The Return of the Native

 It must have rained really well to make everyone feel so happy, relieved in fact, after two days of heavy downpour. It rained so heavily that even earthworms thought it was the mythical rainy cataclysm and started crawling into the house, abandoning their hideouts in the garden. Tiny frogs seem to have literally fallen from the skies if you look their sheer number. They can beat even ants in number as of now. Either God brew their seeds in the pools of clouds and dropped them at our heads or the frog couples have been extra horny on earth this season. Well, they have taken over the garden and the ones who want better accommodation have crawled into the rooms and are jumping and hopping. We have to walk very carefully. We are as much of intruders to them as they are to us. In their little minds the house belongs as much to them as we have the notion of ownership in our slightly bigger minds.

Fed up with waters, all seem to say, request in fact, ‘No more water at the moment.’ The sky is still cloudy but one can see the sun making a dent in the cloudy fabric to reclaim its kingdom. It cannot allow the clouds to rule the skies for too long because they are good as visitors only, make them permanent citizens and there will be a big problem. Well, not for fish and aqua life. But definitely for we humans. The air is fresh, cool and windy. It feels like a massive air conditioning unit is blowing after the preceding hot-humid weeks. The weather had turned so sultry and humid as to put a frown even on the most joyful faces. It has been really baking hot and humid. Global warming is a reality and we need to come out of our comfort zones and do something about it. If we miss it, the next generation may not have too many options to avert the dangers. 

Luckily, rains have been very lenient this season. Even the prickly trees are decorated with lush green leaves to appear more presentable. They are no longer the crooked nailed quarrelsome old grannies. They are now buxom happy women of substance. Drunk with rain and nutrition, the branches sway to the song of air. Butterflies have extra air in the wings and loop, curve, dive and lift themselves with the sweet nectar of the rainy season. The dragonflies go with more linear determination against the wind like an adamant drone. All seem out to play after the rains. Birds have raised a pleasant ruckus. A tailorbird couple is hammering their prickly sequence of angry notes to distract some predator from their leafy nest. A squirrel is busy in tik-tik chorus. Probably its bullying neighbor stole its nuts. An Indian Robin chips with her coquettish glance from a wire. Peacocks hoot as the kings of the season. A peacock is under bigger risk during heavy rains because its huge plumes soak so much water. When it rains too heavily, a peacock sits like a statue without moving. That is acceptance of the forces beyond our control. It knows this rainy blizzard is just an aberration. There will be blue skies to fly and sing at the top of their voices. They do it now to the capacity of their lungs. 

Coming to the peacocks! Do you recall the peacock that sneaked into the kitchen when it was really hungry and after feeding it couple of chapattis Ma would chase it away with broom complaining, ‘You eat here and drop your plumes on the neighbor’s roof!’ Ma has departed for the journey beyond this plane. It has been nearly 19 months since she left us. The peacock stopped coming after she left. It didn’t come even once during these months. But here it is today staring into the kitchen. As I came near it won’t run away. Immediately I knew it is Ma’s peacock. He hasn’t forgotten. They have better memories than we humans. I sat on a chair and fed it a chapatti and a sweet pancake. It ate from my hands. I had tears in my eyes. Probably, it can see what we cannot and still feels her presence here. Now it’s sitting contently on the roof fence, its huge plume hanging down and its upper body lost in the neem and gulmohar branches above.    

A laughing dove couple is seeking a suitable branch for making nest as a follow up to their courtship and acceptance of each other’s love. A stern looking red-vented bulbul is feeding pulpy, rain-shod guava to her two young kids who are almost ready to take off of their own. Presently they follow their Mama across the trees. Their dependence has no meaning without her love. And her love cannot manifest without their dependence. A forlorn pigeon looks languorously from its perch on a railing. Probably his girlfriend has abandoned him to fly more joyfully with merrier wings. Another pigeon is playing with the wind. It flutters against the wind, going flip-flop and ascends almost vertically and then abandons its feathery self to be blown happily with the wind to enjoy an orgasmic glide. Is it the happy goon who has taken away the forlorn pigeon’s lady? Well, you never know. Probably they also rub salt on each other’s wound like we humans. 

Kitchens are busy. Various cooking smells waft as freely as the birds and butterflies. And that’s how the song of life proceeds to adopt another day with its tireless rhythm. All this makes this Sunday a real fun day. Icing on the cake is Rakshabandhan, the festival of brother-sister love and affection. Rakhi is a beautiful reaffirmation of the unshakable sibling bond. Wish you all a beautiful Rakhi day! Brothers, give a pause to your habit of spending money on goonish follies and unstring your purse to give a bit more than you are willing to give to your sisters. Give them all you have. It’s their day today. Beyond the customary money, give them the reassuring smile that you will be always there to help them realize their dreams.

