The Tottering Caravan of Thoughts

Lust has no bounds like this ever-expanding universe, so much so that hungry predators in the nobility, who had grown rabid in their lifetime looking at the famed beauty with jealousy as she conquered men of her class, dug up her grave and satiated their devilish hunger on the corpse. The pangs of lust take us to the heavens of procreative moments; they but drag us to the bottom of netherworld also when they high-jack all emotions and logic.  

The lusty Romeo, the chameleon, is red with strong heat. It has erected the ridge of lust for spreading its genes. The force of procreation is humongous. It heaves creation on the onward march. But still more powerful is the fear of death, the primal fear. If not for this, how will he survive to procreate? So he forgets his Juliet and takes to his heels as he finds me too near for the game of privacy.

Fear appears to be driving this creation. Suppose there was no fear at all, what would happen? He would mate right on my head and I would still be condescending! There would be all love around. And we would all die like flies in an open jar of honey, drenched, saturated with sweet and fossilized like insects. Fear seems to be the fuel! So why malign it? There isn't too much of a difference between caution and fear; the difference is only of degrees on the same scale. These are not something qualitatively different; there is just quantitative difference. I take caution primarily because I have inherent fears. Fear is the innocent child; caution is merely a more calculating, graying old man. It doesn't mean they have different flesh and blood. The gene is the same; just a bit staler biology in the one and some inexperienced hormones in the other. Is caution possible without the background of fear that basically prompts us to be cautious?

Abandoning his Laila, the chameleon Majnu scampers away and tries to scale the smooth plastered courtyard fence. As it slips down, it must be thinking, “How I wish I could change my species like I do with my colors and turn a lizard to climb the wall to escape this goonish paparazzi!”

So struggles he now on the compound wall and is being made to pay for falling in forceful love. He has been loitering around lustily, shamelessly following the lady chameleon that resides on the Parijat tree. He is an intruder basically and aggressive as they are supposed to be. He even took an aggressive reddish stance in front of me, taking me as the conservative grandpa of the lady who is against love on principle! But then reality struck him and he had to leave the battlefield and run for dear life to wage the war of lust and love some other time.

As the slip-shoddy Romeo tries to scale the fence, the game of love and lust proceeds undisturbed despite the chameleon and the human engaged in a tussle. Two flies are mating on the gently swaying leaf. Their unending buzzing has gone into a meditative silence. God knows what do they mull over while in that fly missionary position! No love game goes unwatched and scorned at across species including we humans. So another fly peeks over the edge of a neighboring leaf like a grimacing spy. Its eyes seem to be popping out of excitement. Lovemaking on the swaying, airy rhythms of a leafy bed and the jealous peeping Tom! The twig bearing the love bed has big thorns. The air is thus redolent with cribbing, angry warnings by the big barbs on the love-path. But do the lovers care about such pricks on the love-path? Surely they don’t. The surge of hormones serves to turn one blind to all reason as much as it propels the force of procreation. If not for this forgetfulness not too many will jump into the pit.

Corona is doing a scary Cameo with India well into scary sandpits. Our profusely baulking politicians have tremendous lung power, so they should take the fiend head on.

Dancing Lungs Cameo on Covid Tunes is what I suggest for the common people like you and me. Lung aeration and ventilation pranayama means bursts of inhalation and exhalation into lungs as per the individual's capacity without putting too much strain; focusing with an inward smile on the lungs. Be your own saintess and turn the chi energy on the fingers into your own blessings; tap with fingers of both hands on the chest with an inner smile with eyes closed. One's energy flows as per the rhythms of our emotions, so be your own healer and believe in yourself, your energy, your blessing hands. Let almighty keep all of us safe. Take asvagandha and Giloy tablets to boost immunity. And most importantly, pray for all! Giloy the majestic creeper must be shivering with fear as the entire country runs to cut its stalks to boil and drink with relish to retain immunity against the epidemic.

Don't miss the inner smile while doing this! An emotion decides whether a blizzard of energy is constructive or destructive in manifestation. For example, the same amount of sexual energy under the dark spell of lust turns one into a rapist; while the very same sexual energy if guided well through spiritual practices makes one an embodiment of godliness. The choice is always ours!

We are also scared like rabbits as of now. For too long we have been hunting everything that came our way. In Charles Dickens' lingo, we can ask the resourceful modern man, "All's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?" Now is the turn to get hunted down in return. Hope our fleeting memory will retain some of the Corona era lessons!

Charles Dickens says in Dombey and Sons: “It's when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished.” Isn’t it a gloomy stage of missed opportunities? How much we have lost in the pursuit of unchecked gain!

Then there are people playing pranks on social media. A video has gone viral. An alleged ghost is gymming on the open bulwark in a park at 2 o clock in the night. The policemen look on as the bars go swinging back and forth. A doctored video definitly! But even if it is true, why does a ghost need toned muscles if it cannot flex them in our face. At the most, it's an airy fart, trail of piss and a hideous lump of poop. It doesn't make any difference whether it appears like a skeleton or a World champ body builder!

Bagheera, named after the famed black panther in Mougali, the only spotlessly jet black canine king of the village, walks in as he finds our gate open. He walks in with surety of a nice welcome. He knows we drool over him for his majestic looks. He doesn’t need chapattis for there are enough thrown in front of him by all and sundry. He needs more affectionate words for which he has endless hunger. His stomach may not allow him to eat all that is given to him, but his sparkling yellow eyes like a panther’s have enough deep pools where anyone can dive with love and affection.

Spotless black dogs are rare. There must be something special about them. The Tantra mystics of Kanphata Gorakhnath sect used to carry a spotless black dog on their shoulders on their spiritual march across India. Bagheera was initially raised by a peasant woman but she allows him to rule the streets of the entire village. So everyone has a feeling of ownership about him. He roams around with majestic air of freedom. He definitely seems to have a feeling of his specialty. He is well fed, for there are many who drool over him for his looks. While the rest of the dogs howl and bicker over trivial matters, he moves around unconcerned without falling into trivial canine matters. He is cool and composed.

I remember a chilly winter early morning. It had rained overnight and fog had frozen the surroundings. Around 4 o’ clock, I was on my early morning walk and Bagheera joined me at one street corner. He walked a few paces in front of me like a confident bodyguard against darkness that appeared defeated by his majestic color. Cool, composed and perfectly poised he walked ahead of me, without taking too much of trouble in sniffing out time-killing mischief in the path-side bushes. Far away in the countryside, when I turned back to come back, he just looked back once and kept on walking into the darkness as if asking me to follow him further. I expected him to come back after me. But he being a master of his own will kept on walking. Bagheera returned on the third day. God knows what realizations he availed during the solitary sojourn!

Some food for thought, or rather thought for food! The things that we usually eat for our tongue ought to tasted, not eaten. The food that we are reminded to take for our stomach, must be eaten, not gobbled. But we do the reverse. We gobble down the things that must be merely tasted. And we flimsily taste the things that must be actually eaten! The forces on the periphery of our existence create desires that always drive us off the path, taking us into the puzzling pathways, where we end up spending our entire life and energy in banging our head against walls and moving just by chance, driven by random forces. On the other hand, there is the option of living by choice. The ability to live by choice increases in proportion to the distance we create from the outermost peripheral forces controlling our life. The more we move away from the fringes, the lesser becomes the chance factor in life driven by circumstantial winds. Does it mean that our feelings are basically flimsy means of we losing the track and the thoughts are the tack-lines meant to draw us back onto the path for safety and survival?

Beyond thoughts and feelings, Mexican Petunia smiles after months! He was Ma's favorite little plant son, dazzling with violet smiles almost all the time. She really appreciated and mused over this little soldier of smile's spirit in outdoing others of bigger brand-names. Then she left this body to be part of everything to keep her evolution in another dimension. The plant seemed to go into mourning and stopped smiling anymore. It smiles again! Ma is surely smiling and watching with a motherly muse over my follies! Love you Ma!

Nearby, the dazzling pink pout of Kiss Me Quick flower creeps out with a coquettish welcome. Her slender body creeps across the intimidating underbrush to offer a little bouquet of smile. All is well, she whispers! Love and smiles are always eager to sprout through thick stony walls, barricades and difficulties provided we have the pause to acknowledge them.

