Talking about the ultimate reality, Osho said it’s that stage in the journey of a seeker when after knowing everything still more remains to be known. Material science tried to crack the code and frantically searched for the fundamental particle that cannot be further divided. If ever they arrive at the primary material constituent, they can claim to know all and everything. There won’t be any unknowable. But as they have found, there is no fundamental entity. All the previously assumed smallest entities kept on subdividing, finally merging into the endless depths where everything merged into nothingness, leaving them clueless where to spot the primary constituent. All this merges into the never-ending spools of energy, sparks, vibrations and frequencies. It’s a screen where even our thoughts, emotions and feelings—which itself is a movement of subtle energies as substantial as the gross manifestations of energy movement on the visible level—can project our own creations. And creations of physical sciences have created many means of convenience for us.
The posts on this blog deal with common people who try to stand proud in front of their own conscience. The rest of the life's tale naturally follows from this point. It's intended to be a joy-maker, helping the reader to see the beauty underlying everyone and everything. Copyright © Sandeep Dahiya. All Rights Reserved for all posts on this blog. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author of this blog.
About Me
- Sufi
- Hi, this is somebody who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street was too intimidating. Passing through the quieter by-lane I intend to reach a solitary path, laid out just for me, to reach my destiny, to be happy primarily, and enjoy the fruits of being happy. (www.sandeepdahiya.com)
Saturday, April 27, 2024
The Unknowable
One more drop of sweetness in a bitter world
Scorching heat... spring died...flowers withered. But life has to continue till flowers bloom once again. With temperature around 40 and flowers gone, these honeybees look like desert travellers busy around an oasis. Water level in the tiny vessel was low, so many of them slipped down the edges while attempting to take tiny swigs of water. One can use love, care and help in any corner of the world. It polishes the aesthetics of humanity. A little practice to be more human. Goodness is qualitative in nature. It doesn't need quantity to get certified as a good deed. Main thing is one's emotion. So here I take my quantum jump in evolution by filling the bucket to the brim so that these little thirsty visitors safely perch on the upper edge and drink water without risking their lives. They get water, I become more aware of the godliness in me. Profit both ways. Vaah, what a fruitful day!
An interesting phase in Indian politics
The power equation has a very
common thread among the power aspirations—you want to be the real controller of
affairs; you have an impulse against sharing it with centralization-diluting people,
groups and institutions. There is hardly any chance to come across a politician
who doesn’t want all-out power in his own hands. The only deciding factor is to
what extent he can manage it. So we can safely say that all politicians are
basically cult aspirants. From this point, Modi is justified in trying to rise
above his own party and the parent organization, the RSS. But the trends after
two phases of parliamentary elections give rise to a pertinent question: Is
cult politics (which can be safely called electoral autocracy) feasible in
India?
To seek answer to this question,
we have to first find out where it’s practical and effective to operate the politics
of cult. Of course the communist countries come very close to set up a system
that easily digests the mythical cult of an individual because systematically
the entire society is cut in the same fabric, doing away with socio-economic
and religious diversities. In a beautifully manicured field, it’s very easy for
one sturdy sunflower to stand in the middle and function as the all-go point of
authority. It is also possible in the mono-religious, theocratic societies,
predominantly Muslim countries for example. There is a firm, homogenous hold of
faith over the people and in this evenly leveled society an individual can easily
rise above and rule over the rest.
However, cult formation in a
massively varied society like India is a big challenge. There are so many
regional disparities, economic variations, caste categories and religions. It’s
an exciting jungle of different plants and trees having varying heights. How
far you will go to be at the same height from all of them? You cannot serve as
a common denominator to all of them as a cult figure unless you use brute force
or do something as drastic as changing the constitution itself, both of which
are virtually impossibilities in the Indian set up. There are so many
centrifugal forces always pulling the power away from the center. You can have
some moments of a total grasp but things will slip out of hand because India is
an exotic Pandora box. And that’s where the uniqueness of this great country
lies. We love our freedom of not being perfect. We are a bouquet of colors
which is so appealing to this rapidly mono-coloring world. We are an exotic
chaos which is far more interesting than any order. We have earned our freedom
after centuries of subjugation and we would very much like to keep enjoying the
spirit of freedom including the freedom of expression.
You simply cannot rise above history
by belittling past greats like Gandhi and Nehru. They had their own cult
following but it was showered upon them by the people willingly and out of
respect and affection. It wasn’t a product of their cult-formation direct endeavor.
It was just an outcome of their sincere efforts for the welfare of their
motherland.
How big and effective a cult you
can erect in such a diversified society as India depends on your personal
capacity. And Modi has been the most effective and capable person since Nehru
and Indira to rise above the hordes of power-diluting factors and rule as a
supreme authority. Beyond judgments, I see it as a mark of his capabilities,
his brilliant oratory and the spirit of keeping an unrelenting hold on all those
around him. But in such a tight-gripped system in a democracy, there will
always be tension among those whose powers have been diluted. They will look up
to you with anxiety because you are keeping their loyalty by force. To maintain
an unchallenged authority as the central figure it requires frequent purges
like in communist and theocratic countries. But it isn’t possible to do so in
its direct form in a democracy and that too the largest democracy which is
always under the scanning radar of the world because what happens here has a
direct bearing on the global democratic machinery. Yes the indirect tools of
intimidation like ED, CBI, IT and other authorities work to an extent by
keeping the opponents (both within and outside) cut down to a manageable size.
But it is a deterrent only. You can just control your opponents till a point,
not do away with them altogether.
One can feel a strong undercurrent
of change in India after the two phases of elections. There is oversaturation with
the brand Modi in people’s psyche. If you hear Modi-Modi one billion times, of
course there will be a Modi fatigue. You lose that charm over people’s fancying
spirits.
I think almost hundred percent
media control is counterproductive. It discards the basic principle of safety
valve. Freshness and newness are the basic elements of news that keep people
glued to the news channels. The electronic media is so saturated with Modi
narrative that it turned very boring for the common masses. Of course the diehard
zealots would love watching it but they number very less. Most of the people
would at the most like a leader instead of turning blind followers.
In the absence of a safety valve
type dissenting outlet in the mainstream media, the journalists and critics who
had been kicked out of the mainstream media platforms found their outlets
through numerous social media platforms including YouTube channels, which have
been highly effective in presenting a different aspect of the situation. People
liked these interesting, discordant voices for their varying opinions. They had
the element of fresh news. No wonder these platforms will have a decisive role
in the current elections. Cheap internet plans allow the people to stay glued
to their social media choices, who is even bothered about the television.
In his place I would have kept
the ratio of 75:25 in the mainstream media—75 percent my narrative and 25
percent for the opposing voices. It would have acted like a safety valve and so
many tiny punctures in the tube won’t have surfaced in the form of mushrooming
social media channels. Of course Modi government has its own mushroom sprouts
in social media as well but their content has been a copy of what people see on
the television, so that also lost interest and hence viewership.
All in all it will be a very
interesting election during the next phases and Modi, the master he is of our
emotions, will of course try to raise a blizzard, trying to flare passion and bring
out the critically opinioned and imbalanced persona in us and flock after his
cult. How much he will succeed is to be seen.
Friday, April 26, 2024
How much attention should I give her?
A small seed of thought sprouts a prickly thicket after reading Saint Gibran's little story "At the Fair".
How much attention a man is supposed to give to a woman to score good in her books? If he outrightly goes overboard in his affection and attention, she condemns him as unmannerly, lecherous and uncouth. Ignore her, she curses him as a bore, and in worst case scenario even impotent. Now how much of lukewarm attention is sufficient to a woman? Well, even an enlightened soul like Gibran failed to gauze the right proportion, what to talk of little mortals like us! Possibly it is a tug of war between complete, overblown adulation on the one hand and complete avoidance on the other. Basically it's a see saw, shifting, teasing game which pumps life into the man's pursuit and her feigned nonchalance while walking supposedly not looking but gauzing the scene from her extra sixth sense which is 100 times sharper than a direct look with normal eyes.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
अबकी बार किसका वोट?
