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

 2019

Miscellaneous Notes, Reflections and Literary Expressions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Urban Jungle and the Little Republic of Survival

The years between 2010 and 2016 cover my career in publishing in Delhi NCR. I worked in a few companies ranging from online B2B marketing, content development for web portals, digital publishing, and hardcore academic publishing.

The jobs were thoroughly engaging, requiring your submergence into the sea of words with total focus, and at the end of the day you would feel like you had been doing hardcore labour, just like unskilled workers in the manufacturing sector do. And on top of that was this feeling of not getting enough payment, a kind of undercurrent of being underpaid for all this hard work.

It was tiring and exhaustive work, full of underachievers because, of course, in editorial and content development work, these were people who had some talent, who had academic inclinations, but unfortunately could not achieve in life what they really deserved, and at the end of the journey they had to take up this job.

I don't think I came across anybody who was here by choice. It was by compulsion. It was just by circumstantial forces pushing one into a corner and then having to take up this job when there was no other option.

Salary, of course, was always an issue. It was not as per my expectations, and especially after all those lofty aspirations and nearly coming to touch the civil services, and then having tasted business, and even though at the end of it I had to quit business, still I had seen, I had felt what it was like being an owner of an establishment, however small it was.

I had seen money arriving, money going, and the nice lifestyle in between, international travel, seeing the world, and other luxurious things. So having to convince myself to take up a content writer or editorial job in academic publishing houses was almost a milestone.

I accepted my fate and melted into the ignominy of congested, crowded, jostling, teeming, unkempt, labyrinthine, suffocating, mushrooming, disheveled Delhi. Being lost in this claustrophobia being as good as finding oneself in silence and solitude in the infinite space among the crowd.

My major stay during these six or seven years was at Aligaon near Badarpur Border in Delhi. A rural settlement caught in the restless entrails of the concrete octopus spreading its tentacles but not able to digest it completely.  The smell of struggle in the streets, the sweat and fatigue of labour, the diehard stubbornness of hope and dreams, and the soft, quiet, unassuming dignity of people struggling against enormous odds. Here you had thousands of struggles within meters. Dreams here were plentiful, sadly space wasn’t.

It was an urban village off the road to Faridabad and Mathura, cutting across the congested stretch from Ashram to Badarpur Border. On the right side you had this manufacturing corridor in Okhla Industrial Area. On the left side you had Sarita Vihar, and just nearby was this urban village growing very weirdly, unshapely, being pushed from all corners by the urban forces. Here poverty was the landlord; necessity its poor tenant. Everybody seemed to be moving; few in reality were progressing.

 

Under unplanned forces, it was just like any other urban village, as you can imagine, people trying to cope with the rising economic opportunities and then just rushing into the first major thing that comes to them, that is, making rooms to accommodate more and more people as tenants. The tenants had to be busy, busy and busy to make ends meet; nobody had the luxury of standing still. The city promised mountains but delivered molehills; but hope was the cheapest item that could always be bought even with empty pockets. Life was cheap; but survival was very costly.

This area was a cheap locality because on one side you had Okhla Industrial Area and Mohan Cooperative industrial zone. Then you had the Badarpur and Faridabad industrial corridor, and across the Yamuna to the east, of course, it was Noida. It was thronged by unskilled migrants labors, hawkers and vendors carrying inherited struggles on their frail shoulders; but at least hope would take birth every day in morning after dying by the end of the day.

Here poor migrant unskilled labourers from UP, Bihar and MP were staying, paying low rent for one-room or two-room accommodations. Here in this tiny rural corner with a mountainous urban grafting. A stubborn village although swallowed by the urban leviathan, but not completely digested and hence puked out in a strange half-digested rural-urban hybrid -- weird, shapeless illegitimate child of unplanned urban development. The streets slept very lightly; while hunger hardly ever slept. Full of crowded lives with almost empty futures.

To me personally, it was even peaceful to be lost in this concrete wilderness, to be wandering unnoticed while caught in the sprawling tentacles of this heartless urbanization. In the suffocating embrace of urbanization -- a labyrinth of brick, mortar and human strife, struggle and desperation (but dreams also) – it was strange type of peace. Here in this haphazard anatomy of the urban village, in a forgotten crowded pocket, where this untidy untended creeper clung to the big metropolitan banyan tree, I also rented a little nest. While the city exploded like uncontrollable organism around, I willingly became a participant-cum-observer of this claustrophobic geography of survival and needs. There was dignity in this drudgery. There was discipline in this desperation. When tomorrow is mortgaged to today’s needs, survival itself turns a full-time occupation. And there is art in it. Aesthetics.

Staying here would save me a lot of money because just for two and a half thousand rupees I had a reasonably good room in comparison to the majority of the people who were staying in almost slum-like conditions at 800 rupees or 1,000 rupees per room.

As they say, a one-eyed man is a king in a group of blind people. The same was the case with me. I was surrounded by people whose labour the metropolis was aware of but wasn’t aware of their names and presence. It needed their hands, but wasn’t interested in even casting a single cursory look at their faces. Every tiny hovel-like room had an unfinished story. To me nobody was insignificant in their struggle. It was a big university without classrooms to learn lessons in life. I studied their curriculum, they busy in trying to pass the exam of survival. I saved money here, but I collected rich experiences also.

The entire street where this house, whose one room I had taken on rent, was situated was full of unskilled labourers, security guards, petty shop attendants and vendors, street hawkers, or engaged in any type of job that can be sandwiched between the urban toast to squeeze out a morsel of survival and living. Quite a busy and happening place.

Poverty has its great tightening grip on its carriers, and there is a sort of communal living where many struggling poor people are staying engaged in different types of jobs.

It was more or less like a village kind of environment, people speaking in Bhojpuri and Purvanchali dialects, addressing each other like they were from the same village.

It was a very happening, busy, noisy street clamouring with the pangs of survival, the economic survival of unskilled migrants arriving here in the urban jungle with dreams and aspirations to look for a relatively better way of life, but getting lost in the urban sea as unknown entities. The fast wheels of economic growth, development and progress plied over them like they were a layer of tar or asphalt.

The central thoroughfare with ceaseless caravans of economic refugees arriving like human tributaries emptying into the metropolitan river. These uprooted children of impoverished hinterlands jumping from deprivation to uncertainty, sometimes calamity; their entire possessions tied in a few rag-tag bundles; the unsung and unknown foot soldiers of our economic development. They land on the platforms, day after day, year after year, jumping into uncertain destinies. The restless migration of unmeetable dreams; the flight from inherited deprivation to uncertain opportunities. The small-human tide washing against prosperous shores. The exodus of these refugees from the circumstantial tyranny makes them look like economic pilgrims moving towards the shrine of the goddess of prosperity. And when these invisible passengers of our train of growth land here, ogling at the distant lighthouse to these dispossessed, it's a leap from familiar poverty to unfamiliar struggle. Ironically, it feels like a massive migration starting from fringes and ending on margins. A herd, almost in tandem with herds of cattle and sheep moving almost hypnotized: carrying the accumulated arrears of historical injustice; shackled by the inherited chains of inherited deprivation; a life starting several miles behind the starting line; squashed and pulped by the crushing arithmetic of daily survival; haunted by the perpetual deficit of existence; burdened under the ancestral baggage of discrimination and exclusion; struggling to come out of the bottomless pit of everyday necessities after spending a lifetime in the pit over the generations; busy in the merciless mathematics of hunger; balanced on the knife-edge; chalking their endless plans for survival; a life lived on the narrow ledge between life and death just a step from each other,

It was not a long street. It was a mere side street. It ran for just a hundred meters approximately starting from the main street. The house was situated at the end of it. About hundred meters of compressed humanity: a microcosm of our unfinished social transformation; a little republic of socio-economically dispossessed; a miniature struggle of survival; the cramped theatre of everyday survival; the living museum of everyday existence; the buzzing beehive of human necessity; a human anthill of restless activity.