A Miracle on the Ganges

Fed by the heavy spates of rains in the Himalayas, the holy river Ganga flew with full life and vigor. Its waters rushed past creating torrents of devotional fervor. The evening Ganga arti on Parmarth Ghat, Rishikesh, is an important milestone on a typical day at the pilgrimage town.

Everything is routinely settled for the evening arti. The yellow robed young monks are ready to chant delicious mantras to enthrall the congregation held on the marble steps overlooking the majestic river. The tourist-cum-pilgrims are set for a delicious dose of religious musicality. At half past 5 in the evening, the hills to the north get clouded by dark gray clouds. The air mass moves down the valley. A strong wind blows. The arti has just started. The rain lets loose a pining, pleasant outpour. It’s a torrential rain buffeting earth with life. It pours down with open heart. The opposite bank becomes almost invisible. Meanwhile, the arti continues under the waterfront shelter as people rush to take shelter under any portion of roof available. The people stand, sit and recline and clap to the rhythmical chime of the mantras. Brass prayer lamps with hooded snakes projecting over the fire bowl burn with unaffected vigor. It warms the cold air gushing into the valley. The hymns are captivating. The Ganges becomes one with the falling dark grey torrents of water. It seems a conduit to the awesome super entity above. Everything is thoroughly washed. 

The people, a teasing mix of natives and foreigners, gather and dive into the devotional fervor with equal measure. Incense smell wafts across, pleasantly plummeted around by the wind blowing down the valley. The spears of rain pierce the heaven-bound fragrance to keep it lingering on earth for a little bit of more time. The simple rhythm of mantras and devotional songs vibrates the chords of faith in many hearts. It’s beyond language, religion, caste and culture. The people are sitting on the bathing ghat steps, lost in devotion, staring at the fervently rushing waters of the holy river. All are part of the devotionally surcharged air.

Even though you surrender, your subconscious mind is encouraging you to have more expectations, entitling you to more blessings by the higher entities.

There she is: an innocent, pure, unadulterated being, beyond ambitions and fight for a space in the world. An accident at the time when she was conceived puts her on the sidelines. She isn’t a participant in the buzzing game of life; she is a mere presence.

She is a girl around 14 years in age, her ‘being’ defined by the clinical symptom named autism. It sidelines her and puts her beyond rampant ambition, the devil bug that infects the modern mankind and despite best of our efforts stays side by side with our imposed goodness.

The swift currents of prayers have captured the mundane souls around but all this, more or less, is meaningless to her. Or does she have her own share of meaning that we can’t understand and perceive?

She is a beautiful special child. Her identity could have been still better had she been in a position to gather the traces of her individuality with the cord of self-interest.

The doctors may call it ‘autism’ but she just is the way she is. She looks the other way. She stares into the tiny side-lane where the birth-time biological accident has pushed her into. She has virtually no claim over the life’s bounties that we so brazenly fight for. This look of detachment appears a punishment to the normal world with its mountainous pettiness. Holding her head at an awkward angle she looks away. She has no reason to fall prey to the surcharged prayers.

The girl has beautiful eyes, a perfect nose and an attractive face-cut. Overwritten is the imprint of her special ability that we take as disability. Her lower lip hangs loose. It’s an opening into her disarrayed persona. It’s a clue to her not being in control of her identity. A bit of saliva drips down. With an effort she moves her hand to wipe it with the back of her hand and muster up some control. She then fiddles with the towel hanky given by her mother sitting next to her.

Her limbs and head move with mechanical pauses, not with that fluidity which pushes us into the stream of commonness. Looking at her helplessness, everyone around appears to own a sea, and she merely a drop. How will you accept such injustice on the part of nature?

Her family appears to have enough sensibility to take care of her needs, but that is no justification. She doesn’t even realize what she has lost right from the beginning of her innings in this life.

Lost in the oblivion of her own special world, she comes gasping on the surface, awkwardly tugs to draw her mother’s attention, who has learnt to ignore such disturbances on her girl’s part.

It’s a particular challenge to raise a special child. You need unending patience and the tank of maternity should never be empty, otherwise the special child has no choice other than suffering.

