Be the king in your small world

There are just dozens around us who have achieved more than us at the cost of far less struggle and effort than us. But there are millions who have nothing like us, even though they have struggled thousand times more than us. The numbers involved in this simple maths should make us proud and satisfied with whatever we have achieved and given by life. So smile, feel lucky and look at the small world, your own world, around you. It is bigger and better than you ever thought. Just that you have always been looking sideways to the taller structures. Don't worry the inhabitants over there are even more anxious than you. They have their own still bigger world to ogle at and feel sorry for themselves. You are a 'being', a phenomenon which can exist in the present. So simply be with the moment in your small world. That's what we call by being with your own self.  

Following the codes of existential intelligence

The tireless woman who is camera shy.

This woman-- I mean the one on the wire who is really shy and won't allow me to click her with a close up smile, forcing me to use some sister model of her's from the internet--is busy all day in knitting a little cup of love on the branch of our Parijat (night flowering Jasmine) for the new lives inside her. Well, best of luck soon to be mom, little red vented Bulbul! But then I have to keep a watch on the neighborhood goon also, the big rascally cat, as big as a leopard cat in the wild. I think my stick also needs to be in the scene somewhere...

Some sister of the one in the story, who is a more confident model.

PS: No need to mention that her husband is a loafer and does less work, fools around more. Possibly in the guise of warning tweets it flirts with the lady birds around. Well, not that scandalous because all men are like that. He is just true to his salt. So forgetting about him we can talk a bit about red vented Bulbul in general. They tentative smoke brown birds double the size of common sparrow and have partially crested black head which gives them a semi-hawk stern look. There is a very attractive crimson patch below the root tail. Their white rump is very prominent in flight. They can be very angry for their size. I was wondering about the shape and location of the nest. It doesn't look too safe. But then possibly they are confident of defending the citadel.  

The home...a cup of rootlets...sweet home.. waiting for eggs.

PSS: All well so far with the usual struggle. Chased away a cat many times. It has stopped visiting. Ironically there are always counterpoints in nature. So you have the eggs and you have Shikra, a small hawk bird of the region. At noontime I heard the parent couple's panicked notes and tweets followed by ruffling of wings in the branches. I just ran out exactly at the moment the hungry hawk was trying to perch on the delicate branches for a belated egg breakfast. It flew away and watched from a nearby tree. I loitered around to increase the morale of the defending force. It made attempt again and due to my being still ready for the job it had to fly away. Saw it again the next day and was sure of its success. Then prayed that its hunger be quenched somewhere else, on a dead animal preferably. Thankfully haven't seen it since then. The nest is very small and looks a weak fort--little did I realise the couple's pugnacity in defending even a weak fort--so draped a piece of cloth around, leaving a hole for the birds to sneak in, making it a better home. In any case mother nature can do without our discretion. But then I have to take some credit. The same old human malady. So I presume that possibly the hawk got duped in taking it as some human design to capture it. I have to take my words hitting at the father's laziness. He has earned my respect in many regards. While the mother is in the creative process of managing the nest, the man has been keeping a stern sentry watch from the vantage points in all this heat. I often see him perched on the top end of a rusted out-of-use antenna pole. Even with the hawk, 5-times bigger in size, it gave all that a father can. It fluffed its feathers to look larger and made cantankerous noise to distract the predator. It kept on going very close to the enemy and toe him away with the bait of a larger meal. What won't parents do for their children! He is more free with crows who are also at least five times bigger. He just doesn't allow them to sit anywhere on the surrounding trees, least they spot his family. The more I look at it, the more I am sure of the ingrained divine intelligence each and everywhere. Whenever he is having a row with a crow, tweeting vivacious abuses at a furious pace, the group of house sparrows, warblers and sunbirds add to the chorus, forcing the larger bird to leave the scene in indignation and irritation. Elsewhere, the collared dove looks silently with her mummed up silence and majesty. The cantankerous babblers just babble in a group possibly chasing a cat or even some little snake. Sternly professional mynah go with an air of well meant business. Peacocks, exiled by pesticides in the fields, sing mourning songs in the village. But who cares about the multi-coloured wonder of nature. Monsoon has been normal thus far, so everything is richly green. Butterflies go with business among the bougainvillea flowers who bloom to wildish proportions. And most importantly, I see the parents cargoing insects, grass seeds and worms into the nest. Possibly hatchlings are there, one step further. I can hear very faint chirping. Yea, new life! A new beginning in the stream of existence which links all of us. Life is just one common force driven by cosmic intelligence and it blooms in endless forms and avatars. Another drop of existence manifesting in the sea of existence. Well, best of luck Bulbuls! Let's hope all goes well.

Stay away and respect my privacy. 

PSSS: Life from close quarters, so open, transparent, innocent, vulnerable and optimistic at the same time. Their beaks are always open. The parents are busy throughout the day, still it falls short. The beaks are always open. They have to eat relentlessly, grow as fast as possible and beat the moment that may undo it all. 

Out of the shells and shaped out of the fluid

A squirrel lets loose a chittering chorus. A group of parrots go over with a fruitful shriek. A tatihiri (lapwing) goes on a trumpeting hoot, possibly happy for its correct monsoon forecast. A butterfly darts from bougainvillea to motia to mogra to rajnigandha to sunhair. There are more birds than a decade back and that gives some hope that mother nature isn't totally angry at us.

PSSSS: It has been a roller coaster week. Lots of noise. Well, the hatchlings have jumped out of the nest. All that incessant feeding bears fruits a bit quickly from human standards. There is no pause at this level in nature. One miss, and it's gone. Saw one of them in the shrub below the nest. The parents never fall short of nibbling at crow's feathers whenever they happen to be in the near vicinity. The father especially doesn't allow any bigger bird to perch on any nearby vantage point which may expose the tiny hatchling. They are all day putting out different sounds to communicate in a mysterious way. The language for survival. Presently they object even to me whenever I am nearby. I respect their ownership of the tree. In the scheme of things they own it before me. I don't know about the other hatchling, may be it's there also in the shrubs, may be it hasn't survived. Well, I am not looking for it either, because whenever I do they abuse spiritedly and I feel like an intruder in the scheme of nature. Let's hope this hatchling takes its first flight in the next couple of days. All the best little one/ones!

