Baba Rajnath -- Illustrated Biography (Part 2)

 

The World of Trees, Plants, Fungi and Small Insect

 

The Hidden Communication and Relationships of Trees

1. All the time, chemical alarm signals are buzzing around within the trees, through the air. Fungal networks around roots also allow them to carry warning signals. Chemical compounds and electrical impulses travel at the rate of ⅓ inch per second.

2. Fungal intermediaries within the rooting complex intermix many plant species.

3. In this apparent silence, it is a talkative world, warning, competing, co-habiting.

4. Colour and fragrance are invitations to insects, bees and caterpillars to work, pollinate and get their reward in return.

5. Within the same species of trees, fungi around roots carry out nutrient redistribution work from stronger to the weaker, providing a form of social security.

6. “A tree can only be as strong as the forest that surrounds it.” — Peter Wohlleben.

7. “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”

8. In heavy blooms, even wind helps pollination.

9. On a massive scale, trees produce huge amounts of pollen to be carried by bees, insects and wind.

10. Pollen fertilises the female flowers.

11. Male and female blossoms: Some trees have male and female organs in the same blossom.

12. A pollen grain landing on a stigma activates its genes. Through a tube developing from it, it moves down towards the ovary, looking for an egg, leading to the development of fruit and seeds.

13. Male flowers give off alluring aromas and colours, attracting insects to them. Later, the bees move to more sober female flowers, transporting pollen to them. The male pollen has to move to the female for procreation.

14. Trees avoid reproducing their own gene pools by interbreeding and getting pollen from other trees.

Survival, Fungal Networks and the Secret Life of Trees

1. Normally, trees defend themselves by making their leaves excessively bitter for insects.

2. Over its reproductive age, a tree produces millions of nuts and seeds, all in the hope of keeping its genes alive. At the end of it, after a lifetime of fruit-bearing, if a single son or daughter thrives to reach adult status, it is called successful reproduction.

3. Cambium is the life-giving layer under the bark.

4. Trees scream at the ultrasonic level through crackling roots and vibrating trunks.

5. Fungi lie somewhere between plants and animals. Their cell walls are made of chitin, which is not found in plants and makes them a bit like insects. Unlike plants, they cannot photosynthesise and take organic nutrients to feed on living beings. Their underground web, the mycelium, probes for edible tissues.

6. Some fungal masses cover hundreds of hectares and are hundreds of years old.

7. Trees cooperate with fungal networks to optimise their water and nutrition intake. These webs connect with the webs of other trees, serving as agents of nutrient exchange and even alarm communication, such as during insect attacks.

8. For their service, the fungi charge doses of sugars and carbohydrates from trees.

9. Diversity is a safe voucher for security.

10. Wood-boring beetles and bark beetles hack away at the trees' life-sustaining cambium.

11. The trunk consists of long tubes for transporting water through a suction mechanism fuelled by transpiration, osmosis and capillary action.

12. A majestic banyan ageing gracefully.

The Tree as a Living World

1. A normal human sheds around 0.05 ounces of skin cells every day. Around 10 billion particles flake off us every day, making about 0.7 pounds in a year.

2. Algae, moss and fungi on the old bark are like the mirrors of an old, old tree's soul. Decomposition.

3. An old tree's bark giving way to fungal growth.

4. Oak — a symbol of longevity and fortitude.

5. A dwarf tree, almost a shrub, in the tundra may take a century to grow one foot.

6. Trees and plants are Mother Earth's clothes. We are ripping them apart, forcing her into nakedness.

7. Peter Wohlleben: “An organism that is too greedy and takes too much without giving anything in return destroys what it needs for life and dies out.” So there is an inherent tendency to avoid overexploitation.

8. A tree has sugars, lignin, cellulose, water, carbohydrates and minerals. These add up to millions of calories.

9. Aphids, also called plant lice or greenflies, suck tree fluids, filter protein for their growth and expel much of the sugars and carbohydrates as honeydew.

10. Sap-sucking pests, leaf-eaters and bark peelers feed on different parts of trees.

11. Ladybugs feast upon aphids, while ants eat honeydew.

12. Midges, wasps, bacteria, fungi and caterpillars are among the many small organisms associated with trees.

13. Butterflies, moths, flies, wasps and beetles are also part of this living world.

14. A growing plant's leading shoots are nibbled off, turning them prematurely aged, bent and bowed.

15. Fungus, mushrooms and tree stumps: Their rooting mycelium plunders nutrients and sugars from the tree's cambium, leaving mouldy wood.

Photosynthesis, Defence and the Breathing Forest

1. Photosynthesis is the process of changing light and CO₂ into sugars.

2. Nesting cavities provide homes for creatures living in trees.

3. Pecking among wood to get beetle larvae.

4. Hermit beetles are not too eager to move around. They spend their time in a hole in a mouldy trunk.

5. Diversity ensures that one species does not take over.

6. Bracket fungus — possibly HID (fire).

7. Leaves are the solar panels of a tree.

8. Trees produce defensive compounds called phytoncides. These are antibiotic in character and keep their surroundings safe from threats by bacteria, viruses, fungi and insects.

9. Quaking aspens: Their leaves shake even in the gentlest breeze and expose both faces to the sun to photosynthesise at double the rate. In other species, photosynthesis takes place only on the upper surface, while the lower surface is normally used for breathing.

10. Flies feed on seeds, carrying the parent tree's genes to far-off places.

11. During drought conditions, the leaves get an extra waxy layer on the leaf surface. It slows down transpiration. Of course, with this cover, breathing becomes burdensome, but survival demands it.

12. Hoar frost: Plants covered under sugary frost.

13. Conifer forests contain germs in the air, so allergic people feel better in these forests.

14. In summer, trees release 29 tons of oxygen per square mile per day. A human breathes in 2 pounds of oxygen per day.

15. Marine air: Algae in salt water produce oxygen, which bubbles out of the water and compensates for oxygen deficits on landmass, especially during winters.

Light, Colours and the Extraordinary Life of Leaves

1. Blue skies, bright sunshine: Trees convert sunlight, CO₂ and water into oxygen, sugars, cellulose and carbohydrates.

2. Why do we see different colours around us? Every object absorbs light differently and changes it into a different kind of radiation. The remaining wavelengths are reflected back and decide the colour we see.

3. The reflected light from leaves is, in fact, the unused spectrum of light which the chlorophyll cannot process. The uplift of our aesthetic sense is, in fact, the thrown-away portion of light.

4. Young leafy shoots are red. Why? Their soft tissue has a sunblock called anthocyanin. It blocks UV rays to protect the soft leaf sprouts. With the leaf's growth, anthocyanin is broken down by an enzyme.

5. “Tree blood” — water and nutrients move from roots to leaves at a rate of ⅓ inch per second.

6. Kichwa of Sarayaku, Ecuador: “Forests are the most exalted expression of life itself.”

7. The sunlight travels 93 million miles to reach your eyes. Photons, the packets of energy, carry light.

The Restless Mind: Between the Art of Living and the Poetry of Desire

 

# Miscellaneous Notes, Reflections and Literary Expressions

1. Routine things give boredom. Too tough things will only add to your stress and anxiety. Hit the midway path. Tolerably challenging tasks get you into an absorbing flow.

2. As they say, having a compass pointing in a definite direction is more fruitful than having a detailed map.

3. Our brains are not wired to function in parallel processing like computers. Multitasking is a big fallacy. It just is a replica of the instability and restlessness inside.

