A date with 'Her' in the wee hours

My eyes open at 3 in the morning today. There is something special, my gut feeling appears to intimate. I go outside. A mammoth wave of pleasant surprise shakes up the last traces of sleep from my body. Is it 28th of March or some frigid January night? Time seems to have drawn back by at least a couple of months. There is dense fog and and chill in the air. It makes you feel as if spring is still out there in the other hemisphere.

At the start of this night on other the other side of the zero hour, a terrible rainstorm lashed once again, like it has been doing all through the winters. It’s very, very unlikely to have such wet conditions during winters and spring in this part of the world. The wheat, mustard, peas and tomatoes have been decimated. Mother Nature appears to be on an all out war against the humans. This particular rainstorm is supposed to further dent the wheat crops, leaving only just sufficient to feed the farmers, forget about selling anything for commercial gain.

Well, to the poet in me the sight of such a wet, cold foggy night, when there is supposed to be warm gusts of air from the western side, appears as a gift from Mother Nature. I take long draughts of fresh cold air and allow my eyes to literally melt in the night stage set up around the fog. Tiny hazy stages set up by the smatterings of electric bulbs here and there leave me dazzled. I come back to the house and lay on my cot and chant Mahamritnjya Mantra for individual and collective salvation against the Corona virus. Even in the desolate cold and foggy wetness, the world of humans seems terribly dented. I keep chanting for almost an hour and involuntarily find myself getting ready for a long walk in the silvery darkness. It’s very exciting as I lace up my shoes.

I decide against carrying umbrella, feeling it would be like trying to play too safe. This is the night to open up; to be alone in the fog-augmented and well-bathed darkness. Cold air hits my face as my shoes create squelching sound in the empty village streets. Even the dogs have taken a clue from the dispirited world of their masters. I don’t hear any growls as I move on. The darkness is dazzled with silvery crown of fog. I see the tell tale signs of the night rainstorm. Trees stand mute, bow headed in reverence to Mother Nature. They still play naughty as big drops of water still soaked in their canopy sprinkle over me and I look upward to see if it has started to rain again.

With open-armed teasing, winking and seductive invitation, the countryside opens her uninhibited charms in the vaporous darkness as I emerge out of the village. It’s a silent world more than ever I remember in the recent years. All the noise has got sucked indoors, leaving the countryside maiden to come out in its naked beauty, her wild tresses open and tossed by the rainstorm. Her lithe body washed by the holy waters. Her curves hidden in the silvery veil of the cloth that hangs loosely around her majestic body. She has a seductive smile on her lips and eggs me on. ‘Come, come o thou solitary journeyman, enjoy my unrestricted charms!’ I almost gallop to grab all of her to my own individual self. We have been branded and customized to be greedy. Even aesthetically we turn greedy. I walk on to lay my hands upon as much as I can receive from her willingly inviting persona.

The little countryside path serpenting across the farmed fields, linking the neighboring hamlets, has its chessboard set up in the dark. I have my mobile with me but decide against using its torch. I don’t want her to be discomforted by the glare of the molester of the darkness. I want her to be totally at ease and completely happy. Only then she will open her secrets to me. I am her lover. I have to get involved as per her terms and conditions. The weather-stomped little sinewy path has its own set of puzzle games to play with me. The places where I presume it to be smooth walkable earth turn out to be puddles of water; the assumed water puddles come out to be smooth solid earth. We deceive only ourselves with our assumptions and presumptions and then blame the path. I start doing the opposite of my assumptions and quite surprisingly I am able to walk decently. My shoes are wet. My trackpants below the shins are completely wet, but this is between me and my lovely night, so no blame game and grudges.

At places the path is under water, so I have to get onto the narrowest of embankment to move ahead. It’s like walking on a tightrope. Muddy water on the one side and rain decimated wheat crop a few feet down the other side. The rope is actually Marijuana rope! The embankment is thickly overgrown with wild Marijuana plants. This season there is an abundance of Marijuana plants in and around the village. With things going wrong for the Homo-sapiens, Mother Nature probably wants to provide a rotund stock of artificial stimulation to get Samadhi and forgetfulness. We need to eat less and forget more. That is why She has destroyed the crops and blossomed Marijuana. A confession here. As I walk on the Marijuana tightrope in the silver-laced darkness, I feel like committing a little scandal by chewing a few Marijuana leaves. But then I decide against it. I don’t want to be an intoxicated lover. I have to be fully alert to enjoy her charms. Moreover, those who have tasted the meditative forgetfulness will find any substance funny like kid’s game. So I allay the funny thought and move on to meet the lovely maiden hidden still deeper into the broader horizons. As I jump onto the path again, my shoes squelch with water and my pants are all wet. I feel cold now, so stop for a moment to take stock of my situation.

I remember a rain-soaked peacock, with Kilos of water in its long plume. The gallant then shakes it off with a vigorous shaking and continues to dance. So like a half-drenched peacock having accomplished a Marijuana rope walk, I jump, hop and shake the moisture. It warms up my body.

Utter peace and silence pervades each and every particle of the fog floating around. A lapwing titters in its usual accusative voice against the intruder. It lays its eggs on the ground and keeps a watch like an unsparing watchman. The moment it sees anyone near around, it raises a screeching ruckus. Her protests shake the sleepy silver-veiled darkness out of its slumberous state.

Plants, trees, bushes and thickets by the path stand frozen in time. On both sides, wheat crop lies decimated. Still Mother Nature will give enough for the stomach, if not more for the purse in addition. And countless are her ways to distribute what it takes from the humans to other species. So trillions and trillions and still more insects, rodents and birds will feast upon the fallen crop. Plunder in one corner comes as a perk in some other corner. It’s never a total loss.

In the distances I hear dogs barking in the thatched mushroom dorms. Business and economies have fallen flat and become redundant as of now. The Corona threat. It feels so safe here in this silver-laced silence. Faint silhouettes of threes on the silvery dark canvas make it feel as if time itself has stopped and suspended from its round the clock service. With each step away from the scared den of the humans, I feel sinking into the surrendered charms of the welcoming hostess. I touch my overgrown hair. Fog has settled down in dew drops on my head. I walk like a proud owner prince of this silence and peace. But then I have some dew mascara on my eyelashes also. What a makeup she has given me. I almost giggle.

In the rain-beaten foggy stillness and silence crickets sing their morning hymns. Their cricketing notes sound like very ample marching notes for the gallant me. I am on the way to shake hands with peace and silence without the risk of catching Corona. There is hardly any chance to come across any human being and I can spread my wings like a majestic eagle in the open skies. I reach a small bridge over an irrigation canal. The waters are holy. The canal carries Yamuna waters. It flows like an unassuming mystical flute. The ripples sound like honey drops fall from the cosmic comb into the waters. It’s so sweet. I can taste the sweetness of this sound. I am supposed to hear the sweetness, but it sweetens my tongue also.

