the movie—sorry, after a sound sleep—he looked fresh and totally detoxified of the urbanized exposure I had brought upon his system. The modernist clatter and noise seemed to have no effect on him now. His smile and poise was back as he walked out of the mall. ‘Kaka Maharaj you could actually sleep so soundly in that noise!’ I exclaimed as we drove back. ‘Yes Tagore—he calls me Tagore for my love of books—I don’t know whether you believe it or not. I saw my Guru only on the screen. Then it was so easy to sleep,’ he said. Maybe his guru had sent him for a little test and I’m sure he passed the test by coming out unaffected from a totally alien environment. That’s the sign of a good meditator. He/she retains the inherent balance even after coming across conflicting situations.

On the way back, he asked me to buy cumin seeds for him. I got two 250 grams packets, one for him and one for our own kitchen. ‘How much is this?’ he asked, gently weighing the little packet on his palm. ‘It’s 250 grams,’ I replied. He gently corrected me with a slight sway of head, ‘No Tagore, it’s only 200 grams. The shopkeepers would always cheat like in the old days,’ he said. Then I expressed my doubts about the difference in weight telling him that this is the town’s very reputed grocer and I don’t think they would cheat people like this. ‘Look at the packaging and all the stats given regarding weight, packaging date, expiry date, nutrition table, nice logo, nice material,’ I enlisted the indicators of quality. Later that day, I weighed my packet on the tiny kitchen scale and the weight came to be exactly 200 grams. I am humbled.

A few satsangs after this incident didn’t go well. He debated and cut my opinions as if with premeditated intentions. Maybe he was giving it back for taking him to a place that stood the polar opposite of his world.

A few months back, I found him visiting my room crammed with books. Possibly he got curious to know a bit more about me. He is into bhakti yoga and I could feel his discomfort while standing near the little hill of gyan marga. As we know one’s company of friends and people leaves a big impact on the person’s life. Maybe Kaka Maharaj got interested in books. Some days later he asked me for a book. I chose a book by a local saint, the combined works of Narayan Maharaj, thinking he would be able to relate to the writing because it was written by someone from the same area keeping in mind the socio-cultural factors prevailing in the area. Judging the psychology of reading among non-readers—they lose interest very easily—I suggested him to read the book randomly, not page by page. ‘Just open any page at random and read, maybe that particular page has a message for you,’ I gave my expert advice as I handed over the thick volume. He was sitting under a mango tree and took the thick volume with discomfort, almost suspicion. He opened a page at random as I had suggested. He is all seriousness as he reads the first line on the page. He throws the book into my lap as if he has received an electric shock. ‘It’s a sheer lie!’ he mutters. Well, the first line on that page happened to be the local saint's prohibition against weed, ganja and charas. Kaka Maharaj has been smoking weed as an aid in his sadhna for decades, so obviously he found it insulting. ‘See, I respect him. But that doesn’t mean he is correct about everything!’ he looks stern.

Imagine out of 500 pages, this page had to open and the first line—perhaps the only line in the entire book—happened to be the one that would offend the reader. So the book was returned just one-line read. ‘You yourself wanted to read books,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘No, no … books are suitable for you. Take it away,’ he instructed. So I returned with my thick book.

Recently he crossed a big milestone in his sadhna. I call it a milestone because I have heard and read about it that most of the sadhaks have to cross it sometimes on the path. At one night he faced the soul-rattling experience of weirdest apparitions, ghouls, djins, naked witches, ferocious demons, the strangest human-animal hybrids. ‘I was sitting in dhyan post-midnight. They just arrived in big numbers. You cannot imagine such strange and fearsome bodies and faces. Some of them came so close that I could smell their breath. The naked horrid witches stayed a couple of feet away, but they danced in a repugnant manner. My heart would have burst out with fear if not for my guru. I survived just because I kept focused on my guru and saw his image in my mind,’ he told. I have read many books of sadhaks meeting such experience. He is a simple man of faith, so it may not sound too much to him. But I know with my bookish knowledge that mother existence has tested him for fear. That day I felt very glad for him and left with a smile on my face—for him, for his sadhna, for his guru who saved him from a fall in the face of the devil. 

A fulfilling life

 He was nicknamed Pahadi by the villagers. Nicknames hardly followed any rhyme or reason during those days. Had there been any logic in naming another boy as Bodda (roughly translated as kamzor or weak), he ought to have been named thada (majboot, strong) because he was rotund and full-bodied like a double-door big refrigerator in girth. So Pahadi (hill) was no mountain but maybe being a big boy with somewhat mountain man features must have aroused someone’s creativity to name him as such.

Pahadi was my classmate from class one to matriculation at the village school. A robust, rosy-jowled boy who had, and still has, a propensity to unleash distinguished rolling notes of laughter at the littlest provocation. It must have given him loads of—almost a little pahadi—positive hormones. He has retained the laughing spirit that I witnessed in him as a small boy. And now as a grown up man he is the same one as far as laughter is concerned. He is a big man with a loud, booming laughter and that sums up his name-de-plume. His ever-green laughter seems to have given him a kind of timeless vitality.

Pahadi loved movies. Those were the VCR and cassette days. If someone brought a VCR player on rent for a night, it would turn into an epoch-making news in the countryside. Pahadi would walk for kilometers to watch movies at neighboring villages.

I met him recently at a new mall in the city. He looked happier and healthier than ever. His laughter also had taken bigger, longer notes. He has a new job—bouncer at the multiplex cinema in the mall. There are some guys who cannot help hurling bad words during the screening, targeting the female audience, especially the love-birds seeking dark corners to carry out their pleasant conspiracies. So in Haryanvi multiplexes you need to have bouncers as well, just like there are muscular order-keepers in bars and discotheques. It still is a stubbornly conservative society. The shadowy, chilled out corners of a multiplex sound like flower-banked altar to lovebirds.

