In celebration of life and living

 

Why would there be sense pleasure in nature? Can you imagine any type of life possible without it on the planet? Is manifestation possible at all without sense-driven gratification? Isn’t sensual pacification the gateway from the unmanifest to the manifest? When a flower blooms isn’t it a result of the black-bee’s sense gratification? When a rishi goes into the caves to launch his war against the senses, isn’t he himself a result of the sense gratification of his parents? When I aim for the ultimate gratification, the much cherished perpetual bliss, isn’t that a super gratification?

Poor sense pacifications, they are such a maligned entity. Their theoretical negation forms the base all the endless stream of words in holy books and scriptures. While the reality is that at the level of life’s manifestation, as it’s on earth, how will you even survive without this faculty? These are merely the faculties that have evolved with us in the game of survival. The key lies in their balanced usage for a wholesome life.

Those on the path of so-called spirituality start with an acute sense of some imbalance, some pain, loss, bitterness. The latter are just results of mismanaged, skewed usage of our natural faculties. I have seen very well-poised and balanced people serving as hawkers and rickshaw pullers in crowded bazaars; almost saintly in demeanor; at so much ease with whatever nature has given them at the level of senses and their use. And I have seen high priests, the careerist spiritualists, unfortunately most of them in fact, who are well decked up in the armor of dharma and holy look, but peace is farthest from their eyes. Many of them take a cute tumble with their lady followers.

It’s only about being at ease with yourself; nothing less, nothing more. One can use any kind of words to describe it. There is no end to words. They are the products of the faculty of our mind only. Sometimes back an old sadhu was ruminating that he got a nightfall which he considered a sin. Well, had you been healthy in your ideas about sex and women, had been balanced in your ideas and usage of this natural sense-born faculty, you won’t have been crying over night falls in old age, I thought. It’s not about negating sense-born desires. It’s not even about getting saturated with them. It’s all about balance. Like when you eat. Not much to give you ache, not too less to starve you. Like Buddha realized when he almost died after starving himself for months.

Learn to be at ease dear brothers and sisters. If you are sitting in a brothel and are at ease with yourself, you are your own saint. If you are occupying the highest seat of a pontiff and itching with restlessness then you are a novice still. So learn the art of being at ease with yourself wherever you are situated. Balance. Balance. Balance. In everything that life offers. Accept. Accept the windfalls of the pleasure of flesh with humility and gratitude and pay back with sincere hard work. It’s a beautiful world because of the teasing interplay of sensory desire seeking, not because of those who preach against it and keep smoldering with desire within.

You dear seeker, you ought to feel obliged to the teasing ways of desires. You have been given this beautiful life by an exciting play of desires between your parents. I am sure they were not meditating while you got launched into the womb. Desire is the force that’s catapulting the forces of creation and generation: at the level of species in mating urge, and huge galaxies expanding at the cosmic level. That’s the force that pulls this cosmos. Those who are running away from life, relationships, needful responsibilities, mundane pleasures need to remember that most of our gods, rishis and munis had beautiful partners, families and children. They are called bhagwan because they used their energies in an optimum way and managed their sensual faculties in the way they wanted. They used them in a balanced way instead of falling imbalanced to one particular impulse.

In balanced amount even poison serves like amrit. In imbalanced amount even amrit turns poison. A judicious mix of what nature has given is nothing short of enlightenment. Why put your fate solely in the pages of holy books? They are mere indicators, just creation of the minds who could write better than you and me. So ease up. Just be. Accept what you are. Why negate? As the component of being at ease builds up, the tendency to go into impulsive, imbalanced use of sense pleasure faculties will get transformed itself. New neurological circuits develop that drive more hormones of wellness through our system. It’s a very simple physiological fact. Why interpret it to mythological proportions?

The ultimate untroubled playfulness is a result of carefully nurtured well-balanced use of our energies and sensorial faculties. We come to a ripening. The impulses lose their meaning and desires drop off without pain like a ripe fruit drops by itself. The senses and their potential for pleasure still remain in the body but their use or no use means the same. They no longer drive our thoughts, actions and emotions. You get a choice and use doesn’t drive you crazy and no-use doesn’t make you suffer. In a way one rises above that dimension. Call it realization or enlightenment. It’s but merely more conscious, aware form of living; just transformation of energies for a bit more refined thoughts and emotions; a shift in perspective.

It doesn’t mean I find people in the so-called worldly dimension as lowly placed. Everything is just same in mother existence. It’s only about a choice to be something extra if our present sense of existence makes us restless and we feel something missing. It’s merely a choice to be at more ease with the self.

Just learn to stay in the present. This is the ultimate meditation. No need to roam in the Himalayas. Do it among the sweet-sour scent of humanity around you. It’s almost always about what we had been or what we would be. Very rarely we are what we are now. And thus dear brothers and sisters, we exit from the portals of life as ignorant of its meaning as when we entered it.

The flower bud opens with a pining majesty. Infantile petals ready to be born for one more fragrant, juicy season. The goddess of beauty opens another eye to see this world with more colors. But the de-juicing black-bee is also around! Things of beauty and joy are almost always accompanied by the greedy swirls of utilitarian air—two aspects of duality. But that doesn’t mean the things of beauty and joy shouldn’t smile and bloom.

I know it disturbs many minds who have accepted the superiority of particular paths in taking them to the exclusive class of refined and holy beings on earth. That also is another form of ego: the desire to be in a state from where the rest of humanity seems a group of meek ignorants who need reformation and enlightenment. So take this slightly bitter pill of information with a glass of water and be at ease. If your mind still feels disturbed then rethink about the utility of gurus and scriptures who haven’t given you equanimity of mind to even digest this. Then reboot. And smile. Then laugh. At yourself. It helps.

A skirmish in the village temple

 

The village temple seemed a sad affair. You cannot expect too much from a temple patronized by farmers. From the same equation, you cannot afford to have an ambitious priest in such a temple because the boons of rituals are meager. Some years back an ageing priest arrived with his wife. Two of his elder children, a boy and a girl, were already married and ran their separate houses. The returns from the village temple were meager but the services were in the same league. Pandit ji fumbled over mantras and coughed terribly during havan ceremonies because he was asthmatic. Since most of the farmers around the temple loved liquor, so he went along the popular culture and started drinking as well.

I remember the havan he performed on my mother’s death anniversary. The havan smoke triggered his asthma and as a result it was a rumbustious chanting of coughs. Hardly any mantra was audible. In any case he knew a little set of mantras which he repeated to good effect on all ceremonies ranging across birth, death, marriage, engagements and house inaugurations.

Staying among the farmers toughened his attitude by several notches. Earlier he would have verbal potshots at his wife but now he would even launch a physical assault sometimes. Then he fell ill and died leaving the panditayan in charge of the temple. She did not know anything about puja and rituals. The already neglected idols further slumped in neglect. Their dresses developed a thick coating of dust. There were cobwebs around. Shiva’s idol had a hole in thigh because someone left a lamp burning on it. Hanuman being viewed as a wrestler and fond of food would be forced to eat. The muscular idol’s mouth had eatables smitten on it and bees and wasps ate for his sake.

There were voices of dissent against her conduct. The people had to bring a pundit from outside the village for a havan ceremony. The majority of the villagers wanted her to leave the temple but four or five families wanted her to stay. The offerings to the neglected gods were sufficient to allow her a nice life of retirement. It became an issue and the two groups would engage in brawls. Finally, the majority prevailed and she had to go. During the conclusive brawl her supporter group of ladies advised her, ‘Before you go, leave the village under your curse.’ So on the day of departure, when her supportive group came to receive her farewell blessings, she showered her beneficence over them. ‘All of you become like me,’ she said. It meant all of you bear the same fate as me, roughly interpreted as being a widow and turning homeless. Some women from the opposing group laughed, ‘You asked a curse for the village. Since you are also part of the village, you too get your prashad as well. A curse through a blessing on your head!’