4. **Melting of ego:** When one is so absorbed in a process that, instead of she doing the task, it is the task that is leading her.

5. Around 60,000 random thoughts flit across our minds daily. Meditation generates alpha and theta brain waves, the relaxing brain waves that get activated just before we fall asleep.

6. Those who move around a lot stand a better chance of living a long life than those who tire themselves out in gymming and hard exercise.

7. Even feeble moonrays can set in germination in seeds. All you need is a faint light.

8. **Passion, when recalled in the lap of luxuriant nature by a stream in the hills, turns hundred times sweeter with each passing moment.** My mind ran across your quivering contours. Your uncertain response, trying to keep you chained within the threshold, beyond which the blizzard of uncontrollable desire awaited with a glee. The confident shine in your eyes smothered down by the look of a woman lynched by desire.

The sacred within the ordinary

 

Premanand Ji Maharaj of Mathura tells a beautiful story. A story which, in its simplicity, tells you what real dharma means, what it means to stay rooted in dharma irrespective of whatever domain you are in.

And the story also proves that being a proponent of dharma is no copyright of just renunciates and ascetics.

The story goes like this.

There was a very strong-willed tapasvi who was doing his sadhana under a tree.

After a long session of meditation, suddenly he was jolted into the realisation that a bird sitting in the branches above had happened to drop its excrement on him.

Now, looking at the bird dropping on his saffron robe, he got very angry instinctively. He cursed the poor bird.

Since this tapasvi had built up a lot of energy because of his sadhanas, the curse materialised and the bird was turned to ashes instantly.

After some time, this tapasvi set out to ask for alms, as the ascetics used to do in older times.

Standing in front of a house, he spoke in a loud voice, asking for the attention of the household.

A young woman came out and, looking at the sannyasi with his bowl standing in front of their door, she very politely and courteously asked him to wait.

The sannyasi thought that she would straightaway go and fetch the alms.

But much to his surprise, she did not return for a few minutes.

In the meantime, the woman had gone to seek the permission of her husband, who was doing something in the inner courtyard.

And when she informed him that there was a sannyasi standing in front of the door asking for alms, he smiled and said, "What was the use of coming back and seeking permission for this? You should have straightaway gone on to give him something to eat or drink."

She smiled politely and said, "I am just fulfilling my patni dharma, the moral dharma of a wife."

This interaction had taken about a couple of minutes.

In the meantime, the ascetic standing in front of the house lost his patience.

And when the woman came out with some food after a couple of minutes, he got very angry, being impulsive and angry by nature.

He shouted, "This is not punya, this is sin! This is not virtue. You have made a sannyasi stand in front of your house for a long time, and you don't seem to be concerned about the virtue of serving the ascetic standing in front of your house."

And before he could go into a cursing spree, the young woman, confidently but with discipline, dignity and respect, and yet with firmness, said, "Stop. You being a sannyasi does not mean that you can go around cursing people like you cursed that poor bird this morning."

The sannyasi was very much taken aback.

How can this woman, this simple housewife who does not seem to have done any sadhana, know what happened this morning?

So, in surprise, he asked her, "How do you know what happened this morning?"

She said, "I know that I am not doing sadhana like you, but I am rooted in my dharma. That is the duty of my household affairs and my affection and faith in my husband as my partner.

"That is my dharma. I am rooted in it, and it is as good as performing a sadhana like you are doing.

"Now, if you want further elaboration on this, go..."

She mentioned a place nearby and told him, "Go to that place, and there you will find a man, a butcher selling meat. Go and ask him. He will tell you something more about it. I know you are curious about how I know what happened with you this morning."

So this ascetic was very much surprised, thinking, how can a person who is engaged in meat selling, who is a butcher by trade, elaborate on this?

He is not even in dharma!

At least this woman is rooted in dharma in her role as a housewife, in her duties to her house as well as in her trust and commitment to her husband.

But this butcher, I don't think he will have anything to elaborate on this.

Still, he was full of curiosity, and he walked in that direction.

He reached the place and saw that the butcher was not that old, just around forty, a very dignified, decent-looking fellow weighing meat, with customers standing around.

And when there was no customer, this ascetic approached him and asked him, "What kind of task is this? You are trading in meat?"

So instead of asking him something, he started preaching to him about the dharma of killing, of eating meat and all this.

The meat seller laughed.

He said, "Now don't just vent out your anger on me just because you happen to have been reprimanded by a young housewife just now."

The ascetic was taken aback.

How come this meat seller knows what happened just a few minutes ago?

It's quite something very surprising.

So he asked him, "How do you know that there was some incident between me and a young housewife just a few minutes ago?"

The young man, the meat seller, laughed.

He said, "I am not doing sadhana like you, but I do my sadhana in a very small and simple way.

"I am busy. This is my trade as a butcher. I have inherited this occupation to fulfil my responsibility as a householder.

"I take part in this trading, but I am not attached to it.

"Even while weighing meat, I am still engaged in remembrance of God.

"Whenever I get time, I fulfil my rituals. I do my bhajan. I sing in praise of the Lord.

"And even while I am holding my weighing scale, I am just looking at it to give it perfect balance in full equanimity.

"So I am into this job, but I am not this job. I am just playing this role.

"My dharma is to stay in remembrance of God as much as possible.

"So that is my dharma."

So the moral of the story is that it's not what you do, or the kind of job you are into, that alone decides your dharma.

Dharma is not just limited to those who go to the forest or perform rituals or are doing sadhanas.

It is for everybody, wherever you are, provided you are fulfilling your responsibilities and engaged in your activities that demand your attention and time because you are fulfilling a certain social role.

But alongside, if you are rooted in your full detachment from that activity, in remembrance of God, you are as good a tapasvi as any one of the sadhus meditating in remote caves.

“The Chains of Tradition: Death, Caste and the Question of Dharma.”

# The Chains of Tradition: Death, Caste and the Question of Dharma

*Diary Entry — 2017*

Death will come surely. The only challenge lies in dying with the assurance that life was not meaningless.

At the end of the journey within yourself, you know how good or bad you have been. You feel contentment as you reach the final destination if you look back and see your contribution to others' happiness.

In the last twenty years, there have been a few instances of honour killings in the surrounding villages for crimes as small as a little fun a boy enjoys hundreds and hundreds of times a day.

There are seven thousand villages in Haryana. Hardly any of them goes without an honour killing now and then. But it is just hushed up.

It makes thousands of girls martyrs in the name of patriarchy.

The girls and women of Haryana have sacrificed their lives to claim freedom, like wearing jeans and enjoying a little fun in life.

Buddha said that the meat of a dead animal can be consumed. The cobblers, the people belonging to leather-working communities, used to eat the meat of dead animals. So no wonder they were a historically very disadvantaged and unprivileged section of society, and they were assimilated into Buddhism right from the beginning.

Another point is the Brahmanical acceptance of Buddha but rejection of his ideology.

There is a story about God sending Buddha to Earth to spread heresy so that hell, where there was nobody, while heaven was full, could get its population of evildoers.

So that was the story spread by some zealot in Brahmanism.

Then there is the Brahmanical acceptance of Ravidas as a saint.

The fable goes like this: He was a disciple of Ramananda in a previous birth, and a Brahmin.

He got prasad for Thakurji from a Baniya who traded with the cobblers. So he was punished.

And after his death, he took birth in a cobbler's house.

