A sane man walking

The farmer cheated me. He left the tubewell system plundered to the core. If you challenge them on their own terms—like shouting, fighting, going to police—only then they think you are worth your salt. Since, I am hardly interested in any of the three—because all of them would reach the same end—he thinks the bookish man is scared of him. So that made him still happier. He boasted about it also. The only option for me was to talk him into a resolution of the issue. But it was as good as talking to his buffalo. I found it suitable to use my energy in fixing the set again by investing money to buy the entire set again.

Thinking and pondering over the human trait of grabbing more and more I’m walking by the side of the road. It is a busy road. Earlier it was a cart track, then district road, then state highway and now a national highway with a toll plaza to collect the charges for speeding over it. There are signs of change on both sides. Agriculture is giving the baton to business and enterprise. The models of cars are getting costlier. The road is getting busier with the passage of each day.

He is walking by the side of the road. His long hair unkempt, his overgrown beard saggy, shirt buttonless and pajama somehow tied with a cycle tyre’s tube working as a belt. He has a trash bag. He is not a trash collector in the business sense of the term. He is just carrying on with the momentum of collecting just for the sheer habit of carrying some load. He is just an unrefined lunatic clinging to his possessions and further adding to them.

All around him are refined lunatics doing exactly the same: running around in the competition to gather more and more, to carry bigger bags. But ultimately the lunatic’s trash collection and the factory owner’s collection—just opposite the road—will stay here on earth. The lunatic trash man and the wealthy businessman have to go empty handed. Just that he picks up small throwaway items. The others are running for a bit more nicely packaged items—the things still in use—but the race is the same and finally both come to a naught.

The first week of September

 

It is the first week of September. It has been a dry August. Very hot. They have now air conditioners in the village. There might be some cool moments inside but the exhaust leaves it burning outside at night. Earlier, we had tolerably cool nights at this time of the year.

It is late evening. Fluffs of clouds are tinged orange by the setting son. A shikra is perched on the top of an electricity pole. A wiretail swallow is whoozing around its head. It flies dangerously close to its head with agitated chip-chip sounds. Maybe the hunter is after its chick that they are training to fly.

A perfect half moon is visible in the sky. There is a commotion in the street. A big rat snake has been sighted. It is hiding under a narrow duct in the small open water drain by the street side. People cannot believe that such a big snake is harmless to the humans. Three huge bullfrogs are wallowing in the muddy water near the duct’s end. Maybe they are very confident that their size is beyond the range of a rat snake. They can easily see the snake peering at them from under the duct just five or six feet away but they are not bothered about it. Sometimes big size helps.

Snippets of a playful sky

 

The second half of August brings out playfulness in the sky to an unprecedented scale. In the rain-washed pristine blue, there are clouds floating to set up a very active stage. Colors, shapes, sizes, designs self-evolving and self-dissolving by the chance winds. Divinity seems very active in spraying various patterns on the blue canvas. These are freewheeling daubs and spatterings. Godliness enjoying a free float in the form of loamy clouds.

During the days they are white and gray drawings. But mornings and evenings fill up the canvas with multiple colors. A pattern emerges, then the slate gets wiped clean and a new pattern floats in. The shifting stage, just being. It shows the monsoon is slowly losing its grip over the skies. Huge wheels of clouds go floating, freely, as if no longer under the obligation to precipitate and kiss earth. The clouds seem to be in love with their gliding across the blue canvas.

But that is above in the skies. The ground has its own practical necessities, like my beautifully ageing bike. The old two-wheeler is under service. My biking days are almost gone with the youth. In any case I don’t loiter around too much these days in my forties. The machine is still impressive with its good condition despite its age. I am basking in my machine’s praise emanating from the head mechanic’s mouth. The words of praise turn you calm and serene as you sit in a chair. You don’t even get irritated even while he stops working on your machine midway to attend to some less calm person who has arrived after you. Nice words and little smiles put you under an obligation to pay back by staying calm so that he doesn’t lose a customer.

Well, the momentum of patience surely creates an aura around you. It attracts a tall young man. He is reasonably well built and looks strong. He wears a dark gray shirt and black capri pants. He seems in a different dimension. He’s asking money for food. ‘I can bear up with hunger, no problem. But there is an old man who needs to eat,’ he points to some place somewhere. Who or where is the old man, I don’t have a clue. ‘I am ready to work. See, I have washed my clothes as well,’ he tries to present himself as a clean, honest guy who isn’t a lazy crap. He has proven himself to be enough hardworking by keeping his shirt clean. Maybe he thinks that dirty beggars are offensive to people these days.

I ask him why doesn’t he work, that there is no dearth of work for those who really want it, that there is no need to ask money for food when you are young and healthy. ‘I work, see I have washed my clothes. But the old man cannot go hungry,’ he again starts with his story. I know he is high on substance. I give him my contribution to his addiction. I give him twenty rupees. He moves on even without looking at me. All the blessings were reserved for the moments before I pulled out my purse. It is a wasted life. Whom would you blame? He, his circumstances, society or institutions? A man is a product of so many elements. It is very difficult to put blame on just one of them. If someone is in a sour soup, I take an integrative picture. You become a bit more forgiving. These considerations usually make me lenient to beggars.

A day in the life of ants

 

The ants are busy over a tiny crumb. It must be something delicious because there is a stampede over the item. The advantage of being caught in an ant stampede is that there is hardly any chance of getting crushed. Well, unless a careless human foot crushes all of them enblock.