A renegade dark and grey big-horned bull is breakfasting right in front of our gate. He has defected from the famished cattle horde of Rajasthani nomadic herders and appears to have settled for an independent life in greener pastures. Well, nothing wrong with his choice if he is ok with a solitary life that comes with many struggles in comparison to a grouped life. Freedom can’t be cashed man; it has its own yardstick to measure life and living! My only concern is that he doesn't start gobbling the cannabis plants hovering above the grass. A bull high on weed looks too much for our rickety gate!

Yellow Hibiscus offers her first smile after being planted. Nothing beats the fun of helping blossom baby soft petals smile at their best even in this 40 degree plus scorching heat. Summer flowers have their own charm! They look at you with the message that even in the fiery guts of misery, there are possibilities of smiles, provided we don't lose our faith in smiles! To the hell with pandemic, here this baby smiles so winsomely even after getting fired by merciless Sun's cannon-fire through the day! Keep smiling, adversities are nourishment for being our best version! We always have the choice of cutting the soot of adversities and keep it a smiling plant and not allow it turn into a parasitic creeper suffocating us to death.

It’s a year of tragedies. Sushant Singh Rajput, the young Bollywood star, committed suicide. I would like to spare him from the only question entire India is bombarding his soul with, i.e., "Why", and offer my humble condolences. RIP brother!

Much as we condemn the act of self-termination, we ought to look into the issue of self-inflicted mortality with a fresh perspective! The issue of mental health has been hijacked by mock-sympathy on social media while millions continue to die slowly even while I am writing these lines. The topic of suicide has been bracketed so abstractly that to talk otherwise turns almost a sin by default. Corona-forced lockdown has further narrowed the escape route for those in depression.

With our limited knowledge of our physiognomy and psychosomatic build up, we have simply gone into gross generalized narrative about suicide and such psychological accidents that defy all the apparent laws of self preservation. All I can say is that we are far more ignorant about this issue that most of us think! We have to look at it from a broader and more elevated plane. The higher dimensions of perception have fewer and fewer people; hence these opinions may sound unorthodox. But that shouldn't discourage one's quest for truth. Was the path to the things that later turned truths free of barbed fence? Keep journeying! Let all of us have a nice path of self realization building up ahead! Best wishes!

Dancing Lungs Cameo on the Covid Tunes

Lung aeration and ventilation pranayama...bursts of inhalation and exhalation into lungs as per individual's capacity without putting too much strain... focussing with an inward smile on the lungs...be your own saintess...turn the chi energy on fingers into your own blessings...tap with fingers of both hands on the chest with an inner smile with eyes closed... one's energy flows as per the rhythms of our emotions, so be your own healer and believe in yourself, your energy, your blessing hands...let almighty keep all of us safe. Take asvagandha and Giloy tablets to boost immunity. And most importantly, pray for all!
PS: Don't miss the inner smile while doing this! An emotion decides whether a blizzard of energy is constructive or destructive in manifestation. For example, the same amount of sexual energy under the dark spell of lust turns one into a rapist; while the very same sexual energy if guided well through spiritual practices makes one an embodiment of godliness. The choice is always ours!

Fear is the child; Caution is the grown up man!

The lusty Romeo....the force of procreation is humongous. It heaves creation on the onward march. But still more powerful is the fear of death, the primal fear. If not for this, how will he survive to procreate? So he forgets his Juliet and takes to his heels. Fear appears to be driving this creation. Suppose there was no fear at all, what would happen? He would mate right on my head and I would still be condensending! There would be all love around. And we would all die like flies in an open jar of honey, drenched, saturated with sweet and fossilized. Fear seems to be the fuel! So why malign it? There isn't too much of a difference between caution and fear, only of degrees. These are not something qualitatively different. Just quantitative difference. I take caution primarily because I have inherent fears. Is caution possible without the background of fear that basically prompts us to be cautious?

Faking Cobras and Boisterous Rabbits

We Indians have been too growth oriented of late, so how could we stay behind in the Corona race. As the second week of June turns north Indian planes almost torture chambers, Corona cases are now swiftly building up the ominous tempo. Already at fourth position with a quarter million confirmed cases, and an equal, if not more, unconfirmed cases, we are sure to beat America during the monsoon season. As people come barging out, feeling terribly tortured in the lockdown prison, the stampede seems a fertile ground for the gleeful virus waiting outside the trench-works.

Unfortunately, those who are over-zealous to jump over the fence to claim more of life and living on their skewed terms are the ones who haven’t faced starvation ever in their lives, nor are they expected anytime in future. The current stampeded is driven by those who aren’t missing the basic necessities of life; they are the ones who need more, the ever-luxuriant human greed. The poorest of the poor have just reached their homes hundreds of miles away from the cities. They are the ones who face starvation and whose jumping over the fence might be justified, if at all. They but will stay where they are. They have given their all to reach home, so even a starvation death at home will appear better than dying in the urban stampede again. It, however, is again a matter of time before poverty will force them to come back to the burning furnace that kills them and keeps them somehow alive at the same time, the famed urban centers.

Scary news is surfacing about the treatment of Corona cases. The government and medical institutions appear spent of their zeal to fight more. They seem to have spent their fuel. Hospitals are saying a loudmouthed ‘no’ to admit even the confirmed Corona cases. In many cases, even to the people with visible symptoms they discourage testing and ask them to take precaution at home. Even the most critical patients have been denied admittance and a few have died. Critical patients of other lesser ailments like cancer are hardly given priority and advised against loitering around hospitals. A few hospitals are minting gold charging many hundred thousand rupees for simple routine Corona treatment costing a few thousand rupees in reality. It appears to be going speedily down the typical chaotic Indian way.

There is a silver lining as well over the edges of the impending gloomy dark cloud. We boisterous Indians are adept at digesting many a bug in squalid conditions. With recovery rate at 50%, it seems to be encouraging people to take the enemy head on. Another pleasant scene that touched the heartstrings is the sight of migrant workers being welcomed with marigold garlands and a genuine smile. Usually, a poor migrant agricultural hand rarely gets even a cursory look by the local farmers. Stray dogs and migrant workers both enjoy the freedom of anonymity to the same degree. Under the new normal, however, a migrant worker is a rare species and hence worth acknowledging and giving a smile. Punjab paddy farmers actually sent a chartered bus to carry workers from Bihar. A chartered bus is a poor man’s chartered plane. On arrival, the broad robust farmers welcomed the thin famished workers with flower garlands and genuine smiles. They de-boarded the bus to the shouts of appreciation and clapping as if they are the soldiers on a special mission.   

America is again in a soup. Just like Wuhan virus spread from China to derail the entire world, the racism virus spreading from the mind of a murderous policeman has spread across the globe. People seem in a real mood to protest. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is the movement that has positively infected the conscience of world citizens in dozens of countries. It at least is a good infection, not like Chin-hatched one that spells doom and destruction. But even a good infection is an infection after all. It unleashes loot, plunder and pillage of property alongside the genuine prayers for racial equality.

China on its part has turned a war-monger. It prefers to be seen as utterly belligerent to appease the nationalistic sentiment at home. It’s using the dramatic rhetoric of its military, like a fantastic Cobra hissing to mesmerize the audience with its majestic hood, to draw the narrative away from Corona. These military drill clippings appear to have been taken from some war-jingoistic movies from Hollywood. At least military movie-making will get a boost in the land of Panda. Loss of revenue for popular American action movies it means.

The PLA soldiers have actually sneaked 10 Km inside the Indian territory along the LAC in Ladhak. They have pitched tents, built up reinforcement and are smirking with their little eyes and yellow faces at the robust Jat and Sikh soldiers who overpower them in the physical scuffle game where no bullet is permitted, keeping the skirmishes to jostling, pushing, abusing and even throwing stones. The state controlled media plays Hollywood style cute videos of its military preparing to strike any moment.

Does anyone remember when the PLA soldiers actually fought? Not many, I am sure. The last war they fought was in 1979 in Vietnam and the tiny country soundly beat them blue. In contrast, the Indian forces are forever in the boiling cauldron of anti-militancy combat operations in Kashmir mountains, thanks to our dear buddy Pakistan. No wonder, Indians appear far more battle prepared in the mountains than the Chinese and it should come as no surprise if the yellow faced red bully gets a blue bump on the forehead in case some battle actually happens, which is highly unlikely in any case. Military scene will scatter away in proportion to the Corona talk fading away from the scene.