There are girls of her age, fleeting around, full of life, sweet-sour experiences of life waiting with excitement at the threshold of adolescence. The people are floating leaf bowls containing flowers, incense and a tiny lamp. One tear in her unseeing eyes is more substantial than the Ganges itself.

The sea of her loss drowns me in its endless waters. My own tears add to that sea.  My own bickering and bitterness feel such a meaningless thing. There is everything around, but she cannot so much as take a confident, solid step to claim her share, while everyone in the devotional crowd is busy in a stampede to collect huge piles.

The evening Ganga prayer is over. The rain has stopped. Her family stands up. She also gets up with an effort, her movement standing somewhere between a human and a mechanized robot. It’s not a confident, fluid run. Every moment has a full stop, a kind of an end of the journey. Walking absorbs her in its own world. There she goes with unsteady steps, her hand on her mother’s shoulder to get that support which she will need forever.

She can survive only as long as there is love and care in a fellow human’s heart. It’s more vital than the oxygen, water and the food she eats.

What is the meaning and purpose of her survival? Perhaps, it’s to keep the banner of love and care flying in this worsening world.

The night is falling. Her language has just a few efforted sounds. She can merely respond to the language of love and more still to hate and anger.

I’m lost in the sad sea of her loss. I try to swim to find some justification and meaning to all this. I find none. It’s blank, pointless. Tears are streaming down my face. Her image haunts me. I sit to meditate by the Ganges. The sea of sadness surges in. A daughterly affection for her engulfs me. My hands convulse to bless her with all the happiness possible in the world. My lips move to kiss her forehead and sip down all her agonies with my fatherly prayers.

This seems to be the meaning of her life. Melting hearts, creating selfless torrents in the hearts caught in selfish quagmire and make people feel gratitude over whatever they have got in life.

As I close my eyes, more tears stream down, washing my soul of much of the bitterness I hold on account of my own losses.

I feel like a helpless father who cannot give a portion of the world to his daughter that she surely deserves. I implore mother Ganges to pour all blessings on this little angel; to fulfill the endless abyss of her helplessness with all the happiness and joy possible for a girl. I pray for the long life of her parents, for only the parents are best suitable to feed the vulnerable lamp with the oil of love, affection and care. I pray for her family’s economic well being and over all luck so that satisfied with life, and hence less bitter, they turn more loving and sweet and she gets her share of love and life from that happy pool. I pray for her younger brother to grow up to be a sensitive human being who will take the baton of love from their parents. I pray for him to have an understanding and loving wife who will help in keeping the flame of love going on to enable the flower survive happily. On top of all, I put my faith in Ma Ganga, ‘Ma you have a soul. You are so full of life and carry miraculous powers in your holy waters. Your force can cut mountains, so it can definitely help this little flower take control of its destiny in her small hands. Do a miracle Ma! Let her be cured gradually so that she takes her portion of happiness on her little palm. Do it slowly to make it appear like a digestible fact, a kind of little surprise medically, if you don’t want to make it appear too miraculous!’

The blissful torrents of Ma Ganga ripple past. With the tears streaming down, I pray for that little angel of love and affection. My tears have absolved me much of my bitterness. I open my eyes and look helplessly into the darkness. In the dark, Ma Ganga feels capable of performing miracles. I want her to be miraculous.

Next evening, I visit the arti ghat again to see the angel more than anything else. There she is! I look at the angel with a peculiar mix of sadness and happiness: a strange equanimity, equidistant from pain and happiness. I may have forced myself to believe in a miracle. I am happy with it. I can sense a small installment of Ma Ganga’s blessing going to her share.

Today she isn’t looking with sad indifference into the side-lanes of her unparticipating existence. She looks closer to the world around. She is looking into the praying mass. She appears a bit closer to have her own share of happiness, all by herself. She laughs, shakes her head, hardly making any noise. She tries to clap, rapidly bringing her clenched hands together without actually hitting them. She pulls at her mother’s sleeve with more authority. She looks belonging to this world and ready to see and understand it at her own pace and conditions.

As they get up after the arti, and as she follows her mother with efforted steps, she pulls at her shoulder and points to her waist. Her mother turns and adjusts her pyjama. There they go at their own pace.

It’s better to believe in miracles because sometimes that is the only option left.

For the remaining part of my stay, I fervently pray for her to the limits of my soul. On the day my departure, at five in the morning, I walk down the steps to reach Ganga Ma, wash my face and pray again for the angel. The holy river looks very calm in the pre-dawn darkness. It looks as if she is able to hear my prayers in the absence of all the din and noise. 

Even while moving away in the auto on the road along the opposite bank, I keep lighting the lamp of my prayers.

