Musings on a rain-soaked day

 I walk far more than any ultra-marathon runner. In fact I beat all the runners combined in terms of walking and running. I walk with my mind. I walk on the legs of thoughts. They keep me on the busy highway. The other day, someone complained, 'You hardly go out these days, always busy with books!' Now how to tell that person that I'm always walking, walking in the mind. The best test is just to walk with legs only with the mind shut off. Because walking with both mind and legs can be very tiring. Walking on legs with positive feelings is somewhat better. But there was Krishna who walked on a blood smitten battlefield. He just walked on his legs. With no feelings and thoughts. What detachment! No wonder we worship him as a god now.

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Human mind is conditioned to hatch and plot more and more human-centric realities. Artificial intelligence and synthetic biology are the latest tools to further spread our intellectual wings and forge bigger realities. But ultimately the 'maker' will stand synonymous with the 'made'. Presently we can feel proud while looking at our products because they stand separate and lowly while we muse our our creations. But now there is a fundamental shift. The product isn't strictly outside our physiological body. The product is creeping inside us--into our neurons as artificial intelligence; into our cells as synthetic biology. We have been crazy about making something. And when there isn't anything left to make, we have started making a newer version of our own self. It's just like nature produced we humans on this tiny planet but got devoured by its product. Similarly the homosapiens will be gradually absorbed by a new product, a new species. Just evolution, maybe. So why worry. Make the most of it as one of the last real homosapiens generation on this small planet. Enjoy what life and mother nature has still to offer.

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Language is used in pursuance of intellectual truth, an edifice created by the mind on the basis of sense perception. It's a mere utility just like the birds have wings to fly. With words you can make a career at the most, be it any field. And intellectual truth is just a portion of the experiential truth which one feels in the moments of dissolving the self in beautiful nature where nature is cooing its real secrets through sighing winds, rippling brooks, waving trees, playing clouds, solitary valleys, wild flowers and more. 

The moment we really feel, not just theoretically because that again is mindwork, that thoughts and their end product, intellectual reality, is a mere sense perception based functionality, just like an ant's single-sense based craze to seek a grain of sugar, we take a quantum jump into higher dimension. We enter the dimension of experiential reality which again is a portion of the ultimate reality but it's far far bigger than the intellectual reality. It's a portal to the unknown.

From words to silence to unknown. It's just a matter of rise in consciousness. Words speak of something limited, something symbolically fixed to help us understand a tiny portion of existence around. Silence speaks, wordlessly, of its own self. Open yourself to it. It will embrace you in its maternal loving arms and transport you into a far bigger dimension. And obviously one feels better at an uncrowded place. Don't we feel better after coming to a peaceful hill station, leaving behind the hustle and bustle of bazaar and cities? In the same way our consciousness is also seeking avenues to a broader dimension, from intellectual to experiential, from materiality to immateriality. 

Happy be thy journey from noise to silence, from running (both in mind and body) to arriving home, from restlessness to perfect ease.

The last day of January

 

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

Lovebirds

 

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

January

 

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

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

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

The Shape of My Love

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

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

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

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

The last primitive kingdom

 

Far away from the Indian mainland in the watery expanses of the Bay of Bengal lies the last outpost of the prehistoric times. A tiny place where the world is still exactly as it was 50,000 years ago with a few minor exceptions. It’s a little island named North Sentinel Island, a little earthen dot in the lap of sea measuring 60 square kilometers in area with an approximately squarish outline. It’s inhabited by a prehistoric tribe called Sentinelese.

Let’s call it the Kingdom of Sentinelese. The prehistoric kingdom’s population is estimated to be about 50 to 200. Its seashore is roughly 50 meters wide. It’s bordered with littoral growth, which leads to a dense tropical evergreen forest. Its citizens are hunter-gatherers who use bows and arrows, collect seafood, wear bark strings on their handsome black nakedness and carry daggers in string waist-belts as a mark of confidence and courage. Their homes are poorly contrived huts having leaf-covered roofs. And in brush with the other-worldly civilization they scavenge for the metal pieces that wash ashore—to them it must be just like any other offering by father sea—to make tools, spears and metal-tipped arrows with these to go for hunting pigs on the land and making canoes for lagoon fishing. Imagine they must be thinking that the metal is a produce of the sea just like fish!

There is no clue about their language. It’s primarily based on lots of gesticulations, exclamations and body movements. They are happy in their world and aren’t interested in interacting with the outer world.

Their history, in our chronological terms, starts in 1771 when an East India Company’s hydrographic survey vessel, the Diligent, observed ‘a multitude of lights…upon the shore’. It happens to be the old civilization’s first brush with modern history.

Wars and battles are defined in proportion to the level of upheavals they carry for the geography, lifestyle and population of a particular place, region or country. So the tiny isolated place with its miniscule prehistoric population has a right to term its minute skirmishes with the outer world as wars and battles because they shake the very roots of their existence.

The Battle of October 1867: An Indian merchant vessel named Nineveh got stranded on a reef off the coast of the North Sentinel Island. The passengers and the crew landed on the prehistoric kingdom’s beach. On the third day as they lazily started their breakfast, there was an assault by a group of naked, short-haired, red-painted inhabitants. It was a confident breezy assault. The Sentinelese bowmen forced the ship’s captain to escape in a boat. The defeated head of the rival army was later rescued by a brig. The Royal Navy sent a rescue party. They took all the survivors on board. Thankfully the stranded crew had somehow managed to repel the attackers with sticks and stones. There were no fatal casualties on both sides apart from cuts, wounds and sore throats born of constant shouting and cuss words. As the civilized man departed from their primitive shores, the Sentinelese must have celebrated their first victory over the enemy coming from the wombs of the sea in their strange vessels.

The Assault of 1880: It was more organized and target-oriented encroachment by the outsiders. Andaman and Nicobar’s colonial administrator Naurice Vidal Portman—who had his own administrative reasons to scout the island falling within his jurisdiction—arrived on the shore with an armed group of convict-orderlies, Europeans and Andamanese trackers from other indigenous groups who had been brought under the yoke of ‘civilization’. It was big and a well-organized army this time. The islanders fled the scene. So that would go as a shameful defeat in the annals of their history. After days of futile search they caught an elderly man, woman and four children. So that accounts for the first mass kidnapping of its citizens—given their tiny population. Away from home and exposed to strange diseases, the elderly man and the woman died but the children somehow survived. The colonial administrator sent back the children with gifts from the other world. I’m sure strange myths and legends would have spun in the prehistoric kingdom based on what the children saw ‘outside’ and the things brought with them. Maybe certain stories, including strange Gods and demons based on these experiences, do the rounds among the tiny group. Or maybe the descendants of those returned children would claim more privileged status in the tribal society because their ancestors fought their way back from the enemy from the sea.