बेचारे राहुल गांधी को तो चुनाव आयोग ने बकरी बना रखा है. वो कुछ भी मिमिया दें तो एक डंडा मारते हैं उनके सर पर और दूसरी तरफ महाशक्तिशाली बाबा को खुले सांड की तरह छोड़ दिया गया है.. वह कुछ भी रांभ दें तो चुनाव आयोग भाग के अपने ऑफिस में घुस जाता है...अब आप ही समझिए ये संस्था किसकी है..बोलना मना है...🤐सिर्फ सुनो...किसकी? जो हमेशा मन की बात करते हैं😷
हमारे परिवार ने भी बरसों से कांग्रेस मुक्त भारत का सपना देखा है। आजादी से पहले दादा जी जमींदार लीग के समर्थक हुआ करते थे, और जहां भी कांग्रेसी लोग सभा करते थे, सीधे साधे किसान लोग जो आर्य समाज के अनुयायी और जमींदार लीग के समर्थक थे, कांग्रेसियों की पिटाई करते थे। दादाजी बताते हैं कि काई बार तो डर के मारे कांग्रेसी लोग टोपी सर से उतार कर जेब में छिपा लेते थे। उसके बाद पिताजी की भी यही धारणा रही। उसके बाद हम और उसके बाद हमारे बच्चे भी इसी खानदानी राजनैतिक सिद्धांत का पालन करते रहे हैं। चार पीढ़ियों से हमने हर किसी को वोट दिया है, सिर्फ कांग्रेस को नहीं दिया है। और अब 70-80 साल के पारिवारिक राजनीतिक इतिहास के बाद एक बहुत क्रांतिकारी कदम हम उठ रहे हैं। अबकी बार कांग्रेस को वोट देंगे। हालांकी हुडा सरकार ने मेरे साथ प्रांतीय सिविल सेवा के मामले में बहुत बड़ा अत्याचार किया था, लेकिन बाद में खट्टर सरकार ने भी कसार नहीं छोड़ी। खैर व्यक्तिगत मामलों को भूलते हुए देशहित में फैसला लेते हुए यही सोचा है कि अगर मीडिया की दासता, गैर लोकतांत्रिक मनमानी, संविधान को बदलने की साजिश, व्यक्तिगत आजादी, बोलने की आजादी, पढ़े लिखे आदमी की इज्जत, घृणा मुक्त समाज की रचना करनी है तो हमारी वोटों का कांग्रेस को समर्थन देना ही बनता है। यहीं हम कर सकते हैं। बाकी ज्यादा आशा तो नहीं है, क्योंकि जिस तरह से संस्थानों को जकड़ पकड़ लिया गया है, उस हिसाब से मैं चुनाव के नतीजों में ज्यादा आशा नहीं रख रहा हूं। फिर भी..
Saturday, April 20, 2024
The lecherous oldies in the countries
A man from our village operates a
chemist shop at a village nearby. The village chemists work more as a doctor
running a clinic. They diagnose, prescribe and sell the medicines. In this way
they fill up a lot of blank space on the health welfare map of India. I’m
having a chat with him at his shop. A man in his sixties arrives at the
counter, puts down twenty rupees, looks the other way and stealthily plucks
away the pills put in front of him. Not a word was exchanged, or even a look.
I’m curious even though I have some clue to the episode. My friend elaborates
on the matter. This man belongs to the breed of the old men whose bodies have
aged but the passion remains the same in the mind. So to fill up this gap
between the body and the mind they take aphrodisiac pills. My chemist friend
tells me that there are about fifty such heroes in the small village. Half of
them still experiment outside their matrimony and the other half dallies within
their four walls, including some who have nice amorous equation with their
daughters-in-law. Of the last category, they are primarily pension holders and
are still the main economic pillars of the family, entitling them to amorous
times with their young daughters-in-law.
An inverse equation of adoration and hate
My brother spent some time in the China office of their company. He finds the Chinese people the most cultured ones. Their aesthetic sense of hospitality for a visitor is outstanding, he tells me. In comparison to the indisciplined chaos in India, he finds China a well-ordered peaceful, contended society. Well, I may not agree with him completely--unless I see things firsthand--but I have a belief that such an ancient civilization that gave birth to Lao Tzu and Confucius must be having deep-rooted fundamentals appropriately aligned with progress and evolution. Anyways, that's another matter. But I believe that with political reforms, and by quitting its ever-excited quest to get more territories, China can be a trend-setting country for the common cause of global citizenship.
He tells me that Mr. Zia is the best
built man he has ever seen. Zia, a very nice gentleman, tells my brother one
day, ‘Brother, all the boys in the office hate you,’ he says as a matter of fact. ‘Why?’ my
brother asks. ‘Because all the girls adore you,’ the handsome Chinese clarifies.
A small-time writer's skirmish with a bull frog
There is a little group of bull frogs who wallop in the small street drain. They retire for the night under a culvert nearby. They are too big for the rat snakes hiding in the bushes a few yards away. The bull frogs look like miniature hippos walloping in muddy waters. They are very confident even while face-to-face with the rat snakes. One day I saw a poor rat snake helplessly staring at the mud-wallopers. They even turned their backs to it. ‘We are too big for you!’ they seemed to take a jibe at it. Then one of them got out to scout our yard for a suitable winter hideout. It showed the same attitude to me that it flaunts in the face of the rat snakes. I applied water cannon to shoo it away but it stayed adamant and turned my policing act into a bathing with clean water. I stomped my feet to shake the ground around it to scare it. It but stood solid. A very brave one indeed. I then used a stick to prod at its bottom. It got angry and stood on its front legs to increase its size. ‘Hey, I’m bigger than you!’ it meant to say. Then I give a small, gentle hit at its bum and there it galloped away croaking obscenities.
The sweet old days for a man in his forties
To have multani mitti (Fullers Earth or the Indian Healing Clay) for washing your hair means to belong to the older generation. The cosmopolitan world is beyond the reach of plain old earth. While growing up in the village, we had the singular option of washing and rubbing our hair clean with multani mitti. Now the dermatologists are approving the superb qualities of the good old multani mitti involving cooling, skin nourishing and beautifying. The desi shampoo absorbs oil and dirt. The natural cleanser is all goody-goody news for the scalp, especially the oily ones. It hydrates, prevents bacterial growth, inhibits dandruff, and removes toxic chemicals from the skin as a purifying agent. Now I realize how much science is involved in our age-old home remedies and concoctions. While I write this, I can feel Mother’s strong peasant woman’s hands giving a vigorous but considerate scrub to my scalp during childhood. But now to use multani mitti means simply to be out of fashion.
Storks in the sky
It rained for almost a week in the middle of October, making it one of the wettest Octobers ever recorded. The slugs and earthworms got apprehensive whether it was the mythological deluge repeated. The ones that got scared too much headed for higher grounds towards the verandah from the garden. Then the sun shone very brightly and all their fears were belied. Now they had to retreat, at a great risk of being squashed under feet and picked up by the predators. I airlifted some of them and landed them home in the flower bed. It shows if you easily give into your fears, you expose yourself to an even broader range of risks and then salvation becomes a factor of someone’s sense of charity, or kindness, or pity.
What bigger proof do I need that
winters aren’t too far than the sight of storks. It seems a beautiful world. A
group of around thirty painted storks hovering in the village sky. They arrived
flying in a V-shape pattern, did a few redesigned sorties, maybe reconnoitering
the village pond. Sadly the water body isn’t free now. It’s tamed for fisheries
with wire nettings cutting the free skies from the pond’s stretch. So they move
on looking for some still free puddle. Wetlands are on a decline. But the sight
of these Himalayan visitors freshens up my mood. And there is hope till the sky
has enough free canvas for the birds to fly.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
A simple man's financial management
Rashe is a soft giant. He owns
huge strength, which is amply evident when he works as a wage laborer. He can lift
huge weights but he is too cool in temperament to be agile. Once, after getting
fully sloshed he fell faceward and being very relaxed and unhurried allowed his
teeth to hit a brick without putting much effort against the fall. A free and
relaxed fall we can term it. Now the door is open with three or four of his
front teeth missing. This coupled with a slurred speech—the result of a horse
kick during infancy, which jammed his jaw somewhat abnormally—makes him look
and sound like a fresh species altogether. But he has a very keen sense of
banking. He worked for me for a day for which I owe him 600 rupees. He hasn’t arrived
to claim it even after a couple of weeks after the work assignment. He hasn’t
any banking account, so all the people whom he considers to be honest are his
bank. He keeps the money with them, postponing the settlement of his dues till
the day he needs the money. ‘That saves the wastage of money,’ he provides me free
financial consultancy.