As I walk, I feel the tingling sensation of the bioelectrical energy through my body as if I have been aroused by her soft touch. Beyond the world of bodily ejaculations, it is about the arousal of the entire self to take one to the stage of holistic orgasm, of mixing Yin and Yang within. Call it Chi energy or Prana, it’s the same thing and all of us have it. Just that we try to look out and exist on the surface and become insensitive to feel it. Go within and you will feel its orgasmic sensation! I am not into the business of spirituality. They have made it sound like an exotic art and craft to set up institutions and incubate immense followership. They make it sound like the toughest job where only the choicest few can succeed. Frankly speaking, if we overcome this urge to be a guru who possesses mystical powers, and guide all and sundry about the most evident secret without beating around the bush, each and everyone of us can feel this cosmic gingham. The neurons of my brain dance to the particles of cosmos. It itself creates an orgasmic buzzing and humming, which tries to set up a duet with the crickets around.

I come across at a farm side square. Another path cuts my path perpendicularly. I know the geometrical importance of this symmetry; of humans setting up an energy flow with their guided walk for the routine farming chores. There is an extra coagulation of energy there. It shoves at the apron of my bioelectric energy rushing to meet the hitherto untouched maiden of silence and peace. I respond to its pull. Stand there on the square and my Chi, or Prana responds to the lump of energy around. My hands and body move in symmetry, a kind of Tai Chi movements—I have never learnt, read or watched videos of these movements by the way—to align my meridians with the energy piece put on a platter for the guest by the teasing beauty. I feast upon it. It’s immensely energizing and reinvigorating.

With gentle fluidity, the day is holding the hand of the silvery darkness. The fog is lit up with grey traces of light. Indian rockchat, the expert early morning chatterer, starts chitchatting from the trees around. The deeply resonant coo…ooop cooo…oopp of the Cocucal reminds her that she has to go to the swathes of slumberous folds now. And there she takes hurried steps, with a mischievous smile on her lips, and love in her eyes, and moves further ahead before I can touch her fingers. I can see the hand still open and fingers moving in a smiling, coquettish bye. ‘Some other day!’ she says. The fog is dazzling now with the first signs of the twilight. Across the clouded panorama, I see her escaping to her royal bedchamber to sleep. She is looking back with a smile now and then. I take a turn and start back to the world of Corona scared humans.

Indefeatigable Beauty

The storm screeched through the night,
Poured its fury through sadistic love bite,
Undefeated but smiles the beauty,
Still doing its fragrant duty,
Her holy petals bear
the storm's violating drops without fear,
Holy beads now they are,
Smiles, smiles and no war!

Homo-sapiens beware, it might be the start of your extinction!

Mother Nature has its own calculations to decide what is good or bad overall. While only one species, out of the millions habiting this little gob of earth floating in the cosmos, is sulking, the rest are jubilant.  The air is fresher. The skies are clearer. The noise is less. I don't know whether to celebrate or sulk. So I stand in between. I feel sad for Homo-sapiens. I feel happy for rest of our earthlings. Also, standing on the middle line seperating the Single species from the rest, I pray for a good for all solution where all are happy and nobody sulks. Is it too much asking for? It may be easier than we think. Provided we cut the greed to the limits of need; reshape our value system and learn to take peace and joy as prized as gold; systematically nurture the emotional quotient in our next generation with the same urgency as we force their intelligence quotient; and most importantly replace a sense of blind competition to beneficent cooperation; realign the parameters of victory to include excellence and intangibles of sweet persona in the trophy of winner. All the things that have messed up the scene currently are our mind creations only. If these are failing to set up a joyful world, we can systematically create a different reality using our minds. What is the big deal about it. Stop taking power, designation, wealth, bank accounts as the only achievable pinnacle of human destiny. Give equal respect to love, compassion, empathy in a person's character as recognisable traits and rewarded accordingly to give them a life of decency. If your mind can fix values worth millions of dollars to stones found in nature, and which are of no value to any other species, why can't you devise ways and means to reward softer things of life. Endless are the resources of mother nature. All we need to do is to stop the mad race to plunder each and everything. Walk slowly. Pause. Then see what a paradise mother earth gives you as a reward within two decades. Otherwise keep fighting as an enemy of mother existence. Endless are her arrows from countless directions. How long you will fight. Just listen to her a bit. Showers of bliss wait you. But don't come as a robber. She will shoot you down. Approach as a smiling child moving to his mother to hold her hand. There she stands. Just waiting for you to correct your ways. Do it or keep fighting till your fears turn your physiognomy into almost a machine, with flesh and blood gone. Then a new robotic species will evolve. A sort of walking and moving matter. It hardly matters to mother Earth. It will readjust itself to a new mischief monger like it has done so far.

Soldier Uncle's Badminton Hops to Shuttle Away Corona

Corona Corona everywhere! Marona Marona its echo from the opposite horizon! It’s cloudy and pretty cool for this time of late March. I am doing rounds in my courtyard. Flowers smile and plants give an assurance that not everything is lost. Getting bored has never been my cup of tea. I am confident of spending 10 years in isolation at the tiniest island in the remotest seas, provided I have at least 1000 big books and get one frugal meal a day. But then collective humongous waves of the united yawns of boredom of the humanity locked up in their houses reach me and turn me a bit restless like an old frog that moves, at long last, a bit from its hibernation and looks with suspicion and sadness around.

The neighborhood uncle shows his inquisitive eyes across the grills of the safely secured Iron Gate. I have to keep my fort well protected to keep stray humans from barging in. Even stray dogs are more welcome into the house these days. Well, he has been firmly shaped and caste into a disciplinarian mould in the army. Generally, this cast lasts well after the retirement, till the fag end of life in fact. I am forced to greet him with the minimum courtesy. I stand the risk of sounding almost rude. I have to ward him off till Corona lasts, but then I have to keep normal neighborly etiquette also for non-Corona times. Given my overblown enthusiasm for social isolation, as a mark of my contribution in the war against Corona (as inspired by our caring and hardworking PM), I come dangerously close to sound outrightly impolite. I stop myself from falling so low just to save this physical self, which in any case all of us have to shed some day or the other. It’s totally unlike me. I can see shock and surprise surfacing in his eyes. ‘What has happened to this decent guy?’ he must have thought. But the dangerous equation of social isolation seems to spoil the very definition of mankind, i.e., mankind as a social animal. This Corona will spoil all community relations, leaving us antisocial animals.

‘How are you Uncle?’ I try to pour sugar over my recently acquired bitterness, but end up asking like a robot with no warmth and affection.

All this while, I am scared that my usual smile would see my gate being crashed and the visitor barging in. I am standing at a distance from the gate, hoping that he just happens to pass along the street on his unmilitary type infringement of curfew. Well, strange are the times! Those who are instinctively prone to break law and regulation at every nook corner panic the most and behave like the most obedient kids. On the other hand, the normal time decent law-abiding guys may become adventurists and get a taste of the changed attitude. May be they are like the otherwise cornered animals who now come out to jump, hop and gallop a bit on the empty stage.

Encouraged by my remedial action, his badminton racket, raised above his head, greets me. I see it as a sword taken in an attacking stance to breach the defense system of the fort of my isolation.

‘Was getting bore son, so thought of having a bit of game,’ he says and I give the blankest of an expression in order to murder the evening badminton player in him. ‘And all these farmers, oofs the uncaring, ignorant Corona carriers give me jitters. Only you seem to give a sense of security about your following the rules,’ he tries to break the mask of my frigidity through the arrows of flattery. It appears he is really itching to play.