The story of an old man

 

Tau Bhoopan has finished his innings here on earth but the anecdotes he sired still fetch little nuggets of memories from the deep abyss of the past. He had a penchant and flare for flirting with norms. He was a certified flirtatious character; always water-mouthed for the opposite gender till late in his old age. So most of his stories deal with his disconcerting overtures to pacify and gratify the undying worms of desire in him. The people seem forgiving and laugh about it.

He indeed was a character. He once came across an English sahib in the privacy of acacia forest and finding him alone pounced upon him like a local panther trying to redeem the native pride. Both of them were strong for each other and huffing and puffing, unable to outdo the other, fell into a well. After a few minutes of water slinging they realized the importance of truce to save their lives. Then both of them yelled, joined the forces of vocal cords to draw someone’s attention. The help won’t arrive for a few hours and meantime they copiously consumed their quota of swearing, oath taking and cuss words in their respective languages. Once they were fished out, they had antipodal reception. Bhoopan was jailed for a few months and the Englishman was treated like a brave prince.

India then became independent and Bhoopan would always claim that he had fought for the country’s liberation from the foreign rule. In a free India, once Bhoopan had opened a tea stall by the road outside the village. He would get up at four in the morning, start fire in the hearth, set the kettle sizzling as a welcome sign for his customers. But he always felt that the number of customers never did justice to his seriousness about the job. He got itchy over the months and when a military convoy passed the road his check dam broke. He fell in front of the officer’s jeep and started crying profusely. The officer thought he was the most wronged person in the area. He asked him about his grievance. A profusely weeping Bhoopan told him about his plight, how the villagers were deliberately ignoring him, as he thought, to make him go penniless. ‘Please point this cannon towards the village once, please, you don’t have to fire, just the cannon mouth towards them will teach them a lesson. They are cowards, they will pee in their pants,’ he pleaded.

In his sixties he was struggling as a sugarcane juice maker. A woman ordered a glass of juice. He made it and while he was gloating over her figure a fly fell into the glass. ‘See, you have put a fly in the glass,’ she angrily complained. ‘Of course, I cannot put an elephant in the glass,’ he countered from his side. She threw away the glass which broke and paid him for the juice. ‘But what about the fly and the broken grass?  Pay for them also. Those were costly items,’ he hollered.

His mischief got hugely manifested in mind, as his body grew old and the basic instinct seeped into his old neurons from the body tissues. A young peasant woman was showing her buffalo, which had been giving mating calls at night, to a bull for calving and fresh milk in the family. It was a tiny grove of trees. Her farmer husband was not at home and fearing a missed chance at getting the buffalo seeded, she herself took charge of the situation. It would have been embarrassing in the presence of someone but since there wasn’t anyone around she tried her best to get the mating done. She pacified the buffalo into a position and whistled to inspire the bull. She had after all seen the process with stealthy eyes as the menfolk managed it. This bull was not that experienced in the art. It was willing, was in the mood and repeatedly getting on but missed the mark. She had seen how nonchalantly the menfolk would help the faltering bull by holding the pizzle and putting it into the slot. But it was a big block in her female mind, conditioned in the chains of patriarchy, to get this particular thing done. She seemed in two minds. She blushed even though there was nobody around. She moved her hand with determination but seemed lacking the courage to do it as if she was scared of it. ‘Daughter, why worry? It looks red and hot but it isn’t so. It won’t burn your hands,’ Bhoopan the expert spoke from behind a tree trunk. He was considerably old by this time and had expertly followed the trio, anticipating some fun that would tickle his lusty bone.

Once, this time older than before, he was urinating by a path. At a distance some peasant women stopped waiting for him to get done. ‘Daughters, don’t worry. You can safely pass. That which you are afraid of is firmly held by its neck,’  he assured them.

As he grew still older he would have lots of fights with his daughters-in-law, sons and grandsons. And people would try to remind him that an old man shouldn’t quarrel and fight with his family members. ‘If not the family, with whom should I fight then? Russia and America? Sorry I’m not capable of that anymore,’ he would say.

Fresh milk in a farmer's house

 

A buffalo’s mating call is melodious to a farmer’s ears. It brings the prospects of fresh milk to the family. At the slightest hint, the family patriarch runs to hire the mating services of a mater (either a public bull like earlier or a farmer’s domesticated bull presently). The males, as usual, are ready yearlong with their ever-active passion.

It’s the females who decide when the male luck will strike gold. Then sometimes there are false alarms. Maybe the farmer misread the female cattle’s braying, grunts and moans. Maybe it doesn’t like the husband presented to her to be the father of her calf. The situation turns tricky when she kicks and gallops to deny the water-mouthed bull any chance. The farmer gets irritated. They whistle. They try to get them into proper mood. The buffalo is tamed into immobility by tying her with ropes. I have seen farmers holding the bull’s pizzle to facilitate a forced entry. And many such forced adventures turn out to be fruitless. And then the bull gets a bad name. The aggrieved farmer, having paid for the seedless adventure, casts aspersion on the mater buffalo. ‘The bull is worthless, not fit for siring calves anymore,’ he taunts. To this the owner of the bull cringes with such pain as if he himself has been called impotent and sterile.

Beauty and truth

 

Truth is the mind and beauty is the heart of the ultimate reality, if at all we can have some terminology to comprehend it with our limited senses. And art straddles the tenuous bridge holding truth and beauty together, binding each to the other with almost a synonymous bond. Economics will hardly have any valuation for truth, beauty and art. The beholders of truth, lovers of beauty and practitioners of art may try to monetize their domains, but they mostly fail. Truth, beauty and art stand, somewhere, in the bylanes, in almost secluded corners, away from the mainstream commerce and monetization.

Ghosts floating in Tau's room

 Tau Hoshiyar Sing is nearly hundred and almost blind. Still he is smart and calculating enough to find his way using the bigger landmarks still visible to him and go for walks without tumbling even once. Sadly, he has met a tragedy at the far end of his honest, hard-worked farmer life. He lost his eldest son, Randhir (in his late sixties). Randhir was a very close friend of mine and a genuine well-wisher. So it’s a big loss to me as well.  

I’m sitting with Tau (uncle) in his little room, he lying on his charpoy and me on a chair by his side. Irrespective of age a parent would always feel the pain of losing his/her children. A slight tremor in his voice makes me feel the pain inside him, but otherwise he is as much composed like always, in full acceptance of life. His faith in God is as firm as usual. In my limited experience, I find him one of the rarest people who have such firm, rock-strong faith in the almighty even without going to a temple or worshipping a deity. I have never seen him entering a temple in my life, never performing a ritual, or going on a pilgrimage. But when I talk to him about God, he takes the name of God with such reverence and hundred percent confidence and honesty as to make him a highly spiritual person. And why won’t it be? After all, he has produced crops by irrigating them with his sweat, nurturing them with the nutrients of honesty and integrity. Nobody can point out that he committed even a single mistake that hurt someone’s interests. Godliness dawns in such people of its own. They are spirituality in practice, naturally, by default.

Whenever I meet him I joke that he can hardly see and uses his experience and smart brain to cross the streets and make others believe that he is still able to see and present right there in the race of life. And he always protests that he can ‘see’. So whenever I see him, I stand in front of him, change my voice and ask him to recognize me. Of course he fails to recognize me. When I laugh that see didn’t I tell you that you can see far less than you claim, he would slowly, dismissively say, ‘I had seen you clearly but I forgot your name because my memory is somewhat affected now.’ It means Tau takes the importance of eyes far more than the mind.