The Triumph of 1896: A convict escaped from the penal colony on the Great Andaman island using a makeshift raft. The lone runaway landed on the North Sentinelese beach. This time it was easy for the defending army. He was easily slayed. In the coming years they successfully accomplished arrow piercings and throat cutting with some odd convicts who landed on their shore by sheer bad luck. I’m sure the Sentinelese bowman whose arrows killed these unfortunate convicts must have claimed a heroic status in local myth and folklore.

In between, various British colonial administrators landed on the beach—not with the intention to rout and kill them altogether because had they wished it, it could have been done easily—with the purpose of academic research and a keen sense of curiosity, almost like searching for a new animal species in the forest. The prehistoric tribesmen would retreat into the inner parts after shooting arrows and making angry gesticulations. And when the research parties went back to the other part of the cosmos, i.e., the sea, they must have felt proud of their natural fortification and would have imagined that the enemy retreated because of the fear of their arrows and spears.

After independence, the Indian government declared the island a tribal reserve for anthropological research and studies. So they are protected under the Indian law. The Indian coast guard maintains an armed patrol to prohibit travel within three nautical miles off the prehistoric shores. During their protecting patrols, the Indian coast guards have taken photos of naked men aiming arrows at them. The kingdom of the Sentinelese have every reason to believe that they are continuously warding off the enemy with their sticks, stones, bows and spears who dare not come onshore to meet them in a battle. Well, isn’t our imagination bound by the extent of our knowledge? They must be having regular watch posts and parties to ward off the enemy who is their protectors in reality. If not for them there would be intruders and a little party with automatic weapons would destroy the prehistoric kingdom. But this assumption that their strict vigil parties keep the patrol parties away must have given rise to a rudimentary system of army, posts and watch parties. What a way to keep busy on the basis of imagined realities! We too are doing the same, by the way—at a bigger scale though. Who knows a far more advanced and evolved form of life somewhere in the cosmos has declared us to be a tiny reserve to protect us and watch with amusement all the savage antics going on our small place? The UFOs might actually be the space patrols—like the Indian navy patrols around the tiny island to protect it—to keep the intruders away. And just like the Sentinelese are happy in warding off the outsiders, we too are beating our chests with pride for having defended our place so bravely.  

The Battle of 1974: A National Geographic team approached the island to a make a documentary. The chief modus operandi was to give them gifts to earn their trust. As the motorboat broke through the surrounding barrier reef and entered their calm fishing lagoon, the Sentinelese advance guard launched a barrage of arrows. The crew but landed at a safe beach. They left behind an interesting assortment of gifts—a plastic toy car to catch the fancy of some prehistoric kid, a live pig to make their mouth water, a doll to raise the fancy of some little girl and aluminum cookware to tickle the kitchen nerves in a woman. They responded very wisely. They launched a fresh barrage of arrows. One of the arrows hit the documentary director in his thigh. The man who had hit the director proudly laughed from behind a tree. Others speared the pig and buried it with the doll. But they took away coconuts and kitchenware. God knows what will they do with the utensils! But it was a handsome victory. The Sentinelese bravado had once again saved the motherland. The brave man who had injured the enemy commander must have been given extra coconuts from the war booty that day. And these little-little victories against the small parties of outsiders must have acquired the bloody proportions of pitched battles won with lots of efforts and bravery. I’m glad that they aren’t aware of the million-strong armies, automatic guns, artillery, tanks, fighter jets and nuclear weapons. Our reality seems to be framed on the basis of what we ‘don’t’ know. 

The Arrival of a Friendly Alien: Famed anthropologist TN Pandit is known for his pioneer work among the indigenous tribal groups scattered over various islands in the Andaman and Nicobar. Many hitherto untouched tribals positively responded to his gentle, friendly touch. He slowly, silently crept into their little world and danced exuberantly with bare-breasted Jarawa tribe women. He acted as a scholarly bridge between the so-called civilized and the so-called primitive man. The untouched tribals would dance with him, take off his clothes, examine his anatomy to find similarities between the outsider and themselves. The Jarawas slowly got assimilated in the society. Then Jarawa women started giving birth to the babies of the settlers. They picked up clothes, dropped their bows and arrows (and their raw pride and freedom with it). Their raw dignity and freedom was gone. Many were turned into beggars or mere showpieces for the tourists to marvel at. But these are the spin-offs of modernity. The earth has to turn a mono-culture, and primitiveness chucked off from everywhere. But at least it is still preserved at a little island far off in the Bay of Bengal.

Mr Pandit led many academic attempts to connect with the Sentinelese between 1967 and 1991. He knew how to connect with the aborigines and had won the trust of many raw, animalistic tribes of the region. But the Sentinelese were the toughest to approach. They always wanted to retain their prehistoric ethos. Mr. Pandit made several friendly expeditions in the 1980s and early 1990s. Maybe the fair Kashmiri Pandit definitely carried some raw prehistoric fragrance in him which allowed him to win the trust of many other indigenous tribal groups. He would leave gifts on the shore. It was a shaky love-hate contact. Sometimes they would throw away the gifts into the sea, shouting, aiming arrows, flashing their genitals at the outsiders scanning them through telescopes from a distance. Sometimes they waved and took some of the gifts, leaving the rest untouched. Sometimes they turned their backs to show a defecating gesture. It was a kind of no-welcome gesture; maybe a type of message that we take a dump on your civilized society. Sometimes they would start swaying their penises, as if proclaiming their utter freedom, thus challenging the civilized man to do the same.

Then arrived the first soft brace of the old with the new on January 4, 1991. Perhaps it would go down as the ancient society’s brief truce with the enemy. The first touch! Very tentative though. A young woman named Madhumala Chattopadhyay was part of the scholarly expedition. Maybe they found a woman’s presence assuring. She seemed to have convinced them that there was no danger. As a symbol of ceasefire, a Sentinelese woman fighter pushed her arrow down on the beach sand. A man followed by burying his weapon on the beach as a symbolic gesture of holding fire. They approached the scholarly party without their weapons. Coconuts were distributed hand-to-hand, the outsiders in their boat and the islanders in the sea walking towards the boat in neck deep waters. It turned a gift, not a charity throwaway like earlier. Maybe Mr Pandit and Ms Madhumala appeared to them having saintly touch. The islanders must have named them favorably as some reincarnation of their deities. Further expeditions without Mr Pandit were not met with friendly bearing. Maybe they still remember Mr Pandit as a kindly man from across the seas. Then the government of India closed all voluntary approach methods to reach out to the islanders, leaving them in peace to preserve their prehistoric ways. The Sentinelese army must be basking in pride for having finally defeated the enemy from the waters because they no longer bother them.  