It was a little street with hundreds of twisted tales, unfinished and bleak. It was a cauldron of conflicted dreams at the congested crossroads of destinies perpetually getting baked under fire. In this mosaic of deprivation and determination, there was the orchestra of labour, laughter and quarrels. A tiny republic on the crowded island of humanity where citizenship meant to be ever-a-soldier in the miniature battlefield. Here the unending carnival of unending needs and necessity played out day and night. A little universe held together by the undying will to survive. 

There was a dead end, and beyond that was the single railway line for cargo trains that fetched coal to Badarpur Thermal Power Station, which belched smoke into the already smoked-out lungs of Delhi. Along the line there was semi-wilderness comprising bushes, grass and trees on both sides of the single line.

Just in front of the house where I had taken a room on rent, there was this rectangular, double-storeyed block of a tailoring unit. They were vendors of some local clothing manufacturers. There were rows and rows of sewing machine operators toiling away day in and day out, their salary being defined by the number of pieces they finished in a day. Just near it was a water treatment plant where they drew water with a borewell, treated it and sold it in 20-litre bottles. The rest of the street was occupied by families in bundles: big families, small children, school-going children, adolescent parents; all struggling from the youngest to the eldest.

You could see the handcarts of the people who would put either their small-time eatables, snacks, tea, or vegetables, or trinkets and toys on them and wander around the congested Aligaon to seek out a few rupees that would convince them that this life was economically more paying and better than their villages in UP, Bihar and MP, where there were no opportunities. The wage payments back home were very low, and on top of that, you had annual floods that would destroy their crops on their little plots of land.

Most of these poor unskilled migrants belonged to the so-called lower rungs of society, poor people, socially disadvantaged, from the so-called lower castes, always at a disadvantage, underprivileged, and beginning their journey from a huge account deficit, where even reaching zero and starting afresh required almost an entire life's worth of effort. But still, whatever might be the living conditions in urban villages, people get drawn to them, just like people from Third World countries are getting drawn to developed countries, even if it means perishing on donkey routes and illegal migrant routes, drowning in the sea, getting shot by guards, being duped and kidnapped by mediators on the way. That is the same old story of people running away from their miseries. So it was a little replica of this tendency of humans migrating to better places.

These were too small people to venture out for any bigger places. So they had landed here in Delhi.

On a daily basis, full trains of migrant unskilled labourers from Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh and other northern states arrive at Delhi platforms. You have small, dark, famished, undernourished, malnourished, historically deprived, underprivileged thousands walking with their sackcloths and gunny bags full of utensils and clothes bunched together and made into bundles, carrying them on their heads and shoulders and backs. Little women, I call them girl mothers, clad in soiled saris, carrying infants in their arms, and a few others toiling along with the struggling parents.

A very poor sight.

 

Staying among these people, it would always remind me that it's a privilege to have a skilled job, even if it was in content writing in B2B ventures, or digital publishing, or academic publishing. It would give an appearance of being a good and nicely paying job.

The house where I stayed was a two-storeyed house at the end of the small street, in front of that tailoring unit. The lower floor was occupied by Chhedi Lal, a man in his early fifties, small, stocky, funnily mustached.

He plied his handcart called thela and tried to sell his chole bhature or parathas, which his always-fighting wife would prepare early in the morning for him so that he could sell them, serving as a lunch provider for scores of unskilled migrants and labourers in the near vicinity.  

They were from Bihar, from the cobbler community, historically deprived, socially very, very underprivileged and exploited. People like them have been running away from the dragnet of historical exploitation by the higher castes. They hardly have any opportunities: no land, no education, no social standing. So here they are trying to re-fabricate and reshape a new identity, at least for the children. The woman was very energetic but quarrelsome though, and that can be understood. Managing the economy on a shoestring budget, where you have to dig a well every day to drink that day's worth of water, is wearisome and very tough. And she was giving her best. She was restless, but I never found her to be lazy in any way. Her husband, in contrast, was a cool guy; a silent pond in comparison to the gurgling, noisy stream that his wife was. So he would absorb all her grumblings, shoutings, taunts, comments. Most of the time he was silent and just did his job, and when he was at home he just lay down. He did not bother about the hurricane unleashed by his wife.

Their pairing was like a placid pond by a turbulent waterfall; almost a quiet bank of a perpetually overflowing river. If he was a man of still waters, she was a woman of restless currents. Her words would unleash like monsoon torrents, he would quietly absorb them like dry land. I could usually hear this domestic cyclone fussing around the unmoving centre. It was a treat to watch such differing temperaments yoked into the same cart of survival. As she cooked food, the steam from pressure cooker looked like her anger escaping. Chhedi Lal surely had amazing endurance. Maybe her restlessness fuelled the household and his composure steadied it. While reading after coming from office I could hear the daily thunderstorms going late into the night. I really respected Chhedi Lal for his patience against this endless friction born of poverty that cascaded from the mouth of his wife. The grinding wheel of survival is bound to give sparks. Good that he never raised his sails while her storms lasted. Otherwise the house would have blown off.

It was sheer luck that I never ever found him raising his voice. So we owed our stay at the house to his endless patience.

 

 

 

 

 

The ground floor, where they stayed, had two almost semi-dark rooms. The entry was through a small door leading to a little, always-wet corridor, on the right side of which you had their bathroom, toilet and kitchen, and as you passed it, in front you had their living quarters, and in between there was the staircase leading to the first floor where I had my room. Their bathroom, toilet, kitchen, almost always busy, always noisy, somebody shouting, somebody raising complaints, almost hara-kiri. It was buzzing with that struggle for survival, always on tenterhooks. It was always shaking, and I can never ever recall the small cemented, brick-paved flooring being dry. It was always wet.

They had four children. The eldest was a dark, slightly overweight girl, must have been around 17 or 18. She was followed by another girl, 13 or 14, a slim girl, dark in colour but with very pretty features. The girls  were followed by two boys.

The family was doing its best by sending their kids to a government school nearby, and as you can understand, the education system in state-managed schools is very poor. So it was education in name only, but still they were moving towards getting matriculation or senior secondary certificates. So even if Chhedi Lal probably never went to school, and neither did his wife, if their kids reached up to senior secondary level, that would be counted as moving up the rungs, and possibly the generation after, their grandchildren would move on to achieve graduation certificates with real skills to get into some job, some skilled job. Such fights in such families are intergenerational after all.

