Of little smiles and big pains!

Newspaper, electronic media and social media are now hijacked by the Corona thing. The situation is definitely serious. If developed countries having far better infrastructure, medical facilities, robust economies and sparse population are suffering so terribly, imagine what would happen to India if the epidemic reaches the third stage of community transfer. It must be already in that state. We are but trying our level best to believe that it is still the second stage. The entire country is looking at the numbers of confirmed cases with bated breath and a feeling of dread. The game winning has reversed. With cases shooting off into hundreds of thousands in the US and the Europe, it is about the least numbers that signifies success now. Government of India appears helplessly trying to strengthen feeble coastal embankments while the massive Tsunami reaches towards the coast.

To be a real patriot now all you have to do is to do absolutely nothing. You just sit at home and quell your desire to roam free in the mad race. Earlier, being a patriot required you to sacrifice your blood, vanquish the enemy, do this, do that, all doing, doing and still doing as much possible. Now, all you have to do is to absolutely nothing, and you win more odds in favor of your life. The government is in fact acknowledging you as a try patriot and nation builder if you agree to stay home.  

Criminal negligence and utter insensitivity for a joint humanity are the breaches in the fort work being set up against the Corona assault. Nothing sort of treason, I tell you. While the Indian PM has been pleading to the masses to stay indoors and in isolation, people try to sneak out like hen from their coop. In Nizamuddin, Delhi, a congregation of about 2000 evangelical Islamic preachers, Tabligi zamaat, flouted all humanistic and legal norms to stay in a building, which looks like a gaol market under the present situation. Here they shared communal kitchen and engaged in religious discourse. I respect their enthusiasm for serving the cause of Islam. But, isn’t being sensitive enough to follow instructions to help avoid the spreading of the epidemic also serving the cause of Allah?

The Maulvis then shot off into different corners of the country like live bio-grenades to infect people. They may not have done it deliberately, but the task is nothing short of bio-terrorism and they look like suicide bombers—carrying the corona vests tied to their cells-if we calculate the risks they have spread in terms of community transfer. Zeal for faith is one thing. But equally important is the consideration of safety of the people. If your love for your God doesn’t turn you sensitive and considerate enough to respect the value of life over all, including those of other faiths, then there is high time you go into self-introspection and learn the real meaning of the religious tenets you have been mindlessly cramming for centuries. The offender Maulvis should be traced, quarantined and penalized by forcing them into a bit of secular education meant to turn a person more loving and caring. Given their fright for anything outside the scope of Islam, I think they will find it even worse than being sent to the gallows. So it will be an ample punishment for the errant soldiers of faith.

Given this rampant breach of safety norms by the Maulvis, already there are communal interpretations of the incident. They must not have done it deliberately, only being turned stone deaf to the PM’s teary appeals to follow the norms as clarion calls of the champions of Islam buzzed through their neurons, but the common people are only capable to interpret it as a deliberate effort. Already the rumor machine is working faster than Corona. In the countryside people are saying that escaped champions of Jihad are rubbing their saliva at gate and door latches to punish as many kafirs as possible. The situation turning communal is the worst we can expect at the moment. Gods of all faiths please save us as one common species, the poor self-fucking Homo-sapiens!

Evil Corona seems to tear apart our social fabric apart from our bodies. There are instances of house owners asking their medical staff tenants to vacate their properties, fearing the angels fighting in the front-line against the devil will bring Corona to their threshold. Worse still, there are heartbreaking episodes of panicked crowds chasing away doctors who go for testing and asking the suspects to go into quarantine. If you self-shoot your own front-line soldiers in the fight, it’s nothing short of collective suicide.

The conduct of police during the crisis has won my heart. They are going out of all their routine calls of service and doing everything they can do. After duty hours, lady cops are sewing sanitary masks, cooking, serving food. The families of the cops are helping their valiant soldier by doing all they can do to contribute to the cause. Still there is ample of goodness left to defeat the hellish virus. People are setting up community kitchens and making arrangements for the homeless to stay indoors at community centers.