He is a minimalist. If he offers tea to someone at his house, he would expect half of the things that go into making tea to be carried by the visitor himself. So I am sure he will be the last person to get his second racket to be spoiled in a game, even if he is proposing the game to beat his boredom. I am sure he is carrying only one racket. About shuttles I cannot think even in wildest dreams he will ever carry.

‘Ummn, sorry uncle my rackets are broken,’ I just keep things to the bare minimum too ward off any chance of a foreign foot treading my well-protected yard.

‘But yesterday I saw you playing badminton with your niece till late in the evening,’ he seems to complete a full game with one racket and without shuttles.

I have turned very mean during Corona times, as I have already mentioned. The lie slips out like a hungry snake slithers out of its hole to chase a mouse. O God, so unlike me!

‘Yea, we had a fantastic evening full of badminton yesterday, but but…’ my usually honest tongue puts up a little coma as a mark of its protest before I splurge out the lie.

‘But, but what?’ he peers through the gate at the prisoner inside. Look at the scenario: here prisoners are fighting to keep their jails intact!

I expertly overcome the tiny coma protest and say with confidence, ‘By mistake the rackets were left in the barn store at night and at night mice had an amazing follow up games of badminton. The netting has holes where the biggest rats in the world can pass on easily.’

I am sure the mice have soiled his game also. In fact, I am relieved a bit and hold lesser grudge against the rodents now for creating a chance, through their fictitious part in the story, to ward off possible Corona carrying intruders.

‘Oh, even you are getting careless like these simpletons around,’ he swings his racket around to demarcate the circles of foolery, which in fact comes to cover the entire village. I am presented as an exception from the typical countryside lampoons. A matter of pride! But if I cherish the pride, I have pay a price also! So I quell my ego and don’t accept the flattery.  

I derive sadistic pleasure out of this helplessness in his eyes. The moment of pleasure is so short lived that I haven’t yet felt its comforting feel in the tiniest part of my brain. He has murdered my pleasure like he must have thought of murdering the enemies in the battlefield. Well, he never fired a bullet in his entire career by the way, so my father teased him as a bagpiper soldier, for which he has never forgiven my father even 10 years after my father left his body, leaving the aggrieved soldier to keep nursing the scars on his soldierly conscience.

I focus my eyes to conform what they see might be wrong. Uncle soldier has done a coup. I see two rackets in his hands held tightly in his fist like he is holding the triumphant flag of mother India proclaiming victory after a bloodied battle. In the other hand, he holds the shuttle proudly by the tip. He holds it like he has won an Olympics gold medal. The most exuberant soldier! I don’t think I can bear up with the assault for too long now. I stand in utter helplessness.

‘We will have a game,’ the intruder beams with sadistic pleasure.

‘Uncle you are so well informed I know. This Corona…’ I use my last bullet against the enemy.

‘This Corona can’t kill our spirits!’ he cuts my bullet right in the middle of its path by the thundering cannon shot of his war cry.

‘Here is the sanitizer!’ he shows off another item from his armory. ‘The rackets and the shuttle are well rubbed with the sanitizer. In fact you need to be cleaned up to be entitled to touch them!’

My fort lies broken and vandalized. The enemy is in. As the victorious King, he decides the terms of negotiation. I am the defeated King and have to listen and follow up his instructions. I find myself obediently rubbing sanitizer on my hand to change my status of an untouchable.

As I rub, he is peering into the pores of my soft poetic hands. ‘Rub with force man! You are still young. Destroy each and every Corona from your hands. It’s a war!’ he is no longer a miser with the sanitizer bottle and pours a big splurge, as if I am a confirmed Corona case. Looking at the way he is using it so copiously, I am sure he has moved out the entire sanitization stock from the army canteen, where they get it at terribly subsidized rates.

So I am sufficiently quarantined. ‘I have to keep in check any involuntary coughing during the play, otherwise he will immediately call police and doctors to get me isolated at the stinking civil hospital in the city nearby!’ in my sullen silence I take stock of the situation.

‘After every set, we will sanitize our hands as well as the shuttle and the rackets!’ I hear him setting up his kingdom after conquering the enemy territory. My spirit is already defeated. So I start with unwilling movements. All I hear is his warlike guffaws and instructions. ‘He never fired a bullet while in the army,’ I hear my father’s sagely baritone voice. ‘So the old soldier is trying to win wars here after retirement,’ I am having my revenge intangibly. I move sluggishly to beat down his enthusiasm for a competitive game and get him bored to hell. Even by losing you can defeat many people!

‘Aren’t you feeling well? Um, not feeling ok! Some problem…Corona!’ Before he gives the final confirmation of one more Corona case, I am forced to cut him short with a hard smash which nearly missed his nose.

With my hard hit, I give a proof that I am feeling OK and there is no Corona scare in the yard. But a defeated soldier bears all ignominy. The victor thinks he is all sense and the fallen one is all nonsense. Having sanitized me, thus availing the advantage of incalculable value, he is finding faults with my ways of covering the court, my movements, my way of holding the racket, in fact everything. Oofs! I know I am not even the village champion. But, am I that horrible at badminton?! I am trying my level best to keep my temper in stock instead of losing it.

But the heights of insanity now! ‘You have to dive while you try to reach for a shot from a distance. Don’t run unnecessarily like this and tire yourself out!’ his latest instruction lands like molten lead in my ears.

Well, guys this is intolerable. When and where did you see a player diving to reaching the shuttle in a game of badminton? You dive in the air to take a catch in cricket. You do it because after that you roll on to the ground and you don’t have to immediately get back to your feet to hit the shuttle back. I cannot make the head and tale of it.

With my hands on my hips in a confrontationist stance, I ask him like an Indian General will ask his Pakistani counterpart, ‘Well uncle, what do you mean by diving to hit the shuttle. Am I a cat, so that I will jump up again within a fraction of a second to return the shot? Do you expect me to stop the dive midair and get back into the normal stance? One takes long strides and lunges forward to hit the shuttle. When did any player on earth dived to hit the shuttle, Uncle?’ I am irritated to the hell.

Soldier uncle still has his confidence in the face of my unsporty fusillade. ‘Yes, you have to dive!’ he says with steely determination. ‘Like this!’

He moves sideways to demonstrate like an old, old leopard cat. With his racket aloft he hops like an old toad sideways to jump like you do in sacked foot race. This jump of a couple of feet sideways turned out to be his dive. Why would you put up so much of effort to walk like a Penguin, if without effort you can run like a rabbit, a bit old though?

‘But why would one jump like a frog in a hot pan, if one can take one’s foot in a lunge forward or just parting the legs a bit more than the normal?’ I am clueless about this latest Bermuda Triangle tragedy.

He is doing it like he is the coach of the Indian badminton team. Hops to this way, then that way. These are the dives to beat the world champion. I am stunned by an assault of sudden laughter. I bend down with laughter. I hold my guts to save them from the ravages of laughter. He is confused about what is so funny about it. That’s how it is done, he is sure. With laughter-assaulted waters in my eyes, I go to his part of the court and hug him for his cutest old toad hops, the so called dives, which he believes can beat the best in the world.