America is whimpering that the Chinese hackers are stealing latest Covid vaccine researches to stall their progress in order to make their own vaccine and then cash on world’s collective miseries through dumping medicines from New York to Timbuktu like they dump cheap toys. Was business ever free of exploitation in one form or the other? So why blame little red-capped, yellow faced, tiny eyed champions of egalitarianism only for this?

It leaves us at the question: Who will emerge victorious in this cold war of faked belligerency? The answer is ‘America’. Indisputably! It may take even a decade for the communist system to crash but that is inevitable. It is not a question if that will take place. The only question is ‘When’. What makes me so sure about it? Well, the communist system is inherently fallible. It has the raw power to surge like a dastardly blitz-kriz rapid fire cannon, but it is bound to burn its fuel before putting the satellite into a stable orbit. It’s too unsustainably manipulative. The system, the communist party, primarily focuses on keeping its own population at a far too low level by repeatedly cutting their wings of individual freedom and liberty to keep them as manageable entity. Everyone is a prospective state enemy! The state is forever wary and apprehensive of its own people. Of course, the pressure cooker has its bearing limits. You know what I mean. Let the coming years answer for it!

A democracy, however flawed a system it might be, in contrast has far less reasons to be insecure about its own people. Instead of cutting their wings, political parties vie with each other to win their favorable opinion. It’s a slowly heaving elephant that goes lumbering on and on despite many pitfalls and bickering. Communism is an angry crouching tiger; it has to feed on phobias, both internal and external. It growls, pounces, claws and tears for bloody scary scenes. How long it will continue hunting. A species that simply eats without any intimidation, like an elephant, has more survival chance than a species that hunts ferociously. Sounds contradictory? Well, not so if you think a bit more deeply about it.             

It’s said that the gunpowder was invented unintentionally by Taoist master alchemists looking for the elixir of life. Well, the innocent monks surely ended up making the elixir of death! What a miscarriage of the idea! Communism as an ideology is the modern equivalent of the miscarriage of the idea of equality. It was offered to bring heaven and ended up bringing hell.    

I am no strategic analyst. I am a common Indian speaking from my humble lodging in the countryside. I take lessons from life thriving around and advise Chinese to provide safety valve to their system before it bursts.

I am sure most of us have seen a sweet-sour tug of war among a group of trees in a narrow space. Much as different trees push and prod to kiss the sunrays, they are ready to recede and be on the backfoot at the same time. They are ready to take frontfoot with as much enthusiasm as they are ready to go on backfoot. Much as they try their level best to go straight to kiss the rays of survival, they are equally prepared to bend down to the necessity and take a detour in the face of obstruction. It’s a beautiful balance between surging ahead and surrender. All this is beyond winning and losing, a marvelous equilibrium. Ego, the phantom malady of we humans, cannot survive on such a beautiful line drawn with unqualified composure. No wonder, it’s beyond winning and losing. These are the fallacious categories mischievously hatched by the existential forces to put testing hurdles on the path of our evolution. It’s as simple as a constraint on a plant or tree that faces natural limits and hurdles to its growth. A plant grows egolessly, unaware of the terms of winning and losing, and hence there is hardly any suffering in its journey. We are a bit more aware egoistic plants, popping out to grow and be so much more aware to lose this restricting ‘limited awareness’ of cutting down reality in poor fractions. To be frank, a plant or tree appears more evolved than us in this regard. What we aim to gain after intense spiritual practices is naturally available to a tree. So who is more evolved? In my opinion, it’s the tree! In fact, the spiritual model of evolution—in which we take mankind as the more evolved species after having traversed through the lower realms of plants and animals—may indeed be the reverse. Like, we may be at the base and by shedding our illusionary mindwork, we are moving to higher states of egolessness, crossing over to animals to trees to grasses to dust to nothingness, on the path to become part of everything by shedding all sense of ‘I, My and Me’. I at least feel like worshipping trees more than I feel prostrating before any of the so called holiest feet on earth.     

I am unrestrained in my devotion to the divine feminine. To me male and female means more of traits beyond strictly biological categorization as we usually do. This existence has two basic elements: receptive (feminine) and aggressive (male). We have males trapped in female bodies and vice versa on the basis of the ratio of either feminine or manly bearing in their persona. So sexuality is basically attitude not just genitals. As a Taoist follower, I am more inclined to revere and worship the feminine face of creation. No wonder I see the glaring injustices against women in traditional societies like India. To escape boredom, a man has to just extend his normal schedule; the same extension, which barely meets a woman's paltry effort to tide over her boredom, turns her into a sinner.

Look around and you will find the woman, a representative of the divine feminine, is the stronger and superior force. Her gently flowing spirit, like cool waters, assuages the fire in man, the rugged representative of divine masculinity. She carefully douses the male fire. The burning volcano in him loses its flame. Yin energy, the pliable, soft, surrendering, receptive and yielding polarity of creation, unfailingly conquers yang, the hard knots standing at the rigid polarity on the other end. Holy waters are yin. Earth and stones are yang. The majestic serpentine curves of rivers are yin, the divine female. Its softness has the tightest grip. It wins and triumphs over solid most and hardest rocks. Mountains give in. A gentle stream slowly, imperceptibly wears and corrodes a mammoth mountain and writes its victorious tales in majestic valleys. Accept it O thou poor man, accept! Fire has to go; water has to flow!

Still we are at the same stage that was set up by Charles Dickens around 200 years back in his seminal work on patriarchy, Dombey and Son! Charles Dickens took 900 pages to express it. A proud rosy Papa is holding the soft lilac infant bud as if the son-crazy father will protect the infant son even from a nuclear strike. The force of patriarchy gets revealed in a brief pause! I am afraid a daughterly bud hardly stands a chance to blossom to her full potential. If we can spare the discomforting sight and smell of the overblown patriarchy, it’s an afternoon drink for the eyes: sherbet mixed with milk! The father-son rose duo has red traces in their white.

Nearby stand handsome homegrown Peepal lads! They will taste fun and frolicking days during the coming monsoons after being planted in the wild. Then they will give shelter to saints, sages, thieves, ghosts, spirits and commoners like you, me and all without any discrimination!

Much as I care to the best of my capacity to bloom a single exquisite rose, the least cared flowers blossom the most! Sadabahar, nicknamed by so many like a homeless street urchin: Catharanthus roseus, bright eyes, Cape periwinkle, graveyard plant, Madagascar periwinkle, old maid, pink periwinkle, rose periwinkle. Cut them, leave them waterless, don't look and appreciate them, forget them, treat them cheaper than grass, they will bear all insults and ignominy just to smile all through the year. Seasonless beauties! Mollycoddle your nursery rose like the apple of your eye, these destitutes don't feel jealous. Feed the cherished and highly pampered exotic flowers with the nectar of your love and affection, these orphans still don't mind. Let your pruner go carelessly over their eager to play petals, cutting and bruising them, they still don't lose their smile. They are happy with what mother Earth has given them. They don't need more. And still how much we hanker after the spoilt dandies, who bring many tears in our eyes to give a solitary smile in return!

Like our creeping civilization, the giloy tendril has taken hold of a baby soft new soot of grass to reach the wall! To be an ultramodern successful creeper, we usually use our tendrils like tentacles to reach the wall of our goals. Our tendrils and tentacles latch onto the softest sinews, even if that means killing and suffocating the tiny offshoot that needs help and support itself, on the way to hit our post. Sometimes I think, after witnessing the rawest elements of nature, this creation is imbued with self interest, and our pretty human selfishness is just a portion of the infinite force of self-preservation that we see around. What do you think?

We can be our own saints to bless our own selves!

Usually, we link energy with the physical force, manifesting primarily through what we accomplish with the movement of our limbs and body. No wonder, moving a little stone from the ground appears a real task to us—with the force used and the effect present before our eyes—while a thought of lifting a mountain on our finger-tip qualifies as a wishful, negligible thing. In the latter, there being hardly any interchange of energy in the strictly cause and effect sense. Nonetheless, the real movement of energy in the latter, although imperceptible on the surface, is more than the former. In any case, lifting a stone itself is somehow guided by our thoughts.