From a soft tiny ball of meat to a handsome toddler.

PSSSSS: Well, it has been a happy ending. The little one stayed on the tree, after coming out of the nest, for couple of days. Remained completely subdued, glued to a branch for two days while the parents ferried food. On the second day it drizzled almost throughout the day. It stayed like a cute little ball under a cluster of leaves. It even jerked its feathering and coat to shake off water. Well, then possibly it got bored. In the evening it stopped drizzling and away it went on its first sortie under a heavy shadow of clouds. Due to the monsoon everything has a double foliage. It will help him. I can see the parents loitering around on a cluster of keekars nearby. More than the little one, I am sure of the parents' ability to defend it. So I don't see any big hassles. They are no longer bothered about the tree and the nest which they defended so stoutly almost for a month. They possess a thing in totality unlike we humans who do it in fragments. Now they possess that cluster of lush green keekars. I can see the father perched on that dead keekar tree at his sentry point. Well, the world is better with at least one, and hopefully two, Bulbuls. Well done you husband and wife.

PSSSSSS: Even a prickly keekar appears so luxurious in the monsoon season. The little one must have been in the cluster of trees, a larger world, learning the tricks of the trade. I could see the parents loitering around very cautiously for the next two  weeks. They have a stern look and stout defenders of their rights for their size. Just watching them still busy, I can surmise that they still have the little one somewhere in the branches to get them fulfilling the parental duties.But now they look more relaxed, a clear signal that the young bird is growing well. After exactly two weeks of its first flight to a bigger cluster of trees, this breezy morning, I see the fruits of their struggle. It is growing boy or girl. In any case, they don't bother about such issues. Their duty is full not fragmented. It has a slight plumage and a slight crown on its black head. It is sitting on a high branch. And parents tweet from a distance. There it goes with a free swirl followed by the proud ma and pa. They aren't concerned about the nest. They own everything and nothing at the same time. Well the tree has new tenants. A pair of spotted munia. The already existing nest is cosy still but they don't care. They have made a new globular grassy citadel still higher. These are smaller birds and need a better accommodation. A bit below is another world. A tiny hammock cup nest of a white eye. There it sits sternly with its white band around the eyes. The more I see, the more I realise the design of existential intelligence. These birds weigh a few grams and look their feats. The codes of existential intelligence are very smartly written. Salutes to the supreme power!

PSSSSSSS: THERE is no indivisibly aloof life. There is just an ever evolving and transforming process. All apparent forms are just part and parcel of the ever expanding stream of energy. Individuality is just apparent on the surface because of the certain frequencies behind the shapes. But you still you feel elated when you see a milestone reached in the process. Here is the family.

The happy family on a dry crowning branch against skies overlaid with monsoon clouds 

They have build up the bridge to the continuation of "life and living" from their tiny point in the infinite scheme through their selfless work of the last few weeks. The father, as they are, is aloof, to the left. Ever pampering mother, like they are everywhere, is nearby to the right. And in the middle is the prince/princess. The fruitful outcome of nature. The little one is almost the size of its mother. I could recognize it only because it still has the childish manner of opening its beak and shakes its wings expecting to be fed an insect. It is gradually opening to the free flight in an open world. It darts quite sharply, a bit erratically though, and is seen out of the cluster of trees where it has been hiding for the last two weeks. They are still concerned about their little one. And they will continue dutiful to their duties till the day when it will take to the skies of its own.  The father takes liberties to be off the scene. Must be definitely flirting somewhere. The mother, on the other hand, is just busy with single point focus. I cannot see any other priority for her right now. She makes sounds particular to their species and type. The little one is being trained in different tones of sounds, for alerts, socializing and who knows what other coquettes of the birdie world. I even heard it imitating and responding to her. The other day, she nibbled at a guava on the courtyard wall and the young one looked keenly. It also imitated its mother and took beakfuls of guava. Must have really liked it because it continued greedily till a drove of sparrows landed and teased it by pecking at its tail. It then flew away with visible irritation. Now they take even bigger sorties of the open chunk of free skies. But off and on I see the mother and kid, and sometimes the father also, on the dry branches of a dead keekar tree from where the father scouted the skies for predators during the nesting phase. Well, it has been a happy story. Well done Bulbul pair. And best of luck little one!

Dig up your treasure

It’s a beautiful, fresh morning. A fox is on hunt in the forest. The sun is verdantly casting long shadows from the east. The fox gets drunk with ego and pride looking at its long shadow. “I must be really big and powerful to cast such a huge shadow! So little rabbits and tiny rats aren’t worthy of being in my big body! I have to hunt an elephant at least. That will do justice to my true status and standing.” So all through the morning it roams around to get an elephant. Many a small preys cross its path, but swooning with ego and pride it just ignores them. It’s not before the noon time it sees an elephant. The sun is hot and brightly overhead. The fox stands in the elephant’s path. But before it even realizes what is happening, the elephant swipes it away like a dust particle with its trunk. It lands at a distance very painfully. It now runs in panic. While running it looks around its feet and sees the tiny shadow clinging to its scared self. “How come I’ve become so small after the fall?” it wonders.

Holding onto the impermanent elements on the shifting stage of life is the cause of pain and suffering. The externalities are the moving shadows. They give the impression that they define you. But how can such fickle, impermanent, transient, fleeting, temporary things and phenomena be the component of our real self? Peace and happiness lie in connecting with the essentially real self, the substance, the permanent entity. It lies inside all of us. But is of no use unless and until we spot it, observe it, realize and acknowledge it. But if it’s not recognized, it’s almost of no use like the beggar who died wretchedly on a hidden gold treasure.