Children the tender shoots trying to break through the concrete of inherited poverty. Soft, slow steps on the slow staircase of generational uplift. Each school certificate a breach in the fort of deprivation and dispossession. A windowless existence so far, now education opening a tiny hole to the outside world. The tiny participants in the long relay race of social mobility. It's almost like Chhedi Lal and his wife running the first lap, followed by his children and then his grandchildren, to be finished in the coming generation. Or say, the parents planting a sapling whose shade and fruits would be enjoyed by their grandchildren. I watched their first uncertain steps out of the historical gutter. Their eyes glittering like tiny lamps flickering against the darkness of deprivation. A schoolbag carrying the unmet dreams of many generations. Walking on the fragile bridge between inherited poverty and imagined prosperity. This generation adding one more rung to the ladder, to make the ladder long enough to allow them to crawl out of the painful basement, and go on a slow painful ascent up the ladder to come onto taste open air from the subterranean existence. And go on roof and look at the distant horizon of a university degree. Vaah, the stubborn green shoots of possibility; dreams germinating in the cracks of deprivation.

We should not expect too much and expect them to create miracles, and we should never judge them, because they start their life from gutters, and to come out of a gutter, from the worms of survival, and clean oneself and start walking on the main street, and then go on to the highway of economic upliftment, is no mean task. It requires generations of effort, and they are doing that.

The eldest girl probably was in the loops of adolescent love, because I would always see her sneaking up to the terrace on the roof of my room, going past like a young filly, phone clasped in her hand and a gleam in her eyes. The other girl of 13 or 14 was very silent, and I almost always found her silent in a very dignified way. She carried herself with a lot of maturity even at that young age.

Sometimes, after office hours, when I stood on the terrace looking at the silence of bushes and trees along the railway line, the Badarpur Thermal Power Station railway line passing behind the house, and another abandoned house just overlooking the other side, it gave a very quaint feeling, a strange feeling of not being exactly in a metropolis, but in a very weirdly shaped village where so many types of stress, tensions, aspirations and dreams had commingled to form a heady concoction.

Therefore, it was quite interesting: looking at this last green fringe of the suffocating, smog-laden metropolis, with thermal power belching smoke nearby. Sometimes when I took a peg or two of whiskey the railway line looked like a scar across the urban wilderness from the terrace; a scarred iron artery feeding Delhi's industrial appetite.

At nights, the room would shake with the rhythm of coal trains carrying black nourishment to the smoke-belching giant, the thermal power station. And the smoky lungs of the tired metropolis would try even more to keep jogging, for progress and growth.

The forlorn patch of greenery at the edge of industrialization presenting a kind of uneasy handshake between wilderness and factories. But past midnight, when there was no train on the track, it gave the feeling of a thin line of silence. I would look into this abandoned yard of metropolitan battlefield. A thin slice of dying wilderness in my backyard surrounded by the soot-stained horizons. Here I sometimes heard the last whispers of rural solitude very late in the night. And to make it very ironical, it was so close to the thermal giant belching smoke.

The staircase landing on our floor lay in the middle of the two rooms on this floor. On one side there was my room, and on the other side was the gem of an attraction for this entire little house. It was full of new, fresh dreams, and it would require a complete separate chapter in its narration.

 

These were rectangular rooms. My room was a measuring about 20 feet by 10. Its roof was made in the typical rural, mundane, modest housing style, of stone slabs and iron beams. The other room in front of me, facing the street, in front of the tailoring unit, bore the same proportions with just one addition. It had a little kitchen, a very small kitchen where, at the most, two persons could stand shoulder to shoulder and try to work out the cooking. And in between, where the staircase landed from the ground floor, there was the washing area with a tap, and just where the staircase landed, there was a common bathroom and attached latrine, very small ones. A little bathroom where a heavy person would have difficulty in giving a free hand to massaging and rubbing his body during bathing. And from this bathroom, there was a little, tiny room leading into the Indian toilet on a raised platform. These two things, toilet and bathroom, and the washing area with a tap, were shared by the occupants of these two rooms facing each other. That was the setup where I was staying, like a one-eyed prince among the blind.

I was seen to be earning quite well, staying in a better room. And indeed it was so, because the room in front always had five to six occupants. Can you believe it? Five or six of them staying at the same time, sharing the meager monthly rent.

The average age of the entire group would come out to be 2O at the most. Like some of them would be under 20, some of them would be a couple of years more than 20, most of them undergraduates from poor, socially deprived families in UP and Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Bengal and other states. Most of them held senior secondary school certificates and were doing graduation through open learning courses and distance learning courses here in Delhi, with dreams in their eyes. Their families were not able to continue their studies back at home. They were doing jobs in call centres. Call centres, the dream world of any job aspirant who lands up in Delhi NCR. And one or two of them would continue getting shifted, like someone going out and being replaced by someone else. But four or five of them were always the permanent fixture, and that made it very, very interesting.

Five, six, even more when they had visitors folded in a single room, a kind of dormitory of unfinished dreams. When it was having visitors apart from the regular residents, it gave the feeling of crowded nursery of ambitions. But more than that it was a small fraternity of economic survival. They were hardworking decent boys with dreams bigger than the room that they stayed in. The young shoulders, restless apprentices of urban prosperity, seemed to carry ancient family burdens. It kept the floor buzzing with life after the boring repetitive editorial work. The experience was everyday fresh in proximity of this roomful of tomorrow's possibilities. There was a solid faith in life fuelling this apparently fragile fraternity of shared hardship. I witnessed this generation trying to approach the threshold of opportunity, their dreams traveling faster their salaries. Five or six different destinies sharing a roof forming a tinier republic within the little republic in the poor street of a poor locality. Some of them even read at nigh and seemed the midnight scholars of economic necessity; the scholar borrowing time from sleep to buy a better future.

]A crowded launching pad to take their families ahead.

They called me Big B. Not that I was too big in stature, just that I was elder to them and was in a dream job, the way they saw it. Because they would laugh that you earn as much single-handedly as all of us do in a month, and that fetched me a lot of respect from them.

These were boys from very disciplined, cultured families where elders had given them the family values of respecting elders. So I fetched a lot of respect from them, and that made it quite bearable, watching people struggle, five or six of them earning only as much as I was doing in a month, and a few of them even still teenagers, already supporting their families, bearing all their costs in Delhi, paying for their open studies, and still managing to send a bit of money back home.

 

Staying there almost a part of their group, it made life worth it. After shedding invisible sweat of intellectual labour while working on the assembly line of words in the factory of sentences and paragraphs, it was a relief in that personal environment. I felt almost like a labourer in the vineyards of words. Those who have worked in editorial departments must be aware of the mental treadmill of editorial deadlines; the ceaseless churning of the editorial mill; the quiet drudgery of cerebral labor; a miner digging through manuscripts; a regular excavation of meaning from mounds and heaps of words. While the unending conveyor belt kept on fetching more and more raw, full of errors manuscripts. Sometimes it would appear like a sea of words with no shore in sight. And I would come back carrying a mysterious fatigue born of earning a living using just mind with hardly any other physicality involved. Still, it was disburdening to be away from the spotlight in my village. I was lowest of the low here in this locality and it gave me a strange relief.

The entrepreneurial wings had been chipped, so now it was restless little bird trying to adjust to a smaller cage; a journey from steering my own boat to someone else's. From the pinching peak of ambition, it was coming down to the plateau or low land of accommodation, thereupon I wandered with a peaceful sense of resignation. The office was a tight pipeline so the once free current hardly had any avenue to feel the vastness of ambition, success and goal. The dignity that would be bruised earlier was now customized to the level of all those around me.