People seem to be discovering new terms of being human. That seems to be the only icing on the cake. A municipal garbage collector, clad in his poor sanitary worker’s green jacket, his weapons against the invisible enemy being just a mask, his feet in tattered slippers, slowly pulling his rickshaw cart of garbage dump, is showered with flowers by the people clapping, cheering and applauding from their balconies. He looks up. His faceless persona lights up with a newfound pride. For the first time he is visible. Earlier even the stray dogs were more visible. He has tears of pride in his eyes. People shout their loads of gratitude. He pulls his rickety cart with renewed strength.

There are many who are so restless that they can’t bear the ignominy of staying indoors for so long and would slip out like errant kids. The police catches them. Now the severe most punishment for the restless types is to force them into the art of restfulness, Yoga. The police lines them up, right there in the middle of the deserted road and they are sternly taught to do Yoga. Given their stiffness of bodies and frigidity of uncaring, inconsiderate heart, they seem to have undergone the Yoga torture for the first time in life. They would prefer even hard leather work on their bums in order to avoid this Yoga torture. Well, police knows to hit where it hurts the most!

Medical staffs are getting infected. God forbid if the soldiers of the war against the Corona start deserting the field. In Italy, Spain, France, UK and America things are moving to an unprecedented chaos. In Spain, with medical facilities falling short, they are forced to give ventilator to younger people instead of the old patients who might have lesser chance of survival. Patients are lying in the corridors just like they do in poor third world countries. Corona has eaten away all globe-shaking issue of nationality, economic wars, military rivalries and strategic game-planning. It’s just one little species fighting for survival. Hope the feeling of unity in the fight against Corona continues even after this episode is over. We will need it more and more in future because challenges will be global in future instead of being local, regional and national like in the past. This acceptance will do us the best favor we can do to ourselves.

Medical experts say, and there are statistics to prove it also, the males are more vulnerable to Covid-19. Their behavioral aspects of smoking, drinking and other indiscipline in life leave their immunity on the lesser side in comparison to females. There are social, biological and behavioral reasons for that. Males are predominantly responsible for the things having gone wrong on this planet. So by hitting males more than females, Mother Nature is passing a message: Let there be higher participation of females in planning and running the affairs of this world. Their greater role in running the world will turn it into a better world I swear!

Corona is doing some sort of reverse engineering. Poor people, who are yoked in the rough and gruff of life, are sitting idle and washing their hands regularly. They will have the best shiny versions of their poor peoples’ hands. They will have softer, shinier hands! The rich and privileged on the other hand have to do all their household chores, so their hands will acquire rough avatar. Limitless are the somersaults of fate: a king can turn a beggar and a beggar may become a king. So never ever commit the mistake of taking anything for granted. Things are simply in a flux. 

  

Imran Khan gives a lot of human rights lectures about India. Right now, during this Corona crisis, when people have become suddenly jobless, they push out poor Hindu and Sikh families from the queues waiting for ration and food. Pakistan is an officially Islamic country. They can do it as per their constitution and religious priority, but as per the holy laws of Koran, there can’t be a bigger sin than discriminating against people on such grounds and deprive them of even a little meal. It has turned out to be one of the worst places on earth, I tell you. Muslims of India should feel thankful to Allah for being Indian citizens.

With abundance of consumerist supplies drying up from the globe, people should learn and hone the art of surviving on the basic minimum, just for need, not for greed. As you have more time with your children, tell them the story how Mother Earth was raped. Be frank in your acceptance of mass blunders of the current and past generations. Make them understand the value of sustainability. Confess. Set up an example to them about living a joyful life instead of an unhappy wealthy one. That will be your contribution: Churning out a valiant next gen soldier of sustainability to protect future. Laugh more, play games as per the suitability of your house, tell them stories, spend quality time. Misfortune comes with the prospects of new seeds and saplings after the storm is over. Use it properly, or be prepared for bigger ones in future.

All of us anywhere over the planet stand equal chances of being caught on the wrong foot by the Corona army. So, only preventive measures aren’t sufficient. Don’t just spend all your energy in panic washing of hands and getting locked up behind seven locks, go for curative ones also. Strengthen your immunity. All of us are net-doctors with plethora of knowledge and tips on the internet. Do everything possible to upscale your immunity including balanced diet, exercises, Yoga and meditation. Try to be a robust joyful soldier. Make your armor sturdier so that you can withstand the Corona arrows now and other bugs stalking in the roadside bushes as you again go out once this particular bug is vanquished.