Thoughts create more powerful channels of energy than the visible physical channels through our body. And emotions heave still more bundles of energy at the still more subtle level.

At the grossest physical level, energy cascades under the guidance of our thoughts. It follows our attention under the guidance of our mind through its reining forces of thoughts. Thoughts create their paths on the terrain of our emotions. The moment we realize, feel and actually accept that our thoughts and emotions are far stronger channels of passing energy than they appear, we take a quantum jump on the path of higher consciousness and self-realizations. From a mere creation, we jump on a stage where we are offered the possibility of a creator.

The feeling of anger itself is a massive surge of energy. It’s like the wild fire out there to annihilate everything. A feeling of love again is a bundle of the same amount of energy, but here the fire doesn’t burn, it lights up to show us more of life and living. Same applies to all the negative emotions (that leave us feeling unwell) and the positive ones (kissing our bruised selves with a healing touch). Positive polarities of emotions are uplifting, negative ones plummet down. The force is the same. The energy movement is the same. The destinations are but different. In the one we create, in the other we destroy.

Our straying thoughts and boiling emotions create puzzled webs of energy movement across our psychosomatic built up, leaving us a helplessly, restless, unwell piece of wreckage bobbing on sea surface, helplessly exposed to the winds from all directions. The webbing gets so complicated that it gets entangled in itself. No wonder we feel completely lost. We become the fisherman who gets entangled in his own net.   

A well guided cleansing of these energy blockages can really set us free from our own created boulders of puzzlement, pain and sufferings. The nagging restlessness that we feel is usually nothing but the knot where our thoughts and emotions have stuck up. The moment we decide to be responsible for our thoughts and emotions we put ourselves on the path of healing. Primarily all of us have to show the biggest kindness to our own selves. First we have to be the healer of our own selves. We have to smile at our own selves. A smile has far more force than we ever realize. We have to smile at our own selves. We have to be first our own saints capable of blessing our own being with a healing hand on any restless part in the body. The blockage melts.

Next time you have some upset in the body, just be your saint, close your eyes, and tap that part with finger tips, with an inward smile visualizing breathing in and exhaling through the same part. Alchemy of love gets unleashed. The disordered crests and troughs of the energy waves get pacified under the soulful music of your fingertips, the carriers of your chi energy. We actually function like an electric welder, mending the discordant waves with our torch of energy dripping from our fingertips. It will sound miraculous to you, believe me. Then gently rub your hands clockwise and anti-clockwise on the same part, while retaining that inner smile blessing that part where the cells gave restless signals as the energy patterns went out of the loop. The realized ones have purified their emotions to the level to do it for many like you and me. We can be at least our own little saints and healers.  

The realized sages are known to accomplish so many things just by casting serene look at the face of the devotees. There are three levels of purification: body, mind and emotions. Complete purification at all three dimensions enables one to accomplish deeds with energy movement merely though thoughts and emotions, just like we common mortals do by taking many physical pain. An unadulterated emotion, beyond the shadow of self-preservation, and honeyed with all-consuming compassion, does what people find miraculous. In reality, nothing is miraculous. Given the limitless potential of the energy dimension in the cosmos, miracles are impossible. In a nutshell, everything is possible. Physical dimension is merely like walking on foot to reach Bombay; the mental dimension is like boarding a train to Bombay; and the emotional dimension is like taking a flight to Bombay. Beyond the judgmental talk of which one is superior or inferior, it’s merely about the choices we make and the resultant utilization of the energy potential.

A jumbled up desire can create a rapist; a well direct sexuality on the path of spirituality can turn one a sage. The same amount of energy is consumed, and the difference is what we know as heaven and hell.

Accept that our thoughts and emotions are purely our own constructs that we try to impose on the external factors. This acceptance wins half the battle. How to start cleansing and purifying our thoughts and emotions? Well, enough has been said about it on the subject by far more elevated souls than me. So anything I say will be mere repetition. However, I can say one thing with reasonable surety—after having practiced most of the paths across religions—the Taoist practices are immensely effective in clearing energy blockages born of habitual thoughts and emotions over the years.

Rotdu

This chap has carved out a unique identity in the locality. While the rest of the street dogs in the locality are lost in the same old canine ways, standing out almost as an inconsequential common noun, this spotted red and brown champ stands out not for his color (as they usually get christened on the basis of color in India). This one has a fabulous perseverance. He has stuck to his point among all the chaos. It has won him a well-branded identity.

His unique persistence in the vocalization of his needs, wants and fears puts him in a separate league. Among the riotous canine chorus buzzing with interesting vocals including purring, yodeling, snarling, screaming, barking, whining, growling, howling, sighing and groaning, this fellow maintains the same tempo. He sticks to his copyright tone in all situations from the best to the worst. He piteously whines, whimpers and howls, accelerating his sad, heartbroken song in the given order.

Barking is synonymous with being a dog. They just love barking! God knows whether it’s out of anger, joy, fear, need or frustration. While the rest of them are in a merry chorus, as we humans get jittery during Corona times accompanied by dozens of mild earthquake tremors in the Delhi NCR, indicating all is not well under the earth, this brown-white dirge singer has his own ludicrously howling composition. It appears as if he is offering his doomsday song well in advance. While, the rest of them go into long spells of yodeling and barking in varying joyful notes, as if they can smell the soon to break in fault-line underneath, this champion vocalist but stays on his same old frequency. While the rest of them are shouting ecstatically, we can pick out this one’s piteous howls as if he wants to spoil their game.

Offer him a chapatti, its anxiety and god knows what pains spurt out through a sad whine that beats even the customary dog’s tail-wagging on being offered food. So the moment you offer it a chapatti, it will start eating but give you a guilty feeling as if you have given it something very bad in taste. It whimpers, whines and then lets loose a screeching note of howl in gratitude. May be he is not comfortable with anything at all in the canine as well as our human world around and goes cursing. Eh, the perennial naysayer!

Growling also is the sovereign right of a dog. They assert their arrogant dogliness through it. What dog is that which doesn’t growl? This one doesn’t. He can’t even if he tries. Because the moment he puts pressure on his vocal chords, the muscles appear to have stuck up at one place to give the same very old whine, whimper and howl. Suppose some skinny outsider dog enters the locality and all the natives are barking out their machismo spirit at full speed, and there being almost no danger as the skinny outsider cowers in the street drain, this champion participates in the defensive force with his full-hearted wretched howls, as if he is on the side of the pinned down outsider. In this he unsettles many of his companions, who give a break to their lungs and actually stare at him to find out if they have bitten their own buddy by mistake. His lowest of a rumble automatically catches onto a sad song of pain and cries.

When a weirdly dressed gypsy hawker enters the locality, the dog squad gives more pressure to their coiled tails and set after barking in a line after the hawker nomad. He doesn’t mind their barking. He walks confidently, thinking of himself a majestic elephant who isn’t bothered about barking pathetic dogs. They on their part think this strange one will have a share in their chapattis and ladies so needs to be thrown out at the earliest. The nomadic hawkers hardly bother about barking dogs. But even he is forced to abandon his detachment from such mundane settlers’ ways and look behind carefully, his ears picking the piteous howling cries among the proudly ringing din. May be some aloof and unattached gypsy will also start crying after hearing these sympathetic notes. Wonder of wonder, the poor fellow actually believes that it’s barking as can be seen from its taut coil in the tail and proud bearing during the citadel defense. It can’t help if it comes out as a whimpering, irritating howl. May be some unique vocal filter fixed by nature to do some experiment!

The rest of them have wide range of vocals to vent out a range of emotions from the best to the worst. But this one’s joy, sadness, curiosity and of course frustration are all expressed in the same crying tone. His groans give a clue to his discontentment with life. Suppose a dog fellow approaches him with the intention to play, this one reciprocates with his own innocent intention to play. But how will he stop his sad howling. Those playful sighs again come out as piteous scary whines and whimpers and the fellow leaves him, accusing him of being a habitual crier.