The Sentinelese must have a name for their world, for their kingdom. That isn’t known to us. But for our convenience, an official surveying party fixed a stone tablet on a disused stone hearth to declare it a part of India. Maybe a far more intelligent and developed life form has left a similar tablet claiming earth as its territory, while all of us quibble on the small place like the Sentinelese must be doing, thinking that their existence and survival is guaranteed because they can fight with their arrows. While in reality maybe we are merely left as a little prehistoric dot of earth for academic amusement and anthropological studies by a far-far advanced life-form.

The Sentinelese Expedition to Explore the Outside World (1981): On August 2, 1981, a cargo-ship named MV Primrose laden with chickenfeed from Bangladesh and bound for Australia ran aground off the island. After a few days the captain gave a distress call for firearms. It was the first organized takeover attempt of an enemy object by the prehistoric tribe. About fifty islanders prepared their boats to take over the ship. They launched the attack. Luckily strong winds deflected their arrows and prevented their canoes from reaching the ship. The thirty-one member crew held off the invaders with axes, pipes, flare guns and lots of cuss words and abuses which come very handy during wartimes. A civilian helicopter evacuated them after a week. The tribal army must have felt jubilant seeing the enemy flying away scared of their arrows in their strange vehicle. The shipwreck lay about 90 meters from the shore. Of course now it was a war booty item for the aborigines. They triumphantly got onto the abandoned vessel and scoured it for metal pieces to upgrade the next version of weaponry for their modern army, the metal-tipped arrows and spears. Far away in the outside world, a dealer won a contract to dismantle the ship. This work would last for about 18 months. Maybe at this period of time, the Sentinelese army was led by their bravest general so far. He must have acquired cult proportion in the society because under him they were going out to face the enemy instead of defending from their fortress. Two or three days after the work began, at low tide, the contractor saw three canoes bearing around twelve Sentinelese brave-hearts about fifty feet from the shipwreck. He offered truce over the war booty. As a signal of adjusting their claim on the vessel, which they thought to have won after a battle, he offered them bananas. The brave soldiers accepted the tribute of submission and came onboard and began to take what they thought they had won after the last battle—the smallest pieces of metal scrap to modernize their army, leaving the rest for the enemy from the sea. They visited twice or thrice every month while the dismantling work progressed.

The Doomsday of 2004 (Tsunami): It must have been their day of pralaya when the existence burst and a new phase started after it. There were tectonic changes to the island. It got enlarged after merger with small islands. The sea floor got raised by 1.5 meters. The coral reefs were exposed to the air, thus destroying their fishing lagoons. The government of India carried out aerial expeditions to provide help and assess their casualties. There must have been deaths for sure but many had survived as viewed from the flying choppers. But the survivors turned hostile and aimed arrows at the reconnoitering helicopters. I think they imagined this catastrophe as the handiwork of the enemy from the sea, who having failed in all its earlier attempts to defeat them now launched some watery attack to annihilate them.

Taking Revenge on the Enemy Soldiers (2006): A fishing boat carrying two Indian fishermen drifted off into the shallows near the Sentinelese kingdom. They were killed, their bodies put on stakes facing the sea. It was a stronger message for the enemy. They must have thought that the enemy was trying to snoop on their debilitated strength after the Tsunami strike. A helicopter sent to take away the bodies was pelted with arrows. They won’t take any chance with the enemy anymore.

The War against Organized Religion (2018): Chau, a trained American Christian missionary, entered the prehistoric kingdom illegally without any permit from the kingdom’s unseen protector, the state of India. He paid money to the local fishermen to take him 500-700 meters off the Sentinelese coast and then continued alone in a canoe. On his first approach he received a hostile reaction to his gifts. As his diaries would later elaborate, another time they received him with a ‘mixture of amusement, bewilderment and hostility’. He sang worship songs and tried to converse with them in Xhoba (some basic tribal language spoken among the so-called civilized tribes in the Andaman and Nicobar group). They would giggle, and made high-pitched sounds and gestures. His last letter says that when he tried to give fish and other gifts, a boy shot a metal-headed arrow which pierced the Bible he was holding in front of his chest. What a clear statement! We aren’t for any organized religion here! The fishermen looking from a distance last saw his body being dragged on the shore. An attempt to retrieve his body was aborted. I think the graves of the few people like him must be serving as the proof of the annihilation of the enemy who came to conquer them.

This is the history of the last prehistoric kingdom on the earth. I think that’s how myths, histories and legends develop at a larger scale as well on the earth in its various parts. Our assumed reality seems to be framed by our ignorance.

Touch

 

I remember a talk I had with an elderly American Buddhist woman at Mcleodganj many years ago. A very ardent follower of Buddhism she had spent decades in India. The outer bearing, including the religious clothes, was pretty impressive. But she looked very stiff, cautious, even stern. I felt it was like someone going on the fathomless path with lots of calculations; following the principleless path with lots of principles. She stiffened even more as we shook hands. I could feel it clearly. It was a wooden hand that I held. I tried to convince myself of the loftiness of her soul because she had been on the formal path of religion for so long. But I couldn’t feel the warmth, kindness and smile in her persona. Maybe these emanated and I was too coarse or not sensitive enough to feel that.

I can still clearly remember the glint of pride in her eyes when she told me that she had spent years in sadhna and had been a celibate since the age of forty-five. She had spent a few years at Pune as well. The mention of Pune instantly brought great Osho to my mind. ‘So did you stay at Osho commune at Pune?’ I asked innocently. She recoiled with horror as if it was an insult to her hardcore, austere tapasya. She shook her hands and head in a vehement ‘no’ as if staying at Osho’s place would have meant a sin. O thou great Osho, misinterpreted so much for all your elaboration of the naked truth as a means to nail down the illusions! Before mentioning Osho I should have remembered that she had been a celibate for at least two and half decades. It was the crest jewel of her path of renunciation. But the great Osho accepted the presence of sex in the human body and talked of its transformation instead of suppression for everlasting joy. So no wonder the celibate sadhak jumped like a rocket at the mention of Osho.