So in a light-hearted manner even now I’m prodding at his soft-spot regarding his eyesight. Then Tau is irritated a bit and lowers his guard. He then gives me a clue as to why he is trying to protect the honor of his eyes. ‘My right eye is almost gone. I can see only bigger things hazily with my left eye. So this left eye gives me a slight idea of the world around and allows me to walk. But all that adang-dhadang (honky dory) stuff is visible to my blind right eye,’ Tau tells me. I get straightened up with interest. I know Tau has entered the talk of the paranormal world even though he hardly believes in it. ‘I see much ulta-pulta with this blind eye. Like many people coming and going through the wall, appearing over the ceiling, someone going to the barn to get fodder. They aren’t scary in any sense. All of them well behaved. And always in clothes. The women also hold purdah over their face. Earlier I used to get curious about them. But now I don’t even think about them. They keep doing their business,’ Tau tells me with total indifference.

Well, his age seems to have given him extra-sensory perception. He surely sees disembodied souls floating around. After exiting the body, the individual consciousness still retains two elements out of the five. These are air and ether. So the disembodied souls float around with their two elements, carrying the predominant tendencies and inclinations found in their five-element body before death. Time trapped, they say, they float around to somehow fulfill the karmic balance before taking a body again. They are mere bubbles of air and ether floating around, looking at alive humans with jealousy for having a body and being able to carry out so many things. While in their endeavor to do something, they can just float around and sometimes interfere with the weakened energy systems in certain individuals. But what will they do to a robust farmer like Tau? He is very much comfortable to see them as companions during lonely nights in his little room.

But isn’t this interesting that old Tau sees entities with his blind eye? By the way, he doesn’t believe in ghosts. And what will ghosts do to someone who doesn’t even believe in them. Tau has put all his belief in one super-entity—God. And that too without having to go to a temple, without performing rituals, or going on pilgrimages. He has established it—his faith—right there with a firm farmer’s foot. And the ghosts play around him on lonely nights.

‘You are lucky Tau in that you get a free movie watching with your blind eye,’ I laughed. ‘Hmm!’ he intoned again pretty dismissively.  

Little Maira's small world

Playing with my two-and-half years old niece Maira is great fun. Coming down from the levels of burdensome intellect and going down to meet her innocent joyful being is elevating and uplifting in many ways. It seems going down but it’s going up in a substantial way. The joy up-shoots like anything. One tastes ‘the lightness of being’.   

A child will help you in breaking many barriers that one has built around himself. As a clown with lisping tongue, acting funny and speaking even funnier, you slay stress like a shiny knight in armor.

We are playing on the sunbathed terrace on this balmy winter noon. A flock of Asian Pied Starlings floats lazily in the sky. They chatter and twirl, taking gentle, unhurried turns and loops in their flight. It’s a playful flight, not the one for survival and sustenance. Little Maira goes ecstatic at the joyous sight. And here I’m habitually trying to put more knowledge in her little brain. I point out that these are Asian Pied Starlings. I repeat it many times so that she remembers the name. Then I ask her what is their name, pointing to the flying flock. She is worried for a moment. ‘Birds!’ she shouts and jumps with joy.

Yes, birds they are. The simpler, the better. Why get bothered about sophisticated nomenclature that our intellect-obsessed mind carves so much for? Enjoy the creatures that fly as birds only. Or, in Krishnamurti’s lingo, see them just as ‘life’. Nothing more, just plain life.

Then Maira knows how to go suddenly invisible right in front of your eyes. It’s a child’s magic. All she needs to do is to put her little hands on her eyes and disappear from the world around. It’s her beautiful truth that she too is invisible to others when she cannot see anything around with closed eyes.

How I wish that we too had the belief and conviction of a child in closing our eyes to all that is unbecoming and painful! We can at least try to close our eyes to the painful past and go out of its sight.

The hawker

 

Kala walks, hawks and talks like an expert vegetable seller now. But if you make a list of their success rank, he comes last. There are very serious quality issues about his vegetables. ‘But how will I purchase better quality if you don’t buy these from me, giving me some profit so that with the money I can get the premium class,’ he says. Well, he has a point here and makes some sense in this. To help people to give him more profit he generally overprices his substandard veggies.

He is from the village itself and more successful ones are migrant Biharis who visit from the town. So he brings personal touch in the bargain. He shouts people’s names also after the list of his items. He would shout your name for ten days at a stretch. If you never even say ‘no’ and stay hidden in your house, it doesn’t affect him. The next day he would call you with the same sweetness. He called me for ten days and I kept hiding. Finally my own conscience reproached me and I came out of my hole like a crab from the seaside rocks. I could see his triumph for having drawn me out. He gave me his severely substandard bananas at eighty rupees per dozen. At the city you get very good ones at sixty rupees only. But then you have to pay extra for being specially addressed by your name by a hawker.

His vegetable-hawking song went like this: aloo,  piyaj, tamatar,  bhindi, tori, ghiya, kheera ... suppee (this one for my name Sufi). It sounds like he’s selling suppee along with the vegetables.

Claim your little greatness

 

If you cannot climb Mount Everest, don’t get disappointed. You can try to do your best the way you find it the most suitable for your individual make-up for greatness and grittiness. Just don’t compare your feat with others. Let it stand alone. Like this man who created a world record in his pumpkin boat. An American, named Duane Hansen from Nebraska, travelled 61 km in a pumpkin boat. The gentleman grew a 384 kg pumpkin in his garden. Lesser pumpkins are meant for the kitchen. This one was special, meant to make history.  He cut a part of it to make it a boat and set foot aboard and away they went down the Missouri river and treated himself with the Guinness World Record on his sixtieth birthday.

A sane man walking

The farmer cheated me. He left the tubewell system plundered to the core. If you challenge them on their own terms—like shouting, fighting, going to police—only then they think you are worth your salt. Since, I am hardly interested in any of the three—because all of them would reach the same end—he thinks the bookish man is scared of him. So that made him still happier. He boasted about it also. The only option for me was to talk him into a resolution of the issue. But it was as good as talking to his buffalo. I found it suitable to use my energy in fixing the set again by investing money to buy the entire set again.

Thinking and pondering over the human trait of grabbing more and more I’m walking by the side of the road. It is a busy road. Earlier it was a cart track, then district road, then state highway and now a national highway with a toll plaza to collect the charges for speeding over it. There are signs of change on both sides. Agriculture is giving the baton to business and enterprise. The models of cars are getting costlier. The road is getting busier with the passage of each day.

He is walking by the side of the road. His long hair unkempt, his overgrown beard saggy, shirt buttonless and pajama somehow tied with a cycle tyre’s tube working as a belt. He has a trash bag. He is not a trash collector in the business sense of the term. He is just carrying on with the momentum of collecting just for the sheer habit of carrying some load. He is just an unrefined lunatic clinging to his possessions and further adding to them.

All around him are refined lunatics doing exactly the same: running around in the competition to gather more and more, to carry bigger bags. But ultimately the lunatic’s trash collection and the factory owner’s collection—just opposite the road—will stay here on earth. The lunatic trash man and the wealthy businessman have to go empty handed. Just that he picks up small throwaway items. The others are running for a bit more nicely packaged items—the things still in use—but the race is the same and finally both come to a naught.

The first week of September

 

It is the first week of September. It has been a dry August. Very hot. They have now air conditioners in the village. There might be some cool moments inside but the exhaust leaves it burning outside at night. Earlier, we had tolerably cool nights at this time of the year.

It is late evening. Fluffs of clouds are tinged orange by the setting son. A shikra is perched on the top of an electricity pole. A wiretail swallow is whoozing around its head. It flies dangerously close to its head with agitated chip-chip sounds. Maybe the hunter is after its chick that they are training to fly.