Amidst all his teary whimpers, he is a loser in love game also as can be expected. During the mating season, the dandies break many a moon to woo their sweethearts. This one also, driven by his biological instincts, tries the same. But the lady runs away during the foreplay itself as his pining moans start with piteous howls as if she has just pierced his heart with her paw. You have to believe me on this. I have actually seen it happening. Otherwise, why would I be interested in maligning his character on social media?  I call him Rotdu, habitual crier, by the way!

A Petalous Reprimand

Hi, I’m Jasmine, a little flower in a tiny garden in a modest house. I have a message to pass. Or do you think I smile for nothing? I have a sweetly whispering tales to tell! Or do you think I have such nice scent in my petals for nothing? But sweet tales are of no use these days; even children are being taught to be rugged puppeteers to create their own unique miracles. So I would, for the time being, prefer to invidiously yawning message. These are not my own reflections, these are inspired by a dew drowsed rose last night, an old one, who ruffled his old petals to unfurl the tale of mankind’s doomed destiny. 
The summer has fire in its heart-kiln. Hottest dusty winds swerve and swirl with an all-consuming passion. Temperature creeps like a restless climber to boil all and everything. The sun shoots off billowing streams of sorrowful rays to soak the last ounce of moisture to appease his current mistress, the unsparing summer. The weather’s torturing squeals tame even a bull that pants with thirsty foam on the muzzle.
I know Corona has had full-fledged orgy leaving you guys caught in devilish bewilderment. I but have the indefatigable and irrepressible grain of the Holy Spirit. It still lies at my petalous core because I have retained some room for it to keep it thriving, unlike you guys who have stuffed yours to the gills. The grain of Holy Spirit stands firmly forthright. Otherwise why would I smile with a spirit so deeply exuberant? I am not bothered much about the nightmarish twists and angry shoves of the noon-time hot wind that builds up with a barraging crescendo.
Amidst all this groaning commotion, I stay unmindful of the garish and grotesque, and always stay mindful of the opulent aura and nostalgic contours of the fresh sips of early morning cool breeze. It caresses me with luxurious swags. I have a single-pointed—unlike the multi-pronged memory of yours—sharp memory that helps me recall all treasure of my good fate, while the testing noontime passes over my petals with a gibberish squelch. Unfavorable time with its tendency of criminal confiscation can’t erase the songs in my heart which the cool early morning etches on me with its hurryless, sweetly crawling pen.
You may have an eternally rampaging brain, but where is that eternal equanimity of the soul which even a tiny flower like me is blessed with? You are firmly in the grip of the riotous renaissance of your passions, but do you have the time even to get a genuine spiritually suffused and nectar-imbibed smile like I possess? Your rapier sharp reflexes, born of your insecurities, have turned you the ruling supernovas of the earth. But restless journeyman, mind thy faltering strides and the fanatic noose hanging down the line as a kind of primordial penalty for rising too high and sinking too low at the same time to be the ugly emissary of some evil, spurious speedster. Take care, thy condemnatory encroachment is continually coiling around your own self.
You guys are superbly theatrical with your eloquent arguments. You are energetically resourceful and proclaim your resounding resourcefulness. But can you even smile with this feeling that you are light-headed and unburdened of some insurmountable restlessness? Can you ever be free of the guilt about the longly repressed real self? Isn’t all your so called growth and development a mere flailing of arms at the unbreakable bars of the perpetual prison?
You are everything and I am nothing. I am a tiny speck of formless and relationless love. I have the golden reminiscences of the slow-moving remotest wilds. I smile fulsomely beyond the teasing tussles of the cringing anarchist who is foredoomed to end in the failure’s meat grinder because he churns his own ill-fate by pulling strings this way and that way to break everything in two, in pleasure pain, light dark, love hate, etc., etc.
I am deep in the docile domesticity of just being as I am; pulsating dynamics of the eternal light flood through my petals. With your copious consumption and arrogant aloofness, you loop around your desires’ dragnet and kill the spirit of the forests. ‘Animism!’ I coo even at my modest most enthusiasm. ‘Humanism!’ is all you can manage even at your best. My worst is still better than your best. Engaged in your piercingly protracted struggle, you may proclaim self-righteousness in your own courts, but in the eyes of the supreme colorist, you are nothing more than a perilous pimp of criminality. Your self-created Gods and Goddesses are nothing more than goblins and elves of fairy tales.
With my silent spiritual reflections, beyond the drag of expectations egging one to write permanent lines on the shifting sands of time, I enjoy the flourishing inspiration of my soul. And sorry, I turned condemnatory like you guys for some time! Now forgive me and inhale the olfactory nectar that I offer in full humility!

Self-preserving Creepers

Covid numbers seem to be losing their relevance as we get onto the usual mode. Forgetfulness is the mother potion of survival and sustenance. Memory is merely a convenience. We don’t basically survive because we can remember the good; we survive because we have the capacity to forget the bad. We overcome the deaths of near and dear ones and cross over grieving traumas. Animals forget far too soon and hence they may have the physiological pain, they hardly suffer. Plants and need not even feel that instantaneous pain. That is almost unadulterated consciousness. We have a relatively longer span of carrying our pains in memory and hence suffer. But when it comes to moving on, nature has given us enough capacity to get into the whirlpool of survival once again.

So despite 6.5 million Corona cases, and still rising rapidly, and 400,000 deaths world over, other words, issues and phrases are toppling Corona from its few-month old chartbusting reign. India swiftly crossed 200,000 cases without making much of scary hoopla about it. Earlier, as we touched 100,000 mark, a massive wave of panic got built up casting gloom over the entire country. However, with recovery rate almost 50% people seem to have taken it as any other illness causing discomfort and even death. Soon it will be business as usual. For a while, it appeared all of us have learnt pervasive, lasting lessons to redirect our manners in more sustainable ways. The pause was forced. However, with the whirlwinds of modern life picking up again, leaving everyone hurrying and scurrying again, the lessons are already tossed to the winds. Those lessons actually sound too poetic, artistic, aesthetic and impractical and hence valueless. I am sure, despite terrible losses, it will be the business as usual very soon.

In America, Corona got dislodged by a nasty racist incident. Forget about Corona and the USA—China feud building up, the lethal virus of hate and insensitivity in one policeman has unleashed something similar to the Corona mutant entering the human body and wreak havoc. Malice, hate and anger in minds are as lethal as Corona. The virus of hate, lying in incubation in the human mind for long, was incubated during those tragic 9 minutes as the white empowered policeman sat with his knee forced upon a helplessly face-downed man of color, the latter forcing muffled sounds ‘I can’t breathe!’ The policeman was forcing his duty beyond any kind of legitimacy. The poor disadvantaged man of color was losing whatever little he had, his life basically. The man dies and riots, arson and plunder get unleashed across America. When one wrong triggers a wave, many wrongs emerge at various fronts, muddling up the situation where right and wrong lose their meaning altogether. A cornered China gets a chance to hit a few punches in return. New spots always put the older ones in background. All we can do is to retain lessons, but given our great faculty of forgetting we lose the thread and the new pages of resolutions get lost to the heaving huffs of winds.  

Creeping civilization! To be an ultramodern successful creeper, we usually use our tendrils like tentacles to reach the wall of our goals. Our tendrils and tentacles latch onto the softest sinews, even if that means killing and suffocating the tiny offshoot that needs help and support itself, on the way to hit our post. Sometimes I think, after witnessing the rawest elements of nature, this creation is imbued with self interest, and our pretty human selfishness is just a portion of the infinite force of self-preservation that we see around. What do you think?    

What is Good and what is Evil? Good means God to most of us. I want to love God. To love my God, I, but, have to hate Evil. I love wanting God, even though I know wanting in excess is always bad even if it is about God. I love God, but to love God, i.e., good, I have to hate Evil, i.e., bad. I want God. I prioritize my want to be good over all other states despite numerous pulls in the opposite directions on the practical stage of life.

Why do I have the need to love God? And to sustain all this, I need the anti-god in me. I love the anti-god in me, other why would I retain in me to nurture the sense of good. I need hate to keep reminding me that there is a thing called love. I need my devil to love my god. We always need the unrighteous polarities to keep our dreams of wanting to love pious polarities. Words simply flummox me, eh. I get caught. And then I throw stones at the devil to keep my urge to throw flowers at my God. Little do I realize that my pious hymns need my hateful hiss at my sins to glorify them as some godly divinity.

