The village of our childhood

 

When we were growing up, the village had plenty of bullock carts. Cattle, buffalo and bulls still pulled the cart of farming. Tractors had just started to come onto the scene. Carts, driven by male buffalos and bulls, had their unique means of shifting gears to increase the speed. Imagine the farmer and the bull both falling into a lethargy, the carter almost dozing with sleep and the bull going very slowly in the rut of the track while chewing cud. Fully relaxed. Then the farmer suddenly realized the passivity. Then he would shift gears. It involved holding the cart-puller’s tail, giving it a jerk, simultaneously his heel hitting the bull’s balls, and the tongue giving a loud clucking sound. All done in perfect synchronism. The bull would be jolted out of its laziness.

So we would imitate clucking our tongues like seasoned farmers. In fact we had tongue-clucking competitions. The atmosphere would resound with clucking sounds. Some chaps would cluck their tongues so loudly that even the bulls tethered in the barns got startled.

My brother took a fancy to be the clucking champion in the village. His practice session would cross over into late evenings when Father arrived from office. The sound has a vehement, egging-on vibes. And who won’t be egged on after a day at the office followed by a commute in a crowded train from Delhi to the nearby town and then a ride in some rag-tag three wheeler plying on the potholed road? So Father reprimanded him very severely after a week. ‘You know what, your tongue will get a fracture with so much striking like flint against your palate!’ Father further admonished. ‘I saw a guy with a fractured tongue. He cannot speak now.’ So my brother had to abandon his practice to become the village clucking champion.

Mother's Day

 

Mother’s Day falls on May 14. Maa left us in January 2020. With Mother gone, one is suddenly less loved, forever. Because who else will love you so selflessly? The space that a mother leaves in one’s heart stays vacant forever. It cannot be filled. Till your mother is around, and even if you yourself are old, you hardly feel that you are old. After all you are still someone’s child and your mother would show the same care like she did when you were small. So how can you feel old?

I keep convincing myself that Mother is now part of everything around me. In her human form she gave me birth, reared me, protected me, nurtured me. She still does the same as Dharti Mata, Mother Earth. So to me Mother’s Day and Earth’s Day are just the same. In her lap I walk, enjoy, shit, pee, cry, laugh, throw tantrums. The very same child of yore.

It pains to see Mother Earth getting older and older, her strength failing to support the errant kids. But She will give her all till She lives. I’m not a power aspirant. I know I cannot handle it. But if ever I’m given some authority I would make cutting the trees without justified permission a punishable offence. I know it’s hardly possible. But this type of daydreaming helps me in imagining a lush green earth at night.

Two-mouthed snake

 

During our childhood there were lots of free sands for the harmless red sand boa (RSB) to lie lazily and be found by the excited, scared eyes of the children. We called it ‘do muh wala saanp’. The village myth went that it had mouths at both ends, that it never bit but if it did on a Tuesday then nobody would survive. The gutsy boys would tentatively hold it in their hands and the chicken hearted like yours truly would stare from a distance.

Then the times changed. The sand was lost. The red sand boas turned rare. Then as per the growing economy even the RSB got an economic tag. It was considered lucky now—maybe due to its rarity. The new myth went that it sells for lakhs of rupees, that rich corporate houses kept it as a lucky charm. So now when a RSB surfaced at a house in the locality, and the unsuspecting children put it in a bucket and left it outside the village, the news busted and the entire locality went searching among the bushes for the big prize. Luckily the RSB had crawled to safety in the meantime. The children were severally reprimanded for harming the family’s economic interests.

A stormy afternoon

 

There was a squall in the afternoon, a powerful windy rain-lashing by the weather gods. And the small creamy white butterflies that were flitting around on a relatively cooler day faced what is most expected from life—a crisis. They struggled through the beating rain. The strong wind made it seem like a flirtatious dance with death. The branches shook angrily as if saying, ‘No, not here!’ as the butterflies approached them for shelter. And once a butterfly landed on a branch, it swayed and shook so violently, catapulting the hapless butterfly again into the squalling throbs of life. The rainstorm was pretty powerful and lasted for half an hour.

It was a little group  of butterflies and I don’t think many of them survived. Most of them must have perished. But how many butterflies get a chance to try their wings, beautiful patterns and colors against a storm? And some chance survivor would see the real beauty of the next dawn and flit around as a living memorial for all of them.

The next morning is a foggy one. It’s real fog with the temperature dipping as low as fifteen degrees. It’s unbelievable for this point of the season in the burning north Indian plains. Nature’s catapults!

The landowners

 

Owning land has been a hallmark of reputation and prestige in the countryside society. So the farmers in soiled, stitched clothes, weathered faces, callused hands would try to receive some respect by exaggerating the acreage of land owned by them while chatting with strangers. One old Tau from the village got a tiny jab at his prestige when he lost to an unknown farmer he met at the town. ‘How much land do you own?’ the other farmer asked. ‘Well, around twenty acres I reckon,’ the Tau from our village replied while using the mathematics of doubling the actual figure. ‘And how much do you possess?’ our Tau asked. ‘At least double of yours,’ the other farmer scored a clean win with a glint of pride in his eyes. ‘Well, even I had that much but just that you happened to ask it first,’ our Tau sighed and congratulated him on the victory. As a reward, in his capacity as a junior land-owning farmer, the Tau from our village filled the chillum and offered the first draught at the hookah pipe to the other, a mark of respect for the senior more respected farmers.

