A message for my dear readers

 

With gratitude and love for all those who read my books. If not for these few lovely people, my pen would turn dry. It’s a pleasure to share my stories with you. Stay blessed.

Dear reader, it’s a beautiful world. If you are happy and joyful, this entire existence feels the same through you. If you exist on a plane of harmony and peace, you invite the entire cosmos to the same plane. When you smile, everything around you does the same. So be a joy-maker and see the beauty underlying everyone and everything around you.

Look out for beautiful souls around you. They are great in their simple ways. They are exceptional and unique even while they are part of the rutted routine. But they run this world and touch our lives in constructive ways that we hardly realise. As Charles Dickens says, ‘It's not possible to know how far the influence of an amiable honest-hearted duty-going man flies out into the world; but it’s very possible to know how it has touched one’s self in going by...’

Through my stories, I try to positively touch the lives of my dear readers. These stories deal with common people who try to stand proud in front of their own conscience. The rest of the life’s tale naturally follows from this point. As Thoreau sums it up so beautifully: ‘Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.’

I hope the time invested in reading these stories serves a good purpose for you. Your time is far more important than you ever imagined. Use it, don’t bruise it. As Thoreau says, ‘As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.’

As I write this, a rose in the garden has blossomed almost perfectly. It looks welcoming the entire cosmos, opening its scented petals with a welcoming embrace. This is what we call full flowering. Blossoming so much, opening its petals with such joy that disintegration and decay turn a mere soothing further step in one’s blossoming, in being alive. Once you open up fully, bloom totally and live completely, the scattering and disintegration turn meaningless. To be completely alive is beyond the duality of being and non-being. So blossom fully and live completely to perfection. Painless disintegration is possible only when you have used up all life force in blossoming full. 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. Like the petals of this perfectly blooming rose fly with majestic ease. 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 plane.

I hope my stories will add to your smiles. Let’s walk together as I share my little stories.

The Real 'Wrong'

 

Well, most of us commit our wrongs with a sense of duty, a sort of commitment, with a kind of frenzied sense of occupation. If not for this, so many of us will not be found ready, almost instinctively, to go the wrong way rather than volunteering to do something good. So, the ‘wrong’ seems to have its justification born of those perceived duties by the doer.

A hierarchy of sieving then decides not so common from the common-most crop. At the first level of filtration, the finest wire-mesh allows majority of the mob of wrongdoers trickle down into the dustbin of petty wrongs on the smallest stage closest to earth in crowded slums, stinking nullahs, mucking markets and laboring beehives, where the fight for survival saps most of the energy, leaving very little escapades, now and then, in the frustrated minds. The bigger, fat, rascally particles stay above on the screened, perforated platform and engage in higher wrongs on a more substantive stage.

Now, the second level of sieving takes place among the thicker rascal-heads, the bigger baddies, or the plumpier daddies of the trade. The holes in the wire-mesh are bigger than the previous one. A lot many foolish gallants topple down, so many die, get beaten, imprisoned and clobbered down to survive at the second tier of wrongdoing. They slide down the screening holes at the second tier and settle for bigger wrongs than the lowest mass. As expected, the still thicker ones get a chance to play the wrongdoing game at the next level. Here, the stakes are higher. The risks involved are bloody, but so are the returns, which hit the proportions of Himalayan jackpots.

To qualify to stay above the screening mesh at the third level, the thickheaded pebbles, veritable stones, quibble, use brain as well as brawn, and mostly utilize the muscle of the toppled down smaller particles at the level immediately below, and the ignorance of the ant-swarms at the bottom.

In this final sieving, the biggest mafias, cartels and powerful politicians stay afloat to rule at the apex. Now they decide what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. All other versions of right and wrong at the lower rungs lose their meaning. On the lower platforms, murders, rapes, felonies and thefts come to be mere stats in the law and order book. These are mere social problems and hardly matter as long as these don’t shake the foundations of the state, i.e., interests of the ones qualifying to be filtered at the highest sieve.

One can commit a murder on the lower rungs and still be considered a foolish nonmalignant element. However, if a sound brain, even in the frailest and most non-violent of a body, raises a verbal assault against the wrongdoers at the apex, he then becomes the most lethal anti-state, malignant criminal. The state is basically not bothered about the marketplace cacophony of petty criminalities like someone cutting somebody’s throat, or someone raping, plundering, beating or shouting abuses. These are local police station worthy petty, minor pardonable wrongdoings. These in fact are the cause of creating the bread and butter for a whole damn law-keeping department. The real ‘wrong’ is the ‘wrong’ that shakes the confidence, or throws light, or exposes, the machinations and stratagems of the biggest rascals at the top.

The Real Prison

 

You know what, institutions are the mammoth whirlpools, which suck individuals into their all powerful innards. By institutions, I mean the systematized, soulless machinery to achieve dark, power-hungry, ambitious motives—even though a lot many of them pass off as the needs to run the world. Such institutions come in the form of despots, dictators, mafia, corporate cartels, business magnates, hidden heavyweights pulling the strings, the intelligence and spy agencies, politicians, NGOs, and many more. These are the black holes that absorb their own light, hence keeping them hidden.

Those who operate there lose their souls, their sense of right and wrong, as a strange sense of ennui grips them, making them sleepwalking jombies. The institutional juggernaut reaps its crop, while the individual clogs, levers, pullies, nuts and bolts just perform their duties mechanically. Institutions have strange hypnotic powers to put vibrant hearts and independent minds on the chopping block to turn these into suitable mincemeat. The constituents operate like lifeless bottles on the conveyer belt in an assembly line in a factory.

Even the stones change, slowly though, to the cooing calls of varying seasons over decades. The institutions do not. They adapt though to the changing circumstances. However, the core philosophy stays the same. And long after the cog is retired, and regains a fraction of his soul, and sees the grease on his hands, only then he realizes what he has been through. Now he can listen to his heart. His mind now can help him see beyond the factory wall. It does not, but, change anything in the world. Nor it can even if the retired cog tries. All it gives is a guilty bruise to an ageing heart and a sad feeling that life could have been spent better beyond the walls of the institution.

Trimming the Hedge to Maintain the Power Center

 

Political extremists (both left and right) and religious fundamentalists try to change the masses for the worse. They play cards to cut down the people to a fraction of their potential and you have nice governable puny-heads. They serve meow meow for instant gratification. Hate, phobias, pseudo-greatness, anger and jealousy are very convenient tools to rob someone of sanity and get cast as a hallucinated pawn in the power game.

The power hungry—individuals, groups, political parties, governments and institutions—try to disempower the masses. It cannot be otherwise. The power pyramid has few strong characters at the apex and weak masses at the base. It can never be a square, having people of the same realized potential from top to the bottom. Those ambitious for power can never think of empowering the masses. In that case the pyramid loses its standing.