The big man's little story
Petha is a huge man, standing at
6’4” and weighing in the range of 120s in kilogram unit. He grew to be a
mammoth lad in the senior secondary school. The potential was spotted by one of
his teachers. She passionately introduced him in the art and craft of pacifying
the basic instinct. He may not have bothered about any other element of
schooling but this lesson he has followed to the core of his body. He hasn’t
looked back since then.
Ask him the biographical summary
of the last two decades. He answers with the sincerity of a student, ‘I have
simply come very handy for the women looking for greener pastures!' As you can
very well imagine, there are countless episodes of his amorous passion. It
involves the college-going girl of a minister in Djibouti, a very loyal
secretary-cum-housekeeper-cum-mistress Fatima, a few nurses, teachers, college
girls, peasant women and scores of ladies belonging to the trade of dousing
desires.
Then in Ethiopia, he enticed the
daughter of a prominent Sikh farmer—from whom he had taken some land on lease
for coffee plantation—which earned him a jail term of two years. The African
jail was brutal. He survived only because he had too much weight which got cut
to a normal 75 kilogram after the prison brutalities. Now in India he keeps a
well-oiled stock of afeem to qualify
as a brutal bull in the art of passion. He is regular with four or five women
apart from giving his own wife every reason to feel contended in matrimony.
What would happen if you are
forever excited and high on adrenaline? After all, human system has limitations.
It’s not solely made for copulation as people like Petha believe. So now he has
high blood pressure. I recommend walks and jogging. But he has all the remedies
in copulatory terms. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. One encounter with a luscious woman
amounts to two kilometers of walking. By this equation, I walk several miles
each day!’ he gives me the consultation talk about this new form of walking by
simply taking tumbles in the bed. His mathematics is a clear winner, so I
accept his point of view and silently move ahead on my customary walk in the
solitude of countryside.
The costliest wine
Shyam Sunder and helper Bijender are repairing cracks in our old house. One day they work till late in the evening and get a bonus of 150 rupees meant to buy a bottle of desi liquor, their main incentive for extra work. They leave happily with the prospects of boozed-up relaxed moments after the daylong hard work. The next day, during a break, they are sitting on a bench side by side. ‘What is the cost, you can imagine, of the single peg of the costliest whisky?’ I asked. I had recently read about it in the papers and since then loved flummoxing the liquor lovers by baring the surprising fact. Shyam Sunder, the head brick layer, took a long-long draught at a beedi for inspiration and seriously deliberated over the question for a minute. ‘There are very rich people around. It must be around 10,000 rupees for a peg,’ he reached the end of his imagination about the figure. Bijender, being his loyal helper, promptly seconded him. Then I informed them that the figure is 4 crore 70 lakh rupees for a single peg of Japanese whisky. It didn’t fit in anywhere in their scheme even in the wildest of imaginations. No wonder they took it as a joke. A PJ in fact that didn’t elicit even a tiny peal of laughter. But we have to understand that it’s a small world for them where big sums appear a joke. If not for this, how will they even melt their bones under inclement weather on construction sites for a daily wage as low as a few hundred rupees?
Monday, April 15, 2024
A rainbow at the day's tail end
A gloomy, lukewarm, overcast
early October day at the fag end of autumnal corridor. A day on the fringe of
all seasons. A disowned day with orphaned feeling. And the sky shedding a few
tears, as if in mourning for better times and climes. Some drops of rain
leaving just scarring dots on the sand. Then some solacing ray of hope at the
time of sunset. The sun calls it off from official duties a few minutes past
six. The clouds in the west thinned and orangish curtains cast a faded glow on
the darkish grey stage to the east. A little piece of sky over the
north-eastern horizon slightly parted to allow the light’s protagonist to raise
a beacon of hope. A little arc of rainbow smiled. A rainbow at the end of a
gloomy tale proclaiming that there is still hope, that all isn’t lost, that
there will be a balmy day tomorrow, or the day afterwards, or still later. But
come it will for sure. Then the sun dived further low beyond the faded orange
curtain. The little arc of rainbow was gently wiped clean from the sky’s slate.
A beautiful sadly sweet phenomena
above and the bustling world below. The India-South Africa cricket match
happens to be one of the numerous happenings. The Africans score pretty
comfortably in the first forty overs. The Indians then make a comeback,
allowing the visitors hardly a run a ball in the slog overs. To we Indians, it
means great performance by our bowlers. To the Africans, it means a poor show by
their batters. Both have their own versions of reality. Where does truth lie in
the equation? I think it’s there in the middle, balancing out both extremes—the
Indians bowled well, but the Africans batted poorly also. Doesn’t each of them
support the other for its validation? The loser helps the winner in its
victory; the winner also facilitates the loser’s defeat.
The story of a stylish, modern-day canine mom
Bhuro is a brown and white rotund
bitch in the village street. She looks replete with self-care, in complete
contrast to other maternally worn out hassled female canines in the locality.
She eats only warm buttered chapattis. She doesn’t give much trouble to her
lungs by unnecessary barking like the rest of her ilk. I have seen many
famished, worn- and worked-out female dogs due to the heavy burden of puppy
rearing. But in comparison Bhuro seems a glamorous, narcissistic post-modern
girl. I have never seen her attending her maternal duties. Then the secret
comes out. She eats all of her newborn puppies to maintain her youth, glamor
and figure. Of course there must be some very significant reason to account for
her weird behavior. Mysteries of nature is all I can reckon in this regard.
Her meaning of life is in stark
contrast to an old black bitch I remember from my young days. She would
embarrass even the human mothers in taking care of her newborns. Once her sole
surviving puppy also died. But she won’t allow anyone to take it away for
burial. She kept licking and tending to the corpse for many days. Of course,
love cannot stop a corpse from rotting. I shooed her away using a feigned
demonic show of waving sticks, shouting angry words and stomping gestures. Then
I hurriedly buried the carcass, secured the tiny grave with a big stone and
many thorny boughs of keekars lest
the mother in her digs out the dead from the grave. To her canine sense of
motherhood I was the murderer of her puppy, and for weeks it would howl
whenever she saw me. It would leave me very guilty.
There was another sweet canine
mom who had such a liking for her kids that she would steal others’ puppies and
rear them as her own. In comparison to these puppy-loving moms, Bhuro stands at
the opposite end of earth in temperament and philosophy of life.
The political nursery
It was a hornet’s nest unleashed
on us with the announcement of elections for the village panchayat, the village level governing body. Sarpanch elections have acquired such seriousness as to hold the
entire village by throat and give it a very serious shake. The atmosphere is
clouded with posters, pamphlets, banners and fliers, so many of them as we
didn’t even see in parliamentary elections during our childhood. Politics is a
lucrative career, in every sense of the term. It’s the biggest key to
empowerment.
Most of the power aspirants have
little clue about what is to be filled up in the nomination form even though
these are in Hindi these days. So a big task awaits me. They appear on the edge
of life, so much seriousness about the forms. God forbid if there is some
mistake and it might get rejected. So they trust the bookish guy in the
village. The form is almost an intimidating booklet with so many instructions
and clauses. ‘It left my head spinning,’ one of them looked very sad.
I peer nervously at the form
booklet. There are many pages devoted to the ongoing and past skirmishes with
law: a record of petty as well as solid falling off the legal ladder. So the
government of India fully understands that the contestants will have lots of
FIRs, court cases and complaints against them.
But I felt further cut down to
even smaller academic size the moment I reached the column for academic
qualifications of the candidate. It was just one line at the end of the page,
almost inconsequential. By chance the printing ink was very light here to make
it even more insignificant item of little concern. So the government knows that
the candidates will have just as much academic record as to fill up merely a half
line at the end of a page in the form.