A beggar died in most wretched poverty in his hut. The place just reeked of misery and suffering. After cremation they just couldn’t bear up with the stench, so decided to dig up the place to remove the signs of misery. To their surprise there was hitherto unfound golden treasure under the hut. There was gold just a few feet under and a man who had met a slow, prolonged, painful death due to poverty on it.

Same is the case with the treasure trove of our real self. Find it, acknowledge it, nourish it to be happy and be at peace, or meet a painful, discontented death. Much as we run after the shadows, the centre, the pivot lies neglected. Shifting shadows never give permanent joy. So go down, unearth and lay bare the treasure you are sitting upon!

The Real Story

Forget about rockets, nukes, missiles, bombastic egos, skyrocketing sensex, high rises, malls, fashion, militaries, cars, bla bla bla. To me the tiniest story of love and compassion is bigger than any other story on earth. The stork with a plastic ring on its beak, an apt testimony to our crimes on Mother Nature.

There are people who aren’t looking too high. They just look around for simple things. But their eyes are special. They have love and kindness. So this good soul clicks a two-and-half year old, male black-necked stork at Basai wasteland, some 34 kms from Delhi. On zooming the picture, the birder found a plastic ring stuck around the bird’s beak.

The Wildlife department set up three teams involving their own officials and people from Bombay Natural History Society. Apart from this, nature and bird lovers from Delhi and Haryana also volunteered. Hundreds of compassionate souls actually roamed around hundreds of kilometers in all this heat to undo a portion of our plasticized sins. It took these soldiers of love 5 days to save the bird. In the last leg of the search, two young boys from Haryana, Rakesh Ahlawat and Sonu Dalal, ran for 4 kms to catch the bird just before the jaws of death waiting nearby in the form of hunger and thirst. Aren’t they and the others involved in the search real heroes? They didn’t do it for a small news item in the newspapers. They did it for love. To them a bird’s life matters. As long as there are such people, hope remains.   

Look at the two pictures. The transition from tragedy to motherly care. This, to me, is the real story. But then somebody is eating iftaar delicacies and mocking the well intentioned fitness video of the PM. World is full of idiosyncrasies. High time we start undoing some of our collective sins. Look at the pictures: the ring of death and the cradle of life. The first, our own doing, the second, some undoing on our part. Which one is preferable?

The twilight: no light, no dark

If you want to swim, accept drowning. If you want to fly, accept falling. To win, accept loss. To fulfillment, accept emptiness. The duality is bound by an unbreakable cord. Pull one, and the other one comes dragging. A win is not a win completely. You are losing something also, in some for or the other. No flight is a flight solely. It involves a fall also in here and there. Swimming isn’t floating only. It involves intervals of drowning also. Accept the so called opposite, antipodal, the perceived enemy and the threat. Don’t run away from it. Success is not the absence of defeat. It’s only accepting defeat, learning further and moving on. Accept death and you live. Surrender and master the ownership of your thoughts, actions and emotions.

The tale of two poor idiots

The urge to dominate, the ambition of power, the desire for prestige, these are all driven not by strength, but by some inherent weakness, fragility, fear and imperfection. There is an inherent imperfection which drives grossly selfish acts. Stalin had very short legs in comparison to his upper body. When he sat on a chair, he looked damn funny as his legs fell short of the ground. We need not insult humanity anymore by even retelling the atrocities he perpetrated on his own people. Changez Khan won half of the world and slaughtered countless innocent human beings. He was so insecure of his death and mortality that he went on rampage to forcibly plant his biological seed across Asia. By an estimate, almost 8% of the Mongoloid people draw their genetic line from him. But even this large scale cropping won’t give him peace and security. He was so scared of his death that fearing some sabotage he never slept at nights. He just went paranoid and one night ran out of his tent, tripped, fell on an iron peg and died like a stray dog dies accidentally.

The mountain and the lake

There is an old ascetic staying very happily under a banyan. No material possessions, almost naked and no desires. The force of his wisdom is spreading far and wide. The King gets so impressed that he touches the saint’s feet and overcome by huge pangs of reverence for the sage asks the old mendicant to come and stay in his palace. He is sure that the ascetic is going to say a loud “no”. But then very surprisingly the old sage says “yes”. So it becomes a big news and the King is even feeling duped. The old friar comes to stay in the palace. In irritation the King is pouring more and more worldly comforts around the mendicant who never shows any unwillingness to roll over more and more in comfort. The sage is accepting all the worldly facilities on offer. The King’s agitation is turning into burning jealousy day by day. He starts condemning the sage as an imposter who has now forgotten all his wisdom after staying in the palace. The King’s anger reaches a breaking point and he condemns him as a disgrace in the name of monkhood and banishes him from the luxurious palace. Nothing changes in the old monk. He smiles and says, “Ok King, as you wish! I was just fulfilling your wish to offer me luxury.” Smilingly the old sage prepares to leave the King with a blessing and a little sermon:

“I stayed in your palace but your palace didn’t stay in me. I am not a lake, I’m a mountain. I enjoy the water falling all over me, cutting my sides, kissing the trees on my slopes. But I am not possessive to hold the waters back. I simply allow it to flow down. I don’t hold. I don’t pull back. I just let it be as it is supposed to be. The lake is hollow. It craves for fullness. It wants more and more water. It has to hold. It has to collect. It is attached to collection. But the water will in any way flow away. So there is pain at the exit. Hence it’s forever looking upland for more and more water. I allow the flow, so enjoy the process, the mix of past, present and future. The lake holds. It suffers. It hardly enjoys its present, its being.”