With pseudoism and populist rhetoric, they rob the masses of the balance of their judgment. Hate does it. It tilts you off the balance. You fall prey to a peculiar weakness. You become lesser of a human being. The power monger’s ambition draws on the peoples’ weakness of judgment. They try their best to keep the people nearsighted to tame them in a narrow sphere, with unrealized potential, from where the launch-pad of wisdom is too far. The biggest loss is when people tend to lose faith in love, peace and harmony as the mass-managed dark cloud of hate, anger and distrust builds up.

It draws votes for the power hungry. In the day to day life, however, it is paid in terms of racial attacks in America, brutal killings by Islamic extremists, attacks on Africans in India, and scores of incidences when people pick up hate and run after each other.

Quite ironically, power politics is just the butter churned out of the milk of social disharmony.

Corridors of Organized Hate where Love Suffers

 

Jimi Hendrix  says: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”

Well, it may appear too much to ask for. But aren’t the evil effects of love of power too evident to at least reconsider Jimi’s advice? More so because the corridors of power almost unerringly become the corridors of hate. The urge for power bears a directly proportional relation with breeding hate. Sadly, when hate becomes the mantra at the top, it is hardly possible to stop its cascade effect from creeping into the normal functioning of day to day life of the citizenry.

Deepak Chopra nails it completely: “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.”

Absolutely correct! Spiritually suffused leadership becomes a tool to work in the garden full of flowers for a fragrant humanity instead of stinking muck.

Cal Thomas maintains: “One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective, election and power are.”

Your humble brother thinks that is where the problem starts. By being power-centric you surrender a large portion of your compassionate self to feed the rapacious bug of ambition. The bigger problem is that you are able to let loose the waves of hate because you are in a position to influence.

Friedrich Nietzsche captures the grey shades of reality when he says: “All things are subject to interpretation and whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

So brothers and sisters, the functionaries of power end up suffering from a natural helplessness to fall in the trap of lies, conceit, falsification and what not.

Your humble brother is not inimically ill-willed against the agents of power-seeking brigade. You know there is a very thin line between one’s skill set and its honestly hardworked rewards on the one hand and the endeavor to use the same set of skills by using the disability and ignorance of the fellow human beings. The latter sadly turns an ambition into a profession called politics, which entitles the power hungry to climb the ladder for more and more glories. It’s never enough in the palace of power and politics. The misdirected self is ever dying to control the destinies of millions.

The leadership is churned out from a sleazy concoction of mudslinging, aspersion and whole lot of bull-shit. They have huffing and burning souls behind the smiling expression. It carries its momentum to the larger set of policies because more than what you are doing to make, you are focusing on breaking the opposition. You may think that by such broad generalization I am almost leaving the solution impossible. No. My only point of raising the issue of this typical political malady is to highlight the importance of more compassionate beings in leadership positions.

All we see in political systems world over is literally war-mongering among hateful brigades. Does violence and hate come so naturally to us? No, it doesn’t. It’s simply darkness in the absence of the lamp of love and compassion, which is facing furious winds as we raise storms with our stampede. In any case, I reserve my right to call a spade a spade and nurture my utopian dreams of an all-loving system because that is what we are destined for. So kindly allow me to crib over the spools of darkness formed due to the absence of the light of love!

Winning more than the Trophy

 

The Cricket world cup of 2019 will be known for many reasons that go beyond the prowess on the field. Real victories jump over the trophy, and there are many, just that one should have a humane heart to feel. My only congratulatory note to England cannot come out without this refrain: “How does it feel to be crowned champion when you actually know you haven't won?”

Well, even though New Zealand destroyed Indian march to the trophy, and thus earning the ire of millions of cricket-crazy fans, most of us supported New Zealand. The reason is simple: supporting the underdog comes instinctively to we humans. One more proof of our essentially loving self! Isn't it?

Destiny, silly cricketing rules and some umpiring goof-ups robbed New Zealand of a well deserved win. However, the heart’s domain is endless and here comes my verdict about the game: England wins trophy; New Zealand—more importantly—wins hearts!

Now the biggest take-away from the tournament! You need not be a rampaging bull, huffing and puffing with arrogance, to win at any cost. Nice guys can also win. The Kiwis played like gentleman. No hyperboles. Such composure is possible only if you take yourself to be a human first and a sports star later. They won the semifinals against one of the best teams in the world and went for a peaceful celebration with the people who matter to them. They are a product of a system that does not promote stardom over the basics of being good sportsperson. I salute their graceful walks and humble gestures as they moved back to the pavilion as the finalists. Imagine the rowdy show in case some other team had won the match!

Kane Williamson looks like a saint on hiatus from the hills, who has taken to sports for some time for the reasons best known to him only. A pleasant diversion, possibly. Whatever the reasons, it's but a treat to come across such graceful persona among hordes of mean machines designed to win at all costs. Grace in both winning and losing is what defines the basic framework of being a good sportsman, or being a good human, more importantly.

The New Zealand skipper is a saintly cricketer whose balanced demeanor teaches more than his terrific exploits both as a leader and player. His calm, bearded muse underplays the grit and dedication he brings in his boys. Winning is holistic. Apart from the trophy, we cannot ignore such gentlemanly gems. They are winsome trophies in their own regard. To me victory doesn't stop abruptly at the trophy. It's a big zone of marvelous takeaways, one such is Kane Williamson and his behavior on and off the field.

After the tragedy in the final, which will be retold time and again till cricketing eternity, the Kiwi skipper didn't try to garner laurels as a martyr, even though he had every right and most of us would have taken his bitter outpours with big bear-hugs of sympathy. The pinching tragedy could not produce even a single phrase of acrimony in him. Imagine how Indians, including our cricketing stars, would have reacted in a similar situation.

Dear Kane, you are the biggest star to all those whose eyes just don't look at the trophy only. Believe me, there are millions of such eyes that appreciate gentlemanly combat within the boundaries of grace and dignity. Better luck next time—if people can't still forget about the trophy. However, I am sure you are already past the temporary storm and walking on some lonely beach carrying that stoic, meditative muse.

So guys, Kane shows it's possible to win without flashy temper, angry tattoos, throwing abuses at the opponent even after hitting century and taking wickets, proud prowls like an extra terrestrial super-species, glitz, glamour, bla bla bla. His delicate smile pacifies many a storm.

Some ladoos for our team’s effort also. Don’t hate our cricketing team. If they go off the line sometimes, we should never forget that they are the product of the social system created by us. We make them starry-eyed Gods. So, of course, the poor guys slip sometimes, like the idiotic proclamations of womanizing exploits by two of them on a silly show hosted by a terribly chatty person.