Well, sex or no sex, if you turn wooden and suspicious even at the age of seventy by the touch of a man of the age of your son, it simply means you have missed a crucial link to liberation. If the suppression of sex has stiffened you, made you austere, not given you a genuine smile, sweetness of temperament or ease of being then one may need to revise the fundamentals of one’s faith.

In contrast I remember a woman from a neighboring village. A very beautiful peasant woman famed for her illustrious beauty and untamed sense of freedom regarding the basic instincts. The lore of her beauty and its exciting spin-offs had reached my ears. There were far more happy and joyful men, and very few jealous ones, having shared the unbridled sense of feminine charms flowing from her persona. There was a joke that she would occupy the best chambers in heaven for having made so many men happy.

Mother usually won’t allow us to go to the fields, taking all the responsibilities on herself. We the pampered ones had the easiest task in the world—studies. Mother must not have been feeling well that day; otherwise I won’t have been there in the fields to get fodder. I was struggling to load the bale of fodder on my bike and failing at it miserably with my bookish hands. The beautiful peasant woman knew me because we shared fields across the village boundary. She walked quickly from a distance. That was the first time I saw her from close quarters. Her famed beauty was no exaggeration. She came smilingly and with a singular effort put the heavy fodder bale on the bike and tied it firmly without even putting the littlest strain on her face. What strength! She must have heard about my bookish ways. ‘These soft hands aren’t for such rough work masterji!’ she took my hand in her rough, peasant woman hands. I will never forget that touch. It was humane, strong, kind, palpable, supportive and understanding. And that friendly smile. And that naughty glint in the eyes. Beautiful was that color of mellowness and acceptance of life in its basic terms on her face. Wonderful was that strength of character in her strong farming hands. ‘And this is the woman the critics malign so much for her sexuality!’ I thought. Shyly I thanked her. She laughed and walked away to continue with her work.

The wooden touch and a full of life, sympathetic touch! The sum and summary is that beyond the debate of sex or no sex, it’s the warmth of our touch, the kindness in our eyes, an accepting smile on our lips that’s more important. If celibacy leaves you wooden and stiff in the old age then I don’t think the Gods would love you for that. And if full compliance with the basic instinct gives you a kind heart, genuine smile and ease of being then the Gods won’t hate you for that.

Since we are talking about the touch of hands, it won’t be misplaced to mention His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s touch. When you hold His hand it seems the softest like a new-born baby. You don’t feel the slightest rigidity, tension, dis-ease or stiffness. It’s almost like a soft brush that a gentle breeze has with a rose petal. You feel divinity in that soft touch. Long live His Holiness!

Men have failed this world

 

It’s an angrier world than ever. There are wars, violence, blood and gore. A very insecure world it is. Trust is falling apart. Faith lies sidelined and charlatans misuse trust and belief for parochial motives. The states are arming themselves with more and more deadly weaponry. There is a stampede for supremacy and one-upmanship.

Violence has been deeply institutionalized in the society. The states, intelligence agencies, shadowy players, business mafias, cartels, religious fanatics and many other actors have been covertly and overtly using institutionalized violence to further their interests.

Its effects can be seen in the society. Relationships are falling apart. The people are lonely and depressed. It’s a very unhappy world. And a very dangerous spin-off surfaces: the individualization of violence. The stand-alone shooter mired in his lonely, unrelated world. Someone marooned on the island of pain. He too launches a war, goes out with a sophisticated weapon and shoots innocent people out there for mundane activities of life.

There is so much collective mistrust, hate and insecurity around. The lonely individual absorbs his share of fear, phobias and suffering from the air around. Then he goes for a blast. It’s a culture of arms. Imagine sophisticated weapons in the hands of lonely, anguished, depressed individuals. An unarmed depressed man might go for verbal assaults or fist-work at the most. If you are equipping him with sophisticated armory, you are providing predatory talons to his lonely suffering and anger. Isn’t it an aid in crime? Give back his faith and love in humanity that he has lost, not arms.

The arms industry is running the world. They are the ones who finally decide which country gets bombarded or whose innocent blood is shed in which part of the world. They are very dangerous people. The lethal-most traders they are. To them an ant squashed or a human murdered hardly makes any difference. They are sadistically addicted to blood and gore. It’s simply business. Commerce. To sell more grains you need more hungry bellies. To sell more weapons you need more wars and murders. And a violent society serves their purpose well. A violent society will have more violent leadership. There will be more wars, more blood, more butchering. So they are happy with the scenario of lonely, depressed human hunters.

Ironically, we started as hunters of other species. Now hardly anything is left to hunt in the jungles. So we are hunting our fellow humans—just for the sheer mad fun of it. Nobody is safe anywhere on the earth. Anyone can be killed by anybody over anything in any part of the world.

Is there any chance of redemption? The scenario is very bleak but there is a slim chance. Almost hundred out of hundred mass shooters, bloodthirsty dictators, warmongering leaders, fanatical religious heads, mafias and other evil incarnate are men. The statistical truth is we ‘men’ have failed in managing our mother earth. So let’s try with ‘women’ for a change. Let’s have more and more women in leadership positions. Yes, it will be a far more chatty and gossipy world but that is still better than blood and carnage that we see around.

Love-struck, dancing birds

Have you seen beautiful, colorful birds courting their lady love? They dance, spread their amazing wings, flick tails in fabulous patterns and let out the best of vocals to attract and woo their lady love. With a negligible exception, it’s the males who go into a great eye-catching show in courting the females. There is a thrower of charms and there is a receiver of those charms. So much for the scheme of this polarity!

That amazing range of play-acted maneuvers (under the impulse of hormonal throw of energy) is not what the male persona is under ordinary circumstances. The show of romantic heroism is an exception; just an ecstatic throw of mood and attitude to catch the female’s attention. These are momentary sprouts. They don’t define the normal traits of a common bird in its day-to-day life. For the rest of the time they are simple birds, doing normal things just like any other bird of the species. And I don’t think the female birds mind that. They are lucky that they don’t have memory like women to remember all this dancing.

The restless male energy is always looking for rest in the silent pools of receptive female energy. She too is looking for the wearied runner to walk home and rest in her receptive folds. It gives a meaning to her life. It fulfills her. It saves her from the restless void, the procreative emptiness brimming with the potential to manifest and create new life forms.

There is hardly any difference between a colorful bird pirouetting in dandy mode using the tail and wings and singing best songs and a man wooing a woman. At the peak of hormonal storm, he jumps to fulfill all the columns of female expectations. That’s natural. But that’s not what he is in the normal state. He is a normal guy otherwise.