Elixir of life and curse of death

Creation has just one source, single point of focus. Elixir of life and curse of death spring from the same source. The nectar and the poison originate from the same place. Life’s shadow is death, and death’s shadow is life. The perceived duality is a mental image projected in vacuum as we peer through the lens of “ego”, i.e., helpless bondage to the outermost layer, the grossest level of our material existence. The latter stands as the bridge to the shaky walk this way or the other. Break the bond and these drift away into non-existence. Love is tied to hate. And our “ego” is the rope, the bridge holding the two extremes of duality. Clinging to the two extremities, we have the option of treating one as the substance and the other as the shadow. If your ego allows love to be the substance, then hate turns a shadow. And vice versa. But in treating hate as the substance, we contradict the basic principle of nature. Hate is an exception, love is the rule at the cosmic level. Endless swathes of cosmic tranquility into fathomless depths cannot sustain without inherent love, peace and harmony. By hating we are putting a roadblock, a speed-bump in the path of infinite space-time continuum.  Through love we speed up the cause of evolution. In choosing love and the elixir of life, we add to the inherent cosmic harmony. In hating we add to the cosmic explosions and accidents.

Shadows under the light

There is no perfect darkness,

and hardly complete light,

Not totally good

and perfectly bad either,

Darkness stands because

the light is at some distance,

And light means

the shadows are yet to crawl near,

Here lies the challenge for goodness,

because bad is just a bit away.

The times when almost everything was pardoned

Old times had their own good bad charms. You just can’t afford to be judgmental. In the region where my parent state stands presently, there was this Nawab of Daulta near the present town of Beri. Well, the man was a religious enthusiast. He released even the murderers if they converted to Islam. So what do you say?  

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

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

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

Be your own champion

What is there to win for you? If you cannot win a gold medal at the Olympics, who has stopped you from enjoying the game in your local park? Nobody! Only we ourselves deprive us of the moments which could have fetched unqualified happiness to us.

We don’t enjoy because we look at the end, the gold medal, and totally ignore the process--the present--of playing.

So what if you can’t be the handsomest man and the prettiest woman on the earth! But who stops you from getting decked up to be the best for your resources and looks? There is no scale of beauty, we create one on the bases of our complexes. Nature made all of us different in appearance. Nobody holds the copyright on beauty. It’s a freebie lying there dirt cheap to be claimed by one and all.

Accepted that you can’t own a Jaguar. But who stops you from enjoying the pleasant drive in your old car while nature is at its kindest and the weather is applauding at its best?  

Long before destiny, society and governments arrive to rob us of our claims to happiness, it’s we ourselves who shut the door ourselves. We are basically self-fuckers, always pulling down our own pants to shame our own selves.

Expansion and contraction

A raindrop in the ocean,

and a balloon in the air,

One mixing with the whole

to become complete and happily spread out,

The other capturing a part of the hole

to egotistically confine for a specific, limited self.

A simple remedy for thousand ailments

Raise awareness. Work on it diligently. It gives you a nobler heart and more controlled mind. It’s a practice much like you build your physical strength through regular workouts. Natural instinct, almost similar to being inclined to be lazy, is to be caught unaware. It’s nothing short of blindness, just like going into a dark tunnel. Once you cannot see, you are no longer responsible for your actions.

Evil has roots in unawareness. Awareness is a disinfectant. A human being, while being fully aware, can’t kill, rape, rob or fight. It’s simply impossible to be aware and be at your worst at the same time. Goodness flows from awareness. It’s simply being in the warm light where you feel better and see everything crystal clear.

There is a fountain of happiness inside. It lies dormant under the crust of fears, lies, illusions and ignorance. All these are bred by unawareness. To sharpen your awareness you need to do the spadework. A lot of unearthing required. You need to dig. Stop, take a pause and dig again. It needs a long look within.

With just knowledge you can walk on the crust. It makes you simply competitive, wherein you want to win at any cost. It pushes you into a zone of being terribly self-centered. No wonder you become less humane.

Awareness breeds wisdom. You reach the source of happiness. Therein you just don’t run to your destination stampeding over the lesser things along the path. You have empathy and you care for the consequences of your actions.  

Unawareness is the root cause of pseudo-illnesses of the mind. In the long term these even turn into real physical ailments.

The soldier of peace

If avoidance of fight and quarrel is cowardice and escapism, then biting back a dog that has bitten you is bravery. If running away from fire is defeat, then standing in front of a speeding car is bravery.

Acceptance doesn’t mean defeat. It means taking control of yourself, sympathize with the self, giving yourself an understanding pat on the back, pause, sit down, rest and allow the storm to pass over. And then you see the light. Believe me, storms burn out too fast. And peace drags moments to eternity.  

When you get caught in the whirlpool of adverse situations, the more you struggle, the more are the chances of drowning. The perilous eddies are most dangerous on the surface. But sometimes allowing yourself effortlessly to be sucked in gives you a chance to slip out of the vortex, because the base is very narrow. Similarly, problems have an apparent broad surface, but in reality have a very tiny base below the surface. So don’t choose to waste yourself on the surface of issues and routine headaches. Just dive down. There you see the reality. Most of the seemingly mammoth problems eddy out of a very small, funny base.

So the cool soldier, be on your guard, lower your head and dive to survive and see your glorious sun some other day at some other point.

Repose, rest and creative imagination

Don’t be in haste, don’t run too fast, for in running too fast, always looking at your destination, you lose the real charm of your journey. You miss the real fruits that were placed along your path. You hardly realize the real boons coming across your path. Is it, in any way, better than a blind run? And mind you, no destination is defined just in itself, something lying at a distance in abstract. Every destination is the sum total of the experiences coming across the way.

So cool down, take a pause, and move restfully with respectful awareness. The things that light up your awareness at each step are as important as the final destination to which you mean to reach. The trees, birds, floating clouds, gentle breeze, sunshine, ponds, rivers, nice people, charming conversations, and what not. Your each step carries the prospects of the pearls of happiness provided you slow down your time. The time which is yours, defined by you, not by the clicking hands of the clock. Your time obeys you, not the vice versa. You can slow it down with your increased awareness. Stretch each second on the enlightened curve of awareness. Time then obeys you, giving you more in seconds than you ever watched and experienced in whole days.