A Corona-raided game

As people fight their individual battles of killing Corona from their hands by washing, washing and washing, peeling layers after layers of their skin in the chase after the enemy hidden in the pores, leaving them slim and delicate handed, the war appears to have turned further in favor of Corona. All of us are soft-handed soldiers now.

I realize this and make it a point to play badminton regularly. I still remember uncle’s diving shot, so try his unorthodox instruction to be a champion shuttler and a better soldier against rascal Corona. The game is such a fun though. The late evening silence is ruffled by slow breeze, which makes the game of badminton far more interesting and tricky in an open yard. Whenever there is a shuttle to my far right, forcing myself to remember the instruction, and firmly keeping my resolve to fight Corona, I try to dive. All I manage is a sideways gallop like a springbuck and hit it with so much of self-harming sadistic relish. It gives titillating sensation to hit it like this, so exhilarating that you even forget about the foul-toothed grin of the Corona soldiers peeping from the yard boundary.

The sight of my sideways springbuck jump must be really funny, as my niece bursts out giggling every time I turn a champion sideways-galloping springbuck. Apart from the self-driven reward of having been able to hit it like this, I usually get smashing returns almost hitting my nose as I recover after the effort. Moral of the story: it’s better to try predatory pounces like that of tigers. You stand a better chance in the game. Also, the bastard Corona will find a tiger more daunting than a cowardly springbuck. But the addiction is injurious primarily. And I continue with relish.

As the late evening moves towards a shy twilight, a dragonfly appears offended against the flying shuttle. It appears to chase it like a heat-seeking missile hell bent upon shooting it down. It tries a few attacking sorties. It swerves around from the branches nearby and whirrs about the escaping enemy object like a US Blackhawk helicopter. It has to give up finally. The target is too big for it.

During one of my sideways springbuck shots, the shuttle goes really high in the sky. It nearly hits the rudder of a huge-plumed peacock taking a struggling, buttock-bursting low flight over the yard having jumped, almost like it was going to commit suicide, from the neighboring roof. The micro-climate of the yard turned windy, given the massive feather fan going bamboozling overhead. A peacock storm! Possibly the airy dynamics avoids a hit at the flying ship’s rudder. It’s a criminal offense to hit a peacock. We are saved of the crime.

As the twilight builds up, making the game even more exciting among the murky mix of light and dark, the moon’s shy coquettish crescent and Venus’ passionate glare, like a crazy love couple, look down with dazzling brilliance. What a lovely spectator couple of our game! We try to lift the level of our game since we have such august people in the audience.

The bats come out and flutter overhead as the spoilers of the game. Bastardly, sleazy nocturnal witches! Their zigzag flutters appear ill-intentioned. A few small ones scurry around a few times, almost with no effect either to the players or the shuttle. But then a huge one arrives as a bullying criminal. Possibly it has fallen in love with the cutie shuttle. Chases it like a stalker. It comes so close to my niece’s racket that she shrieks with fear and takes to her heels. The hooligan has stopped the game. We should not forget that bats carry Corona virus. Probably, the Corona army riding in their hawkish drone is guiding it to spoil our game. Corona has a right to stop the game. It has already stopped the world of we humans. Rest of the non-human part of the world still moves as earlier, or even better.

Spring seeds for the best version of the self

Mother Nature seems to play Twenty20 cricket game in the year 2020. She found it an apt chronological phase to start hitting sixes rampantly. (Of course, it seduced China to fix the game.) We may cry foul, but that doesn’t matter. Foul has no relevance in the art of modern gameship, because we have already flouted all norms and fouled innumerable times. So the guardian angels stand neutral as her ball chases us around the field. All this while, She had been playing test cricket with her silent majesty, with calm demeanor, unperturbed mindfulness and inherent grace. Mankind then kept on getting onto a more and more adrenaline pumping game. They got into 50-50, one-dayer excitement. She still found it digestible somehow. However, the fast and furious kid started challenging her for Twenty20. There she loses her composure as the year strikes 2020 on the calendar. She decides to play Twenty20, racy, fast and furious, with sixes landing in the audience like deadly projectiles. Gone are those elegant ground-strokes to display class and take just one run or no run at all. Even classic defense earned laurels. So the ball turned into grenade and started giving bluish bumps on our heads. The crowd is in a melee now.

