The village holy fool

 

Ishwar was called Bawla by the villagers. He was too simple even for the bucolic times during the last decades of the century bygone. What else the society calls a man who isn’t cunning, calculative, scheming and shrewd? The absence of this typical smartness entitles a man to be called Bawla or fool.

He was a huge man, with a rolling gait, mostly on his toes as if he was going downslope and trying to check or put brakes to avoid a free fall. In his simple kurta pyjama he looked like a kindly grizzly bear. In the face of smart clamor around, he bore a perplexed, puzzled look. As kids we were afraid of him. Someone would shout Bawla at his back. Then he would go on rampage like a bull angry over a red flag. He would run after the culprit with a brick in hand, shouting mild imprecations and cuss words that he had mastered.

He was quite poetic in response to the insult ‘Ishwar Bawla’ and would shout ‘Teri Maa Ne Kare Tawla’—something to do with the offender’s mother—before launching a full-scale attack. I but once witnessed his real side. We had gone for a cricket match to his part of the locality and there Ishwar allayed all my fears. He was a gentle spectator and his talk made perfect sense to my thirteen-year-old self. Most of his talk was about the significance of keeping good manners by the children. I could feel that this was the acme of his realization born of his first-hand experience of the errant behavior of the village children.

Now after decades, having gained a bit of insight, I would call him a holy fool, a God’s innocently pure child, too simple to get into the mainstream chauvinism.

Ishwar was unmarried and stayed with his joint family. He was famous for eating copious amounts of laddoos and puris at marriage feasts. There were episodes when he literally emptied the laddoo basket singlehandedly and on being reminded that it was his own stomach and he shouldn’t torture it like this, he would storm out cursing why had they invited him if they hadn’t the guts to pacify his hunger.

He was very dismissive of women. He followed a credo: he would tie his fodder bundle—a huge one as you must have guessed—and heaved it upon his shoulder first and then hoisted it further upon his head. He never requested anyone to help him put it on his head even though his bundle was always double the size of what a big farmer could carry. Usually the farmers and the peasant women would request a fellow man or woman working nearby in the fields to help the bundle onto the head. But whenever anybody asked Ishwar for help, he would snap, ‘Why did you make it bigger for your capacity to lift it of your own? You should have only as little as you can heave unto your head without assistance.’ Still the peasant women would tease him to help them with their fodder bales. It would result in a barrage of his credo repeated in loud voices to make it clear to them. He looked perturbed that they couldn’t make out even such a simple thing even after being told so many times. Maybe it gave him a nice feeling that he was the only sane man in a village of fools. Well, maybe he indeed was.

He knew exactly how to save his life. One particular farming brat was a specific threat. The boy loved to play truants which the target took on their face value. Whenever the boy came driving his tractor and found Ishwar coming on the way, he would practice mock attacks on Ishwar, trying to make it feel as if he was going to run him over under the tractor. Ishwar would run helter-skelter, thinking it was the doomsday. As a man learning from experience, he devised a plan after many rounds of running to save dear life. He would pick up a brick and stand with a ready-to-strike posture as the tractor passed. Self-defense is good.

Once he was getting his shaving done at the village barber shop. The mischievous young farmer arrived there. Ishwar, his immense torso tied under a chador and his big face copiously leathered, looked sideways as his naughty adversary entered the shop. The young farmer picked up a razor from the counter, stood behind the chair bearing Ishwar and started sharpening it on his palm, while staring at Ishwar with a determined expression. Ishwar stared deep into his foe’s reflection in the mirror on the front. His eyes went glazed with fear, plain raw fear of death. He knew it was the doomsday and the enemy is going to slaughter him right there. He knew exactly what to do. There he escaped, flung the chador away with full force and ran out of the shop, all leathered up, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘He is going to cut my throat with the razor!’ A few village elders had to do a lot of convincing to get him back into the chair and make him believe that the boy was just joking. But Ishwar would ensure that the boy was off the scene first. The latter was requested to leave the place. Later, the barber had to deal with a whole lot of doomsday stories told by a shivering Ishwar. ‘He was sure to slaughter me today if not for my timely escape!’ he was muttering.

He ate chapattis that always counted in double digits. An honest conscience and big body needs a full stomach to sustain. He looked very relaxed while eating, slowly munching his morsels like an uncaring bull chewing the cud. The people joked about it, but he wasn’t afflicted with the malady of changing one’s ways on the basis of what others say or think.

Once the entire joint family had gone to the fields, the ladies having prepared a big stack of many dozens of chapattis in the early morning to have lunch at home after finishing the farming work by noon. All of them returned tired and very hungry but found the cache of chapattis gone. Ishwar was extra kind that day. After finishing his usual quota, he summoned all the dogs in the village in his booming voice. All the dogs were well fed that day and slept very peacefully.

He knew that it was a cunning world and he had to be very vigilant. So he followed a strict protocol regarding monetary transactions. Whenever he purchased somethingfrom the village grocer’s shop, he would demand a firm, articulate ‘yes received the money’ from the shopkeeper after handing over the money. He was always scared that someone not acknowledging the receipt in his standard ‘aa gaye hain’ would cheat him and would demand the money again. There was a big ruckus in the street one day on this account. The villagers found a very nervous, almost on the verge of fainting, Bihari ice-candy seller, a slight man cowering under the verbal harangue unleashed by the big-built Ishwar. Among the verbal torrents, the burly man slurped on the melting red ice-candy. The matter stood like this. Ishwar had carefully handed over the five-rupee coin owed to the seller in lieu of the purchase. But the seller won’t acknowledge the receipt by repeating the standard phrase ‘aa gaye hain’ which an angry Ishwar kept repeating. ‘He isn’t saying, “Aa gaye hain!”’ he was heard shouting, much perturbed at the seller’s effort to cheat him of his coin. The Bihari seller had hardly any clue to the standard monetary protocol followed by Ishwar. So the poor puzzled fellow stood on the verge of nervous breakdown. Imagine an elephant haranguing a rabbit over a monetary deal gone wrong. Then the villagers clarified the issue to the panic-stricken ice-candy seller. He gently said, ‘Yes, paise aa gaye hain.’ ‘See, only now the deal is done! He was thinking of duping me. Took the money and won’t say it that he has taken it, so that he could demand it again,’ a much relieved Ishwar guffawed while taking big slurps at the melting ice-candy so as not allow even a single drop go waste due to negligence.