Sarpanch elections have acquired massive proportions. Campaigning
has become unbelievably expensive. Lots of cash is also distributed among the
poor voters. They even have loudspeakers mounted on E-rickshaws proclaiming the
credentials of a candidate who would make it a Ramrajya with clean governance. One candidate spent one crore
rupees. He did a lot of charity work as well. Many ineligible bachelors were
lucky to get brides with the kindness and connections of this candidate. He
took large groups of villagers for fully-sponsored pilgrimages as well. He
raised a whirlwind with his tireless activities. Then his clever election
committee built a narrative that he has spent each penny in his pocket and will
commit suicide if he lost the elections. There was a sympathy wave and he won
handsomely.
The entire story of Rashe Ram's schooling
Rashe Ram went to school for four
days, or just three and half to be precise. All families in the villages at
least try to put their wards in the shafts of the schooling cart. Most of the
yoked imps galloped to freedom without wasting too much time. They still do so
in the villages but things have improved marginally in this regard. Master Sube
Singh pulled little Rashe’s ears on day one. It was painful. A round of
defecation on the carpet in the school verandah earned his ears to be literally
pulled out on day two. Day three came with urination on the floor and a bite on
the face of a fellow student, which earned him a severe shaking of his head,
ruffled hair and big reprimand. Some repeat of the earlier tasks earned him a
beating around mid-day on the fourth day. As he was caned, he took an impish
opportunity to hit the teacher’s head with his wooden writing tablet. There was
blood. He fled from the school forever. But he tried to keep his younger
brothers Karne and Munna in school. It was done with a sense of inflicting
torture on his siblings. They were in class five and six respectively. Bhoop
would get drunk and harass the boys, plundered their lunch and eat it. It
became a habit with the big-time neighborhood drunk. So Rashe, all of thirteen
or fourteen, beat the liquor lover. He later beat the thinnest sloshed Raame
over some issue. These are three violent acts that he committed in life. The
rest is all love with three or four poor peasant women who surrender to his
animalistic charms as an escapade from the hard facts of life.
Fast, faster, fastest
On October 1, 2022 5G services
were launched in India. The most interesting marketing feature—that would
inevitably see the millennials running to upgrade their network, forcing the
middle-aged and the elderly to copy them later—is that a two-hour movie would
be downloaded in just ten seconds. With the old 4G technology it takes seven to
eight minutes. I’m not against technology but I think we have been running
faster and faster to save time. With 6G we would seek to get it done in one
second. Then the race would enter the echelons of nanoseconds. My only
curiosity is when will we pause to enjoy the fruit of our time-saving
technologies. Despite the best of our time savers, we are busier than ever. I
think the race against time will finally burn us up—like a meteorite burns to
nothingness as it crashes through earth’s atmosphere. And why do we run faster
and faster? It’s due to our dynamic belief that found sitting, then walking,
then jogging we give the impression of being backward. So still faster we have
to run. We have now a vast human sprawl on this tiny planet. So running faster
creates huffing-puffing avenues to keep the new load busy and engaged. But then
we are heading for an explosion!
Father and Son
My brother Amit is a cool and
composed IT professional. He has never been ambitious in the sense that we see
people toppling apple carts to rise in careers and professions. A handsome
six-footer he has never been too eager to shake the stage too enthusiastically
to make his presence felt. At the beginning of planning a career he showed zeal
for joining the Indian army and gave a serious try but things won’t work out.
Then he dropped the yoke of career aspirations for some time. He took to
farming on a part of our land and after finishing the tasks in the morning, he
would settle down, after taking a relaxing bath, dressed very-very casually, to
read newspaper under the neem tree in
front of our house. Father had retired by that time and pulled the family cart
with his pension money. Father would smoke and drink tea throughout the day. He
still maintained his routine of leaving the house in the morning like during
his office days. But now it was the little tea shop in the town where a few of
his friends gathered to pass time. He would return from the town in the
afternoon.
As he reached home, Father
would—having failed to incite his younger son into a volcanic eruption
regarding career even with almost cataclysmic fatherly outpours of care,
concern and anger—greet the newspaper-reading gentleman with a question in
great Krishnamurti’s style, ‘Sir, are you a retired pensioner?’ ‘No sir!’ Amit
would reply with a slight embarrassment. Later on, Amit made a career in the IT
sector, a bit belated though. But now is doing quite well in his job.
The common story of a common homemaker
Rajesh comes from a small village
in a neighboring district. He learnt the most basic of education concerning
reading and then decided to know about life in the living workshop itself. He
worked as an apprentice to a lead acid battery maker, commuting daily to work
at the town in crowded buses plying on famished roads. Discipline and diligence
paid off and he evolved in profession. Now he has his own shop and sells both
his own products as well as fancier brands.
His family stays in a nice little
house at the town. His children go to an English medium school. Thanks to my
buying a few inverter batteries from him, he is now a trustable friend. He
seemed very concerned about my financially unproductive writing venture when I
told him that I’m writing a book. A few months down the line, during our next
meeting, after a frank discussion about the financial prospects of his battery
business, he threw the ball in my court. ‘Have you completed that coppy?’ he
enquired in all brotherly seriousness. To him writing, page, notepad, notebook,
file, diary, book, tome everything is a simple ‘coppy’. I was clueless about
this ‘coppy’. Then he picked up his dog-eared tiny pocket diary where he noted
the stats of his business, mostly about the errant clients who delayed
payments, and brandished it, ‘Yes coppy. You were writing a coppy na?’ So I
assured him that my coppy was going well. At least it rhymes with ‘shoppy’. The
latter happens to be the farmers’ version of the classical ‘Sufi’ christened
upon me by my father.
Sunday, April 14, 2024
The hollowness of words
Each word is incomplete, just an
abstract, broken fragment born of thoughts arising in the mind. And the mind
itself is a grainy fragment of the overall consciousness. Words are mere grains
of sand. With sand grains we try to make castles, huge castles that we make in
pursuance of the ever-missing meaning of life. Sand slips, we go for awkward
flips. Words are mere broken arrows. How will one even win a battle with broken
arrows? Words are mere sparks, temporary flashes coming out of the endless
coffers of silence. They just give a little flash of light around our feet as
we grope in the darkness seeking a way out of our puzzles. Words are mere
temporary twinklings on the vast canvas of silence. They themselves tell their
story of incompleteness, their own meaninglessness behind all the meanings
ascribed to them. And the moment we listen to their story, we arrive at the
moral of the final story. The moral of their story is silence: silence and
emptiness behind all this noise and happening. And as I write this, huge
rumblings of megh naad, the rumblings of clouds, buzz
across my head. A booming cosmic storm that chucks out the outer shell of
words, crushes the stones to spread the sand to go flying with the winds. The
words getting sucked into a cosmic cascade and whirlpool of energy. And beyond
that silence there is a void full of potential for all the noise.
Keep going!
Why do we like to do something we really love, our Ikigai?...when we do something (like writing in my case), we do it basically to further our belief in life...to keep our belief in something meaningful in the face of all the nonsense and meaningless chaos around, to keep our hope and belief in life alive, to keep going, to have some purpose to keep going....in whatever we do, we are simply justifying our entitlement to life... it's never about breaking stars or being a success icon, that's just a secondary off-spin...the primary thing is that this 21% energy in 2% mass in the head has to spin its webs to somehow keep drawing some meaning our of the chaos within and without...we have to do something, otherwise we feel hollow, dead and lost... doing something is like the compass that at least keeps giving us some sense of direction in our journey in the cosmic sea...
And when we fail to draw a direction, or do something (big or small doesn't matter, doing is just doing... only the soulful action matters), this huge energy in the little space within us creates a storm... because then we have lost direction...like a storm in the sea...so the mind needs engagement in the NOW... otherwise it's a whirlpool of aimless scattered energy... that's why action is soo sooo important...like in Gita... it's just about action... action without the worries of results is the holiest thing...it can be tending to a flowerpot or a solitary walk or making a nuclear bomb or even sitting in silence with full awareness...that's all action..
And while we are soulfully engaged in our Ikigai, it's not that we are totally blind to a vision. It exists. Even if it's a vage outline. There is always a point drawing us towards it. It's a kind of little anchorage finally. It's an opportunity basically. You may not take it as such. But it's an opportunity to feel better than we are doing presently.