Well, the ball is nanometer size. We cry foul that we cannot see it as it lands on our bodies with sadistic glee. But it is Her game, just like we contrived so many to entertain ourselves. We cannot complain now. We have been playing ours. Now it is her turn. The ball is a nanometer monster cutie. It has spikes over it to lock into the play arena of our cells and then keep on rolling to the boundary for sixes and fours. If the immunity fielders can stop it, the player saves the day. If not, the player is clean bowled.

In the ensuing stampede, the game gone haywire, ‘Namaste’ is trending. Professional handshakes, cordial hugs and affectionate peck on cheeks all have been eaten and beaten by Corona for the time being. Humble ‘Namaste’ still stays out of Corona’s reach. Why? Simply because it’s so unassuming and simple to catch the evil bug’s devil eye. It’s so respectful. The virus is yet to breach its age-old rustic defenses. It has got the antibodies of unassuming grace and dignity, which has a hidden power even above the powers of any fee-fawing arrogant gesture.

‘Namaste’ means ‘Namah te’ in Sanskrit, i.e., I bow before you in full respect, taking you as a representative of God, a carrier of His godliness. Here lies the hope for the future. A humbler, less egoistic Homo-sapien is beneficial not just to the planet but to their own species also.

Now, let’s salvage our positives from the Corona chaos. Let us allow this symbolism carried by ‘Namaste’ to turn into substance in our persona. Let’s be more fluid, mellowed and receptive. Fluidity has the soft power of sneaking out of supposed deadlocks by unegoistically circuiting out of many a problem. Boulders of ego merely clog the biggest of mountain passes. Let us be supine. Let’s melt our frigid egos to be more caring, understanding and loving. Let’s bow respectfully and gracefully to the fundamental principles of life, the bedrock of our existence. Let’s worship life and loving with bowed heads. The blades of grass bend down and weather the fierce most of storms. Hardest oaks break and fall down, simply because they don’t bend down. Learn from nature. America, China and all other global power aspirants listening?

Automobiles are rushing to make ventilators. DRDO, instead of pioneering killer missiles, is making medical masks. Millions of migrant workers, who throng cities like an ant-swarm sticks to a jiggery lump, are fleeing away like rats jumping out of a sinking ship. They are ready to risk life and be with their poor families in wretchedly backward countryside, where even death seems more tolerable than the suffocating life in the Corona-infested cities. Celebrities whose one coquettish look can break as well as elate million of hearts are cooking, washing and cleaning—most probably for the first time in their lives—as the domestic helps vanish from the scene. Hasn’t the world come upside down? Sirsasna is good for health even though it comes with lots of practice and a bit of discomfort initially. But it overhauls life and living if you master it. So as we do penance and learn to do a collective Sirsasna, let’s learn it properly and read the message straight. What we have been doing is hardly sustainable. We were going rapidly down the precipice to fall off the cliff. Thank Mother Nature, and China’s maneuvering as an agent of the evil effect that we deserve, there has been a pause, forced though. Errant kids hardly listen to the corrective message straightaway, by the way. Now let’s go back to the kindergarten of the basics of life and forget about the research and post-doc universities for some time. Life has been turned too complex, a quagmire almost. Better to take a by-lane and rest for some time.

Even in the face of grave danger, not all seems lost. Historically, the police has been ill reputed to bruise bums with their sticks. They do it still, but their sticks never appeared more justified in falling over asses as people break the lockdown instructions. However, in penance for one strike on an offending bum, they are doing 1000 pious deeds, while being out there in high risk places. They have surprised me in being so holistically caring. You see a policeman delivering medicine to a differently abled old man; a policeman feeding rasgullah to a patient whose sugar has come down dangerously low; you watch in disbelief as policemen sing songs to entertain people looking bored from their balconies; you giggle with a tinkling in stomach as you see policewomen doing the arti with diyas to embarrass the thick-skinned rascals, the milder versions of full blown criminals penalized by law, who are shameless enough to break the curfew; police personnel cooking food in their own kitchens out of their own pockets and feeding the hungry. The list is endless. I am humbled in the face of this totally new face of policing in India. As we will come out of this dark shade, the entire country will acknowledge this humane face of the police. Moral of the story: a police personnel is the best version of himself or herself as a kind, considerate and helpful officer. So why don’t we have a society where police people are not just half villains forced to tame the full criminals. Let’s have a society where policing is constructive as a helper, the life sustainer, not just warding off the evil. Criminals listening? Mend your ways and allow police to be their best version!