I could have easily afforded a nice accommodation in a nice society, but I preferred to stay here. I felt like a wearied long distance traveller now safely cocooned in this urban cubicle. My wandering spirit seemed strangely domesticated. I was fastly adjusting to the truce between aspirations and necessity. From open seas to this narrow canal. Ambitions thrown away. Personal freedom ditched. Still in this narrow confine, there was a sense of a different type of freedom, on this hard pavement of survival, in this reconciliation with the below-ordinary. I seemed to glow even more with the subdued embers of my civil services and entrepreneurial fire.                                                                                  

Drops of Divinity: The Sacred Is Here and Now

Late March, 2026

The beautiful charm of the small world, of small places, sleepy life in a pause in the countryside of Haryana.

There are unassuming small places, little drops of divinity; but they carry the essence of godliness, just like a drop of the sea has got the entire essence of the sea. Similarly, these places, not so famous on the Indian spiritual map, carry the essence, the significance of divinity in their little, little ways.

They are part of local folklore, local legends, local mythology, and these have been the guiding light for scores of people from the struggling, labouring, farming class, the people that you come across in villages. And they have been keeping the flame alive with their faith, with their belief, with their rituals, with their festival celebrations and annual fairs in commemoration of the spiritual significance of these small places.

These are small just in name, but they are as mammoth and huge in godly essence as any other famous place.

And as I wander around, taking little sips of divinity from these restful portals of energy, it gives me the same feeling as any big spiritual place like Mount Kailash would give.

One such place is at village Chitana in Sonipat. It's near my village, and the Devi of this village is worshipped and is famously known as Chitane Wali Mata.

The story goes like this: about 400 years back, a Brahmin kanya from Chitana village had a dream in which Mata gave her darshan and told her that in the village pond there was an idol of hers.

The villagers dug the pond and found Mother Divine's beautiful statue deep in the mud. The grand idol was extracted with faith, reverence, song, dance and celebration.

After rituals and much celebration, a temple was constructed by the pond and Mother's idol was consecrated there.

Presently, a grand fair is held on Saptami and Ashtami of Navratras. There is a tradition of digging earth seven times from the pond. The pond is named Kamal Talab.

The village temple committee has been very, very efficient. You can just look at the way they have set up the arrangement. It's very impressive, the entire compound, and there is discipline, there is seriousness, which bespeaks their faith and diligence in maintaining the sanctity of this place.

By the temple's back, there is a miraculous imli tree. It is very ancient, this imli tree. It is hollow from inside. It was dead earlier. After the eternal lamp was lit, the tree got new saplings. It sprouted to life.

There is a belief that if someone ties a thread on the tree, it fulfils one's wishes.

As of now, the tree seems to be dead, but it is alive in the hearts of the people who still keep on tying their threads while asking for fulfilment of their wishes.

So faith and myth are fresh, alive and green.

The tree is still worshipped as if it is fresh and green.

The temple is very impressive, well managed, everything in proper order. A regional Shakti shrine, folk sacred character, the sacred trinity: temple with Mata idol, sacred tamarind tree and pond.

The temple has evolved organically with additions and improvements over a period of time. It is a hybrid architecture of folk and Nagara style. Even with its modesty, it has a very tall spire and brick-and-plaster construction, incremental expansions over a period of time.

You can easily guess that people have been spending money on it with the rise in the economy.

The entrance courtyard is spacious, with semi-covered halls for kirtans and the inner core, the sacred chamber where you have Mata's beautiful idol glitters with religious decoration. There are sacred peripheral shrines of Devis and Devtas, and mass devotion during Navratra gatherings. It must be very crowded during the fairs because you can see the railings for managing queues of the devotees.

There is not much carving. Still it's modestly majestic with its painted and tiled surfaces instead of sculpted stones.

There is a classical Shastra-based yagyashala, and in front of it hangs a huge brass bell from the entrance archway.

Its vibrations send rhythms of divinity in the air.

It's very surprising to come across such a well-organized temple premises in the countryside. It means the committee and temple trust have been coordinating really well, and so are the donors of money, who have been quite liberal and kind and loving in donating big amounts of money for constructing and managing this beautiful temple, where thousands gather during Navratras when there is a fair held.

It fulfils multiple purposes of giving opportunities to the people to have darshan of Mata. Children come and enjoy the thoroughfare, buy toys, eat sweetmeats. So it is quite entertaining during the Navratras.

Now at this time, when this is off-season and there are not many pilgrims, save a family who have brought their newlywed son with his new bride for fulfilling rituals in front of Mata's idol and taking her blessings.

As I stand here, I just muse over the fact that this place is no less than Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, if you have that particular emotion, that bhav in your heart.

So, of course, even here Mata's blessings are as powerful, loving and compassionate as they are in the Vaishno Devi temple in the hills, provided you are open, you are on that frequency of surrender, full belief and faith.

You can harness the divine energy from any spiritual portal, big or small, it does not matter.

And there comes a stage when each and every part of Mother Nature becomes a living idol of grace, of love, of godliness. When you are on that frequency, you are no longer required to go on pilgrimages to get into that bhav of surrender and faith.

When you are perpetually, constantly on that platform, when you start seeing godliness in each living and non-living part of Mother Nature. When you see the same godliness in a stone as well as in a flower, in a beautiful woman or a handsome man, or a fearsome wild animal, or a reptile like a cobra. When this happens, you meet the essence cosmic unity. 

When you recognize the inherent unity of the same cosmic energy, which is the fundamental base of all living and non-living beings at the quantum level, the same energy manifesting in different forms in this interplay of beautiful Leela, this Maya, this grand illusion, this sweet shower, this ecstatic burst of energy on Mother Earth in myriads of forms.

When you recognize that cosmic inherent unity, then you start feeling godliness at each geographical point, at each spatial unit.

So space and time then acquire a sanctity and nothing moves. Even if everything moves around you and is churning, you are unmoved. You are out of the compulsive boundaries of karma bandhan. That's liberation. 

You are stable with your faith, with your feeling, with your surrender, with your acceptance, with your acknowledgement of divinity at each and every part on Mother Earth.

So as I stand at this beautiful place in the countryside of Haryana, the solitary chiming of the temple bell instantly draws my attention to the very fact that yes, it's here, it's here and now.

Divinity is here and now.

Dear sadhaks, wherever you are, the cosmic grace is available. You just have to recall and be aware of its presence and remember it.

The moment you remember it, it is there.

The only time this portal is shut is when we are not aware of it, when that veil, that separation of ignorance, removes us from this continuity, this everlasting, infinite oneness, the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of each and everything in the cosmos.

Only then do we feel separated, and the moment we feel that separation, there is restlessness, there is that pining, weird feeling, that pain that is driving most of us on Earth, and as a replacement we go for so many pursuits on the material plane, driven by our fears, insecurities and illusions.

But the moment we are aware that yes, it is here and now, divinity, the grace, and I occupy that position where it's present and is enveloping me, embracing me from all sides. That's liberation. That's samadhi. 

It is there where you are at this moment.

It manifests there the moment you are aware of it and feel it.

It just needs your awareness, your focus, your attention.

So the more we try to recall this fact, the more we are on that frequency. The frequency of liberation. 