Do you think a journey is accomplished by the running force you propel into? Think again if you say yes. It’s not possible to run forever. A run has to depend on rest to sustain itself. Do you think the accelerator paddle in your car takes you to the destination? No! It’s the brakes intervening to give restful pauses for safety to give meaning to your speed, to make it an organized run instead of a mad rush ever accelerating and crashing into some fatality.

The break, the pause, the rest, these are the basic ingredients to turn any random movement into a meaningful, assured, safe journey taking us to some destination. Miles and miles of mindless dash without breaking, restful pauses are meaningless crazy jump into the desert ending in painful mirages.

As you run without pause, rest and awareness, and with heedless hurry, you stress yourself out. This stress and tension kills the imagery. All tensed up and stressed, looking anxiously at the destination far-far away, you lose that dreamy imagery which makes each step a victory in itself. Do you think life is meaningful without restful reflections and creative imagination? It simply isn’t. If not now, you realize it later when unfortunately it is too late.

So guys watch your step. And look around you. Countless things and phenomena await to enrich you. These are the things which make your journey fruitful and meaningful in the true sense. The destination stands defined only in terms of the process of journeying and the experiences gained alongside. And when you reach your destination as someone different, almost a victorious king, from the one who began the journey, it’s only the experiences before the final goalpost which have turned the scale in your favour.

The nutshell is: Enjoy the journey fella. Don’t just close your eyes to the surroundings thinking about the destination where you presume to become happy some day in future. Forget it. No destination can give you happiness if you haven’t been happier while journeying.

Happy journey!

Life, love and living

Many, many years ago, a sage was meditating on a Himalayan peak. Majestic dales and solitary vales sprawled around were all aglow with the divine streak.

Though the birds chirped songs, and rain poured down in throngs, he was unmovable, lost in a deep trance.

In winters, icy cold storms blew and the snow around and over him was all aglow with its chilling primitiveness. His soul but was safe somewhere in the cosy warmth of transcendental realisation.

In autumn, wind-fallen leaves sailed down with slumberous tumble, and ripe fruits fell proudly, adventurously for a juicy, pleasant crumble. He still was somewhere else when the nature opened these marvellous jewels from her treasure trove.

In spring, wild flowers fully unfurled their fragrance and smile, and honey-bees engaged in dawn to dusk toil. He but was unmoved and transported into a state where the ecstasies of natural bounties don’t mean anything anymore.

Summer’s warm days sprayed desultory, eerie uneasiness around, and cool nights proudly embraced this son with his soul heaven-bound. Still it didn’t matter. He was undisturbed and was silently moving on his meditative path.

Once it was a full moon autumn night. A fairy was flying amid milky delight. A perfect calmness pervaded the solitary vales. Everything was asleep, bathed in the softest fluffy shades of white. The fairy flew low over the peaks glowing under the moonlight. The seer was lost in his trance in front of his cave, the beauty of nature sprawled around meaningless to him.

She saw him and hovered around the sanctimonious air of his sagehood. A small, harmless mischief rustled in her young, innocent heart. She circled in the air above him. Her laughter touched the milky sea around and created soft ripples. Her unbelievably soft dress rustled in the gentle breeze born of her circles. It but did not have any effect on him. He was engrossed too deep in the cosmic balance beyond the sensory contradictions and dualities. The more she looked, the more was the urge in her to bring him back to the beauty of this world, to fetch him from the deep ocean where his soul had dived.

His exquisitely masculine physique and persona created tempted sparks on her magic stick. She tried all juicily leering feminine tricks. But her desire-lorn swirls in the air failed to move him even a bit. Helplessly she descended onto the earth. There were almost tears of helplessness in her beautiful eyes. She sat in front of him with those rose-red lips pursed in a heart-breaking frown.

Her marvellous eyes were lost in his handsome, bearded, well sculpted face. It was mesmerizing. There was not a single worldly trace on his face. She herself was caught in a trance and lost the sense of time and the laws of the fairyland. The night sped away as if in a jiffy.

The day rose. The sun arrived with full earthly delight. There was terror in her eyes. The hope to return to her realm died. She had broken the law of her land by not returning on the same night after the brief terrestrial sojourn. The realisation crashed against her soft self like a thunderbolt. Her utmost sensuous bare shoulders heaved under the tremors of this unpardonable fault. A cry involuntarily tore through her slender throat. And then it was a still bigger violation.

His serenely flowing meditative phrase met this sinful, full-stopping dot. His communion with the divinity was broken. His long-closed eyes opened. The world of his penance lay scattered. His fiercely burning eyes stared at the flower in sobs and sighs. Her large, flooded eyes pleaded for mercy. But the fire in his unforgiving eyes was unrelenting and cursing.

The fabric of his serenity was torn. The sage thundered, “You proud, vain woman of egoistic beauty, become an ugly bush of thorns!”

Mowed down by the spell of his cursing energy, an ugly bush stood in place of that angelic beauty. All shaken and ravaged, he left the place. A thorny branch, meanwhile, got entangled in his loin cloth, as if for meek, pleading forgiveness and brace. He but scornfully jerked it apart and headed to some other place for a new start.

Time then took to its heels on swift horses. The seasons changed. The spring’s colourful patterns were rearranged. The summer’s warm kisses melted the snows. The autumn’s harvest uncomplainingly fell to the air’s chiding blows. The winter’s snowy blanket covered the peaks. And rains lashed down in stormy freaks.

This pleasant wavering of nature, however, couldn’t shake the sage from the meditative maze high there in the hills. Faraway down the hills, the accursed bush was shrouded in thorny haze. It struggled to sprout fruits and flowers. Even cursing has a testing time against soft, innocent glow of purity. How can something having a fairy core remain ugly and thorny for too long? Her pure soul entombed in that thorny shrine prayed for penance. And see, a flower of her fruits sprouts forth!

A flower blossomed among the thorns. So beautiful! It lit up with life among the thorns and deadly pale dark brown branches. It appeared juxtaposed by a miracle, like it had dropped from the heaven and got stuck there. It was the day when the enlightened sage arrived from the north. Contented with his cosmic realisation, he came down the beautiful dale. As he passed the bush, his purified soul sensed the thorny shrub’s plaintive wail. His feet disobeyed him and he couldn’t move. The lone flower among the thorns fell at his feet in holy-most obeisance and greet. He picked it up and was lost in its fragrance.