But as a Brahmin soul, he refused his cobbler mother's milk.

Ramananda recognised him and blessed him.

So that shows the caste rigidities followed by Brahmanism: that to attain liberation, you have to have a Brahmin soul, predominantly.

Because they had accepted Ravidas as an enlightened soul, but still they attributed it to the fact that he was previously a Brahmin who had been penalised for breaking the injunctions.

And in this birth, he was born in a cobbler's house, but he refused to feed on his mother's milk.

The commerce and caste system of Brahmanical Hinduism have been smartly maintained through myths, fables, rituals and the stoking of fears.

Osho Rajneesh often rubbed shoulders with Brahmanical Hinduism. He was a big critic of hardcore, ritual-based religion.

He tried to puncture the myth of a golden Brahmanical past.

A few points that he raised in his preachings are as follows:

1. **Racism:** The practice of keeping women whom you purchase as brides or wives, but whose children cannot inherit the property.

2. **The Ramayana:** Lord Ram ordered molten lead to be poured into the ears of a Shudra who had committed the sin of listening to the Vedas.

3. **Dharmaraj Yudhishthira:** Yudhishthira, whom we take to be the beacon of righteousness, plays poker and puts his wife at stake. So somebody who claims to be an epitome of dharma pawns away his wife.

4. **Arjuna and Draupadi:** Arjuna shares his wife with his brothers, which Osho says was most probably not as per the consent of the woman, who had only one husband in mind.

5. **Kanyadaan:** You offer your daughter as *daan*, charity, in marriage.

6. **Brahmagyani Bhishma:** Bhishma lowers his head while a woman is being disrobed in full assembly.

7. **Dronacharya and Eklavya:** Drona thought Arjuna would be the world's best archer, and it would fetch him glory. So, in order to accomplish that, he got Eklavya's right-hand thumb cut off. Later, when he saw that all factors were indicative of a Kaurava win, he fought for them.

8. **Ram and Sita:** Ram banished the pregnant mother Sita. He also asked her to undergo Agni Pariksha.

9. **Parashuram:** Parashuram slaying Rajputs and beheading his mother.

“The Wood Wide Web: The Secret Communion of Forests.”

The Wood Wide Web: The Secret Communion of Forests

*Diary Entry — 2017*

**Mycelium or Mycorrhizae**

Mycelium or mycorrhizae. It is the underground network of symbiotic fungi binding to plant roots.

These fungal threads carry out nutrient exchange, even supporting young plants and giving life to very old tree stumps—the parental trees around which these later trees grew.

This fungal web is called the *Wood Wide Web* (WWW).

One of the oldest trees on Earth is a spruce in Sweden, which is 9,500 years old.

**African Acacia**

When a giraffe starts nibbling leaves, the tree lets out a chemical whose scent wafts through the air.

Other trees down the line smell it and produce a short-lived toxin, so when the animal moves to these trees, it just sniffs and moves on.

Things, of course, become normal after some time.

**The Leaf and the Insect**

The leaf tastes the saliva of the leaf-eating insect.

The tree sends out chemical signals to attract predators to eat the insect.

**Electrical Impulses and the Wood Wide Web**

Electrical impulses pass at the rate of one-third of an inch per second.

This is the communication that passes between the roots as well as through the body and canopy of a tree.

The Wood Wide Web may nourish the dry stump of a cut tree for decades.

**Yellowstone National Park, USA**

Here, wolves disappeared in the 1920s.

Due to this, elk herds increased rampantly, and they chewed away willows, aspens and cottonwoods along water channels.

It meant that animals and birds dependent on these trees left.

And wolves made a comeback after seven decades.

Elk herds were forced to keep moving instead of staying in one place and browsing rampantly.

The trees sprouted, and water channels stabilised. Animals like beavers returned.

So that shows Mother Nature has its ways of maintaining balance.

The unseemly wolf, whom most wouldn't welcome, turns out to be a big balancer in this vast ecosystem.

**Forests as Superorganisms**

Forests constitute superorganisms with interconnections through Wood Wide Webs.

They form a wild commune because it is easier to survive and grow collectively.

It generates a climate of humidity, water, nutrients and moderated temperatures.

Planted forests strongly lack the bonhomie observed among wild forests.

**Trees Communicating Through Scent**

Trees use scent as a means to communicate.

Elms and pines release pheromones attracting wasps to devour defoliator, leaf-eating caterpillars.

“The False Gods of Modernity: Rethinking Our Heroes and Role Models.”

*Diary Entry — 2017*

Faulty role models are destroying our generation as well as social harmony.

As we move on the path of progress and modernity, we have violated certain fundamental laws of nature. The primary one is asking for more and more.

We cross the limits of our needs and land in the corridor of greed.

It drives the consumer culture that is good for business, profiteering and profit-making. Nothing wrong with that.

This, however, is just a part of the picture.

The complete picture is scary if you consider the spin-offs of mass consumer culture.

It makes you crave for more and more for your own self. You stand alone in the crowd, competing to gather more and more.

It basically turns you terribly self-seeking.

You forget about collective good. You ignore the common problems.

You idolise the people who have built huge reputations for themselves through working for their own interests.

The people who do something for the common good are relegated, unrecognised because their collection of material things is not that impressive.

The media, advertisements, hoardings—everything is flashing pictures of those who have built massive individual fortunes and reputations in business, sports, entertainment, bureaucracy, etc.

Not that they don't deserve appreciation. They certainly do.

But our definition of heroes should be extended to include eminent personalities and their socio-economic contributions in areas beyond their own profit-making.

Each and every species on Earth works primarily for its own upkeep and self-preservation.

By that yardstick, the so-called celebrities, heroes and modern-day role models are nothing but super animals.

Because what, basically, an ant does at the level of a milligram, they do at a larger scale, in tons.

In the cycle of evolution, we are privileged to occupy the top slot on Earth.

We are aware of our being. We can analyse. We have options.

So naturally, as the super species, our definition of role models has to include something extra, apart from doing something which is just a larger degree of the self-interest-driven instincts of animals.

The real role models should be driven by the feeling of responsibility for the larger domain, including Earth, environment, hunger, diseases, poverty, wars, etc.

Let a billionaire be considered wealthy not just by the money in his accounts, but rather by the degree to which he or she has been responsible for dousing hunger in the bellies of the poorest of the poor.

We need to overhaul our definition of role models and heroes to basically include their overall contribution to the greater common cause.

It is easier said than done.

These are generational changes.

The best thing is to start with education.

Children are very impressionable. Let them not be blinded by the consumerist bombardment.

A good job is not the end. Being a good human being is.

At least educationists can glorify the tales of real heroes who have been working in the shadows, away from the flashy lights of name and fame.

It is about changing the values you fight for.

Let these values be a bit larger than just the self—larger than the self-seeking, animalistic instincts.

Parrots’ Plight: Where Are the Fruit Gardens?

2004

Where are the fruit gardens, fruit trees here and there, scattered among the scrub forests dotting the countryside, berry bushes landmarking the dusty pathways? Well, such times did exist during the childhood of our fathers! But it now sounds unbelievable. Such fruity things did exist, indeed, the same parrots, those colourful winged lives whose colourful endowment privileged them to lay claim upon the ripened fruit first, must have had a beautiful time. Then there were mighty trees of majestic stature, with nature’s wondrous artistry chiselling out cavities and holes in them, like dungeons, peepal residences, jails. In these safe recesses, their domesticity thrived. Alas, all that is long gone!