Love always has had its enemies. So there are plenty of evil’s foot soldiers, the rowdy ones without girlfriends, itching to force their transient transgressions into the little love-tales blooming in the shade. With his impressive bulk Pahadi is a kind savior. Let there be a lewd comment or abusive phrase and there you see Pahadi the bouncer moving across the rows to catch the throat sourcing the nuisance. There are even guys—so thoroughly drenched in discourtesies—that sometimes he has to drag them by the collar and dump them outside. He is a kind of all goody-goody hero beating the villains. The lovebirds look up to him with a lot of gratitude in their eyes.

Nurtured by daily doses of movies at the glittering new multiplex, life seems a bed of roses. Compare it with the days of watching movies in a street on a small television set having a bleary and grainy screen, with a water drain gurgling nearby and sleepy street dogs yawning with boredom. And now all this! Do we still need proofs that life gives blessings?

The jolts of life are to 'make' you not 'break'

 On April 18, 1906 San Francisco was jolted by a big earthquake. Buildings collapsed and fires spread around. Many bedridden invalids suddenly got up and helped in saving others. It beats many a logical, well-chiseled paradigm. A paradigm-busting kick almost: meek shuffles and soft, helpless floundering in beds getting transformed into savior legs and arms; a burst of life, new shoots and saplings instead of steady degeneration, almost fossilization while still alive, in the practically lifeless museum; a rapturous run of blood cutting the individual super-failure with its saber-sharp counter-offensive to regain the lost ground. A kind of shock therapy, I suppose. It’s better to get jolted from time to time. It keeps you on the toes and engaged in the game of life.

The chip-chip sound of love

Researches have shown the mother turkey’s maternal strings get tugged by the chip-chip sound made by her chicks. It’s not about the smell, look or any other element. Mother turkeys have even agreed to hatch and lovingly adore the rouged and rolled dummies of antagonistic species just because they played the familiar chip-chip sound. The same may be the case about likes and dislikes among we humans. So cool down thou amazing, meticulously passionate enchanter! If you are feeling super-confident of your starry looks and mind-blowing glory because a gorgeous gal has fallen in love with you just for everything perfect in you. Maybe you make a chip-chip sound for her (your resplendent raylet) to accept you and possibly a funny jowled but quietly competent fellow gentlemanly making the same sound and emanating subtle innuendoes stands exactly the same chance as you.

A little prayer

 Lord let me be joyful to see my own death. Let my old self take a peaceful death right here in front of me. Let a new me take birth before I shed this body. Dying of the old self and the birth of the new!

Let the hand that would have hit on impulse die and take birth to go up for a blessing on the same provocation. Let the tongue that would have spewed out poisoned words die and take birth as the one that gently rolls out delicate words of kindness, sympathy and solace in the same situation. Let the face that would have snorted with anger and hate die and take birth as a smiling face of empathy under similar circumstances. Let the eyes that saw fault in others die and get reborn as the one which see the inherent beauty in the same people. Let the heart that carries anger, hate, jealousy take its last breath and rise as a kind and compassionate chamber of my soul in its new birth.

This is a beautiful dying that all of us have to welcome in our lives. The old self dies slowly, gently over a period of time and by the time we reach a stage of physical death we are already reborn as a new person. In that case the physical death loses its meaning. We already know that we have been reborn and there is more that awaits blissfully in changed dimensions and reshaped consciousness. Maybe then there is no fear of the physical death of this body. Maybe this is what they mean by getting liberated.

Wish you all a very happy Gurupurab. Let Baba Nanak’s blessings be showered upon you on this holy kartik purnima!     

The bliss of being 'common'

 I don’t want to be too good or too great to be finally get burdened under the weight of my own goodness. Conceptual sense of goodness and purity turns an obligation in the long run and one has to put up masks to keep it. I don’t want that divinity that would uproot me from the pains and pleasures of earthly humanity. I don’t aspire to attain too lofty a character to finally become someone who has to take up falsehoods as customs and rituals to maintain my persona. I don’t want to be completely detached, perfectly moral, neutral and aloof so as not to even hear the panicked notes of a little bird being pursued by a hunting bird and watch the game of ‘the stronger eating the weaker’ unfold with a saintly muse. I want to retain enough humanity to allow my kindness on impulse and throw a clod at the hunting bird. Even if it hits the bird of prey I would take the chance. I don’t want enlightenment or liberation that takes me away from the sweet, common scent of humanity with its mundane pains and pleasures.

Even Buddha kept quiet when his wife questioned him about the necessity of renouncing everything to get supreme joy for himself. He had abandoned a wife and a little son; severed his ties right in the middle of the night. That to me is causing pain to others for individual salvation. When he returned as a revered spiritual king, his wife requested to be granted a meeting with the great teacher. ‘It’s my right to be allowed a meeting with him in privacy as his wife,’ she said. And the great master agreed. ‘O great spiritual master and dear husband, you abandoned me and your child and the entire family for individual salvation. Tell me whether what you have attained could not have been attained without abandoning us?’ she asked. She spoke as an aggrieved wife with feminine authority and worldly conviction. The great master kept quiet. For the first time he had no answer to this. He knew all this could have been attained even without causing pain to his family. But it would have been a bigger challenge to attain all this, which he had availed as a sanyasi, while staying in worldliness.

So isn’t renunciation the easier way? Isn’t running away—even if it means to attain the salvation of humanity later—an easier path? It’s very easy to shut out disturbing mental situations from going rampant while sitting in a cave. The real challenge is to be a yogi within while moving on the worldly stage with all the earthly bearings of duties, roles, relationships, karma, dharma, everything. Like Krishna did. Like Rama did. They forged their saintliness ‘within’ right there on the stage of this drama.