Most importantly, give them the credit they deserve. Topping the table in a round robin league format, where each team plays against the rest of the participants, proves the meticulous level of performance. The knockout stage is basically dicey. You get some bad 45 minutes on the field and you are out. It doesn't tell anything about the team's ability. Just that New Zealand clicked at the right time. It was a great game of cricket. Well done India and congrats New Zealand! Oh, yea, well done England also!

Mining Gold from the Well-beaten Dust

 

Like he is looking for pomegranate seeds in a dung cake, he looks deep into the well of nostalgic memories. “What does August 15 mean to us? It only means that rains are almost over. A mark of change of seasons. Similarly, January 26 means the end of the real cold,” he gives his innocent, but immensely practical, interpretation of the Independence Day and the Republic Day.

And the anecdotes follow. His dim eyes are looking back to enliven some memories buried deep in the layers of his brain. Well, don’t most of the citizens of India feel that way, I wonder.

Nobody grew vegetables as a cash crop during those days. It was called dum kheti, named so after a caste legendarily popular for their leisure ways, who cringed away from physical labor and survived on singing folk ditties and smashing drums, and that too on rare occasions like when a son was born. In 1952, it was the old man’s family that sowed peas, and not just sowed the seeds but chartered a new path also.

They had a huge dung disposal pit, where they would dump basketfuls of dung taken out in the morning, as the buffaloes, bulls and cows defecated freely through the night, a faculty with the domesticated cattle in that they can continue eating through the night, letting out the waste from behind. And this faculty served as a manure factory during those simple times.

In the dung pit, they would pour bucketfuls of cattle urine. Over months and years, it turned into most fertile manure. There was hardly any artificial fertilizer during those days. As the pioneers of a new trend, they sowed peas. And not only introduced a new vegetable, they sowed the prospects of a new farming way.

“The pods grew this long!” he is indicating from the top of his middle finger to the lower half of the palm. It even comes as some crude gesture. Some peasants laugh. Even he himself gets conscious and makes it more polished. “The pods had 22 grains, can you believe it? I myself counted these! In fact, I learnt counting with those pod grains.”

“Sugarcane was as thick as this much,” he has sprawled his fingers and thumb in opposite directions to accommodate maximum girth. “And what did you need to grow the sweetest wonder? It was just human effort, manure from the dung pit, and sprinkling alkaline soil from the waste land outside the village. You just chew one sugarcane stick, drink water on the village well, take a bath in its cool water, and mind you, you had to run to your house to avoid dying of hunger.”        

He is then telling about the legendary wells in the farms. Their water was so sweet that you never missed sugar during those days. Then he is telling how everybody was so healthy, so healthy in fact, the healthiest of today would still fall short of the weakest of those times. He is telling of legendary strong bulls that pulled carts, which even a tractor would struggle with. He tells of buffaloes whose bursting udders would compete with a whole dairy’s output. He tells of mighty farmers who could pull a whole cartload by themselves, in case the bull went on its knees, and still pat the animal on its back as if it was their son who needed some help.

It seems the best is long past. Gone with the wind. Well, does it mean that we are on the path of regression? If not, why would every old man in each age die with such sweet, pining nostalgia?

The Times when almost everything was Pardoned

 

Old times had their own sweet sour charms. All it proves is that the world wasn’t too serious. Seriousness is the modern-day malady. Looking at the way things happened in the past, you just can’t afford to be judgmental. There might have been grossest wrongs. No justification for that of course. Nonetheless, the small takeaway was a casualness, a sort of relaxed attitude, which dispelled the clouds of seriousness. And mass hatred, the modern-day evil, institutionally instigated to reap benefits at a big scale, hardly found a place in such relaxed environments defined by the loose strands of casualness.

In the region where my parent state stands presently, there was this Nawab of Daulta near the present town of Beri. Well, the man was a religious enthusiast. He released even the murderers if they converted to Islam. So what do you say? Any lessons for the democratically crowned kings of the nationalist party? 

Then there was this communist chap, Prakash Singh Dujana. Even politics was simple during those bucolic days. He won’t think too much before proclaiming at the rally, “I need to convince only the Jat voters. The lower castes will come along by default like a street dogs comes with ticks on its ears.” Someone said, “You don’t have a single vote.” Our politician was one-eyed. Expertly and confidently, he pointed out someone in the audience similarly placed on the vision front, “There is my brother in half vision. He at least can’t ignore me through his single eye!” Then he realized another advantage and quipped, “Ten girls from my village have been married here. And they are very social and pleasing personalities. I have faith in them. They must be in a position to influence hundreds of men around!” Well, even with its sins, this politician appears less lethal than the modern-day avatars who rouse the rabble and fury of Knights on rampage. Is old always affable, almost to the extent of appearing gold, for every succeeding age?

There was then this old man. Travelling in his bullock cart at night, he would take long detours away from any type of light visible on the horizon. “This light attracts thugs, robbers and ruffians. This is not light. This is the path of sin,” he used to say. Well, he would have preferred to keep the whole world in darkness at nights. So cutely innocent! Isn’t it?

So those were the days, when the best to the worst were put in the same basket and weighed in the scale and valued at the same price. And nobody got unduly jittery. Those were the times of acceptance I suppose!

Not that I overlook the flaws lurking behind these crudely simplistic statements. There are hard, serrated edges of injustice as well. In hate and mockery it never was better or worse. It is the same world, just that older times appear more tolerant and forgiving than the present one in the simple fact that people then didn’t carry malice too deep in their hearts and quickly moved on with life. There were hardly any storms in tea cups over non-issues like present when minor things go out of control and shake our foundations. Well, in a forgiving society the risks are still less than a well-ordered, law-abiding, cynical, non-accepting and judgmental society. Old has always its lessons.

A Day on the Railway Platform in a Small Town

 

A superfast train rubles past without stopping, raising dust and many a wearied feather. Rub of iron on iron. Packs of migrant Bihari laborers with their families descend from a not so swanky, classy train that stops at this not so illustrious district centre. Small people, they look all the same in their smallness. They carry huge gunny sacks crammed with clothes, utensils, flour and rice—the bundle of dreams.

 Linesmen are busy working on a section of rails. Vibrating sounds of hammer striking the rails chime through the cool air. Red cloth banner set on the rails under repair, nearby a man in orange shirt, holding flags, red and green, is looking in both directions for trains on the rerouted spare tract in the centre.