She is in her own world surrounded by love and care which I believe will only grow with the passage of time, making her happier. More importantly, the miracle of Ganga Ma will work. It may happen slowly but it is inevitable. With the passage of time, she will become capable of having her share of life and living at her own terms to give back the love that has kept her alive.

Any memory of her doesn’t go without praying for her. I feel enriched and evolved by her sight. My bitterness has poured out and it has made me more loving, full of gratitude and more open to the belief in miracles. For, ultimately only miracles count. It may not appear like this, though.

GOD BLESS HER!

MA GANGA PLEASE CURE HER!

LET HER BE THE PART OF THE COMMON STREET!

LET HER COME OUT OF THE TINY SIDE ALLEY!

Miracles are happening all the time. What is quite miraculous is that most of them pass off as ordinary occurrences. Perhaps, that’s how it has been planned.

Never felt so fatherly before. I can feel the likeable pain of being a parent. Blessed is the parental pain!      

 

Life is just a choice to be alive

 A little frog is croaking and jumping in a little rain puddle. ‘Why is it dancing?’ I wonder. Probably it’s very happy, I get an answer as per our own equation of happiness. ‘But why is it happy?’ the skeptic inside again tries to get an explanation. ‘It’s happy because it’s dancing,’ this isn’t my idea. It has landed from a higher plane. Things just exist in an unqualified, unconditional state. The ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’ are mere cognitive consequences of the neuro-transmitters cascading in the brainy matter. Within its exclusive zone of happening, everything is cause and effect at the same time. Imagine two points on a circle. Each point leads as well as follows the other at the same time. And their journey can be endless on the circular path. Cause breeds effect; effect sires new causes. Creation sows the seeds of destruction; and destruction conceives creation. Everything is round about. ‘Sab gol gol’, as a mendicant friar exclaimed by the Ganges. A big sunya. Here nothingness breeds everything; and everything sums up to be nothing. It’s just a mammoth humming, buzzing, vibratory drama. Play your tunes well and dance like the little frog. To be happy and joyful is a matter of choice. Food, clothing, career, hobbies are what make one feel better and happy. So isn’t happiness a choice? Choose what makes you feel better. Now, who says happiness isn’t a choice? Beyond philosophies, simply choose what makes you happy.

Sleepy musings on a sultry, humid night

 If those in power could take corruption to the extent of CWG, coal mines and 2G spectrum, thus writing it clearly on the wall at every nook corner that that’s how things are done. Everybody knew that corruption came perilously close to be synonymous with Congress. With the incentive of all this knowledge, the masses who voted these people into power again in 2009, it proved that we aren’t just a poor helpless bunch of monkeys. We are in fact street smart guys who know how things get facilitated to creep out of the dusty corridors of governance.

Manmohan Singh became the third longest serving PM of India after Nehru and Indira. It also prove that we Indians have a lot of digestion for hereditary rule. If we are to believe in royalty, Nehru the King and his family the royal family have a long-standing in our ruling affairs and rightly so. It’s as per our customs that are comfortable with royalty and hereditary hold over knowledge, skills and rulership. Well if it finds favor with the majority of my countrymen then a cribbing commoner like me should shut his mouth very tight. In fact I’m keenly waiting for the Yuvraj to become the PM of India, which he will surely at least once.

**

When lakhs of your own sons and daughters are taking pot-shots at you, think o mighty Hindustan think! Either you have turned out to be a very bad father or they are the worst of children.

**

I've an arrowed heart. Its insensitive steel a check dam across the smooth flow of the river of my sensitivities. But more painful is the fact that the hands that pulled the string of merciless bow are the hands of my own people. My Bhisma's arrowed body with countless holes in it offers the outlets for the outflow of countless sins committed by me and my near and dear ones.

**

It rains in the hills. Muck, shit, garbage, cow and people stink even more. But Ma Ganga gets a nutritious face pack. Its sediment-laden torrents gain victory over the errant child perennially shitting and pissing in its motherly lap.

**

While many an Indian PM delivered the costmary Red Fort speech, it has rained during the last leg of the monsoon season. It always appears to me that God pours water to wash some of our collective sins. Thank God our cute to cumbersome PMs’ khadi appears spotless and clean.

**

V shouldn’t evaluate our status by analyzing shadows. Just because we have long shadows in the morning and evening doesn’t mean we are giants. If you think so then we are dwarfs at noon. So go for the substance fella. That will confirm the real status. It will puncture the ego, leak out extra air from the balloon of your existence and allow you to fly at a height where you deserve to be.