Baba Jindanath: The Living Fireplace of Faith

Late March, 2026

About 250 years back, a boy was born in village Moi on the 14th day of the Chaitra lunar month. Born in a farmer family, he was named Jaspal.

The family kept cattle and buffaloes. It was normal for the boys to take the buffaloes and cows for grazing in the surrounding scrub forest and pastures around the village.

Boy Jaspal had a spiritual attitude to life right from the beginning.

One day Baba Mastanath met him while the boy was preparing to return to his village with his cattle. Baba Mastanath said to him that he wanted to eat kheer.

Being respectful towards ascetics, Jaspal said he would go back to his house and return with kheer because it could not be prepared in the forest, as there was no rice and no milk.

But the Baba said, “If you are a true devotee of God, you will prepare kheer here itself.”

Jaspal explained helplessly that none of the buffaloes was lactating at the time, and moreover there was no rice or sweet to make kheer.

Baba pointed to a buffalo that had never calved, had never given a calf.

“Go and milk that one,” the Baba said.

The Baba gave him his kamandal and asked Jaspal to milk the barren buffalo, which had never given a calf in its life.

Miraculously, milk came out of the udder of a buffalo that had never been pregnant even once in its life.

Baba Mastanath then asked Jaspal to prepare kheer.

Jaspal said he would have to go back to his village to get rice and gur, jaggery.

The Baba then picked a bone and dropped it in the milk, and as it was boiled on fire, kheer was prepared.

Baba Mastanath told him that he had come to make him enlightened, like Gopichand and Bharthari.

“Eat this kheer and turn immortal,” Baba said.

But Jaspal hesitates. He doesn't feel like eating the kheer because Baba Mastanath had dropped a bone in the milk to prepare it. For courtesy's sake, he says that he doesn't eat a sadhu's food; instead, we offer them something.

Despite repeated requests, Jaspal doesn't eat the kheer.

Lastly, the Baba himself served kheer on the leaves and ate it and left the place after some time.

Strangely Jaspal got terribly hungry after the Baba left and could not help eating. He licked the leaves on which the Baba had eaten, and it triggered disenchantment with worldliness in the boy.

He followed the Baba to his Math at Asthal Bohar. He repents and asks him to bestow liberation upon him.

Baba made him his disciple.

He asked him to do tapasya at the place where they had met.

“On the 14th of Asoj, Mother Earth will embrace you in her divine lap and you will take a living samadhi, a jinda samadhi. You will be famous as Baba Jindanath.”

Jaspal returned and performed tapasya at the place for many years.

The said day arrived.

On this occasion mother Earth parted and took him into her maternal lap for a living samadhi, jinda samadhi.

As he was entering Mother Earth, a Brahmin saw him. He ran to inform his family.

Jaspal's sister-in-law cared for him like she was a mother and he a son. When she came to know that her son-like brother-in-law was taking samadhi, she came running to the spot and requested him to come back to their house.

Jaspal asked her if she also wanted liberation, she was free to accompany him to the real home, the abode of God.

And without hesitating, without thinking twice, she also jumped into samadhi.

Both of them entered samadhi while completely alive and conscious.

Now, to commemorate this great spiritual event, a big fair is organized twice a year, on the 14th of Asoj and the 14th of Chaitra month.

Farmers offer jaggery and brooms at the samadhi temple to seek the Baba's blessings. On this occasion, about 20,000 quintals of jaggery and a big mound of brooms collect at the site, so that gives an indication of how many devotees throng the temple shrine on the holy occasion.

The temple is a Siddha Mandir, a samadhi memorial of Saint Baba Jindanath.

It has an open courtyard. The renovated temple has imposing carved pillars and domes and arches. The garbhagriha has Baba Jinda's samadhi. There is grand stonework in the interior.

From earlier brick and lime paste, now it is extensive stonework in russet brown on the outside and marble inside.

And as me and my brother stand in this grand monument of sacrifice and thirst for divine love, which drew Baba Jindanath into a living samadhi, driven by the divine unquenchable thirst, unless and until one meets with the cosmic Father of ultimate realization, it showers joy and blessings on us.

Standing here, sitting here, absorbed in the beautiful carved stones, recalling the great spiritual happening that occurred two and a half centuries ago, it's a wonderful feeling in this March, when the wheat crop around in the surrounding fields is acquiring ripening colours.

It's like being at any other holy place, the lofty spiritual places like Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri.

That is small-time India's charm, spiritually redolent with its local saints and sages who graced Earth and did tapasya for the beneficence of the local people, the farmers, the poor people in the countryside.

They guided them. They still keep inspiring millions.

On the days when the fair is held in commemoration of the great spiritual happening of Jaspal turning into Baba Jindanath by going into a living samadhi, the farmers and poor people come here with faith, open-heartedness, honesty and simplicity, and offer jaggery and brooms, the simple things that they can afford, and seek blessings for the welfare of their cattle and their family.

It's a living fireplace of faith and blessings that still spreads kindness, love and healing for the people around.

A Yellow Sunflower Among Saffron Marigolds

March 2, 2026

The Buddhist monk, the sole yellow robe among the sea of saffron-clad sadhus.

He seems ageless, hasn't changed a bit in the last one year. He has arrived to take his usual spot at a corner in the narrow street buzzing with tourists and pilgrims.

Before that, he bows down to Ganga Ma and each and every idol or image of gods, goddesses, saints and gurus which are visible from the point he is standing at.

After this, he will stand meditatively at the corner in the crowded street, a shiny brass bowl held in a piece of cloth slung across his torso, holding the bowl over his belly, his hands at opposite corners. A slow nod of the head if someone drops a note or coin in it.

I don't disturb him this time.

I accost him the next day when he is walking in the bustling narrow bazaar.

His lump on the Ajna chakra is gone. I think he got it operated.

But he says, when I point it out to him, “It came out of its own.”

“But why did you get it operated?” I say still not getting the point.

“No, no, not that operation. It burst of its own and cleared up,” he clarifies.

“Do you remember me?” I ask.

“Yes, I do. You are Wakil Sahib, who had arranged a scooty for me to take me to the hospital for injections against dog bite.”

He remembers, but I don't know how come he calls me Wakil Sahib. I have never said so. It is his own guess about my profession.

I don't say anything on this.

“How much money have you collected for making a little Buddha temple at your village?” I ask.

“Not much, just fifty thousand rupees,” he says with a sad but peaceful smile.

“So much money!” I gush with feigned joy and ask where it is. “I would take it.”

“No, no, no, I don't keep it with me. I have a bank account. I keep it safe,” he laughs.

I add fifty rupees to his collection.

So this Buddhist Baba is the sole yellow-robed sadhu from Buddhism that I see during my pilgrimages to the holy town, and he stands out like a yellow sunflower among saffron marigolds.

There are sometimes very exciting sparks when the edges of Buddhism rub against the multitudes of Hindu edges carried by numerous mendicant friars and Babas around him.

But that's what makes it quite interesting.

It's a very lovely feeling to watch him when he bows down to Ganga Maata, when he folds his hands in front of Hindu idols of devis and devtas and gurus that are visible in the ashrams and temples around.

So basically, this is what Sanatan Dharma is about.