A perfect half moon is visible in the sky. There is a commotion in the street. A big rat snake has been sighted. It is hiding under a narrow duct in the small open water drain by the street side. People cannot believe that such a big snake is harmless to the humans. Three huge bullfrogs are wallowing in the muddy water near the duct’s end. Maybe they are very confident that their size is beyond the range of a rat snake. They can easily see the snake peering at them from under the duct just five or six feet away but they are not bothered about it. Sometimes big size helps.

Something for the pigeons

 

India completed seventy-six years of independence. The government of India initiated ‘Har Ghar Tiranga’ program to celebrate the occasion. Many roofs had the national flag even in the villages. But the national flag on one particular pole served an additional purpose also apart from celebrating the republican spirit. It liberated white pigeons from a tricky situation. The boy keeps many white pigeons. He has fixed a long pole on his roof with a little perch platform at the top end. The pigeons roost there. They are habituated to land on it after their little struggling flights. The sun is extra bright in the rain-washed skies. It was a little sad to see the pigeons sitting under the harsh and hot sun. Then the tiranga campaign caught the boy’s fancy. He dismantled the perch platform and now the national tricolor is flying proudly among the late monsoon winds. The pigeons have got their freedom from the heat at least.

Those were the times by the pond

Ours was a very big village pond; almost a lake. In the middle part it was pretty deep as well. We spent a considerable part of our growing up years both by its side as well as inside it. During the summers, we would compete with the buffaloes in swimming in the green, mossy waters. We sunbathed on the back of relaxing buffalos; dived then from the platform; played Catch Me If You Can, a sort of hydraulic version of hide and seek, as it involved a lot of dives to slip away from the catcher. We also tried speedboat and water-skating. Unruly buffaloes were chosen for this version of enjoyment. One hand held the buffalo’s tail and the other yielded a short but sturdy stick, preferably mulberry wood. The stick-yielding hand would go in quick-fire mode. The buffalo would go searing away like a speedboat dragging the driver in her wake. It was done on dual purpose: one, to enjoy the fast water ride; two, to teach the disobedient buffalo a lesson because it usually broke all rules of civility and would run away into the nearby fields.

During the winter, we gossiped sitting on our haunches by the shore when the buffaloes had their fun bath. It was never easy to get them out of the water. They would close their eyes, slowly chewing the cud. Then we would start trying our arms for long-distance throws. Stones, pebbles, clods or any throwable object would start a meteoric shower. They even displayed their disagreement. As the stones fell near them with a plop, they moved their necks in a naysaying manner. We developed good throwing arms due to this practice. It helped us a lot in our other engagement, village cricket. The balls on dusty potholed uneven pitches missed the bat usually. But we threw it around a lot. So, much of the time was spent in searching it among the bunchgrass and acacia shrubs.

Well, one particular throw of mine was too good as it hit the sleeping buffalo on its horns. It took offense and went scudding across the pond and ran away towards a neighboring village. It took a few hours to cajole her back. Another throw was also good for the opposite team as it missed the bricks, serving as wickets, but bad for the old farmer who was passing near the boundary. It hit him on the back on first bounce. He used to be an angry man. He picked up the ball and ran after us, aiming to hit any of the backs. We ran away. He left with the heavy cork ball. We knew he would seek revenge. We shifted to a still more uneven part of the land at the other end of the village. Those were forgiving times. We were back to our former ground after two weeks.

Snippets of a playful sky

 

The second half of August brings out playfulness in the sky to an unprecedented scale. In the rain-washed pristine blue, there are clouds floating to set up a very active stage. Colors, shapes, sizes, designs self-evolving and self-dissolving by the chance winds. Divinity seems very active in spraying various patterns on the blue canvas. These are freewheeling daubs and spatterings. Godliness enjoying a free float in the form of loamy clouds.

During the days they are white and gray drawings. But mornings and evenings fill up the canvas with multiple colors. A pattern emerges, then the slate gets wiped clean and a new pattern floats in. The shifting stage, just being. It shows the monsoon is slowly losing its grip over the skies. Huge wheels of clouds go floating, freely, as if no longer under the obligation to precipitate and kiss earth. The clouds seem to be in love with their gliding across the blue canvas.

But that is above in the skies. The ground has its own practical necessities, like my beautifully ageing bike. The old two-wheeler is under service. My biking days are almost gone with the youth. In any case I don’t loiter around too much these days in my forties. The machine is still impressive with its good condition despite its age. I am basking in my machine’s praise emanating from the head mechanic’s mouth. The words of praise turn you calm and serene as you sit in a chair. You don’t even get irritated even while he stops working on your machine midway to attend to some less calm person who has arrived after you. Nice words and little smiles put you under an obligation to pay back by staying calm so that he doesn’t lose a customer.

Well, the momentum of patience surely creates an aura around you. It attracts a tall young man. He is reasonably well built and looks strong. He wears a dark gray shirt and black capri pants. He seems in a different dimension. He’s asking money for food. ‘I can bear up with hunger, no problem. But there is an old man who needs to eat,’ he points to some place somewhere. Who or where is the old man, I don’t have a clue. ‘I am ready to work. See, I have washed my clothes as well,’ he tries to present himself as a clean, honest guy who isn’t a lazy crap. He has proven himself to be enough hardworking by keeping his shirt clean. Maybe he thinks that dirty beggars are offensive to people these days.

I ask him why doesn’t he work, that there is no dearth of work for those who really want it, that there is no need to ask money for food when you are young and healthy. ‘I work, see I have washed my clothes. But the old man cannot go hungry,’ he again starts with his story. I know he is high on substance. I give him my contribution to his addiction. I give him twenty rupees. He moves on even without looking at me. All the blessings were reserved for the moments before I pulled out my purse. It is a wasted life. Whom would you blame? He, his circumstances, society or institutions? A man is a product of so many elements. It is very difficult to put blame on just one of them. If someone is in a sour soup, I take an integrative picture. You become a bit more forgiving. These considerations usually make me lenient to beggars.

The gardener turned king

 

Two millennia before Christ, the people of the Mesopotamian city of Babylon had an interesting manner of celebrating the new year. Commendably they had their fixed twelve-month calendar that allowed them a sense of managing time. So they would have their new year, allowing them celebrations for a new start. A common person would be crowned ‘king for a day’ in the morning. The one-day king would be exposed to all the luxurious delicacies of royalty. But before the day end the one-day king would be sacrificed to appease the Gods. Maybe they believed that the Gods would feel pampered over having a king sacrificed at their feet. Then one year, Enlil-bani, the king’s gardener, got his term to be appointed as one-day king on the first day of the new year. Possibly the Gods got fed up with one-day kings’ sacrifices and decided to have the real taste of royalty. Before the sacrifice, the real king fell ill suddenly and died. As luck would have it, the one-day king turned into almost a quarter century long king. The gardener turned king ruled for two and half decades with wisdom and practical acumen. At least he must have focused on flowers and gardens because there are some poems eulogizing him for his good work.

A kind, gentle charity-seeker

 

He is a small man, himself carrying very dismissive air about his own persona. No wonder he walks so lightly and looks at ease with himself. He visits the village asking for donations for a blind school they operate. Most of them are fake, so even a few genuine social workers get repulsed from the doors. He has a pad of receipts bearing the address and contact numbers of the said school. The nice thing about him is that he does not show you any sign of disappointment, disgruntlement or irritation. As you say ‘no’ he would give you a smile and move on. It seems like a concession to you because normally charity seekers haggle with you and won’t leave your doors before making their disappointment all too evident to you and making you feel guilty or angry. I have said a firm ‘no’ to him a few times and every time he did not say a single word and left with a smile. He has been giving me a free smile. I somehow feel indebted to him. As social animals you want to reciprocate on an impulse. His nice behavior, his concession by not haggling or showing any visible traces of any irritation, gets me in compliance finally. I give him some money. He has earned it by leaving me with the feeling of indebtedness by giving me subtle concessions, pulling me into compliance mode finally.