**

Even the words of sympathy and the emotions of piety serve as a fraction of the practical fight for justice in terms of utility. So feel proud for your contribution to a greater cause. If you still feel helpless and guilty for not doing even that then recall the memories of any selfless soul that you remember  on account of his/her deeds and you nurture a strain of greatness in your DNA.

**

The Governments waste more energy in defending their wrong rather than justifying their right.

**

If a few thousand votes cast in secrecy can make you the so called law-maker, then the millions of open and non-secretive shouts in someone’s support earn him the status of law-defender. Governments you just cannot ignore the civil society’s cause. It comes with far better democratic legitimacy than you guys.

**

Conversation with a Stranger:

One day he asked someone hiding inside

the bodily façade like a fugitive,

‘Who are thou?

And why despite all the architectural negativities

people define thou positively?’

From it unreachable deep cellar

that someone raised it germ-free, disinfected voice,

‘I am the exiled one without choice,

While the bones and the flesh around me

in worldly spotlight rejoice,

I just take the ordained backseat

and watch the game of

birth, survival, struggle and death

played inside the castle on the shaking stage.

‘Don’t you feel perplexed by the passing days?’

Again the query was voiced,

‘Don’t you feel bad or ever you rejoiced?’

It answered in a heavy, impassive tone,

‘Thy gimmick cannot shake my throne,

In the timeless shades I spend my time here

and when the castle will be broken

the death squad will find the door open,

Away I’ll fly with the figures of

deeds and misdeeds to the final court,

and if it is found short,

again I’ll be exiled.

It has been like this for thousands of years,

but I never rejoice at new birth

nor weep at death and shed tears,

My book lies in mighty primordial hands

and the player to settle cores changes with worldly trends,

I am the same forlorn, exiled child

of the majestic, mighty father,

It’s a never-ending game perhaps,

A tiny cog on the chessboard of creation,

Let’s see how high and mighty you make the castle,

Void will then gobble the tone and stars!’ 

Irritated musings on a baking hot, humid noon

 The lush green ripply pastures of yore are gone. It's now a barren, stony waste stretched for miles after miles in my heart. The fiery sun bakes the sand and the sandstorms screech and howl. Joy only so little as would amount to some lone dewdrop on a singular blade of grass if that can survive. And the sufferings lay piled up like daunting sand dunes. They don’t change, they just creep invidiously. The rose that once blossomed and smiled when all this was a lively, joyful garden is now a dry thorny memoir. It stands there like a crooked garland of thorns draped around the heart. It pricks and lets loose a torrent of memories that nibble at whatever moisture lies there among the barren waste.

**

A lot many words have lost their essence in spirit. They survive half-alive in ‘letter’ only. They are no longer those perfumed living entities that their ‘spirit’ bestowed them. If ‘letter’ is the body, the ‘spirit’ carries the soul of a word. We have squashed the ‘spirit’ like a worm. To take our mechanical assault one step ahead, we are pummeling the ‘letter’ part now. The literal meanings of all the nice words have entered the obsolete book of poetic justice. Guys for the real practical meanings rub these shiny words till the blindfolding glitter vanishes to show you the more realistic stuff.

**

Plundering has been the first priority of our political class in democracy. We aren’t saying anything about the outright autocracies because there plunder, looting and exploitation isn’t a mere ‘priority’, it’s an outright and sole ‘right’ of those who wield power. In a democracy, sadly our ruler has to come out of this breed only. Is there a way out? Yes, it’s the civil society! Guys cast your alternative vote. Join the ranks of the civil society movement. The civil society guys are basically a thorn in the flesh of democratic autocrats. The world is yet to witness its first perfectly democratic government by the way. Peep over the wall and see the massive bundles of lies, conceit, forgery, falsehood, loot and plunder that goes through the legal machines of autocratic democracies. A slightly heightened sense of awareness is the eligibility to be a foot-soldier of civil society movement. In future, civil society would become the flag bearer of democracy in autocratic democracies.  

**

Life isn’t all about pursing your dreams, it’s also about fighting for the leftovers lying in your plate after the hungry fate has had satisfied its gluttony.

**

THE LAWS

HAVE

THEIR CLAWS

THAT FURTHER EXPLOIT

THE HUMAN FLAWS.

Stale, yawning, sleepy musings on a hot, humid and sultry noon

 A widow fleeing from a Taliban ravaged town in Afghanistan says: "When there are two girls in a family they take one to marry her to a fighter; when there are two boys they take one to make him fight."