The thorn was ugly. The flower so beautiful and fragrant! What contradiction! Flowery heaven and thorny hell together! The latter born of his cursing condemnation; the flower born of the beauty behind the thorny bars. It was a jolting earthly realisation. Hadn’t he broken the beautifully set laws?

Torrents of repentance cut through him. He bid penance at the altar for a long time. His repenting self set around a reformative shrine. His soul drenched in painful chime. He braced the thorns with the love and affection purest of the pure. It gave him bleeding fingers so many times. He caressed and cared for it like it was the beautiful most flowery shrub. He was practicing his penance now, of love, of surrender, of repentance. What else can be bigger than these?

When his soul had been salvaged of the sin, nobody could bet against her for a win. There she blossomed in front of him. Beauty, charm and grace filled to the brim. Her smile was forgetting and forgiving. It was the beacon of her penance, of love, of beauty. Inside the stony walls of his heart, a new luminosity was now thriving. The sage embraced her. She, who had been separated from her loved ones, got the earthling she had fallen for. Happiness, bliss and calm opened a new door to the start of a fresh cycle of life, love and humanity.

All but the sage had been extinguished by the cataclysm. The lone and forlorn survivor, he had been striking at the doors of heaven with his endless questions. Now there was no more pursuit. The endless had manifested itself in a small sip of love. Now they lived as a man and a woman. New hopes, aspirations and offspring began to thrive.

Thus were sown the seeds of another spell and cycle of life, of creation. Their unchecked love in those flowery vales left countless exotic trails. Gurgling brooks gave company to her primordially sensuous laughter. His instinct’s procreating sprouts mingled with the mirthful waters of her receptiveness.

The pregnant baby

It’s an effort to pass it off as a mall in this town of Haryana, even though it is no more than a street urchin is not a self-sustaining, mature confident young man. Delhi isn’t too far, and almost everybody, to whom the issues like malls matter, especially the teenagers and young adults, has been, one time or the other, to the famed Ambience and Sahara in Gurgaon and scores of others in Delhi. But you just cannot scamper away to those famous places every time your eyes burn with desire to watch the latest release; your tongue lets loose a stream of saliva to dab into something chatpata, some pizza burger sandwich chicken fry; your wallet appears too heavy and eager to shed some bucks to get some famous brand, some trousers, bra, lingerie, underwear, undergarments, jeans, shirts, tops, trackpants, sneakers, and more. We get as much itchy to spend as we are eager to earn. That’s where the consumer culture draws its lifeblood from. And these days you don’t want to hunt around in a dusty sweaty market to get your cravings fulfilled. There are too many shops and too many provisions. You need too little items and of many types. You want it at one place. So even a small town, with its inhabitants having seen the luxury a mall offers, has to have a mall.

And here it comes up like the first tottering steps of a toddler.

The three-storeyed mall has come up to at least partially fulfill the shoppers’ and idlers’ dreams. It’s an adolescent town running to meet its mature city self down the decade. One side on the ground floor has garments, footwear and a couple of saloons. The other side has struggled. Subway struggled there, so did pizza wallas, and so did the franchisee-less efforts at cuisine by enterprising dish-makers. The peda and lassi wallah left. They left with more enthusiasm than they opened. A Patanjali store, sure of its brand, on the upswing, has taken the space of three stores, by removing the walls in between. It has more display cases and rows than the number of people at a time. Still we survive for future. The brand gives all indication of growing, growing and still growing. Let’s see how long it goes.

On the second floor, one side is ready to take shoppers in. But it is all shuttered up, no takers so far. The other side is yet to have its separate blocks of shops. Even the floor tiles are missing. You just have the all-clear view across the class front along the outer side. We missed the basement part. It has a huge, stuffed to the gills, provision store. The rest is parking lot where hardly anyone parks, apart from those who have set up business here. Teenagers just try to get suddenly invisible, now standing here, now gone, and steal some kisses behind the pillars in the basement. A boy and a girl kissing, though still a considerable scandal, is no longer the sin it used to be a decade back when it fetched honor killings as consequences. Now it fetches leering, jealous remarks and sniping hooting. That much is digestible for a godamm kiss. Of course there are many, who don’t have a girl in their lives, even in this freeway decade, when many successful macho boys claim girls are better available than even brandless shirts in rundown stores, who prowl around to catch it preferably on camera, and leave it in the endless stream of the social media.

Domino’s arrived with a bang, “Try all new Dominos”. The had the push of their brand. Unfortunately not many takers. It closed. Displays are still there, waiting for a new player to relieve them of their wasted duty. On the glass-fronted marketplace side of the mall, Looks Unisex Saloon is displayed in white letters on a tar black board. Its plush interiors and golden embellishments invite with a modern smirk. To surpass the rickety level of modernity, both males and females are welcome. Well, that makes it modern by default. It’s a humungous effort to catch up with modernity. The rate of change has lagged a bit in the society lynched by patriarchy. By the salon’s side, New York Slice are gone. Unique Collection, the garmenters, look over the counters to spot some serious buyers. The staff at Giani’s since 1956 broom the not so stamped floor, trying to make it swank clean. They are trying to look damn busy, thinking their up to the marl seriousness will draw people. By its side Satyam Medical Store sells condoms, I-pills, toffees, chocolates, napkins, but hardly any takers for medicines. They must selling some headache pills and ENO to survive.