As I hug him, I hear him muttering with suspicion, ‘Hope you have been washing clothes daily, that too in Dettol’

   

High-flying Corona

Now the Corona scare penetrates deep in the countryside. The village saloon-keeper, a very nice friend of mine by the way, has a very adventurist brother. Just like anyone around might draw every ounce of capability and cunningness to fulfill the basic needs of life, he puts up every effort to board a flight to be away in a different country or region to, primarily, nurture a sense of being a businessman even if hypothetically, and, secondarily, to have a bit, o sorry a lot, of fun. So New York is no better than Timbuktu to him. Lo, here he lands up in the sleepy village from Bangkok. As most of we Indians are expert at, he does a roundabout to dodge the little trouble of staying isolated officially for 14 days, only to come across the bigger trouble of gifting cough and sneezing from the exotic land. So we the Indians will use all expertise of our calculating, cunning persona to avoid 14 Day quarantine, believing that it cannot happen to me, and then walk into a bigger quagmire, not just for ourselves but for many others also. We love sharing! Don’t we?

So here he moves around his family and mixes with his social circle in the village, drinking wine with his pals and telling tales of the latest adventure. By the time the healthcare workers arrived to take a stock of the situation, his brother, the saloon keeper, has shaved the chins of almost half of the village. The house has been put under quarantine. A paper nicely slapped over the nameplate as a sort of punishment. Their entire identity hijacked by the little piece of paper.

Now imprisoned with his huge joint family numbering into dozens, my friend, the saloon keeper, sounded even angry. “They just shout from the outside ‘How are you’ without coming inside,” he is furious. What does he expect? Does he expect them to come and embrace them? Well, I think he can keep his expectations a bit low till 14 days pass and the reports come. Till then all those who have visited his saloon are waiting like their own reports are to be released soon. People are no longer as dismissive of the pandemic like they sounded earlier when the scary reports from distant parts started arriving. This is a very tiny planet, you should remember!

During the fateful period, with me being ignorant of the gallant boy’s return from exciting Bangkok, I remember having gone for a long, long evening walk with my saloon-keeper friend. In the countryside, the child buddies share a special bond. We still prefer to walk with hands on each other’s shoulder, like two bulls yoked to pull a plough. It’s taken as a sign of real friendship. Now, like a sullen monkey, I rethink about the outdated signs and symbolisms of childhood countryside friendships. So the incident has spoiled my mood a bit. But then it has spoiled the temper of all those who had got themselves shaved at his saloon. So I am not alone in this mild scare.

I had thrashed him once during our childhood. ‘If you get Corona, I will thrash you again!’ I baulk at him over phone. ‘And if I don’t, then? he is on back foot, as if he has committed a crime. ‘Then you will be lucky to retain friendship. But no longer shoulder to shoulder child-buddy strolls anymore. We are graying middle-aged men now!’ I still appear aggrieved and in no mood to spare the poor fellow.

So the lockdown acquires exciting colors now. My hair has grown like a mendicant friar. ‘We will use a trimmer to give an amateur bald cut to each other,’ I propose to my younger brother. He has a glint of mischief and immediately aggrees. I smell the mischief in his eyes. Corona scare gives you extra sensitivity. ‘No, no you will run away before your turn comes up after making me funnily furrowed badie!’ I read his intentions very well. ‘So I will give you a bald cut first to avoid this,’ I propose. I am serious. ‘And what if you run away after giving me the funniest bald furrows on my head?’ he has an inkling of my mischief also. My Corona scared brain works out a solution for the emergency. ‘You have your trimmer, I have mine. We will call two people and ask them to start putting balding furrows at the stroke of zero second, like they start a 100 meter race with a bang.’ He has agreed to the suggestion. So during the lockdown at least the haircutting problem seems to have been resolved.

My mother had a special liking for this brown and white female street dog. She would even chase away other dogs to feed this backbencher, who stood meekly at the end of the group. The tradition has been kept alive by us to specially give chapattis to this one. Now the problem is that another dog of exactly same appearance has arrived on the scene and has enjoyed the perks and benefits of looking like our preferred dog. My niece appeared disturbed over this fact. The poor dog went empty stomached from our threshold a few times. It is very disturbing. With the Corona jolt, I seem to have turned very mean and scheming. ‘I will pour some black oil on the rascal’s smooth coat to demarcate it and spoil its camouflage!’ I am determined. See, what Corona does to even those who have grown up assuming themselves to be decent human beings. I hope by the end of the war against Corona, I may emerge a full rascal ready to take on the world.        

Love during the Corona War

With India locked up, and dirty boy Corona doing the rounds out there in the streets to catch any gallant humans outside, a new generation might be unleashed as bored, scared and desperate couples use their unspent energies through forgetting and forgiving dives into the pools of physical intimacy. Demographic statisticians must be waiting with bated breaths, scared with the added workload waiting in the wings, at the possible surge in the population growth curve. To the hell with Corona waging a war from the side of mortality! We Indians are the valiant foot soldiers of the goddess of fertility and procreation. With back-breaking fight for economic survival being suspended, we may go all out into procreation to tilt the scale in favor of creation against the forces of destruction. Idiotic Corona peeking through the windows will surely lose heart. The moaning moments of human creation will make it feel ashamed of its destructive potential. We have the onus of keeping creation ahead of destruction. An entire new generation will crop up, sired out of fear, boredom and desperation, the Corona time brats. They are sure to have congenital immunity against the deadly virus. The fight in the bedrooms will take two courses. The couples who have been waging wars against each other like the worst enemies on earth will fall into bed after calling a ceasefire. The best lovebirds, who have been the apple of each other’s eyes since decades or even moths, will fall down on the floor with an all out scratching of each other’s hair like wild cats fighting to save the universe. To disappoint master Corona, both these courses will have the same result, addition to the stock of Homosapiens, the Corona-resistant generation. So when the sun  will smile warmly again after the frigid night, and the air will be free of Corona scare, many a lady will have motherly compassionate smile on their lips as they walk a bit more carefully while rolling their hands softly on their elevated tummies. Look forward to better times, man! Keep Hope!

Calculate your equation of farting and planting trees

Every time you offend the modesty of the air around your ass, stealthily (as majority of us do) or unabashedly (like some of us do), both deriving sadistic pleasure in their silent and violent ways respectively, run to the nearest tree and hug it for it is a mute, uncomplaining spectator, a sort of sufferer but still diligently doing its duty of a purifier of our misdeeds. Right from our apparently innocuous farts to the Himalayan gas emissions by the airplane darts, we leave a trail of exhausts that leaves Mother Nature stunned. So don’t expect that It won’t grimace with irritation. Farting should remind you of your well esteemed primary status of being a pollutant. So hug the tree and say sorry. It may still be scared of you as you hug it, fearing a still more grotesque version of your blast, the blast of your ego and greed that manifests so often in mass slaying of trees. CHOP CHOP CHOP! So my dear little pollutant, plant more trees. One tree per fart will be asking for too much because you have to accomplish planet-taming endeavors also and still have to tame other planets in the solar system. But I think, one tree for 100 farts will absolve you of your crimes. You will carry better conscience also, I tell you. So fart more, dart more, but take the message of planting tree to every door!