Two students, going to Faridabad for exams, are passing time and beating youth’s over-exuberance through friendly mock-fighting. Jhelum express is late. One of them is blaming the other for setting out late. The hoot of a fast train is approaching. It's all rumbling iron. From the dense green foliage of the banyan by the platform number one, a squirrel is tik-tiking in some serious argument.

A short portly woman clad in a dirty sari approaches the students. One of them gives her a coin and asks her to pray that they reach on time. If they get late, he will find her out in the evening and will take all her collection as a punishment. She is assured of the crowd where she can escape into anonymity, and shakes her grey, untidy, unwashed bun of hair in consent.

 Platforms are a favorite place for those who have lost their minds—or who knows it is actually they who have regained theirs. A woman stares at a point for so long that you fear she will drill a hole in the ground. Smell of pakoras wafts with a pungent, oily fizz. The newspaper stall looks unburdened of its load of morning news. The stationary kiosk appears to seek students’ attention.

Under the base of the footbridge on the platform, a shoe-mender has his portion of the stomped world. Polish, wax bottles and soles define his boundary. A cargo train chugs past at a high speed that is surprising for her lethargic, old woman type bearing. The long trail of faded, beaten maroon cargo bogies raises a storm. Bored commuters, waiting for their passenger trains, look at it with jealousy.

 Life seems on a mysterious pause before hitting the rails. Those who stay on the platforms rarely take bath, unless they get drenched by the rains—clothes, sweat, mud, gripe, soot and all—leaving them more stinking than ever. A fat boy is standing, looking at everybody but still nobody in particular. They have their own world, those who have something to do with a bit dissimilar functioning of the brain. Shouldn't call it malfunctioning, but yea definitely it works differently, taking them into a special world, unseen to the stomping majority around.

 His bottom on a fertilizer sack-cloth and knees drawn up to his chest, a man is taking deep draughts at a beedi. He is aged well beyond his real years. Looks 60, but don't be surprised if he turns out to be just 40. Poverty seems to be in love with old age. His gaunt features have acquired an unsparing penetration, a hawkish tenor, like he will jump into criminality at the slightest instigation.

 And here she, he, o no he, she rather, both in fact, comes. Many a head turn. A boastful, proud hybrid, cocking a snook at the dirt cheap normalcy scattered around. The prince/princess of his/her world goes cherishing a peculiar freedom beyond confinements of gender and social roles. She/he has carefree air, walking and playing two roles at the same time. Both males and females look at him/her with a strange curiosity. He/she moves with manly swag and feminine coquettery. The only emotion it creates in males and females is plain curiosity, even some traces of derision.

Let's call him a he for convenience. He wears a see-through black, body-hugging top. His shoulders are masculine in the manner they sway and swing with each step. Arms are also long, like an attractive damsel’s curvy one, but these are drawn tightly with traces of worked on muscles. He holds them like a lady of grace. His chest is flat and would have passed off as a teenager boy’s prospects of a decent manhood. He wears black track-pants having orange flowers on both bums. His legs move in a feminine rhythm, in tempo with the swings of arms with elbows drawn in and forearms slanted out.

Look from behind and you may think a slim teenager girl is walking with a bit of teasing promiscuity opening its bud. The despos may even get aroused. He is dark. His hair is also cropped midway through the length and style of a boy and a girl. Unlike, many transgenders who jump into exaggerated tones of sounding and appearing feminine, he has left his natural identify as it is, right there in the twilight, no light no dark, no shame no fame, nonchalant, lukewarm, impassive and self-absorbed. He moves creating a wave like a snake-head creating a wavy ripple as it glides through the still waters of a lake. Most of them can't help staring, some even do with a mocking laughter.

 The mother is there. Sitting like all the soot and grime has polished her misery to the extent of bleaching her bones. Her kurta and long skirt are soiled beyond the parameters of color. Her dirty, torn at many places, dupatta is spread in front of her. A child, barely a year old, is lying by her side. It is playing with a plastic cup, nibbling at its edges, touching it with its legs, taking its tiny tongue out.

Wait, there is another baby, couple of months old at the most. It is packed, like it will stay safe during conveyance, only its face out to the big, intimidating world. It is crying. She has put a bottle of milk to its lips. It cries anyway. Don't think she has enough milk in her bosom. A group of smartly clad college girls passes. The one with a backpack of books takes a moment out to look at the unfortunate mother and adds to the coins on the torn duppatta.

 And life simply moves on like it is doing around the globe and further into the deeper recesses of the cosmos. There are parallel currents of agonies and ecstasies at all points and places. Learn to observe it closely and minutely. It enlarges the perspectives. It broadens the range of your emotions. It lights up many a shady areas from your being and drives away many assumptions and insecurities. It trains you to be an aware person. And awareness straightaway takes you very close to your real self. Those who are shaking hands with their true self have the best prospects of love, happiness, joy and contentment in life.

The Deadly Injured Mosquito

 

It’s the last week of August. Humidity tickles the nerves instead of the heat. The Monsoon is about to complete its trip. Once again, in this part of Haryana, it is leaving with lot many promises unfulfilled. Deficit rainfall is the norm here. In any case, the Monsoon hardly abides by the law of averages. It’s either too much or too less. Nature has, after all, lost its equanimity, its level-headedness. It’s irritated and grossly impulsive these days. The nature, I mean. And rightly so, for what wrong we haven’t done to her.

As the light peers through a humidity-soaked sky, I decide to make the most of this cool morning. Reading under the open overcast skies has its own charm. While the world gets up, yawns, stretches its arms, gets ready to dab into the birth-time energetic spirits to go jogging and exercising, I decide to pick up this nice book and use my time in the best suitable way I can think of, reading.

The light picks up from across the bluish dark curtain hung over the skies. A cool breeze is blowing. The invisible vestiges of the rain in the previous evening still loom in thin air. It appears like it stopped raining just five minutes back. The words and sentences have a lucid meaning. It is like writing on a clean slate. The brain, after all, is unclogged of extra garbage at this time.

The book is touching. The sentences fetch deeper meanings than they carry at any other time of the day. I read with a trace of smile on my lips. In fact, I feel like I am doing a holy deed early in the morning, like a sage officiating over yagna. I get attuned to the phenomenon of literature, which is nothing but one more effort to portray another aspect of truth from the endless space-time continuum of events and happenings.

If there were sages in ancient India, there were demons also, the fabled rakshasas, who threw meat and bones into the holy fires. They laughed with their deep, rumbling peals of mocking guffaws. An avid reader is the most a modern human can come close to be a rishi, sage, of ancient India. And the demons? Well, there are countless. In millions, and of course, billions. Mosquitoes. The carrier of death, fever, dengue, chicken guinea and what not.

