The small world of a poetic man

 

The birds seem to hold a nobler form of love. Wild free-will carried by their wings. The reflection of love on the screen of life seems tranquil, chirpy though, and wholesome. We on the other hand carry lots of false modesty on the grand old mule track of love. Our reasoning gets clouded with passion. Our emotions spin colossal tangle as we walk on the woodcutter trails in the forest of love.

Men are mostly snapping their jaws like sunning alligators trying to eat butterflies—to quench the insatiable hunger as well as provide amusement to the bored self. And women, beautifully enigmatic and amusing, scented breeze in their tresses, ravaging silence behind their gossips, they almost borrow happiness at a hard price in a male-dominated world. They have their pain and undulations while hanging between lucidity and illusion.

But the birds possess a nobler form of love, as I mentioned earlier. The wire-tail swallow couple, for example. They are the resident birds in the neighborhood. I see them flying around for most of the year. They are extra active during the monsoons. In the musty, humid air of July and August, they reflect extra dose of love, of being together, of caring and sharing. Despite their chipping quick notes, airy swirls and swift flapping of wings their love seems calm. Lyrical and real; very natural without any superfluous infusion.

Unlike young clandestine lovers in some town in a deeply conservative society, all sly and telling a lyrical lie, foul words stamped on perfumed paper with a luminous ink, the birds are free to spread their love on free wings.

The monsoon breeze is cooler. The swallows have a permanent nesting place on the verandah ceiling. They always modify the last year’s mud nest. There is a cable going over the yard and I see them making love on it after fixing the house. It’s never a hurried and pushed love like we humans. First they take their duties of setting up the nest and only then they allow themselves some pleasure. They seem so light—devoid of the extra weight of wisdom and knowledge. They are contended with the primitive trinket—mother nature’s raw bouquet of life and living—and do full justice to it till death’s slingshot brings them down.

There is a very lucid conviction in what and how they do it. But the mankind is different. Our love’s character is furrowed by pain. We are caught in childish entanglements with dramatized perseverance. The funny authors of our own huge shame and tiny fame. We die every moment to sign in the gold book of life. The streets are vice-ridden and in disarray, crowded with distinguished, arrogant and prejudiced people. The scene revolting and ridiculous. Duplicities drizzling. Ingenuous villainies abounding. Mirrored doors stop this street clamor and try to retain the beautified and glorified private interiors holding little patches of succulent swamps. An effort to create a minute trace of picture-card peace. Gold thread embroidery on the muddy clothes mired in arduous morass. Cosmetics layered over enfeebled charms. Almost like an illicit dose of love—like a married man climbing into a widow’s bed.

Beyond all this, I try to acknowledge and admit the possibility of real, natural love in the human world.

She, the wire-tail swallow lady, is plump now, carrying eggs. They are usually comfortable with my presence but sometimes play mischief and swiftly almost graze my just-shaven head, chipping away with a birdie joke maybe.

They do it now as I watch the labored journey of an earthworm in the yard. It started from a corner very early in the morning and after three hours I see it just a dozen feet from the destination, a little wet flowerbed with fresh mud. It seems a very adventurous earthworm. Luck, as they say, favors the brave. It has beaten many accidental possibilities in reaching this far in the journey. It’s a lovely sight to witness such a fruitful homecoming. To add my helping share to its struggle, I decide to keep a watch till it reaches home to undo any risk because there are many a slip between the cup and lips.

A squirrel has shifted her base. It had its nest outside the wall among the clumps of trees. But there are snakes there, so possibly it’s changing house to avoid encounter with the reptiles. So looking for a better lodge for its little ones it has made a nest of cloth strips, cotton and dry grass high among the branches of the parijat tree in the garden. There it comes bounding from under the gate’s lower grills, its kid held in mouth. It almost bumps into my feet as I stand guard to see the earthworm safely home. It takes a sharp turn and looks worried from a distance. A mother shouldn’t be stopped like this. So I move away and here it comes and climbs the tree to show their new place to the kid.

A little pilgrimage

 

Being a bookish guy, I’m not much into physical activities. But walking on pilgrimages seems to add a different dimension of physicality and I’m able to surpass my individual capacity and surprise my own humble self sometimes.

I share a special bond with my brother and we are here at Rishikesh at the yearend to say a bye of gratitude to the year going out and greet the new year with hope in the lap of mother Ganga. We bathe in Maa Gnaga’s holy waters early in the morning and start on the foot track to the holy shrine of Baba Neekanth. The track passes through verdant Shivalik hills of Rajaji National Park. It’s fresh and rejuvenating. At the grossest level it’s a nice exercise for one’s legs and lungs. For those who are looking for the nutrition of their souls, the names of Maa Ganga and Baba Neelkanth do the task naturally.

We go on day one and return pretty joyfully in the evening. The next day we again take an early morning bath in the holy water of Ganga Maa and suddenly feel so reinvigorated as to start walking again to the holy shrine. The same happens on the third day. And before we realize we have walked to the holy place on three consecutive days. Our schedule didn’t allow us to continue the walk on the fourth day, otherwise I believe I would have continued for maybe a week at least. Bathing in Maa Ganga’s sacred waters cleanses one of age-old sins. So getting one free of tiredness and fatigue is a mere cakewalk for the divine waters.

Each day, an old woman would greet us from a distance during the last stretch of the track to Baba Neelkanth. This is the offseason for the pilgrimage and very few people hit the track. She peers into the distances to spot some odd pilgrim. She is an old woman beaten by poverty, age, circumstances. Almost beaten by life and its leela, she has a pleading voice. It strikes you. Her helplessness and disadvantaged situation acting like a speed-bump, pulling at your conscience, forcing you to slow down, look at her. And that sometimes forces a few pilgrims to take out a coin or a ten-rupee note and offer it to her.