The simian sense of independence

 

The monkeys got up earlier than me to celebrate August Fifteen. As I came out into the garden they had left after their simian celebrations. The trees and plants immediately complained pointing to many a broken branch. A few birds—tailorbird, spotted munia and babbler—also lamented, their grassy homes lying on the ground. I had fixed a small looking-glass above the washbasin outside the bathroom wall. One of them—very looks conscious surely—took it away as well. Maybe he is freshly in love and is concerned about his face. It is irritating. But it’s a grand occasion. We are celebrating our seventy-sixth year of independence and their misplaced enthusiasm can be pardoned. I take these activities as Independence Day celebrations. Things are what we interpret them as.

The black and white television

 It was almost a milestone in the village history when Father brought home a small 18 inch, black and white ET&T TV set. There were just three or four TV sets in the entire village. The unfortunate bearers of these TV sets were under real assault on Sundays for the weekly movies because people seamlessly barged in despite all protests. Once the room was full and the door shut, the rest tried to catch the action by hearing dialogues from outside.

A kind TV owner thought of larger good and put his coveted item in the street for a public screening. The entire street got jammed to a long extent with the kind of crowd that you see at Rajiv Chowk Metro Station in Delhi presently. Then someone threw a pebble that landed dangerously close to the precious item. The owner shouted profanities that would surpass all the nasty jeers of all the villains in the film industry. The show went off.

The TV owners turned very guarded and suspicious after this incident. It was then Father decided to get us our little black and white television set. Doordarshan was kind enough to give us Wednesday chitrahar and Sunday movie. An antenna looked like a crown of the house. A house with television antenna was held in high esteem. Thank god, the village was monkeyless during those days. The frequency was slippery. Little elements of wind and clouds had the capacity to spoil all entertainment. Holding the antenna in an ideal position was a big challenge, almost an art in fact.

Then the path-breaking serial Ramayan started. By this time there were about two dozen television sets in the village. So the pressure per TV set had eased a bit. But the electricity would go off, leaving people in a puzzle if life was really livable anymore. I remember it was a much anticipated episode, maybe Lord Rama’s marriage with Mata Sita. The entire village looked up to celebrate the marriage. A day before the episode the electricity transformer gave sparks and got blown out. The village went into mourning. But there was a glimmer of hope.

Father had stealthily smuggled in a rechargeable battery with enough voltage to play the tiny television set. The news spread throughout the village. Our house was attacked. Never ever I will see so many people in a small house. The people got  onto whatever perch they could manage. I saw heads almost touching the ceiling. Potatoes were crushed. Some of our old brass utensils still bear the marks of that assault. The house would have burst out that day.

An old woman who could not squeeze in went lamenting through the street. She knew where Grandfather spent his days smoking hookah in a gathering of elders in a chaupal. ‘You smoke hookah here, but when you will go home you will walk over its rubble,’ she howled and hollered. Grandfather was around eighty-five at that time. He ran on his rickety legs to save his house. Then he gave the all-time best performance of his life in both words and action. He threw bricks, clods, sticks, fists, kicks amply accompanied with suitable tongue-lashing to clear off the door and continued throwing whatever came in his hands. Heavy brass utensils came very handy as weapons. His old-age burst certainly made it a war scene. People must have thought he was haunted by Ravan’s spirit that day. But full marks to Grandfather’s spirit. He created a stampede and forced the crowd to run away from the scene. Our small humble house bore the look as if a few bulls had fought inside it. And there he stood, fuming, but proud to have saved the house. ‘If you people go like this, you will find yourself on the open road one day,’ he admonished. That day Father had to be on the back-foot and Grandfather gave him a big load of advisory, admonishing hearing.

The law of reciporation

 

It was dreadful in the trenches during World War First. Millions of soldiers waited in anticipation of death or killing. There was a kind of no man’s land between the trenches of the opposing armies. Across a slowly smoldering front between the German and the allied troops in Europe, a German soldier was reputed for his stealthy prowl. He would stalk the enemy fleas like a predatory lizard across the buffer zone and preyed upon some lone soldier, disarmed him and forced him to crawl back to his side. He had completed a dozen such successful missions. On one such  mission in the dark of night, he overpowered an allied soldier. The allied soldier was eating bread. The initial impulse is to resist your enemy. Had he done so, his fate would have been like others who had been kidnapped by the German soldier. As the German soldier started to disarm him, the captive allied troop offered his bread to the enemy. If you offer something to someone, you put that person in an obligation, almost indebted to you. You feel like paying back. This law applies to all cultures and is one of the basic laws of human society. The German soldier found himself detained by the subtle chains of this law. He spared the soldier and returned empty ended.

My cricketing days

 India won the cricket world cup in 1983. The entire country got so inspired that millions of childhoods and boyhoods in the 80s and 90s of the last century were almost hijacked by the cricketing spirit. People walked, talked and ate cricket. We did the same in our village. It was more or less hit-and-run cricket on the uneven stubbed ground. It was all about wild swings and weird heaves. It hatched shocking and dramatic events sometimes. Farthest from any cricketing technique, the chance factor was the real master of the game.

Anand decided to be the fastest bowler in this part of India. I was maybe in eighth class then. He ran in from the bunchgrass shrubbery, beyond the boundary line, and would throw terribly unpredictable deliveries. He was concerned about speed only, so any direction, height, width, line or length hardly mattered to him. In any case these were very fast deliveries. Add to it the fact that it was a cork ball, almost double the weight of the usual leather ball, uneven pitch and the completely unguarded batsman (almost naked from the cricketing gear point of view). No wonder the equation turned almost disastrous for the poor batsman. In such conditions the bowlers were demons and they ruled the game. We played six or eight over matches. It was all that was needed to chuck out the entire batting lineup. The entire team’s score would be usually in measly twenties. Someone going into double digits was equal to hitting a ton.

I was facing the crazy speedster that day. He ran in like a rampaging bull from the edge of the pond and threw it with so much force that it came almost parallel and hit me on my left cheek. I instantly collapsed. I envisioned surreal crystallizations of night-sky constellations in broad daylight. Helmet, pads, guards were the things which most of us hadn’t seen even once in life. Still most of us dreamt of playing for India one day. Vow, the innocence of childhood! They lifted me and put me on a greener part of the ground. Very caring on their part I have to accept. It was terribly painful. But full credit to the bowler that he had hit it so perfectly, nicely we can say, at the luckiest point on my cheek that my jaw, teeth, tongue and bones cannot complain at the memory. There was no damage. A slight deviation in angle or positioning would have shattered my jaw. Yes, the cheek muscles can complain a bit because I carried a big laddoo on my cheek for many days. Our science teacher Master Surest chuckled with glee whenever he saw me. He hated any kind of game or physical exercise. Science and mathematics was all that meant to be the focus of cosmos to him. Looking at the laddoo he seemed to have drawn satisfaction that at long last the art of game was defeated by the art of science.