In my opinion, Buddhism is just one part of the great bedrock of human faith, Sanatan Dharma. And there are big parallels between the two.

In fact, Buddhism came out as a social reform movement against casteism and other negativities that had cropped up in Hinduism at that time.

So when I look at Buddhism, I just look at it as a part of Sanatan Dharma, and there is so much of commonality that Buddhism and Hinduism share.

Whatever differences the main priest-keepers of both sides claim to be there, it is just to maintain their position.

In reality, more or less, it is just another stream of faith and enlightenment flowing on the landscape of Sanatan Dharma.

Sanatan Dharma is the overall landscape on which these little streams, like Buddhism, Sikhism and all forms of Hindu belief systems, be it Shaivites, Vaishnavites, and I would say even Bhakti saints of Sufi order, they are also the offshoots of this beautiful, majestic, comprehensive landscape of Sanatan Dharma.

These are little streams sparkling with joy and contentment, with means and possibility of taking one to Om, the utmost restfulness of biggest realization.

A Grenade on My Conscience: Gandhi Jayanti in a Violent World

October 2, 2026

The birthday of the prophet of nonviolence—the Gandhi Jayanti national holiday.

So ironical.

The Mahatma is almost a prophet now. His philosophy and principles are almost otherworldly, distant, unrelatable and impractical for this violent world. His talk seems suitable only for heaven, while we earthlings are busy fabricating our own multiple hells using violence, distrust, lies, deceit and mad competition in order to win at any cost.

So the great man looks distant like gods. His legacy vaporizing to rise to the dimensions of mythology and merge with the ancient greats. And when that happens, we earthlings just worship that great persona through statues. We garland the pictures and pay lip service through preachy talks.

Violence and wars have become the norm now.

The United Nations is practically defunct. The poor institution looks on helplessly as countries break all international norms of sovereignty and boundaries of their neighbouring states or even distant countries and launch wars.

The words of measured caution and disciplined arguments are obsolete. The heads of state now talk quite loosely, freely venting out their anger and hate like people on street corners.

As if American hegemony wasn't enough, now we have China as the new superpower aspirant. There will be lots of friction and sparks as their respective sharp edges graze past each other, bruising their egos. The smaller countries will become the cannon fodder for the two super bulls to score goals over each other in the international arena.

All in all, it’s a super-violent world.

Violence is sprouting in various forms—in the form of a crumbling ecosystem, poverty, the haves and have-nots, the unsurpassable chasm between beggars and the super-rich, civil wars, communal flares, genocides, land grabs, ranging from countries attacking each other to take away more chunks of land to oligarchs grabbing land in pristine forests and turning them into dead land after mining.

I think we are going to embed all this violence in the algorithms of artificial intelligence.

It is an unprecedentedly powerful tool, but its mechanical soul is driven by our poisoned mind. It has the potential to make a heaven for us. But for that, you need a sweet collective heart in the driving seat in the form of governance, collective responsibilities, responsible institutions, humane corporates prioritizing rules and regulations, checks and balances, systematic pause.

But that is impossible.

We are intrinsically made to use a resource as a tool or as a weapon to surpass others. And such a powerful tool like artificial intelligence will open the avenues for unprecedented harm to humans at many levels.

Let us see where this unprecedented capacity for violence takes us in the short, immediate future.

We can no longer talk of the medium future. So forget about the distant future.

Chronic uncertainty will lie or linger just weeks away now, or even days. Aeonic shifts in the shortest of times will put the stage on a very, very shaky platform where the characters, the plot, the theme will be vibrating with drastic uncertainty.

Drastic overhauls, stormy somersaults, blizzards of change in situations, views, opinions will become the norm. These bursts of massive shifts within no time will eat away the still remaining traces of stability and pause.

When change becomes so short-spanned, it will speed up the element of entropy to such an extent that human civilization will get heated up, running fast to a burnout.

Violence in digital form is a byproduct of violence in our minds.

I stand helplessly on this day when we celebrate the prophet of nonviolence.

As we pay lip service to him through a holiday and garlands to his statues, making speeches full of lies, every word a white lie, because those words are impractical in such a violently competitive world.

As I walk in my garden, I see the imprints of my own unconscious violence: the prints of a few hairy caterpillars that crawl at night and were squashed under my foot during my night walks, the pulp of a few slugs, the numerous ants I step on daily, the yellow mark of a broken egg on the bricked yard, dried but still visible—the mark of my version of putting things in order.

The trees had overgrown during the monsoon season, hardly leaving any sky visible in my small yard garden.

As I pruned branches, plop comes down the egg.

It fell like a grenade on my conscience.

A frozen moment.

A dove's egg, broken on the ground.

And there I stood, shell-shocked, with my pruner in my hand.

I felt like the harbinger of violence, so symbolic of what we humans are doing to other species on Earth.

The more we think we are putting our house in order, the more we are destroying the little homes and nests and habitation of other species.

The poor thing, the dove, can't even angrily shout like most other birds when either a human or a predatory bird destroys its nest.

It just coos, and even in agony, it sounds as if it is chuckling, because it's a laughing dove. We have named it a laughing dove on the basis of the notes the bird makes.

That is the irony of being human.

Whether we intend it or not, we end up being violent in one form or the other, and there doesn't seem to be a way out.

That makes it most ironical, a pinching irony, at least for a poetic heart, on the birth anniversary of the great man, the Mahatma, the prophet of nonviolence.

I stand helplessly looking around in all directions, trying to get some assurance that things will be peaceful, that it will no longer be a violent world.

But alas, there doesn't seem to be any clue.

Things look destined for a darker face.

One More Step, One More Tap: A Pilgrimage Through the Tired Hills

Late February 2026 — Rishikesh

More people, more heat, less water in the holy river, more rituals, more pollution and garbage and plastic waste on the Neelkanth track.

The forest doesn't look and feel fresh even in the early morning. Nature seems tired, having overworked itself to keep absorbing the dirtying deeds and maligning needs of her children.

Less water in the brooks on the way, more plastic waste dotting the foot track. Fewer birds, fewer bird songs—a wailing call of some bird echoing through the valley, a very sad call, coming as the dying songs of the birds.

No elephant poop near the track. They have retreated further into the hills for food and free movement.

Just one creamy butterfly, even though it is still the season of spring in these Himalayan foothills.

Little groups of greenish, sparrow-sized birds—they are still maintaining a healthy population.

A foreigner in a white T-shirt and grey cargoes, making the most of what this deciduous forest has to offer. He takes shortcuts, going up steep hillsides, along dry water channels. He is clicking pictures with a boy's enthusiasm.

I see him appearing and disappearing as I move slowly, steadily, attuning myself to the rhythm of the tap-tap-tap sound of the crooked stick I hold.

The stick taps with a measured friendliness.

One more step, one more tap.

The wood and the sound it makes turn friendlier as I move on.

Tiny groups of youngsters come rushing from behind and pass me with a swag. But all of them I meet resting on the way, upslope, after some time.

The smartphone seems to have sapped their energies, making them dull and less imaginative, habituated to instant gratification. Their calf muscles and lungs and hearts don't seem to sustain a steady, relaxed, joyful walk on a forest track, on small rolling hills.

A tiring restlessness seems to be toying with them.

I again meet the foreigner about a kilometre from the temple. The path forks into two and he is confused about which one to take. I point out the correct one from a little distance.