I would prefer to run into situations instead of running away. To try to be stable on a shaking platform is the real challenge. It’s so easy to get poise and balance on a stable platform. The entire essence of being a spiritual person to me is just to remind myself of my core truths even while I’m walking across the illustrious, blinding bazaars of fakery and falsehood surrounding me; to be stable within even while walking in a noisy bazaar; to do my duties on the worldly stage with a perfect detachment and understanding that I’m playing this role in this drama and I have to perform it really well.

The saints are as much part of this existence as the common people like you and me are. If the God had been too partial towards the saints, they would have outnumbered the commoners by now. The real saints are joyful with the minimum that supports their life. The common people suppose that the drama on the stage will get them happiness. Not much difference, I think. To some super-galactic consciousness, taking itself to be a separate super-entity, all this would be just the same—the saints and the commoners. So don’t harbor vanity for being a saint; and don’t feel the guilt of being common. Mother existence stands equally distant or close to both the categories. Further, God certainly must be in love with his common children because He has so many of them.

If my sympathetic tears alleviate the pain of a fellow human being, I’m ready to cry. If my smile lights up someone’s life, I’m there to offer it. I don’t want to be an idol that turns liberated, impassive, heavenly and mute to all the fluctuations of fate and fortunes around me. I love being just like anyone around. 

And if you ever get judgemental over normal worldliness, either about your own self or others, always remember this: It's lonely enough in an increasingly difficult world. Pardon people for willing to find comfort by indulging in illusionary sweeties of life. Because all this is part of life; all this is meant to help us grow, evolve and continue with our journey. 

The little world of honeybees

 It needs a lot of effort by the honeybees to hold onto the edges of water bucket and take sips of water to save their larvae in the comb. It’s a risky gambit, many tumble down and swim very hard to get back to safety. Many drown in the process. But they don’t mind it. They exist as a species, not as Mr Honey x or Miss Honey y. It’s a humongous survival game on the tiny stage portraying extraordinary interludes of life and hope among the assault by brutal bayonets of annihilation. They are just near the bigger bank of survival, the monsoons; just three or four more weeks of ferrying water in this killing heat. Then the monsoons would be roaring. A few stinging yellow wasps also visit the bucket. They carry an advantage as far as drawing water from the bucket is concerned. They are bigger in body and have larger legs, which allow them to land straightaway on the water surface like a seaplane.

The tree above the bucket is a place of active engagement these days. A babbler and tailorbird nests cause this shrieking squalor. Both of them are very proactive verbal fighters. A tailorbird is far smaller in size but punching far above their weight the little couple even outshouts the babbler pair. The little guys are staunchly stubborn. I have seen even the bullying babblers turn hesitant and patchy in their beaky bombardment, calling for a ceasefire which is very surprising. And when both these noisy nest-makers are silent for some strange reason, it looks as if pure and primitive strains of silence have dawned upon the little garden.

A little journey

 On our relentless march on the path of progress, we have turned ‘time’ more and more scarce. We are running against time, or maybe away from it. We have speedier vehicles, better roads, iron-hard will to arrive ‘within time’ but still we are losing the grip and time is always speeding away, forcing us to continue increasing our quest for more speed. Everything is in a whirlwind, spinning like a mad top, cosmic top with whirring galaxies, sucking black holes, exploding stars. Things have changed so much as to reverse the reality: waterwork’s vestiges on the Himalayan peaks and sandiest deserts where once there were luscious most forests. And we with our social prominence and feigned calm trying to outfox time that has outfoxed everything to the stretches of infinity.

As I go slowly clinging to the edge of the road on my scooter, the bigger vehicles go making war-like din and angry clamor. Some even shriek with a hungry terrier’s vengeance. People seem to be running almost madly. Sadly very few have the real clue as to why and where they are running to. It’s more of a habit to run, I suppose. There is not much to look around the road, at least in this part of India. There are sinews of self-destruction scattered around in the intensive lop-sided cropping pattern in the fields with wagon-loads of poison in the form of chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and weedicides. The vestiges of the erratic interlocutors hell bent upon writing a one-dimensional, human-centric legacy.

In any case, you hardly have the time to look at something that may assure you that not all is lost. You have to be spot-on in staring at the road to survive and not get squashed like we squash worms and ants as we hurriedly walk. Your chances of reaching the destination and a centipede crossing the road are almost same. But then there are brief moments that steal in because they fall within the range of your concentration. The gypsy caravan is an exotic chaos by the side of the road. A young gypsy woman untangles the little front leg of a baby goat from the tethering rope and puts some chopped fodder in the small metal basin in front of the tiny guy. A truck carries a pile of junk and sitting on the junk heap are junked humans, the laborers. Faces and clothes smeared with dirt and grease. Destiny-hounded men carrying just trifle measure of flesh around their ribs, while the capaciously potbellied behemoths of luck and prosperity go almost squashing them underfoot. You feel so lucky even on your little scooter amidst car-swarms of latest models competing to get bigger and costlier. Many a shoeless foot bleeding on the stony path, while at least you have your slippers and common ground to walk upon. If you ever feel like a victim and think that the hostile searchlight of fate always picks you out to test you, please remember that there are people who are in the burning kiln right from beginning to end without any respite. 

True knowledge

 True knowledge is just coming home with the realisation that all the information fed in our neural network is only a means for survival, a mere tool like a chair to sit upon. It also sets up the course for unknowing and unlearning, and the consequent swiping the screen clean, to be in sync with the intangible, but ever manifesting, intelligence in its undivided form. Logic, words, knowledge and information are mere chisels and hammers to chip away the mind-created stone from the huge rock of our assumed self, ego, and carve out a dimenaionless entity. So one's logic though can't take you to the Truth, but it can at least help you in avoiding the tricks of the false. So guys pic up your tools, but remember they are nothing more than a stonemason's instruments in his rucksack as he movers to his stoneyard.