An ode to the spring

 Summer the moth is passionately kissing the dewy petals of spring blossoms in my courtyard!!! The heat of its greedy passion is building up!! Aye, summers plz stay away from my flowers for some more time!!

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!

The storm screeched through the night,

Poured its fury through sadistic love bite,

Undefeated but smiles the beauty,

Still doing its fragrant duty,

Her holy petals bear 

the storm's violating drops without fear,

Holy beads now they are,

Smiles, smiles and no war!

There is always hope,

As long as nature holds the rope

through its smile pure, 

Survive we will for sure!

Summer nights in the villages of past

 

During our childhood, the village was far smaller. The houses were small with plenty of space around. The electricity would continue playing hide and seek. During the summers we would sleep in the open on charpoys. The street dogs got a night-long stringed roof over them as they slept under the charpoys. But then you can’t just sleep at night, especially if you happen to be a canine species. Maybe they felt playful during the night and the chappals and jutis would be found missing in the morning. These were the favorite toys of the dogs.

It was a usual sight to find someone searching for his missing footwear in the morning. The lucky ones would find the item still somehow usable even after very serious canine attempts to decapitate it. But humans are one step ahead of the rest of the species on this little planet. They are born to go seeking solutions. The habit is so chronic that when all the solutions for the time have been found, they create fresh problems in order to have the satisfaction of seeking new solutions.

We also had our solutions in this regard. Our slippers, chappals and jutis turned into pillows. We tucked them under the durries and bed sheet and rested our head on them to avoid a situation of beginning the day with finding the solution to the puzzle of missing footwear. A short-sighted solution, like most of our solutions are, because it would surely give cervical problem to the elderly in the medium term.

Summer shades in the countryside

 

Nevaan’s birthday falls in the last week of April. Even the mornings look tired due to the heat. And the charmless air almost guilty over the village. Then a triumphant sound creeps across the sullen sky. Six sarus cranes, three pairs, three husbands and three wives, announce their flight path over the village. They go in a line, in a slightly curving arc of faith. I reckon they extended their stay in the plains by three weeks or so. Places have a tendency to turn homes, they have their own pull, and develop a nostalgia before we realize. But then the heat here will almost scorch their wings. So they have to leave. The manner of their call and the conscious arrangement show that they are up for a journey to spend the summers in the Himalayas among forests, valleys and lakes.

They hold the baton of grace, faithfulness, unconditional love and marital fidelity in a world where love is getting brittle day by day, thinning like air, vaporize like water from the desert sands and fall like pale, dead autumn leaves. Their call carry excitement about starting on a new journey. And for those who might care to listen, it’s a full-of-love, best-wishing goodbye. Happy be thy journey and return safe for your winter stay!

The crane spirit is for elegance, rest and pause. They are married for life and never allow their love to go stale. They keep the flicker alive through beautiful courting displays, dancing, calling, bending necks. It’s a lovely mating dance. For matrimonial harmony, both sexes take up responsibilities in building nests and rearing the kids. A crane couple involves two happy soulmates seeped in their little world. Both of them happily undertake long risky journeys over mountains, deserts and forests. I really love the fact that they are the tallest flying birds because the sarus stands almost six feet tall.

The rich people may have the ACs to deal with the heat. But the poor people have to go out in the burning heat to earn a living. However, sometimes mother nature does them a favor. The western disturbances work as a mass atmospheric cooler for the burning north Indian plains. They bring down the temperature by a few degrees through cloudy skies, sporadic rains, scattered hailstorms and cool winds. The sun that could have burned the poor man’s skin turns a bit kinder. But then the rains and hailstorms destroy wheat and mustard crops as well. It being the harvesting season. It’s never a win-win situation for all of us. Mother nature is helpless in this.

The trees know the implications of climate change. The trees in my little garden have been dropping their burden, fearing a famine, like the crew on a boat flooded with water throws away its cargo. Every gust of wind brings down showers of rustling dead leaves. The trees stand bare, with open declaration, ‘See, we don’t have anything left now.’ Only the guava tree is as green as before. The flowers have vanished. Only peregrina has its red clusters of little flowers where the honeybees hover around in competition with a few butterflies and the purple sunbird couple to get the still left out nectar. It’s like various types of African animals gathering around a little mossy puddle of water at the peak of the dry season.

The nomadic chain has been broken, its pieces flying apart, by the crude hammer of modernity. The big caravans are gone, just like the joint families broken up to form tiny nuclear families with their bigger-than-ever woes and pains. The long lines of banjara carts slowly lurching along the roads and dusty paths are gone. Now we have a customized motorized tricycle with a bike torso and an open carrier body pulled at the back. The banjara riding the vehicle and his wife, children and provisions heaped at the back, going a bit more speedily, but clueless as to what to do, how to do, how to fit in a world that has changed beyond their imagination. One needs roots to survive in a hurrying world, otherwise it will shake you like a furious storm. They now seem to look for a suitable point to pitch the tent forever. And this banjara woman sat on a desert cooler in the mechanized tricycle’s cargo hold. Of course, you need to stay cool to beat the heat.