A note of thanks to PM Modi

When you put money, and the rest of its resultant materialistic derivatives, above everything and anything else, and make it the axis of human existence, like Western countries have done since centuries, you get big economic statistics to give you a false sense of security. But does it bring joy, peace and harmony in its wake? It hardly does as you can surmise from the exponential growth of human sufferings alongside the economic growth. The irony is, monetary figures are mind creations, and are hardly effective in fighting against the consequences of the overblown money-making process. They create a smoke-screen of development and progress, turning us blind to the real plights. The causes stand hidden in the natural, biological cauldron. To succeed against the same, you have to prioritize human life over economy because humans make money not vice versa. So while Trump finds economic depression worse than the prospects of mass deaths due to Corona and hence is still spending much of his energies in creating economic solutions, PM Modi has humanistically abandoned all talks of moneymaking at this juncture. The unprecedented lockdown of the country is a proof of the eastern humanist values of putting human lives above money. This pause will make India a world leader, a shining example of being a progressive, kind and considerate society. We are a massive society. The challenge is unprecedented. But when your leader abandons all secondary priorities and spends sleepless nights to save lives, in plain and simple terms without any political and economic compulsions, the success is inevitable. Salutes PM Modi! This economically unthinkable—at least in Western terms—step of putting up a pause will reinvigorate India and make it healthy to an extent that the rest of the world will look towards it for inspiration in future. Thank you PM so much! It's an honor to have voted for you! It feels like my vote carries a value worth millions of dollars!

Holy Fire

I am the moth

and I love my flame!

My fire!

But I feel the burning core of

the glow around which

I helplessly circle around!

I know that I cannot stop

the fire from burning,

So I throw myself in a fiery pit

to forget my dear flame's burning plight!

I throw myself in a bigger fire

so that I forget myself

and my flame's cries!

Listen O Thou Majestic Homosapiens

    

So the nanometer master Corona brings the Hercules to knees. Don't panic. We have performed miserably. So Mother Nature is just holding us by the ears. Oh, we the errant kids! All we need is a civilizational pause, a collective hiatus. And think and reshape our priorities. Align them along the fundamental laws of nature. Apart from a few thousand unfortunate deaths of humans, Mother Nature is a bit mollified as carbon emissions have come down a bit due to the forced suspension of our mad rush. Now let's go a bit slowly and make pause a choice.

Corona virus isn't just a disease; it's a message from Mother Nature, a bit stern though because we have turned deaf to her warnings. Holy Mother has been giving messages: Amazon forest fires, Australian bushfires, floods, polar ice melts, etc, etc. But modern society hardly cares about such message, which don't seem to affect it directly. So here SHE goes now and shoots down a poignant, straightforward message that hits us directly. No if and but about it. 'Listen little fools listen!' she whispers like an offended mother. HER invisible soldiers can puncture our egos. 'Now mend your ways little kids!' SHE says. 'Or be prepared for the WORST in future. All your so called inventions, discoveries, researches will turn out to be futile efforts at finding solutions to your self-created problems. And solutions to self-created problems will create further problems only! And this little drama on the stage called human civilization may come to an end FAR-FAR SOONER than anyone of you may ever think or imagine!'

Ye karo, vo karo, karo, karo, karo na, karo, karo na, karonaaa, Corona....itna kiya ki ab maro na, maro na! Chacha Corona should be rechristened Na Coro, mat karo, ye na koro, vo na koro, Naaaa Coro....NaCoro...bongs seem to have something to do with it. I think some Bengali researcher will crack the solution. 'O babu moshai, koro na, ya na koro, maachh khabo, dwai Lebo!'

Let us spare a few moments for the Chinese. I like their entrepreneurial practicality. However, it turns counter-productive after a point. Good that you take it as a weakness to have faith and be a believer. But doesn’t it dehumanize society collectively? The check-dams to our human rascality break and we get a flesh and blood robot who never listens to the soft voice of conscience, where everything is acceptable in the name of material progression, power, profits and global superpower status.

Animals are hellishly tortured, burnt and boiled alive in Chinese live animal food markets. If someone wants to have a glimpse of what hell may look like, I would recommend Chinese animal food markets. There are thousands there. It’s a mammoth pooling of negative karma operated like enormous factory where the raw material is slaughter, boiling alive, suffering and pain of a vast number of animal species. Of course, there will be negative off shoots as we witness it presently.    

There are costs to be paid as an omnivorous carnivore society like the Chinese. Not judgmental about them. They have every right to eat anything, including themselves. But then one can't rule out scenarios like Corona virus. There are a huge number of human-hazardous viruses hosted by animal and bird species. In this case, bats are the hosts for this virus. The poor bat was gobbled by the snake who in turn found himself on the enthusiastic dining table of a Chinese and lo, the world gets an epidemic. At Wuhan market, you have truckloads of dogs, live foxes, crocodiles, wolf puppies, giant salamanders, snakes, rats, peacocks, porcupines, camel meat and you name anything possible under the sun to douse human gluttony. Eat man eat, I know you love boiling live beings and take burps of world supremacy! But why spread the evil effects of your gluttony world over! As an epidemic-scared globalist, I am as scared of the hunger rumblings in a Chinese stomach as a dog is while being ferried to the dog market. Because God, or maybe even dog, knows, what new species may end up on the table of the Chinese culinary experiment, unleashing some new virus in the food chain. Given their overblown aspirations to rule the world by cramming Chinese nationals all over the globe, the strain travels faster than their supernukes. As a poor vegetarian Indian, I am more scared of the viral-nukes launched from their dinner tables than the globe-destroying weaponry. God, errr dogs, save us! I am getting more and more scared. I think, the human race will be destroyed, not by nukes and supernukes as you may suppose, but by some hitherto unheard of culinary experiment in some Chinese kitchen where some animal, reptile or bird might be boiled and cooked for the first time in their entire millions of years of history, introducing a viral strain that will eat the entire globe-load of Homo-sapiens. Oh God, see, o dogs rather! To make it still worse, if I fall in the Chinese hands, the kindest of them would still be happy to roast me alive and bring about another culinary experiment!

Like they do to conscious beings, rest of us in the non-Chinese part of the world, aren’t less culpable. We do the same to natural resources. We slaughter acres after acres of pristine forests. We destroy river ecosystems through dams. We rape mother earth through unsustainable mining and quarrying. We spoil coastlines, pillage hill slopes, pollute air and water bodies. Trees at their prime lay butchered. Their corpses tell their murder stories: “I stood for decades by the path giving shade, shelter and pure air. Then the path changed colors. Its sands turned into tar. And I became a roadblock and done away with smoothly. Best of luck Homo sapiens!’

So who will have the last laugh? The climate shocks have been unprecedented. Horrific! Cold has slaughtered soot and saplings with its unsparing frosty sword. Heat almost boils. An angry Mother is forced to cry with pain. It turns out to be wrath poured out with tears in eyes and a bloodied heart. Mother ignored and abused like garden cactus still has a few flowers to help us smile again. Irrespective of the severe damage, it decides to retain its smile. Its smile overcomes the frosty burns. With tears in eyes, aching heart and a forgiving smile on lips it says: ‘Happiness is a choice. A conscious effort, independent of so many external factors that you presume to be finally decisive for our happiness! Stop the mad rush. The joy comes from within.’

Beyond the storm in the cup of we Homosapiens, from astronomical distances, Father Sun dies to reborn again. ‘Death is the beginning of birth. Birth is the beginning of death. In fact, there is no death or birth. All we have is simply an ever-evolving transformation, simply a process! Live and let live sons and daughters, learn to live in harmony. To me a grain of sand, a tree, an insect, an animal, bird or you, all are the same. Never forget this brotherliness. Otherwise you perish and turn to sands. Everything!’ Got some sense out of His message? If not, kindly read it a few time more!