Puzzling words, always failing to convey the ‘real’, leaving the expression incomplete! Was there any perfectly complete sentence that carried the sense of expression to the ultimate? We should feel that it's about 'experiencing' life, not just 'knowing' it. We know too much, and knowing is just on the surface, leaving up bobbing restlessly like fishermen’s net-line floaters.

To feel we have to dive into the depths and forget. Let’s hone the art of forgetting to take huge bites at our sense of ego, and become a sort of self-eating shark. It will help us sink to the bottom of experiential embrace, a kind of amazing restfulness. When I get such experiential embrace by mother existence, a mammoth mountain, a huge panorama, a little flower all acquire same beauty and significance irrespective of their size. The moment overpowers the senses and gives a sweeping feeling as if there is nothing more to know, a sort of Samadhi.

Self-preservation

Creeping civilization! To be an ultramodern successful creeper, we usually use our tendrils like tentacles to reach the wall of our goals. Our tendrils and tentacles latch onto the softest sinews, even if that means killing and suffocating the tiny offshoot that needs help and support itself, on the way to hit our post. Sometimes I think, after witnessing the rawest elements of nature, this creation is imbued with self interest, and our pretty human selfishness is just a portion of the infinite force of self-preservation that we see around. What do you think?

Sage Dostoevsky and God

Sage Dostoevsky speaks about the idea of God:

“The mere fact of the ever present idea that there exists something infinitely more just and more happy than I am fills me through and through with tender ecstasy — and glorifies me — oh, whoever I may be, whatever I have done! What is far more essential for man than personal happiness is to know and to believe at every instant that there is somewhere a perfect and serene happiness for all men and for everything. . . . The one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men are deprived of the infinitely great they will not go on living and will die of despair. The Infinite and the Eternal are as essential for man as the little planet on which he dwells. My friends, all, all: hail to the Great Idea! The Eternal, Infinite Idea! It is essential to every man, whoever he may be, to bow down before what is the Great Idea. Even the stupidest man needs something great... They don’t know, they don’t know that that same Eternal, Grand Idea lies in them all."___ Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Start of Unblock Series

There isn’t enough steam left in the tottering economy to go for another costly blockbuster sequel, Lockdown 5.0. So for economic redemption, they are going for Unlock series. Phase one of Unlock gets on the way from June 1. The soldiers will come out of the trench, cautiously avoiding the Corona booby-traps, looking this way and that way like a scared hare lest the sniper shot travels through the hurts, lungs rater because the Corona bullet slays lungs primarily. One cannot win a war by forever hiding in the trenches. Living itself means taking calculated risks.

The market in the town appears shaken terribly like broken palm fronds on a cyclone struck coast. It will take hell lot of courage on the part of even the most money-crazy trader to come out of the trench and start with the same relish for money, especially when people run to wash hands after touching currency like it’s a sin. It will surely take a few months for things to get normal. The train has been completely derailed. It ran too fast and for too long. Nature intervenes to insert pause.

Dostoevsky: “Stupidity is of as much service to humanity as the loftiest genius.” We have lost the trail of our glorious stupidity while imprisoned at homes. The driving force of our civilization, our fabulous puzzlement of stupidities has paused and so has the chugging, huffing, steam-spewing engine of progress and development. This mad rush defines our being alive. Without it we hardly appear like human beings. We look more miserable without our miserable rut of life. A sort of addiction we have!  

Political croaking is swiftly overtaking the Corona chorus in media now. Well, it reminds me of a particular political system. Which political system do you think is inherently the enemy of true life and living? Some clues to the answer: they are the sworn enemies of freedom and individuality; they are the rascally advocates of a glorified mediocrity; propagators of an abominable shallowness; and the dark Angels of some grossly hypothetical equality minus individual freedom and dignity.

Tell friends, tell! I hope most of you have guessed it right. They prune the roots of individuality like one does with the potted oaks. The roots are repeatedly cut to keep the bonsai alive, stunted, well below the full blossoming mark to avail a subservient species. Communism does the same.

The population in China is QR-coded like they are lifeless products stuffed in a swanky mall. This kind of digital surveillance allows the authorities to scan each and every aspect of the citizens’ lives such as where did they go, which transport they used, what they wore, what they ate, with whom they did go, how much they spent, etc., etc.

All US—the land of individual assertion to optimize the full potential—needs to take an edge in the cute war is to puncture Huawei’s tentacles over the global communication network. The speed of the red car will slow down with one main wheel getting punctured. Keep your missiles safe and fire phrases like Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights, Uyghur Muslims, Panchen Lama to name a few. A political system strictly defined by the sanctified lines in the red book gets terribly ruffled by disturbing phrases which appear sacrilegious to the biggest hypothetical dream trapped in the tiny funny book.   

Ruskin Bond says, “To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beast.” How will such stunted spirits laugh? In gross standardization for the base level cut down equality, how will mercy survive as an emotion? Mercy thrives in an environment of freedom. Ever-watchful state system might create material prosperity but it quashes the spirit and breeds misery of the spirit. And miserable spirits hardly can be merciful. Does it mean communism is basically to dehumanize people, to make them nearer to animals than what we know ourselves as Homo sapiens?

Ruskin Bond: "It's unlucky to call a tiger a tiger. My father always told me so. But if you meet a tiger, and call him uncle, he will leave you alone."

Well, given the arrogance and attitude of all and sundry that I see around, everyone should be addressed as "uncle" by me. I find them adorned with the majestic pride of a tiger. But problem arises with men in late thirties and early forties. They are the real claimants of the title of uncle, but the moment I address them as uncle, I mean tiger, they turn a rampaging bull, ready to trample me to death.

Corona you may keep spreading the guttery stench, I have feathered fragrance. An emotion can be far stronger than tons of muscles and physicality. Spreading the fragrance and colors of the land of paradise amidst the burning plains of North India, Kashmiri Gulab! It has delicious smell and its pink color and paradisiacal smell outshine the deadliest blaze of summer sun.

The Juggernaut of Corona has left soot, saplings, plants and trees trampled all along the way. We cry over the loss of mainstream trees and crops. There are wayside weeds also that might be inconsequential from the point of view of our economy, but for Mother Nature they are as good as any high value cash crop. In the mainstream demography, the stateless citizens, the wandering nomads, are like wayside worthless weeds. They too have their share of loss, just that their loss is almost no loss on the economic scale.  

Out of movement, out of petty trade, out of steam, the gypsy caravan is stuck up at a place for the last 3 months. Of all other deprivation and drudgery, they sorely miss their only right, the right to move. These are the intangible losses that would never be counted among the category of Corona losses by the mainstream society.

In 500 years since they took a vow never to settle down at one place after their leader Maharana Pratap lost to Akbar, these nomadic iron smith tribals have moved on the fringes of the mainstream society. They didn't compromise with their freedom and said a firm no to Akbar's offer of a settlement. Meanwhile, modern civilization contrived rockets. As change is inevitable, the gypsy rate of change is pleasantly swooning. The ornate, wooden ox cart is now being slowly replaced by the bike rikshaw. The jostling civilization scattered around is pushing and prodding them a bit harder to force them to move faster on their endless path.

Nearby, the sunshine gets strangulated and caught in high-tension electricity wires and mammoth metallic banyans supporting them to pin a hole in the skies, the wings of these free birds catch fire and they try to fly away and drop one by one.

The nomadic cattle herders who wander around with their hundreds of famished, huge-horned, bony cows now set out with tottering steps like the creaking water wheel over a dry well. How did they even survive while no movement was allowed? The cows scraped dry grass out of dust on a wasteland. Their dung lies littered like jackals poop, so small and miserable. The herder has a flaming red huge headgear, almost a crown of thorn. His gypsy shirt tightly squeezes his slim torso and the windblown dhoti sways like the torn, raggish pal on a lost ship. There they go escaping the desert sands, the nomadic herders from Rajasthan. Dust here means better pastures to them. How I wish we get used to be contented with what we have!

There has been torrential rain quite unexpected for the season bringing down the temperature to 30 maximum from 46. The honeybees take rest from their death-defying attempt at fetching water to cool the hives. Mother Nature has spewed enough water for two days at least. So they don’t return just out of habit. Theirs is a world that is strictly defined by basic needs. We humans nurture habits out of basic needs, which quickly leads to our typical greed. 