Mothers are mothers. No wonder, he too was the star of his mother’s eyes. At the high tide of her maternal surge, she would put boiled milk—many liters of it—in the broad iron basin used for carrying anything from wheat, soil or cattle dung, leaving it to cool so that her lovely son could gulp it down. Ishwar would then consume it like a thirsty male buffalo much to the solace of her heart. ‘And still they say he is a fool and fit for nothing. Can they even match him in this?’ she would let out her maternal grudge against the society.

He was a powerful man as is proven by almost a quintal of fodder bale getting hoisted upon his head without any helping hand. But a gentle giant he was, a mere child in a big body. He never used his physical force as per the dictates of an abused ego born of taunts, jeers and puns targeted at him. Yes, he would be irritated and would mutter, grumble, feign attacks, but all this fell well short of any serious injury to anyone. As per the norms of the raw physical strength, he was capable of breaking the bones of the entire locality singlehandedly. Yet the children could well afford to entertain themselves at his cost.

On the last day of his sojourn on earth, he was seen restlessly running around the village. He was in his late fifties I suppose. In the afternoon, after the daylong running to complete the rest of his journey, he lay at the village cremation ground for the last rest. He preferred to die there itself, perhaps to still keep his credo of not allowing anyone to carry his load. He died without much fuss, taking it like an elephant would call it a final day in a forest, without suffering and without much fuss.    

Love

Sometimes you dump a person even though she/he still has a bright smile, twinkle in eyes and lovely fragrant words on lips. Well, that's simply the sunset of love.

Sometimes you lovingly embrace a person despite the frown, caustic remarks and tightly pursed lips shut over bad odor even. Well, that's simply the sunrise of love.

Love is simply a day -- or usually days at random -- in people's lives.

And that makes it so ordinary, so normal, so natural.

Let it remain such.

Why turn it otherworldly?

The teachers

Sometimes the things that would have come naturally to you as a human being acquire a difficult shape because they try to make you learn these by force, fearing you won't be of any use without them. In your natural state you could have been useful, at least like a plant that just grows, giving its little share of oxygen, shade and a little starter to some hungry goat. But the attempt surely leaves you useless -- to them at least. 🤓

The creator

At a given moment, there is no absolute reality or truth or existence beyond one's set of beliefs, knowledge, information, set of conventions and collective mindset, and the respective set of contradictions of all the previous categories. In our endeavours to find the absolute, we simply shift to a different set of all these categories. We simply create a new plain of reality. We keep pushing our truth to cover more space and adjust our ever expanding desires and fears. There is nothing to discover. There is everything to create--first in ideas, imagination, emotions, insecurity, expectations and fears; secondly, its manifestation in physical reality in the domains of art, science, social conventions, economic models, everything.

Reading the book of life

 

Aha the book of life! Every day a new chapter. Each incident, happening or phenomenon a fresh sentence with profound meanings.

The new sun rising on a misty morning arriving with the message that there is always light after dark to help us see and realize the illusions and unwarranted fears that we imposed on us in the dark.

The setting sun saying ‘a smiling bye’ with a message that one has to accept and willingly dive into oblivion after a dazzling day, after touching the peak of brilliance, after a full-hearted bear hug with life, after completing an innings in career or a relationship. That a ripe fruit has to drop, that even very dear people will go out of life, that smiles will be followed by tears as well. Acceptand recognize that we have to welcome this play of existence in totality and that includes smiles-tears, win-loss, falling in love, partings, birth-death. Everything.

The shifting shades and reshaping clouds in the sky brimming with the message of change and impermanence, of new forms overtaking the old ones, of a smooth transition, of the old changing into the new without any drama, without any hassles.

Mother earth holding this portion of existence on her maternal palm with unconditional love and the undying spirit of just giving all that Her children need. The message of giving! How much more satisfying it seems in comparison to taking! That we evolve by a great margin just by giving a smile. And ‘taking’ also is highly undervalued. If we ‘take’ with a smile and gratitude, doesn’t it create a ‘giver’ who became joyful for the act? Mother existence prefers a graceful and full of gratitude ‘taker’ than a cranky ‘giver’. Give with a smile of kindness and empathy; take with a smile of gratitude. To mother existence these are simply two facets of the same coin.

The chirping of birds conveying the spirit of keeping songs alive on one’s lips even while engaged in the day-to-day commitments and routine practicalities of life. Their free flights spreading the fragrance of freedom, the urge to fly on one’s own path.

The trees with the message of growth irrespective of the changing environment and the divine instinct of giving fresh air, shade to the weary traveller, inspiration to artists, nests to the birds, fruits for the hungry. A new shoot sprouting from the cut on their bark:the message that we too can get fresh colors and shoots to our personality at the points of cuts, wounds and adversities.

The flowers with the message that smiles carry the touch of divinity, that fragrant petals and nectar fuel the colorful sorties of many butterflies, that we too touch many lives positively with our gentle manners, smiles and sweetness of temperament. That our rainbowed touch can make many people joyful like nectar-satiated butterflies. We smile, say soft words, treat them gently and they soar high and become joyful.

Beautiful relationships with the message that our travel-weary heart, mind and body need a soft touch, a cool brace, a healing bonhomie; that friends, family, relatives, partners, lovers are all there to help us cross a milestone on our eternal journey and then melt and get reshaped like clouds in the sky. But we carry the invisible imprint of their persona on our individual selves. It’s firmer than a line on stone. People might have tears on account of you, once the pathways have parted, but ensure that the tears are accompanied by a smile as well so that the dry tears don’t singe someone’s soul.

A river in the hills, furiously cutting big boulders, passing the message that we have to raise a blizzard of karma to later enjoy a peaceful flow in the planes and still later merge into the bigger serenity of the sea. That we have to cut karmic stones to come out of the stones, walk joyfully on the plane of relationships, kindness, care, share and finally sleep in the lap of mother sea.