As you suffer and suffocate in the jail like homes due to the lock downs, please don’t curse Mother Nature for the fall outs! Mother Nature’s razor sharp talons, piercing beak, and predatory eyes are just an illusion. At the core lies the baby soft, melodious hymn of love. Salutes O Mother! Once the storms are over, the motherly ray will come down to kiss and heal! But for that you have to show repentance, accept your faults and promise to mend your ways. Don’t forget, one tear in your eyes gives her thousands in her heart. To make you laugh again, she has her own mollycoddling ways. A superb full-moon night waits around the corner for a milky delight! So just see through the self-created smoggy night, where the sun has been hidden and airs have been suffocated to death in gas chambers. The rainstorm may appear unsparing and unrelenting. Still lots of smiles left! We have to believe.

Go and touch a nearby tree with the faith of a true friend and close your eyes, standing under His majestic, protective canopy. He responds! Feels your pain! He transfers His energy to heal your wounded soul. He will be helping you in getting back your faith in life and living. He is your sincerest friend. The tree somewhere! Go and embrace Him! Reconcile. He will definitely reciprocate. Probably He looks forward to your visit to His house. Say thanks to buddy! You never know at what level of reality He is existing. A saintly King I tell you. Listen as you put your ears to His so called wooden heart: “I am basking in my sovereignty! I am the King of the world not visible to the human eyes! I am crowned with celestial lights!” You will hear it clearly. Just open up your soul. The miseries will melt away.

A mother is a mother is a mother. It's her selfless love that is driving the force through the rescuer's hands! You are bound to survive because a mother has to be forgiving. She is simply reprimanding you for the evils you have spread around. With lovely, kissable traces of sadness, the day which appears to close its eyes here will surely open them with a child's verve and happiness somewhere else! It’s not all over yet. All that we need is that we have to realign our priorotoes.

There is always hope,

As long as nature holds the rope

through its smile pure,

Survive we will for sure!

Pause is the remedy. Otherwise, be ready for a bit more stern messages. She has to shriek a bit louder to make our deaf ears hear Her plight. God forbid it may turn out to be a catastrophe as bad as WW 3! The choice is entirely ours. We get what we sow.

On a tiny molehill of hope, I see the faintest tinkling of hope. Now when most of the human population over the planet is exactly following the kind of lifestyle which has been my routine life for years, I feel that I belong to this planet only, not some disgraced extraterrestrial species!

Home stay is a torture and imprisonment for those who have existed on the surface, identifying with the externalities; whose life has been just a mad rush after the mirages that pop up in the sandy desert of illusions. Cool down fellas, Mother Nature has given you guys an assignment to look within. It's a chance to rebrand yourself and become a better version. That's how this civilization will change. At least you get time to think. So don't yawn with killing boredom and look within O thou development champions!

Of course there will be a remedy for Errant Chacha Corona! No doubt. But it will be a bandage for symptoms only. The roots of the tree of our sustenance and survival have been shaken. So all isolated efforts to find an antidote for Corona Chacha will be simply like disinfecting the pale leaves of a tree whose roots are being eaten by termites. So as your own house turns into a jail, kindly study the roots! It's an open book. Read it!

As mankind suffers in these Corona crazy times, Mother Nature appears to regain Her footing. Simple math: our interests and Her interests---because of our collective misdemeanor---stand antagonist, in terrible disproportion, to each other. A scary mathematics! Simply because we are a tiny subset of Her overall set. Possibly Mother Nature finds us like pathogens, just as we find Corona for our system. Solution: Ours and nature's existence should be proportional and in harmony!

Gone into self isolation! Well, take it as an apprenticeship into the art of prisoners. There is a huge backlog of our collective sins. So we have to serve prison terms in various ways. So hone the art of a diligent, obedient prisoner. All situations have positive outcomes also. Take away yours during these moments of being alone and isolated. Read your life and reflect over the path. You will realize your little part in the evil drama Homosapiens have been playing for a few thousand years. Rectify your part and you stand absolved from your side.

Corona ka Karnama is written in scary script. The most dreaded criminals, tucked in the highest security and the most isolated cells, are the safest among the Homosapiens as of now. Meanwhile, birds are singing more chirpily. Animals roam more freely. Trees smell fresher air as pollution plummets down. When the rest of all are feeling better, how come we are suffering most miserably!? Mathematically, it means we are the source of miseries to each and everything falling in the category of non-Homosapiens.

If mother nature had a language like ours, or we had the ears and mind to hear and understand what she has to convey, we would come to know that we have turned out to be nothing sort of Corona virus to Her. And what do we do to fight Corona? We launch a full scale war to counter the bug's onslaught through isolation, sanitization, debugging, antibiotics, etc, etc. Isn't She also doing the same against someone who is Corona-type lethal to Her? Mind you, Her tools to save Herself are floods, earthquakes, Tsunamis, epidemics, drought, forest fires, etc. It's high time we raise a white flag of peace and call ceasefire and get onto the negotiating table, for endless are Her resources in this fight. We hardly stand any chance.

When humans kill their fellow human beings---we need not repeat the multi million murders in the name of religion, caste, creed, nationality, ethnicity and rest of all our mind-contrived ways and means to slaughter each other---there is hardly anything scary about it. It passes off as passable act of routine violence. But when humans die at the hands of other agents, they panic too much. When millions get slaughtered in the name of religion, there is hardly any world scale scare. But when a little one wants to propagate its species, we get scared to the guts.

Get some sense O thou majestic owner of this tiny planet, Homosapiens. Mother Nature has given you this heavenly blissful planet. Accept your role in the things going awry! Rectify your errors. Still there is a chance! Grab it before it’s too late!

From Cobra to Corona: The scale of Homosapien fears

As scared to the guts Homosapiens scamper and slither into holes for safety, the still remaining species come out of their hiding places and take a view of the empty stage. The skies are relieved in the absence of the massive metallic birds, who no longer shout in to its face and puff out million tons of horrible farts in its nostrils. No wonder, the skies are bluer. Mother Nature appears to have regained its smile.

The Bigger pathogens are busy in fighting a smaller pathogen as of now. On the empty stage, on the premises of a gated colony in a city, a Cobra comes out to take a stock of the abnormality, the eerie silence. ‘What fresh mischief the two-legged ones are cooking up from their houses now?’ it must be mulling in its little brain inside the attractive hood.

The stage is less crowded. So its revulsion of Homosapiens is diluted a bit. In front of an unoccupied ground floor flat, it flashes its majestic black body as a veteran soldier from Mother Nature’s army who has occupied an abandoned post and claimed independence from subjugation and slavery. Its hood is raised with peaceful alertness. In routine times, a Cobra in the open in a human colony gets swiftly condemned as the worst possible enemy and you straightaway hear shouts of ‘Maro Maro Saanp aaya, kill, kill, kill the snake’. But now Corona is the biggest enemy. So there are no such impromptu shouts. Cobra is a lesser evil in comparison to Corona, the Mahishashur out there to wipe out the entire humanity. I think many eyes must have even fetched tears of devotion for Lord Shiva’s fabulous necklace. Some extra devotional type may even offer a logic: ‘Corona dies the death of a stray dog where a Cobra breathes!”