In the forest a honey badger is devilishly tenacious. An elephant may surely crush it like an ant, but the little stubborn rascal will stand on its way till the last breath. A jackal flip-flops among cowardice, caution and cunningness. Two extreme characteristics in two species. They test their skills in the game of rope pulling. Unluckily for the poor python, there was no rope in the forest for the contestants. So they used a python instead! As a common man I feel like being pulled in all directions by the smarter species. Poor migrant workers returning on foot on their hundreds of miles long march of misery is the mammoth, fat python that is now being pulled and hunted by the political hunters to get bellyfuls of political pie.

In a tribal hamlet in Gujarat, far away from the maddening crowd and its still madder Corona offshoots, an old tribal woman drags a huge Kobra. A jittery forest official is lucky to shoot the scene on his mobile. She holds it inconsequentially like it’s a junk piece to be dragged out of the habitation. She walks like performing daily chores, holding the poor devil by tail, the latter clueless about what to do and what not. She drags it across the street without even looking behind. The deadly snake throws its hood in desperation along the crowd. She then simply throws it away like an unwanted unusable piece of old rope. The toothless wisdom of a grand-mom: A rope and a cobra are the same as long as your fingers don't discriminate between the two while holding!

Since the start of the Lockdown blockbuster series, there have been 5 occasions when mild earthquake tremors hit the Delhi NCR. Corona forces us to stay inside the box, and mother earth then shakes it to see us toppling out like scared mice. Five mild tremors in such short time doesn’t portend well. Geologically it may mean a big earthquake is waiting in the wings in the area. Moreover, crores of locusts are hovering in the northern skies like the nefarious enemy drones to chuck out crops. God knows what else this 2020 has in its store to stump us!

Dostovskiyan Samadhi

Samadhi is no domain strictly of those full time into spiritual practices. People across the world, belonging to all domains of life ranging from beggars to billionaires, artists to aristocrats, in all cultures, religions and geographies have experienced the touch of divine, the State of bliss, samadhi. The kundalini shakti inspires different people to manifest their realisations in different ways. Take a look at Dostoevsky for example. Do you think it's simply a writer speaking? No, it's someone who has tasted divine, his kundalini shakti pushing him into the zone of divinity, samadhi. Just that samadhi has been hijacked by esoteric cult practices that present religion as a lucrative business practice and a purveyor of samadhi. To me Dostoevsky is as good as a Himalayan mystic when he says in his work, Devils:

"There are seconds — they come five or six at a time — when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It's something not earthly — I don't mean in the sense that it's heavenly — but in that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect. He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear and unmistakable; it's as though you apprehend all nature and suddenly say, 'Yes, that's right.' God, when He created the world, said at the end of each day of creation, 'Yes, it's right, it's good.' It . . . it's not being deeply moved, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything because there is no more need of forgiveness. It's not that you love — oh, there's something in it higher than love — what's most awful is that it's terribly clear and such joy. If it lasted more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and must perish. In those five seconds I live through a lifetime, and I'd give my whole life for them, because they are worth it. To endure ten seconds one must be physically changed.I think man ought to give up having children — what's the use of children, what's the use of evolution when the goal has been attained? In the gospel it is written that there will be no child-bearing in the resurrection, but that men will be like the angels of the Lord."

Lost Trains and Aggrieved Pythons

If at all there is something like Lockdown 5.0, and surely there will be, it will be primarily left to the people’s individual sense of safety and security against the virus. People have rushed out and so are the cases that are surging at the rate of 7000 every day. These are official figures. One can very well imagine what the exact picture is among the millions of the poorest laborers on the way back to their native places. Definitely the infection rate is very high and many cases go unreported, and so do the deaths.

On a positive note, the majority of people are getting cured and success against the virus is more of a routine in the individual battle. But the virus carries far more weight psychologically than its real ravages on the body. The cash-starved government has recognized it and asked hospitals to discharge non-critical patients just after two days of treatments. The people know rest of the self-quarantine, medicine and precautions against the virus as much as the qualified doctors do, having crammed the same for three months while sitting idle at home.

A friend had to travel from Delhi to Goa in car to drop his relative who has got a job appointment. They had stocked their food and were on the road for three days. All along he saw endless trails of poor migrant labors walking beaten, burdened with their miseries, wounded, hungry, starved, carrying their remnants of their urban dreams in gunny sacks, their children kow-towing bravely, their little steps taking the miseries head on. These are the miles long signature lines of miseries that appear to have taken a lot of credit from the government in having managed Corona efficiently in the country. It goes without saying that the issue of migrant laborers could have been handled in far better way. There will be political repercussions. The Congress must be gloating water-mouthed like a crocodile as the beaten and starved wilder beasts continue on the longest walks of their lives. What will encourage and help them to come back to the cities again? What will the cities do without them as they stand on the blood and toil of these intangible and unsung pullers of urbanism? Perhaps hunger and poverty will draw them back as sheer panic forces them to flee. PM Modi will need a vast amount of oratory and gallons and gallons of poultice to balm the aggrieved hearts. If that is not done, the Congress enters the fray as a credible contender without any effort. That is the irony about Indian polity. Miseries of the masses are the seeds of opportunity for the political parties by default.

The railwaymen seem to have lost their typically rattling alertness as the engines cooled their exhausted innards, bogies rested their wheels and the endless entrails of rails slept peacefully after more than a century of relentless search. When the signal for getting back to duty comes in the form of a few Shramik trains taking the migrant workers to their homes, they show signs of restful hangover and perform comically. A Shramik train bound for Gorakhpur reaches Rourkela! Poor, moneyless, foodless and waterless laborers must have felt like tortured inmates being taken to concentration camps having gas chambers.

India fires a cute salvo in the cold war against China. Two of its parliamentarians attend the swearing in ceremony of the Taiwanese President, thus giving a semblance of recognition to the island nation. As can be expected, the red dragon spits still cuter salvos and asks its troops to enjoy still more solitary climes a bit inside the Indian side in Ladhak. PM Modi sends more troops and the armies are staring at each other. The war of eyes!

In MP, masked bride and groom exchanged Covid-19 free certificates before garlanding each other to start their matrimonial innings. Corona has come in between many a hug this season both authorized by law and unauthorized scandalous types. It has beaten romance like anything. Romance has withdrawn in its shell like a sulky old tortoise, but is sure to hit back with vengeance during the latter half of the ear.

Few domestic flights have taken to the skies with a jittery shake of the aircrafts like a sleepy bird shakes off lethargy from its fur and stretches its wings to start the day again. The metallic birds deserved some rest after decades of endless flights in the skies. The cabin crew walk along the scared aisles like astronauts packed in PPE kits on some inter-planetary mission where there are hazards at every nook corner along the curvature of space. A lot many air passengers in India think that staring at beautiful female cabin crew members actually compensates for the airfare more than the service itself. Such passengers will surely think the ticket is overpriced for the stale glamorless service presently. I hope they won’t demand cabin crew in bikni once things get normal to make up for the loss on eye-feasting gluttony.

Looking at miles long queues in front of liquor outlets, a Maulana is miffed. ‘Why not allow the mosques to be opened for 15-20 minutes when you can have crowded 2-3 Km long queues for wine?’ he has a logical question. Just that the economy of a crowd in a mosque gets beaten by Hindu drinkers who pump bucks to the money. Faith is yet to be monetized directly for our common senses to understand it the way the price of a candy is understood in terms of rupees; indirectly of course it drives the biggest business on earth, religion.

Trump has hailed HCQ as a wonder drug against Corona and he himself is taking it on a precautionary note. The WHO finds it not suitable for the patients and so officially bans it. Probably they want to advertize some drug taken by Xi Jinping. But the secretive regime there won’t allow even the type of food taken by the top communist functionaries behind the iron curtain.

The errant kid surfaces and allays many a speculative theories. Kim Jong comes out after playing hide and seek amidst Corona confusion and appears ok. His disappearance for a fortnight was so effective an international news item that it pushed even mighty Corona from the centre stage for a couple of days. He did it on purpose. The fat lad seems to love being in the limelight. Any day we expect him to start firing rockets again. He actually behaves like the street urchin crony of the local criminal, acting in this capacity as a crony of China to keep the area in turmoil, unsettling the plans of the neighboring countries by firing rockets. He just loves fire-cracking and cackles with laughter like a fat chubby boy. But what villainy hides inside the chubby fat!