The tiny crumb is covered with ants and looks an ant mound. A babbler, having yellow-ringed furtive and Machiavellian eyes, is attracted towards the busy spectacle. There are so many takers, so it must be something very tasty, the babbler must have thought. We usually go with our first impressions. Most of us fall in this broad stereotype. Here it comes energetically and takes the coveted item with a jerk of its beak, drops it a few times on the ground to make it ant-free and thus unraveling the prize. Many ants take a tumble and get scattered around. But the culinary item doesn’t meet the babbler’s taste. It drops it on the ground and hops away.

What else the ants symbolize except a gripping grittiness? The ants regroup and once again it’s the same world. Such routine mishaps don’t dampen their fire. A squirrel sneaks in tentatively and it too is attracted to the coveted tiny crumb. Again the tiny item doesn’t fall in the list of the squirrel’s culinary likes. It also moves on a bit confused. But the squirrel was a bit better behaved than the babbler. It didn’t pick it up with a quick jerk and scatter the ants. It just snoozed over it for a moment and left it. Maybe the ants have sprayed some repellent over their dinner to deter other claimants.

 

My noisy neighbors

 

I’m the most abused person this morning. You can say it with full confidence if you have a tailorbird couple training their just-out-of-nest chick in the art of calling, flying and survival. They have turned ultra-sensitive and start abusing with staggering impertinence the moment I step into the courtyard. My morning newspaper reading corner has been grabbed. The freshly hatched chick is flapping its wings for little flights from one branch to another in the clump of plants in the corner. It’s almost as big as its parents minus the tail. As I try to focus on the news in the paper there is a constant barrage of drilling notes into my brain. Even the noisy news items look so peaceful.

The longer-tailed gentleman is more audacious, comes nearer with warning tweets. He has a nice bow-tie kind of spot on the neck and carries a rusty brown head. Whenever I get up from the garden chair, they change their tweeting as a mark of victory, of the enemy being routed. Well, defeat might be surrender sometimes, but victory is a matter of perception only. They have a right to perceive it as a victory. Sometimes Papa bird comes very near as if to take a nibble at my nose. Luckily for me he missed it. Then they tried bird-dropping upon me but the tiny spot on my newspaper proved that they missed it as well. It seemed to make them angrier. Their shrill notes can drill a hole in any brain. It’s better to accept defeat.

The ant hole is just nearby where I sit. The ants have put on weight. Believe me, they have! If you look carefully, you can even see the ants putting on weight. They look darker and glossier now.

A saga of diminishing libidos, love pursuits, PDA and PDL

The lethal most Public Display of Lust (PDL) I have witnessed goes like this. It was a bull in full heat of the moment—in hormonal terms. Sadly there was no cow in sight. The red-hot excited bull must have had a great sense of visualization. If not for this how would you digest the sight of a bull riding a scooty. The bull visualized  the scooty as a cow. There are always alternatives. Aren’t there? The scooty was parked by the roadside. A nice white scooty, smaller than a cow. So the bull raised its front legs and landed on it for lovemaking, mating, raping, call it whatever. It shocked and jolted the human senses for a moment but then everyone laughed, hollered, guffawed.

The craziest, all-defiant love pursuit I have seen goes like this. It was a massive male buffalo. A free-roamer allowed to graze in the fields in return for mating with domesticated buffaloes to sire colts and getting fresh milk in the family. It would go lumbering across the village streets, graze in the fields, cordially welcomed to fulfill the needs of the buffaloes at the time of seeding. The buffalo bull should have treated all the females in the village equally, with equal affection. But then it fell in love with a young filly. It was a very attractive young buffalo. He just went crazy for her. He knew that she would come of age soon and then he would get an opportunity to be the father of her colt. He lost interest in the rest of the buffaloes. She would be there in the shade of the barn and he would wait in the street, sitting in burning June heat, waiting for the evening to come when they took her out for watering at the village pond. Then he would accompany her to the pond, walking fondly with her, gentling shoving her, licking her skin. He won’t go into the fields to graze and thus was losing weight. Spellbound by her, he wasn’t be interested in mating with other buffaloes. The people started calling him Majnu. The owner of the young buffalo filly took it as an attempt to tarnish their reputation. People started joking it as if it was an attempt at the family owner. The farmer would beat him with sticks. But he would bear all this just to be with his love interest.

The grandest fight one gives to prove one’s libido even in old age was presented by the village’s one-eyed community buffalo bull. We called him Kana, for he had lost one eye in a fight with a rival. He was a massive bull. In his heydays he sired hundreds of colts in the village and was thus the cause of bringing fresh milk to scores of rural houses. But then age caught with him. He but would try to keep his fiefdom still intact. I remember it once when he fell down in an attempt to get onto a young buffalo. The onlookers laughed and made derogatory puns at his vanishing stamina and strength. Maybe the old buffalo took it to heart. And to prove a point that his power was just the same, he carried the momentum right there on the ground. We saw him convulsing with lust on the ground. The poor old bull was trying to drill a hole in the earth to prove a point. It was pretty hilarious that day. When we try to be what we are no longer, we simply turn a joke. Don’t we?