Look at the changed equation! Doctors, nurses and paramedics are the new soldiers fighting lonesome, life-hazardous battles against the invisible enemy in isolation wards. The conventional soldiers with their guns and their patriotic blood boiling to kill and get killed look the worst version of a soldier. These doctors and their staff are the best version of soldiers who put their life in danger to save lives. Let’s have the best version, well respected and valued in terms of rewards and applauds. Once the gloom is over, let’s have soldiers who save, not just kill to ward off most of our virtual and assumed fears.

The highest have been infested and so have been the lowest. People from the royal families have died and so have the poorest of the poor. Lesson: it’s just one little humanity that is bound to suffer in the same ways if things go the wrong away. Let’s re-contrive our economic modules to allow the horizontal spread of benefits and the fruits of economic progress. Let’s transform economic growth into social development. The richest countries are suffering and the poorest are cowering with fear at the impending ill fate. Let the high and mighty draw some lessons out of this catastrophe and rethink about their priority. Let there be some institutionalized grooming of art and aesthetics, not just cold hard logic and reasoning. Emotions and sensitivities are the shock-absorbers against the impending falls born of frigid logic and unforgiving reasoning. Pure reasoning cannot sustain. It can sustain machines not humans as societies. To be logical, we have to stay sensitive also because we are flesh and blood creatures primarily.

In the politically stage-managed communal by-lanes of UP, thelotus of hope and love blooms in unthinkable circumstances. In Bulandshahr, an aged Hindu dies and his family can’t reach for cremation due to the lockdown. The diseased man’s Muslim neighbors perform the Hindu rituals to finish his journey. A group of Hindus manage to avail an ambulance and get a pregnant Muslim woman to hospital to save her life. A Hindu senior cop goes out of his ways to help a pregnant Muslim woman in reaching hospital in time for delivery. She delivers a baby boy. She hasn’t forgotten the act of kindness. She names her son after the cop: Ranvijaya Khan, a human being, half Hindu and Half Muslim in name, a blessed child who will be a living testimony to the triviality of man-created communal identities in the face of challenges that have no discrimination for caste, creed, class, nationality or religion. Hasn’t the antibody of goodness already started debugging the society of its evils? Does Corona stand a chance? Much as there is strife and suffering, but the strains of our best versions do hold the beacon of hope.

As economy crashes across countries, the money diplomacy should be scorned upon, as the new sun smiles once the night of the epidemic is over, especially China’s Yuan diplomacy of enslaving poor countries indirectly through debt trap. They should feel the Dragon’s python grip around their throat and try to avoid a suffocating death. Global peace and security largely depend on China in future. If there is a democratic government in China within a decade, good for the world. If not, God save us then! If there is democracy in China, positive social reforms—especially the position of women—in hardbound Islamic societies, a humbler America, at an ease Europe and an India that isn’t merely in the rat race to compete against the worst to excel, we can lay the foundation for the best version of globe.

As you lie down in self isolation, don’t just fart with boredom in your living rooms or be hyperactive in bedrooms, try to be the best versions of yourself. You have lots of time. The specter of running from the pillar to post isn’t staring down your neck anymore for the time being. You have the most precious commodity as per the modern parameters of human civilization: Time. So welcome all your deep-held softer urges to be creative, to be something more than what the circumstances have forced you into, to be a bit more than you have become. Nurture those little dreams. Use the pause creatively. Learn cooking, read, write, paint, do gardening, rectify haywire gone relationships, let your family see the best version of yourself.

Even your pets will be ecstatic at finding you at home, the entire family dining together, have chat, watching TV. A pet dog Robo in Essex UK went berserk with ecstasy finding the owner family at home: eight wonder, all of them together. He acknowledged it to the core of his innocent heart. Wagged its tail almost the entire day and got a painful sprain in it. He has been prescribed painkillers for a week and its tail tied. Now it has to show its love and affection only through its mellifluous eyes. But I am sure, he will find the pain worth it.

Of course this too will pass. It hardly matters. What matters most is what is left behind. I hope the best version of all and everything will be sowed like winter seeds to sprout during one fine spring!     

Pause or Perish

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.