Far away from wars and violence

 Mid-June is burning so excitedly and with such clinching ruthlessness that I sometimes fear the hair on my head may catch fire when I go out in the sun. Fierce loo is the triumphantly shrieking queen now. It singes your body and tries to parch your soul. It sizzles with its boiling sighs as if a red-hot iron rod is put in water letting out tempestuous sprouts of water and fire. And heart also burns with pain at the news of burning Manipur. Violence, hate and anger constitute a fire that burns all. It doesn’t compartmentalize its victims across religion, caste, class, ethnicities or any other differential that we humans have created in the society to form groupings. It was tragically verified in the ongoing ethnic violence between Meiteis and Kukis in Manipur. An ambulance was torched by a rampaging mob. A Meitei woman and her little daughter died in the attack. Meitei casualties from this perspective. But a Kuki man lost his daughter and wife as well. The dead Meitei woman was married to a Kuki man. So a Kuki casualty from this perspective. And above all, it’s always common humanity’s casualty. Politicians, leaders and other power aspirants will always trigger fire along the dividing fault lines. It serves their purpose. But in the fire the common fate of all groups burns with equal tragedy.

Beyond ethnic violence and imperialist wars, here in my little garden there is something that defies fire and is holding a little flag of hope, faith, humanity, colors, waters, flowers and spring. It’s a lemon swallow-tail, a butterfly. Gliding over the hot eddies, it arrives in the sun-thrashed garden to cheer-up the brooding, beaten, pale, stunted, withered plants. There are a few sun-burnt flowers, almost lust-ravaged by the fiery kisses, giving a sad smile as if they are the insignia of a proud but lost civilization. It lands among some almost melting, faded purple Mexican Petunia flowers still somehow managing their smiles under the parijat’s shade. The butterfly takes a few sips, and reinvigorated goes gliding almost through the fire. The air is so hot that it seems it will catch fire any moment. A little phenomenon, a transient slogger making the most of the few days bestowed by mother nature. Why stop flying as long as you have the wings even if it means flying through the fire? The butterfly flutters away in the hot, sighing wind, challenging its own colorful, soft pusillanimity, cutting across the snarling loops and deadly snarls of mortality. It’s a songfully fulfilling sight, a wholesale sortie of freedom, a quintessential assertion of free will. A grandiose gale proclaiming, ‘Burn my wings but fly I will at any cost!’ 

Sobriety--an exception

 Their fate went into petulant plunge, landing them into the pits of misery. The same old story of two generations of chronic drunkards. Peace goes out in an illustrious exodus from a house whose males spend most of the time in drunken oblivion.

The liquor-lover who quarrels and drinks non-stop is on a ceasefire today. The house was crumbling, the bricks losing their grip in the walls. It never was a home in any case. But even the namesake house, an assemblage of bricks and a roof overhead, was wearing away due to the negligence and constant strife and tension inside. The walls and the roof seemed to say enough is enough and started giving in.

A little piece of farmland was still in the family’s ownership. It was acquired by the government to build a road. The compensation money miraculously survived because the four daughters and their mother sat on it night and day. The entire female force rallied and banded together to ensure that the money was used in house-making only. The old crumbling house was dismantled. A new modest house emerged out of the ruins as the females of the family beat even the masons, bricklayers and laborers in contributing to the construction work. They worked full time with the construction staff to save the labor costs.

The liquor-lover seems sober today. The proud girls are watching with the immaculate dignity of caring daughters despite all the ill treatments by the menfolk under a patriarchal system. He is sprinkling water over the recently plastered walls. Holding the water hose he lets loose squirts of water like a child. He playfully wets his old father as well. It’s a big change because usually they squirt, sprinkle, pour and hurl the choicest abuses, cuss words and expletives at each other. The father also clumsily gambols a mild abuse. He teases his wife also and sprays water in her direction. How happy looks a house without drunken fights! Well, let’s hope the newly built house now becomes a happy home! However, there is not much chance of it being so given the liquor-loving father-son duo’s unswerving allegiance to the weird code of drunken conduct. But what’s wrong in hoping it to be a happy home at long last.

Urbanization

 The ones who stay in a village may have a notion about relatively cleaner air than the cities. But things are changing very fast even in the villages. In the villages also the disposable plastic per household is on the increase. The farmers keep dung heaps, not too far from their houses, which they use as farm manure at the beginning of a new crop season. In order to avoid the plastic from going into the fields they keep burning the little heaps over the weeks—a very simplistic solution to turn the plastic rubbish invisible in the air instead of seeing it in physical form in the fields. So I can smell poisonous plastic burning multiple times a day. Little do they realize that the very same plastic now goes into their lungs in another form. The day is not far when the hypothetical solace of breathing better air in a village will lose its relevance. The villages will turn as polluted as the cities unless we find a better way to dispose our plastic. It could be as simple as collecting your plastic garbage in a sack and dump it at the dumpsite outside the village near the town. But who will take that much trouble. We need quick solutions for everything these days.

New shoots on the old tree of patriarchy

 We still have pretty solid patriarchal roots in our social soil depriving women of their well justified position in various spheres of life. Take the case of football for example. Despite the best of facilities, fat pay cheques, world-class infrastructure, promotional tours, global level support staffs, the Indian men’s football team is ranked 107 in global ranking. Now consider the Indian women’s football team. Nobody talks about them because they hardly get any priority in the gaming scheme. In comparison to the men’s football team they get maybe just five percent attention, resources and focus. Still they are ranked far higher than the men’s team. The Indian women’s team is ranked 60 in the world. They have been twice runners up in Asian championship. The men’s ISL league matches are played under glaring floodlights, while the women footballers struggle in their league under merciless hot sun as their matches would start at 8:30 AM and 4 in the afternoon. Who would spend extra money by lighting floodlights for women’s football game? Let them play under the sun. It hardly matters to the organizers.