And just today I saw the bravest Public Display of Affection (PDA): A cow and a bull standing right there in the middle of the busy road at the entrance to the town; in full foreplay mood, licking each other with the very same pleasure treasure that each species seems to run after on earth. We respect cows and the vehicles would divert to the sides to allow them this holy PDA. And here I am going on my scooty marveling at their holy audacity. The only point of mismanagement was that he chose the wrong moment to try to materialize the peak of affection. He went for the heave just when I was crossing over. I was at a safe distance but still the shuffling and movement brought them precariously close. It was a momentary scare. He would have risen in love to the crest of ecstasy and I would have fallen as a fruit of their love. I’m glad not to have become the casualty of a PDA.

The citizens of a lesser world

 

In a corner in the garden some dry leaves are self-deposited by mother nature in its very own bank of silence, solitude and stability. Slugs crawl over them in safety without getting trampled. They leave a slimy trail as they slowly move at their snail pace. This silvery slime shines later as the hallmark of a snail’s path well trodden, or a journey successfully completed. This is a zigzag pattern of silvery lines, notifying a slowly busy world of a tiny colony of slugs. Walk slowly but substantially like they do.

Tailorbirds use camouflage to good effect while making their nest. It thus comes almost with a sense of victory to discover a tailorbird nest on the older parijat tree. Parijat’s is a big heart-shaped hardy leaf and the tiny birdie tailors love the fabric for sewing a nest. But the parijat is usually a small tree and the nest is always under risk. But this time they have chosen well. It’s on a branch that protrudes away from the canopy and the bough is thin enough to deter a cat from risking a fall in order to reach the nest. The leafing is dense. Where you situate yourself in life means half the battle won. And they have done so. I hear the softest of jangling chirps in the nest. There are hatchlings.

Squirrels are the main egg-stealers but they stay away due to the roaming feral cats. As if to keep the cats around they have placed it very strategically. To contain a smaller enemy you need to somehow bring a bigger enemy into the picture. On top of that they keep tweeting throughout the day. The cats get confused and spend more time under the tree. Little do they realize that they act as nothing short of guards for the tailorbirds above. It further means that a lot many other predators are also kept at bay. The tailorbird couple successfully runs their show given their tireless vocal chords.

A red-vented bulbul was seen curiously peeking over their little leafy cup and one of the parents crashed its tiny body into the bigger bird, startling it and leaving it almost off-guard. It flew away in disgust. There aren’t many who would mess with parents turning suicidal in their bravery to protect their children.

A bully cat is snoozing in the damp, shadowed part of the flowerbed right under the tree. The tailorbirds are pik-pikking nonstop. They just love doing it. It seems their Ikigai. They seem to be vainly joyful while raising the ruckus even when they are angry over something.

On a neighboring roof a peahen gets fed up with the noise and takes to its cumbersome flight all of a sudden. Peahens can fly more than the males of their species. They hardly possess the burden of the tail fan like their males. Very common looking in comparison to the grand romeo, they but have the advantage of flying greater distances to flirt and seek love. Thus builds up another morning in the little garden yard of a small-time countryside writer. And the time slowly moves with its day-to-day irritants and pleasures laden on its mundane apple cart.

The milky white pigeon

 

The sun is setting and its tired rays fall on the carcass of a cloud sprinkling it with pale saffron hues. It looks like the skeletal remains of some cloudy elephant. Ribs are prominent on display.

A babbler couple has just set up a nest on the smaller parijat tree in the corner. A young tree really comes of age once a bird sets up a nest among its branches. It gives the look of a confident adolescent young man. It gives me shade also as I read newspaper under it till late mornings.

A tailorbird couple seems to have successfully hatched one chick among the leaves of the young tree. They are chik-chikking nonstop for the last three days. These tiny birds are illustriously valiant in throwing around their beak in raising a birdie din. It can easily give a headache to anyone not too good on the tolerance scale. That is primarily done to dupe and distract any predator. Since I look like the biggest predator to them, I have to absorb all the insulting torrent throughout the day. It makes me more tolerant.

A beautiful milky white pigeon landed in the garden. The owner clips their wings to give them a small struggling flight; just like we get clipped by customs, conventions and other hampering snares that curtail our free flights born of free will. The bird had beautiful pink in its tail. There are cats so I followed it. It walked very softly and allowed me to catch it. There is a tremendous feel-good element in setting a bird free. You get a faint trace of how mightily sagacious God must be feeling when he helps in our flights to fulfill our destines. I took it to the roof, held it in both hands and gave it a flight. It fluttered and rose high to fly for some distance and reached its perch platform at the end of a long pole on the owner’s roof.

The illustrated contraries of chance winds

 

This woman in the neighborhood has indomitable spirit and is firmly full of vigor for A-division street fights. She looks like a world class wrestler with shrill abusive words. No wonder people usually try to save their skin and bones. This morning she has put a big heap of discards at the little square and set it on fire. A huge plume of dark smoke engulfs my establishment as the wind is blowing into the house. If you commit the mistake of saying something against her on the issue of a smoky fire in front of your house, she would be more than happy to upgrade her endeavor and shift the fire right within your courtyard.

She seems to possess unrestrained optimism about the chances of her victory in street brawls. Keeping silence minimizes the damage these days. I do the same and brace myself for smoke-choked house for some time. But then the wind suddenly changed and her own house was completely lost among the dark plumes of smoke. It remained so for half an hour. The wind changed again once the smoky affair was gone. Now when it blew again into the house, it bought beautiful fragrance of jasmine flowers from the wall of another neighbor. Well, sometimes coming from the unknown interiors of the womb of happenings, circumstantial winds favor you if you keep silent. And winds are winds. They dutifully carry all the illustrated contraries. No use of pointless jibing at its ways. They have a duty to carry smoke as well as flower fragrance. Bear up with smoke sometimes and you will surely have your share of beautiful fragrance another time.