The silence in a forest loaded with the message that this is what all the words and languages point to, the language of silence, the mother of all sermons and preaching.

The exotic chaos and cluttering noise in a city heavily pregnant with the message that all of us are destined to wade through inner conflicts, puzzles, trauma and tension like the common people beautifully engaged in the sweet-sour poignancy of the cities.

Falling in love loaded with joy, pleasure, care and share. It tells how important these feelings are for our wellbeing. Just recall the feeling of bliss while freshly in love! Isn’t that wonderful?

Falling out of love, tears, pain and suffering passing the message that we always could have been better lovers. In any case, it’s always for the best in future. We just become better lovers after partings.

Everything around us is full of messages. The book of life! Observe it, feel it, understand it. It opens the experiential dimension in life. With experiential knowing, the phantoms of intellect and mind take a backseat. They always bow down to the confident sovereign, the soul, the observer now fully aware of its kingdom, its colors, shapes, hues, everything.

The beauty of carefully reading the book of life is that we learn to touch our own self, our own body, mind, thoughts and emotions with more empathy and self-love. We fall in love with the life overall. We simply come out of the definition of life within this particular body and feel related to the life overall. Then we touch many lives very-very positively. We become healers without trying to do it intentionally. It’s just a natural state of being in that dimension. Happy reading the book of life!

Enjoy what is still left there

 

We have to deal with mother nature’s slingshots. Just a week back it was extremely cold, and through the gloomy, cold, wet last week of January one could all but pray for the savior sun. Now in the first week of February, the sky is bright and clean and the sun so hot that you feel its heat too much to sit under it even in the morning. So I would say that we have the spring already. But it would be better to call it the spring of the nights, mornings and evenings when there is cool breeze, dew and light mist. The days have all that that makes them entitled for early summer. Beyond all these travails, the beauty would have its moments of sojourns.

As I walk on the thin ribbon of wilderness between the canals cutting across the well-manicured agricultural fields of wheat and mustard, the bright red disk of the sun hovers over the silvery sea of the mist over the horizon. It’s assuring that we still have beautiful moments of sundown. Also, even the crazily intensified farmsteads are better than bladeless concrete jungles. These scatterings of the trees over the channel bunds, embankments and dust paths are better than complete deserts. These sparse clumps of grasses and bushes are still better than lifeless, floored and tiled boulevards.

As the little groups of birds return to their host trees, it again strikes me that we ought to feel gratitude for what is still there. As the sun is downing, the moon is already visible high on the horizon—an almost perfect moon, just a day short of fullness, having a little blur at its lower rim. The two celestial beauties ogle at each other.

A dog barks and I recall three little puppies that have grown very possessive about the tiny village square. It’s their territory and they mean to defend it. I have seen big outsider dogs walking off the scene under their shrill assault.

It was a sad balloon seller who came with a few balloons on his rickety cycle. He walked dejectedly and the canine lads howled to give a suitable gloomy music. The bigger ones howled too. Then a young one almost hitched a ride on their mother. But it had to retreat under their shrill protest. ‘Don’t do it dog! We aren’t yet ready to share our milk with new puppies!’ they seemed to say, bark rather.  

The war within

 

Remember the wonderful time you spent on a beach facing a calm, bluish lagoon? Its soft bluish ripples gently tugging at your soul. Silence and peace seeping into your ruffled, wavy self. Remember walking on the soft sand of a desert on a wintery, windless day? The sand cotton soft and the sun kindly warming the rigid clods of pain. Away from the hot sandy blizzards, the mirage buried under the sand and you joyfully watching the footstep trail, optimism gently tugging at your soul. Remember rolling on undisturbed pastures on a balmy noon away from the icy shrieks of windstorms? Do you recall the grassy softness assuaging all the hard knots of suffering inside? Remember a calm lake? Its soft ripples gentling tugging at the aggrieved self, asking why are you so sad. Remember the spotless blue sky of the spring season, looking amusedly over the colors that have sprouted below? Of course a sadly pining, sweet nostalgia tugs at our sleeves.

Stormy seas, heaving lakes, disturbed desert or wind-lashed pastures hardly beckon us. We move away from them. They remind us of the storm within our own self. Most of us carry tiny invisible storms within, invisible storms let loose by the onslaught of nervous energy. There are waves of random thoughts, overbearing emotions, fears, insecurities, complexes. That’s why the symbols of peace represented by the kind, peaceful face of nature appeal to us so much. They are like a healing pill, a medicine of peace that we soak, inhale and gulp down todo away with the stormy sea inside.

Most of us carry a choppy sea inside, tossing the boat of our existence. The wind howls and the waves shriek as the nervous energy moves randomly like in a puzzle game, seeking a way out of the troubling alleys and corridors within. Shaken by this stormy onslaught from within, it’s quite natural for us to run around in order to seek solace. It primarily is the base of our eternal urge to connect, interact, build relationships, friendships, setting up families, careers and all that we engage in order to make it somehow meaningful.

There are people within whom the storms have died; so much so that they are a human representation of all the peaceful scenarios given in the first paragraph. They possess the peace of silent, bluish lagoons in them. They have the serenity of a wintertime desert on a windless day. They have the gentility of smoothly rolling pastures. They have the flowering of joy like the spring season. They have the summer warmth of kindness and empathy to melt others’ icicles of pain. They have the autumnal surrender and detachment to carry an unconditional smile. They have the coolness of winters to undo the burning hot turmoil in others. The best of natural peace out there gets sublimated inside their persona. They come to represent the calm, peaceful, assuring, healing aspect of mother nature.