The Naxalites blew up a police vehicle in Dantewada forest of Chhattisgarh. Eleven soldiers, including the civilian driver of the rented mini-bus, died in the explosion. Another driver, driving the rented Scorpio SUV, can pay thanks to his tobacco-chewing habit for survival in the incident. Actually his vehicle was in the front and was on the way to run over the IED implanted on the road. But a split second decision to take a pinch of tobacco, thus slowing down, allowing the mini-van to overtake him and meet death instead of his vehicle, gave him and others in the vehicle a lease of life. Well, he and the jawans in his vehicle were lucky, just like those in the mini-van were unlucky in overtaking.

A sad tree

 

The mourning tree...it was once a huge, luxurious semal (silk cotton tree). In March and April it used to smile with big, red, luscious flowers. Then the sand mafia came. Greedy for the river silt piled around this tree, they scraped away earth, cutting its big roots. The tree survived somehow. But it hasn't smiled even once, not a single flower, during the last two years. And now when the spring is at its peak and flowers are abloom on uninjured semal trees, this sad tree stands without even a single leaf, forget about flowers. It's its way of showing its mourning over the loss. It still greets me with its sad barren silhouette. I feel its pain. With a little extension of our sensitivity, we can feel and be aware of the joys and sorrows of the non human component of life on earth. The flowers are their smiles. The sap oozing from the cuts on the bark are their tears. Their luxurious canopy swaying to the winds is their dance. The ripe fruits, shadow and fresh air is their kindness. It's all there. We just need to be aware of it.

I put my hand on its hard bark. A handshake. An acknowledgment of we humans' rapacious ways. I feel sorry from the side of the humans. 'Don't worry, I am trying to smile with flowers and one fine day I will welcome you on this solitary trail with my flowers!' it seems to say. Well, best of luck you fighter tree. You are injured but big and strong. Keep your faith alive. Let's hope for the best during the next spring. And till then our handshake and greetings continue...in my heart and your wooden tissues, let this friendship stay fresh!. It's a lovely friendship and I'm honoured to be your friend, privileged to feel your pain and would be joyous in sharing your spring smiles.

Barsana Holi

 

Those were the days when I still felt young enough to experiment with life. Barsana Holi is very popular as we all know. A friend arrived with his car and proposed a visit to enjoy the famed Holi at Radha Rani’s village. I agreed to the plan. Free offers are a big weakness with we Indians. The Holi was nice and colorful as can be expected. The revelers were dancing in the pillared open-air pavilion of Radha Rani temple standing on a rocky hill overlooking the sleepy village doused in a riot of colors.

A couple of trans-genders, elegantly decked up in a damsel’s sixteen-shringaar (maybe they tried to look like apsaras and seemed to succeed about one quarter in the mission), were dancing with lots of verve around their slim hips. They locked their fingers into ours and had a nice swirl dance. Then they sweetly proposed that we should stay overnight. We said a firm NO which they accepted gracefully. But then a middle-aged well-fed roundly built Pandit smartly filled the vacuum. He nicely coupled with one of them and danced a sensuous, colorful dance of celebration and desires. After the moves as their heads came near I heard him muttering the phrases of copulating proposal which his dancing partner happily accepted.

You feel you have a right to take bhang on Holi. Totally new to the experience, I gulped down a full ball of bhang. My mischievous friend fed me sweet sugar-drenched halwa after that. They say that the bhang’s effect gets multiplied after taking sweets. Soon I find myself in a dreamy, jerking world. I start explaining to him the difference between the languorous liquor nasha and the one resulting from bhang.

‘Liquor gives you a slowly rising and ebbing high. A kind of gentle wave builds up that takes you in its pleasant undulations. You feel slow undulations, an evenly slowed time, a kind of even and leveled forgetfulness, a type of gentle plateau. Its graphical presentation would be evenly poised wavy patterns that go onto flatten, their crests coming down and reach the horizontal line as you pass out,’ I tell him. ‘Bhang on the other hand gives it in jerks. Not waves but pointed ups and downs like on an ECG graph. You will have a straight line and then it will suddenly fluctuate to accelerate out of proportion. Suppose you are sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle plying on the road and you see a car coming from the front. One time you will see it small and drawn back almost a kilometer and then suddenly it would flash big right in front. In a flashy jerk,’ I elaborated.

I was convinced of the validity of my philosophical analysis of the difference. I was intellectualizing and laughing. Then the ill-famed effects of bhang surfaced. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I heard hammers striking and tonking in my head. I was sure that it was just moments away from exploding. I was scared that the heart would come out bursting through the chest. All celebratory color went off my face. A pre-death feeling, I was sure!

‘I’m going to die! And I mean it!’ I declared to my friend. He was out of his wits. ‘Should I take you to a hospital?’ he said, his body shaking with fear. But I didn’t want to die as a bhang-drunk man on a hospital bed. ‘Take me to my place. I’ll die in my room. Let them think I died in sleep,’ I was bothered about my clean-boy image and thought of leaving with a clean reputation, not that of a substance-abused soul.

Poor guy, totally out of wits, he sped at top speed, completely sweat-laden with anxiety and panic. All along the way I kept reminding him that I won’t survive and death was certain. It was crazily scary and death seemed so near. Thankfully I didn’t cry otherwise it would have robbed me of reputation in his eyes for being a death-scared sissy. The clocks of death were tickling and thumping in my brain and the chest. The head felt like it will blast and scatter into hundred pieces. I would count the experience as staring at death from very close quarters.