Under the patriarchal system, the man has convinced himself to be far superior to the woman. It’s factually very-very incorrect. There is a deep-seated acceptance of his inferiority and to cover that the system of patriarchy was built up. And to justify his patriarchy construct, he is trying his best to fit in the chauvinistic slot from as many angles as possible. When he covets a woman and goes into the process of wooing her, he adopts an emergency ploy to appear the best in all slots. He is helpless and it’s all about bright colors, bright dance, bright song, best attitude, best look, best behavior, best hobbies and much-much more. Truth and genuineness take a backseat. Falsehoods creep in long before we even realize. And where falsehoods creep in, miseries entail in good measure.

O thou poor dancing bird and the still poorer man! But a lady bird can be duped. The dandy can afford to be normal after the deed is done. But not so with a woman. She has a brain and a nice memory. She remembers the entire range of colorful somersaults that you have been doing to get her hand. And that becomes her benchmark to assess you. Now how long you will maintain the crest of your best version? Of course you will come down to a normal self as the fever comes down. Then you appear such a poor guy, almost a cheater who pretended to be what he isn’t usually. I think a woman can be more forgiving if she accepts that the poor guy was simply doing a wooing dance like a bird in the Amazon forest. He is simply throwing his message to have a partner. The content of the message isn’t what he is in reality. It’s just a catchy title to draw attention, like an eye-catching book title and its cover. The title might appear attractive but the story is usually mundane, very-very common.

The bird cannot be dancing forever at the best of its colors and the best of songs. Naturally it will become a common bird after the energetic storm is over. The beautiful parrot turns a boring crow. But brother, why did you try to be what you are not. You gave your best in wooing her and that raised the bar of her expectations. And expectations breed disappointments. She expects you to be the very same beautifully cooing and majestically dancing parrot. She is right in sulking over the dull crow cawing boringly by her side. 

The irony is that we get habituated to take the wooing dance as the primary characteristics in an individual, i.e., we take the catchy title as the story itself. Isn’t that a mistake? The excitement and thrill that one gets out of the bird dance is addictive in nature. We need to learn to be comfortable with normal people around us. We need to give respect and love to the ordinary humanity. Sadly we hold high expectations from people. To fulfill those heavy expectations he is all valor, grace, dignity, bravery, stability, unqualified giving and masculine handsomeness; and she is all receptivity, feminine grace, support, acceptance, care and share—both sides trying their best. Effort beyond a limit breeds artificiality. This artificiality then ends up in stumping each other. After all, how long will one keep jumping at his/her best? Ultimately we have to get grounded. The boring normalcy sets in. The dreams vanish. The colors fade. The songs turn to ugly croakings. Angels turn to dark angels. Then both sides part ways; look for new partners, expecting the thrill of wooing exception to be the everlasting normal. No wonder most of us are a series of broken relationships.

That’s why it’s advisable to be just normal, the real self, even during the phase of courting a partner. Stay as you normally are. Honesty is a highly undervalued trait in the modern society. But primarily it’s the sole trait that decides whether we are carried as a miserable junk into the cemetery or a peaceful corpse looking at whom not many people get scared. I remember the face my mother after she had left her body. She looked angelic and so beautiful in her eternal sleep.

If someone accepts you with your dull colors, weird dancing and funny songs that relationship has a better chance of survival for a longer time. Truth always serves well in the long term. It may appear to let us down in the short term, giving us little-little disappointments and let downs. But it saves us from major collapses in the long term.

One may wonder why this guy is preaching about relationships. Yours truly tries to speak from his own experiences. Experiential knowledge is very near to truth. I did my own set of fabulous dancing for seven years—just once in life and with one person only. I can feel myself almost boasting about the fact. It simply means I have to clear more webs from around my eyes to see more clearly. It’s wise to learn from one’s experience.

Using my creativity I built up a grandiose avatar, almost like a shining angel, and became the crowning prince in her big eyes. In flying too high I burnt my wings. So couldn’t afford to fly anymore after seven years. When I landed on the plane of normalcy, she felt cheated on witnessing my normal colors and mundane songs; her dreams broken, her shining angel merely a common person like anyone around, no longer able to maintain her beautiful dream. There was a normal crow cawing around her. But I’m happy that these are the days of women empowerment. She was confident, self-standing and glamorous, with a smile to kill and eyes that could intoxicate a dozen men with a single glance. No wonder, I saw her flying away with a beautiful swan that was flying in the seventh heaven to fill up the slots of her expectations. ‘You idiot, you too will fall one day!’ I cawed from the ground. Even as a self-believed spiritualist I am happy that he too fell within a couple of years. I take it as a mark of victory for having flown more than him. I’m not bothered about other men but at least I viewed him as a rival.

Normal cawing has its own benefits. It taught me poetry. There were emotional storms in the tea-cup, which I amply cashed by forcibly trying to be philosophical in nature. Lost love, or for that matter any type of loss, is invisibly preparing you for many other gains in many forms. There comes a day when you actually feel gratitude for those losses in shaping what you later became. You realize that those losses were meant to make you what you are today. So I respect the past without any grudges, but I’m far happier with my present and give due credit to all the experiences I went through.

I also realized that maybe I had punched far-far above my weight in wooing and actually winning her. But how long you will keep the arena clear of rivals if the girl is such a head turner that there are at least a dozen men dancing to her tunes with their tongues out? To match her big aura I too had acquired larger dimensions like a porcupine spreading its thorns to look more imposing. All said, as a man I take full responsibility for creating those expectations. And as Buddha said expectations breed sufferings—at one end at least, if not both. Most importantly, I’m happy for her. Why should men have all the fun? The women have been subjugated for too long and they have lots to cover up in enjoyment and normal fun which we the men have enjoyed so far.

Thankfully, I seem to have spent all the wooing fuel in one go. Wise people don’t need to repeat the same experience to get the same lesson again and again. As far as beautiful girls are concerned, I am able to impersonally appreciate them like a flower, with a pleasant detachment. I connect more to old women with their motherly aura and saintly faces carrying the majestic wrinkles of age. Maybe losing my mother is a far bigger weight on my soul than losing the woman I loved.

These days, while watching the colorful birds dancing and singing in the documentaries to woo their ladies I become very conscious, even embarrassed. I cannot blame them. All of us are birds in the same way. But I always wag my admonishing finger and mutter, ‘Son, take care! You will have to pay for this!’

And now on a serious note. Retain your simple colors, ordinary steps and normal songs while wooing a partner. If he or she accepts you with your normal stuff that’s well and good. If not, give it a damn and laugh at all the artificially jumping love-birds—ranging from the birds in documentaries to the people around you—and go giggling about this funny game. 