Won’t the people feel these peaceful vibes coming from such souls? They surely will. When we talk of enlightened sages and benevolent saints, maybe we have the vast picture of calmness, peace, tranquility and stability in a human form: a human representation of all the beautiful things in nature that heal and assure our tossed self. The gentle sea, the calm desert, the peaceful lake, the softly musing sky, the soft carpet of pastures need not say anything to us to undo our pain and suffering. They pass the message just by being there. Similarly, the vastly stabilized self of a spiritual person gently, invisibly strokes our hair, kindly embraces our presence without any judgment. They are not left with any possibility for judgments because these are born in a tossed self only. No wonder, the people will look for such gentle souls. They might be hiding in the forests and caves but we somehow seek them out. Just to watch them, be with them and feel their presence. Because it heals. It pacifies the storms within.

Postscript: Inspired by the interaction with a gentle soul who is on the path of becoming exactly such a person.

The women that are no more

 

Those were the buxom old ladies who still lumbered around quite seriously, still pulling the cart of domesticity, till the last decade of the century gone. They had seen much of the last century. They carried manly strength, a thick-skinned temperament and rough farming hands. They had much to give and almost limitless strength to bear. Further, they were broad shouldered and possessed huge breasts which hang down to reach their navels in the old age. These had breastfed many children, not limited to the ones born of their own wombs. In the extended big joint families there was a kind of communal breastfeeding for the dozens of children. There would be many lactating mothers at any point of time to fulfill the children’s needs. The children too took liberty to suckle as per their choice or availability of a feeder when the pangs of hunger struck.

These women were full of motherhood and offered their breasts to even the unfortunate ones in the neighborhood whose mother was either dead or was too sick to feed them. They would roll up their kurta and pop out the nipple. The hungry child would suckle and draw the nourishing drops of life. They also won’t bear the sight of the child crying of hunger in the buses and trains or at the stations. With a quick assertion of motherly guts, they would pop out the full-of-milk nipple, get the infant suckling at it, cover the area with their chunri while keeping their head still covered.

When they grew old, and their breasts hung down to their navels, they would tell the weaker young ladies of the modern age with their smaller breasts, ‘We can still squirt out more drops of milk from our old boobs than you the weak ones of the modern age!’

As the world of we humans gets more and more complex both within and without, the drops of milk are vanishing as the human physiognomy is changing under the onslaught of pollutants and modern lifestyle. A few decades down the line, maybe we will have all the babies produced in artificial wombs in the labs. The human body will hardly have the strength and capability to bear children naturally. But well that’s change. Isn’t it? 

The last day of January

 

The last day of January, a gloomy cold overcast windy day. And weather-beaten leaves drizzle like profuse leaf showers. It gives a sad autumnal feeling. A smaller water channel branches off to the north from one of the canals. It was a few feet of wilderness with its reed grass, bunch-grass and other wild weeds and shrubs. A kind of tiny refuge for rodents, reptiles and little birds among the well-managed cropped fields, where not even a single blade of unwanted grass is allowed to grow. The land is forever falling short in meeting the mankind’s needs. And the farmers need to have a more efficient water channel. It was clogged and hemmed by the wild bushes on both sides along the embankments. So it’s swiped clean. The bushes burnt and the small trees cut. Now it’s a clean path to agricultural progress. But so many little homes and worlds gone in a stroke.

A pilgrimage

 

There is an open large sewage drain, the mother drain of all the smaller sewage drains and nullahs in the town. It flows with its black, stinking sludge. An eliminatory canal taking away the waste and refuge emanating from the overworked urban bowels. People grimace and cover their noses as they pass by it. But this impurity is what defines the purity of holy waters. There are little temples nearby. Here the people enter, open their souls while breathing in the incense smoke in front of the idols.

I walked for a considerable length by the big open sewage nullah. It’s a strong smell: the smell of stress, pain and struggles of the overburdened humanity. It’s the heady stench of the mass transformation of life into mere struggle. I love walking by holy rivers. But this also is an avatar of the mother stream. The all-accepting avatar of primordial mother who is happy to accept all the dump Her children put on her. A mother unbothered about the urine and shit dumped on her by the infant child. My head spins due to the strong odor after fifteen minutes. But this also is a little pilgrimage for Maa’s blackened avatar. She is smiling even with all her filth because she is after all the very same mother whose divinity flows in crystal clear mountain streams. As I move away it seems as if I have performed a little pilgrimage.

The fun of fluidity

 

There is hardly any qualitative difference between what goes in the sky above and what happens on the ground below. The sky shifts. It moves, it sings, it moans, it sighs. Sometimes it's relaxing and pristine blue. The other time it’s gloomy, dark and dreary. Sometimes it cries and sheds tears in a torrential rain. The other time it sheds gentle tears of joy by drizzling over desert sands. Sometimes it floods with a fury. There is light, darkness, shifting shades over clouds, clouds drifting and reshaping, clouds melting, clouds forming, clouds vanishing, winds, breeze. It’s a flow. There is something of everything in it.

The same happens below, as if it’s merely a reflection of the sky in the pools of earth below. There is sadness, joy, victory, failure, meetings, partings, smiles, tears, making, unmaking, falling in love, falling out of it, birth, death—an endless shifting. The sky leaves a deep imprint of its ever-shifting shades on the earth below. See the clouds melting in the sky, watch them daily. It’s such a big message written on the massive billboard for us to read and remember. But usually, we are seeking needles in the hayrack and hardly lift our eyes to read and remember the message.

Don’t the clouds bloom, get colors, travel and melt? They shower earth with their melted self, become flowers, perish and again become vapors. This bubble has to burst anyway to take another form. But before that it has to be in fullness. It has to live. It has to be tossed around by chance winds. It has to seek its way, its course. It has to do justice to its existence. And then it has to happily and lovingly give way to new shapes. But it can always remind itself that it was, is and will forever be in the shifting shades and shapes.

The charm of solitary walks

 

The solitary walks on sunny winter afternoons allow you to soak in the last traces of seclusion still available in the farming countryside that is now showing visible signs of getting stretched to utilize every square yard as the population further increases and the landholdings get further squeezed. We are now the most populous nation on the earth. As I take my steps away from the human hubbub at the village, a tiny canine lad daily harks my attention from its post. It’s a vacant plot on the fringes of the village serving as a dumpsite. The heaps of plastic waste and other discards show the ugliness of what we have consumed. This is the tiny canine baby’s territory. It has reasons to defend it for this site provides it the survival crumbs. He means to defend it and barks with shrill, childish notes.