Recently Kerala Blasters men’s football team walked off the field during a match. The club was heavily fined for this breach of sports’ ethics. Who suffered the consequences? Will you be able to believe it? To offset their financial loss the club suspended their women’s team. The women pay for the men’s folly and unwarranted conduct! Isn’t it hilarious? Patriarchy is so deeply entrenched in our system that directly or indirectly women and girls have to pay when their interests clash with the males.

Take the ongoing wrestling saga where the champion daughters are fighting for justice. They are pitted against a powerful man. There are allegations of sexual harassment and severe breach of professional conduct on his part. But the system seems to be protecting him. In fact, there are thousands who are questioning the girl wrestlers themselves, asking for the proofs of molestation. As if a girl is always walking with a spy camera to present in the court as evidence. Very sad and disappointing.

The workshop within

 How will you even touch someone softly if you haven’t felt the gentility of your own fingers on your skin? How will you even offer a smile to someone if you haven’t showered your own smiles at the representative of divinity, you true self, within you? How will you embrace someone if you haven’t given a warming bear hug to your soul like a beloved? How will you even touch someone’s life in a healing way unless you haven’t healed your own invisible scars? How will you make someone joyful if you haven’t enjoyed its treasures first? How will you understand someone’s pain unless you have understood the value of your own tears? Charity begins at home. All this has to start from one’s own dear self. Till then whatever we do in the name of all the gifts mentioned above is nothing but a lip service, a theory without experiential reality, a mere pretense to fulfill a duty, or even facelift measures to beat our own weakness, fear, insecurities. Others are just an extension of this very own self. So it’s better to start with the self, the nearest source to experiment all these truths and then build upon the larger scale.

A suitable distance and noble proximity

The inspirer of lovers and the innocent muse of little children, the moon is always there in its orbit around earth. We expect it to be there after dark nights, its crescent first increasing then decreasing. How come it’s able to fulfill its natural duty with such unerring precision? It’s born of centripetal and centrifugal forces, the forces of opposing nature. The centripetal force of earth, born of its gravity, pulling the moon towards it; the centrifugal force, the outward force on moon when it rotates, saving it from crashing into the earth due to the its gravitational force. Perfect balance, harmony and precision!

The same is the connection between two humans, be it business partnerships, matrimonial alliance, friendship, communication or any situation involving a connection between two human beings. There has to be gravitational pull, the attraction. This attraction is born of our hopes, expectations, insecurities, vulnerabilities, strengths, weaknesses, dreams and aspirations. But the pull can be really hard. It sees us crashing into each other as if the other person is the last salvation point. We forget that he/she is also a human being with similar strengths and weaknesses. Then follows the pain, dilemma, blame and even suffering as we try to free ourselves from the other person, feeling suffocated, our sacred self violated, our sense of freedom jeopardized.

How to keep moving safely at an optimum distance in the trajectory of any type of relationship? We have to maintain the pull, but too strong a pull will see us being sucked into the privacy and vulnerability zone of the other person. Similarly, the outward-bound centrifugal force of testing incidents and situations will try to pull us apart, pulling us against the forces of attraction. It’s always there to make people fall apart because without it the force of attraction has no meaning.

It’s only the see-saw balance between these opposing forces that sees an object moving in a safe orbit about another body. Similarly, it’s the attraction and the challenges to that attraction that make the trajectory of a relationship between two humans dynamic in nature. It gives it mobility. The mobility makes it a journey. And the journeys are meant to make us learn lessons, to evolve and be wiser. Wise people know the importance of love, kindness, care and share.

So all you people there, be careful in your role of a friend, partner, husband, wife, colleague. Maintain the attraction but don’t allow it to pull you too much into the inner sanctified zone of the object of your attraction. Don’t simply fall over people, making them feel burdened with you. Respect that inviolable individuality in a person. At the same time, don’t allow the outward-bound forces to break the fragile bond of attraction and fly you away into the unknown, out of the trajectory of that person. Don’t be too far. Don’t be too near either. Keep a teasing distance to keep it fresh and alive. Too much of intimacy and too much of space are both bad for a relationship. Harmony is the product of a balanced equation.

With some space in between, each of the two persons can feel comfortable and can see the other in true light. We need some space to watch, to witness, to appreciate, to note weaknesses and thus guide and give support. If we crash into each other, with too much intimacy, it somehow disturbs the sacred individuality of the person. Then we see a blurred picture of the other person because he/she has crossed the zone of observance, comfort and bonhomie. It turns into a transgression. That’s why two persons, who might be almost perfect to others outside, after coming into too proximity get confused about their respective identities, make it complex and then find themselves almost intolerable to each other. They take each other as transgressors.  

This cosmic law holds even supermassive galaxies in balance. Human relations are a cakewalk for its application. So hold hands softly, don’t crush; embrace gently, don’t squeeze; softly brace, don’t clutch; speak gently, don’t shout; hold talks, not debates; make love, not just violent lust; just smile, don’t snort; listen and make your point; laugh and make her laugh; gently support but slowly undo the dependencies; don’t lead or follow, just walk together; hold hands but not pull him/her into your direction, walk on a common path. These are the little tools to maintain that sacred space between two humans.

So there has to a sacred space in between, the space defined by healthy attraction, which is just sufficient to undo the outward forces of distraction. Not too near; not too far. At a perfect distance. If we meet each other at this perfect distance, we too can keep revolving around each other in an optimum trajectory for a long time.   

The seekers of truth

Mahatma Gandhi said: "The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should be so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of Truth."

It's such a beautiful statement. This humbling melts the rigidities in us, the cold hard blocks that prevent a free flow of the self, putting us out of sync with life. And in the absence of a free flow, we get stuck up at a place, in a particular situation, in the past memories, in negative emotions. We negate life. We become rigid, lose our vulnerabilities, our softness. We take up a stern visage as a defense mechanism. The things, people and situations that take a little strike at our rigid opinionated self, our ego construction, are nothing but humbling tools, to break the wrong edges in us, to reshape us, to mellow us, to help us flow, to get as near to truth as possible. Keep flowing. Flow is evolution. And stay open to any chance of getting humbled. They are blessings in disguise.