We reached my place in the wee hours. My head was exploding with pain. I devised a nice mechanism of standing near a wall and slowly bump my head to rattle the tight claws of pain in the skull. The poor guy nearly fainted thinking that he was witnessing my death pangs. Then I vomited. The bitterest and the vulgar most thing I have ever puked in my life. I think I threw out death itself from my portals. Slowly the dark angels of death departed empty handed. I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was the most beautiful of a sunny day. The birds, the fresh air, the trees, and most importantly my breathing, my life! What else you need?! Why the hell we complain as long as we are breathing?! It felt the biggest blessing to be just alive on a lovely spring day. It felt like I will never have any grudges anymore in life.

The art of surrender

 

Two events, roughly 125 years apart, bear witness to the validity of the principle of surrender, of unqualified, ageless surrender to be precise. It bears fruits. The first instance dates back to 1890s. Of all the so-called low caste communities, dhanaks are known to be the least submissive to the dominant landholding castes. They are dark-skinned proud natives who have the guts and foul words to rattle the eardrums. They also possess enough stick-wielding prowess to match the previous two traits. They don’t carry social power and standing, but they hold their head quite high and can definitely quarrel when faced with casteist slur.

In the 1890s, Magni was a popular outlaw from their community. He and his group of vagabonds robbed the travellers crossing the scrub forest around the village at night. Confident of his dark-time profession, he carried extra air in his chest during the day. But then pride hath a fall.

A farmer from the village bought a beautiful mare from a fair. The majestic animal instantly caught Magni’s fancy. The barn was within the almost fortified compound of the haveli. It was impossible to enter once the main big copper-spiked wooden door closed for the night. The walls of lakhori bricks worked in lime were too strong to be broken except by hours of hammering.

Magni but had a better plan than launching a loud attack on the walls. He sneaked into the haveli around twilight and hid himself in an upper wall alcove used for storing dung-cakes and farm equipment. There he sat hidden casting greedy looks at the mare below. Unluckily someone saw him. Very silently a group of rotund farmers wielding lathis and pharsas gathered, closed the gate and peacefully stood below the hiding place. There comes down Magni with the highest probability of being lynched to death.

However, Magni was a smart guy also. He knew humility and surrender has its value. They saw him coming down with his buffalo leather juti held in his mouth as the humblest mark of surrender. It qualifies as the highest degree of self-court-marshal. There he goes, keeping his eyes on the ground, shoulder slouched to a big degree, his muddy leather footwear in his mouth, walking with the warm and majestic ease of ceasefire and surrender. Such unqualified surrender deserves consideration even among the work-brute farmers. They let him pass. But after this episode he had to keep a little less air in his chest as he walked in the village streets.

The second incident dates back a few years. There was a huge bully dog in the village. A misuser of the canine power, I would say. It was so dismissive of the lesser canine mortals. It would intimidate women and children, ate the smaller dogs’ chapattis and stole their girlfriends by force. All in all, it wasn’t popular neither among the humans nor the canine folks of the village. It had been to our yard as well. In fact it toppled over the pots containing dalia poultice for the newly calved buffalo. We ran after it but it would escape.

Then one fine day, on yet other mission of mischief, it got trapped because it couldn’t escape in time. We were successful in closing the yard gate before it could escape. Within minutes a few stick-yielding brats arrived to help us settle the score. They had their own grudges against the dog bully. So half a dozen nice sticks waited to dispense justice. Ours is a society that believes in justice, especially if we are in the authority or position to bring it about.

Had the dog growled or reacted in some angry way meaning a fight back it would surely have meant getting lynched to death. Had it yelped in piteous pleading tones, it would have meant a few severe, maybe, bone-breaking strikes. But it was a clever dog, maybe even wise, as smart as Magni was. Like him it knew the value of utmost unqualified surrender. It sat on the ground, brought out its tongue in supplication and hideous abjection and gave such a marvelous show of shivering that the attacking party was left spellbound, almost hypnotized by the show of perfect surrender.

I think had it shivered just a bit more, we would have heard its skeleton creaking and clanking. We were mesmerized. We forgot that we had sticks in our hands. We saw the waters of his surrender dribbling out from under him. He performed the surrendering feat for full five minutes. Yours truly having some poetic bent of mind or rather heart, became the first one to accept the terms of surrender and even the rough farmers agreed.

The surrender papers presented such a big victory that it wasn’t possible to ignore them. I opened the gate. There it went with its tail jutted against its balls, tongue out and body shivering. A slow march to defeat it was. I hope it wasn’t Magni repeating his surrender in a canine avatar.

Bowing with respect to the past

 

Do the past’s facts, assumptions, beliefs and theories are worthy of being put into the dustbin in the light of new emerging facts and theories? Normally we think so. But we shouldn’t forget that the past was once as relevant and useful as the present is now. The past is the building block of the present.

We lived in the caves once and hardly knew anything beyond the raw struggle for survival in the forest. We used that little platform comprising tiny bits of knowledge to construct a small stage. We didn’t even know the shape, size and basics about our planet. Were we wrong? No. That was simply our reality in the past. It was our truth at that time.

The Rig Vedic Indian sages had hardly any idea about what lay beyond the ocean. Did that stop them from evolving an elaborate system of human thought which still holds relevance for us in this modern age? Till a few centuries back we thought the sun was revolving around the earth. Did that stop us from using natural forces, resources, and contriving laws and regulations to shape fantastic civilizations? It didn’t.