Further on, there are three puppies at a path-side farm shelter, all itchy, who also mean to defend their bastion. They bark with irritation, itchy complaining and whining bursts. Well, they have a good reason to bark. I don’t mind it. They have a hard life and barking maybe relieves their pain.

The further I move on the dusty path, and lesser the marks of tyres in the ruts, the more prominent become the marks of mother nature on the soft sand. These are nice designs, gently looping lines, curves and circles. A picture of sustenance on the soft sands of life. The long-legged birds like water-hen and lapwing leave a floral trail on the brown sand. Titeeri (red-wattled lapwing) is a slender-legged bronze-brown beauty with white, black and crimson fleshy wattle. It’s an irritating complainer with its famous ‘did-he-do-it’ calls. It can fly well but its long legs inspire it to walk and run a lot. It’s a crazy vigilante, keeping watch almost twenty-four hours, spots intrusion and raises noisy alarm against any transgression into its domain covering a few fields. It lays eggs in the farms among little clods of earth. There it defends its territory around the little open hollow containing its greyish brown blotched eggs, matching the earth to almost perfection.

There are few such vigilantes loitering along the path. They think it’s their path; I consider it mine. They daily snub me pretty vociferously for loitering around unnecessarily.

The lapwing leaves a nice design of its walking trail on the sand, slightly less aesthetic than a moorhen. There is a group of five-six doves, flitting around peacefully, peeping from their perch on the electricity wires, sailing over the yellow of mustard and the green of wheat. The mere survival of a little group of doves, so unassuming and docile, confirms the fact that there are still little niches left for the docile people to survive in this angrier world.   

To the north of the path that I take for my solitary walks, about a kilometer and half away, around the marshy loop of fallow lands, due to its low-lying character and hence being unsuitable for tillage, a group of four sarus cranes comes visiting during the winters. They will come till our needs force us to use that little sanctuary as well. But with the arrival of winters, it’s reassuring to hear their far-sailing, loud trumpeting calls reaching my ears as the afternoon yields its pale sunrays to the evening mists. They are a tall grey bird with long, bare red legs and a red head. Their slow rhythmical wing strokes, the neck determinedly stretched ahead and long legs trailing behind like an expert air swimmer bring them annually to this little hideout every year.

As I move further over the still smaller foot tracks bearing still lesser human footprints and more of the birds, rodents and insects, it boosts the sense of solitude manifold. The cranes’ trumpeting calls go sailing over my head and merge with the setting red disk of the sun across the silvery thin veil of mist above the green, yellow and white in the fields.  

There are some clumps of grass and trees along the field channels for irrigation, little patches of fallow lands and the narrow ribbon of scrub forest between the canals. This is all that stands for the countryside wilderness presently. A jungle cat is the top predator of this terribly shorn—shorn like a sheep—wilderness. I have seen it flitting across the shrubbery a few times. It’s, I guess, about one-and-half times bigger than the feral cats in the village, its ears bigger and tautly erect, tail bushy with greyish dark bands on its dark brown coat. It snoozes around for field rats and hares. It has reasons to be cautious as there are many dogs in the mushroom farms dotting the countryside. The dogs have bred quite impressively and I feel they are far more than their sustainable number. They bark incessantly and seem to be the front squad of the upcoming one more assault on the path of further taming the nature.

It’s a silent misty evening. On a leafless sheesham tree, a sad silhouette of grey, a group of birds is enjoying the sight of the dull-red sun-disk hovering over the silvery fabric of mist. It’s a surprising bonhomie among a few species of birds. The birdie watchers include a couple of crows, a dainty oriental magpie robin and a few smaller ones like robins and rockchats. The approach of twilight is really peaceful. All insecurities melt. I watch from a distance. Then the oriental magpie robin gets playful and suddenly sails down, almost pecking at the head of a lapwing standing among the wheat saplings below. The leggy beauty gets angry and gives a tittering call, hearing which all the birds dart away in different directions. It’s a world of shifting sands and scenes.

Mother nature will have her adornments even among the dry sandy soil, the last water drop falling a few months back, and the grass beaten dry by the cold and frost. But here comes a milestone. It’s a sandy path without even grass, but four-five flowering thistle (Mexican prickle poppy) stand in their snappy luxuriance. It looks like mother earth has developed a prickly, snappy, hard-pointing finger of resistance. It’s a hardy pioneer plant, drought resistant and a prince of poor soils. They have bloomed to full proportions and stand as mighty oaks of the grassy kingdom. I marvel at these sole sentries of mother earth holding onto their little patch of poor earth by the dusty path. Its bright yellow latex is poisonous to the grazers who leave it alone. But they say that it’s used in medicines. They flower in March, flaunting their yellow flower (kateli ka phool) as an offering to Holi mata in spring. They are offered in prayers during Holika Dahan. The seedpods resemble mustard, so some people adulterate the mustard oil with these seeds—pinchy aids for our prickly desires. This concoction causes diseases. The offerings from the so-called wastelands and their weedy crops coming to the aid of our rich crops and their suitable lands. Ours is a very needy mind. So the nuisant plant, categorized as an agricultural weed, still serves its purpose and utility in the scheme of our selfish designs. Its greyish white prickly leaves welcome me with my solitary step and tell me softly that we aren’t altogether ‘satyanashi’ as we are named in the local dialect. These little groups of erect, prickly herbs, their leave margins having prickles, each tooth ending in a prickle, pass me a gentle message that even the apparently lifeless soil has primordial urge to expand and evolve. The erect herbs, undisturbed and unpoisoned, seem a little self-satisfied world complete in itself; absorbed in its silent, solitary self. Their flowers are complete, i.e., bisexual comprising a functional male and female part within the solitary yellow flower. However even within the same bulb they need the help of insects for pollination. And the wind disperses their seeds to such undisturbed corners where the mankind is not at war with the nature, to spare them of the noxious herbicides. The herbs stand all braced up for a cold frosty night with their determined bluish green leaves, dense at the base, with the middle and upper leaves oblong and elliptic. The spiny prickles on the long arrowy leaves pass a soft warning by mother nature that I can bite if disturbed too much.