The bloody saga opens full throttle again in Afghanistan. And the outsiders go there to have their share of the pie and then leave. Superpower blocks cannot heal the Afghan soul. They have bled it too much for many decades. Any healing, even cosmetic in effect, has to come through the UN. Afghanistan needs a UN peacekeeping force. With strong Indian boots on the ground, of course.

**

Dogs, slums, shit, squalor, stray cows, filthy pigs, poisoned air, plundering rulers, dying truth, abandoned and obsolete god. And in all this, we the commoners lost like plagued rats. Rain lays bare the reality in our so called swank 21^st century metropolitan cities. Flooded potholed roads convey the scars that we carry in our imagination. Dirtier than shit garbage lays the foundation of the karmabhoomi of wormish survivals. Salutes my cities!

**

The farmers are shedding blood of their will power for their mother earth. The very same earth whose maternity they have maintained through countless sweat and blood drops falling on her golden crystals. Land grabbers beware! They will stay. Want to test their stamina? Well, do it at your own risk!

**

The real skill of we Indians lies in mindless, reckless, profuse and enthralling procreation. It seems to be a full time job. We just love conceiving even more than the ecstatic moments preceding the conception. No wonder, we are a big, buzzing ant-swarm now. Jostling and lost in its own directionless, blindfolding majesty.

**

Yamuna is up to a complete facelift this time. More rains, more torrents packed with hilly sediments. The runnels of Yamuna rushing past the flood plains in Delhi but still bear the marks of defecations on her holy brow. There was a time, as close as three years back, when two elephants played on the semi-stinking sand, raised their trunks to pay homage to the inherent holiness. The laws have their claws. They were dispatched to some sanctuary. The mother seems to miss its muddy roly-poly babies. 

Musings on a hot, sultry day

 All pigs are good. Unfortunately we can't say the same about the humans. And all donkeys are elegant gentlemen. Again we can't say the same about we humans.

**

The sea has but no option other than to feel its existence through each and every drop cradled in its immensity. Each drop has the very same code of creation as the entire sea. Similarly, the entire cosmos has the only option to feel its lively, enthralling expansion, its pulsating consciousness, through you, me and all of us around. Each sand grain, each particle in the air and the void itself bespeaks of the very same code of creation, the very same primal consciousness. When you know more of yourself and others and the life in general, the cosmos is in fact engaged in a sweet self-reflection.

**

Don't look down upon people just because they are poor and look dirty. Every soil has its own characteristics worth gold. We try to see in others what we ourselves lack. Before condemning and degrading someone else over looks, wealth, power and position, we have already condemned our own selves for lacking the same. How will you judge anyone without having been a thorough judge of your own self. The prejudice that we cast on others is first practiced within the workshop of one's own self. How will you hate anyone if you haven't been hating yourself secretly about your supposed failures, shortcomings and expectations.

**

We cannot avoid doing wrong. But we can at least try to learn to do wrong things for the right reasons.

Musings on a rainy day

 Well, well, well it has been worth it. The storm of course had steely nerves. But then it inspires the very same in you. Unstretched you are just a lethargic, spiritless coil of rope, waiting for the time and its agents to nibble at your sinews. Stretched you become a taut bowstring ready to unleash your potential into the existence around you. Unstretched you are a mere creation, a product. Stretched you are a creator, hurtling your potential on the ever expanding canvas of creation.

Accepted that it was a blizzard worth its salt. A whirlpool of energy whipping up an expansionist storm. But then it also had every right for expansion like all things, phenomena and living beings. It hardly left any visibility on the stage of my life. But then adversities are simply new avenues for the expansion of our potential. Trying to see the way out, I strengthened the muscles of my will power and the eyesight of my inner self. I feel better with the iron in my spirit. Hee hee, nothing goes waste fella. This is the law. Even the most unfavorable lot cast by the fate can’t overrule this. The most it can do is to take away the most common and expected result of one’s endeavor. And is that loss worth crying for and weaken the precious gain in the real substance of your existence?

**

He was a saint for he sat stoically among the garbage dirtier than shit. The dog saint, the holy friar of unholy shrine. And me the follower, the dirty puppy playing in the filth. Now if I drive my soul mad to get enlightenment, do you think there can be a bigger fool?

**

A star shines in my eyes. It shoots off on an exciting, perilous journey, leaves a dusty whiz across my horizon and its remnants instead of crashing into the sea land on my head. I get a nice bump guys!