Humanity's future

 That's how AI driven society will operate ... It will be factually correct but the bear of mechanisation and automation will eat the real human.

Dancing birds

 

Have you seen beautiful, colorful birds courting their lady love? They dance, spread their amazing wings, flick tails in fabulous patterns and let out the best of vocals to attract and woo their lady love. With a negligible exception, it’s the males who go into a great eye-catching show in courting the females. There is a thrower of charms and there is a receiver of those charms. So much for the scheme of this polarity!

That amazing range of play-acted maneuvers (under the impulse of hormonal throw of energy) is not what the male persona is under ordinary circumstances. The show of romantic heroism is an exception; just an ecstatic throw of mood and attitude to catch the female’s attention. These are momentary sprouts. They don’t define the normal traits of a common bird in its day-to-day life. For the rest of the time they are simple birds, doing normal things just like any other bird of the species. And I don’t think the female birds mind that. They are lucky that they don’t have memory like women to remember all this dancing.

The restless male energy is always looking for rest in the silent pools of receptive female energy. She too is looking for the wearied runner to walk home and rest in her receptive folds. It gives a meaning to her life. It fulfills her. It saves her from the restless void, the procreative emptiness brimming with the potential to manifest and create new life forms.

There is hardly any difference between a colorful bird pirouetting in dandy mode using the tail and wings and singing best songs and a man wooing a woman. At the peak of hormonal storm, he jumps to fulfill all the columns of female expectations. That’s natural. But that’s not what he is in the normal state. He is a normal guy otherwise.

Under the patriarchal system, the man has convinced himself to be far superior to the woman. It’s factually very-very incorrect. There is a deep-seated acceptance of his inferiority and to cover that the system of patriarchy was built up. And to justify his patriarchy construct, he is trying his best to fit in the chauvinistic slot from as many angles as possible. When he covets a woman and goes into the process of wooing her, he adopts an emergency ploy to appear the best in all slots. He is helpless and it’s all about bright colors, bright dance, bright song, best attitude, best look, best behavior, best hobbies and much-much more. Truth and genuineness take a backseat. Falsehoods creep in long before we even realize. And where falsehoods creep in, miseries entail in good measure.

O thou poor dancing bird and the still poorer man! But a lady bird can be duped. The dandy can afford to be normal after the deed is done. But not so with a woman. She has a brain and a nice memory. She remembers the entire range of colorful somersaults that you have been doing to get her hand. And that becomes her benchmark to assess you. Now how long you will maintain the crest of your best version? Of course you will come down to a normal self as the fever comes down. Then you appear such a poor guy, almost a cheater who pretended to be what he isn’t usually. I think a woman can be more forgiving if she accepts that the poor guy was simply doing a wooing dance like a bird in the Amazon forest. He is simply throwing his message to have a partner. The content of the message isn’t what he is in reality. It’s just a catchy title to draw attention, like an eye-catching book title and its cover. The title might appear attractive but the story is usually mundane, very-very common.

The bird cannot be dancing forever at the best of its colors and the best of songs. Naturally it will become a common bird after the energetic storm is over. The beautiful parrot turns a boring crow. But brother, why did you try to be what you are not. You gave your best in wooing her and that raised the bar of her expectations. And expectations breed disappointments. She expects you to be the very same beautifully cooing and majestically dancing parrot. She is right in sulking over the dull crow cawing boringly by her side. 

The irony is that we get habituated to take the wooing dance as the primary characteristics in an individual, i.e., we take the catchy title as the story itself. Isn’t that a mistake? The excitement and thrill that one gets out of the bird dance is addictive in nature. We need to learn to be comfortable with normal people around us. We need to give respect and love to the ordinary humanity. Sadly we hold high expectations from people. To fulfill those heavy expectations he is all valor, grace, dignity, bravery, stability, unqualified giving and masculine handsomeness; and she is all receptivity, feminine grace, support, acceptance, care and share—both sides trying their best. Effort beyond a limit breeds artificiality. This artificiality then ends up in stumping each other. After all, how long will one keep jumping at his/her best? Ultimately we have to get grounded. The boring normalcy sets in. The dreams vanish. The colors fade. The songs turn to ugly croakings. Angels turn to dark angels. Then both sides part ways; look for new partners, expecting the thrill of wooing exception to be the everlasting normal. No wonder most of us are a series of broken relationships.

That’s why it’s advisable to be just normal, the real self, even during the phase of courting a partner. Stay as you normally are. Honesty is a highly undervalued trait in the modern society. But primarily it’s the sole trait that decides whether we are carried as a miserable junk into the cemetery or a peaceful corpse looking at whom not many people get scared. I remember the face my mother after she had left her body. She looked angelic and so beautiful in her eternal sleep.

If someone accepts you with your dull colors, weird dancing and funny songs that relationship has a better chance of survival for a longer time. Truth always serves well in the long term. It may appear to let us down in the short term, giving us little-little disappointments and let downs. But it saves us from major collapses in the long term.

One may wonder why this guy is preaching about relationships. Yours truly tries to speak from his own experiences. Experiential knowledge is very near to truth. I did my own set of fabulous dancing for seven years—just once in life and with one person only. I can feel myself almost boasting about the fact. It simply means I have to clear more webs from around my eyes to see more clearly. It’s wise to learn from one’s experience.

Using my creativity I built up a grandiose avatar, almost like a shining angel, and became the crowning prince in her big eyes. In flying too high I burnt my wings. So couldn’t afford to fly anymore after seven years. When I landed on the plane of normalcy, she felt cheated on witnessing my normal colors and mundane songs; her dreams broken, her shining angel merely a common person like anyone around, no longer able to maintain her beautiful dream. There was a normal crow cawing around her. But I’m happy that these are the days of women empowerment. She was confident, self-standing and glamorous, with a smile to kill and eyes that could intoxicate a dozen men with a single glance. No wonder, I saw her flying away with a beautiful swan that was flying in the seventh heaven to fill up the slots of her expectations. ‘You idiot, you too will fall one day!’ I cawed from the ground. Even as a self-believed spiritualist I am happy that he too fell within a couple of years. I take it as a mark of victory for having flown more than him. I’m not bothered about other men but at least I viewed him as a rival.

Normal cawing has its own benefits. It taught me poetry. There were emotional storms in the tea-cup, which I amply cashed by forcibly trying to be philosophical in nature. Lost love, or for that matter any type of loss, is invisibly preparing you for many other gains in many forms. There comes a day when you actually feel gratitude for those losses in shaping what you later became. You realize that those losses were meant to make you what you are today. So I respect the past without any grudges, but I’m far happier with my present and give due credit to all the experiences I went through.