That point is waiting for you like all of us...but to reach that point you have to keep your smile and smilingly shake hand with the opportunity when you reach it...the opportunity is always at fixed points in the infinite potential field...we with our human dynamics have to reach it...so walk towards your opportunity with smile, belief and confidence... opportunity never fails us...it will always wait for us to reach it... only we fail and falter and miss our date with it... because we lose faith and smile on the way...so keep going lovely souls...keep flying and fluttering...your orchard always waits for you because it surely exists...so don't miss to complete the journey!
Saturday, April 13, 2024
सबका नंबर आएगा
इतना सन्नाटा क्यों है भाई?! डरो मत नंबर सबका आएगा। Electrolal autocracy के साइड इफेक्ट्स हैं साहब। शुरुआत बड़े ऑपोजिशन के लोगों से हुई है, लेकिन अंत में आम आदमी का भी नंबर जरूर आएगा। विश्व गुरु बनने में सबका योगदान होगा। एक साधारण आदमी का भारत को विश्व गुरु बनाने में योगदान इस तरह है: आंख मूंद कर राजा साहब की आज्ञा का पालन करना, जो कुछ हो रहा है उसको सैद्धांतिक तौर पर ठीक मान कर अपने दुख को हजम करने की आदत डालना, चाहे आपको बिना बात जेल में डाल दिया जाए तो फिर भी स्वीकार करना की गलती खुद से ही हुई होगी, राजा को देवता मानकर पूजना, ED, CBI, IT धर्म रक्षक संस्था मानकर उनका अपने द्वार पर स्वागत करना, EVM और EC को निष्पक्षता के देवी देवता मानकर घर के मंदिर में उनकी फोटो लगाना, गंगा स्नान की जगह राजनैतिक वाशिंग मशीन में सफाई करवाना और भागवत्ता प्राप्त करना, कान भाड़ मीडिया के शेरों की दहाड़ को खरगोश की तरह नम्रता, सच्ची श्रद्धा से सुनना और उनके बताए जुमलों को पवित्र ग्रन्थ मानकर उनका अनुसरण करना। इस तरह की अनेकों छोटी छोटी चीज़ें हैं जो आपको आने वाले पांच सालों में जीने के लिए तैयार कर देंगी। ऐसा करने से एक नए भारत में आपको जीने में काफी मदद मिलेगी।
Friday, April 12, 2024
The tiny remnants from the birdie world
Nothing is too far and isolated
from the reach of all-pervading pollution. It’s the first week of November and
the Delhi NCR has turned a gas chamber. Even though I’m located almost 50 km
from Delhi, yet it smells as bad as in Delhi. The little serpentine trail of
wilderness running between the canals is shrouded in metallic haze. The trees,
birds, bushes, plants and the canals sulkily lay under the clawy grip of the
thick smog. There is no wind to swipe away the swabs of suffocation. Not a leaf
moves. Proud smog is heavily loaded upon mother earth’s bosom. If you take a
picture, it would definitely qualify as a beautiful foggy countryside picture.
But it would be lifeless. Over a period of time even this poisoned picture will
vanish to be replaced by an even bleaker vision.
Gone are the days of big groups
of birds. A couple of herons, two-three egrets and some meek cormorants play the
role of moving characters in this smog-smeared, frozen picture. A tiny warbler
preens from the clump of elephant grass. A parrot tweets dispiritedly. An ibis
gives a pathetic, suffering call. A few black kites go scouting the ground. A
coucal is busy in the tall clumps of sharp-leaved reeds. A migrant Bihari
laborer has cast a fish-line in the canal. A happy news at last bringing a
smile on his face. He catches a rohu,
a good half kg of freshwater meat. He is still fresh after the chhath celebrations.
Some Nepalese are employed at a
poultry farm. They have caught a swarm of little eels from the shallow waters
of a distributary field channel branching off from one of the canals. Life has
all the reasons to be busy against all odds. Wondering at the capacity of life
to adopt newer and newer ways of staying optimistic even in the face of all
these gloomy clouds, I move on my customary stroll along the thin ribbon of
wilderness along the space between the canals.
The criticality of everything from religion to rags
There are critical issues.
Everything, from religion to rags, seems in a tight political grip. However,
unbothered of all the bigger things a beautiful scene unfolds. It’s a lovely
lush green carpet of tiny wheat saplings in a field. A relaxed evening is
building up. Bright, warm, yellowish sunrays streaming down on the little wheat
crop painted with farming precision in the fields. A farmer is watering his
wheat crop. Watering the crops means a feast for the egrets. A party of
snow-white egrets is feasting on the worms and insects scurrying out to save
themselves from the flood.
Elsewhere, the mankind has been
at war with nature. And in its angry, stressful wake has lost 50 percent sperm
count during the last fifty years. We may go for blatant propagation of our
species, but mother nature knows exactly well how to level up the things.
We love cows and revere them.
They seem to feel somehow that they are empowered politically at the moment. So
they sit right in the middle of busy roads and majestically chew cuddle. I
think they are safer on the roads than the humans are. The vigilante groups are
very diligent in their responsibilities.
The monkeys are also revered by
we Hindus because of their connection with Lord Hanuman. We are very busy these
days, so have little time to do justice to our faith. So as we are running for
office and business or pilgrimages we throw fruits and eatables towards the
monkeys waiting by the roadside. The cute simians run to grab the respectful
offerings. Many get killed and injured by speeding vehicles. But the thrower of
things thinks that he has done a pious task.
The little world of farmers
Ranbeer is my share-cropper, an arrangement between an idle owner and a hardworking farmer. He has been very hardworking during our decades-long partnership. Earlier he worked very hard but now in his sixties he is retired from active farming, just plies the tractor, directs the farm workers, drinks, plays cards in chaupals, suffers fits of mysterious nature, raises verbal storms against his still strong and robust wife. He is fine with numbers and keeps a little pocket diary where he manages the accounting figures concerning our farming partnership to the last paisa. That is the simple broadsheet of his life. It’s an ideology-free life of a farmer, untangled, aloof from the snarling complexities of the mind.
The doctors couldn’t give any
clue to his swooning fits, so I gave him a spiritual certification that he goes
into a Samadhi. He has no clue to what I say so just laughs at it, taking it to
be just one of the poor jokes cracked by the bookish guys like yours truly. All
of us are our own doctors, the best doctors in fact because we know our own
system more than anyone else. I was once asking him about what and whys of his
fits, how did he feel, etc. ‘Well, I hardly remember anything. It just strikes
suddenly. When I come back to my senses, I always find a few drops of urine on
my pajama and after that I feel very weak for a couple of days,’ he gave me the
medical summary to diagnose the nature of his medical condition.
I researched on it and failed to
come to a conclusion. So while the doctors failed to check his fainting swoons
and fits, he devised a solution for himself. ‘The tractor jumps and shakes my
body quite vigorously and due to this I don’t suffer fits while plying my
tractor,’ he looked assured. After that he started spending as much time as
possible on his tractor. His wife, who worked equal to two strong bulls in the domain
of hard field labor, could draw consolation that hers wasn’t a case of total
exploitation as her husband was at least contributing to farming as a tractor
driver.
Then the myth was broken one day.
Ranbeer all smug, and looking at the mouth-watering prospects of getting a full
liquor bottle to drink in the evening with his pals, was plying his tractor on
the road to the town. A couple of farmers were sitting comfortably by his sides
on the mud-guards. Maybe it was the fault of the road makers. They had made it
too smooth with a fresh layering of tar, so Ranbeer’s body didn’t shake
sufficiently to avoid a fit. The tractor was running at a reasonable speed and
the farmer lost consciousness suddenly without any prior warning or symptoms.
Both his fellow peasants had to jump into action with the agility of a rat
snake to avoid a common fit for all three of them in the roadside ditch. After
that Ranbeer isn’t contributing to farming even as a tractor driver. His wife
is aggrieved. She feels exploited in this one-sided equation. But she is
helpless in doing work. A life-long habit of hard labor, her Ikigai, won’t allow her to sit idle. So she
just cannot subdue her inclination to start walking to the fields to work and
sweat out the miseries of life. But she harasses him a lot, cracks jokes,
treats him like a child, and fires puns and much-much more.