Bhindo also used to try fast bowling. Imitating Anand, he would also run from the boundary line. But he was so fragile and weak in limbs that his delivery arrived as a perfect spin ball and I would usually hit it to the fence. He possessed a very big calculating mind in a small body. Maybe chess was good for him but he stuck to cricket. I was the one who symbolized an all-encompassing rival to him, almost equal to an enemy in the childhood world. Only God knows why there was such proliferation of antagonism in him at my merest sight. Whenever I hit him for a four or six, he would cringingly walk down the pitch and would gnash his very cute buckteeth like a stinging rabbit, ‘Ma kasam, I would hit you for a six on your first ball to me!’ So trying with an incisive longing to keep his kasam, he got bowled by me on the first ball itself. Actually seething with anger and hate he blindly ran down the pitch and it was easy to scatter his wickets when he lowered his guard so madly. His kasam lay tattered with the wickets. The world slipped away from under his feet. His heightened sensitivity hitting a tornado, we found him crying profusely behind a heap of bricks. His eyes were red with tears and the unkempt kasam. I had to say sorry to save his life. Clean-bowleding such guys is almost like stirring a proverbial hornet’s nest. Who knows such crazy boys might run into a speeding truck to save themselves from the unbearable pain of defeat. I loaned him a few comics which he never returned; maybe as a revenge to settle the scores with me.

Bhindo was junior by a year to me in the school. A very hardworking student, he would mug up the content like a parrot and reproduce it on the answer sheet to lay claim among the first three in the class. Once during the exam, Bhindo was heard sobbing very painfully. It was already ten minutes since the paper started. Many students had started with a writing sprint like the athletes shoot off like a rocket in 100 m race. But Bhindo was caught in a logjam. He had forgotten the first line of the answer. He got nervous and more so as he saw his nearest rival, a serious and self-contained guy, scribbling away his answer at a smart pace. Every passing second was acute and upsetting. Sobbing and tears running down freely from his big male goat’s eyes, he was heard pleading to the rampaging rival, ‘Randhir, Randhir, don’t be so bad. Kindly tell me the first line!’ He could garner some sympathy for all his tears. A kind teacher had to stop his piteous sobbing by telling him the tormenting first line. Bhindo stood second that year. ‘If not for that pagal first line I would have beaten you fair and square!’ he congratulated the boy who had scored over him.

I was a slightly build boy but others held the view that I possessed stamina and strength normally expected in a hefty boy of that age. Acknowledging the energetic verve in me, the kabbadi boys would sometimes include me in the game. So I sometimes participated in kabbadi games as an extra. Bhindo felt crestfallen. Egged on by the simmering flame of competition, he also had to be a kabbadi champion, if I was taken as an extra by the muscular boys of that game. To be honest it was incredible audacity on his part given his fragile body. He didn’t know the risks of this game of raw strength. He nearly died under a heap of burly ruffian kabbadi boys. There he came out stumbling and floundering, the stems and stalks of his pride almost uprooted by the rotund boys of kabbadi. He cried piteously and blamed me for hatching a plot to break his bones.

If he saw me running, he would declare that he would break the national record in running one day. And he carried his vendetta with his growing years. When I cleared the UPSC mains and got interviewed for the coveted Indian civil services, a visibly shaken Bhindo paid me a visit. ‘Subhash Chander Bose had cleared this exam! How can you do it? I cannot believe!’ he threw it in my face. He declared in full honesty that I was spreading lies. I showed him the interview letter. He read it with shaking hands. The paper literally got burnt under his malevolent stare. He crashed into a chair with a heavy gasp, completely muddled and passive. I had to offer him a glass of water to help him overcome the shock.

To me it was light and entertaining. In the jolly backdrop of such mild skirmishes our roller coaster adolescence brought us to the threshold of youth and its serious matters about career and job. Thank God he got appointed as a government primary school teacher and I’m just a non-descript village-based writer. This at least gives him a semblance of solace that life is worth living at long last. 

Defeating death with a joke

The legendary Indian soldier, Field Marshal Sam Makekshaw, fought as a junior officer in the British Indian Army during the Second World War. In a daring endeavor to catch a strategic hill in Burma, bravely leading from the front, he was hit by a light machine gun burst. He had nine bullets lodged in his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. His orderly Mehar Singh lifted his injured boss on shoulders and walked fourteen miles to reach a military field hospital. His torso ripped apart and bleeding like flooded rivers, the young officer seemed sure to die.

From the look of it, only death seemed a reprieve for the injured officer. The British senior officer, fully aware of the Indian junior officer’s brave fight, tore his own Military Cross (one of the most prestigious military awards) and put it on the chest of the apparently dying soldier saying, ‘Military Cross is given to only living soldiers. So hereby I confer it to you while you are still alive.’

The Australian surgeon, heavily burdened under the big tasks with limited resources, thought it wastage of time and medical supplies to attend a definitely dying soldier. Sam had a few traces of consciousness at that time. ‘What happened to you?’ the doctor asked ironically. And the legendary soldier’s answer would later change history, not just for India but for Bangladesh as well. ‘A mule hit me,’ Manekshaw joked, a weak smile emerging from his messed up body. The Australian surgeon was shocked. ‘If someone can crack a joke even in this situation then his life is worth saving!’ he said. He operated upon the soldier and extracted the bullets from his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. It was a bloody operation; a major part of Manekshaw’s intestines had to be cut out. But bravest are the ones who can smile and joke even in the face of death. By cracking the joke with death staring at his face, Sam had already defeated death.

The rest is history. Sam Maneskshaw not only survived but went onto play important roles in all the wars including Pakistan (1947-48), China (1962), ending with Bangladesh war (1971) when he was the army chief.

He was as much famous for his bravery and military strategy as he was for his sense of humor. If not for this sense of humor, the Australian surgeon won’t have even considered treating him. If not for this sense of humor, Sam would have died with a borrowed, consolatory Military Cross on his chest. With this sense of humor, he retired as a Field Marshal, living to the ripe old age of late nineties, holding the proud baton of a perpetual soldier who is entitled to a salute from the highest of the high in the country as long as he is alive. I think this unbuckling sense of humor won him the toughest battle of his life by defeating death.

So keep your sense of humor dear readers! Keep it alive! It’s precious because it defeats even death sometimes.

LOVE

There is abundance of love around, of family, of nature, of birds, of animals, flowers, everything in fact. When hate vanishes, love blooms and you soar high with such love instead of falling. You love all simply because you don't hate anyone. Love for a man or woman is the first step on the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, but don't just stop at the point. It's just a beginning. From particular to the universal. The limited love is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, universal love. So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

Love you all!

The infinite perceiving itself through the finite

 Nothing stands in isolation. Can a drop of water stand alone in the ocean? Can an ocean exist without a drop, i.e., with a hole in its heart and the drop missing? Same is the cosmos. It's one continuity in one or the other form. Sea is nothing but drops drops everywhere in the expansion of its geographical spread. Same is with the super sea of cosmic consciousness. It's merely individual consciousness everywhere. Now the question is: how come there is a perception of individual consciousness? Well, that's how the fabric is! Start dividing a sea into tiniest dots! What happens? All we have littler seas made of tinier drops! The threshold from individual to infinite intelligence exists and doesn't exist at the same time. Possibly the sea itself perceives itself like a drop. Divide it into countless drops, they retain the feeling of individuality. Individual consciousness is thus nothing but a point of perception in the transforming whirlpool where the elements are going cyclically. Is a drop fundamentally and qualitatively different from a big sea? It isn't! Coming to humanoids. The so called conscious is the littlest bit of perception surrounded by the subconscious, which in turn melts into the infinite intelligence and consciousness pervading all around. That's the ladder to spread yourself, to feel more meaningful. One's subconscious part of mind is most active just before sleep and immediately after waking up. That's when the gates open tangibly for taking a quantum jump from conscious to subconscious and further on into super-consciousness. Grab it. Put your affirmation and claim to a larger self. There are infinite possibilities. What you seek at your greediest best may not be more than a drop of water desiring to double its size. You have the pathway etched to be the sea itself. You already are. Just that all that remains to be done is to start seeing through the walls of conscious, watch eagerly through the windows of subconscious in those walls and get connected to the infinite right there in front of you. It's suitable to start with tangibles to break the virtual shackles, just like it's easier to start with body in yoga. The higher battles with more virtual demons are managed further on the path. At the mind front, it's more convenient to start with the conscious part because it's tangible through its operational part through thoughts and emotions. There starts the second tier of management leading to the subconscious part and further on to be out of the prison to come united with everything around. It's not mother existence's concern whether there are storms lashing a drop, pond or sea, or peaceful calm waters pervade. To her indiscriminating eyes all things are just as they are. What happens in the drop of your consciousness is solely your own concern. You create the storms or peace in the tea cup of your existence. And the tools to make and break are conscious thoughts and their shadows in the form of emotions and feelings. They majorly decide the energy pattern pervading across this specific pattern of awareness, this little arrangement of energy within the super sea of energy. Pain, suffering, disease, stress and tensions are mere effects, little obstruction in the flow of river, the life stream. And the repair work primarily begins from the conscious part of the mind , which operates through thoughts, emotions and feelings. So just like u go gymming, go gymming with thoughts. Work like a mason. And etch your reality, your better self on the subconscious, which in turn reflects as your truth on the endless canvas hung around with its infinite dimensions. Good luck!