Even during our childhood, during the eighties, we saw packs of these shrieking greenies. But all that sounds a dream now. It is the first decade of this new, high-tech century. The mobile revolution that I’m still living in my village house enables me to see, sometimes, a few of them making mournful shrieks in the branches of a tall ancient tree by our boundary wall. It is a pity that they stay there and take a long flight to eat the long, greenish, tasteless, fusiform pods of this tree, denoting hardship, scarcity and thanks. But they eat it nonetheless. The fact that they have chosen this particular one, for there are no more, even such acacia trees around, makes it stand on the border of the sweetest such fruits, if they can be called so, among their prickly foliage in and around the village, which now almost single-handedly denotes the treeline of the area.

All in all, it sounds like a sad anecdote: loss of trees, loss of birds, loss of titillating varieties to life. A parrot eating, and that too with a defiant, tolerable, chemical, acacia pods—it sounds like the last, poor and pathetic chapter in the beautiful bird’s life, at least in our part of the world.

A similar fate is shared by the national bird of India. Though its hunting is banned, below the pale of this protection, the watchtowers, the vast and distant farming fields are strewn with illegalities. Farming is killing these individuals, either as a species. At the time, it cannot be taken for one particular individual; it is perpetuating the crime against anything particular. When the system is eclipsed by the thing, then it becomes a subtle, nuanced way, unwittingly. Pesticide-strewn monotony of farming finds the landscape treeless and insectless. Where will this big, colourful pageant of life find something to eat?

So, the few survivors—perhaps the last of their generation—are abandoning the faraway villages of man and entering the village like beggars in search of a few crumbs of bread. This big bird, its size reaching the knee, its broad eyes, a crown, a big brown fan of long, exquisitely patterned feathers, now steals a few crumbs. But there are those erotically shivering dances with its full circle of dancing bent tail feathers, somewhere in the isolation of a garden.

Parrots’ Plight: Where Are the Fruit Gardens?

 **2004**

Where are the fruit gardens, fruit trees here and there, scattered among the scrub forests dotting the countryside, berry bushes landmarking the dusty pathways?

Well, such times did exist during the childhood of our fathers! But it now sounds unbelievable. If such fruity things did exist indeed, then the parrots, those riotously coloured winged lives whose colourful endowment privileged them to lay claim upon the ripened fruit first, must have had a beautiful time.

Then there were mighty trees of majestic trunks, with nature's woodcarving artistry chiselling out crevices and holes in them, like banyan, peepal, sheesham and jaal trees. In these safe recesses, their domesticity thrived. Alas, all that is long gone!

Even during our childhood, during the eighties, we saw packs of these shrieking greenies. But all that sounds a dream now.

It is the first decade of this new high-tech century. The simple reason that I am still living in my village house enables me to sometimes see a few of them making mirthful shrieks in the branches of tall acacia trees by our boundary wall.

It's a pity that they twitter and take a long flight to eat the long, greenish, tasteless, juiceless pods of this tree, denoting hardwood, scarcity and thorns. But they eat it nonetheless.

The fact that they have chosen this particular one, for there are now numerous such acacia trees around, makes it stand as the bearer of the sweetest such fruits, if they can be called so, among their prickly foliage in and around the village, which now almost single-handedly denotes the treeline of the area.

All in all, it sounds like a sad anecdote: loss of trees, loss of birds, loss of titillating varieties to life.

A parrot eating, and that too with a decent, tolerable choice of acacia pods! It sounds like the last poor and pathetic chapter in the beautiful bird's life, at least in our part of the world.

A similar fate is shared by the national bird of India, though its hunting is banned. But below the pale of this protection, the watchtowers, the vast and distant farm fields are strewn with illegalities.

Farming is killing them as individuals rather than as a species. The crime can't be proven. No one in particular is perpetrating a crime against anything particular. When the system as a whole adopts the thing, then it becomes a subtle, nuanced way, unimpeachable.

Pesticide-driven monotony of farming finds the landscape treeless and insectless. Where will this big, colourful pageant of life find something to eat?

So the few survivors, perhaps the last of their generation, are abandoning the fear and shyness of man and entering the village like beggars to get a few crumbs of bread.

This big bird, its blue velvety neck, white-bordered eyes, a crown, a big broomful of long, exquisitely patterned feathers, now steals a few crumbs.

But where are those erotically shivering dances with its full circle of drawn-out tail feathers?

Somewhere in the isolation of a grove.

The Distressed Farmer: Faith Amid the Darkest Fears

 .**2003**

The month of hot *loos* still arrives with some respite for the farmers because, by now, they are almost over with the backbreaking hard work of harvesting.

But things were altogether different for this farmer, who looked sullen, dejected, worn out, even though he had good crops and earned reasonably well with his thresher and tractor.

The season was the reason. The reason was the tumour raising its perilous dome. How those cells go on a warpath of unchecked growth, we don't know.

It grew by the side of his neck, below the left ear.

For his recovery, I should come to the present tense, for writing in the past tense appears a sin, considering the situation he is in and the type of person he is.

He is a good human being in his early forties, of dark colour, decent features, medium height and nice build.

But now a part of his body appears to have revolted against him. Like the merciless, non-discriminating swipe of nature, this accidental interjection by Mother Nature seems to be swiping away all these niceties.

He came to me, his whole being almost shaking for fear of that cruel word, with the report. Initial tests show that the doctors fear it to be a malignant tumour. Now they have taken a syringe full of fluid from the affected part, whose result will be known in about a week.

I do pray for him.

I can well understand his position during this period, when the darkest of thoughts will plague him, when some flashes of pure faith will try to lift him off the abysmal pit of fear.

Thank God we have at least this thing called faith, which can provide anchorage to the storm-tossed ship.

The Kid with a Stolen Rod

 **2003**

Ice-candy sellers prefer to barter ice candies with grain, metal scrap and throwaway glass bottles, as well as newspapers, old books and copies (notebooks).

Why? Because the margin in bartering is big. In simple monetary terms, the margin left with them is fixed. But here they can elongate it almost freely in their lopsided bargaining with the children.

And most often, the children can't raise too much voice against the loss in the deal because, most of the time, they have somehow, through dubious means, laid their hands upon these petty articles. So, in fear that lest they get caught, they want to shut up the matter at the earliest without raising too much fuss about it.

A thief, however petty he is, is after all not the rightful claimer of the true value of a thing. So these mute, hesitant bargainers settle for anything the vendor proffers.

A six-year-old arrived with a big, twisted rod of iron worth at least twenty rupees in the hot noon.

The street was desolate and empty.

The boy showed it and asked the ice-candywala, "How much for this?"

The look of confidence in his voice instantly told the candy man the story behind it. So he greatly decreased the gain to the boy.

"Only four ice candies for this," he said.

"Only four?" the boy almost shouted.

The ice-candywala said, "Then go and ask your mother, or you can bring your mother."

"Mother is not at home," the boy replied.

"I am sure you have stolen it," the ice-candywala said with a mischievous smile.

The boy tried to sound confident.

"I haven't stolen it. I found it on the way by the school."

Taking a look at the area around, the vendor opened the mouth of the sack tied to the box at the back of his tricycle.

The boy dropped the thing into it.

Both of them understood the point. The ice-candywala knew it was a stolen item. The boy knew he could not get more than this.

The deal was done.

Both went their ways hurriedly.