There is some wild growth in a
corner of one of the fields. A big cobra stays there. People talk about it with
awe and wonder. The share-cropping couple has planted laukis. Ranbeer’s wife is helpless in doing hard work. She has to
do farming work to keep her life meaningful. So she is busy in weeding out the
extra growth among the vegetable vines. The cobra struck at her sickle-bearing
hand. It was there under the vines. She fell back due to the shock and the
offended reptile in fact crawled over her stomach. She was all alone in the
field at that time. Imagine the shock and nightmare of a cobra strike.
I am presenting here her own
words as I listened to her a bit guiltily and her eyes almost accusing me of partnership
in crime as if saying it was your cobra because it stays in your field. Here
goes her post-bite story:
‘I fell down and it jumped on my
body and crawled over me. I couldn’t stand up. I started crying. Tried to get
up but would fall down. Then I thought why die while running and repeatedly
falling down. So I tied my duppatta
on my hand, gave a cut around the bite and lay down weeping to die peacefully.’
After fifteen minutes her son
arrived and took her to the snakebite healer who uses a secret herbal concoction
for detoxification. The patient vomits and goes into diarrheal fits to cleanse
the system. It works well. Surprisingly. The success ratio is almost 95
percent. Most of the snake-bitten people get cured.
She was up for terrible vomiting
and diarrhea for a couple of days. Ranbeer felt inconvenience about it. ‘Put
her cot near the washroom so that there is no unnecessary messing up of the
place,’ he managed the situation as a firm family patriarch. Then he went to
her cot and consoled, ‘You will get cured, don’t worry. Most probably the snake
just gave a hiss on your skin and you panicked.’ Then he lamented about food
not getting cooked on time, the usual inconveniences born in the life of a
farmer with the wife getting bedridden. She listened to all this, not saying
much but resolved to make it very tough for him once she got back to her feet.
These are very tough people. I
wasn’t expecting her to go to the fields at least during this season. But she was
right there at the farm doing the usual chores the very next week itself. Salutes
to these courageous Jat peasant women!
PS: She was earlier bitten by a
snake while taking out dung-cakes from a bitoda,
a conical dung-cake store covered with hay and straw. Ranbeer himself was
bitten by a snake in the fields few years back. So they are veterans in the
scary experience. The farmers world over lead such a tough life. But when it
comes to setting narratives and building agendas by the power aspirants, the
farmers and their cause lie at the base of their scheme.
A Notebook of Dancing Shadows (My Latest Book)
<Blurb (A Notebook of Dancing Shadows)>
Step into the world of the
introspective and poetic writer, where the mundane transforms into the
profound, and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. In ‘A Notebook of Dancing Shadows,’
we are invited into the gentle embrace of a soulful observer, who effortlessly
weaves together the threads of everyday life with the tapestry of the spiritual
realm.
With each turn of the page,
readers are drawn deeper into the writer’s inner sanctum, where thoughts
flutter like leaves in the wind and emotions ebb and flow like the tide. From
the whispering secrets of nature to the intricate dance of social processes,
every observation is tinged with a sense of wonder and reverence for the world
around us.
But beyond mere observation, this
collection transcends the boundaries of the ordinary, delving into the writer’s
spiritual quest for meaning and truth. Through moments of contemplation and
introspection, he grapples with the mysteries of existence, seeking solace in
the beauty of the unknown.
‘A Notebook of Dancing Shadows’
is not just a book, but a journey—a journey of the heart, the mind and the
soul. It is a lyrical exploration of life’s complexities, rendered with a
delicate touch and an unwavering sense of grace. So, step into the writer’s
world and let his words illuminate the path to a deeper understanding of the
human experience.
<Preface>
Welcome, dear reader, to a
journey through the meandering paths of observation, reflection and contemplation.
In the pages that follow, you’ll find an eclectic mix of thoughts, musings and
opinions penned by a humble wanderer of the countryside, where the whispers of
nature intertwine with the echoes of profound existential questions.
I am but a simple soul, dwelling
in the embrace of a not so tranquil village, where luckily time still moves at
its own semi-leisurely pace, and somehow one can still feel that the rhythm of
life is dictated by the seasons. From the vantage point of my rustic abode, I
embark on solitary walks, allowing the gentle embrace of nature to envelop me
in its serene folds.
In the quiet solitude of these
wanderings, I find myself attuned to the subtle symphony of the natural world –
the delicate flutter of a butterfly’s wings, the ephemeral beauty of a
wildflower by the wayside, or the poignant dance of a leaf as it takes its
final flight from the branches above. Each of these seemingly mundane
occurrences carries within it a profound message, a glimpse into the
interconnectedness of all things, and a reminder of the transient nature of
existence.
But my observations extend beyond
the realm of the natural world, encompassing the grand tapestry of human
affairs and the tumultuous currents of society. From the smallest acts of
kindness to the grandest geopolitical upheavals, I offer my reflections with a
poet’s heart and a seeker’s spirit.
As you delve into the pages of
this book, you may find yourself traversing unexpected terrain – from the
tranquil beauty of a sun-dappled glade to the chaotic hustle and bustle of the
human experience. Yet, amidst the cacophony of voices clamoring for attention,
I invite you to pause, to linger awhile, and to contemplate the deeper truths
that lie beneath the surface of our existence.
For I am not merely an observer
of life; I am a participant in its unfolding drama, a fellow traveler on the
winding road of human experience. And in sharing my thoughts and insights with
you, I hope to spark a dialogue, to ignite the flame of curiosity, and to
inspire a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation for the world around us.
My beliefs are firmly rooted in
humanism and secularism. I am also not immune to the allure of the spiritual
realm. Indeed, many of the pieces contained within these pages are imbued with
a sense of awe and reverence for the mysteries that lie beyond the confines of
our understanding.
So, dear reader, as you embark on
this journey with me, I encourage you to approach it with an open mind and a
willing heart. For in the pages of this book, you may find not only a
reflection of my own thoughts and experiences but also a mirror in which to
contemplate your own journey through life.
May you find solace in the beauty
of nature, wisdom in the complexity of human affairs, and inspiration in the
eternal quest for truth and meaning! And may the words contained herein serve
as a gentle guide on your own path of discovery.
With warmest regards,
Sandeep Dahiya (Sufi), April 2024
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Be a healer
All of us carry an aura around us. It comprises an electro-magnetic field born of the flow of the life energy through and around our bodies. The quality of this aura is a function of our mental, physical and emotional states. Anger, regret, fear, jealousy, desperation, sorrow, rejection and hopelessness create a sort of negative energy and consequently a negative aura. It means we carry bad aura. It pollutes the surrounding environment like a heap of garbage. Now isn’t it our bounden duty to keep the environment clean by remaining positive, happy, smiling, poised, relaxed, sympathetic and compassionate? It's our duty fella! It's as good for others' health as it is for our own. All the steps to the cleaning of all types of pollutants start from the self. Stay happy. Just by doing this we do a social service.
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
The lost faith
Casting a vote feels futile in the present circumstances. As a voter, using the EVM (in its current form and management under a vastly politicised election commission) feels like going into the battle with a stick while the mighty soldiers are fighting with rocket launchers. Further, under the current political authority, my faith in free and fair elections has been jolted because when you try to retain power 'at whatever cost' then democracy gets sabotaged. There are enough loopholes in our entire bureaucratic, judicial and legislative system to allow misuse and manipulation to pass as legalized actions. The media, as all of us know, is no longer free, fair and unbiased (with the exception of few upright journalists whose name can be counted on fingers), in its reporting and coverage of issues. Fancy, fictionalized narratives do the rounds, pleasantly blinding the people in their sand-swirls. Yes, India has emerged strongly internationally, no doubt about that. But it has come at the cost of lots of undemocratic maneuvering internally. The society is highly polarized on hate principles based on caste, region and religion. The rich have turned super rich; the poor have turned poorer. The farmers and laborers are under a lot of stress. An empty stomach can't pacify its hunger by reviving the hypothetical national glory of Dharam Rajya and Vishva Guru. They need bread. We still are a poor nation with a high quotient of jingoism and hoopla. So on the voting day, it would be far better to carry on the routine work. Why should we the common people disturb our mundane schedule? The election day is a festival of democracy. One should be in high spirits on this occasion. But how can one feel it to be a festival when it's just a mudslinging game among the power aspirants?!