Romancing with small-time moments

 A wire-tailed swallow couple is seriously on a lookout for their mud nest. They make chipping sounds as if discussing the suitability of a little terrace porch facing this countryside writer's hideout-cum-writing den. Yesterday it rained a bit and they were quick to lay the foundations by ferrying mud from the street and sticking it to the wall. The swallows usually leave a heap of drops under the nest. So in order to avoid a stack of bird-drops in front of my writing table I just stand under the new muddy foundations, giving them a message that there are humans around, expecting them to abandon their ideas about the safety of this place. But they don’t seem to mind it too much. They sit quietly nearby on the cable network wire. They have learnt, I suppose, that to survive in this world they can’t afford to be too shy of we humans.

It’s a busy birdie world looking to set up families in anticipation of the upcoming monsoons. But opportunities have been diminishing for the birds. The walls are plastered making it harder for the little brown house sparrow to seek nesting holes. As the fissures open inwards leaving us trying to cover up the exteriors through swanky posh interiors and cozy homes, the holes vanish from the walls. There is a half-inch plastic pipe across the wall fitted as a passage for electricity wires. There are no wires leaving it as a miniscule tunnel of possibility. A sparrow is struggling at the opening, flapping wings to stay afloat as its probes its beak for any house-making possibilities there. But the opening is too small for a sparrow, or for any bird for that matter.

The village is full of peacocks. We have poisoned the farmlands beyond their sustenance, so here they swarm into the village, pee-hooing day and night. They are respected birds. Indirectly we may take away their habitat but directly we need to show them respect so that Lord Krishna would become happy and shower more and more material blessings on our head. In any case, beyond what, why, if and but theirs is a pleasant sight in the village.

Oh, the doves, the lousiest nest-makers! They did make a change at long last. Instead of laying eggs at the same famished nest on the tree that has seen so many tragedies, they put the twigs on a not-in-use ceiling fan in the barn porch. The wire is disconnected to ward off even accidental start of the fan. From this angle it seems a suitable choice. They put some sinews on the fan-wing. But there was a storm and the fan took a few circles and the eggs fell. Sadly, again a very poor nesting choice and an example of very dumb parenting.

The babblers are busy through the day because a huge rat snake has been spotted among the little cluster of keekars. The giloy creeper has acquired every inch of canopy to give it the feeling of a few square yards of a real pristine forest. In the thickly leafy tent warblers and tailorbirds have ideal nesting site. There must be many nests for a coucal, the brown-winged big jungle crow, is busy at the site for the last couple of days. They are usually heard with their loud coop-coop sounds outside the village along denser shrubbery by the canal bunds. But this one has taken up assignment inside the village. Where there are nests, there lie the possibilities: possibilities of raising successful hatchlings and chances of successful hunt.

Randhir is a smart man. A hardworking farmer he understands the value of each sweat-laden buck. He looks on top of this world. The old age pension is up by 250 rupees. He is freely eating my morning newspaper reading time. ‘I was going for a shave at the barber’s and thought of dropping for some time,’ he says. He has one 500 and two 10 rupee notes in the pocket of his kurta. It’s a great financial scheme to save 10 rupees. The shaving charges are 30 rupees. ‘I usually go in the morning when their box has hardly any change. So after the shave I push forward the 500 note. It gives them a nightmare at the idea of managing so much of change so early in the morning. Then I offer 20 rupees which feels like I have done them a favor even though I pay 10 rupee less,’ he explains his game plan.

Then he shares the latest update on an old distant relative of his. The concerned farmer is a big built fellow of nearly eighty. In the last five years he has fallen twice, once fracturing the hip and fracturing the leg the other time. ‘I asked his grandson to take care of their granddad but the young man appeared full of complain. “He won’t stop eating ghee like he was young,” the burly grandson complained. What has ghee to do with it, I asked. Ghee strengthens the bones. “You didn’t get me uncle. You eat ghee and you get energized beyond your years. You feel like you can jump around like a young colt with fun and frolics and you end up breaking your bones,” the boy explained. So according to him eating lots of ghee is the main reason for the old man’s broken bones,’ he is laughing.

Then the laughter vanishes. An angry babbler above in the parijat tree eases itself and the fluid drops on his pocket as he is spread out relaxed in the chair. It feels like a grenade has fallen. It’s not about the spoilt kurta. It’s always about the money. He looks flustered and in panic. He checks his bucks. A bit of tiny fudge on one of them but still workable. He is relieved. But that breaks his willpower to stay eating my time despite all my covert and overt signs and signals of wanting to be left alone. He gets up and leaves. I thank the entire population of babblers on earth. 

Musings from a tiny corner

 Most of us have our favorite spots. Some feel at complete ease at some little backstreet café or a tea shop or cinema. I like my little corner in the small garden. To me it’s a seat of spirituality’s sovereign comforts. It’s shaded with a pair of parijat and bhelpatra trees sharing the space with magnanimously consensual smiles of brotherhood and friendship. They are small trees but sufficient to shade a little corner for a village writer. There are hibiscus, marigolds and sadabahars around. I sit there in the morning to steal some momentous reflections and cultivate some healthy perspectives about life. Both these are holy trees in Hindu mythology. Their shade above feels like spirituality canvassed over my conscience. This is the corner where I feel oodles of gratitude to the almighty. This is where I’m fully convinced that in our lack of thanklessness to God, we forget sores of things He’s worked out in our favor, which get masked by the common visible factors of our misery.