I walk further on. It’s a sandy upland, not too much under the farming assault. Among the dead trail of grass by the footpath there is dusty green little bouquet of sorrel, a perennial herbaceous offering of the potential in the sickliest soil to have a buffet of leaves branched out on the ground. Maybe a mouthful for some goat or stray cattle. But they hardly reach this point. Nearby is a leafy growth of patience dock (garden patience or Monk’s rhubarb). They call it a garden weed, but here this meditative bunch of leaves has all the time and space to nurture its patience to lie as a mark of life in the trail of dry, almost lifeless soil.

I move on and come across a clump of lantana grass. Lantana is an erect, branched out shrub, reaching up to 1.5 meters and covered with roughly hairy, pointed, toothed foliage. There are clusters of yellow, orange and red flowers in the same bush depending upon the number of days they have seen. As per our utilitarian index they are invasive and noxious weeds. Our grazing cattle avoid their leaves. But they are very sturdy skin covers for mother earth whom we are regularly stripping naked. I have seen just a few clumps of lantana here but they cover the entire low Himalayan foothills. I remember having stranded in a lantana covered hillside in the Himalayan foothills and I had to crawl like a jungle fowl to come out, bearing non-bleeding scratch marks all over my body. They are the defenders of mother earth’s last ramparts. We may condemn them as useless weeds, but we hate them because they stoutly defend mother nature. Looking at this lone lantana brings back the nostalgic memories of those mighty defenders of hill slopes from erosion and human encroachment. They may not have much use for we humans but their tiny fruits are a delicacy for the white-eyes, bulbuls and scaly breasted munias. These flowers possess some sweetness in their core as the butterflies flit over them irrespective of human prejudice. Then there is a lovely aspect to their existence. Some male weaverbirds would arrive and pluck lantana flowers to adorn their nests with them. These striking decorations attract the aesthetic sense of some female looking for setting up a home. A lovely tale blossoms, and a family starts.

Collecting the last traces of these still available gifts of nature among the severely tested and beaten countryside, I look with hope as the still larger line of wilderness running along the space between the canals cajoles me to walk further on.           

Lovebirds

 

It's a much in love wiretail swallow couple. They are always together. It's very green during the monsoons and there are flowers around. They fly together, they sit together enjoying each other's company. It's a resident couple as I see them year long around my place and during the monsoons they set up their mud nest at the same place on the ceiling in the Varanda. They are very possessive about their house, especially when they have the little ones.  It's very difficult for even me to visit that place, forget about cats and predator birds.

Lightness of being

 

Who doesn’t appreciate the genius of Leo Tolstoy? Through his beautiful writing the sagely author continues to inspire millions even a century after his death. Undoubtedly he was a great human being. But his wife had a diametrically opposite view of him. To her he was the same normal, almost oppressive, husband. Does it mean that all of us are essentially the very same poor humans after we enter the privacy of our room, shed the clothes and behavioral bearing?

We don't just cover ourselves with clothes. We wear multiple layers of thoughts, attitude, behavior, calculating mind, scheming intellect and maneuvering to maintain an image. This is a subtle clothing. Hardly visible like the clothes we wear. But this is the primary steel armor that we carry with us. Maybe it’s necessary to wear it to survive in the struggle as a human. We have our jobs, duties, responsibilities to fulfill. There we need this subtle steel armor. But we get habituated to keep it on us, always, day and night, even within our walls. Its weight crushes relationships. No wonder we feel tired even while lying on the bed. Its weight crushing the soft petals of relationships. It challenges our own essential faith.

The armor is still sitting on our chest as we enter the domain of our intimate people where we are supposed to be open, free and light. So why not go for complete disarming at least within the privacy of our rooms, in our little intimate group, with our closest dear ones? Join them as a very light being, almost naked like a baby with all your vulnerabilities, flaws, fears, insecurities, anxieties. To feel very light, to be disarmed of the heavy battle shield, to almost float in your secure, personal bubble. Drift like a cloud with your vulnerabilities within the security of your cozy bubble. Lay bare your soul. Lift the iron chains from it. And just be. Becoming something is a necessity I know. But put it on as you come out. However, stay light, open, honest, frank and see-through among the people you trust.

Share your pain. Speak out your miseries. Shower your ecstasy. Offer your smile. Show your tears. Present your kindness. Drizzle your pure emotions. Then one can feel the soothing solitude within the safe bubble. Make your little capsule of solitude and peace among all this meaningless crowd and intimidating chaos. It can be done anywhere with faith, love, care and share among the chosen few. And float lightly in it, like a balloon drifting to the ceiling fan’s wind within a safe room.

If we make it with the ‘Lightness of Being’, it’s possible. Do it with vulnerable gentility, disarming smile, openness and baby-type nakedness after shedding the steel armor of ‘becoming something’ that we need to wear once we come out of our cozy bubble. Then go out with your behavioral clothing and perform the essential tasks and come back, put off everything and enjoy the ‘Lightness of Being’. This is the little workshop in the art of the ‘Lightness of Being’.

The enlightened sages are the ones to whom the entire existence becomes such a cozy bubble. The entire humanity becomes merely an intimate, warm bubble. They float freely without the need to become something. They shed the steel armor forever and turn baby soft. No wonder they float so restfully. That is a high degree in the university of the ‘Lightness of Being’. We the common people are in the schooling stage of the same subject. We have to pass the higher and senior secondary school exams in the art of the ‘Lightness of Being’. It’s a low grade examination. It doesn’t require research scholarship. It’s a tiny assignment—to enjoy the ‘Lightness of Being’ within a carefully nurtured little bubble. But believe me it carries the taste of the cosmic bubble.

Trainee fighter pilots learn and practice in simulated indoor environment and then fly freely in the open skies. If we learn the art and craft of the ‘Lightness of Being’ in our tiny intimate bubble, maybe one day we will be floating free among the vast expanses of this existence.