Subtle dangers to democracy

 The recent trends in Indian politics are very disturbing. The present government says their goal is Congress-free India. Now can you visualize a democracy without opposition? A political system without effective opposition is as good as autocracy.

Let’s try to understand it through a true story about Chinese premier Mao Zedong. The all-powerful leader ordered his subjects to kill sparrows so that they won’t eat grains in the fields and thus there would be more grains for human consumption. The people treated him as a God and on his instructions the entire Chinese human population turned enemies of poor little sparrows. So the sparrows vanished from the Chinese skies. A sparrow-free China it became. But they had forgotten that sparrows don’t eat just grains, they eat pests and harmful insects as well. So with the predators gone, the pests and insects reigned supreme and chucked out entire croplands. It resulted in a terrible famine that lasted for three years.

Similarly, if opposition, that is Congress, is chucked out of the political system, the pests and bugs of predatory tendency to misuse and manipulate power will chuck out our democracy. A healthy opposition is a predator for the bugs and pests of autocracy. The government has to understand that Congress doesn’t merely eat their parliamentary seats; it eats the pests of autocracy as well. The government is legitimate in its efforts to come to power again in 2024 but why shout ‘Congress-free Bharat’. Say we will defeat Congress. If you openly declare that you want to finish the opposition, it only means you want to run this country as an autocrat.

The hallmark of a true democracy is the reach of law and ethical principles followed by the leadership that enable either the law to act or enable a leader’s conscience to step down in case of infringement of duties or any other inappropriate behavior. A lockdown-time little private party cost Boris Johnson his British premier position. Can you imagine anything like this in India? Here the grossest transgressions of duties and misuse of power by the politicians are treated as routine affairs. When there is no fear of the card-castle falling apart in case of the slighted mischief with cards, those in power will take their positions for granted.

Sadly, there are many instances when cloud-piercing cries of genuine suffering go reverberating across the corridors of power and fall on deaf ears. The main reason being that they emanate from poor people’s mouths. And there are so many instances when real thugs, ruffians and rascals are seen getting victoriously crowned after manipulating and hijacking the system in an apparently legalized and institutionalized manner. There are episodes where your soul suffers nightmarish convulsions witnessing the manipulation of the system by the strong, wealthy and powerful. Their eyes shine with a malevolent, piercing sense of pleasure in bypassing the norms and your helpless guts give a disgusting constriction. You feel so helpless. All you can do is to watch in a severely sustained silence.

The show of power is still a frightful lot in the country. And the strongmen of the game, through their titillating tutelage, nurture a cringing breed of yesmen who handover the consequences of misused power to those lower in stature to them.  

There a lockdown-time party can see a prime minister bowing out; here even serious allegations of sexual harassment won’t budge a parliamentarian from his powerful seat. We have a lot of work to accomplish to be a real, strong democracy.

In a really strong democracy, the strongest of the strong can be taken to the dock in case of stepping over the laws. Take America for example. Their ex-president is being put into the dock for official mismanagement and discrepancies. It can happen only in a strong democracy, where official institutions are bigger than individuals occupying constitutional posts. America rules this world because they are the strongest democracy on earth. We are of course the largest democracy but the quality of democracy needs a vast amount of improvement. Here individual leaders are bigger than the seats they occupy. It creates two categories of justice: one for the privileged and the other for the common people.

Yes, we are a constitutional democracy on paper in every sense of the term. But in practice we are missing a lot from the great principles in our brilliant constitution. It will take some time to get a leadership that follows ethical principles and listens to conscience, and institutions and authorities independent enough to penalize even the strongest. I would say we are a work in progress as a democracy which is a good thing and far better than autocracies and pseudo democracies like Pakistan where there is a shadowy deep state pulling the strings. I firmly believe that there will be a day when we will be world’s strongest democracy as well, not just the largest. The strongest democracy is the benchmark where the most powerful is under the same chance of penalization as the weakest in case of falling off the lawful limits.

Slow-paced pleasure of some silent moments

 The world around you changes once a babbler makes a nest in your garden. They are very assertive in defending their territory. I’m spraying water on jungle geranium as a kind of bonus gift to it because it has blossomed really well even in this heat. An almost permanent shade of the parijat above has worked in its favor. I water it twice a day and it has made the most of it. It’s a pleasant sight to look at its bulbs of soft pink. These are tiny clusters of flowers forming big laddoo-sized bouquets. It’s a beautiful pattern, almost exotic and challengingly intricate. It’s a decorously contoured, captivating flower, a visual delight. Each bulb comprises a cluster of small, tubular blossoms which densely populate the inflorescence. The individual flowers are very small in size, just measuring about one to two inches in diameter. But their beauty lies in unity, holding together in illumined integrity. They grow closely together and form a rounded shape, presenting the stunning visual impact of a single big bulb of flower. You feel proud to have helped in creating such blossoms. These are visually very interesting flowers having intricate streaks and patterns, carrying unique swathes of aesthetics. They look inviting with their exotic appeal.

As I sprinkle water over the flowers and the glossy green oblong leaves, inhaling the tropical aroma, a babbler has some serious issue. In my flowery reverie I have stepped near a little puddle of water formed on the uneven cemented bricks in the yard. It must have been drinking water there and I inadvertently disturbed it. There it starts with a long chain of tart, stinging words. If you have the lung power to out-babble them you can assert your rights. But I have to give in to this perennial dissenter. My mailbox is full of recent rejections so I am in no mood to fight. I try though, in slight irritation. I turn the water pipe in its direction and give it a mild shower to cool it down. But that makes it outright abusive. I simply move away, why get into arguments with foul-mouthed guys. It proudly hops and reclaims its puddle and takes sips of victory by turning its neck sideways so that its beak gets a slant enabling it to scoop some water with each effort. It looks even angrier with its side-long white-rimmed look. I move further away.