On the way up, the first day, we have given her ten rupees. She would continue showering blessings at your back as you walk away. I heard her till the next bend and waved and looked back a few times. On the way back, she again accosts us as fresh pilgrims. ‘Tai, you can see I know. We already met on the way up!’ I laugh. ‘Yes son, I know. But beta I have to ask from you even on the way down because I have collected too little money,’ she tells us very honestly. We give her a little money again.

It gets repeated on the second day as well. Somehow I felt very easy with her and talked and joked and she laughed. On the third day, December 31, we decide to give her hundred rupees as a new year gift. And what does a tiny currency note mean as a gift if you don’t sit by that person and have a word of empathy and kindness? So today we sit by her and offer her the gift money.

Then the spontaneity of those somber, kind, holy moments created a simple reality of human-to-human connect. Its real significance would strike me later and it does even now with a powerful effect. As we held her hands and offered her the new year gift with kind words of happiness and joy in the new year, the check-dam of her age-old emotions burst out. She started crying. These were the tears of pain, happiness, suffering, hope. All mixed in one. She seemed a little baby crying for affection, for sympathetic human touch. My brother is a spiritualist in practice. I have a very high regard for his genuine values that he keeps on the practical platform of life. But what he does now even stumps me. I see him putting both his hands on her head, affectionately covering her head. He touches her like a father, like a son, almost like a god.

Her lifelong pains melt. She flows. She cries profusely. I have no doubt that ours happens to be the first human touch of love, respect and dignity in her entire life. Her soul felt it. Asa poor begging woman, the best she can expect from the people is some charity money even from the kindest of souls. I felt she wasn’t prepared for this warm, genuine human touch. The way she gave into it seemed as if it was her first experience that made her realize she was also a human being. She is also something above and beyond a beggar. I know there are people who would throw a thick wad of money even without taking care to notice how did she look. But will that enrich her soul the way this touch did?

We move onto the holy shrine of Lord Neelkanth. She is still crying with love and gratitude for that human touch and we can hear her blessings till the next turn. On the way back, I can feel that she is peering into the distance to see us. As we reach her she greets us with a cheerful demeanor and smiles. As we sit by her to have some more chat, the sweetest fruits of human touch and kind words drop like a blessing on us. She opens her soiled, torn cloth bag and takes out the treasure of human love. We get the best new year gifts by a devi. In our absence, she had hastened to a nearby path-side tea seller and bought gifts for us. She gives us our gifts like a kindest mother. It’s a packet of Kurkure crunchies and a small packet of biscuits. We are the richest people in the world. I’m not a fan of crunchies but this one I would relish like a little kid. After all it’s a gift by a mother.

Did our few ten-rupee notes and one one-hundred note open this lottery of human affection? No. Money is too small to buy human empathy and love. It was the human touch and kind words. Touch the closed stony gates of a poor human and see what treasures topple out, the treasures that would have withered and died unseen if not for your soft touch.

We feel so indebted for the priceless gift that we offer her some more money and she takes it with confidence and faith like a mother receives her well-deserved share from her sons. She is very happy and points to her tattered sari and says she will buy a new one with this money.

As we get up to go and express our hope to see her again sometime in the new year, she starts crying again and says who knows she may not be alive by that time. Through tears she says that her life might be over before we come again on this path. I can feel that she would very much like to meet us—for that human touch. Thankfully there are enough kind souls who would at least give a bit of money which is also necessary for survival in this world. But how I wish there were more people who provide human touch as well, a touch that reminds a poor person that she also is a human being.

We moved slowly on our path, her blessings showering like rose petals from behind. It was a sad feeling, somehow; leaving someone behind with sad tears—even if these are of gratitude and love—is too much for a poetic man like me. I looked back a few times and waved and she waved in reply. At the bend on the path I turned again, had a glimpse of her waving hand, heard a feeble reverberation of her blessings and moved on with the hope that she will be there when I return sometime in future.

The countryside PDL and PDA

 

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 after grazing in the fields and was 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 identical 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 the 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 interested in mating with other buffaloes. The people started calling him Majnu. The owner of the young buffalo took it as an attempt to tarnish his reputation. The people started joking that it was an attempt to malign the family’s honor. The irate farmer then would beat Majnu with well-oiled sticks. But he would bear all this just to be with his love interest.

The grandest fight one wages to prove one’s libido even in the old age was presented by another romoeo, a 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 the 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.

A sadhak nearing destination

 

Kaka Maharaj, who has been for many decades staying in a hut by the canal, is comfortable in holding three satsangs with me in a month. That is the time when we share, discuss—and even debate—about our versions of truth. He remains tethered to his hut and avoids contact with the people who he thinks carry too much worldly subjects within themselves which disturbs his sadhna. Once a month, he takes a solitary footpath to reach the temple outside the village where an idol of his guru is installed to pay homage on purnima.

He hadn’t visited the nearby town for more than a decade and seemed set to avoid it forever. But then he paid a little worldly price for holding satsang with me. He adores Dada Lakhmi Chand, the legendary folklorist from the area. A little test of his adoration: suppose he is just about to break your head with a brick and you just happen to say ‘Dada Lakhmi Chand’ and he would stop to listen what you have to say about the Shakespeare of Haryana. I spotted this chink in his armor and enticed him to the town. It was a feat in itself.