They buzz with multiple layers of preening sounds that crawl over your skin, bruising and itching it long before it strikes with its bloodthirsty snout. They have ultrasonic precision. You feel the drone’s deadly hum from a distance before your eardrum alerts you to the hurtling missile in your direction. On top of that they are bloodthirsty. Who knows, all the demons of the past may have turned into mosquitoes of the present.

Here it drones to spoil my morning. Dengue-wallahs bite early in the morning, my alert system sends a warning against the poisoned missile. I see it then. A huge one, almost as big as a housefly. I’m sure it must have bullied a few houseflies on the way to its mission. The chopper’s buzzing wings cut across the chorus of chirping sparrows on the courtyard wall. In a panic mode, I take a swipe at it. Guess with what? With my book man. What better weapon a bookworm can arrange on such a short notice? The elegant piece of literature turning into a weapon of defense! The rascal deftly dives, enjoying the catapulting rolls in the swirls of air sent down by my papery weapon. Even a mosquito is too good for a book these days. Uffs.  

I jump from my chair, knowing fully well that it will surely succeed in its mission if I keep sitting. Still eager to keep the meanings in sentences clearer like before, I start walking and reading in leisurely circles, pacing up and down the courtyard, sure that the deadly projectile is ineffective against shifting objects. I even take consolation that now it is doubly beneficial, reading-cum-morning walk now it becomes. And here it is again. A super-mosquito, I recoil with fear. I see it just about to land on my hand decently holding the book. These are not the times of niceties after all. This time I see it clearly. It has the ill-famed black and white bands across its hull, the deadly enemy, the dengue one.

Reading takes a backseat and revenge starts. It is too big to get invisible into the cowardly mosquito anonymity in thin air. It has grown too big for its cowardly skin. Its confidence protrudes through its bubble-strong body. I track it to the end of the wall. While I strike it against the wall, the instinct stops me from using full force to avoid a dirty palm smeared with a crushed mosquito carcass. The hand moves with the agilest movement, but strikes with minimum force against the wall. Maybe I want to injure it critically and enjoy a slow death with no blood on my hands. It is too big to go into that last moment’s topsy-turvy dive to escape. And of course sometime you hit the nail on its head, hit the jackpot, win the lottery, get the best girl in the college and bla bla. Similarly, you hit your target, the mosquito, in the second attempt only. A great stroke of luck that should undo most of the miseries of life!

With the scared anticipation of a high school girl waiting for her result, I take away my palm. The feeling is worth winning a million in lottery. My trophy lies against the wall. Not crushed. The force is perfect to send the idiot into coma. One of its wings broken, the other jutting out, some legs broken, the rest swished together, its deadly snout projecting out as if in utter pain. What a sight! One of its antennas moves a bit, to make it icing on the cake that it isn’t instant death. I see the black and white checked pattern on its body. What a kill man! Can’t believe my luck early in the morning!

Well, if such a victory cannot make you happy, I doubt which huge achievement will turn you into a horse-grinned champion?

A Lollipop of Happiness for the Kid in you

 

All mundane moments lying around have their potential of happiness and joy. They are meaningless until you spot them. The moment you dispel their anonymity with your caring look, they turn into a huge treasure instantly, at least for the aesthetics-starved heart in the present times.

To me happiness is when everything is soaked in rain in the morning and the diligent newspaper boy hands you a copy of dry newspaper. You feel like proclaiming him a champion and yourself a lottery winner. You just grab your slightly damp copy—newsprint is so soft that it soaks some moisture from the air itself, so the delivery boy cannot help in this—like a prized possession.

Life is not about mountains of mighty triumphs. It's about tiny molehills of such small pleasures. Learn to be happy with scores of little, little strokes of luck that come your way on a daily basis. Simple mathematics is: At the end of the day, the sum total of our little fractions of luck is more than the big shitty stroke of bad luck. Appreciate your tiny sinews of luck, for they constitute the rope of your survival and sustenance. If not for them, things can go wrong in as many ways as the vastness of this universe.

The Sweet Feminine Push

 

Some sweet moments stand out from the dust of time on the well-trodden path even years down the line. They haven’t actually changed your life with a huge jolt, nor let loose a tsunami cascading down the corridors of your memory. Rather they are very small happenings whose smiling smell defies dying in the ever-crowding chambers of your brain. They are simply like some small wayside flower you came across and whose smile you retain with you as you waft through the turbulent sea of life.

One such moment stands out, its imprint as solid like any other substantial event of my life. The memory leaves me with a nostalgic smile. It happened more than a decade back when I used to lumber along the sea of humanity struggling to complete one more day in the behemoth that Delhi is. Delhi was changing and females were seen jostling in the struggle shoulder to shoulder with the men-folk.

A petrol pump and its female keepers womanning the oil machines! After guzzling fuel from the efficient hands of the sweet girl attendant, my cart, a very old battered car, won’t start, its battery gone weaker than the body. Embarrassed, sheepishly I looked around for help. Gracious heavens, two petrol attendant girls came manly—if we may say so, although given the men’s ways in Delhi, it’s no matter of pride to be manly—forward and pushed the old hag and its owner with such dignified force and refined purpose that my buffalo cart surrendered its obstinacy to the feminine purity of their purpose.

‘Salutes! We are a gender-neutral, vibrant nation-in-making now,’ my heart exulted with the starting jolts of the old engine. I looked back and there they were with a smile on their faces. The moment seems etched in stone in my memory chambers. Millions of chit-chatty things come and go and fall off like inconsequential flakes, some things but stay with you.

Take out such moments of life on some early winter day and relive those moments. As you smile with the recollection of those moments, and preferably sip ginger tea, you find life slightly better than before. And meaningful also. Happy winters guys! Or whatever the season when you happen to read this.

Flower and Snake caught in a Single Loop of Memory

 

Some moments just get etched in your memory. Their empowering aesthetics or intimidating impulses can still tickle the senses even a decade later. Such moments define life, make it momentous. These moments stand as the real milestones notifying the flow of invisible, unstoppable stream of time. Such moments stand out in two ways: a) raising your hair, jolting your senses and giving scary goosebumps; b) massaging your aesthetic senses in a way that you retain the touch almost throughout life. I can recall two such moments.

The first one occurred a decade back at the start of winters in Delhi. As the metro's first ladies-only coach eased its beautiful burden, I found myself walking down the stairs among a fragrant swarm of few dozen beautiful young ladies. Colorful woolens…Deo and perfume...grace and beauty. Smiling, chirpy flowers in the garden of life swaying to the teasing pulls of youth and exuberance. I felt like in a perfumery and walked sheepishly like a guilty black-bee in a garden.