There is just growth and evolution. From simpler to more sophisticated. Or maybe it isn’t even complexity. It just is—a transient stage in the stream of ever-unfolding dynamics. Truth is no static entity or something absolute. The only Truth that we may assume is a certain pattern in evolution and emergence of phenomena at any given point. Like a little plant grows in a forest. Its growth and survival are bound by the infinite possibilities of cause and effect. Cause and effect are a sequence in happening. But the trigger points for the cause-effect to take place can be infinite.

March musings

 

The month of March. Earlier we had spring in March. Now it has been relegated to just the last week of February. However, just like many of the customs that we keep following out of habit, I feel better by taking this second week of March as the spring season even though the sun is already hot enough to hit you with its rays right in the mornings.

The afternoon sun is golden yellow, showering its riot of warmth over the ripening wheat crop-heads. You can actually feel the green fading into the littlest traces of gold. The heat is building up to lead us to the harvest season. The nights however are dewy and cool and it nurtures ageratum flowers. These wild flowers have many interesting names—floss-flower, blue milk, blue weed, pussy foot and Mexican paintbrush. These wild blossoms help me keep my belief in the spring season. There are countless light purple and bluish fluffy flowers by the sides of the field-paths, foot tracks, channel bunds and the canal embankments. They have blossomed so profusely—over the thin lines of wild tracks and field divides, as if nature, taking a clue from the mankind’s intense agriculture, has done its best to utilize the thin ribbons of uncultivated land for its unwanted weeds to thrive among the well-manicured lawns of monoculture crop patterns.

They are said to attract butterflies. I hope there will be butterflies soon. There are four red semal or silk cotton trees. After the winter’s assault they are leafless with bare ashen branches at the upper end of a long straight robust silvery trunk bearing a light canopy. But they have luscious dollops of beauty to make up for their shorn-sheep look. These are big red vibrant five-petaled flowers, facing the sky upwards, receiving the grace of open skies and sunshine. They drop with a plop and then the ants have a feast. It’s also a feast for a few purple sunbird couples, bees and some odd barbet that may have delayed its flight back to the lower Himalayan hills with the passing of winter.

On one of the silk cotton trees, three parrots are having a dining gossip. Some bee-eaters are enjoying the taste of the bees hovering around the juicy big flowers. And around these solitary beacons of beauty, the long rows of bluish floss flowers are indeed still holding the banner of spring and avoid an eventuality when the spring will be an extinct season altogether.

There are a few mango trees. These are laden with inflorescence called panicles at the shoot terminals. These countless pale yellow clusters have a fragrance of procreation. So many will drizzle down with gutsy summer winds but still the tree will be left with enough for our taste and the survival of its species. During Father’s time, when they grazed cattle in the scrub forest—most of this area wasn’t tilled at that time—there were so many mango trees along the canals that they could afford to just see the mangoes come floating downstream and eat whenever they liked. Now I see just five-six mango trees in the area. Father told me there were plenty of wolves, jackals and even hyenas in the scrub forest around the village during their childhood times. And now we plough every square inch of land with a pin-pointed precision. So the wilderness is squeezed tight across the canal embankments, field channel bunds, field divides and path-sides. Here I have seen the area’s top predator, a majestic jungle cat that looks very lonely as it runs for cover on my approach. Then there are a few cobras and some jackals. Well, that’s better than no wildlife at all. This is what I consider to be my forest, stretched like narrow ribbons. I walk along these, cherishing what is left of the spring.

High in the branches of the eucalypts trees, I can see cream-colored fluffy little flowers. They spread a faint fragrance of the spring. All along the narrow paths, where the mankind is yet to arrive with pick axe, shovel and spade to turn the soil into some more productive use, there are rows of hemp plants. It has become a ubiquitous weed as if mother nature is offering her spring-time bhang lassi to make us less serious and more prone to merrymaking.

A honeybee with its one million neurons in its brain is happy with the few odd semal flowers. I, on the other hand, with my hundred billion complexities of neurons in my brain feel the loss and pain as well. I know that most of the people are running in the mad race of material progress. They are also Me. I share their fears and phobias because at the level of genome I’m 99.6 percent similar to someone else. With my 0.4 percent of genomic variance, defining my poetic individualities, I roam around in the countryside chronicling what still survives in the background of all that has vanished. It gives nostalgic pain; but it gives joy as well, like these long rows of floss flowers do. I know I’m an assemblage of genetic instructions coded in the DNA sequence; a reflection of genetically imprinted memories in my cells where each cell out of the billions contains 25,000 genes to propel my system of agonies and ecstasies. A tiny memorial bundle of love, agonies and ecstasies, here I walk bracing my fingers against the wild rows of floss flowers which line up to greet me because I recognize and accept that the spring season is still there.

The unknowable

 

To look for the ultimate truth, or reality, or absolute knowledge, the body would need immense amount of energy because the normal levels of energy would be just sufficient to sustain the normal, collective perception that conditions our mind to settle for the base-level actualization of the infinite potential.