There was a biopic movie on Dada Lakhmi Chand shown at the newly constructed swanky, posh mall in the town. Ask him to visit the sansar of town and his weed-lit red eyes would throw daggers at you. He may even throw some object at you. So I suitably rolled the invitation with the name of his hero. As a result, he didn’t jump at the mention of ‘town’ like he would have normally. I could spot my chance and built my orchard around the great folklorist. I built up an imaginary world extolling the virtues of the biopic in highlighting the great Haryanvi poet. The result was that I could convince him to watch a movie—unimaginable—at a big mall. He who doesn’t find the idea of even a television set in a house too becoming for a healthy life and living! He agreeing to watch a movie at a mall! That shows yours truly can fruitfully bargain with hostage takers as a profession.

On the appointed day I drove him to the town. He was dressed in a pair of kurta-pyjama that was lying buried under a sack for almost a decade and was surprisingly safe from the rats.

(The rats would cut even his plastic jars and steal his meager supply of grocery that keeps him alive on one frugal meal a day. I have seen big rats scampering across the grassed roof of his hut. ‘They even jump at me when I’m sleeping,’ he once told me. ‘Maybe it’s a message from your guru that you aren’t supposed to sleep,’ I remarked. ‘Well, maybe!’ he seemed in agreement with my casual jesting remark. A monitor lizard once stayed near his hut and then there won’t be any rats. Kaka Maharaj considered it a friend. But then one day when he was meditating the lizard crawled onto the head of its sadhak friend. Kaka Maharaj wasn’t aware that it was his friendly lizard. He swiped his hand and it panicked and jumped. The lizard must have thought that it was an attempt at its life. ‘It jumped and ran but stopped at a little distance and looked back. We looked at each other for a long pause. Then it went away. I never saw her again. It was my fear that startled her. This littlest ounce of fear has to go from the body of a sadhak. The body shouldn’t move even a little under such circumstances. I knew I had failed in my sadhna. So I cried that day,’ he told me.)

Now, coming back to the movie-watching trip. He found the town changed beyond recognition since his last trip. ‘I cannot find the old town anywhere!’ he exclaimed. It was understandable. The world around his hut has remained the same. It’s the same canal with the same flow of water. The only change he can make out is that the little saplings he had planted are big trees now. That’s the parameter of change for him. He looked startled and intimidated by the booming urbanization. Imagine a person who stays in a grass hut being taken straightaway to a showy mall! He was tentative and unsure on the slippery floors. The elevators, lifts, showy shop-fronts, food aroma from the food court, the humming of humanity, the glitz and glamor and among all this an old saintly man. He seemed lost among all this. He towed me like a little child follows an elder in a crowd. The scent of modernity in the mall hit him hard. It was completely opposite to the free natural fragrance around his little hut.

Inside the theatre, he sat like an alien trapped in a hostile environment. But when the movie started and a few folksongs from his hero blared and bombarded the eardrums he looked a bit amused. Then the folk-hero’s life history began with his birth. It was too much for him. ‘All this is a big lie! How do they know all this happened like this? It was more than a hundred years ago. This is fake! A funny drama!’ he shouted in my ear. I was thinking of making a respectful exit from the darkness. But he understood. ‘I know you like it. So watch it. I’m going to sleep,’ he assured me. Then Kaka Maharaj folded himself like a baby in the womb and slept off in his chair. His guru his mother. His faith the safe womb. He could actually sleep in a cinema hall where the music would rattle your bones.

After the movie—sorry, after a sound sleep—he looked fresh and totally detoxified of the urbanized exposure I had brought upon his system. The modernist clatter and noise seemed to have no effect on him now. His smile and poise was back as he walked out of the mall. ‘Kaka Maharaj you could actually sleep so soundly in that noise!’ I exclaimed as we drove back. ‘Yes Tagore—he calls me Tagore for my love of books—I don’t know whether you believe it or not. I saw only my Guru on the screen. Then it was so easy to sleep,’ he said. Maybe his guru had sent him for a little test and I’m sure he passed the test by coming out unaffected from a totally alien environment. That’s the sign of a good meditator. He/she retains the inherent balance even after coming across conflicting situations.

On the way back, he asked me to buy cumin seeds for him. I got two 250 grams packets, one for him and one for our own kitchen. ‘How much is this?’ he asked, gently weighing the little packet on his palm. ‘It’s 250 grams,’ I replied. He gently corrected me with a slight sway of head, ‘No Tagore, it’s only 200 grams. The shopkeepers would always cheat like in the old days,’ he said. Then I expressed my doubts about the difference in weight telling him that this is the town’s very reputed grocer and I don’t think they would cheat people like this. ‘Look at the packaging and all the stats given regarding weight, packaging date, expiry date, nutrition table, nice logo, nice material,’ I enlisted the indicators of quality. Later that day, I weighed my packet on the tiny kitchen scale and the weight came to be exactly 200 grams. I am humbled.

A few satsangs after this incident didn’t go well. He debated and cut my opinions as if with premeditated intentions. Maybe he was giving it back for taking him to a place that stood the polar opposite of his world.

A few months back, I found him visiting my room crammed with books. Possibly he got curious to know a bit more about me. He is into bhakti yoga and I could feel his discomfort while standing near the little hill of gyan marga. As we know one’s company of friends and people leaves a big impact on the person’s life. Maybe Kaka Maharaj got interested in books. Some days later he asked me for a book. I chose a book by a local saint, the combined works of Narayan Maharaj, thinking he would be able to relate to the writing because it was written by someone from the same area keeping in mind the socio-cultural factors prevailing in the area. Judging the psychology of reading among non-readers—they lose interest very easily—I suggested him to read the book randomly, not page by page. ‘Just open any page at random and read, maybe that particular page has a message for you,’ I gave my expert advice as I handed over the thick volume. He was sitting under a mango tree and took the thick volume with discomfort, almost suspicion in fact. He opened a page at random as I had suggested. He is all seriousness as he reads the first line on the page. He throws the book into my lap as if he has received an electric shock. ‘It’s a sheer lie!’ he mutters. Well, the first line on that page happened to be the local saints ‘prohibition against weed, ganja and charas. Kaka Maharaj has been smoking weed as an aid in his sadhna for decades, so obviously he found it insulting. ‘See, I respect him. But that doesn’t mean he is correct about everything!’ he looks stern.