It was really overpowering in a mysterious swathe of truth, beauty and love. I can still smell and see those moments as vividly as it happened a decade ago. Some moments just refuse to fade from your heart’s horizon. It somehow stands out as a memento of love, beauty, grace and freedom. The girls walking so confidently, carried by the morning verve taking them to their colleges and offices, the air redolent with empowerment, and those self-standing women on the path of carving their own destiny.

The second one still sees me swathed with swirling emotions of scared ecstasy, awe, plain fear and genuine appreciation, all at the same time: a real cocktail of emotions and feelings. Flashing the ultimate message that nature is neutral and has all the possibilities for our version of reality, truth and feelings. In a way, it means that it’s your cosmos, my cosmos, as much as anyone’s cosmos.

The moment stands erect almost a decade back on the highway of time. I saw two snakes mating. Not on TV guys but in real life in the cooing calls of the countryside solitude. Surrendered to slithery, coiled and hissing passion, their venomous stalking turned to submission. The kiss of death morphed into the kiss of love. Their fangs and poison took a backseat. Horrified initially, my shaken self felt the coiled fluidity of those two slithery bodies forming love loops. Shocking majesty! Ecstatic creeping! Those vivid images still crawl in my mind as if it’s happening now itself.

Well, everything is equally good, bad, neutral, passive and impassive to nature in isolation. Then we arrive on the scene and define the picture as per our knowledge, emotions, motivation and convenience.

On a parting note out of this memory, I can say with personal experience that love defines the empty canvas on which we paint our version of truth. The colors of love are the same for everyone. Just that we draw various panoramas with our individual perception.

Nostalgia: Virginal Sensation of Love

 

There are tiny specks of golden memories carrying far more nostalgic weightage than you can imagine. Use their rasping, filing power to smoothen the painful edges of a stressed self. Cumbersome memories have the tendency to dull the screen of your being, clouding your vision, making you feel lost. On the other hand, the incredibly fascinating anecdotes can actually help you in getting a firmer hold on your present.

The enchanting haze of nostalgia can wipe out the trace of many a pinching real-life fact plaguing your present. And then who knows you may even nurture fresh perspectives on life because looking with a detached musing self, you acquire a mystical objectivity of looking at things. The warm glow of lilting memories melts the iron hard blockages in the course of life. It has a tendency to spread the self. And spreading is freedom. Believe me! Try it!

Nostalgia is your seductive lover. It will pull you through the cloud of pain. It's a free lease to your loving self as it finds itself cramped for space due to chaotic present. The ephemeral notes of these disjointed anecdotes weave a sweet harmony. There is a malleable softness that titillates one's heart. It triggers a balmy effect, you smile, you get an installment of self-love. A loving nature is just the bonus you draw.

These moments stand out with an eternal calmness. It has a bouquet of emotions. You feel restful sadness and smiling gratitude for the things that came your way and laid the foundation for what you became later. It nurtures gratefulness.

You somehow find your ground with this thin cord relating you to what you were, showing a small milestone reached by you. It's beyond big bang events. They are your moments that refuge to be swashed down the drain. There is no logic why they stand out so prominently because on the surface they are almost inconsequential to your life's journey. These are simply the milestones on the highway of your march.

You simply cannot miss the exhilaration you feel as they tug at your sleeve with the innocence of a little child. Reciprocate. Smile back. Give them your finger to hold onto for some time. You will never feel losing something while you slow down to give them a hearing.

Slow notes of romance seize you. You become aware of a universal sense of mundane things. A few soft shades beat the vibrant, exaggerated colors of the present.

Such balmy moments never fail to give a smile to my lips. A deep sense of purpose surfaces. I quite interestingly find myself more humane and more loving after entertaining these small time guests.

The Matricidal Tale of the Biggest Sinner

 

The August rains wreak havoc across many parts of Asia, uprooting millions who stay closest to earth. These hapless masses, occupying just a tiny shelter and a few cattle, have hardly any role in robbing the pristine slopes of their natural armor and in corroding ecological immunity, still they suffer the most.

The behemoths, whose rapacious juggernaut rapes the natural resources, hardly get affected directly. The geography of a plush cocoon in a high-rise may save them, but the stinking, suffocating atmospherics of an asthmatic earth, with lungs hardly functioning without trees, will come to lay its evil, chuckling grip on their plump, neck-tied throats sooner or later. Let them have air-purifiers, as they may brag about it. How many times you will have your funny oxygen toy with you? Will you use it even while shitting and fucking? Well, if you do, then my dear poor plunderer let me remind you that you are nothing more than a caged bird. If you still have the heart to take your golden cage as the palace of freedom and liberty then please carry on. One more thing, terminal diseases hardly think twice before knocking at a thatched hut or an ivory-paneled palace.  

The naked, raped slopes cascade down, crying testimony to their rape and plunder. As they lose their space, they vanish with a silent curse, ‘Humans, even you will lose, cringe, fret and fight for mere inches of space!’ Aren’t we suffering with the curse, as we engage in wars over wastelands and pay mountains of money pooled over generations just to buy a few yards of space in congested urban ghettos?

The spiteful rivers shout the tale of mankind’s scourge. The dying rivers polluted with the illegitimate semen of our industrial plants, breathe their last with a muffled, choked curse, ‘Humans you will have to pay for every single drop of water!’ Aren’t we paying for water now? The grandest trees fall telling another tale of agony and tragedy, ‘Fools, you will have to pay for every breath to survive!’ Don’t worry, very soon clean air will claim a major portion of your savings in the cities. The glaciers fall with the majesty of grand old men killed by their own grandchildren out of criminal neglect. Many species become extinct, taking a final breath with a curse on the man and his kind. It’s mother earth’s big, loud, painful cry, you damn fools!

Mother earth’s lungs are burning. As the fresh, verdant, lively, life-giving woods get charred to lifeless ash, the mankind has taken one more step toward the inevitable doom. The lungs of earth, the Amazon forests, supplying 20% of the total oxygen to the mother planet, are turning to smoldering char and dead ash. Nobody seems to be bothered. It hardly qualifies as serious international news. The golden haired top-boss of the world and a small, plump Romeo, bursting at his skin’s seams, shaking hands to take a break from their respective follies pleasantly startles the planet. The message reaches everywhere from the hungriest bellies in the remotest hamlets in Africa to the well-fed rats in the gutters of the financial mega-hubs housing the dens of lies, conceits, exploits and plunder. But the lungs of mother planet burning and collapsing hardly qualifies to be a news-studio worthy beat.

The modern civilization appears to be too solution-oriented. Ironically, all these are mere solutions to its own self-crafted problems. So, the simple question is: why create so many problems in the first place? Can’t we have a simple model of development that doesn’t create problems primarily, thus saving us later from falling into a vicious circle of running after solutions? However, when you use your creativity and potential to find a solution to self-generated problems, instead of going back and rectifying the flawed model that led to the problems, you enter a futile circle where both solutions and problems compete against each other to create further problems.