The wire-tailed swallow couple is sitting at exactly the same spot on the wire. It’s a love-spot for them. They take a view of the courtyard with a sort of miscellaneous muse.

I have minimized honeybee casualties by putting dry leaves and light dry twigs on the water surface in the bucket. After taking a tumble in the water most of them swim to safety to the nearest point.

The flower in the wall crack is facing the toughest test. It has shed its leaves as homage to the fiery summers, sparing just a few leaves at the top as a mark of life and its ongoing fight. I sprinkle a bit of water over the crack twice a day and that keeps it going. It has to hang on till the monsoons return. Just a matter of one moth I suppose.

The ants have made their hole bigger and there is a little heap of sand, the dredge of their mining effort, on the clean cemented brick where they have drilled a hole. All and sundry need a pucca house these days. It’s a busy world with cascading ambitions.

Curry leaf tree, the beloved culinary plant with aromatic leaves. It is laden with small, delicate flowers growing in clusters called panicles. Each panicle comprises numerous individual flowers densely populating the inflorescence. Each gust of wind results in a drizzle of almost countless tiny petals measuring a few millimeters in size. The florescence is so dense that despite a continuous drizzle of tiny petals still there is enough for the bees, stinging wasps and creamy white little butterflies to go feasting through the day. Tiny star-shaped individual blooms harken the sappers. They emit a sweet, gently floral scent that wafts with the winds and carries its sweet invitation.

Far away from the tumultuous trajectories of the bigger world, it’s my little corner crowned with an unadulterated halo; of little sounds and long silences; of rosy radiance and reverberating bliss. A little world taking me into the pools of seductive withdrawal. There was a time when I tried to fit into the piercingly gibberish mainstream. Very soon I realized that I am one of the fringe folks. And frayed, frazzled and fatigued, no longer able to bear the shadowy overtures of the thoroughfare, carrying sore stabs of the feeling of victimization, sobbing tempests buzzing in my ears, I walked into the embracing folds of my little private world. It healed the scars on my soul. Far away from fictitious championing, I just try to be my real self, a tiny self going in sync with small-small happenings in my tiny corner. 

Life

 Why should winning be just defined by finishing the line ahead of others? Finishing the line with your best, even if it means coming last in the list, is also a win. And beyond finishing, the will to touch the line, even if you fall on the way, is a win. Further, even the will to participate is a win. And if you don’t participate at all and do something else that also is winning. Why talk of defeats? It’s winning-winning all the way, in one form or the other; because to be alive itself is a win. The breath that you take now is your triumph, your trophy, a result of your body’s collective heave to help you keep carrying your journey, the crowned crest of the will to continue on its journey. This step you take now is a journey. Life is a winsome game in totality. Count all your missteps, follies, cloud-piercing cries, disasters, tragedies and pains. Add them. However high is the sum, it will still fall short of nullifying the big positive number—life, a soft smile. Life divine drawn and painted in its celestial contours. Life bound together with mystic strands and syncretic synergy. You all are winners I tell you.

Fusillade of the furtive flautist

As the furtive flautist goes raising dust on the path of time with his rag-tag show, many a petite songstress loses their songs and melodies. The forests turn quiet and a silence reigns with its unabashedly parochial throbbing. Mother nature looks a travel-worn sailor not able to recall or even imagine pure mythological horizons of the past, a wonderfully wild past with its generic sacredness. Then one species rose supreme with its sadistic leer. With clockwork precision it lugged it out and lugged it in by scattering the deviants of its overworking brain. The forests vanished and devolved into potted plants. Spring sunshine and lovely desert nights encradling sand and stars became one and the same.

There is an incessant face-off between mankind and nature. We are the new gods with our particular perceptions and selective denunciations. The new god sordidly swarming over everything in its path. And its deeds almost a devilish enclosure for mother nature. The disciple that started with a rudderless reverence to the original god and then passing through dark doorways declared himself to be the new godly sovereign. We are too big a source of change on this little planet. The force of our hand is visible through rampant global warming, furious tornados, forest fires, poisoned air and polluted seas. The forces of evolution have gone into a tizzy. The wheel of evolution is spinning too fast. Many species are in a desperate spell of adaption and evolution to extend their survival for some more time. But that seems futile in the face of massively changed environment.

In a matter of around 150 years, the beak size of Australian parrots has grown by 4-10 percent. All this is to cope up with the increased heat. In a matter of just half a century, the wings of round-leaf bats have increased by one percent. In a short span we have now larger billed finches adapting to survive in hotter climate. Larger beaks help them to dissipate excess heat. Brightly colorful butterfly fish are usually aggressive in the seas. They stoutly defend their territory with a squirming valor. Now they are becoming less aggressive. This is due to the menace of coral bleaching going at a big scale. They are less on calories and that turns them docile. You need a lot of energy to fuel your aggression and territorial ambitions.

In warmer Alaskan regions now more berries ripen and the bears eat more of berries than salmons. As a result they turn lethargic and plump. It needs less effort in feasting upon berries than chasing salmons. Who is interested in unavailing ransackings and flunging forth for slippery agile preys when you have unmoving berries harking your attention? There was a time when in the subarctic region one’s next door neighbor was many miles up or down the line. Now there are harassing hundreds every square mile and our footprints write title deeds of ownerships in every nook corner of the icy wilderness.

The conditions have turned windier and stormier, so a lizard named Anoleshas now has bigger toepads and more muscular front legs to cling onto survival chances among the terribly shaken vegetation. To beat hurricanes you need stronger toepads.