Imagine out of 500 pages, this page had to open and the first line—perhaps the only line in the entire book—happened to be the one that would offend the reader. So the book was returned just one-line read. ‘You yourself wanted to read books,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘No, no … books are suitable for you. Take it away,’ he instructed. So I returned with my thick book.

Recently he crossed a big milestone in his sadhna. I call it a milestone because I have heard and read about it that most of the sadhaks have to cross it sometimes on the path. At one night he faced the soul-rattling experience of weirdest apparitions, ghouls, djins, naked witches, ferocious demons and the strangest human-animal hybrids. ‘I was sitting in dhyan post-midnight. They just arrived in big numbers. You cannot imagine such strange and fearsome bodies and faces. Some of them came so close that I could smell their breath. The naked horrid witches stayed a couple of feet away, but they danced in a repugnant manner. My heart would have burst out with fear if not for my guru. I survived just because I kept focus on my guru and saw his image in my mind,’ he told. I have read many books of sadhaks meeting such experiences. He is a simple man of faith, so it may not sound too much to him. But I know with my bookish knowledge that mother existence has tested him for fear. That day I felt very glad for him and left with a smile on my face—for him, for his sadhna, for his guru who saved him from a fall in the face of the devil.

The energetic gentlefolk of old times

 

Old Taus and Tais would pour out their hearts to me. I have been lucky to listen to their very personal tales, the exciting chronicles of their youth. Dozens of old people from the village shared very personal stuff with me. For the sanctity of their trust, I would keep their names secret and call them Tau A, Tau B, Tai C, etc. I don’t think that even if I mention them by names there would be any big scandal. These are routine things in the countryside in the lives of the farming community. But still from my own code of conduct I should keep the identities secret. Most of them are gone and a few survive almost like sages with that marvelous surrender and cool detachment. But it’s exciting to imagine that they were once warm-blooded with hormonal excitement. Further, you never know some semi-criminalized grandson of one of them might break the hand that writes about the histories of their forefathers.

I remember Tau A fondly retelling those glorious old days when society was simpler and the sense of brotherhood among clan members and extended families ruled supreme. ‘Those were real good days! Brothers shared a great bond. We tolerated very easily most of the things for which there would be bloodshed these days. See son, I would be out during winter nights irrigating the wheat crop and would return after midnight. And most of the time I saw my younger brother hurrying out of the quilt of my wife. I knew it. But I always pretended not to see it. Most of us pretended it and allowed the younger brothers to have good fun with our wives. Where would they go?’ he told it so easily in full flow without slightest inhibition.

I was pretty small then but I recall the episode pretty clearly. Tai B was telling the episode when intimacy was forced upon her by Tau C—good lord, was it the same Tau C who appeared so disciplined after joining an ashram during the old age. It was clearly a case of enforced intimacy but her hollow-cheeked laughter makes me feel that she had long forgiven Tau C if she carried any anger. ‘I was cutting fodder one noon. There wasn’t anyone around in the fields. He came very politely and asked me to help him tie his fodder bale. I followed him to the place where he indicated his fodder was lying. He kept saying a bit further into the furrows of tall Jowar. Then I found there was nothing to tie down. It was a ploy to untie…my cord. Once it started I thought there was no point in resisting. If it is so, then let it be! There were bigger issues for us to sort out than this. At least he wasn’t bad at it!’ she laughed nudging at the old ribs of another woman. All of them heartily laughed. ‘If it can be passed so casually, where would ‘rape’ fit in then?’ I wonder now. Well, it depends upon people’s own choice. It started without her consent but ended with her approval so much so that she compliments Tau C who is no more and must be feeling proud of his virility in the other world.

Tau D was too proud of his wee-wee. He would pretend to urinate when the young women passed. Getting tongue-lashed was very normal for him. But then he ran out of luck and got more than a tongue-lashing. A banjara woman—an audacious gypsy woman—hit the item of his pride with a mulberry switch. He nearly fainted. His flashing escapades withdrew. Maybe the concerned anatomical item withdrew into its shell after the strike.

Tai E was very liberal in the matters of intimacy and explored the groins of many farmers during her prime. Now all of them were drooping with age and fragile bones. I remember her as a petite woman. She wasn’t hesitant about publicly discussing how much milking she had performed on a particular bull. We remember her doing her duties till the far end of her life as she would unabashedly visit an apish Tau F who seemed to be still active in his old age.

Tai G was more comfortable without her skirt than with it on. So we need not repeat the obvious. She was known for her rivalry with Tai E for the much-in-demand Tau F. He must have been a good bull for milking because everyone agreed that he was still active in his eighties.

Tau H had lost his wife many years back and thus carried a big load of lust in his bulky body. In his late seventies he lunged at a chance to vent out all his pent-up lust. A middle aged banjara woman was roaming in the streets asking fodder for their cattle. It was a hot noon. Tau H got her into the barn on the pretext of giving her fodder. He was successful in his mission. But he turned a miser at the time of payment. He had promised her a big bale of fodder and thought of duping her by giving just a little amount of wheat husk. I think he underestimated the audacity of these gypsy women. There she was shouting expletives at the top of her voice. The little amount of fodder was put in the street and her top-voiced denouement of Tau H went sashaying across hot air. The people came out of their houses. ‘See-see, this is what this shameless oldie has given me! Just a fistful of fodder for all that devilish **** he gave me!’ she was shouting. She was putting up her stick to notify the measurement of Tau H’s endowment. So everyone came to know how much Tau H measured and what he had done to that woman. ‘He is a cheater!’ she declared.  