Wuhan Syndrome and the next gen warfare

Is anybody talking about building next generation warplanes, satellite shooters, next monster ballistic missiles, some super-dad of a Nitro, hrdyo or any x y z bomb or any other type of extension to our greed for power? Are there top security meetings taking place to rule the planet? Everything has been pushed to the corner in the face of a common threat. Lesson number one, in the face of irreversible damage to Mother Nature and the over-sweeping forces of globalization, the problems will be common for Homo-sapiens. So stop creating any more among yourself. These are nothing but assumptions, insecurity and virtual fears in the face of imagined boundaries and mind-contrived notions of having different interests and identity. The walls have crumbled now. It’s just one open field. So play the same game for the benefit and enjoyment of everyone.    

Irrespective of the fact whether the patient zero was an inadvertent culinary experiment in Wuhan animal market or some chance, mischance, deliberate, helf-deliberate or any other reason possible pushing the situation to the leaking of the deadly virus manufactured in the Wuhan biological weapon test lab, the result is that it has carried out the repercussions of the scale of a world war three. Wars have changed shapes and context over the millennia. The greed for power, the rapacious urge to dominate, the ever-persistent gluttony for more and more, all these and more that gratify individual and collective ego are itself deadly mutants that have hijacked our creative brains to keep the destructive trait one step ahead of the peaceful use of our logic and reasoning. The main thing is: we have failed to learn to live in peace.

China and its ambitions to be the all powerful master isn’t the only genesis of the problem. It’s a symbol of our collective greed for more and more by killing the aesthetics in mankind in parallel with burning the house, the little planet, we live in. Behind its iron curtail, things have been very shady in China. The strongest in the Chinese society destroyed millions of their own softer lives in the name of an ideology that nurtures the biggest evil in the name of serving the cause of the maximum, i.e., communism. A serpent which is used to eating the weaker ones among its own species will hardly stop at dining in its own house. It will slither out of its hole to gobble up preys outside also. Like they can boil live animals to satisfy the cravings of their tongue, they will hardly listen to any prick of conscience before planning to unleash any suffering on the humanity outside the Chinese borders. This steely resolve is their strength.

Aggression serves in the brute game of the survival of the fittest. But that is where the entire meaning of humanity gets lost. It’s like retracing the steps back to the pre-historic times when our ancestors survived as one of the animals in caves and forests. We could break that vicious loop of the naked game of the survival of the fittest only because we had the power to group and manage things collectively. Contrary to the belief that our reasoning served as a weapon to enable us to reach the pinnacle of food chain and rule the planet, it’s the still more effective soft power of emotions and empathy that served as the basic fuel of our civilizational progress. Use of logic, reasoning and the subsequent science and technology is merely the means to achieve the ends of cooperation and the common goal to excel as a species. With only raw aggression, we would still have been struggling as one of the apes in the forests. We excelled not because we made deadly weapons. We thronged because we could consciously love and were aware of our empathy to contrive things and manage affairs with a larger collective identity. Now with no other species in the arena to compete against, we are carrying the struggle to excel among within the species. So the domain of collective affiliation and identity is shrinking now after expanding to its peak when Homo-sapiens primarily identified with their own species to evolve at all levels. Now the collective affiliations are shrinking within the Homo-sapiens. It now shrinks along the boundaries of nationality, religion, caste, creed, class, continent and many more. Just as we fought against other species, now we create different subspecies of mankind on the basis of caste, class, nationality, ethnicity and religion. It’s the same age old war that we started against other species. To compete at all cost, even though there is hardly any need anymore, leaving it a divided house now at the risk of crumbling down far earlier than anyone of us can think of.

As I look at China’s obsession for more power and clout, I have to point out that I am no supporter of the USA either. They have been doing all that takes in the power game to stay the de facto ruler of the planet. It includes sustaining conflicts world over to weaken nations and encash resources out of conflict areas. However, the saving grace is that they are a functioning democracy. People have a direct role in choosing their head. And the option of choosing a leader still leaves a whole lot of prospects for the humanity. At least, the head of the state is accountable. He has the necessity of going out there before the electorate and get the license of governance renewed again. The leadership in China is not accountable to anybody. And such power sitting on the head of such immense resources is nothing sort of a potential hazard for the masses both within and outside their boundary.