It’s mankind’s destiny to go for truth, now or later, in this journey or the ones to come. It’s a natural evolutionary flow, it cannot be avoided. In an unawakened state this energy will go randomly, in dissipative ways, creating sweet-sour mischief, this worldliness. But it’s merely a matter of time—the time spanning various lifetimes—before it stabilizes, develops patterns of self-discipline to touch a peak in that very individual consciousness. It enables the carrier body to look for what lies beyond the simple perception-based reality. And the still remaining stumbling blocks in the body, mind and emotions have to fall along; otherwise one learns the lessons in a tough way.

This heightened energy finds different expressions like bhakti (devotion), gyan (knowledge), karma (action), art and still much more about which we don’t have a clue as of now.

The evolution in consciousness will never hit a dead end. It’s a cosmic soup of infinite potential. What you think, feel, imagine or act sets a new point of reality. And it goes on at every point of existence.

The faith-based expression of heightened energies is a very sublime form of expression. This dimension unfolds in the corridors of bhaav. This channel is very near the soul. It’s warmly loving and draws warmth from the soul itself, the high point of joyous realization in the individual consciousness. It’s so easy to jump into the river of ‘relatively higher bliss’ from this point because it’s very near to the source of profound bliss. But before that one’s faith has to shine bright in its purity and there will be tests through situations and circumstances, just like there will be in other paths.

In its karma expression, this energetic blizzard will sire a karma yogi in the carrier body. The carrier body will express its energetic storms in setting up disciplined, righteous energetic patterns (dharma) in the society around, like Rama and Krishna did.

In its gyan expression, the individual consciousness in its carrier body will try to know more and more, observe keenly, understand, and draw logical conclusions in an effort to make a meaning of this mystery and chaos. It’s an effort to cut the mind with its own tools, using the basic faculties of the mind to undo its own framework. To allow the mind to run as much as possible in its pursuit of knowledge, so that finally it stands helplessly, falls and sees a better expression across the cobwebs of its constructs.

There is another dimension of the expression of this energetic storm, a replica of the massive stars bursting somewhere in the cosmos. It’s kundalini awakening. It’s the most tangible of all the expressions. It’s a raw, naked force. It stands in front of you, holding you in its grip with a direct maneuver. It doesn’t take any diplomatic cover. It stares in your face. It shakes you. It’s nearest to the gross body in its expression. It’s so near to the base level of ego identification that you clearly feel its storm in the body as it breaks the obstructions in its path. I would say it’s a mixture of all the three above-mentioned expressions. You are jolted off your safe zone at all levels of your existence. To make a meaning of all these psychic reshaping, the reformulation of the nervous system, the remodeling of the perception channels—which is usually tough with many instances of things going very wrong—the carrier body takes help of bhakti, gyan and karma (randomly, in various orders) as per the shifting surges of this psychic force in the system.

Whichever way it happens in an individual carrier body, I don’t think there is a final arriving. It’s an infinite potential. The so-called ‘final arriving’ is itself a self-set benchmark by an evolved consciousness who rose high, perceived far more than the normal people and agreed to drop anchor at a point in the infinite cosmic sea. It’s just like space travel. You keep travelling and never reach any edge and then accept a conceptually defined reality: Ok, let’s agree to set up this point as the boundary of the space.

At every point, in every individual consciousness and its carrier body, there is the seed of infinite expansion and potential and maybe that draws these energetic storms. And however far one goes with howsoever heightened energy, the mystery always remains the same. It all remains to be known after coming to know everything. There is always more to be realized after realizing everything that is to be realized. A bit puzzling though, right? But we have to accept it logically, as long as we believe in the concept of infinity.

The baba basking in the 'now'

 

The old babaji has picked a very suitable place to pass his days in sunshine during the winters. It’s an iron bench by the foot track on the way to the holy Neelkanth shrine in the lower Himalayas. It is the off-season, so just a few dozen pilgrims pass him, whom he accosts in the lord’s name. Some coins, some ten rupee notes, sunshine and lots of peace among these little hills are his possession. During three consecutive days of our pilgrimage to the holy shrine we have offered him some bhiksha and built up a lot of friendliness with him. He has lots of scriptural knowledge and recites beautiful lines from the holy books befitting the context of the talk. After having a nice talk, as we get up to move ahead, he hails and celebrates the occasion with a shout of joy: ‘Hey rajan, aaj ke anand ki jai ho!’ It means: ‘O king, let’s hail today’s joy!’ It’s a beautiful summary of the joy of being in the ‘now’. 

A little pilgrimage

 

Being a bookish guy, I’m not much into physical activities. But walking on pilgrimages seems to add a different dimension of physicality and I’m able to surpass my individual capacity and surprise my own humble self sometimes.

I share a special bond with my brother and we are here at Rishikesh at the yearend to say a bye of gratitude to the year going out and greet the new year with hope in the lap of mother Ganga. We bathe in Maa Gnaga’s holy waters early in the morning and start on the foot track to the holy shrine of Baba Neekanth. The track passes through verdant Shivalik hills of Rajaji National Park. It’s fresh and rejuvenating. At the grossest level it’s a nice exercise for one’s legs and lungs. For those who are looking for the nutrition of their souls, the names of Maa Ganga and Baba Neelkanth do the task naturally.