Proud of its caliber and technological advancement, the modern civilization believes in grafts and transplants. It’s taken as the hallmark of scientific prowess. Isn’t it funny? I mean just having to pursue solutions for the follies that we are knowingly committing. It’s outrightly fatalistic. It just fights the evil-effects of the well-proposed and efficiently implemented policies and plans. Why doesn’t it just show innovation in being with the natural mechanisms that support human life? Why does it put all human potential in first deliberately destroying its overall home and then use institutions, NGOs, armies, research institutes, medicine, innovation and planning commissions to plan on a bigger scale to undo the self-inflicted harm? It is simply as fatalistic as a snake eating its own tail to survive. The poor thing assumes that it’s moving on the path of survival. Little does it realize, it’s progressing on the trail of its own annihilation.

So, as the news channels and those who matter waste their lungpower in school-boyish scuttles and slips, the pristine flora and fauna in the most luscious natural region of mother earth burns to lifeless ash. To the land-monger modern civilization, a clear patch is more important than a clump of trees. The issues of trees and environment are left for the future generations to handle as they deem it fit. Basically, we are showering the so-called parental love and care on our children just to leave them suffering in the concrete gas chambers a few decades down the line. There cannot be a graver and more shortsighted version of self-seeking love.

Fighting Sparrows and Broken Eggs

 

The hate in humans is being spilled over into the natural scheme of things. In non-human species, the natural instincts are adapting to the rulebook of the super-species. 

Cooling in the elixir of postmodernist glow?  There are deft strokes, steely lines and spools of songs about our achievements. However, there are pale beacons that beat the fog with their pallid but penetrating light.

The angelic, sacred balance defining the natural laws has been violated and warped. Something basically wrong has happened with nature during the present scandalous times.

Have you ever seen a sparrow couple fighting out with another, the latter having set up its nest, mated, laid eggs and waiting for hatching under the mother’s warm fur and father’s protective gaze? It does happen now. The force of human touch is too strong on nature. Everything is getting humanized. With due respect to the pardonable—beyond the realm of sin and piety—non-judgemental fight among innocently instinct-led lives in the animal and bird kingdoms, we can still brand it as the most gruesome attack on somebody’s home and hearth to fulfil the basest of a selfish motive.

They were furiously screeching and abusively chirping. Their beaks bit into the rivals’ fur mercilessly. Their little claws trying to gouge out the opponents’ eyes. Mind you, it had all human connotations. Their rumpled feathers and crumpled fur had all the elements of a bloody street fight among we humans. And what was it for? To grab the nest, of course.

Possibly the fact that the nest had the smell of human hand in making it had something to do with the things going nasty like among the supreme species of earth. It was a barn roof made of wooden rafters and stone slabs. The box made of plywood was attached to one of the rafters. It hung there with a broad look of TO LET for free at the uncemented, brick-laid floor below.

Earlier this transgressing couple hardly cared to look at the abandoned nest, vacant after the previous hatching, waiting for some laborious sparrow couple to sort out things for another cycle of home-making by the new entrants. Then a diligent couple arrived looking for a secure home. Finding the odour of long-left nestlings inimical to their pure, non-short-cutting instinct to procreate and preserve, they worked to bring it into order for a new homely start. Old bird-drops smitten sinews were thrown down piece by piece and new ones fixed for a brand new cosy interior. Then eggs were laid and the expectant moments for hatching started.

Now there was a fight at hand. Perhaps, it’s the modern day norm to destroy before getting on to the next step in the journey. The way they—the attacking couple, led by their hissing instinct which easily overpowered the much mellowed down parental defence—beat out the parents waiting for the fluid in their tiny eggs to form and shape into nestlings, made them condemnable as the rogue, brutish couple. Broken shells and scattered fluid on the ground for ant-feed provided testimony to the charge against them.

The winners knew that the mourning couple will take one more day to keep fussing around the site, so unashamedly they mated on a nearby tree, fully sure of their possession of the nest. The next day, they started flitting in and out of the grassy shelter, with spring in their flight and much mirth in their dives; making minor adjustments to the grabbed property to satisfy that primordial birdie instinct to make a new nest before drawing out procreative self’s best. Very cleverly, they made those minor adjustments; gave themselves a clean chit and life started again in the nest.

Why have even birds started taking short-cuts like humans, stepping over others’ toes in the selfish stampede, crushing others’ dreams to fulfil personal motives? Very intelligently the birds around the human world have also picked out a few paying lessons from our book of practicality.

Is love such an outlandish idea for the modern civilization?

2119 AD: An Alien Research on Earth's Ruins

 

I don’t intend to sound like a frustrated loudmouthed propagator of doomsday scenario. However, with our iron-fisted, hard approach, resulting in taming nature and subjugating other species, giving rise to a scenario when we humans are too many to be friends and in the consequent fear and suspicion we become enemies of each other, there seems to be a sure-shot possibility of crash-landing in a pit.

With love and emotions taking a backseat, and mechanization of human self gone full throttle, there is a possibility of the confrontation going out of control. The chances of peace plummet down. Then you can expect anything. With our steely nerves, we are more of the agents of destruction instead of creation. The things that we count as creation are nothing but desperate efforts to counterbalance our own previous follies. And solutions to follies themselves are no lesser follies.

Since mankind’s occupation of earth, by beating rest of the species through his main faculty, brain, everything has changed. Creaking carts with wooden wheels changed to spaceships. The acts of Gods came to be resolved as mere weather phenomena. Everything changed it seems. But there is an exception: happiness hasn’t increased and misery hasn’t come down. The latter in fact has soared up like never before.

In fact, modern man is far unhappy than the ancient one. Simple reason is the use of logic and science for creation and destruction at the same time. One step forward, one step backward: Life and death overlapping. Where will we go? The net result is zero. So we stand at the same place where we started from.

Medical research is doing wonders to beat mortality, overcome diseases, lessen pain and increase the quality of life. One step forward, accepted. But then the destructive face is no less on innovation. Nuclear weapons that can wipe out the entire earth, chemical weapons, missiles, warships, guns, bullets: many steps backward. You make deadliest weapons to take as many lives as possible. Then you contrive the best means to save lives through bullet-proofs, bunkers, shelters, helmets, surgeries and medicines.

Ease of life through modern utilities, one step forward of course. The consequent destruction of environment, multiple steps backward. The latter puts up innumerable challenges before mankind, thus necessitating further chains of remedial actions and innovations. The so called solutions to the problems turn out to be still bigger problems in the medium and long term. All this doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. It’s simply going nowhere.