I also realized that maybe I had punched far-far above my weight in wooing and actually winning her. But how long you will keep the arena clear of rivals if the girl is such a head turner that there are at least a dozen men dancing to her tunes with their tongues out? To match her big aura I too had acquired larger dimensions like a porcupine spreading its thorns to look more imposing. All said, as a man I take full responsibility for creating those expectations. And as Buddha said expectations breed sufferings—at one end at least, if not both. Most importantly, I’m happy for her. Why should men have all the fun? The women have been subjugated for too long and they have lots to cover up in enjoyment and normal fun which we the men have enjoyed so far.

Thankfully, I seem to have spent all the wooing fuel in one go. Wise people don’t need to repeat the same experience to get the same lesson again and again. As far as beautiful girls are concerned, I am able to impersonally appreciate them like a flower, with a pleasant detachment. I connect more to old women with their motherly aura and saintly faces carrying the majestic wrinkles of age. Maybe losing my mother is a far bigger weight on my soul than losing the woman I loved.

These days, while watching the colorful birds dancing and singing in the documentaries to woo their ladies I become very conscious, even embarrassed. I cannot blame them. All of us are birds in the same way. But I always wag my admonishing finger and mutter, ‘Son, take care! You will have to pay for this!’

And now on a serious note. Retain your simple colors, ordinary steps and normal songs while wooing a partner. If he or she accepts you with your normal stuff that’s well and good. If not, give it a damn and laugh at all the artificially jumping love-birds—ranging from the birds in documentaries to the people around you—and go giggling about this funny game.

A lovely book of poetry

 We are born as little poems, soft, sensitive, pure, innocent...our senses open to the poetic wonder unfolding around. But then as we age we are cast into rigid, customised identities. We lose poetry. We leave behind that soft, gentle, fluid glow of humanness. The same happened with yours truly. I started as a poet but then on the hard anvil of life lost touch with poetry over the years. In between I would pick up poetry books but they won't sync with the hardcore fighting self in the battlefield of life. But I'm glad that I hereby come across a book that really touches one's poetic chords. Brief. Conscise. Gagar mein Sagar. Each word a tale in itself. Little lines embracing vast seas of emotions. Antraji is a renowned painter. Her poetic words are merely an extension of what she creates on the canvas. If poetry is a painting in words then there is no bigger proof than these poems.

Smoking @ 1 cigarette/year

 I'm not a smoker but I can't say that I haven't tasted it. I do smoke sometimes --  one cigarette or two at the most in a year. Never more than that. And that too when I feel I deserve this and have earned this right to cheat on myself and be a goonda for some rare occasion. 

Why do I do this? Maybe because I find the tag of a teetotaler too boring. I don't believe in too clean a slate. We have to scrawl our nonsense also. Sometimes. In celebration of our rare personal feats. It's just to be human. Completely denying something is one thing. It's a block. But saying no to it even with the choice and openness to have it is totally different. It shows you are in the driver's seat. (Disqualifier: I am not belittling those who don't touch it on principles. Smoking is bad, that's a universal truth, irrespective of the fact whether you are a chain smoker, teetotaler or someone like me who smokes one cigarette in a year.)

And even if I miss this one or two annual criminalities I hardly miss anything because I barely feel anything while smoking. The whole thing feels very funny. Imagine filling your mouth with smoke like an engine and then puff it out. Ridiculous...just like most of the addictions are. The book shared below is for dear fellow human beings who want to go smoke free. It's a really helpful book in the genre.

On a burning day

These are the musings on a fiery day when I'm afraid that even green trees might catch fire any moment at the cataclysmic hot noon:

Basically, the main recipe of the dish involves dishonesty and fraud. The so-called honesty is just a tiny ingredient used as a spice while frying. But however bad the times are, the table full of rogue, fake, swindled dishes won't be serviceable if not for those tiny sprinklers of honesty. That's the power of honesty and goodness. Its little molecule can carry mountain loads of lies and deceit.

Basically, the main recipe of the dish involves dishonesty and fraud. The so-called honesty is just a tiny ingredient used as a spice while frying. But however bad the times are, the table full of rogue, fake, swindled dishes won't be serviceable if not for those tiny sprinklers of honesty. That's the power of honesty and goodness. Its little molecule can carry mountain loads of lies and deceit.

Christmas musings

 

Christmas. A warm sunny noon is the best gift by the snow-bearded Santa. It’s cold and windy but the sunlight infuses enough courage in your bones to allow you to go for a noontime walk on the solitary trail. There are three little skinny puppies by a mushroom hut. They already have a sense of owning a territory. A big dog turns in their direction and the tiny chits of puppies let out a full-spirited spell of growls and barking. The elderly dog is amused and stops. It looks at them with respect. It then turns away, allowing them to have a sense of successfully defending their territory. You have to speak up for your rights, even in the face of far bigger rivals. Sometimes they just give you respect on principle.

It’s a narrow cart track among the farmlands. There are bushes on both sides. I see a snake’s crawl line on the fine undisturbed sand. It seems a beautiful signature of mother nature. It must be a huge cobra. The crawling line is at least wide enough to cover my palm. It’s still the same old world with such big snakes somehow still alive and surviving. I respectfully look at the bush. Maybe it shifted position to sunbathe on the southern side.

Musings on Father's Day

 What am I? A tiny bubble of air, a breath, a cycle of inhalation and exhalation. I die every time I exhale. I merge with the unbounded, free air. I take birth every time I inhale. Little bit of air then fuels this illusion of body and organisms. I keep dying and getting born in a sequence. The duality stands as long as the illusion of this sequence of birth and death follows and guides our sense perception. But the moment they coexist, dying and taking birth, side by side, dying and getting born simultaneously, in and out, out and in turn the same. Then you feel that you just are, a 'being' beyond all illusionary 'becoming'. A pulse, a rhythm, a reverberation, a drop in water, a molecule in air, a speck in dirt, a fragment in ether...something and everything at the same time. And most probably 'nothing' at all as the perception in higher dimension seems to indicate.

And as I cast a look into the sky, mighty Father seems to send a message on this Father's Day. It's a rapidly greying, gloomy world and the Lord has to hide and peep through a hole to spot any trace of truth and honesty that may be lying around.