We go on day one and return pretty joyfully in the evening. The next day we again take an early morning bath in the holy water of Ganga Maa and suddenly feel so reinvigorated as to start walking again to the holy shrine. The same happens on the third day. And before we realize we have walked to the holy place on three consecutive days. Our schedule didn’t allow us to continue the walk on the fourth day, otherwise I believe I would have continued for maybe a week at least. Bathing in Maa Ganga’s sacred waters cleanses one of age-old sins. So getting one free of tiredness and fatigue is a mere cakewalk for the divine waters.

Each day, an old woman would greet us from a distance during the last stretch of the track to Baba Neelkanth. This is the offseason for the pilgrimage and very few people hit the track. She peers into the distances to spot some odd pilgrim. She is an old woman beaten by poverty, age, circumstances. Almost beaten by life and its leela, she has a pleading voice. It strikes you. Her helplessness and disadvantaged situation acting like a speed-bump, pulling at your conscience, forcing you to slow down, look at her. And that sometimes forces a few pilgrims to take out a coin or a ten-rupee note and offer it to her.

On the way up, the first day, we have given her ten rupees. She would continue showering blessings at your back as you walk away. I heard her till the next bend and waved and looked back a few times. On the way back, she again accosts us as fresh pilgrims. ‘Tai, you can see I know. We already met on the way up!’ I laugh. ‘Yes son, I know. But beta I have to ask from you even on the way down because I have collected too little money,’ she tells us very honestly. We give her a little money again.

It gets repeated on the second day as well. Somehow I felt very easy with her and talked and joked and she laughed. On the third day, December 31, we decide to give her hundred rupees as a new year gift. And what does a tiny currency note mean as a gift if you don’t sit by that person and have a word of empathy and kindness? So today we sit by her and offer her the gift money.

Then the spontaneity of those somber, kind, holy moments created a simple reality of human-to-human connect. Its real significance would strike me later and it does even now with a powerful effect. As we held her hands and offered her the new year gift with kind words of happiness and joy in the new year, the check-dam of her age-old emotions burst out. She started crying. These were the tears of pain, happiness, suffering, hope. All mixed in one. She seemed a little baby crying for affection, for sympathetic human touch. My brother is a spiritualist in practice. I have a very high regard for his genuine values that he keeps on the practical platform of life. But what he does now even stumps me. I see him putting both his hands on her head, affectionately covering her head. He touches her like a father, like a son, almost like a god.

Her lifelong pains melt. She flows. She cries profusely. I have no doubt that ours happens to be the first human touch of love, respect and dignity in her entire life. Her soul felt it. Asa poor begging woman, the best she can expect from the people is some charity money even from the kindest of souls. I felt she wasn’t prepared for this warm, genuine human touch. The way she gave into it seemed as if it was her first experience that made her realize she was also a human being. She is also something above and beyond a beggar. I know there are people who would throw a thick wad of money even without taking care to notice how did she look. But will that enrich her soul the way this touch did?

We move onto the holy shrine of Lord Neelkanth. She is still crying with love and gratitude for that human touch and we can hear her blessings till the next turn. On the way back, I can feel that she is peering into the distance to see us. As we reach her she greets us with a cheerful demeanor and smiles. As we sit by her to have some more chat, the sweetest fruits of human touch and kind words drop like a blessing on us. She opens her soiled, torn cloth bag and takes out the treasure of human love. We get the best new year gifts by a devi. In our absence, she had hastened to a nearby path-side tea seller and bought gifts for us. She gives us our gifts like a kindest mother. It’s a packet of Kurkure crunchies and a small packet of biscuits. We are the richest people in the world. I’m not a fan of crunchies but this one I would relish like a little kid. After all it’s a gift by a mother.

Did our few ten-rupee notes and one one-hundred note open this lottery of human affection? No. Money is too small to buy human empathy and love. It was the human touch and kind words. Touch the closed stony gates of a poor human and see what treasures topple out, the treasures that would have withered and died unseen if not for your soft touch.

We feel so indebted for the priceless gift that we offer her some more money and she takes it with confidence and faith like a mother receives her well-deserved share from her sons. She is very happy and points to her tattered sari and says she will buy a new one with this money.

As we get up to go and express our hope to see her again sometime in the new year, she starts crying again and says who knows she may not be alive by that time. Through tears she says that her life might be over before we come again on this path. I can feel that she would very much like to meet us—for that human touch. Thankfully there are enough kind souls who would at least give a bit of money which is also necessary for survival in this world. But how I wish there were more people who provide human touch as well, a touch that reminds a poor person that she also is a human being.

We moved slowly on our path, her blessings showering like rose petals from behind. It was a sad feeling, somehow; leaving someone behind with sad tears—even if these are of gratitude and love—is too much for a poetic man like me. I looked back a few times and waved and she waved in reply. At the bend on the path I turned again, had a glimpse of her waving hand, heard a feeble reverberation of her blessings and moved on with the hope that she will be there when I return sometime in future.

An old farmer

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life lessons by a little angel

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

A drop of love on my table

 

The houseflies go gloatingly nibbling at your peace. You are helpless and watch wrathfully, nursing animosity. To rub salt on your wounds they land on your face, the representative of your worldly identity. That seems like vandalizing the holy altar of your existence by stomping their dirty feet on your skin. You turn taut with attention; muster up all determination to be at your quickest best. Then you take a ferocious swipe. You hurl all agility stored in your cells. But the houseflies are always quicker than the best of your shots. They escape unharmed. In fact you have a high risk of pulling some muscle due to the sudden jerk to your limbs.