It has been a plain, mindless hot-pursuit. Ever since we surged ahead on the path of civilization, it has been a rampant, mad rush to go ahead, at whatever cost. There has never been a civilized pause, a hiatus, a break to ponder over, to think about the costs we have paid: a calculating look back and around to evaluate future. All civilizations pushed for a relentless thrust, to march on, with full force, at whatever cost. Mind you, marching on and on, the storm, the fire, these cannot go forever. Such hot-pursuit and crazy race cannot sustain itself. It has to come to an end. It’s as per the laws of science. If you run forever, you will collapse. One has to take a pause somewhere to sustain the march.

The progress without a pause ends in a disaster. It simply isn’t sustainable. In genetically ingrained and socially ordained hot-pursuit, have we ever thought of devising the means of systemic pause and rest, for ourselves, for countries, for this planet itself? Only rest, peace, calm and love are sustainable, because these are not burning with the fiery energy. So before we continue rampantly and dive headlong into the abyss across the precipice, cannot we learn to devise civilizational pause, when this planet earth gets a holiday, for some time, its lungs getting a lease of life, its freshwater bodies getting lesser pollutants, its sickly body getting a sound sleep to help recovery and rejuvenation?

Just like we have carbon cut quotas, cannot we have population cut quotas? It will help. It will save earth from being inundated with human ant-swarms, who will ultimately eat the environment itself that sustains them. Cannot everything be slowed down at regular intervals to save the critically exponential stats from nose-diving into a deathtrap?

Long before a superior, antagonistic extra-territorial life overpowers us, or a rogue planet crashes into earth, or sun explodes, we will surely destroy ourselves before any such eventuality. And when that happens, some alien researchers will sigh with wonderment, looking at our ruins and archaeological remains, much like we marvel at the ruins of ancient human civilizations such as Harappa, Egypt and Babylon, and think and build hypothesis about the causes that brought about the downfall. 

Cancered Farmer and Beggared Peacock

 

With progress, we have created more miseries for countless human beings and other species than we have brought comfort to the few. The trophy of progress stands on a mountain of miseries. Just that we stare and clap at the shiny crown and take the rubble at the base merely as the cost of production and efficiency.

How I wish that our policies were directed by a collective sense of consideration and empathy. The world would have been materially advanced with far less suffering and far more happiness and joy. There is a tendency for a selfish task to go into regression after a point to start eating into the original cause it began with. Then you are not just a creator, you are basically fighting to ward off the evil effects of the heartless deeds. This is not progress. It’s a mere struggle. And struggles never get to happiness and joy. They rob the smile of your face. They turn you more prone to get angry.

I just need to look around the life in general in the countryside and see through the flimsy veil of progress and development. The birds are rapidly vanishing from my village. As tractors take angry mechanized burps, cattle bellow, buffaloes bray, still-remaining house sparrows tweet, still-surviving flocks of pigeons coo, irritated crows croak and pigs snort, the peacocks add their voice to the rustic humdrum. The peacocks scream. Is it a mating call or distressed cry of plight, I’m not sure.

I don’t think our national bird, occupying a lofty position in the rule book, likes humans as such. It’s a punishable offence to kill a peacock. But the killing should be direct, specific, with the proofs of blood and slaying visible on the spot. However, indirect killing, the slow killing over a period of time, in the form of loss of habitat and introduction of poisonous inputs in the farms, goes unpunished—as usually happens with slow crimes that unfold over a period of time, losing the track of offense and the perpetrators spreading over whole groups of society and institutions.  

The farmlands are poisoned. Nothing survives there except the mono-cultured crops of wheat and paddy. The peacocks risk their lives to enter the human habitation. It’s a forced migration. A feathered riot of colors, they are the latest beggars among the species who can no longer sustain for themselves and look to mankind for survival. The irony is, it is the same man who has grabbed their share from nature. But then the robber can very well impersonate as a philanthropist. It massages the conscience for a mushy-mushy feeling.

The peacocks look forward to get survival crumbs here. The nature is dying, so how will its offshoot, this feathered riot of colors, survive under the onslaught. They prefer to run on their paws in a forest. But that is perilous in a village street. Dogs chase them, cats stalk predatorily and urchins throw stones. So the peacocks with multi-hued splendor of their trains have to heave their huge feathering from roof-top to roof-top, looking out for grains and chapatti thrown by their enemy to salvage some punya from the basket of sins.

Their trumpeting peehoo goes vain like rest of the species’ role in making nature what it was and brought mankind to this level. The peacock even holds the copyright to the best of colors that we humans boast about in our designs and aesthetic portraits. But the poor thing doesn’t have the right to encash the royalty born of this copyright. Its metallic blue, bluish-green, iridescent greenish blue, bronze-green, black and copper markings and glossy green shading is no longer a wonder for the modern man. It does not create awe anymore. The long train made up of elongated upper-tail bearing colorful eyespots is just a pattern on a bird.

Whenever there is a chance for courtship, the train is raised into a fan and shaken to impress the females. Love in times of war. There are risks of being caught and preyed upon. At least the male attracts some iota of appreciation due to its colors. Poor peahens, on the other hand, with their greenish lower neck and dull brown plumage hardy get noticed. If there is a crumb to be thrown, people prefer the peacock and shoo away the unattractive female.

The land under cultivation, where they forage for grains, snakes, lizards and small rodents, is under poisonous assault. That land is no longer for them. In fact, it is not even for the farmers—in the medium term. With population blast, decreasing land-holdings, increasing costs and decreasing returns, the farmers delve deeper into their pockets to buy more killer pesticides and poisons. They just cannot afford to lose a crop. A season’s loss and their fates go down the drain. So the survival comes at huge costs of injecting insecticides, pesticides and weedicides.

The poison not only kills the small world that sustains birds like peacocks, it enters the ground water and goes into the food chain as well. The cases of cancer in the villages are on the rise. The numbers are far more than the cities ill-reputed for life-style diseases born of pollution and lack of physical activity. The farmers die of slow poison, dozens every year due to cancer in almost all the farming villages. The peacocks roam around the villages screaming ominously. It’s a gloomy shriek. The world is but too busy in short-term gains, even if it comes at the cost of slow, painful death some years down the line. 

You may call it an advanced world, but the evil effects of our hardened selves, shrunk hearts and ironed souls are too glaring to ignore. We may try to pass them off as mere throwaways in garbage dumps, but how long we will be successful in looking away? Let’s build a culture based on love that boosts healthy excellence, instead of unaesthetic competition that robs us of the best quality we have, conscious levels of love and consideration.