The Gadia Lohars: The Wandering Ironsmiths at the Fag End of Their Trade

 **2003**

The mid-May heat is merciless. The noons are blazing like a furnace. Temperature over forty degrees centigrade. Even the perspiration seems to vaporize on your face under such a merciless shower of sunrays.

The gypsy women, attired in cheap, bright-coloured, mirror-worked bodices and frilled long skirts of purple colour, with heaps of cheap iron vessels on their heads, are doing rounds in the village streets.

These are iron basins of various shapes and sizes for different purposes, basically agricultural and livestock activities.

But these are the days of manufacturing. You have big factories these days which churn out such utensils on mass-production lines, and the individual items are very cost-effective to the customers.

So these ironsmith nomads, the Gadia Lohars, have lost their footing in the competition.

Earlier, they used to forge small agricultural implements and such utensils, working on their hand-operated furnaces, and then they would go around in the North Indian countryside, pitching up tents by the settlements, selling their wares and then moving on.

But that is no longer economically feasible.

They now purchase them from the cheap manufacturing units. So modern technology finds them just vendors of the finished product. Through bartering, mostly with wheat, they hope to earn a tiny margin.

Still, they manufacture some kitchen trivialities, like those made with sheets cut from butter cans and oil cans. So somehow, their tiny forgeries find them hammering on the anvil, and the trade and its wandering keepers still survive at its fag end.

These women thus have, in addition to the purchased basins, tiny scrubbers, a little boat of sheet metal for milk pots and sour-milk pots, spoons of different contrivances, spoon holders, coarse mesh to clean grains, winnowing pans, etc.

And laden with these things, these women wander through the hotly shining streets of the village.

It is almost two o'clock in the afternoon.

So they almost plead, request, beseech, almost beg the ladyfolk to purchase some item.

"Behenji, please take something. I will give you at a very low price. Haven't opened the account since morning," they would plead.

But the ordeal continues.

So, fruitlessly, shedding lots of sweat, they go from street to street, walking and calling out in their typically significant loud voices, amply supported by their dialect.

In the Mirror of Relativity: The Frailty of Appearances

 **2003**

 

Nothing seems—and maybe it is even absolutely true, even though, while using the term, I might be contradicting myself in using the first word, *absolute*, here instead of using a milder, less sure term of the same genre.

Well, nothing seems to stand for its absolute worth.

If it is a person, his appearance, calibre, wealth and status are mere reflections in the mirror of relativity.

Take, for example, the appearance of my father. As far as appearances go, he is one of the frailest kind. But does his frailty stand within its absolute rights?

Certainly not, because he appears weak and withered, though intellectually he is reasonably robust and well-read in relation to most of those around him.

Most of the time, we find him sickly and frail, for he is actually so against the background of these better-conditioned people.

But by the same rule, the rule of comparativeness, he yesterday appeared full of life.

It was, as is to be expected, against the dry, almost dead, pale, withered and shrunken background of the uncle in the neighbourhood.

Uncle David Singh's health has come downhill to such an extent that he seems a mere lifeless stone of a once fully ripened fruit.

Looking at them sitting side by side, the scattered sinews of life in Father appeared a robust nest capable of withstanding the gusts of survival.

The Lapwing: A Watchman of the Fields and a Herald of the Monsoon

 **2003**

We call it *Tatehri* in local parlance or dialect.

This bird, found in the fields, is characterised by long, thin yellow legs and dark brown feathering.

Enter its territory and it starts giving alarming, full-throated watchman's cries. Farmers, during those long, solitary nights while irrigating their fields, find a very cautious companion in this bird.

If anyone happens to arrive from any direction, his arrival is sure to be noticed by this bird. It then inevitably gives an alarm-raising, shrieking twitter.

And then the farmers use it, even during these scientifically charged days of weather forecasting by the Meteorological Department with the help of multipurpose weather satellites, to estimate the amount of rain during the upcoming monsoon.

In the post-harvest, barren, cracked fields during May and June, if a farmer finds its eggs laid on some higher elevation, like a big clod or field subdivider, then he promptly surmises that rain will be abundant in the upcoming rainy season.

On the other hand, if the nest is found in some dusty hollow, then that connotes that rains will be scarce.

Ahatas: The Bonhomie of the Guzzlers

 **2003**

The guzzlers are on the brink of bloating themselves into big, inflated balloons of oblivion and an unhealthily smouldering flame of artificially imposed restfulness.

It is beer and more beer for the young. Old-timers still cling to their tested brands of alcohol. But summers, at least, belong to the new generation, and it's beer.

Getting a contract for running a wine outlet now means a big, very big earner. In villages, daily sales happily reach ten thousand rupees for most of the month.

In the cities, there are *ahatas* by the wine outlets. These are dingy, crowded, not-so-clean places where the drinkers get a corner of seclusion at the cost of snacks at highly exorbitant rates provided by the keeper.

In the evenings, these places throb with the maximum pulsation of their alcoholic hearts.

Drinkers of all sorts and categories gather. Since the space is not much, they are very happy to share the tables, and a whole new world opens before the participant in this muffled, slow-paced, forgetfully throbbing place.

If we remove all other pros and cons of alcohol, one thing stands out marvellously: the bonhomie shared by persons who, aided and enlarged by wine and beer, share their unrestrained, shameless words with persons whom they have met just on this table for the first time in life.

And the topics draw from somewhere. The topics of discussion—new information surfaces suddenly. Many rumours are quashed, while new ones take birth.

All seem to have accepted, even the most belligerent ones, the principle of bonhomie and peace among the community of drinkers.

Discussions spill over like wine over a glass, and gentlemanly remarks leap over from one table to another.

It is like a beehive, a community of high-need familiarity.

The way talks are held, tongues slipping over words, but the intention becoming gentler and gentler.

Drinkers talk while time moves away sluggishly, yet so fast.

It appears as if some new foundation for some solid acquaintance has been laid. But most often, it is not so.

They talk, they depart happily with dreamy, swooning musings, and forget all about it the next morning under the glare of a real sun and a real day.

Small Times, Big Times: The Waning of Greatness in an Age of Progress

 **2003**

Well, we all know for sure, at least those who have read history, that there are big times (the defining times, times of churnings of good, bad, trials, tribulations, triumphs, losses and gains) and small times (times lean and meagre like a leafless branch which is shorn of foliage but with brighter sunshines and storms).

Great days do have, almost invariably, if we believe the hypothesis of environmentalism to hold the reign of truth (and even if not, then by the law of probability, we, the propounders of the hypothesis of environmentalism, do have a legal share of fifty per cent from the paternity of probability, while leaving the other half with naturalism), greater percentages to steer the ship along the stormy winds or, with remarkable perseverance, to take the ship on the longest, almost endless journeys to the other end of possible life.

While the lean and meagre times have plenty of passengers, their skills not tested by the vagaries and the blizzards, to steer along coastal journeys buzzing with Lilliputian whirls and mundane eddies.

I am perhaps, unfortunately, a product of the latter.

These are lean and mean times. Most of the devilries have been trimmed to make them tolerable. The dark does not cloak us; rather, it propagates its small mildness in its sinister progenies below the so-called lighting poles of light and law, in the form of its very shadow.

Achievement does not rise to Everest. Loss is no longer a fall to the deepest trench.

All in all, these are boring times.

It is a peculiar paleness, with colours of life and death intermixed such that both death and life have something to grasp from.