He is clicking the little arched gateway and the bell dangling from the top.

When I arrive, we start talking as we walk to the holy shrine.

He is Alex from Brazil, works in the Amazon forest in a department dealing with the natives. He lost his son five years back.

“I was suffering terribly. Then I came here and Bhagwan Shiva and Lord Hanuman enabled me to bear the pain, took me in their blessed, caring charge,” he tells me.

With his faith, he seems to have overcome grief and accepted the reality of his loss.

A man in his sixties, full-faced, with a white beard, he is now walking to the place where Bhagwan Shiva consumed poison, as he says, after the churning of the seas by the gods and daityas.

We take prasad from a shop near the temple. He gets late in arranging things. I move along the little line of pilgrims and I am lucky to have darshan before the gates are closed for an hour for performing rituals in the sanctum sanctorum.

It is off-season and few pilgrims stand in the queue to have darshan of the holy lingam.

I whisper a prayer in the ears of Nandi in front of Shiva.

The Shiva lingam, the black, ancient-looking form, is loaded with flowers and bel-patras. As I approach the holy lingam, I pour holy water on the brass lingam, the water flowing through a brass runway to fall on the tiny fragment of rock placed in the middle of the shrine chamber.

I am just out of the shrine when he comes with his puja thali.

He has to wait for one hour to have darshan.

He asks for a suitable place where he can meditate. I think he was lucky in spending one extra hour at the holy place.

On the way, he had picked a small trident-shaped crown of a weed and said, “Even this is Shiva.”

He spoke at length about deforestation in the Amazon.

“The wild animals don't attack women as they do the men because men pose a threat. They attack with guns,” he says.

“Yes, world over, it is we men who have been unleashing wars and blood,” I say. “I think the world government should be handed over to women for some time. There will be fewer bloody wars, even though there will be more noise and gossip among the heads of states,” I say, and we laugh.

The legend of Neelkanth Mahadevji, according to Shruti, Smriti and Purana, draws its origin to the times of Samudra Manthan, the churning of the Ocean of Milk by demons and gods.

Fourteen jewels were produced during the churning, Kalakuta (poison) being one of them.

As a kind of fatherly figure, Lord Shiva consumed the poison. To soothe the flame of poison in his throat, he meditated for sixty thousand years under a Panchparni tree near the confluence of the Madhumati and Pankaja rivers.

Before going back to Kailas, the mighty Lord consecrated a Kantha-shaped lingam for the welfare of the people.

They say it is self-manifested.

I move on to cross over to the other hill on the way to Hanuman Temple, about two kilometres away, leaving Alex behind in a meditative mood, waiting for his turn when the shrine doors will open again after an hour.

The Hanuman Temple is a big one, and it stands on the top of a steep hill overlooking Neelkanth.

The pujari at Hanuman Temple has grown very old during the last year. But he still goes through all the rituals needed to keep the purity of the idols in the sanctum sanctorum. His disciple has to help him in getting up and moving around. So much changes in one year. Just a year back, he had quipped with the innocent mischief of an adolescent.

“You can have siddhis if you follow a few rituals and ceremonies that I suggest,” he told me, as I opened my eyes in the temple after meditation.

There are certain things which the energy does to one's head, and maybe he guessed, or he had this opinion about my energies because he put his hand on my head, on my Ajna chakra at the back of my neck, and then quipped this—that you can have siddhis. You are already there.

I believe in the siddhi powers of yogis. It is practically a science of yantra, mantra, tantra at the subtle energy level, but somehow, even though keenly interested in spirituality, I have never felt drawn towards attaining siddhi powers, either through tapasya or a guru's blessings.

I somehow find it to be unnatural, even unethical.

After paying my respects to the old priest and making a little donation, and after praying in front of the majestic Durga Mata idol and Lord Hanuman's idol, I start walking towards Maa Parvati Temple, two or three kilometres away.

And then I recall Alex, the Brazilian gentleman.

I remember him telling me that he really respects Mahatma Gandhi, the prophet of peace, and then he had asked me, “Do you know Mother Teresa? She was from Brazil,” he says proudly. Then we talked about her charity works.

“Modi has gone to Israel,” he says.

“Lula just came to India,” I reply.

Then we talked about powerful people who are wreaking havoc on Earth.

Now, it is hot noon as the remnants of these talks do very lazy rounds in my head.

The noon is building up really hot as I move on the trail.

Maa Parvati Temple is situated on the top of a little hill about three kilometres from Hanuman Temple. I am the only one on the path. The woods are pale, without any charm. The sun is bright.

Maa Parvati Temple is surrounded by a small hill-top hamlet. Little prasad shops line the path passing through the small hill houses.

One of the shops is owned by an old woman. Season or no season, pilgrims or no pilgrims, she is always there in front of her shop. I don't recall a single instance when I haven't seen her at her post.

The small temple is empty.

I approach Mata's lovingly decked-up idol across the hall. I walk gently and don't strike the bell.

The priest is dozing with sleep in front of Maa's idol. From the entrance to the hall, it seems he is soundly asleep.

As I stand in front of Maa Parvati's graceful idol, I find him busy scrolling his smartphone. Phones have taken possession of modern-day life even in remote peaceful hill temples.

Paying my respects and disturbing the priest's social-media session, I walk across the narrow passage through the hamlet towards the famous Jhilmil Caves, where many rishis, including Guru Gorakhnath, Sage Jhilmil and Dhruv Bhagat, did tapasya in the past.

They say even the Pandavas had taken shelter here during their agyatvas, the time during exile when they were not to be recognized by anyone.

The sun is hot, the grass beaten by the winter just gone, a depressive lethargy wailing in the small wooded valleys.

The cave is on Manikoot Parvat, the abode of many enlightened souls. It looks very ancient, and it feels plausible that it hosted mythical sages in its blackened grooves, natural arcs, recesses and stalactites. There is a natural skylight in the roof at the back. It makes it airy and well-ventilated.

There is light.

It's a living environment.

As I pass the cave, I stand near the entrance, fold my hands and move on further to visit Ganesh Gufa, about one kilometre onwards.

A sadhu from Jhilmil Cave is busy on the phone. It seems a serious issue.

Ganesh Gufa is on the other side of Manikoot Parvat, towards the back side overlooking another deeply wooded valley.

There are frequent warnings about elephants, leopards and bears.

The few shops that dot the final stretch to the gufa are locked. Not many people come here. The Shravan pilgrims may trickle up this far after visiting Neelkanth.

One shop is open.

I can see bottles of cold drinks and packets, pouches and sachets of chips, namkeen and biscuits on a small metal rack. A curtain is half drawn across the little door frame.

I don't see anyone and go down the steps towards the gufa.

“Kindly close the door after having darshan” is written on the grilled iron gate to the shrine.

I go in and put my head on the cemented floor of the small cave.

Lord Ganesha is painted with vermilion. It's a natural idol, a rounded stone looking like the auspicious God with his prominent trunk.

I strike the bell hanging from the chain.

The sound is answered by a shouty, “Who is there?”

It must be the shopkeeper, I think.

I don't answer the first time, but then he asks again.

“I am a yatri seeking darshan,” I say.

There is a very old wooden chair at the back of the wall facing Lord Ganesha's naturally manifested idol. I sit on it and chant the Ganesh mantra.