The first and the last lady don of the entire area from our village, Tai I, can fill up entire chronicles full of her sex trafficking, robberies, charity, bride abduction, armed squads and much-much more. She ruled the prime land of Jat patriarchy during the thirties to the sixties of the last century. Those who were born after her demise still know her name. So that gives the idea of her popularity. I tried to gather material on her from the old men in the village. But they were all dismissive about her. It’s understandable because she had hit very hard on their wee-wee at a time when a woman was considered even lower than a buffalo in a farmer’s house. If I get enough material I plan to write a book on her sometime. Regarding intimacies, it’s understandable that she was far-far advanced than her times.

Tai J turned out to be a pioneer in the art of intimacy. She was reputed to be very beautiful in her youth and carried faded traces of that charm even in her seventies. One of my classmates from the village school was eying her granddaughter. He was around fifteen at that time. He started visiting Tai J’s house quite regularly. Tai J, experienced with age and full of wisdom, smelt the hormonal storm going inside the teenager for her granddaughter. As a wise matriarch she channelized the direction of the storm towards herself. The boy was expertly seduced and looked very happy during those days. Tai J looked even happier on having a lover of her grandson’s age. I came to know about the reason of their happiness when only the old neighborhood dog and me were left out of its knowledge. He shared the information a few years back only. ‘You didn’t know? I thought only the cattle, dogs and cats were out of the loop of this open-source knowledge!’ he wondered when I shared that I never had any clue to this. Tai J carried the most contended smile among all the elderly women of her generation. In fact, I interpreted it as the smile of a sage. Now I know the worldly cause of her saintly smile. God must have been very creative in fabricating such an interesting world. 

The warehouse-type buses of the past

 

We have surely added to our convenience with the years advancing on the path of material progress. I vividly remember our times as students at the nearest town—for senior secondary schooling and later college education—during the nineties of the last century. There were smatterings of roadways buses plying on the potholed road. Those were big, rattling metal godowns meant to carry the passenger cargo crammed from floor to the ceiling. It would start with full occupancy of seats from the originating station in the neighboring district. As it moved towards the destination, it would absorb dozens of students, old, young, laborers, government servants, women, men all awaiting anxiously at the rural stations along the road.

The buses were sturdy brutes and angrily chugged ahead with the passengers numbering many multiples of the normal seats. The seats meant for two people would have four passengers squeezed tightly. The aisle would have people stuffed like farm sacks. People would squeeze into the foot spaces between the seats. There would be brawls and even fights. The lecherous and lusty ones took advantage of the crowded situation and freely molested the girls and women in that stuffed environment. And long after you thought there wasn’t space even for an ant inside, you had scores of people hanging from the footboards of the doors, just their toes stuffed into the maze, one leg hanging loose and the hands clutching at the window-side pipes, grills or whatever came handy to avoid a fall and getting crushed to death. And there were still more people waiting on the upcoming stoppages. Then people—mostly students—would get onto the roof and many clung to the backside grills. There would be hardly any space left for the conductor to move up and down the aisle for tickets. It was miraculous how did they even squeeze through at all. Those bus rides carried a very high fatality rate for the shirts and trousers.

On the way to our destination town, our village was the second last stoppage, so by the time the barely visible bus under the human assault reached our station, we, at the most, had some distant possibility of climbing either to the roof or clinging to some little square inch of space among the legs on the footboard. Most of the drivers—fearing the coming apart of the vehicle itself—would just speed past, leaving huge plumes of angry smoke in our face. The most capable ones ran after the bus to catch any little chances as it slowed down near the speed bump. The second in skill and strength grabbed at any inch of space on the railings and footboards. And the odd ones like me who carried the weight of books in their bags and an injury idea in the mind would wistfully look on and get late for the classes. I remember so many bus rides, my toes precariously perched on a few inches of space on the footboard and clinging to the window-side iron pipe with all strength. But there would still be someone who would try to cling to you at the last station before the destination. So reaching the town in one piece was a successful day at schooling.

For most of the students it was a fun outing. The majority of them played cards, gossiped about girls, fought gang wars over girls and smartly planned their love-lust journeys while lounging in the parks and lawns. The youth was still pretty untamed. There were bloody fights over ego hurt in love. There were belt assaults over cinema tickets. Everyone thought he was Dharmendra or Amitabh capable of wooing a girl and squashing the rivals.

The girl students were outnumbered five to one by the boys. Short on supply, more in demand. Each girl had multiple suitors. Just receiving a casual look by the girls was taken her willingness to engage in an affair. Then a blind pursuit would follow. Those were the days of fights for love, love letters, clandestine meetings in some friend’s room, scandals and more.

Most of the students would while away time and started gathering at the bus stand in the afternoon, waiting for the girls to arrive at their booths for the buses to their routes. It was a big, buzzing love station, secret signs, winks, hidden flying kisses. There were many who had their hearts crushed for a girl from a different bus route than their home places. So they would accompany the flower like bumble bees on her route and returned late in the evening to their places after a hard day at youth’s callings. Books and studies lay at the far end of the scheme. And the girls who managed to graduate in all this pandemonium were the pioneers indeed.

Musings on a rain-soaked day

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

@

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

@

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

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

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

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

The village holy fool

 

Ishwar was called Bawla by the villagers. He was too simple even for the bucolic times during the last decades of the century bygone. What else the society calls a man who isn’t cunning, calculative, scheming and shrewd? The absence of this typical smartness entitles a man to be called Bawla or fool.