In the lobby flex-board covered cubicle welcomes you. It’s Batra Lemon Corner, a red cubicle with price lists of nimbu lemon, jeera lemon, milk rose, pista rose and many more displayed all along the upper half of the set-up. The lower half of the cubicle still carries the signs of its past. The previous entrepreneur, Sip and Bite, tried to seduce young boys and girls with patties, aloo patties, macrony patties, chilly patties and still more. The past that never was, it hardly began, and ended. It but still survives to remind some bored eyes that there are patties in this world. On the ground floor some shutters are closed, but they have displays. These are shops in making. Auram, by Nisha. No clue what it may mean or stand for. Time will tell. It may remain anonymous, the entrepreneur may decide to call it quits at this stage only. A nail art saloon, D’nails, get any design on your nail. It seems progressive. Till a decade back those who look at the board didn’t even realize the importance of decking up face, forget about nails  which got broken while dealing with buffaloes and bulls in the fields. Dollar, always on top, upcoming. These are rich red letters bordered with white on a pitch black board. An aggressive style statement for the undergarment brand. They have been around for some time, so may storm through the initial apathy of window-shoppers.

Like a dead, open-mouthed whale the green Subway cubicle has been closed with more enthusiasm than it was started with. Or is it open forever? Sub in white and Way in yellow, in a white elliptical background. Metal chairs and plastic tables are neatly stacked inside. At least there is grace in closing down. The owner seems to be a diligent person. There is also a plastic room cooler and glassless display case. It was a world which saw its end coming even before it was born. Nearby, Amazing Kids is yet to come with its collection of kids wear. The starter must be keeping a close watch over the kids loitering around holding the fingers of their parents. United Colors of Benetton, the spacious interior has enough kindness for privacy of flirtation among the sales staff. Shopping wise there isn’t much of botheration. Priya Retail Store, shop and save. The invitation is very sympathetic. But is there any saving after shopping. Ever? Anywhere? It’s about spending. Baker’s Hut has nice, suave, white, brown, grey tiles. Who cares. The attendant is yawning like he has just woken up, even though it’s almost lunch time. City Heart Restaurant has claustrophobic interiors. An LED blares as if in the musty back eats of a disc. Teenagers just sit around to watch some song, drink water, do their stuff under the tables and go out. In the garments store, even the notice of 50% discount offer repels more people than it attracts.

Very few people take the lift, after all it’s a matter of just two flights of stairs. But its door has advertisements strips arranged very nicely. These are city brandmakers: Family Dentist, Verma Pathology, Rawal Retina Centre, Bansal Health Square, City Computer Point. Small people with big dreams. Well, isn’t world made of such people only. Those who are no longer small hardly live.

The third floor is the most lively one. They have two screens of Max Cinema on the one side. Opposite is a long and spacious gym, running along the full length of the mall. You can see fat middle aged women, their children gone to schools, and husbands packed off to workplaces, sweating out on the treadmill to chuck out tummy and bum fat right there at noontime. It’s also about getting some Godsent opportunity of some fling to bear up the sinisterly boring tide of the creepy mid-life crisis and boredom.

Max Cinema entry is a bit livelier. They do some business at least. Not that they play nice movies all the time, but basically because they provide privacy and darkness. Icing on the cake. Couples with thudding hearts sneak in to get corner seats to hold hand and do a bit more as would not make them repent the cost of INR 300 for two seats. Two teenagers are stopped by the guard who asks them to take the Centrefresh out. “You put it on the seats,” he is in a position to chide. Those who don’t have a girl actually do this, possibly as revenge and a sort of rebellion by their teenaged self.  

National anthem before gets played before the movie starts. Nobody wants to court controversy, so all stand up willingly, unwillingly. They get down even before the great anthem finished. Nobody wants to lose even a precious second in the cool darkness.  

In the national flag, saffron and green are separated by white. How symbolic. There has to be peace between them. But who will play white?    

It’s the cinema that makes the story for this mall in its infancy. The heaviest footfall was when Dangal was screened. It was never livelier. What a crowed! The owners may have the first night of best sleep during Dangal screening.

Cinema is pushing the revolution of bringing boys and girls together. The surrounding area is deeply conservative. Teenagers and adolescents don’t look forward to hit films. They like those lean weeks when there is no hit spoiling their hideout by the surging crowds. They prefer flops, when hardly anyone comes for the show. The big, dark, cool hideout is the perfect bargain for 150 rupees. A lot of intimacies unfold, with just a few dozen couples busy with their expression of love and lust in far corners, in the middle of the rows, and anywhere a contriving self of a flushed adolescent deems it fit.

You may have the best of a girl with the worst of a guy, the best of a boy with a horribly thin girl, both good looking, both average, both funny. As many combos you can ever think of. It’s an eclectic mix. It’s not about choice. The floodgates have recently been opened, so you cannot be choosy. It’s only about having a boy or a girl friend. On principle. Choices, what, when, how, where and why come later.

Girls come with their faces covered with headcloth. Hooded for secrecy. The strains of patriarchy are still surviving. Honor killings are still not totally unheard off. It’s better to be cautious. The headcloth, which kept women in almost slavery for centuries, is now an instrument of freedom, of anonymity, of facelessness. With it you just become a girl, you lose your name. You cover your face and you lose your identity to become just a girl. So scornful eyes of the elders will just curse a girl generally, instead of you particularly. They wear jeans, suit and salwaars, awkward imitation of the world in the movies and the Delhi NCR. Some look terribly funny though. But it’s more important to assert your independence. It can come at the cost of sounding funny. A dignified slavery is worse. A funny independence is better. Somehow. Don’t have the logic for this. Just that it feels so.  

They loiter around, almost on tiptoes, keeping a strict watch from their hooded faces and eyes, lest they be recognized by some acquaintance. If they haven’t actually seen it, at least all of them have heard of honour killings that were rampant, as little back as 5 years ago, in each and every settlement in Haryana. So it’s about flying with the wings of age, of curiosity, of sex, intimacy, kissing and holding hands. The mall thus grows in operation, month after month more people come, making it less scandalous for the young ones. Let’s hope the theft becomes a routine affair of life, to draw it out from the illegal shadows of minds to turn it just a mere simple fact of life, to stop rape, to vanquish molestation.