Saw a video clip in which a smart hyena cunningly snatches away a deer from the grasp of a python. Poor python! It had worked so hard to tame and suffocate the prey in its coils, a back-breaking effort I tell you. Ironically, eating the prey, that is so much easy for the rest of the species, is far-far more tiresome for the reptile, in fact far more weary and tough than even killing it. The hyena just jumps and hops smartly to run away with the booty. The python actually appears like the ever-toiling and sweat-boiling working class that breaks its bones in digging the foundation and erecting the structure, while the smart select few run away with the real exploits. And when blizzards like Corona come they decimate more of pythons (who are least responsible for the happening) than the hyenas (who are primarily responsible for the storm).

A Smile on the Life--Death Bridge

After the terrible rainstorm at night---that blessed the parched land with holy water apart from satiating the summer time thirst of the rough handwritten draft and notes of some book in future, smudging and bloating the words like soaked almonds, apart from allowing many other books to drink some water---the beautiful hibiscus appeared shaken and jolted. Was plucking old withered flowers and by mistake plucked two unopened buds also. Youth has its moment and indomitable spirit. It has to blossom irrespective of the killing strike. They retain their spirit and blossom up like they would have on the plant. If buds don't mind being plucked unripe accidentally and still smile, I don't have any reason to sulk on spoilt script and water sodden books. In any case, it was my mistake in both cases: plucking the buds unripe and leaving books carelessly at a place where they too would get tempted to get a rain bath!

PS: Nothing happens suddenly at a fixed point in this creation. Infinity won't be possible without an ever-occuring transition having a stream of points as we know them. There is a handover, a sort of takeover. Physical Death also doesn't occur at a point as it seems to us. There is still life in the buds to continue running the show of smiles and living. In case of human death, nails and hair continue growing for 13 days on the corpse after the moment of death as we see it on the surface. It means, it takes 13 days for all the life force to leave the last of cells.

Fire-spitting Dragon or just a Fat, Flabby and Jolly Bania

In pre-independence India, the people of trading class, Banias, were the stock markets, banks, treasurer, economists and much more, all rolled into one. Just a few households in every countryside settlement, they were the crown of the economy sitting affably on the head while farmers and laborers sweated out like ant swarms.

Caste and communities were not straightaway imposed on people randomly. These got ingrained with different attitudes and personal traits over generations. A farmer took pride in being called rough and rowdy that pacified his ego and he defined life in terms of keeping his temper and straightforwardness at the tip of his nose perched over mustache brimming with attitude, even if it meant surviving like a beast in the rough and gruff of a hard peasant life.

Some took pride in fighting and made it the illustrious element of life that validates one’s existence. They turned out to be Rajputs, the warrior clan. Others took menial jobs, probably finding these to be easier and less hassled, and came to be dumped at the bottom of caste hierarchy. Another matter that over a period of time these came to be cemented identities decided by birth and the social system fixed them as mighty disadvantages since birth. So the base sunk deeper and deeper into the pits of deprivation and miseries. Here we are concerned only with the way it started, not about the pains that ail the present time disadvantaged castes.

So casteism evolved as a sort of social Darwinism at play. In the same vein, Banias defined life in terms of gold and silver coins in their coffers. Their sense of worth, dignity, respect and over all identity came to be centered around money and the ways and means to pile more of it in their heavy metal chests set in lime and mortar fort like lakhori brick walls. A Bania won’t mind ill manners, abuses and disrespect by a rowdy outlaw kind farmer as long as the latter was indebted to him in his red-cloth bound account book that had the chronicle of many generations of indebtedness jotted down by his pen. From that standard, the farmer was simply a poor devil hopelessly indebted to the money lender. As long as the farmer kept pawning away his buffalo, grains or anything worth the appreciating eye of the moneylender to meet his emergency needs, his bad behavior hardly counted in the monetized version because it didn’t carry any price to the Bania. A farmer would keep grumbling obscenities under his breath, the Bania but would keep smiling and speak with sugar-coated words, all the while fully having a feeling of the foul words. To a well-meant spider the bickering of trapped flies hardly matters for anything.

The Banias kept lathaits, the muscled criminal type stick-wielding guards, their sticks well oiled and muscles twitching with wrestling pit acrobatics and push-ups. In between, the fat, flabby Bania chuckled good naturedly. He never intended to use the power for the sight of blood and broken bones. Never means never! Fighting wasn’t his domain. Trading and making money requires peace, gentle words and an ever-smiling countenance. A farmer would be the first to lose temper and a Bania would be the last. Well, that set up their antipodal positions on the economic ladder. The farmer used brawn and toiled all through life, thinking his rugged misdemeanor and arrogant attitude was all that mattered to define a human life. The Bania used brain and minted gold from the mine of peasantry’s drudgery. Nothing wrong at any end; just the difference between hard work and smart work.

Looking at the almost unused resource--rarely used and thus almost redundant--the stick-wielding group of outlaws, it appeared nearly unnecessary expenditure because trading was the theme not intimidation. It was primarily a symbolic force more for self defense because if you go belligerent you will kill the hens that lay eggs for you. To a Bania it only meant that the rowdy farmer would keep his anger to the limits of cursing and foul words even to the extent of these reaching his bodyguards’ ears. They won’t pounce till the farmer actually attacked the Bania. This possibility was rare because a symbolic force can at least stop the attacker. And if the situation developed to take the unlikely scene of a real physical fight, the Bania would in fact continue laughing in a jolly manner and ask his men not to attack and allow them to use force within the limits of repulsing the attacker only. The Banias indeed have had legendary patience. No wonder, Goddess Lakshmi, loves their peaceful households. The farmers have legendary uncouthness and the Goddess avoids their humble abodes.

The real threats to the Banias from the gangs of robbers—although always present theoretically yet farthest in practice—was more of an exception, since it happened just one or two times in the entire lifetime. For the rest of the time, the Bania was happy to be circled by his restful symbolic force and treated the peasantry like petty truants whose tantrums had to be tolerated to keep them there in the system of economy to continue raising their multi-generational debts. A Bania ate his bread out of his patience and smart work. A farmer did his on the basis of his hard work only.

China is that typical Bania. It has to earn profits and do business at any cost. It has a well-oiled army just like the Bania had his gang of muscle-men, who lazed under the sun most of the time. It cannot afford to kill its trading prospects by getting belligerent in the real sense in the form of  a bloody battle. I mean they may bellicose and create rhetoric like hell but they will surely fall short of an actual war; simply because they cannot think of losing their trade. With your priority to trade and make profits at any cost, you can’t be a belligerent hardcore soldier, however hard you may try. Money has its tremendous soothing effect on one’s senses.

The Chinese are the smartest Banias on earth and smart Banias never fight in the real sense. They just put up a mock show of aggression to keep trading. Even while investing the biggest sums of money in their military, the Chinese government basically thinks in economic terms. The economic and trading implications of maintaining a huge army, that’s the credo. A keen sense of trading automatically smoothens out lot many pinchy edges from one’s persona. One’s craving for profiteering allays the beast aside and puts precaution on the front. To be a really bloody fighting soldier one has to first be a non-trader, a loser in economic terms. The Chinese Red Army is the former and genocidal suicidal factions fighting in the middle east are the latter. You can calculate their economic worth. The Chinese calculate their defense expenditure as one of the overheads in the scheme of economy, where the armed strength and its symbolic visibility on the surface are more in symbol than in substance.

The current flare-up with India across Himalayan borders is a bit more than trading this time. Cornered by allegations over Corona, China is now engaged in these skirmishes to create dustier scenario of a war time situation so that Corona issue gets diverted a bit. Well, armies these days play more of symbolic role than they do actually on the battlefield. In fact, they are more useful in quelling internal dissent than in wading off external threats, which again are exception like an outright attack on a Bania by a robber gang that happened once or twice in his life time.

America keeps it army for all these and something more also. Something extra! Well, that makes it the superpower. About that extra, we will talk some other time!