The tailorbird couple objects very forcefully but now I’m used to their non-stop abuses and take it as sort of background choir to my solitude. The sadabahar in the crack, my favorite little flower, is withering. I’m afraid it may die. If it holds for another fortnight then the monsoons may revive it.

Mother nature seems to know when to release the chokehold on our throat. Just when June turned almost unbearable, the western disturbances brought clouds and brief thundershowers got the temperature down helping us survive the heat. Five days of cloudy skies and life is back on the track. Jungle geranium’s bulbous assortment of tiny clusters of flowers has added some vibrancy to the heat-beaten soft pink. The Mexican petunias have soft-purple bell flowers under the shade. The sadabahars have grabbed the opportunity to add luster to their light purple flowers. The sun-burnt roses have full smile of lush red blooms around them. Jasmine’s little white flowers spray their fragrance in full spirits. It counts as a huge transformation, a wondrous resurgence, just in a matter of five days. I see it written with an unselfish flair on the flowers with a preciously subtle message.

Resetting, recovery and rejuvenation come far more naturally than we think. We just have to hold on till the favorable turn of winds.

A love-struck hoopoe is giving prolonged bursts of oop-oop-oop for the past few days. Let’s hope he finds a perfect lady love. The male koel is always sweet in its love-calls unlike the shaky female who gives tumultuous, undulating notes. These are but the seductively vibrating notes that drive the restfulness of the male koel’s sweet notes above the virile stirrings of subsurface male passion. The peacocks have pitched up their hooting frequency anticipating monsoons. Just with a few pre-monsoon showers there are numerous baby frogs. Once the monsoon arrives I think they will take over the entire village. 

The 'hanted' house

 The one-time sleepy nearby town that I remember as one busy market street surrounded by lower middle class households is now almost an adolescent city. A little world so big with its sleepy attraction; bountiful providences of urbanism now kissing earth and the land value that was once measured in acres is now done in yards. A protuberant belly of possibilities. Obscenely bulging, modernist pathologies greedily feasting upon the sublimating humility of free lands with their tiny corners of untamed wilderness. There are industrial parks and zones coming around as this part of the Delhi NCR gets its turn to become congested, industrialized and polluted. The urban lark spreading its wings with rigidly designed viewpoint.

They now have a funfair also on the ground where once Ramleela used to be staged. A lovely, twinkling, sparkling constellation of consumerism. The advertisement fliers and pamphlets announce Ferris wheel, handicraft bazaar, dance and singing competitions, stage shows, shopping bonanzas, camel ride and hanted house. Yes, you read it right it’s ‘hanted house’. Probably they mean haunted house and the poor ‘u’ is left to woo the art of non-being.

The group of boys in the neighborhood, who spend most of their time in the streets, have come really ‘hanted’ from the fair. They have toy bugles and horns of multitudinous pitch, notes and frequencies. The musical toys share a magical chemistry with their restless enthusiasm for fun and frolics. They are now giving the best of their lungpower to the toy musicals ranging from the shrillest, which can drill a hole in your brain, to the loudest that can shred one’s eardrum to pieces. It sounds like war music. I deem it fit to stop reading and make the most of the music. I try to choreograph a few steps to go along the angry music. Soon I realize that I’m too amateur to do full justice to this playful ruckus and din. A full lunatic may do something about it. Half-lunatics like yours truly, with his still considerate discretion, stand no chance at all. 

The lucky slug

 The slug, a kind of shell-less snail found in damp corners in gardens and wet places, has set out on a long journey. It’s a few meters voyage from one flower bed to another. But in slug-world terms it’s equal to miles for a human being. It has a right to set out on a long journey in the evening and reach home by night. Its path but lies across the main walkway in the garden. Walk carefully fella, you have a responsibility to avoid crushing a slug on its path.

There is a thing called luck. The slug hits a jackpot, gets airlifted on a dry guava leaf and is safely placed at the destination. It takes a few seconds. It would have taken almost two hours to do the same at its pace, if it had escaped getting crushed on the way, the chances for it being rather slim. The bed where the slug has arrived has some weeds and I start pulling them out. A tailorbird finds it as violation of its property and sets out on abusive tik-tikking rhetoric, a pitiless pouring of sharp words. It considers the yard as its house; exactly similar to my feeling that it’s my place. Both are almost the same feelings at their own hierarchy of existence.

A peacock looks expectantly from a neighboring roof. I get a chapatti and invite him in the yard for some evening snack. It lands heavily. I throw tiny chapatti pieces in front of him. It’s hungry and eats with caution. It cannot trust me completely. But this much trust is sufficient that he has come to the garden to eat at least. 

The pregnant sparrow and her friends

 After the fiery spell that baked everything to a hard crust some raindrops fell overnight. All seem very happy with the brief shower in the dark. The birds have a spring in their wings and chirp lovelier songs. A few sparrows after darting around with scurrying spirits now decide to relax on the one-square feet surface provided by the railing column on the terrace. They are not sitting on their paws; rather they are sitting flat on their tummies in complete relaxation. One of them looks majestically serene. I believe it might be a pregnant sparrow because this kind of regal mien is bestowed by motherhood only. She looks as if she is their queen. One of them is perched as a sentry on the railing and is looking around in case some cat—pouncing upon a mere, mute moment to turn it into an opportunity—turns the relaxation platform into her breakfast table.