Legal, white murder

Do you think only you, I mean the human beings, have the right to tell you story? No man, no! Even we trees have the right to tell the tale of our life, especially when the main protagonist is man, the master of nature presently. So listen you all, humans as well as others who comprise nature. The two are different now by the way. Listen!

Well, I am a huge eucalypts tree standing by a road. But since now I stand more as a roadblock, they are killing me. The iron is hissing and kissing the rings of age in my stout trunk. I stand benumbed and in daze. But I have to speak out before I fall. Possibly you listeners will spot the crime and just—at least—get an idea of the pain I feel while I am being slaughtered.

Well, I feel really sad and bad about it. I never thought the end will come so soon, without any notice. There is no storm threatening to uproot me. It’s a very fine day, but all the more suitable to the humans to carry out their act of greed. My killing but is unjustified because I have been fulfilling all my duties assigned by Mother Nature to me.

The way I have gone overboard in carrying out my task, I think I should have been lucky enough to see the majesty of upcoming wintery full moon. The moon-rays are very naughty I tell you. You may be lost in brighter self-created neon lights, but nothing can beat the beauty of full moon rays on a winter night. I pine for one more such night! Alas, it seems impossible! I have to take solace by remembering the past only. 

See, you may not realise it, but your tools of cutting, your axes, saws, scythes and blades are very painful. I have to impose anaesthesia on myself, for I cannot even cry like you guys. Still I can feel the saw’s butchering the bloodless flesh in my guts. But poor me, I don’t even have the blood to put forth the evidence of a murder. Even though my flesh is as good as yours, but mine doesn’t bleed, so even the sanguine interior as they saw through it, appears simple painless stone to them. But I feel the pain, I swear. Just want to tell. Please don’t take my cutting as simple as breaking a stone.

It’s a hazily sun-lit winter noon. It appeared such a balmy day. I was looking at the people warmly moving onto their destination. But then they suddenly arrived like hounds. I was even surprised why so many of them arrived and started prodding me, slapping me out of my languorous spell. I don’t even know whether to throw my almost harmless, inaudible curse at these fellows. They are helpless themselves.

The state itself has authorised my murder to broaden this already fat road. But this state I cannot see, even though it’s present everywhere. Possibly, it’s bigger and stronger than God Himself. God made me, and is now helpless before the saw of the state. So you can very well guess who is stronger. I feel like bowing before the state to plead for my life.

Let me be clear on this. It’s a murder. You may prefer to call it just cutting wood. But there is a life inside. Never forget this. Don’t I grow like you guys do? Don’t I do my duty of purifying air and providing shade, and give dead and even live wood, like you people claim your utility?

For many decades, I have been standing as a serving helper to both man and nature. During older times, this metalled road, this carrier of huge traffic and so called your ‘progress’, was simply a dirt road. It was my friend taking your forefathers to their common destinations. Nobody was in damn hurry like you people these days. I stood here as a milestone reached by a tired pair of legs or a rickety bull-cart, who halted under me, savouring the shade I provided. I felt so proud of myself.

This very path has turned a foe now. It’s a highway after all, the merciless, fast-paced carrier of growth. It has turned a parasite now. It needs more space. Damn it, they don’t need shade and pure air now. These can be easily managed in the metal boxes that hurtle day and night on it. So I’m redundant and old. I have turned a road-blocker of progress with my few square-feet of foot-hold.

Man, again I try to shout and remind you that if a healthy mass like me is no life, then yours is also not so important. By cutting us you are cutting yourselves, for you are nothing but merely an extension of our world, a mere reflection of the nature around you. We gone, even you will be gone. Haa fools, now I can afford to call you as such during these final moments, for you cannot even see the precipice you are heading into.

Man, now it is hurting quite a lot. But I have resolved to keep telling my murder story till the axes, scythes and saws send my tiniest of branches to be turned to ashes in some poor household’s fire-place.

We trees never wince with pain as your axes spray chips of our flesh. Just because our flesh is different coloured doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain. We do, man!

We had equal rights till mankind was just a part of nature, not the master of it. Now this saw going deeper and deeper into my bloodless guts reminds me of our inevitable fate. Every tree on earth now has a deadly date with the greedy most, treacherous and unforgiving mate.

Haa the cowards! Forever playing so safe! They know that I’m huge. The poor things are afraid of my fall to bring them some injuries. Little do they realise that a tree’s pride is in standing tall and upright. And we do it till the last ounce of our strength. I am not going to give in that easily. They have to earn my dead body. It cannot be a cakewalk. Let them have blisters on their hands. It will serve as a proof of my murder.

Little do they realise my commitment to my duty, my oath to Mother Nature. Even in the face of death, I cannot stop playing my part in the natural scheme of things. As they are robbing me of my few square feet of space on earth, my saplings are still giving them life, still doling out oxygen under this winter sun. I am helpless and bound to my sworn duty. I cannot be vindictive and stop fuelling life into their lungs, even if they happen to be my murderers. Even my murder cannot change me, helpless as I am due to my nature.

Now the saw has gone pretty deep. I am getting the signs of that eternal sleep. There is also an unbearable pain in the so called painless mass. Death is death after all. Hope you understand.

Like hangman’s noose, thick hemp ropes are tied to direct my fall. From a safe distance tractors are pulling to bring down this wooden bull. They are worried, but are assured of victory. There are too many of them, with steely human determination to win, to stifle any chance of failure. No, I don’t see any chance of a miracle. It’s as hopeless as it can be.

Now I feel it. The death blow! The pinnacle of their jeering selves. A  cleavage breaks through the portion still holding me to my mother earth. From softest saplings to rock hard tissues, my whole self is panicked. But still I have to tell the tale of my murder before I finally fall. My saplings are crying like innocent children. The hardest of trunk tissues are shamelessly crying like the battle hard, handsome soldiers on their knees after losing the war. Death is after all death. Who wants to cease to exist?

Who cares? Nobody. This big snapping sound is my death cry. And here I fall with a thud. Yes man, you win. I am dead before I thought I will.