They doze past your swatting newspaper or any other weapon you have at hand. They buzz away with elegant novelty in the art of escaping. And with a sneering, bantering buzz again land on your skin, to itch your frustration again. This behavior is in close proximity with making a mockery of your sense of being a human, the supreme species on the earth. Over a period of time, you settle for mild reconciliation and finally sign armistice from your side.

Out of the thousands of strikes and swipes, effected with crouching hate and anger, I have hardly bruised even a wing in my confrontation with the houseflies. But this day it was a golden chance to strike with ravenous glee and kill two foes in one little strike, and undo all the humiliating hops of yore. But there are moments when such an act would sound full of revulsion and, more seriously, dishonorable.

A housefly pair is making love on my table. The fiery flakes of my revengeful self turn to cool showers of curiosity. I’m stopped from sledge-hammering this stupefying dream of these two tiny insects. At this tiny point in space-time fabric, a little episode of sensuous and voluptuous frequencies is unfolding with surrendering grace. I’m reading my morning newspaper. I turn pages. I move. I shift, sigh, yawn and finally hum an uncouth Haryanvi ragini about a farmer’s love, which is basically an animalistic lust. I’m gloating over them like a shameless peeping tom. They are just a couple of feet away. They are oblivious to any kind of danger today. Aha, love’s animated, flattering tones! All the force of fear and survival now focused on giving a pleasurable crescendo—to heave their species onwards from their end. I take my illegal prying into their private matter even further and start taking their pictures. My mobile is just inches away from them. It seems a bold couple. They aren’t shy of getting filmed in their moments of deep intimacy.

Initiated by the male by striking or jumping into the female (like a typical male of any other species), their lovemaking can last 30-120 minutes. Well, it can give a big complex to most of we humans. Mating comes quite naturally to most of the species on the earth. But to the human mind it comes as a complex ritual. The male houseflies use pheromones (produced by the females) to detect a female by colliding with them mid-air or ground striking. The drone tries to force open her wings. If she accepts his advances, she vibrates her wings to make a buzzing sound. Copulation begins, as it does now on my table. They must have had a very heavy breakfast prior to this as fly-mating takes a lot of energy and they need their bellies full before the ritual of procreation.

The drone fertilizes the female eggs. She then lays eggs in a filthy, warm, moist place. From my table she will go and fly to lay eggs on feces and filth a day after. The eggs will take a day to hatch. The larvae (maggots) will bury in filth and an adult fly will emerge from the pupa. In five to six batches over 3-4 days a housefly lays around 500 eggs in its lifetime of 15-30 days.

I have the choice to allow the rationality of mind—that these are carriers of diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and worms—to stifle the poetic romanticism of lovemaking insects, and squash them down with a newspaper strike. If I do this, I can easily close-up an entire branch of houseflies. It will wind up the new pathways for 500 new houseflies in a week, which would have ended up starting new chain reactions of 500 further houseflies from those previous ones, and onwards similarly. That means I would stop the evolution of millions of houseflies from this end. The rationality of the human mind would encourage one to stop at least one door to the proliferation of these germ-spreading insects.

But is there anything in nature that has not its benefits? Houseflies are waste decomposers and eat poo. A single tiny larva eats about half gram of organic matter in a day. Beyond the side issues of disease transmission, hygiene and sanitation practices, mother nature produces them to decompose the natural and human-produced organic waste including feces and carcasses. There are houseflies because there is excess of organic matter that hasn’t been suitably and properly managed. That opens the breeding potential for these opportunistic feeders. They lap up the putrefying sap with their sponging mouthparts. Moreover, their pathogenic immunity can be studied to help us understand the causes and factors of immunity to help us devise similar medical defense guards for the humans also. So in the scheme of mother nature it’s not clear whether stopping this particular point of evolution would be beneficiary or disadvantageous in the ultimate sense.

I think instead of trying to kill a pair of lovemaking houseflies, I should try to properly manage the organic waste around me, at least on my premises. That seems like a real solution—an effort to remove the cause instead of merely tempering with the effects. Helped by the self-approval of poetic romance, I strengthen my moral fortification and allow the fly couple their moments of surrender to the energetic throng of procreation. They are not concerned about my choice. They take their time, oblivious to my shuffling and flicking newspaper.

The drone then takes off after many prolonged minutes of joyride on the rollercoaster of creation. He has played his limited part in the process. The female has a bigger role to play. Her part has just started. She sniffles around for a couple of more minutes, preens her wings and takes off to look for a suitable filthy site to put her larvae the next day.

Blossoming

 इसको कहते हैं खिलना। इतना खिलना की बिखरना सिर्फ खिलने का अगला, सुखद चरण मात्र बनके रह जाए। पूरा खिलने के बाद बिखरना अर्थहीन हो जाता है। होने और ना होने के द्वंद के परे है संपूर्णता से होना। जियो जीवन भर के, पूरा खिलो। पीड़ारहित बिखरना तभी संभव है जब आपने खिलने में सब कुछ अर्पित कर दिया हो।

और ज्यादा खिला। It happens when you welcome life with the widest bear hug! This is expansion! Then a playful tug of the gentle air will aid in further expansion! A drizzle of ecstasy will occur! The petals will fly away to be a bigger part of a larger dimension! The smile doesn't die. It acquires a broader plain.