Not too many have the courage and even the will power to come out and attack with their routine childish vengeance to kill a snake. Possibly we try to kill our own fears by attacking a snake. But now the fear is far bigger than symbolized by an almost innocuous Cobra. The shapeless reptile Corona, stretching its obnoxious slithery invisible body across the planet stands for our fear for life as of now. So no Maro Maro war chorus. A bit more than average responsible fellow calls the snake catchers. ‘Sorry boss, we can’t come! Lockdown! Policewalla’s stick is more dangerous than the Cobra’s hood’. So they back out.

Someone believing the police to be the ultimate remedy calls the them. Two Corona-scared policemen, their faces hidden under the mask, arrive with their sticks. Guns have become irrelevant by the way against Corona, the rascally criminal. Even a stick stands better chance in the fight. Its tip may squash a few Corona idiots waiting to feast upon someone’s lung cells. The policemen strike their sticks on the ground from a distance. With an irritated hiss, the Cobra gets back into the unoccupied flat. People prompt the policemen to be the saviors as they are expected. ‘We aren’t snake catchers!’ they reprimand. ‘But you are supposed to protest us!’ the believer in policing powers offers his point very politely. ‘Presently we have to protect you from Corona by forcing you guys to stay holed up inside your houses,’ they recall the pressing issue. Everyone looks expectantly at the heroes to salvage the day from the side of Homosapiens. ‘Take out chilies from your houses and throw inside this flat from the windows!’ they tell the solution and scamper off to fight the bigger Corona battle.

Left to devise their own solutions, the people shout their snake manuals from their windows and balconies. A spiritual type says, ‘Mix some milk in water and throw inside!’ The idea is immediately taken up. Nobody seems to argue and opine unnecessary. All appear to conserve their energy to fight the bigger enemy. So the solution is carried out. By chance, mischance or for any other reason, the Cobra comes out again to take a stock of the empty stage. And they applaud at the victory from their locked down houses. It scares the Cobra and angrily it slithers into drain pipes linking the sewer to cozy pots where Homosapiens vent out their exhausts after their planet-conquering efforts.

‘It’s even worse!’ a panic-monger immediately hoots out his apocalypse scenario. ‘It has the power to slither across the pipes and bite you on the chuttar, bum, as you are busy disburdening yourself on the pot!’ The horror of Corona appears to take a backseat. All appear to envision the injection pinch on their bums offered as a sort of punishment for all the negative karmas of life. Well, we need to be pinched definitely on our ass for our errant ways. But then in that case even the Cobra can’t escape the effects of someone’s dirty morning deed of the day. To kiss the ass, it has to first cross the final hurdle set up by the Homosapiens in the form of pot’s contents floating like a safety layer to save its ex-master!

From physical ejaculation to cosmic orgasm

Physical intercourse, which we so often present as decent sounding 'Lovemaking' is the least possible utilisation of the cosmic energy contained in the physical self. Just the first milestone in the journey of evolution of the soul. It's simply the gateway to the world of actualization of the full potential of the kundalini Shakti. You can say it's simply like a little flower drawing a tiny sip of sunrays to blossom up, while far away the infinite energy of the Sun dazzles brilliantly. When the cravings for mere physical ejaculations stop creating the illusion of the ultimate pleasure, when cosmic orgasm stands seperated and at a distance from the maya of physical ejaculation, the entire body vibrates with divine orgasm, the soul dances to the tunes of the ultimate liberation, physical pleasure raised to the highest power possible, to infinite proportion. All the tiny pleasures that maya has set up on the small scale lose their duping power, which restrict the physical self from merging in the pools of the divine self, and one tastes oneness. Or the divine nothingness. Or the cosmic everythingness. All same same!

One need not be the one who has glimpsed into the sun source directly to truly know the truth in these simple words. All of us are equally eager seek to drop the burden of "me". However, the only tool that most of us appear to know is the short, temporary bliss of physical intercourse wherein for a brief moment "me" or ego ceases to exist.

Accepted that all of us have the inkling about, a little glimpse, the ultimate bliss through physical intimacy. It only means all of us are equally qualified to dive into the permanent bliss of the cosmic orgasm, where each cell, not just the genitals, of the body vibrates with infinite pleasure, bliss and egolessness. As all journeys start with the first step, Mother Nature has given us this easiest means, which apart from helping us propagate our species, introduces us to the path of real egolessness.

Animals hardly have the potential to consciously raise the bar to move into the higher dimensions of egolessness starting from the physical ejaculation. But humans have the potential to consciously move from sex to super-consciousness; from the point of cosmic release of egolessness at the reproductive system to the overall physiognomy and further into the domains of soul, where the real self looks at its reality, beyond the screen of physicality..

There are spiritual techniques to facilitate one on the path of egolessness leading to the cosmic orgasm. The central channel along the spine, sushumna, has seven chakras for the movement of vital life energy. But the upper 5 chakras are blocked, leaving the lower 2 chakras for the outflow of vital energies. But the lower chakras are just defined by anger, hate, greed, lust and jealousy, so the majority of the energy is lost at the lower chakras. It's like a pipe having 7 chakras has upper 5 blocked, leaving only the lower 2 open, wherefrom the vital energy outflows in the form of basic animalistic instincts. However, if the upper 5 chakras are cleansed, energy gets a channel to move up, taking one into higher domains of egolessness. Pleasure of lower chàkras loses its value, just like toys lose their importance as we grow old from kids. Similarly, pleasure of lower chakras appears valueless in comparison to the joy felt at the moment energy reaches the higher chakras.

A major portion of the urge to get a temporary release of ego is related to the search for meeting desires, fulfilling expectations, assurance, love, connection and insecurity. The messages from the higher dimensions, in the form of free floating thoughts, emotions and desires, need carrier medium. Irony is that at this plane of existence, at the human level, the carrier medium are humans of flesh and blood. So just like a vehicle has to have fuel to drive, this carrier medium as a physical body has to have its driving fuel also, which are quite interestingly born of exciting, sweet sour version of maya, illusions, and manifest as seeking of assurance, love, connection, insecurity, desires, expectations, physical intimacy and many more. Just like in the journey of the vehicle, the destination is more important than the fuel, similarly, in glimpses of truth, the fuels of maya are less important than the destination of the soul. However, it does not lessen the value of the driving fuels in any way. Their need itself sums up their value in the journey. Journey well. Stay joyful, stay safe. Namaste.

A day in the life of a Corona scared poet

Well, I have believed in the principle of putting down my tail under my legs and back away, almost running off the scene of issues and confrontations. Condemned as an escapist, I still find it feasible and practical beyond words. It stops the cascade effect of further build up of untoward scenes. Most importantly, it pacifies many egos. Little do I care, if their pacification of ego has to stand on condemning me as a coward. However, this strategy works when you have the tangibles visibly confronting you. What to do when the opponent is invisible like Little Master Corona?!

It may come from any direction, through any possible mean and in any form. As an escapist it literally means running away from each and everything. I feel like burrowing the deepest hole and hide there like a scared centipede fearful of getting crushed by rampaging boots. How many precautions to take? There are so many Donts that life even for someone ascetic-type like me appears cramped. Precautions raised to the power of infinity equals paranoid fear. Still I try to keep the raised power within manageable figures to maintain it within the limits of sanity.