**

What is success after all? Is it beating others in their achievements? Or meeting others' expectations from you? Or surpassing your own dreams? Or a wispy, pleasant feeling at the day end, 'Fella you have not been a mere weight on earth!'

**

The sun shines bright this morning. I raise my tired eyes and look across the desultory forlornness. A dream beckons from a distance. I just smile and turn my face away, 'No more runs after the mirage fella.'

**

A spider's best chance of landing with prey lies in casting web and wait patiently instead of hopping around to catch one. Use your best faculty fella, however mundane it appears to you. A mosquito has to be as proud of its tiny sting as a mighty lion is of its massive, cleaving bite. 

Beyond morality and immorality

 Only the terribly guilty conscience will look at things through the moral--immoral dichotomy. Things are neither moral nor immoral. We just jump from this side to that just to help us keep believing in our very own meaning of life shaped by our circumstances. A person caught in the quagmire of moral and immoral is kicking to reach nowhere but self-doom. A clear, transparent conscience will look at things without the tag of either moral or immoral.

Beyond the prism of morality and immorality, all of us have at least the choice to improve upon the worst in us. The littlest step away from the worst in us may turn out to be the biggest step of our life.

And most importantly, don't hold any grudges about anyone or anything because in the end all of us are mere travelers on the highway who just accosted a fellow journeyman or woman, said hi, hello, or exchanged words and moved on the path of our destiny. Coming across fellow travelers on the path is merely incidental. It's not the destination. The destination is always for the lone self.

Speak up please!

 The Western media finds it so easy to lambast India as a pandemic victim. Pouring more of scorn and less of concern over our suffering. But they lose their reporting spirits in condemning China who is actually the perpetrator of this pandemic.  China is too powerful now. And reporting truth is inversely proportional to power. So China goes scot free and India that's hugely damaged gets further bashed up. But don't worry, we have the oldest spiritual values on earth. We will bounce back like never before! This is our dark night of the soul. The rising sun of a new day will see the best version of India.

An appeal to the Honorable PM

 Dear PM, we have lost so many elders, middle aged and young lives -- far far more than what the official death figures would have us believe -- in the first and second waves of the pandemic. The experts are already warning, like they had earlier, that the next wave may hit our children. If you fail to avoid that catastrophe, history will judge you very severely. Kindly pause your dream of making Bharat a Vishva Guru. You will be hopefully still the ruler of Bharat for the next three years, so we are all helpless in beseeching you to learn the skill of listening. You speak so well. But there is a thing called listening also. Please work on this skill. We don't want the status of the master of the globe. We just need the assurance that we will no longer die on the roads without oxygen. We would certainly clap with you as our rover lands on the moon, but before that we have to stay alive. Give us the assurance of basic medical facility. Please help us restore our belief in life and living. The ultra nationalist magic potion, the hallucinating pill of religious superiority, the blinding opium of jingoism and rhetoric fails in the face of even manageable crisis. It may help you to get votes, but it doesn't help us at all when all we need is a simple bed in a common hospital to survive. Please rule India as a different and changed person for the next three years without bothering about winning elections at any cost. India doesn't need a Congress-mukt environment. We need an environment where people don't die like worms. We need a system where we don't have to survive with fear and insecurity. Please change for the better. Otherwise, the next pandemic wave will see us crying over the bodies of our children. And those tears will never forgive you or the system you lead!

Strong leaders plz stay away. We need meek, affable ones!

 What is common among Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Indira Gandhi, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and scores of declared and underestimated dictators? Well, irrespective of their political approach, they shared the huge commonality of being very strong and powerful leaders. They were bigger than the entire system they were part of. Bigger than the institution itself. And when a part proclaims to be bigger than the whole calamity strikes. No wonder, there were mass sufferings under them in proportion to the clout they had built up. Given this, do we need too powerful leaders? In the contemporary political scene also rhetorical, powerful leaders have brought mass miseries to their people. Simply because they just don't listen to anything apart from their own ego-saturated mind. I am very much scared of too powerful leaders. Their strength is derived from tears in too many eyes. After a time they look like scarecrow to create panic among the people on the street. Blissfully silent, meek and affable Manmohan Singh Ji creates a nostalgia now. I am sure he would have spoken less and done more to handle the pandemic that is slaughtering us.

Please learn to listen!

 Great  power always brings mass suffering in its wake! When BJP obsessively talks of Congress Mukt Bharat, they actually mean opposition-less rule. And opposition-less rule is almost synonymous with dictatorial rule. A healthy democracy is the churning result of a seesaw competition between equally strong parties who try to excel on the issues of development instead of flimsy rhetoric which have no say in alleviating mass miseries. Do religious wars give us oxygen when we die like gasping fish on the roads? Do grand temples and sky high statues give us hospital beds when all we need is a simple few days of care to avoid death? 