A condolence gathering

 

In rural Haryana, to take anyone’s name properly is against the protocol. So Randhir becomes Dheere, meaning slow. But he is a quick and very agile dairy farmer. Wiry and fast. He is small but strong. He also washes the dead, puts them in new clothes, prepares arthi with bamboo and straw, and sees the dead on the last leg of their journey.

There is a condolence gathering. An old woman has died. They are talking about drinkers. All of them drink pretty heavily but those who drink throughout the day are considered the drunkard cases in the village society. The case they are discussing happened in a neighboring village. A young man passed out under the scorching rays of July sun after drinking too much. He was wearing just shorts. His once tanned brown strong body was found almost burnt black.

Dheere says that it would have been the same with Beere also. He saw him lying on the dusty field path outside the village, taking what he firmly believed to be the last painful breaths with painful jerks to his body. Dheere lies down on the ground and gives aching jerks to his body to give a demonstration of how he thought Beere was dying. Dheere waited under a nearby keekar so that he could take on his usual duties with the corpse. But then Beere stumped him. He got up, took cleaning swipes with his palms at his soiled pants and tottered ahead on the path of life, leaving all the yamdoots and bier-makers waiting and even annoyed.

Narender becomes Neender. He also is a part of the condolence gathering where they are discussing the matters of death so seriously. He also shares his quite recent close encounter with the guards of mortality. He is a fifty something stocky fellow. He got electrocuted while watering his iron-bodied cooler on the terrace. They found him senseless. The village quack doctor was called. He declared him dead. There was no pulse. That was all he knew about the matter and his set of injections and pills that he had assembled for common diseases wouldn’t serve anymore. He stepped aside with a sullen face expecting a full mourning blast by the family’s females.

Once the doctor said ‘no’ everybody clucked their tongue to nullify any plan to take him to the hospital at the earliest. ‘There is no use, he is gone!’ the unruly conglomerate around the supposedly dead man agreed in a loud chorus. Then a few chance words from a woman saved his life. ‘Put pressure on his chest and blow air into his mouth!’ a woman piped in with her enigma-injecting suggestion. She meant resuscitation. Two hefty ninety-kg fellows, at the peak of their rotund youth, got into the business. One fellow sat on Neender’s stomach and heavily pommelled his chest with his crude palms and fists. The other one blew blizzards of air to give him the hiss and kiss of life. It was a torrential action lasting a few minutes. Neender’s soul was sucked back into the body by the intense storm raised by the two youths. His ribs and muscles are aching now even after two weeks as the poignant symbols of their effort to defeat death from his portals. ‘They seemed bent upon killing me,’ he complains.

The Earth Overshoot Day

 

The Earth Overshoot Day is the day when we have used all that the ecosystem can replenish and regenerate in one year. On July 28, we have already consumed all that mother earth will be able to renew in a year. It means what mother earth generates in one year we eat it up in almost half of the time. So for the rest of the year we are borrowing from the natural coffers at the cost of future generations.

Mother earth’s bio-capacity is severely overstretched. As per the current consumption levels, it would take almost two earths to sustain us. There are countries that chuck out an entire year’s sustainable resources within just two-three months at the beginning of the year. For the rest of the year, they would be drawing from the deposited pool of resources, the pool that is diminishing rapidly and will surely go empty one day.

Well, I should abandon all gloomy thoughts born of these stats for the time being. An earthworm is not bothered either. After a spell of monsoon rain the earthworm seems all joyful.

The earth is all wet

and the earthworm is all set

to crawl to a new home.

 

It seems a huge effort by the earthworm to move. It has to stretch its length repeatedly and make a humpbacked U in the middle to stretch and bring forth the tail part by a few millimeters with each heave. An ant-swarm crawls out. The breakfast is almost steady, a slightly shifting breakfast it is to them. They would love to eat it alive. They have the numbers with them. Like the politicians have the numbers to eat our public money in one way or the other. There are hundreds of tiny bites. It wriggles with pain. I think we are like the ant-swarm and poor earth is like the earthworm. It’s wriggling with pain as we the human-swarm continue biting it non-stop, twenty-four hours a day and 365 days of the year.

The baloons

Of late, flavored condoms have hit sales to the ceilings in West Bengal’s Durgapur. The students have gone berserk. It should be encouraged if they are using contraceptives. But here poor condom is used not for love-making nasha. It’s used for a dangerous intoxication. It contains aromatic compounds that produce alcohol on breaking down. Condoms are soaked in hot water for long hours and the booze is ready. Once consumed it produces scores of health hazards but they are unseen and wait till they strike down the system. But for the time being they give a high and that’s what matters for the short-sighted modern generation.

Growing up in the eighties, we did free advertisements for the newly launched Nirodh. We inflated them to full size and left them floating in the air. The big balloons floated and scandalously spread the message of family control in the conservative society. But we had hardly any clue to the slap-stick advertisement. The elders gave scandalized, embarrassed looks. So in a way we carried free publicity for birth control on behalf of health and family welfare department. But most of the farmers were greedily griping misers as far as pleasure, the sole form of entertainment at night, was concerned. They won’t budge and give away the tiniest slice of pleasure by using the free-selling contraceptives. They found the thin barrier thicker than palace ramparts.

Journeyman, set up your Lagrange point!

 

In the infinite womb of the cosmos, the interplay of matter and energy churns out newer and newer formations, births and deaths of supermassive bodies. The cosmic churn goes on and on. Stars burst, black holes swallow supermassive bodies and galaxies heave massive pulses across the space. It’s basically a super-storm going around. Cosmic bodies pulling, repelling, orbiting, colliding, sucking and maybe many more phenomenon beyond our perception range. But there are little points of peace, balance and poise where there is equanimity and balance in this cosmic storm. These are Lagrange points or Libration points, the points of ‘equilibrium for small-mass objects under the gravitational influence of two massive orbiting bodies’.

Usually, two gigantic bodies put an unbalanced gravitational force at a specific point, thus changing the orbit of any small-bodied object present at that point. However, at the Lagrange points, the gravitational forces of the two massive bodies balance the centrifugal force exerted by each other. It results in little Lagrange points that can be used for space docking for satellites, because here they can float almost unchallenged by any force in one particular direction and hence decreasing the fuel requirements. The manmade space objects can be placed at these Lagrange points for observing the marvelous chaos unfolding around. The satellite is very stable at this point and like a meditative saint can marvel, observe and make a meaning of all this meaningless unfoldment going around.