After meditating and chanting, I come out slowly, close the cave's gate as instructed and go to the tiny shop by the cave side.

The man must be in his early sixties.

I take a water bottle and a little Sprite cold drink.

As I drink the cold drink, sitting on a little mud bench overlooking the valley below, the shopkeeper comes and sits nearby.

The people in the hills would love to talk to a stranger. They have all the time for talks. 

“You must be feeling lonely. Hardly anyone comes this far, save during the Shravan pilgrimages, when some pilgrims venture this far after having darshan of Neelkanth Mahadev,” I say to him.

He says yes it's lonely but good to be left alone. 

I am not carrying much money—the bliss and bane of digital payments.

He points to a scan code hanging at the end of a string from the shed roof.

I scan the payment code. The camera catches the code—twing—the money is safe in his account.

He is happy.

He points to a place on the opposite hill across the valley.

“That is my village,” he says.

He is the purohit of the cave.

“Even though I am not decked up like a priest,” he says unapologetically.

He is wearing a well-worn plain shirt and trousers of a householder.

He points towards the cave, meaning to indicate Jhilmil Cave on the other side, and says, “They are monks in name only. They make easy money without doing anything. They smoke weed, get lots of respect and reverence. They just pay lip service to dharma, a mere formality. The cave is a property to them.”

He is clearly against the monks in Jhilmil Cave.

“This is a holy mountain, this Manikoot Parvat. It is the abode of many holy souls. They may come in front of you in the form of an animal or a beggar or a madman. You have to be conscious of your behaviour or reaction. They appear in front of you to test you.

“All this political talk about danger to Hinduism from Islam is an eyewash. I know many Muslims. They are poor, harmless people, working hard to survive. It is we Hindus who have put Hinduism under danger. We pay lip service only. Our faith has grown hollow. Even Christians have more faith in Hinduism, more than us. In fact, they are keeping more faith for our gods.”

I am listening to his narration as he speaks out his views frankly, honestly, without any filter.

He must have spent many lonely days here near the holy cave.

He seems set for a long chat, but I have to go back to Jhilmil Cave, meditate for some time and then walk down the hills to Rishikesh.

So I get up again and transfer one hundred and one rupees to his account as dakshina, because he has said that he is the pujari here.

I take leave.

He keeps shouting, still continuing with his conversation.

I walk back to Jhilmil Cave.

The ancient-looking, rugged, blackened niche of divinity in the mountain's stony ramparts.

The walk inside is a stepped one. You go up as you go into the cave, and once you have reached the uppermost platform, you stand under the broad circular opening in the cave's roof from which plenty of sunlight pours down.

I sit in front of Baba Gorakhnath's idol at the cave's back, on the platform where they say the powerful and miracle-showing Baba had meditated for years, many centuries back.

I sit in silence.

I have a theory of how to be at such powerful energetic places.

One just needs to be openly aware of the sanctity and importance of a holy place and just open with the self, without questioning, without trying to do something special to harness blessings from the place. Just be there with ease, open up, and whatever is needed for you in this and subtler dimensions gets accomplished naturally, of its own.

I sit in silence, in humility, in acceptance of my shortcomings, my pursuit for a stable self. I feel the play of energy when I open my eyes after an hour or so.

I see three or four young men are also trying to meditate. Some of their friends are enjoying weed smoke with the resident Babas on the platform down there by the entrance to the cave.

I take leave of the holy place.

I am tired. The afternoon sun is very hot.

About a couple of kilometres from Neelkanth, I see a figure.

She seems like a bundle of soiled clothes in an inversion, a place where the path passes through a depression, so it is a descent from both sides.

I see her once in a year.

The old woman is about 90.

“So you are still giving a tough time to Yamaraj,” I laugh as I approach her.

She grins, recognizing me.

“What to do, beta?”

“It is easy,” I say. “Just take the Lord's name, stop breathing and go out,” I joke.

She chuckles.

“It's not that easy,” she says.

Her husband is also alive. He is in the second half of his nineties.

Now the most important issue: she expects big charity from me.

Whenever I come here, she expects nothing less than 500 rupees, and even if I come multiple times on one particular trip, she expects that I pay her every time we meet.

She brings notes of suffering into her tone, shows me her hands, “got needles,” she mumbles, and then says something about it costing money.

I give her 500 rupees.

She is happy and blesses me by putting both her hands on my head.

“I hope to see you next year,” I say as I take leave.

She has tears in her eyes again.

I can hear her blessing words as I ascend and move ahead on the path.

A bit further, on a wayside bench under the shade of the slope, I see the old Baba.

I had met him the year before last. He was very old even than. When I didn't see him last year, I thought maybe he had shed his body.

It feels good to see him still around.

He has grown very-very old, and the good thing is, he has been on pilgrimages to Manimahesh, Chitrakoot, Banaras and other places during these two years.

He knows many sayings, parables, the kind which convey big meaning in just a couple of lines.

I don't have even a single paisa to offer him as dakshina.

When he sees that I am genuinely missing making this donation, he takes out a small phone, the ones which one sees rarely these days.

“Charge it for one month,” he says.

The phone is time-worn, donated a long time back by someone near Narmada in Central India.

Smartphones have turned us quite dull to the basics of such old base models.

He doesn't know his number.

His phone has no talk-time value in it; it means I can't even make a missed call to my phone to know his number.

The Baba remembers his chela, Sonu. He says he is a nice boy in Uttar Pradesh.

I call him, but he does not pick up.

“Call his wife,” the Baba says, and gives me another number from memory.

I'm surprised that he remembers long-digit phone numbers, that too multiple ones of his followers, but he is not aware of his own phone number.

So as I call this second number, a woman picks up, but the call is immediately taken up by her husband, Sonu.

The Baba asks his chela to give me his—that is, Baba's—number, so that I can recharge it.

The chela gives a number.

I confirm it twice.

I go into phone recharge on my phone and check out the plans available for the number.

I pick out a plan of 489 for three months.

“Why waste so much money?” the Baba says.

He says it from the heart and means it.

But I proceed to recharge it.

The recharge-successful bell twinkles, but there is no recharge message on Baba's phone.

I call back a few times on the number we have recharged.

Nobody picks up.

Then it is switched off.

Suspecting something fishy, we call back Sonu.

He is adamant that it is the correct number he has given. He raises a theory about something being wrong with Baba's old phone.

I give up.

I know the chela has duped me.

I hope he didn't give his girlfriend's number for a free recharge.

I am slightly upset that the intended charity got somewhere else, into someone's purse whom I don't know.

The Baba is calm and at peace.

“Don't worry, all is well. The donation is forwarded from your side with pious intentions. It is complete from your side. Your karma is fulfilled in this.”

He speaks very kindly.

I take leave with parting words about his chela being very smart.

“Please don't trust him blindly,” I say.

But he just smiles.

Trust.

Trust and faith are all he has, this old Baba.

It proves to be a very long day of walking.

I walk through the evening, my stick handle loose and rolling. It rolls after me, making a constant dragging sound.

That also is its support.

I reach Rishikesh when the night has fallen.

The pilgrims are savouring spicy food in the narrow, shop-stuffed bazaar after the evening Ganga arati—worship of Food Devata after melodious prayers to Mother Ganga.