But it never was a world where all can be happy. The very same rumbling of joy for someone is tragic thunderclap for someone else. It was a very bad night for the babbler and the tailorbird couples who have nests in the parijat tree. A cat seems to have crawled up almost fourteen feet where the babbler couple had built its nest. The glossy blue shells of the eggs are now littered in the flowerbed below. It must have been a very diligent cat in its hunting because it chucked out even the little nest of the tailorbirds. The babblers have been surprisingly stoic about their loss. They haven’t raised too much ruckus. The little tailorbirds on the other hand have gone crazy over losing their little ones. They have been heartfully abusing any cat they see since morning.

A little forest

 Sometime back I had thrown some tulsi seeds in a cleared-up part of a flowerbed. Little saplings grew and now it looks like a tiny tulsi forest. The beauty about lovable volition, the bhaav of love, is that it takes you above physical limitations. With pure volition of love and compassion 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 the bhaav beyond acts, deeds, words, scriptures, holy pilgrimages. If you are in that bhaav, 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 bhaav takes you above the limitations of space and time. Karma gets unattached from your consciousness during those moments of pure volition and you have the moments of liberation. Call it samadhi, enlightenment or any other word. 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 bhaav, Mother Existence gets everything for you right at that very spot. But we have to walk around a lot ultimately to realize 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 analyze at the level of mind. Well, that’s the beauty of pure, unlimited volition.

A little journey

 On our relentless march on the path of progress, we have turned ‘time’ more and more scarce. We are running against time, or maybe away from it. We have speedier vehicles, better roads, iron-hard will to arrive ‘within time’ but still we are losing the grip and time is always speeding away, forcing us to continue increasing our quest for more speed. Everything is in a whirlwind, spinning like a mad top, cosmic top with whirring galaxies, sucking black holes, exploding stars. Things have changed so much as to reverse the reality: waterwork’s vestiges on the Himalayan peaks and sandiest deserts where once there were luscious most forests. And we with our social prominence and feigned calm trying to outfox time that has outfoxed everything to the stretches of infinity.

As I go slowly clinging to the edge of the road on my scooter, the bigger vehicles go making war-like din and angry clamor. Some even shriek with a hungry terrier’s vengeance. People seem to be running almost madly. Sadly very few have the real clue as to why and where they are running to. It’s more of a habit to run, I suppose. There is not much to look around the road, at least in this part of India. There are sinews of self-destruction scattered around in the intensive lop-sided cropping pattern in the fields with wagon-loads of poison in the form of chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and weedicides. The vestiges of the erratic interlocutors hell bent upon writing a one-dimensional, human-centric legacy.

In any case, you hardly have the time to look at something that may assure you that not all is lost. You have to be spot-on in staring at the road to survive and not get squashed like we squash worms and ants as we hurriedly walk. Your chances of reaching the destination and a centipede crossing the road are almost same. But then there are brief moments that steal in because they fall within the range of your concentration. The gypsy caravan is an exotic chaos by the side of the road. A young gypsy woman untangles the little front leg of a baby goat from the tethering rope and puts some chopped fodder in the small metal basin in front of the tiny guy. A truck carries a pile of junk and sitting on the junk heap are junked humans, the laborers. Faces and clothes smeared with dirt and grease. Destiny-hounded men carrying just trifle measure of flesh around their ribs, while the capaciously potbellied behemoths of luck and prosperity go almost squashing them underfoot. You feel so lucky even on your little scooter amidst car-swarms of latest models competing to get bigger and costlier. Many a shoeless foot bleeding on the stony path, while at least you have your slippers and common ground to walk upon. If you ever feel like a victim and think that the hostile searchlight of fate always picks you out to test you, please remember that there are people who are in the burning kiln right from beginning to end without any respite. 

Far away from wars and violence

 Mid-June is burning so excitedly and with such clinching ruthlessness that I sometimes fear the hair on my head may catch fire when I go out in the sun. Fierce loo is the triumphantly shrieking queen now. It singes your body and tries to parch your soul. It sizzles with its boiling sighs as if a red-hot iron rod is put in water letting out tempestuous sprouts of water and fire. And heart also burns with pain at the news of burning Manipur. Violence, hate and anger constitute a fire that burns all. It doesn’t compartmentalize its victims across religion, caste, class, ethnicities or any other differential that we humans have created in the society to form groupings. It was tragically verified in the ongoing ethnic violence between Meiteis and Kukis in Manipur. An ambulance was torched by a rampaging mob. A Meitei woman and her little daughter died in the attack. Meitei casualties from this perspective. But a Kuki man lost his daughter and wife as well. The dead Meitei woman was married to a Kuki man. So a Kuki casualty from this perspective. And above all, it’s always common humanity’s casualty. Politicians, leaders and other power aspirants will always trigger fire along the dividing fault lines. It serves their purpose. But in the fire the common fate of all groups burns with equal tragedy.