So there is a certain monotony, certain surety, a vague certainty of goals, ambitions, competition and rivalries, which lends the whole scene a certain charmlessness.

News hits high on the pages and screens of media, but mostly these are the very same multiplications of a bad joke. Instead of one, ten die in accidents; in place of lakhs, those in power embezzle crores. Crime claims some more victims. More literacy, thus more job seekers in the field; more prosperity, but equally more depravity, etc.

Orbit is too limited. The longest journey means only more and more revolvings.

The stage is glittering, big, modern, multifarious; characters, spectators, numerous managers and staff, many. But the theme is short, crisp, brittle. The plot is meagre, almost uninteresting.

How to draw juice from this shrunk big fruit of the present times?

Maybe, along the untiring flow, some inundation along the strong modern banks will sneak an outlet from this straight, globalised water channel, which is smooth, waterfall-less.

Though, of course, there are many storms in it, purposely created to generate a make-believe world of risk, danger, insecurity and uncertainties, like a river in its old age.

The senility—please don't take the tantrums thrown by an old invalid as the signs of health, vigorousness, of genuine frictions and squabbles creeping up to the final level of inundation.

The peneplain, the barren, rockless, smooth plain without the remnants of geographical and human hindrances.

It is an old planet. The civilisation is old, though the technocrats have us believe that it is new.

But the truth is too glaring.

It is just a fantastically clad old nanny. Its modern equipage can't completely hide the lifeless rattle of bones.

However hard we try to recoup the sand, we advance on a bare, sandy plain.

The planet, devoid of its fantastic flora and fauna, will look a bald grandpa. Its siblings, all clumped together with contrivance, will think in similar terms, will fight the same fears, will arrive at similar solutions, for science does not discriminate; will have the same pleasures, same pains, a single race on a single terrain.

Greater times are now a thing of the past.

Perhaps the future terminology and vocabulary will not have the intention, space and capability, as well as willingness, to decipher these greater times falling back and back in the chambers of yore.

Presently, we appear to be moving to the brighter sky with brightly lit stars of individualism.

But all will one day shine so profusely that the distinctness of sheen will be lost forever.

Individuality of race, countries, states and religion will be gobbled up by this new sun of humans.

It will shine as a counter to the one above. It might not even require the beneficence of the one above.

That will be the bright sun of this flat, barren colony, and finding it too uninteresting, it will throw its rays into the darkness of the universe to find some more interesting dark corner to see the effect of its light.

Maybe there are still greater times in store, but perhaps in some other nook or corner of this universe.

Days of greatness on Earth are over.

The leaders will arise, but they will be pathetic imitations of those who have gone.

So will be the artistic domain. By the way, the species is almost extinct anyway. Some lone, strong strangers will lose themselves in a generation or two.

Inventors, too, will arise, but they will at the most act as the outpourers of the same oil into the same lamp for more light.

But the same kind of light.

Commoners: The Sheep Flock and Their Masters

 **2003**

Common folk almost equal—no humiliation intended here—a sheep flock. Both are led by commanding herders: by a poor but supervising nomad in the case of the former, and by a group of superiors in the case of the latter.

Here, superiority means the capability and skills to detach oneself from the meekly bleating, dust-raising mass of poor humanity, unidentifiable individually but defined as a mass in their hopes and aspirations.

Let us drop the first part of the corollary here itself. Otherwise, it would become too difficult to carry the reason for two masses and move ahead with the sheep sense impersonated by the human folk.

Well, those humans who somehow manage to detach themselves, either by birth, by struggle, by luck, by chance, by beneficence or whatever other means, from the clotted, jaded, benumbed mass become entitled to play the piper.

And whatever is told through media, through rumours, through written and oral injunctions, political, social, religious and, of late, economic contrivances, they accept it as a fact. Almost as scientifically and mathematically true as two plus two equals four.

These are the mathematical geniuses indeed, not capable of understanding the underhand, shrewd manipulation of equations due to which two plus two becomes almost two lakh.

But no, they will always unflinchingly play into the hands of these statisticians, who glory in the knowledge beforehand that their message will be taken as it is meant to be.

Two religious sects steal the limelight aggressively, one pitted against the other. The angry, sword-brandishing, yelling scenes in the media show them a great, interesting news of fanaticism, but nothing beyond.

While the seed of reality could be as funny, as simple as the politics behind it.

The last government supported one to win elections. It is necessary, while the present one supports another.

So the religious puppets are danced with political strings while nobody sees it.

They just ogle at the spectacle, clap, become a comprehensive audience, but mostly can see only the print written on the title banner.

And it is so in most of the cases.

So the herd moves, raising dust, mimicking and thinking that it meets the farthest end of reason and understanding, with the herders of different sorts walking in closed ranks.

Each one representing the dignity, bearing and position of the fellow herder.

And many a time they feign disunity, the masters.

But it is just a game of further mastership.

Anganwadi Workers: A Few Drops from the Mighty Fountainhead

 **2003**

The Midday Meal Scheme announced by the Central Government is one of those rare pronouncements which leaves, in contrast to the mammoth aspirations outlined on the official papers, a mark of its being rather minuscule on the plane of reality.

Aimed at a noble cause—to provide, under the care of female Anganwadi workers, some morsels of nutrition to children of poor sections—or is it to lure them to the confinement of school, which cannot otherwise be expected to fall into their mouths?

So, beginning from such a mammoth goal, it inevitably trickles down, as is to be expected from a young democratic system, to a visible channel which surprisingly bubbles with life, hopes and aspirations.

So a few toddlers and the Anganwadi workers, who themselves are poor with almost hungry children, get the benefit.

These ladies get a paltry monthly allotment of twelve hundred rupees, but the spare grains, biscuits, dry cakes, puffed rice and some fruits, which inevitably fall into their kitty, compensate for the paltry salary.

Two handicapped ladies from our locality, one differently abled by a leg and the other by a hand, have got the job in the *chaupal* of the locality.

They now wear dresses to the best of their attiring sense, sensibility and economic capability.

Fresh in the job, they do their duty with a sweet urgency and, with equal felicity, save much of the provisions for their own households.

I don't blame them, or rather don't want to, or even shouldn't, because conventionally abled persons run on the crutches of corruption to earn added incentives.

So when the unhandicapped pretend to be handicapped and clutch at the crutches of corruption, we shouldn't become too critical of these two relatively unfortunate ladies, in the physical sense, for earning a few nutritious morsels for their children.

And it being the case throughout India, spanning almost all the Anganwadi workers of all abilities, it makes a rather heartening scenario that the scheme, on paper intended to reach crores, is at least a reality for thousands of households, mostly very poor and needy.

It is thus heartening to note that some drops of real water are reaching the fag end of the channel after starting from the mightily bubbling fountainhead of ministries in Delhi.

Passport: The Little Book of Wings and an Unfulfilled Dream

*2 May 2004*

It indeed is a tiny pocketbook of freedom, travel, tours and business. Its pages bear the new literature of a globalising world: far-reaching enterprises, emigration and immigration, things though usually related.

The big weight of the small pocketbook!

I also applied for one in the last week of October last year, in 2003. After all, there was so much advertisement by the Ministry of External Affairs that it convinced me, a usually lethargic fellow in such matters, that I might really be lucky enough to get a passport within a couple of months.

And I applied with full fervour.

A demand draft of one thousand rupees in favour of the RPO, Delhi, documents and all, at the application collection centre at the DC Office, Sonipat.