Now, with just 3000 deaths, which is nothing in comparison to their millions of slaughters under communism, they are in a fine position to start throwing the sickened humanity outside Chinese borders with cheap, hardly reliable medical supplies. More business. More money. More clout. They want it at any cost. Their biggest rival is on the knees with the risk of even 100,000 people dying from Corona virus. That is what is most important to the Chinese. They hardly care if there have been collateral damages to their own late-found cronies like Italy, who had become the junior sergeant of Chinese belt and road initiative meant to tie a serpent knot on the world economy. Italy unfortunately served as the launch pad of infecting the entire Europe and the rest of the world in its wake, given Europe’s position in the day to day functioning of the world.

The wars in future will come in different colors than we have got used to see in the past. All of us have the fire-spitting metallic birds, the very same ballistic whales that swim in the seas outside our atmosphere and then dive to strike suddenly, the very same fire and hell spewing nuclear bombs, the same guns, mortars and military arsenal. All countries can kill similarly. So who will take the risk of hitting with the same weapon that lies in the opponent’s holster also? The new weapon is inelegant shrewdness and ingenuity to hit the opponent’s interests in almost invisible, indirect and intangible ways. Corona isn’t a self-evident war. Beyond the estimations of what and whys of it, it is primarily an epidemic. The scourge is visible to the human eyes. Only its tell tale effects are visible. Instead of investing in firearm factories, you invest in setting up stages, where the real motives always stay behind the scene of the confusion. You incubate pandemics. You calculate the reactions, visualize the scenes arriving on the stage later after the silent trigger has been launched in the murky haze of human brains, then you act, behave and respond in the ways where the unsuspecting sufferers hardly believe you to be the real mutant brain behind the chaos. And you draw out advantages, indirectly, out of the things changing to a chaos on the stage. Things indeed appear incidental. While in reality it turns out to be a well scripted act.

Not that the rest of the super-power aspirants won’t do the same. They will definitely try the same. It’s only about who can be more deadly. It is not about choosing the best. There is hardly any option for that. It is simply about ‘who is a lesser evil’. And democracy is always going to be a lesser evil. With the next generation warfare, a closed secretive form of government is most qualified to succeed, where there is no specific battleground, no specifically outlined cause, no tangible target to grab. All you know is that you have to weaken the opponent at any cost and draw advantages out of that. You can do anything you want, simply because you are not answerable to anyone in the domestic population.

The motive has been the same historically. But the ingenuity of human brain was only limited to swords, and later modern weapons, where there were cuts and bruises on both sides. So if China sacrifices its own 3000 people, it will take it as its share of casualties in the new version of warfare. If with the stage-managed loss of such lives, they can bring down the entire planet on its knees, wreak havoc with its economy, suspend all other forms of military competence in the rival camps, they will take it gleefully. In the conventional warfare, you cannot even win a local battle in lieu of such number of casualties.

Deadliness is now sneaking into the domain of intangibles. Like this virus is invisible. You don’t get alert like you can do on seeing a snake. To forge out such an invisible enemy, you have to be very ingenuous in approach also. In fact, that is primarily the investment to launch the campaign. It’s about breaking all boundaries of ethics, because even in a bloody conventional war including the nuclear weapons, which are pretty conventional as of now by the way, even with your numerical and technical superiority, you give your enemy a chance to fight and die to uphold their own belief, values and position. Like in villages, the feuding farming families may unleash their fury on each other. They may murder, they may do whatever we have known as routine in terms of violence. But still there are boundaries, almost unbreakable, which even the worst enemies avoid. Their animosity seems to melt away beyond the broadly recognizable contours. All farmers have their crops under the open vault of skies. A major portion of their economic interests lies open to any kind of risk imaginable. That is the domain where mine and yours merge. You want your enemy to be decimated, but you want all farms free of fires because there is something, a voice of conscience that stops you. Your own sense of ego cuts you down in your own eyes if you think anything like that. It belittles you. Those are the open skies, the rivers, the lakes. You avoid that and decide to fight a bit on the tangible stage, where there are chances of you suffering also. But you take that as an offering to the Goddess of your ego. A Chinese type of next-gen warfare has the capability to breach any such false sense of curtailment by one’s ego. They are capable of doing anything in the name of innovation. Heart has no say. The calculating part of the brain has swiping powers, simply because their secretive system of governance allows the maximum chance to groom such a capability. Here the farmer will simply go out and cut his crop, leaving a portion of his own to be seen as burning with the rest, and light the fire. That’s it. You can defend your military installations, your cities, your borders, but limitless breaches are there in the porous and open realm of air, water and forests, the things lying there in the open like farming fields lie there only at the mercy of a sense of conscience, a self-accepted boundary, making them safer than the missiles hidden in deep bunkers.