'Something' with a glimpse of 'everything'

 My tiny Tulsi forest! The beauty about lovable volition, the bhav of love, is that it takes you above physical limitations. With pure volition of love this little group of tiny plants is as big as Amazon forest. It becomes as pure as any holy site on earth. If you can relate and feel like an ant crawling through this tiny patch of holy leaves, then you of course turn a little child wandering in a big forest. It's only about bhav beyond acts, deeds, words, scriptures, holy pilgrimages. If you are in that bhav, this little group of plants instantly turns your Gaumukh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Jerusalem or any other holy site. Right here, this very instant. A pure unconditional bhav takes you above the limitations of space and time. Karma gets unattached from your consciousness during those moments of pure volition and you have moments of liberation. Call it samadhi, enlightenment or any other words. Words are mere pointers. As I stare into this little patch of green and with pure volition muse over a little insect going through it, I'm a pilgrim going through a deep forest. As I take bucket bath and chant Ganga Ma's name with pure heart, I'm bathing in her holy stream. I don’t have any doubt about it. As I walk by a little ancestral shrine in the countryside and bow my head I know I'm having a Darshan of Badri, Kedar, Tirupati. If you establish yourself in that unadulterated bhav, Mother Existence gets everything for you right at that very spot. But we have to walk around a lot ultimately to realise and come back into stillness and divine pause at one point, that pure volition. Then you aren't anywhere but still everywhere. Then it hardly matters where you are, what you are, what others think of you, whether you are moving or not. The small acquires mammoth proportions to inspire holy awe. The big becomes small allowing you to marvel and analyse at the level of mind. Well, that's the beauty of pure, unlimited volition.

Bold beauty

 Yellow Hibiscus. Nothing beats the fun of helping blossom baby soft petals smile at their best even in this 40 degree plus scorching heat. Summer flowers have their own charm! They look at you with the message that even in the fiery guts of misery, there are possibilities of smiles, provided we don't lose our faith in smiles! To the hell with pandemic, here this baby smiles so winsomely even after getting fired by merciless Sun's cannonfire through the day! Keep smiling, adversities are nourishment for being our best version! We always have the choice of cutting the soot of adversities and keep it a smiling plant and not allow it turn into a parasitic creeper suffocating us to death.

Wintery reminiscences

 

Daubed with dual shades the winter moves on. It’s a concoction of good-bad, pleasure-pain, joy-sadness. Laroop followed his drinking passion to the extent of pawning away the landed property, social dignity and domestic peace. But he earned something as well—the title of the craziest speaker and shouter of the words prohibited in all religions, castes and creeds. Most of these obnoxious verbal volleys were directed at his wife. I think he called her a ‘slut’ at least a million times in his life. But she had taken her vows as a bride around the holy fire to be by him, through thick and thin, come what may. As he created a mayhem of all civilities at public squares and streets, she would be always there like an unseen shadow around some corner or behind some column, keenly observing the vulgarized air around her dear husband. Let someone intervene to stop Laroop from his hellish torrent of cuss words, she would swiftly emerge and firmly stand between the keeper of social morals and the slayer of all civilized norms.

Then one day, at the age of roughly sixty-seven, Laroop, sloshed fully as usual, fell from a tractor and broke his back. He was paralyzed but God was kind enough to allow his tongue still wagging for letting out the still remaining stock of vulgarities. However, he was lucky to get his deliverance soon. The doctors had ruled out any chance of recovery. The gentlefolks said it was a respite for the tortured body and soul. Let’s hope he gets a good beginning in the next avatar. He left behind a genuinely grief-stricken and grieving wife. One gets habituated to pain and insults over the decades. The cuts and wounds take such a real shape that one draws one’s identity from them and gets puzzled in their absence. So maybe she still misses him much for all the insults he poured over the years.

However bad it was, but it’s sad to lose a human voice. But God is lenient to restore a voice that had gone mute. As I have already mentioned Kala had got a facial paralysis, leaving him tongue-tied. His hard-worked vegetable hawking skills lay abed. The streets missed enthusiastic hawking shouts at least, if not his not-so-impressive vegetable items. By the grace of God he has got his speech back after three-four months. There are auditory signs of a slurred effort in his hawking list. But his words, though slightly affected, carry enough clarity to convey the message.

He went for a desi treatment like most of the country folks do. I have seen many people recovering after taking the secret potions along with faith-healing by these people. They strictly forbid the patients from getting saline drops which the allopathic doctors do to begin with at the hospitals. ‘Don’t get the drips. If you do, our medicines won’t work!’ they admonish the patients. Thanks to their mysterious potions Kala gets his hawking voice back. He has to take medicines for at least six months. Let’s hope he becomes as fluent in shouting out his list as earlier.

Elsewhere, a pack of asian pied starlings keeps the neighborhood pretty lively during the bright, balmy noons. They chat a lot. Maybe they love this season. The pair of treepies hasn’t yet returned from the Himalayan foothills for the wintertime stay. When they come, they don’t miss to intimidate the smaller birds in the locality. Imagine their natural GPS system that enables them to track this small neighborhood on their journey from the lower Himalayas. There also they must be having a little home among the few trees on a slope or in a little vale. They would return to it after the winter stay. Imagine the natural sense of belonging to a particular place!

Apart from all this, dear readers, there is a tiny jingling addition to the world. Feeble, soft trills of baby birds are a welcome addition to any yard or garden. Although winters are usually avoided by the birds for adding to their families, but there are some couples who take the odd way. Like this pair of scaled munias. Their globular grass nest has little munia babies, sending their softly tinkering notes swimming in the air. The squirrels stay away from the curry leaf tree hosting the nest.

There is a cat in the house. The feral cat considers itself to be a pet now. It was a scared, scrawny, feeble-hearted dark grey cat. The elders would have serious issues about its suitability as a pet from many angles. But then a year-and-half old Maira finds it very cute. The cat is afraid of the grown-up stiff fingers but it’s comfortable with Maira’s soft touch. The elders thus have to adopt it. It’s a laidback cat, not much interested in rats, girl cats or nests. It’s happy to have chapattis and sleep. It means the munias have a nice chance of raising a successful family. Anyway the nest is beyond the reach of even an adventurous cat.

The smile is back

 Mexican Petunia smiles after months! He was Ma's favourite little plant son, dazzling with violet smiles almost all the time. She really appreciated and mused over this little soldier of smile's spirit in outdoing others of bigger brand-names. Then she left this body to be part of everything to keep her evolution in another dimension. The plant seemed to go into mourning and stopped smiling anymore. It smiles again! Ma is surely smiling and watching with a motherly muse over my follies! Love you Ma!