Human life is also a tiny replica of the cosmic upheavals, shifts, transformations, collisions going at a bigger scale in the cosmos. There are forces that pull us down and curtail our flights just like the forces of gravity tend to crash the objects back onto the ground. These are the forces of discontentment, fear and insecurities that pull us back to the base level, cutting our wings. There are repelling forces as well that keep our real self away from the essential core of our pure being. These centrifugal forces are anger, hate, jealousy and judgments. And being either pulled or repelled by one or the other we have to spend a lot of fuel in cutting through the rough atmospherics and vicissitudes of life. We feel the wear and tear of this struggle against the opposing forces. We carry the scars, the discontentment and lots of dis-ease in our being. Life feels a burden as a result.

Luckily, in this rough journey we too have our Lagrange points just like the satellites. Every individual has his/her own Lagrange points, where the soul-ship can be docked in the balanced zone; where it requires minimum dissipation of life-force. Here we don’t feel the struggle of it. We feel the light of just ‘being’. We can feel the ease of just being. In this zone of equanimity and balance, we can set up ourselves with least conflicts and dissipation of energies. The contrasting forces here neutralize each other. A conflict-free existence naturally provides a lot of comfort to the soul.

Now the all-important question arises: How to find one’s very own Lagrange point? All of us have varying situations, circumstances, advantages, disadvantages, insecurities, fears, skills. All of us know the things that pull us down like the force of gravity. We also are aware of the repelling forces that keep our real self from coming face to face with the egoistic one. In my opinion the Lagrange points for a common person are the intersecting zones between materiality and spirituality—the zone between desires of the flesh and the dreams of the soul. One can set up a specific Lagrange point for one’s being and dock the soul-ship there to see, observe, witness all the drama going around, just like observatory satellites placed at Lagrange points do their job. This is the zone where the forces of materiality and immateriality are balanced by each other, allowing us to just be a celebrator of life, a witness of all this seemingly meaningless unfoldment around. Maybe we observe a meaning of life then. Wish you all a happy, cozy and safe Lagrange point in your life!

Uncaring children

 

Cultural anthropologists say that the human society functions on the principles of ‘reciprocity’ and ‘obligations’, both at the individual and collective levels. All our relationships work on the principle of ‘reciprocity’. You feel obliged, even indebted, if someone has done you a favor. If someone has given you something, helped you in some way, or even simply smiled at you, the inherent sense of obligation will firmly ask you to return the favor whenever possible in whatever form. Most of our likes and dislikes are based on what people have given us. If they have given us joy, we like them, love them, feel indebted, and return the favor. If they have given us pain, we return the same. But we hardly do the same in case of mother earth. We forget the principle of reciprocity and indebtedness. We just keep on taking and mother earth keeps giving. That is entirely slyly slanted, one-way process. What we give her back is extraordinarily miniscule (in terms of her health) in comparison to what we extract from her.

Just to show our fellow human beings low, we are drawing longer lines of achievement by their side. The fire of competition persistently burning. The planet crashing like a fiery meteorite. We have already chucked out most of the attractive, holistic heritage that fell into our entitlement. We have taken mother nature for granted and the consequences are plainly scattered around for us to see. Her grievous moanings are no faint ripples anymore. These are piercing cries. Hear them!

Climate Change & a Monkey's Personal Pool

 

Monsoon is a crazy, proud lover. It knows 1.3 billion people are seeking its date. It teases sometimes and gets late. This time she sanctioned June 30 as the appointment date with the Delhi NCR. It showered its pining thirsty lovers with soul-pacifying kisses through drops. When the monsoon hits the sandy burning lips, a mystical fragrance of the soil surrendering to water pervades around. Sadly, I missed the smell. A neighbor had lit up his heap of single-use plastic and the toxic fumes rode the backs of the low clouds and killed the trademark smell of the first summer rain. It was nice to see the first monsoon showers but sad to have missed the famous fragrance of the first monsoon rain. In any case, we will have to bear up with hugely curtailed joy in future.

Western Europe is burning in July. For the first time in its documented history, the UK records forty degree plus temperature. France burns at 46°C. Forest fires. Burning grasslands. Denmark also records its maximum temperature in history. The house is on fire. Do we still need more proofs of global warming? Spain, Portugal, Germany all are in the grip of heat that is typical of northern Indian summers. Now is the time to think of global warming. Hypersonic missiles, wars, superpower status won’t have any meaning if all of us get roasted alive.

Half of the world is caught in forest fires. The other half is flooded. The planetary system seems to be crumbling down while we are using time, energy and resources in developing still deadlier weapons. It seems as if the catastrophes born of climate change are not issues at all. It’s like bubbles fighting among themselves in a boiling cauldron.

The glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate. The Italian-Swiss border in the Alps is denoted along glaciers. Now the glaciers are melting and the borders are thawing and shifting. An Italian mountain ridge is now being pulled into different directions by the opposing nationalities. The melting snows and the shifting drainage patterns have shifted the Italian ridge into the neighboring country. Now, around two-third of the ridge is technically within the Swiss territory. So the man-made boundaries are melting. Mother nature is giving a message that our cartographic lines don’t matter much to her. High time that we all think now in terms of the planet as one entity and consider ourselves as citizens of mother earth first. The rest are all secondary denominations.

We have perilously shrunk within our civilizational interiors leaving the exteriors—everything non-human among flora, fauna and the rest that constitutes earth—as mere utilities. We have gone on the wildest of eternal quests in pursuance of the completely unending path of ambition. We have turned into extravagantly rich-bodied people with shoddily poor souls. And all these natural disasters are merely reflecting the chronic dissonance between what we actually need and what we try to grab out of greed. The seminally formative natural forces lay ravaged. The sprawling canvas of mother earth’s natural painting is replaced by a fractious abstract art drawn with grotesque sense of redrawing anything natural with artificiality—the human-centric abstract art that absolutizes the ultimacy of our madness to keep utilizing natural resources at any cost. The free gifts of mother nature that were once quintessentially common are now swiped away and grafted with our crass mundanities. The virile vibrance of our vigorous negativism eclipses the earth. Where are the starry skies that once crooned moonily? As the centuries old trees fall mother earth sadly applauds the feats of her child, the child who is engaged in a mega-larceny.

Here in our part of the world, the temperature may be around 40°C but it feels like 60°C. You feel being roasted slowly. In the locality there is a vacant plot with plenty of wild growth. The owner thought of putting it in order by cutting the weeds, grass and bushes. As a result, a few snakes, monitor lizards and other reptiles turned homeless. They crept around seeking a new home. It created a big scare among the humans. A big rat snake sneaked into our garden as well. It’s a non-venomous snake. But irrespective of the category of snakes, poisonous or not, our fear is in proportion to their length. The fact is that rat snakes help us by chucking out rats and mice. But their size scares us. We cannot believe that such a big snake can be harmless. Never go by the appearances.

Wherever there is a snake many people gather around because it’s a common enemy. One of my uncles killed it exclaiming, ‘It’s a big one and dangerous!’ All of us felt very bad about the killing. It was the first Monday of shravan. It struck our conscience as a sin but what to do. Our fears turn us helpless and critically limit our choices. But we have a suitable accomplice in all our deeds and misdeeds. We absolved ourselves by quoting certain scriptures that clarify that probably it’s not a sin to kill a snake if it enters your house.

And beyond all these scary climatic issues a monkey has found his personal pool of water to beat the suffocating heat and humidity on this clammy, partially clouded noon. He has expertly disposed off the lid from the rooftop water tank. There he sits on the opening’s rim, his red bum safe on the frame, his tail hanging down, his smart paws holding the edges. He casts the look of owning a rooftop swimming pool. After enjoying a look of supreme solace he goes into the water, wallows for some moments and comes out sleek and shining. I saw him enjoying this for at least half an hour which included about ten dips in the water. The family of course would be using monkey-treated water.