The moment the receipt landed in my hands with its file number, I felt surprisingly assured, in contrast to my general hopelessness, that I might, after all, at long last, arrive at some goal directly, crisply, without facing any barricade or hurdles, which do crop up usually in my path, even if it is a very small, mundane daily chore.

A passport seemed all the way to my pocket when the police inquiry took place after a month or so.

It is customary to pay a hundred-rupee bill to the bearer of papers from the local police station. It is no greasing of palms. It has become a sort of mutually accepted passport custom.

No grudges on the part of the one who has somehow dreamt of foreign lands, and no pleasure pang in the heart of the new bearer of the bill.

Readily going out to call two uncles from the neighbourhood to become references to my identity, I ordered tea to the man's health.

And proffered him a hundred-rupee note.

A passport now seemed almost in my pocket, that small black leather-bound object of the size of a tiny notebook which can take one—

Is it like a wing?—to the other end of the world?

But alas, that is where my passport dream ended.

Weeks were gone. I counted them, then counted months.

And I still count months on this second of May in 2004.

No trace of the thing.

It was a very short spark of luck, ended in a fizz long before the finalisation of the act.

I repeatedly tried to make a phone call to the DC Office, Sonipat, and RPO, Delhi, so legibly printed on the receipt for my convenience.

But both phones are out of working order.

In the meantime, the news of a passport racket involving even a Member of Parliament came into the limelight, with a good percentage of travellers going around on fake passports.

I now fear that my book of wings might have carried someone across while I wait here in futility.

Real Success: The Long and Dusty Trail of an Unfinished Quest

 **2002**

What lies behind real success?

First of all, let us denote, in all sincerity and encompassing consensus, the meaning of real success.

Let me clarify from the first that the difference between “success,” the common noun, and “real success,” the qualified one with an addition which carries the whole essence, like honey in a flower, of the term, should be the unshakable, unflinching assumption for our further discussion.

By and by, let it remain as simple as this.

The differentials between success and real success can be seen as clearly, without needing even an iota of evidence, as that between day and night.

Let us begin with real success.

It is that finest, unadulterated spirit, brewed during long, perspiring, patient, honest moments.

This spirit is pure, devoid of any admixture of luck, chance, favour or any other short-cutting manoeuvre.

The sanctity of this brewery matches any holy shrine on earth.

Any attempt, in most of the times, in fact, the process, is left unfinished when the tired, uncompromising brewer breaks down, not to see the bloom of this earth but to see the light of some other world.

His tools lying there, his body lying like an unsung signpost.

It is inevitable as well, for the goals of real success are too great and big to be achieved by an individual follower during his lifetime.

So the process is borne on the shoulders of the brave conscripts across the generations.

They pick up the tools of the defiant, valiant volunteers and wage the war ahead.

And whenever any individual succeeds, the trophy is shared by the entire generation.

Too large are the repercussions of this achievement.

But who remembers those fallen heroes on the unillustrious and dusty path of real success?

People just see the puny avatar and the godly, divine one with the same eyes.

Then there are real successes at the individual level, a shortened, crisp version of the common real success.

Here the merciless brewing might go on for a few generations within the same family, like the one at the larger generational level in the society of the earlier case.

Fitting myself and my family into this smaller version of real success, I am entitled to notify my family for such a case.

I see a long and dusty trail of pains, pathos and travails, at least from the times of my great-grandfather.

Suppose I succeed in becoming an established writer or a civil servant, for which my father himself had a definitive leaning and which always prompted him to spend a large portion of his salaried income on books of various genres.

Who will read the long and wordy tale of disappointments, losses, even humiliations, spanning all his life and most of mine, in addition to the shaking repercussions and crippling vibrations of sustaining such a passion across a generation, and that too in a countryside family surrounded by almost illiterate farmers?

Given all the situations and limitations of such a goal under such a setup, where you are required to earn and learn as well, it was inevitable that this decent middle-class family tumbled in status to that of lower middle class with the passage of time.

How will people get enough time to read the mildly great lines of this neat and clean, real story of a big family quest for real success?

Here I am, having dashed all the hopes of a conventional career.

In the second half of my twenties, yet to earn a single penny and even orbiting like a perilous moth around the flame of my passion.

Read as many pages of classics as possible every day and write a few justified lines with pen and paper in a day.

Such is the goal.

You work really hard, as hard as anybody around.

Picture to your mind the feelings of your near and dear ones: the father long past retirement, sisters needing your support, mother too living every day from dawn to dusk in the barn, your brother who should have blossomed under your care but is waging the real, practical struggle of your path.

There is so much you ought to do.

And you deliberately kick all these deserving responsibilities to keep glued to the one beyond which you can't see.

You feel the guilt of it, the pangs of it, the more so seeing their uncomplaining faces around you as time passes.

You become unbearably guilty on that account.

But at the same time, you have been laying the foundation of some future superstructure.

What serves such a superstructure if it fails to meet the present petty needs of your family's lives?

Don't they stand to get such needs fulfilled?

It is usually torturingly perplexing, but I have gone too far, like an addict.

Can't even dare to look back now.

The Kabariwala and His Mobile: A Little Anchor in the Sea of Miseries

 **2003**

Strung by such down-to-earth jobs which most of us find unjustifiably humbling and humiliating, the travelling Kabariwala, with his tricycle carrier loaded with castaway items of all sorts and the front stacked with plastic utilities, appears lost in the big, boastful, bragging enterprises of the modern economy.

For too long, such poor fellows, trying to eke out a living from the worthless entities, have presented a poor picture. In a way, they do a work of big beneficence which, unfortunately, goes unnoticed.

For getting some usable, new, clean plastic or crockery item in lieu of the rubbish heap of household items (torn shoes, sandals, chappals, plastic and glass bottles, metal scrap, etc.), which, apart from presenting a dragging, chaotic picture, sap the orderly energy from the surroundings.

Engaged thus in one of the lowest of jobs, the poor fellows, while the consumerist world hurtles past with its castoffs, appear lost in the bleak lanes and bylanes.

But even in the countryside, the consumerist culture now ensures that there are enough castoffs to secure a living for such poor fellows.

Here was this straggling, small and stocky young man in his early thirties, rotund lips, drooping eyes and a faded red headcloth, typical of the labouring class, wound around his head.

He arrived in the village lanes with his long trail—a two-wheeled carrier cart full of discarded household items towed behind a carrier tricycle, fully loaded with a rubbish heap and new, cheap plastic items to be bartered in lieu of a whole heap of scrap items.

This man, however, did not seem lost.

He had energy in his tone and spring in his gait.

The reason for this was evident when his phone rang in his breast pocket, with a well-deserved pride, in the middle of a heckling bargaining with the village womenfolk.

He took out his mobile to talk about his business to the Kabari dealer speaking from his shop in the district town.

A mobile to such poor, genuine strugglers appears like an anchor which supports, provides roots, while the rough and tumble of the heaving sea ever tries to gobble them up for the triumphant sway of its kingdom of miseries.

Corruption, Summer Flowers and a Rainbow

 **25 May 2003**

Corruption breeds on the stakeful tables in government offices. And these are not the tables before the chairs of the high and mighty ones, those at the upper echelons of the official hierarchy.

Clerks and suchlike officials, who really pull the strings of the jobs, are the master breeders of red-tapism, favouritism, corruption and negligence.

They are, after all, the lawkeepers who have to ensure the transaction while sitting in their not-so-august chairs.