Ever lost in our maneuvering mists, we have unleashed evolve-or-perish situation for scores of species. Of course, most of the species won’t be able to keep pace with such highly accelerated evolution rates and would become extinct in the coming decades.

In response to the changing sea water temperatures, squids are now coming of age faster and changing their food pattern.

Galgapos finches are adding to their beak size. Small beaks mean less chances of survival in a boiling world.

Turtle hatching in warmer seas results in more females. With warming seas we will have almost many hundreds of females for a male. So rising temperatures are now determining sex in the species.

It seems a gloomy tale. However, let’s make the most of what is still left—aesthetically.

The regalia of old age

So he, the regal old man, embracing his age with fragile but tight grip, lives happily as the tail-end of a great life lived. He has weathered the tempests of youth: the force of beginning, starting and acceleration! And now the path of letting it go; losing the pace slowly, gracefully, receptively. The deceleration.  Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop finally. It gives him as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the final rest. Now, during the slowing down phase, his time has become slow, the world is a small puddle around his feet. He lives like in a dream. A slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months, months like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, he lives equal to a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode.

He enjoyed the choices which fate sieved for him. Just grabbed his share. Now he picks up and plays among those things and coarse, discarded chaff which remain unwanted above as the fine particles, much in demand, trickle below. But it’s great fun, he tells with mischievous gusto: 

“In youth, we just think that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. But life can be equally enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and chaff. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone.” 

The old reveler, away from the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where the faintest traces of warmth touch his old bones before moving into the cold darkness. 

The majestic slow down, as important and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning, the youth. The source, the beginning, and the slowdown, and the end. A cycle. Enjoy it!

The ease of being with common sense

 There is some manual task to be done. Rashe Ram is my first option for anything requiring physical labor. I try my chance to connect him over his phone number. As expected, the number is temporary out of service. He knows he doesn’t need a phone much. Due to his honesty in work, he is much in demand, so the labor seekers would book his services by launching a physical search and catching hold of him in person. And his secret girlfriends also know where to find him whenever he is needed for his lover’s duties, which is nothing more than a hurried plain mating even without having a word. In any case he is a man of few words.

The work involves some repairs in the street and we are gathered on the spot feeling not so good about not being able to avail the services of the best worker. Then someone informs that Rashe was recently picked up by the police for keeping 15 little pouches of ganja. We have just stopped talking about him and there comes Rashe Ram lumbering with his usual carefree air, unconcerned about the big issues in life. He is much hailed for his timely arrival.  

He shyly denies my question about the police episode. But when he sees that I’m serious about this quest he tells the truth. ‘I had bought 15 little pouches of ganja from Delhi for personal use. The village police informer passed the information to police. They picked me up. Kept me there for couple of hours. They collected all the pouches and took three thousand rupees to set me free.’ These are plain facts of his arrest. Their significance in his life is limited to their literal meaning. His is a mind unburdened of the polished maladies of overthinking, analysis and psychological traumas born of such an inconsequential happening.

‘You don’t keep phone these days? I tried but the number is out of service,’ I ask him. He has his tiny non-smartphone with him. It’s a new number he tells me. The old number? I threw away the chip in a nullah when the police were after me. We the clever people think it proper to take his new number in order to avail his labor services without delay in future. I ask my brother to note down his number because I don’t have my phone with me. He also is enjoying a phone-free time which seems a blessing, almost a vacation these days. Don’t we feel so relaxed when we step out of the house without the one tone psychological weight of the phone? My cousin brother is also having the same vacation. I ask the workers do they have a pen, which was a foolish query because their pockets would have beedies, matchbox, tobacco or ganja—the tools to beat the feeling of being disadvantaged in life by birth, the fate throwing them into poverty right from the beginning. We seem to be at loss of words about the daunting task regarding how to note down his number. With my amazing creative skills, I even think of writing it on the sand and then run home to take my phone before some cattle either pees or defecates on my earthen notebook.

‘Why don’t you just dial your number from my phone?’ Rashe softly drools with his slurred, soft, noble giant’s speech.

My software professional brother, still carrying the classy fragrance of a recent official trip to a developed country; my cousin brother carrying the high notes of confidence and youth becoming of an enthusiastic entrepreneur; and me the man with a library of books in the head—we have been caught on the wrong foot. Common sense seems to be too exclusive for our educated, smart selves. Caught on such a wrong foot of unawareness!

All three of us have an embarrassed laugh. It’s very humbling. A basic dose of common sense is all that we need to lead a happy life, to have a light mind unburdened of overthinking and hard-pressed by weighty issues. Many villagers are straightaway dismissive about Rashe Ram because he isn’t cunning and clever like the rest and this they interpret as being a dumb person. But in his unburdened mind he carries enough common sense to allow him a contended simple life.

The next day he is busy at the assigned task. It involves clearing a big heap of bricks, boughs, plastic and trash all jumbled together to form a nice century for reptiles and rodents. He is working relaxedly but I’m worried for him because many snakes have been seen around that place. I have already cautioned him multiple times about it but he seems to carry on without minding my words too much. Then my over-concern burdens his brain and he has to explain. ‘See, I have this stick with me. Didn’t you see that each time I put my hands to pick up something, I first prod the items with the stick so that the snake will crawl away,’ he slowly drawls. It again is so-so humbling. In my eagerness to spot some snake I had completely overlooked this simple man’s simple solution in dealing with the problem. Such a simple solution for a risky task! In his place my educated mind would have given me solutions like wearing knee-length jungle boots and gloves reaching armpits to deal with the problem. I stand corrected like a little boy standing in front of a stern headmaster.

The so-called common, simple, poor people have huge common sense in their unburdened minds to help them wade through the scores of daily challenges they have to face. I realize however high and mighty be our knowledge, we miss on little nuggets of common sense. But these are the little weapons in the hands of the common man to easily meet the routine challenges of life.