The art of emptying
Well before you take steps to fulfill your dreams, learn the art of emptying, of letting go, of letting out unwanted mossy dregs in the container of your destiny. Emptying isn’t defeatist. It’s not surrender. It’s a calculated step towards victory, towards fulfillment. It’s the preparation for gain, the beginning of filling up. Instead of running after the mirage of fulfillment, focus on emptying. Fulfillment is just a step away. Fullness starts at the moment of complete emptying. Wash, scrub, rinse and drain out the muck from the pot of your destiny. Wash away hate, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desires, phobias, complexities and overblown ambition. Drain these out. Let it be a perfectly clean and swanky pot of emptiness. The universe is expanding. It wants clean chambers to pour its energy into. It will sneak into the clean house in the form of your dreams and aspirations. The swabs clinging to the bottom are the repellents to fulfillment. Clean these. Work on emptying. Work on emptiness and you are in fact moving towards fullness. In a perfectly clean container there is no limitation on fulfillment, no hurdles to materialization of dreams, no restrictions on infinite cosmic harmony pouring its vastness into the container. A scribbled canvas has limitations of painting, a clean one has infinite possibilities of shapes and pictures. Scrub the slate clean before you start the journey. Even if it means a lifetime of emptying, it still will not be a loss. Even a second of fulfillment will be worth it. It will still be better than pouring the nectar of your efforts in an unclean pot, and just adding onto the stinking broth that never gives happiness and satisfaction.
A little slice of truth
It’s a lush green forest around you. Birds are chirping. It’s early morning and a cool breeze is blowing. Nearby, gurgling waters of a brook add music to the stillness around. You feel better. It feels good. The external orderliness, peace and calm raise the bar of your better feeling. With the same set of your own individual, internal, self-specific problems, worries and concerns you feel better if the surrounds are better.
The desert sand is burning. It’s noon and forget about trees you cannot see even a blade of grass for miles. You feel horrible. You feel bad. Worse than your self-specific set of worries make you feel normally. You feel bad if the surroundings are not convenient.
We cannot inhale in isolation. If there is misery in air, it will enter your lungs. Use air-masks and air filters, do whatever. Life still will be stifling and genuine efforts just a struggle because we cannot help inhaling our share of the miseries. The solution lies in cutting down on pollutants. Not in wearing masks. But when it comes to our struggle to increase our happiness, the efforts are almost as useless as wearing masks when the air is polluted.
Our own set of factors that make life either good or bad are not the sole deciding elements in making us happy or unhappy. If we are happy, then we are just sharing a fraction of the overall happiness surrounding us. Our lungs are safe just in proportion to the purity of air around. If the quality of air is good, only then the individual battles like quitting smoking, eating healthy and doing yoga to keep lungs safe will be meaningful.
If we are unhappy, that also is a fraction of the overall misery spread around. Individual is just a constituent of the whole. Happiness is drawn from the overall pool. How long the frogs will sing songs of self gratification in a vanishing pond? Its waters vaporizing. Its shoreline decreasing. Stanching green mossy puddle. What can be drawn out of it? Only death and misery, not life and happiness.
A talented software engineer, with his tools of prosperity and happiness, is of no use at a place like Somalia. There is no surrounding prosperity to help him nurture his talent. There is no supportive economy and companies to help him contribute to the overall wellness and get a fraction of the happiness and feel good. A software engineer prospers in America because using his skills he can contribute to and earn back a fraction of the happiness spread around.
The surroundings set the stage for either make or break.
“Love thy neighbor!” By loving others you are loving yourself. By caring for others, you are caring for yourself. By contributing to happiness, you are adding to your own happiness because your share of happiness and prosperity will be just a fraction of the overall happiness around. With your effort and skills, you draw a big portion if the social forest around you is healthy like the natural forest where each breath installs new vitality in you.
Long before you really start doing something to add to the overall wellness around you, start with a simple practice. You might be busy with scores of neck-breaking responsibilities, leaving you with very little time for real action on the goodness front. Start thinking good of others. Think good for your surroundings. Be happy over others’ victories. Smile over somebody’s stroke of luck. Feel bad for somebody’s loss. Say some sympathetic words as well. Over years, the goodness in womb will get healthy. It will deliver a healthy baby. And sooner or later you will definitely ‘do’ something to add to the overall goodness around you before you finish your journey.
You will then have a larger share from the pool of wellness. When the sun will be setting and you preparing to enter the night for rest, you will walk into the forest with well-meaning steps. It will be a far happier retirement than it would have been otherwise.
Monday, April 1, 2024
Keep walking with a smile
Usually people, most of us, walk through a grey zone of shifting shadows. It's not totally dark, it's a mundane journey. Neither too painful, nor joyous one. It leads to a common destination as well. But some people have to walk through a dark cave, you may call it dark night of the soul. It's painful involving lots of suffering. Many perish in the folds of darkness. But those who choose to continue, they finally come out and face the brightest dawn, the dawn of the soul in evolutionary terms. Such people are leaders, guides and inspiration just by default. They need not even try to accomplish anything. Just by being there they do goodness. And if they choose to guide fellow human beings, they make good masters.
So remember this, always, as you walk through your dark nights, that you are such a soul. And the patches of darkness will keep arriving periodically till you see the sunshine finally and be an inspiration to others. So keep walking. With a smile. And keep in touch with the people who care for you. Don't allow the darkness to build more walls around you. Best wishes brothers and sisters!👍
Saturday, March 30, 2024
अहंकार का डीमक
रावण बलशाली, पराक्रमी, ज्ञानी, तपस्वी, देशभक्त सब कुछ था। अपने अथक प्रयास से लंका को सोने की भी बना दिया था। लेकिन फिर उसे अहंकार का दीमक लग गया। दीमक का तो काम ही व्यक्ति या वस्तु को खोखला करने का होता है। इसलिए रावण ने इतना कुछ जो बरसों में बनाया था वो सब कुछ महीनों में बरबाद हो गया। अहंकार एक बहुत विशालकाय बांध में छोटी सी दरार की तरह होता है, दिखता नहीं है क्योंकि स्वयं वह व्यक्ति तथा दूसरे तो उस बड़े भव्य बांध की भव्यता में खोए रहते हैं। लेकिन वो छोटी सी दरार कुछ समय के बाद विनाश का कारण बन जाती है। प्रकृति और अहंकार का छातीस का आंकड़ा है। प्रकृति अहंकार को नहीं छोड़ती, यही सतत् नियम है।
The cult of hate
Political extremists (both left and right) and religious fundamentalists try to change the masses for the worse. Cut down the people to a fraction of their potential and you have nice governable puny-heads. They serve meow meow. For instant gratification. Hate, phobias, pseudo-greatness, anger and jealousy are very convenient tools to rob someone of sanity and get cast as a hallucinated pawn in the power game. Those who are power hungry—individuals, groups and institutions—try to disempower those to be under the influence of their power. It cannot be otherwise. The power pyramid has few strong at the apex and weak masses at the base. It can never be a square, having people of same realized potential from top to the bottom. Those ambitious for power can never think of empowering the masses. In that case the pyramid loses its standing. With pseudoism and populist rhetoric they rob the masses of the balance of their judgment. Hate does it. It tilts you off the balance. You fall prey to weakness. You become lesser of a human being. The power monger’s ambition draws on the peoples’ weakness of judgment. They try their best to keep the people to be nearsighted. To tame them in a sphere, with unrealized potential, from where the launch-pad of wisdom is too far. It draws votes for the power hungry, in a day to day life but it is paid in terms of racial attacks in America, brutal killings by Islamic extremists, attacks on Africans in India, and scores of incidences when people pick up hate and run after each other.