They are the mesh through which the fishfolk have to pass. They are the ones who sort out the portion of flesh to be doled out to the higher sharks.

It is to them that the credit goes for making the bureaucracy and functioning of public undertakings so sneaky, lethargic and bloodsucking.

Tucked away in the form of a paper in some file, lost in a stack of its poor brethren, there lies the slip of some loan granted, passport application or some grievance.

And the puny, real babu becomes the drawer of lots.

Beyond the miseries of such corruption, which stalls the mundane destiny of common folks, there are summer flowers and a summer rainbow on this 25th of May.

The wind rose suddenly, hotly, around six in the evening. It had all the initials of a dust storm, but it did not cross the limits of its windiness.

Sun-baked leaves of trees, acacia pods and neem seeds, unripe and green, breezed down.

The sky then got overcast with dusty clouds for a few moments. It even appeared favourable for a few drops of rain.

But it was not to be so.

After all, such drops are just a tiny metaphor against the baking summer of North Indian plains.

The wind, however, had some coolness in it, a sign that it rained somewhere.

Clouds were then beaten away by the dusty sandstorm of the wind.

The sun dazzled from the northwest, and lo and behold, we had a glimpse—or rather a summer version of it—of a part of the beauty, the rainbow.

Just a lower part of its incomplete rim in the southeast, starting from the dusty, grey, wispy mass and ending over that part of the horizon.

There the beauty smiled from across the hot, dusty veil.

Below, in my father's plot of potted plants, a cream-coloured rose, bearing all the brunts of wind and sunrays, has blossomed for the last two days.

A thing of beauty indeed.

The Wells of Goodness: When Charity Becomes a Burden

 **Summer 2003**

Earlier, people drank water from rivers, ponds and, if lucky enough, got it from the wells.

Digging of a well was considered one of the greatest charitable works. So people from the trading community built sarais, dug up wells under groves of trees along country roads.

This one deed was thought to expiate thousands of little sins.

Even the wandering Banjaras, the homeless wanderers on the path of life, were not behind in this charitable deed.

Those were easy times when money was not the oxygen of life like it is now. People breathed easily. The times when pious intentions were not shackled by the monetary aspect of the matter at hand.

Whenever a son was born in a Banjara caravan, they did not move ahead before saluting the place by erecting a permanent source of quenching the thirst of travellers.

They would dig up a small well.

A pious deed indeed.

Beyond the wells and Banjaras, modern society is being pulled in the opposite directions of good deeds and bad deeds.

These are very tired, exhausted, needy days.

Need and its siblings! They glare like the second sun at you.

Then there are good people who, like little, little trees, try to provide shade to the ones lying under the merciless, scorching, baking glare of this life-sapping sun of needs.

These volunteers, driven by moral bearings and conscience, try to accommodate as many as possible under the fold of their healing and helpful shade.

But there is a limit to the number of deeds one can accommodate in the constant flow.

A good man can accommodate just a limited amount of goodness, for the unremitting threads—they become shackles after a period of time—which, over a period of time, find a man snared like a moth caught in the dangerous vice of spiderwebs.

And here the good man gets undone of the solace of his being, sticking to the fold of goodness in this ever-hurtling sea of self-interest, greed, selfishness, vices and many other negative things.

So, after a hundred good things, his resources and interests murmuring in dissent, he is forced to stand mute.

Let the wave of goodness bypass him, which makes it appear like a misdeed committed by him.

After repeated happenings of this sort, he becomes adapted to the things, becomes lethargic towards his passion, and apathy and gloom set in.

And ultimately loses himself in the sea of moral apathy.

Faith and Reason: The Blindness of Logic and the Eyesight of Compassion

 **2003**

God, or call it Goddess if you will.

God or Goddess being the cosmic constant, and faith its quotient.

The latter varies perilously.

It's a puzzling thing. The more mature, the more reasoning, the shakier become the foundations of faith.

With your intelligence and reasoning, you become less and less prepared for the mystical whispers of faith and miracle.

If some occurrence, which could have struck you as a miracle, thus strengthening the foundations of faith, comes your way, you want to, although half-heartedly, accept it as a hint of the design of divinity.

But the next instant, the modern, civilised, myth-and-mystical-busting knife of cold, hard and steely resolve of reasoning cuts through the soft, ascendant veil and lets you see suspiciously at the sun of logic.

Modern man, though he wants to believe—given his edifying, astringent, chaotic circumstances—yet his quotient is very poor, and the very same is plummeting down dangerously.

Maybe it will come down to the crashing of the divinity constant, the super-reason will chuckle infallibly.

What would it then mean to be totally faithless?

That would be sheer blindness.

People say faith is blind. But I maintain its upkeepers have the keenest, most nice and the clearest eyesight.

The sight of passion, compassion.

The clear sight of compassion, humanity, love and devotion.

Reason, they say, is the thing farthest from blindness. But its adherents are the blindest creatures on earth.

You adhere blindly to the steely logic of self-interest, even though you could have well borne a bit of light and let in the concept of this adage of self-interest, and not compromised in your bargaining with a poor, old, famished street hawker over five rupees and spoiled the deal.

You save yourself from the loss of five rupees, which doesn't mean almost anything.

It is, after all, the adherence to the ideology of self-interest rather than the prospect of losing five rupees which makes you blind to the pathetic condition of your fellow human being and robs him of the immense, incalculable satisfaction of striking his first distinctly profitable deal after entering the village.

Reason is thus the poisonous wall which incarcerates us, blinds us, insulates us from all the antidotes to the venom of self-interest.

Just imagine how the world will be when full of blind, venomous snakes.

The Hawker of Handmade Fans: The Fading Trade of Airy Comforts

 **2003**

The hand fans which used to be so handy during not-so-old days in the villages, when people would take them in their hands and start shaking to undo the summer-born sweating miseries.

We always wanted to put on airs.

It is necessary for the perspiring skin as well, or even more so necessary for the perspiring, suffocating inner self, full of vacuum containing elements of cravings, desires and needs.

So, across times, the common mortals have held handheld pieces to create airy ripples around their faces.

The kings had beautiful maids bearing whisks to freshen the air of sovereignty hovering lugubriously over their crowned heads.

The colonists had hand-pulled ones swaying from the ceiling to do the same, or to put away the whiff of filth-laden air of natives and their supposed diabolical entity.

Then came electricity. Electric fans with blades whizzed to do the very same for the entire planet.

But then, need is, and has become, or even will ever be, such a prominent feature of Earth that electricity is yet to reach the dark interiors of scores of habitations on the face of Mother Earth.

And where it is, the timing is yet to be brought up to the real existential level.

In the village streets, on bucolic and hot noons, there still wander poor, old, frail Muslims hawking their handmade airy conveniences made of natural fibres.

But clearly, electricity has dimmed the glimmer of the trade.

And the huge lacuna which could have been, and in fact has been so far, left by the real need and production of electricity, now of late is being filled by generators and inverters.

Out of the still slimmer chances of selling a piece, the majority chunk is eaten away to satisfy the merciless need of bargaining by the country womenfolk, who consider it a sovereign right to haggle in an otherwise male-dominated society, where occasional fistwork and abuses are not considered too much out of the norm.

So they stick to this right, wring out the last ounce.

Thus the poor man has to suffer.

He hawks in his piteous voice the gusty, sweating clouds of peril for his trade and prospects.

Light whorls are had.

His white beard sways to their command.

The larger command of a larger fan.