As many Donts as possible imposed like a dictator on my own self. A bit of sense of safety creeps in as I ponder over my own disaster management. Not going outside too much. It is within my grasp. Usually I keep within my house. Walks through nature. Yea, I love that more than anything else in cosmos. That’s my strength. Trees are guardian angels. But how will you dodge rough peasants accosting you with bear hugs as you walk to your guardian angels, especially if you have been smiling and cordial with people. Running away from them won’t help. They will take it as an invitation to athletics and catch you as a trophy. That will be even more serious. Putting up a grimace on your face as you come across them to avoid them will create concern and hence they would poke you until you giggle. So no outings any longer. Painful yea, but what to do. You get a call over the phone and you have to sound like that the person on the line just stole your buffalo, otherwise you will get some invitation and the resultant dozens of excuses you have to offer. So straightaway sound like you just found that fellow sleeping with your wife or girlfriend. So launch a sort of ambush. A merciless beheading of cordiality. Self preservation is the topmost priority man, what else to do?!

Someone left his body in the village, and I offered my condolences in silence. So mean of me, I know. But it’s better not to add to the heap of ash waiting gleefully, especially with its buddy Corona ready to help it to become a little hill, in the village cremation yard by falling easy victim to the deadly invisible army by marching out like an unarmed soldier in a somber, peaceful, grieving party. If you wear the mask on the way to the cremation site, people will accuse you of blasphemy for being so clinging to life, the traitor that has to be taken dirt cheap. While on the way to the crematorium, you have to walk like a lifeless body who isn’t interested in life anymore. Show any type of zeal or precaution for preserving your life, it sounds like an insult to the dead. So if you commit this sin of showing your craziness for living among the ash heap of the dead, you are sure to be condemned as the cheapest rascal who holds life so dear even with this fact of death written so prominently in the form of the body being carried for the final ritual. So very prudently I dodge this eventuality and chuckle at the mask that I had to literally bribe my friend to grasp tightly in my hand like the best lifejacket has fallen on you by itself and the aircraft has fallen in the seas. He had two by the way. But I am so lazy. Now my laziness is legalized by the governments world over, by the way. Laziness is the key to survival! So like an old sullen monkey when I forced him to donate one to me, he gave me a look as if I would be the cause of his death, not this idiot Corona, if God forbid that happens. Anyway, self-preservation again. What to do?

An elderly sturdy peasant woman delivers purest of cow milk to my home. A real gem of a woman, a real motherly Bhabhi who is very caring and considerate. And see what my overblown precautions are forcing me to do. Her son has recently commuted to Delhi in congested local trains. And this has again spoilt the game altogether. The motherly, nourishing aura around her has dissipated suddenly. I am scared of the word Delhi. There are more than 20 million people cramped shoulder to shoulder there. ‘Some gallant sneezer must have sung his nasal apocalypse song right into the boy’s face!’ the calculus of my precautions swiftly let loose the rampaging horses of panic.  He is a good boy and carries more than average respect in my eyes as he wishes me Namaste almost reverently when he sees me. But I change colors like a chameleon and take him as the sturdy carrier horse of the enemy Corona. The elderly sturdy Bhabhi also appears a gallant swift mare carrying the enemy forces now. I have abandoned politeness lest she spends even a single extra second at my place after handing over the milk utensil. I hold the milk container like a bomb diffuser handles the deadly wires, slightest mistake, an explosion and the end of the world. I boil the milk extra hard to decimate the enemy. Poor milk. I must be burning all its nutrients in my fight against the virus. I rinse the milk utensil so hard that it might get scared to get holes in it.

Oh, the newspaper! How do I tell you how scary it has turned? It arrives from Delhi, hundreds of hands touching it all the way down the supply chain. Their collective animosity gets coagulated into the honest and diligent delivery boy. I ask him to stop delivery till my further orders and assure him of payment for the intervening period as well. He but seems to carry the honor of the newspaper industry on his shoulders. He agrees with an unwilling yes. But wait. He isn’t ready to budge from his stand. I find the deadly weapon, almost a mortar of Corona, dangling in the grills of the gate. My request has just made only this much difference that he fixes it in darkness to avoid the chances of the repetition of my precautionary request. I see it as someone is planting bombs on my gate stealthily. What to do? I take the scary thing with the minimum pinch in a corner, holding just the least portion that would enable it to be lifted and straightaway throw it in a corner in the yard where the sun will beat the Mickey out of the virus. Instantly I run to sanitize my hands. Scared all this while that my fort walls have been breached by the enemy soldiers and they are scaling the walls and I have to launch the fusillade of my protection cannons. So here I rub my hands as vigorously as possible. Throughout the hot sunny day I enjoy the sight of the paper literally baked to a funny dish. It’s only the next day I touch the newspaper, half assured that the idiot Corona has been decimated by Father Sun. So I keep myself updated a day behind. Patience helps man. Update and updation is hardly effective anymore.

Today when PM Modi requested to bang utensils and make scary war music at 5 in the evening, to scare away the monsters, I jumped into the fray from the safe premises of my house and beat my heart and soul out on a worn out, dented dung container vessel of my grandfather times and made such noise that for an instant I myself got scared! Offs, this Corona idiot will drive me crazy. More specifically, I am turning irritated also. Today I chased away a cat like it came to my house as a spy from Corona side. Almost hit it, and shouted at it, even though it must have been trying to breakfast on a little mice that has cut down the soles of my leather shoes recently. A monkey that was stoically sitting on the compound wall met the same treatment. I behaved so weirdly that even the monkey looked at me seriously like a sane human being. OOfs! What to do? Horrible times!

Little Master Corona

O thou little master,
The world was a bit faster,
You now force brakes,
Lions turn into drakes,
Even newspaper is scary,
No longer a news carrying fairy,
It comes from Delhi,
Fear pinches my guts and belly,
With inhibitions I touch,
A fearful world is such!

The Story of a frost-beaten tree

The winter has'n brutal and harsh,
And my struggle turned almost a farce,
Lost all my leaves,
With loss my soul grieves,
Still not all is lost,
For greenish life finds a host
in the wheat at my feet,
They pay a respectable greet,
My loss and my pain
doesn't go in vain,
Tumbled down as my leaf
with pain and grief,
Blossom thousands around,
Wheatlings like daughters doth surround,
Fell where my tear,
Many a smile this earth doth bear,
Doesn't go waste my pain,
Sows it the prospects of gain,
If not for me,
Definitely for thee!

The Light

The light does hark,
beyond the deepest dark,
There is a day bright,
after the ghostly haunts of a nightmarish night,
After a barren famished fight,
there blossoms a springed delight,
After pining pangs of seperation,
there is a worthy end to the desperation,
After crashing in the gutters,
there is a surge and rise to bathe in holy waters,
After crying convulsions on the lips,
a smile takes honeyed sips,
After the last deafeat,
still there is an undying urge to accomplish the feat,
Even when blind with despair,
there is hope hiding and cajoling somewhere,
Even in hate, love still lurks somewhere!

Lost

It has been months since
I last lit my faith's lamp,
So many days have passed since
prayers chimed in my dark den's air damp,
My meditating self,
Now gives atheistic yelp.
Lost my faith!
Lost my prayer!
Lost my rituals!
Lost my meditative trance!