He was a huge man, with a rolling gait, mostly on his toes as if he was going downslope and trying to check or put brakes to avoid a free fall. In his simple kurta pyjama he looked like a kindly grizzly bear. In the face of smart clamor around, he bore a perplexed, puzzled look. As kids we were afraid of him. Someone would shout Bawla at his back. Then he would go on rampage like a bull angry over a red flag. He would run after the culprit with a brick in hand, shouting mild imprecations and cuss words that he had mastered.

He was quite poetic in response to the insult ‘Ishwar Bawla’ and would shout ‘Teri Maa Ne Kare Tawla’—something to do with the offender’s mother—before launching a full-scale attack. I but once witnessed his real side. We had gone for a cricket match to his part of the locality and there Ishwar allayed all my fears. He was a gentle spectator and his talk made perfect sense to my thirteen-year-old self. Most of his talk was about the significance of keeping good manners by the children. I could feel that this was the acme of his realization born of his first-hand experience of the errant behavior of the village children.

Now after decades, having gained a bit of insight, I would call him a holy fool, a God’s innocently pure child, too simple to get into the mainstream chauvinism.

Ishwar was unmarried and stayed with his joint family. He was famous for eating copious amounts of laddoos and puris at marriage feasts. There were episodes when he literally emptied the laddoo basket singlehandedly and on being reminded that it was his own stomach and he shouldn’t torture it like this, he would storm out cursing why had they invited him if they hadn’t the guts to pacify his hunger.

He was very dismissive of women. He followed a credo: he would tie his fodder bundle—a huge one as you must have guessed—and heaved it upon his shoulder first and then hoisted it further upon his head. He never requested anyone to help him put it on his head even though his bundle was always double the size of what a big farmer could carry. Usually the farmers and the peasant women would request a fellow man or woman working nearby in the fields to help the bundle onto the head. But whenever anybody asked Ishwar for help, he would snap, ‘Why did you make it bigger for your capacity to lift it of your own? You should have only as little as you can heave unto your head without assistance.’ Still the peasant women would tease him to help them with their fodder bales. It would result in a barrage of his credo repeated in loud voices to make it clear to them. He looked perturbed that they couldn’t make out even such a simple thing even after being told so many times. Maybe it gave him a nice feeling that he was the only sane man in a village of fools. Well, maybe he indeed was.

He knew exactly how to save his life. One particular farming brat was a specific threat. The boy loved to play truants which the target took on their face value. Whenever the boy came driving his tractor and found Ishwar coming on the way, he would practice mock attacks on Ishwar, trying to make it feel as if he was going to run him over under the tractor. Ishwar would run helter-skelter, thinking it was the doomsday. As a man learning from experience, he devised a plan after many rounds of running to save dear life. He would pick up a brick and stand with a ready-to-strike posture as the tractor passed. Self-defense is good.

Once he was getting his shaving done at the village barber shop. The mischievous young farmer arrived there. Ishwar, his immense torso tied under a chador and his big face copiously leathered, looked sideways as his naughty adversary entered the shop. The young farmer picked up a razor from the counter, stood behind the chair bearing Ishwar and started sharpening it on his palm, while staring at Ishwar with a determined expression. Ishwar stared deep into his foe’s reflection in the mirror on the front. His eyes went glazed with fear, plain raw fear of death. He knew it was the doomsday and the enemy is going to slaughter him right there. He knew exactly what to do. There he escaped, flung the chador away with full force and ran out of the shop, all leathered up, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘He is going to cut my throat with the razor!’ A few village elders had to do a lot of convincing to get him back into the chair and make him believe that the boy was just joking. But Ishwar would ensure that the boy was off the scene first. The latter was requested to leave the place. Later, the barber had to deal with a whole lot of doomsday stories told by a shivering Ishwar. ‘He was sure to slaughter me today if not for my timely escape!’ he was muttering.

He ate chapattis that always counted in double digits. An honest conscience and big body needs a full stomach to sustain. He looked very relaxed while eating, slowly munching his morsels like an uncaring bull chewing the cud. The people joked about it, but he wasn’t afflicted with the malady of changing one’s ways on the basis of what others say or think.

Once the entire joint family had gone to the fields, the ladies having prepared a big stack of many dozens of chapattis in the early morning to have lunch at home after finishing the farming work by noon. All of them returned tired and very hungry but found the cache of chapattis gone. Ishwar was extra kind that day. After finishing his usual quota, he summoned all the dogs in the village in his booming voice. All the dogs were well fed that day and slept very peacefully.

He knew that it was a cunning world and he had to be very vigilant. So he followed a strict protocol regarding monetary transactions. Whenever he purchased somethingfrom the village grocer’s shop, he would demand a firm, articulate ‘yes received the money’ from the shopkeeper after handing over the money. He was always scared that someone not acknowledging the receipt in his standard ‘aa gaye hain’ would cheat him and would demand the money again. There was a big ruckus in the street one day on this account. The villagers found a very nervous, almost on the verge of fainting, Bihari ice-candy seller, a slight man cowering under the verbal harangue unleashed by the big-built Ishwar. Among the verbal torrents, the burly man slurped on the melting red ice-candy. The matter stood like this. Ishwar had carefully handed over the five-rupee coin owed to the seller in lieu of the purchase. But the seller won’t acknowledge the receipt by repeating the standard phrase ‘aa gaye hain’ which an angry Ishwar kept repeating. ‘He isn’t saying, “Aa gaye hain!”’ he was heard shouting, much perturbed at the seller’s effort to cheat him of his coin. The Bihari seller had hardly any clue to the standard monetary protocol followed by Ishwar. So the poor puzzled fellow stood on the verge of nervous breakdown. Imagine an elephant haranguing a rabbit over a monetary deal gone wrong. Then the villagers clarified the issue to the panic-stricken ice-candy seller. He gently said, ‘Yes, paise aa gaye hain.’ ‘See, only now the deal is done! He was thinking of duping me. Took the money and won’t say it that he has taken it, so that he could demand it again,’ a much relieved Ishwar guffawed while taking big slurps at the melting ice-candy so as not allow even a single drop go waste due to negligence.