January

 

It’s the fifteenth of January. After many gloomy, foggy days, the sun is seen rising over the horizon right from the start of a bright day. It’s a very clear day and a cheerful one. After a frosty night, the sunny warmth feels like melting an ice-slab of frozen life. One can feel its balminess even in the early morning. As the bright rays kiss our fate, the frozen and stuck life gets back to a warm flow. A blissful thawing it feels!

The monkeys have stayed subdued of late. A group of them sunbathes on a line of stone slabs projecting from the top of a wall, directly facing the sun. The morning sun beats beatifically on the wall and the slabs. They allow the warmth to percolate deep into their bones. A more ingenious type is offering its pink bum to the source of the ultimate warmth on the earth and soaks the life-giving heat through its frozen, pink rear. The rest are lying flat on the warming slabs. Forgetting their mischievous ways, they seem very calm and composed. One advantage of having frozen monkeys in the locality is that you are lucky to see your guavas ripening to finally assuage your taste buds. But as the sunbathing rejuvenates the frozen simian bones, it tickles their nerves of mischief and here they present their usual selves after an hour of sunbathing. They raid the small guava tree in our courtyard, jolt it, pluck away the ripe ones and throw away many unripe ones. A few branches are broken, leaves drizzle.

A flock of dozens of asian pied starlings arrives with their clattering, boisterous, diversified chit-chat. These are very chatty birds. They raise a pleasant ruckus as if complaining against the simian profligacy. Or maybe they are laughing or even appreciating the act. And why shouldn’t they do the latter? The way we have cornered each and everything on the earth, it entitles them to have a bit of fun at our cost.     

Arrogance Vs Efficiency

 

The fall of Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh is very worrisome for the Indian strategic interests; just like the fall of Rajapakshe clan in Sri Lanka must have bothered the Chinese communist government.

For a country like India whose democracy is always on the livewire, it’s suitable to have democracies in its bordering states. Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina—however milder version of democracy it might have been—is always a better bet for India in comparison to any other option.

She was firmly in the seat for the last fifteen years. Despite all the diluting elements of a proper democracy—like ‘crackdown on the opposition, including the jailing of leaders, stifling of dissent, and muzzling of media’ (was she too inspired by her fellow friend in the neighborhood?)—she has been the best shot for the Indian interests. Her ouster acquires more worrisome shades given the fact of unfriendly regimes in Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and the military junta in Myanmar.

When you are a proponent of strongman (or strongwoman) politics, there is a very fine line between what is tolerable and intolerable. Dissension builds up over a period of time and if you aren’t prudent enough to keep safety valves for the seepage of extra effervescence—thus avoiding an explosion—you might become a villain suddenly. The fuel has accumulated over the years; now it needs just one trigger to ignite mass sentiments. There were people swimming in the private pools of mighty Rajapakshes and now you have people taking away framed picture and paintings from Hasina’s official residence.

She could have easily enjoyed her fifth term. What was the use of bringing job quota for the descendants of freedom fighters? One can give positive incentives in so many other ways instead of directly antagonizing the younger section of the population. It was foolish on her part; as farcical as would be the Indian government’s job quota for the descendants of the founding members of the Hindu rightist organizations in the country. Instead of allowing the fire to spread while hundreds died in the protests she could have shown a clever side—staying adamant at all costs is being very foolish, even if it makes one feel strong—by revoking the measures; like Modi did once during the farmer protests by taking back the unpopular farming laws. This is the only time I have seen him allowing some space to the voice of dissent; otherwise it has been a steel frame. It’s fortunate that he did it because it saved India from a bigger fire. But the way female wrestlers were treated—and the oppressor facilitated—still rankles the soul of most of the people in the peasantry class. And the less we say about Manipur, the better it is. I know it’s far more complex situation over there than anyone of a common person like you or me can understand. But despite all the nitty gritties the country’s premier can at least take some symbolic measures to put balm on bleeding Manipuri wounds.     

It’s fortunate that collective Indian psyche is far more mature and would respond—not react—through ballot paper during elections under similar circumstances like it did during the recently held general elections. There are big parallels between how PM Modi and Sheikh Hasina run their government. But our response has been to stop him from hijacking our entire democratic system. Despite the blatant misuse of agencies and the election commission—and I take the result with a pinch of salt and there are enough reasons to believe that election wasn’t fair as it’s supposed to be in the world’s largest democracy—the BJP lost its majority and hence the power to rule with an unsparing rod. A coalition government is the best shot for the social harmony of the country at the moment.  

What is it that undoes the position of a powerful authoritarian leader in a democracy? I think, it’s the plain old overconfidence. An illusion that what has been passing for long will continue to do so. As the most powerful person in the country you think that alpha male type tactics are the only signs of strength and power. You think any adjustment of other’s opinion is a sign of weakness. Like PM Modi initially did during the farmer’s protests. About 700 farmers lost their lives during the cruel summer and winter months during the yearlong agitation. But he didn’t even think of meeting them. The champion and elite female sporting icons kept crying on the road for justice but he didn’t even once expressed his willingness to listen to them. Manipur is burning for more than a year but he hasn’t visited it even once during the times when his subjects need a healing touch. Just mere presence and soft words will do. All of us are lucky that Indian voters are far more mature and respond through ballot box only. And that’s the strength of Indian democracy.         

The power of gratitude

 

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

A little kid, barely seven or eight, comes pulling the rickshaw carrier. Empty plastic cans at the back and the little lad going almost half way down on each side to complete the paddling circle. There are more child bread earners washing dirty plates by a kulche chhole stall. It is early in the morning and instead of getting breakfast before going to school they are earning their bread. The littlest of kids taking a bath at a public tap after a late night stint at an eating point. The childhood has withered in them. They are old before they realize. These are dhaba boys. Getting their skins hardened with heartless, unsympathetic, antisocial strains; fed by the scorns and abuses of their merciless masters. Watching them makes us feel so privileged in having parents who saved us from all this experience, who gave us schooling, shelter and made us free enough to pursue our journey.