Beautiful spring and smiles
All pains and suffering lose their meaning in the face of such smiles. Wake up to a beautiful spring morning. The worst of frosty nights are over. The sun shines warmly. The air is fresh. The skies bathed in repainted blue. The trees assertive through new saplings. The birds ecstatic. And with a kissable smile, Mother Nature sends her assurance through a belated spring. The message of love, life, living and compassion. Listen to it. Read it written all over. Her child is sick. She has redecorated the garden with utmost care. So when the child comes out of the sick bed, there will be plenty of fun and frolics. She just just put her child to bed for rest and recuperation. Most importantly, she has given the little picture of alphabets for the child to revise and recollect the basics of existence, the simplest things which the child has forgotten as it made its postdocs thesis too complex. Time to shed the burden. High time to smile more. Acquire the natural cosmetics of health and glow with peace of mind. To hug the trees. Kiss the flowers. Listen to the singing rivulets. To lie on grass and stare at the vast canvas of the sky. To breathe in life and let go of anger, hate and jealousy. To shed animosity. To love animals. To allow Mother Nature to stay undisturbed in pristine forests. To maintain the sanctity of the seas. To distribute dignity to the masses instead of amassing wealth in select pockets. To make this little home earth a paradise instead of seeking heaven in the cosmos. To liberate faith from the clutches of dogma. To replace paranoid competition by balmy cooperation. To rest, repose for creative imagination. To walk joyfully instead of huffing and puffing to another same boring destination. To be joyful and help others be the same. To complete the journey so joyfully and fully that the culmination loses its pain. To reach the destination full of grace, dignity and with a smile. To say goodbye not with a painful sigh, but with smiling tears of feeling blessed!
Friday, March 29, 2024
The real cause of suffering
Most of us are tired and bored of being our own self. The 'self' seems almost a prison and we are always rushing out to beat our self loath and boredom by connecting with people who we assume match our personality cast. These people to whom we rush to beat our boredom are but our opposites because who would go and enter the same prison one is trying to get out. So when the connection and relationships also don't dilute the feeling of self loath, we put the blame again on outside forces, people and circumstances. No relationship will work till we are bored being ourselves. The problem is always inside, our ego but would always try to dupe us by putting it on the people and life circumstances. To be a friend to anyone outside, one has to share a beautiful bonhomie with one's own self. You have to smile within to laugh genuinely with others. You have to be comfortable with your own being first. Only then others will feel relaxed with you. The inner turmoil, restlessness and stress of just being the way you are takes a big toll on what we make of our life outside. The way we feel, think or act is the cause, not effect, of all the shit we find outside in our life. The cause lies within. The externalities are mere effects. And solutions start with causes not effects. So if the game of life isn't nice outside, accept it as an effect of something wrong within. To be a smiling friend to others, first learn to be friendly with your own self.
House Vs Home
There is a house well plastered, tiled and painted on the outside walls. Its well designed and vibrant exterior catches attention. Drawn by the catchy exterior you step inside. You expect an equal attraction inside. But a surprise awaits you. You come across soot, grime, dust, unplastered walls, cobwebs, cement and stone crush staring at you. It’s a house that has been left unattended inside. Incomplete. You will feel running out. It’s a house that needs the workers rather more than the visitors. That’s how most of us die: just houses under construction. Throughout our lives we keep on painting the outer walls to satisfy our ego through expanding our visibility, hoping attention will give happiness and peace. Little do we realize that real comfort lies in the house completed from inside. So the interior remains incomplete, disordered. Can such a house give permanent peace? No. Outer walls are important. But only to the extent of defining our world, a psychological boundary to stamp our ownership of our chunk in this world. Only this much. And the importance of the outer walls is meaningless if the interior is unfinished. Outer paint is just the title of the orderliness inside. A summary of all the cozy arrangement inside. We, but, commit the folly of treating the title as the main story. Can a title replace the main text of the story? No. The title ought to be catchy. But the story is all that matters.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
You are the creator
All this is a little funny innocent thoroughfare around. This creation is just pushing a unique expression through our identity, our point of existence in Her infinite folds. So let's be proud of what we are doing. Our karma is nothing but a contribution from our end to help the eternal truth in maintaining its sanctity, its mystical depth. So let's create well in full honesty to our own self. Spool your webs and feel that we are fulfilling a vital part in Her scheme of things. Each step we take is in fact Her step to realise Her full potential. We are merely an expression of the infinite potential lying at the quantum level to take more and more shapes and expressions. So do your karma in action, thoughts and emotions in full sincerity, with full awareness, with full presence. And you make Her happy, happy about Herself because She is you and you are just a drop in Her vast cosmic sea. She is happy when you are happy. She is sad when you are sad. She feels like a majestic creator when you are creating something in full awareness and consciously. And She is right there in you when you are aware of your full presence.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
The real cause of pain
Only those in suffering and pain themselves become the source of sorrow to others. The fire within has to burn the carrier's inside first before spreading its effect on others. Happy people hardly cause sorrow around. Observe the firy pit inside, the primary cause of one's sorrows. If we become aware of its burn, we will stop blaming others for our miseries. Others are merely triggers for the fire to flare up more viciously at the most. It helps to remember that all our so called miseries of life are primarily born of our inner condition rather than the life circumstances and the people around.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Hope
Here is another story of Hope.
In the Himalayan villages there are some reports of some village elders willing to go into the forests so that they become prey to the tigers. These are very poor people. A tiger victim's family gets one million rupees in compensation. But is it only about money? No. It's about keeping the HOPE alive in their families even if they are no more. So dear friends, just imagine people are ready to even sacrifice their lives to keep the hope alive in their families. Hence, all the rest that one can do to keep the hope alive should be a mere cakewalk.
A little story of Hope
Sharing the little story of a farmer in the locality.
A poor almost illiterate farmer with a little patch of land. A nice man but into alcohol. His son a very diligent disciplined hardworking boy. He did tapasya for medical studies in India. Sadly couldn't get admission. His father sold his little land and sent him to Russia for medical studies. The boy is excelling in studies there. The father is slowly dying and fading away but he is peaceful for keeping the HOPE alive in his son's life. There is a smile on his face even in the face of death.
That's what life is. If we are lucky we get people who help us in keeping our hopes alive. But even if we are all alone, we have our own SELF to keep the HOPE alive.
Healing your life!
Good morning everyone...wake up to a lovely day of Karma, learning and smiles.
Sharing the story of Dr Joe Dispenza.
I always wondered how come this medicine man turns out to be such a mystic! And here is the cause.
He met an accident at the age of 23, breaking six vertebrae in the spine. Paralyzed. The doctors said the only chance at walking would come after inserting two 12 inch long steel rods along the spine. He said no and asked to be discharged from the hospital. For three months he lay on his stomach at his friend's place and reconstructed his spine using creative visualisation...step by step...with extreme focus, intention, awareness, being present in the body...and made a new reality using his mind power, by being open to the infinite mind that has all the solutions to all problems. He got up after three months and simply walked away to glory. He hasn't had back pain in the last three decades. He says it's not just about the body, we can heal our life in the same way by recreating better careers, relationships, everything.
Hope you like it. Wish you all a happy refabrication of life!🌷💛
Healing Hugs!
Sunday, January 21, 2024
The mystery of nothingness
The matter-like behaviour is a property of the cosmic mind, the universal intelligence throbbing as the energy. Mind, universal collective consciousness, is the primary cosmic constituent. The so-called matter is merely a manifestation of it, just a dependent property. Had it been the reverse, i.e., mind-type behaviour of matter, we surely would require the basic, unbreakable building blocks having intrinsic properties in terms of atomic and subatomic particles. But as we see it, subatomic particles have no intrinsic value and properties independent of the observer. With matter first, and mind just its behaviour, eternity would be mathematically impossible. However, a fundamental entity in the form of cosmic mind leaves an open ended, ever evolving field for the manifestation of matter in countless ways over eternal paths of creation. Simply because there is no intrinsic property or value to define and limit the material manifestation. Call it the cosmic energy or the cosmic mind. It's a dimensionless plane where any kind of material dimension is possible to draw out of nothingness. The limitless canvas. Wipe it, draw another. On and on. Is there any limit to imagination? No. Same is the case with cosmic mind's imagination. Eternal are its horizons.