Beyond ethnic violence and imperialist wars, here in my little garden there is something that defies fire and is holding a little flag of hope, faith, humanity, colors, waters, flowers and spring. It’s a lemon swallow-tail, a butterfly. Gliding over the hot eddies, it arrives in the sun-thrashed garden to cheer-up the brooding, beaten, pale, stunted, withered plants. There are a few sun-burnt flowers, almost lust-ravaged by the fiery kisses, giving a sad smile as if they are the insignia of a proud but lost civilization. It lands among some almost melting, faded purple Mexican Petunia flowers still somehow managing their smiles under the parijat’s shade. The butterfly takes a few sips, and reinvigorated goes gliding almost through the fire. The air is so hot that it seems it will catch fire any moment. A little phenomenon, a transient slogger making the most of the few days bestowed by mother nature. Why stop flying as long as you have the wings even if it means flying through the fire? The butterfly flutters away in the hot, sighing wind, challenging its own colorful, soft pusillanimity, cutting across the snarling loops and deadly snarls of mortality. It’s a songfully fulfilling sight, a wholesale sortie of freedom, a quintessential assertion of free will. A grandiose gale proclaiming, ‘Burn my wings but fly I will at any cost!’ 

Sobriety--an exception

 Their fate went into petulant plunge, landing them into the pits of misery. The same old story of two generations of chronic drunkards. Peace goes out in an illustrious exodus from a house whose males spend most of the time in drunken oblivion.

The liquor-lover who quarrels and drinks non-stop is on a ceasefire today. The house was crumbling, the bricks losing their grip in the walls. It never was a home in any case. But even the namesake house, an assemblage of bricks and a roof overhead, was wearing away due to the negligence and constant strife and tension inside. The walls and the roof seemed to say enough is enough and started giving in.

A little piece of farmland was still in the family’s ownership. It was acquired by the government to build a road. The compensation money miraculously survived because the four daughters and their mother sat on it night and day. The entire female force rallied and banded together to ensure that the money was used in house-making only. The old crumbling house was dismantled. A new modest house emerged out of the ruins as the females of the family beat even the masons, bricklayers and laborers in contributing to the construction work. They worked full time with the construction staff to save the labor costs.

The liquor-lover seems sober today. The proud girls are watching with the immaculate dignity of caring daughters despite all the ill treatments by the menfolk under a patriarchal system. He is sprinkling water over the recently plastered walls. Holding the water hose he lets loose squirts of water like a child. He playfully wets his old father as well. It’s a big change because usually they squirt, sprinkle, pour and hurl the choicest abuses, cuss words and expletives at each other. The father also clumsily gambols a mild abuse. He teases his wife also and sprays water in her direction. How happy looks a house without drunken fights! Well, let’s hope the newly built house now becomes a happy home! However, there is not much chance of it being so given the liquor-loving father-son duo’s unswerving allegiance to the weird code of drunken conduct. But what’s wrong in hoping it to be a happy home at long last.

Slow-paced pleasure of some silent moments

 The world around you changes once a babbler makes a nest in your garden. They are very assertive in defending their territory. I’m spraying water on jungle geranium as a kind of bonus gift to it because it has blossomed really well even in this heat. An almost permanent shade of the parijat above has worked in its favor. I water it twice a day and it has made the most of it. It’s a pleasant sight to look at its bulbs of soft pink. These are tiny clusters of flowers forming big laddoo-sized bouquets. It’s a beautiful pattern, almost exotic and challengingly intricate. It’s a decorously contoured, captivating flower, a visual delight. Each bulb comprises a cluster of small, tubular blossoms which densely populate the inflorescence. The individual flowers are very small in size, just measuring about one to two inches in diameter. But their beauty lies in unity, holding together in illumined integrity. They grow closely together and form a rounded shape, presenting the stunning visual impact of a single big bulb of flower. You feel proud to have helped in creating such blossoms. These are visually very interesting flowers having intricate streaks and patterns, carrying unique swathes of aesthetics. They look inviting with their exotic appeal.

As I sprinkle water over the flowers and the glossy green oblong leaves, inhaling the tropical aroma, a babbler has some serious issue. In my flowery reverie I have stepped near a little puddle of water formed on the uneven cemented bricks in the yard. It must have been drinking water there and I inadvertently disturbed it. There it starts with a long chain of tart, stinging words. If you have the lung power to out-babble them you can assert your rights. But I have to give in to this perennial dissenter. My mailbox is full of recent rejections so I am in no mood to fight. I try though, in slight irritation. I turn the water pipe in its direction and give it a mild shower to cool it down. But that makes it outright abusive. I simply move away, why get into arguments with foul-mouthed guys. It proudly hops and reclaims its puddle and takes sips of victory by turning its neck sideways so that its beak gets a slant enabling it to scoop some water with each effort. It looks even angrier with its side-long white-rimmed look. I move further away.

The wire-tailed swallow couple is sitting at exactly the same spot on the wire. It’s a love-spot for them. They take a view of the courtyard with a sort of miscellaneous muse.

I have minimized honeybee casualties by putting dry leaves and light dry twigs on the water surface in the bucket. After taking a tumble in the water most of them swim to safety to the nearest point.

The flower in the wall crack is facing the toughest test. It has shed its leaves as homage to the fiery summers, sparing just a few leaves at the top as a mark of life and its ongoing fight. I sprinkle a bit of water over the crack twice a day and that keeps it going. It has to hang on till the monsoons return. Just a matter of one moth I suppose.

The ants have made their hole bigger and there is a little heap of sand, the dredge of their mining effort, on the clean cemented brick where they have drilled a hole. All and sundry need a pucca house these days. It’s a busy world with cascading ambitions.