Mothers are mothers. No wonder, he too was the star of his mother’s eyes. At the high tide of her maternal surge, she would put boiled milk—many liters of it—in the broad iron basin used for carrying anything from wheat, soil or cattle dung, leaving it to cool so that her lovely son could gulp it down. Ishwar would then consume it like a thirsty male buffalo much to the solace of her heart. ‘And still they say he is a fool and fit for nothing. Can they even match him in this?’ she would let out her maternal grudge against the society.

He was a powerful man as is proven by almost a quintal of fodder bale getting hoisted upon his head without any helping hand. But a gentle giant he was, a mere child in a big body. He never used his physical force as per the dictates of an abused ego born of taunts, jeers and puns targeted at him. Yes, he would be irritated and would mutter, grumble, feign attacks, but all this fell well short of any serious injury to anyone. As per the norms of the raw physical strength, he was capable of breaking the bones of the entire locality singlehandedly. Yet the children could well afford to entertain themselves at his cost.

On the last day of his sojourn on earth, he was seen restlessly running around the village. He was in his late fifties I suppose. In the afternoon, after the daylong running to complete the rest of his journey, he lay at the village cremation ground for the last rest. He preferred to die there itself, perhaps to still keep his credo of not allowing anyone to carry his load. He died without much fuss, taking it like an elephant would call it a final day in a forest, without suffering and without much fuss.    

The last primitive kingdom

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kundalini Shakti

 

This sharing is something deeply personal in nature, at the level of experience, in the domain of experiential knowledge. I’m not sure how many of the readers will relate to it. Still, its mere theoretical reading will make it interesting. This much I’m sure. It lies in the domain of spirituality wherein all the seekers have their individualistic experiences. There comes a time when one feels like sharing them with others after the initial years of closely guarding the secret as if it’s a treasure. There is no specific reason behind guarding the experience initially and there is hardly any reason for sharing it later. These things happen of their own, mere happenings.

All of us are essentially spiritual beings carrying lesser or more worldly baggage. The latter is merely a fuel for the journey in this lifetime, an accumulation born of our karmic balance from the journey so far. There is no fundamental flaw in carrying one’s own unique worldly baggage. But there is a temptation to take the fuel as the main thing, the essential component of life, while it’s mere fuel and is supposed to get burnt in the form of karmic dissipation, taking us to further destinations in a bigger dimension of perception and consciousness.

The theme of this discussion is Kundalini. I’m sure most of you must have some theoretical knowledge about this much fabled thing. Kundalini is an auxiliary dimension, a seed of potential, lying dormant in our psychosomatic system. It’s a short-cut, a gateway, a portal, a trigger point for speeding up of the evolutionary process of consciousness. Of course, just like any other short-cut it has its risks, dangers, possibilities, rewards, agonies, ecstasies, everything in fact.

The fundamental law of cosmos is primarily pure potentiality. Kundalini is a seed of that potentiality in the human physiognomy. It is a trigger point to unleash a sudden current of energy to take your consciousness to a level where it would have taken several lifetimes in the natural sequence of karmic resolution to help one solve all the entanglements and their resultant pain and suffering.

There is a set of controllables and uncontrollables in one’s life. I tried my level best to succeed in normal worldly terms like anyone around. But the set of uncontrollables at a level of existence beyond my efforts would always push me back to the starting point. Naturally that gives one a lot of pain and agony. One questions the basics that operate the world around him or her. And before you realize you are seeking solace and answers to your burning questions in a spiritual dimension after having failed to solve the puzzle in the normal thoroughfare of life.

I never had a guide in physical form on the teasing and testing field of spirituality. Based on my understanding of things I went into pilgrimages, bhakti of various deities and yogic practices. I was crazy about one particular yogic posture. It involved hammering the base chakra, muladhara, with relentless force. This chakra is the seat of the pure energy potential named Kundalini, which isn’t otherwise needed to live a normal happy life and that’s why most of us are born with it in its sleeping state. As I would realize later, this particular yoga amounted to forcibly prodding the sleeping coiled energy—the serpent—at its seat of rest. And the snake rose. The energy moved. It shook the world that was related to me involving body, relationships, career, family, emotions, thoughts, everything that had the slightest bearing on my current identity. That’s why they say that it’s a living death—you die to your former self in this lifetime only. But for that there is a lot of examination one has to cross through.

My organic structure wasn’t prepared for this sudden onslaught. Imagine a thousand watt current being suddenly let loose through a normal 240 watt wire. What would happen? It will heat it up, there will be sparks, and it may even burn. Similarly, the human system is for the normal flow of energy. The organs are adapted to a normal operation of energy, most of it getting pleasantly getting dissipated in our sweet-sour pursuits and just a fraction going up to activate our neurons which define the conscious part of our mind, the thinking mind.

The hyper current gave me many nightmares which manifested at many levels—thoughts, emotions, body, relationships, finance, career, family. It ruffles you forcefully, taking a tight grip on you, as if shaking you out of your slumber at lower levels of awareness. Literally it left me in a dark night of the soul. It was a karmic leap, a jump into the unknown. I was all alone to fend the onslaught for myself. If there were hidden forces supporting me I wasn’t aware of it. But in effect it was the toughest phase of my life. There was so much of agony, pain, fear and phobia to make life almost unlivable. I was running all around to clutch at any straw for salvation. I went on pilgrimages, roamed all alone in forests, went to ashrams, fell at the feet of holy men—all this just to save myself from getting sucked into a void.