Watching the miseries around should open us to kindness. But it should open the floodgates of gratitude also for whatever we have received just by being born in relatively better circumstances. If you have a personal jet, watch people who have just cars. If you have a car, feel the struggle of those having just bikes. If you have a bike, feel the test someone is going through in just having a bicycle. If you have a bicycle, see the homeless walker who hasn’t anything at all. If you ever feel sorry for your poor footwear, feel the pain of someone who hasn’t got even legs to wear even the cheapest footwear. And millions will die today over the globe. So feel privileged to have this sip of life under the fresh sunshine.

Gratitude is very-very important. Without it we cannot groom self-love. And without the foundations of self-love we face a lot of challenge in building the citadel of love for others. All of us know it theoretically but we forget it easily. To make gratitude an essential element of our daily life we ought to look below as well, daily, to make it a habit. Look above daily to remember the impermanence of life by watching the shifting and melting clouds. And daily look below to feel gratitude for the great boons we have received during this interval between birth and death. There are messages written around. Aha, the master book of life! The codes of the ultimate reality are written so clearly for everyone to read. Happy watching above and below—daily!

Gritty old ladies of the past

 

Tai Rishalo was a wise, old woman. Widowed early with many children to rear, she managed to keep her brood’s neck above the waters to survive and sustain in the pool of life where the storms of low social position kept their little boat tossing with adversarial winds. She but kept her sense of humor above any other mood. Carrying her basket of vegetables and fruits, she sprinkled the staid village air with her puns, mimicry and jokes. She built a position of respect for herself across all castes in the village. She had a stupendous memory and would narrate almost endless fables and stories of princes, princesses, prets and parrots. She could sing, dance, joke and mimic with great effect.

Tai Rishalo loved Haridwar, especially visiting the holy banks of Ganga Maa in the auspicious month of shravan. The latter meant the cusp of all earthly delights for her. Her group of elder women would load themselves with wheat flour, pulses, rice and bales of clothing and start for the pilgrimage. They used multiple modes of conveyance to finally reach the holy town. Here they stayed in dharamshalas and cooked their food to keep their visits monetarily feasible. Some of the women in her group were so old that when they started from the village, many people joked that surely a few of them will definitely stay back with Ganga Maa forever. But all of them would beat all doubts and returned safe. Not only that, they would even climb the hills to reach neelkanth mahadev temple; a stupendous feat, given the fact that one of them, Tai Malho, was sitting on the edge of her grave.

I remember a rainy day when they started their pilgrimage. It was a gloomy, wet day. All of them old and Tai Malho the oldest of them, in her late eighties, frail, bony, slightly better than the crooked stick she held in her hand. She moved with her rickety steps in the street mud like a poor skeleton taking a stroll after jumping out of its grave. I thought I had seen the last of her on that rainy day. But there she was back in the village in a slightly better avatar after spending two-three weeks by the holy river. She had even managed to walk uphill to the holy shrine of neelkanth, a steep climb of almost eighteen kilometers. She gave credit to Tai Rishalo for her survival. ‘She makes you laugh so much that the yamdoots possibly get doubtful and take you far younger than your age because you are laughing so much!’ she exulted.

However, there was a false scare born of the trip. Tai Srichand ki bahu, uncle Srichand’s wife, a robust fair-colored woman with buxom breasts who had nurtured many handsome big-shouldered farmers, caused plenty of scare in the family after her return. She was uncle Srichand’s fourth wife. His previous three wives had died, earning him the name-de-plume of ‘wife-eater’. But our fourth Tai survived and almost two decades younger to her farmer husband, she beat him in the race of life to become a widow in her seventies.

During those days, just a few trains plied between Delhi and Haridwar. Our gang of old Tais would launch an assault with their big bundles to occupy any space available in the unreserved general compartment. The passengers would look horribly at unease but when the elderly peasant women started singing and sharing food with them the things would take a cozy U-turn. During one such scuffle to grab her footing in the crowded compartment, Tai Srichand ki bahu got a nasty elbow strike at her copious breast. A lump emerged as a result. She returned crying from the pilgrimage, loudly proclaiming that it was cancer and she would die. She unleashed torrents of urgency on her sons. They took her to a doctor and only the doctor’s words that it was just a temporary fibroid that would melt away by itself she returned to her usual jolly mood.

All those Tais are gone now on their further journeys. When I remember Tai Rishalo and her fondness for Haridwar, I always feel that she must be enjoying her days on the banks of Maa Ganga after shedding her bodily form. Their memories bring a sweet childhood nostalgia.           

Common and uncommon

 An earthworm is the mildest, most harmless version of a snake. Similarly, the common man is the mildest, most harmless version of a politician. In both cases, the former ones crawl to survive and eat muddy crumbs for survival; while the latter ones are fanged, poisoned and slither around to hunt with impunity.

PS: Within the snakes and politicians, there are different types. Some are vipers, cobras, krates and mambas. The lethal ones. The other are rat snakes, sand boas and many other harmless crawlers who carry the fear and stigma of the lethal ones in the genre.

The Shape of My Love

 The Shape of My Love invites readers on an introspective journey through the myriad emotions that define the human experience. Spanning themes of love, loss, and the eternal rhythms of nature, these verses by Sandeep Dahiya (Sufi) resonate with profound depth and lyrical grace.

From the tender exploration of love's many facets to the poignant reflections on heartache and resilience, each poem in this collection offers a glimpse into the complexities of human relationships. Nature serves as both backdrop and metaphor, from the solitude and pain of ‘Lonely Trees’ to the majestic presence of ‘Mountain Eagle,’ mirroring the joys and sorrows inherent in life's journey.

Through verses that contemplate existence itself—its fleeting moments and enduring truths—the poet captures the essence of being human. Themes such as renewal in ‘Spring’ and the melancholy beauty of ‘Dying Leaf’ evoke universal emotions that resonate deeply with readers.

The book is a testament to the power of poetry to illuminate the soul, offering solace, insight, and a profound connection to the shared experiences that bind us all. With exquisite imagery and emotional resonance, Sandeep Dahiya (Sufi) crafts a collection that speaks directly to the heart, inviting readers to pause, reflect, and find beauty in life's most profound moments.