Curry leaf tree, the beloved culinary plant with aromatic leaves. It is laden with small, delicate flowers growing in clusters called panicles. Each panicle comprises numerous individual flowers densely populating the inflorescence. Each gust of wind results in a drizzle of almost countless tiny petals measuring a few millimeters in size. The florescence is so dense that despite a continuous drizzle of tiny petals still there is enough for the bees, stinging wasps and creamy white little butterflies to go feasting through the day. Tiny star-shaped individual blooms harken the sappers. They emit a sweet, gently floral scent that wafts with the winds and carries its sweet invitation.

Far away from the tumultuous trajectories of the bigger world, it’s my little corner crowned with an unadulterated halo; of little sounds and long silences; of rosy radiance and reverberating bliss. A little world taking me into the pools of seductive withdrawal. There was a time when I tried to fit into the piercingly gibberish mainstream. Very soon I realized that I am one of the fringe folks. And frayed, frazzled and fatigued, no longer able to bear the shadowy overtures of the thoroughfare, carrying sore stabs of the feeling of victimization, sobbing tempests buzzing in my ears, I walked into the embracing folds of my little private world. It healed the scars on my soul. Far away from fictitious championing, I just try to be my real self, a tiny self going in sync with small-small happenings in my tiny corner. 

The ease of being with common sense

 There is some manual task to be done. Rashe Ram is my first option for anything requiring physical labor. I try my chance to connect him over his phone number. As expected, the number is temporary out of service. He knows he doesn’t need a phone much. Due to his honesty in work, he is much in demand, so the labor seekers would book his services by launching a physical search and catching hold of him in person. And his secret girlfriends also know where to find him whenever he is needed for his lover’s duties, which is nothing more than a hurried plain mating even without having a word. In any case he is a man of few words.

The work involves some repairs in the street and we are gathered on the spot feeling not so good about not being able to avail the services of the best worker. Then someone informs that Rashe was recently picked up by the police for keeping 15 little pouches of ganja. We have just stopped talking about him and there comes Rashe Ram lumbering with his usual carefree air, unconcerned about the big issues in life. He is much hailed for his timely arrival.  

He shyly denies my question about the police episode. But when he sees that I’m serious about this quest he tells the truth. ‘I had bought 15 little pouches of ganja from Delhi for personal use. The village police informer passed the information to police. They picked me up. Kept me there for couple of hours. They collected all the pouches and took three thousand rupees to set me free.’ These are plain facts of his arrest. Their significance in his life is limited to their literal meaning. His is a mind unburdened of the polished maladies of overthinking, analysis and psychological traumas born of such an inconsequential happening.

‘You don’t keep phone these days? I tried but the number is out of service,’ I ask him. He has his tiny non-smartphone with him. It’s a new number he tells me. The old number? I threw away the chip in a nullah when the police were after me. We the clever people think it proper to take his new number in order to avail his labor services without delay in future. I ask my brother to note down his number because I don’t have my phone with me. He also is enjoying a phone-free time which seems a blessing, almost a vacation these days. Don’t we feel so relaxed when we step out of the house without the one tone psychological weight of the phone? My cousin brother is also having the same vacation. I ask the workers do they have a pen, which was a foolish query because their pockets would have beedies, matchbox, tobacco or ganja—the tools to beat the feeling of being disadvantaged in life by birth, the fate throwing them into poverty right from the beginning. We seem to be at loss of words about the daunting task regarding how to note down his number. With my amazing creative skills, I even think of writing it on the sand and then run home to take my phone before some cattle either pees or defecates on my earthen notebook.

‘Why don’t you just dial your number from my phone?’ Rashe softly drools with his slurred, soft, noble giant’s speech.

My software professional brother, still carrying the classy fragrance of a recent official trip to a developed country; my cousin brother carrying the high notes of confidence and youth becoming of an enthusiastic entrepreneur; and me the man with a library of books in the head—we have been caught on the wrong foot. Common sense seems to be too exclusive for our educated, smart selves. Caught on such a wrong foot of unawareness!

All three of us have an embarrassed laugh. It’s very humbling. A basic dose of common sense is all that we need to lead a happy life, to have a light mind unburdened of overthinking and hard-pressed by weighty issues. Many villagers are straightaway dismissive about Rashe Ram because he isn’t cunning and clever like the rest and this they interpret as being a dumb person. But in his unburdened mind he carries enough common sense to allow him a contended simple life.

The next day he is busy at the assigned task. It involves clearing a big heap of bricks, boughs, plastic and trash all jumbled together to form a nice century for reptiles and rodents. He is working relaxedly but I’m worried for him because many snakes have been seen around that place. I have already cautioned him multiple times about it but he seems to carry on without minding my words too much. Then my over-concern burdens his brain and he has to explain. ‘See, I have this stick with me. Didn’t you see that each time I put my hands to pick up something, I first prod the items with the stick so that the snake will crawl away,’ he slowly drawls. It again is so-so humbling. In my eagerness to spot some snake I had completely overlooked this simple man’s simple solution in dealing with the problem. Such a simple solution for a risky task! In his place my educated mind would have given me solutions like wearing knee-length jungle boots and gloves reaching armpits to deal with the problem. I stand corrected like a little boy standing in front of a stern headmaster.

The so-called common, simple, poor people have huge common sense in their unburdened minds to help them wade through the scores of daily challenges they have to face. I realize however high and mighty be our knowledge, we miss on little nuggets of common sense. But these are the little weapons in the hands of the common man to easily meet the routine challenges of life.