This Chinese syndrome isn’t an outcrop in abstract. It is the recipe born of the collective fire of modern humanity’s misguided sense of achievement, in grotesque dehumanized values which put human interests before anything else on this little planet co-shared by millions of other species. Just cause and effect man! Like in a weakened immune system, the disease has to start somewhere, here also it happens to get into effect from a system of governance most suitable for the evil-effects of our unsustainable practices to be carried out. So taming China is just a partial solution. In the absence of systematic overhaul of the overall value system, we will have a new version of the Chinese kind new gen warfare and stealth somewhere else. It’s just a symptom. And treating symptoms never fully cures the root cause of a disease.  

As we go into a global lockdown, it’s the time to think and ponder. The things discussed above are mere symptoms of a bigger malady: our collective greed at the level of our species. What is the use of wreaking havoc without limits to greed and create trillions strong economies, if you have to spend trillions again to ward off the consequences, as the roof of the cave over our head, where we have been mining, caves in? Can’t we be happier with less, and that less will be still more than what we will be left with after spending on emergency solutions to save ourselves from plethora of cascading problems.

Rest man rest! Pause. Hell won’t break lose if you pose for some time. You will still have the same little gob of earth circling around the sun; you will have the same days and night, same weather systems. In fact, you will have a better version of everything else, as the sand raised by your hooves settles down while you take a rest for some time. Ask anyone, the skies are clearer than ever in recent decades. Delhi has AQI like any Nordic capital. Can you believe it?! Ozone layer is replenished. Birds appear to chirp more enthusiastically. See, what can your hiatus bring to this little home of ours in just a week! Use the Wuhan syndrome and the resultant Tsunami for forging a better future. Catastrophe has no limitations. It takes millions of years to make, and a few chaotic moments to break. It will take China a bit of time to realize its mistakes. And realize they will some fine day, I am sure. Meanwhile, if rest of the world mends its ways, the Chinese next gen warfare and the value system of their ill-conceived competence will become irreverent. Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent noncooperation will accomplish what super-nukes cannot do. Make it all versus one, but in a nonviolent compassionate way. Just don’t cooperate with the Chinese version of hegemony and dominance at any cost.  

  

Life and Living with a Blessed Pause

All pains and suffering lose their meaning in the face of such smiles. Wake up to a beautiful spring morning. The worst of frosty nights are over. The sun shines warmly. The air is fresh. The skies bathed in repainted blue. The trees assertive through new saplings. The birds ecstatic. And with a kissable smile, Mother Nature sends her assurance through a belated spring. The message of love, life, living and compassion. Listen to it. Read it written all over. Her child is sick. She has redecorated the garden with utmost care. So when the child comes out of the sick bed, there will be plenty of fun and frolics. She just just put her child to bed for rest and recuperation. Most importantly, she has given the little picture of alphabets for the child to revise and recollect the basics of existence, the simplest things which the child has forgotten as it made its postdocs thesis too complex. Time to shed the burden. High time to smile more. Acquire the natural cosmetics of health and glow with peace of mind. To hug the trees. Kiss the flowers. Listen to the singing rivulets. To lie on grass and stare at the vast canvas of the sky. To breathe in life and let go of anger, hate and jealousy. To shed animosity. To love animals. To allow Mother Nature to stay undisturbed in pristine forests. To maintain the sanctity of the seas. To distribute dignity to the masses instead of amassing wealth in select pockets. To make this little home earth a paradise instead of seeking heaven in the cosmos. To liberate faith from the clutches of dogma. To replace paranoid competition by balmy cooperation. To rest, repose for creative imagination. To walk joyfully instead of huffing and puffing to another same boring destination. To be joyful and help others be the same. To complete the journey so joyfully and fully that the culmination loses its pain. To reach the destination full of grace, dignity and with a smile. To say goodbye not with a painful sigh, but with smiling tears of feeling blessed!

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’