Religious differentials melted. Spiritual solace was welcome from any corner. I would enter a gurudwara, mandir, masjid, church, Buddhist monastery with the same reverence and faith. Anything as long as it would save me from the darkness. I tried to be an unquestioning bhakt of many deities. I tried and tested yoga, pranayama, mantra sadhna, fasting, anything that was suggested to my dizzying mind. The blizzard of energy was making me dance to its tunes as if I was merely a lifeless puppet. The force of energy was seeking newer and newer avenues to hurl its fury into.  

Then about six or seven years back I started worshipping Lord Hanuman with full fervency. I kept Tuesday fast and read Hanuman chalisa from a booklet because I couldn’t chant it from memory. I had never memorized it fully. At that time I was visiting Osho’s Murthal ashram where Sadhguru Osho Shailendra—Bhagwan Osho’s real brother—gave mala diksha and sermons. Once I was lucky when he put his blessing hand on my head. I was ready. I was dry fodder. I have no other explanation other than to take it as a case of shaktipat. It triggered a chain of experiences that shook the theoretical foundations of my knowledge. Just recently I had been lucky to be blessed by His Holiness Dalai Lama as well. So I would say that was a lucky phase for me.

Shortly after his blessing touch on my head, on one of my Tuesday fasts I was reading Hanuman chalisa from a little booklet, incense and oil lamp burning in front of the idol. Then it happened. An intense external force gripped me very tight. I was in perfect awareness but the body was under the control of forces that I cannot attribute to my conscious mind. I was twisted and turned in very tough yogic postures which I cannot even think of performing in normal condition. It was like a mysterious, profoundly powerful hand was twisting and turning me in tough yogic postures. I was helpless and allowed myself to be treated like a ball of dough being made into many shapes. Everything was unfolding by itself. These were no weird, asymmetrical contortions. There was a symmetry, a harmony, a precision behind them. As if each set of movements would complete a cycle.

Lord Hanuman’s idol was put on a little house temple of stone. The stone ledge in the front for placing lamp and offerings had a sharp edge. I was twisted in a lotus posture and my torso started going down, taking my forehead towards the sharp stone edge. The slow rhythmic descent to the stone edge was very precise to leave the middle of my eyebrow on the edge. Then the brow started drawing along the thin edge. Just a millimeter down and it would have injured my eye because the rub of the eyebrow on the edge was quite forceful. Completing the cycle on one side, the same happened with the other eyebrow on the other side. The divine synchronicity knows more than our fear, planning and calculations. There was flawless geometry and timing behind these movements. There were many such movements for around 45 minutes. Strangely, I wasn’t scared even for a second during all this. Some mystical assurance kept me convincing that all this is good for you. So there was no panic. How will fear and panic survive when one is straightaway linked to the cords of divinity?  

After that the force left me in voluntary control of my body. My spine got so tautly drawn and straight that I felt like a wooden plank. Then arrived the sweet aftermaths of the divine exercise performed on my body by the higher force—a prasada, a sweet reward. I found myself singing Hanuman chalisa all by myself. I hadn’t been able to memorize it in a yearlong chanting on Tuesdays. Now it was freely flowing from my mouth.

After that for about six months I would experience involuntary mudras and body movements that would play with me like a puppet. Then the crawling sensations started. I could feel the crawling movements across various prana channels in the body; like serpents crawling over the back and the head. There are little channels of crawling energies that I feel all the time. They aren’t painful. One gets used to them after a time. Different channels take shape at different stages. But the one on agya chakra is most forceful, keeps on sending streams of invisible energies down the bridge of the nose and on both sides. Another on the right side of lower back is also significantly active, and many along the spine. I know these are the pranic onslaughts let loose by Kundalini to remove the karmic entanglements still existing in my system.

Maybe all this happens to make us realize that we aren’t just what we think ourselves to be; or maybe to trash our ego that you aren’t solely in the driver’s seat of your destiny. Primarily, it’s to convince you that there are bigger realities and dimensions. At the body’s level, maybe it’s all meant to remove the psychic entanglements in our karmic structure. I know I have lots of karmic entanglements from the past to resolve and that’s why the rise of energy has posed such challenges. It isn’t necessary that someone else will go through the same sensations. All of us have unique genetic structure—an offshoot of our unique karmic arrangement—which responds in various ways to the exposure of this extra surge of energy. Still there are some common observations and on the basis of those experiences, observations and responses of the human body the theoretical framework of Kundalini has been set up to help us understand the basics of it. But one thing is sure, beyond the tiny framework of commonalities, the manifestations in different bodies are varying to a big degree. So we cannot generalize or compare one’s individual experience with others. These are mere pointers. I just shared my experience and it doesn’t in any way lay claim to any fundamental truth or law behind the Kundalini experience.

The journey continues my dear fellow travellers on the path. As the brain adjusts to this new surge of energy cascading across its hitherto unused neural pathways, I hear various types of sounds in my ears and the head. The story of sounds that you must have read one hears in Kundalini awakening is definitely true. I hear buzzing bees, tinkling bells, sharp chin-chin of anklets, drums, flute and rumbling of clouds. This is the divine music of high vibrational frequencies. Meditating on them can take a sadhak into very high dimensions of perception. But I’m a common man. I have my responsibilities and worldly duties to fulfill to resolve all my karmic issues still lying unsettled and creating my circumstances. So I travel on the path without any spiritual pretenses—balancing my path between worldly needs and the food for my soul.

I’m open to guidance. It always arrives from different corners. Presently, I have a hunch that His Holiness Mahavatar Babaji is guiding me on the path. And I feel privileged and blessed. I’m not bothered about the truth of it. Laugh at me, scoff at me but that’s my truth at the moment.