Why is America the strongest democracy in the world? It's because there are two equally strong parties who actually fight on the issues that really matter. Hope the current Indian government learns some lessons from the mass suffering in India and gives us common necessities of life instead of communal opium and an intoxicating, false, blinding and rhetorical sense of nationalism. Please learn to listen to those who differ with you. Don't just build a narrative to condemn them as traitors! Please learn to listen! There is a world beyond wining elections at any cost. Sometimes costs are too high! Great rule might be about great power. But grand and glorious rule is about taming that rampaging power to make it a slave instead of allowing it to sit on our head and be our master.

Keep mum and just pray!

 Critics of Them, justified of course in your intentions and reasons, a word of caution. They are down but not out. As the saying goes, a King is a bad enemy, a worse friend, and a fatal family relation. So stay rooted while you criticize Them. They will hit back at the level you are, wherever it may be, anywhere you are, using the hierarchical powers suitable for your position and standing to push and prod you again into the hole. They may not do much to take us out of our miseries. But They will surely hit back! I have no shame in accepting that I am scared of writing or saying even a single word against Them. Because I know They always hit back at their critics! They have the power! And they expertly mean to use it against dissent. That is the hallmark of powerful Kings! Power has natural disposition for misuse. Here at least they are subservient to the concept of power. Power has power over Them. So my dear angry, cantankerous birds, take a pause. The fear of corona and the fear of Them are both essential to stay alive and safe. So play it safe! Lastly, pray, pray and just pray for all of us. We the common subjects of Them have no oxygen, no vaccine, no hospital beds. All we have is our prayers. So let's pray for each other. Let's use all our power of emotions to keep our boat afloat!

Be your own friend first!

 Most of us are tired and bored of being our own self. The 'self' seems almost a prison and we are always rushing out to beat our self loath and boredom by connecting with people who we assume match our personality cast. These people to whom we rush to beat our boredom are but our opposites because who would go and enter the same prison one is trying to get out. So when the connection and relationships also don't dilute the feeling of self loath, we put the blame again on outside forces, people and circumstances. No relationship will work till we are bored being ourselves. The problem is always inside, our ego but would always try to dupe us by putting it on the people and life circumstances. To be a friend to anyone outside, one has to share a beautiful bonhomie with one's own self. You have to smile within to laugh genuinely with others. You have to be comfortable with your own being first. Only then others will feel relaxed with you. The inner turmoil, restlessness and stress of just being the way you are takes a big toll on what we make of our life outside. The way we feel, think or act is the cause, not effect, of all the shit we find outside in our life. The cause lies within. The externalities are mere effects. And solutions start with causes not effects. So if the game of life isn't nice outside, accept it as an effect of something wrong within. To be a smiling friend to others, first learn to be friendly with your own self.

Look within

 Only those in suffering and pain themselves become the source of sorrow to others. The fire within has to burn the carrier's inside first before spreading its effect on others. Happy people hardly cause sorrow around. Observe the fiery pit inside, the primary cause of one's sorrows. If we become aware of its burn, we will stop blaming others for our miseries. Others are merely triggers for the fire to flare up more viciously at the most. It helps to remember that all our so called miseries of life are primarily born of our inner condition rather than the life circumstances and the people around. Long before the pain manifests on the surface, exposed by the externals including people, it already has established roots in our self, deep inside, nurtured by our wayward thoughts and emotions, the self injurious dose of negative energy that we ingest ourselves with in little little doses over the ears. So next time someone hurts you look within first before hollering at the person. 

Regular guys always win!

 IQ fundamentalists shut up! When we fall down, it's not our extraordinary and special talent that sees us through. It's the plain old spirit of perseverance -- common man's ubiquitous heap of normalcy. At whatever level you are busy writing the story of your life, keep yoked to your mission like a diligent ox guys. And the furrows of your very own life and living will follow.

Dump all preconceptions about breaking galaxies with the shining supernovas of eye-blinding heroic traits and feats. Be the proud little man who keeps working on his small-time mundane qualities with persistence and passion. And then you become the joyful sovereign of your little world.

Don't worry if you don't have the elite sprinter's lungs and leg muscles to win the 100 metre race and reach the podium to see your success through other's eyes. Nurture endurance in spirit and strive further and push harder in the slow-paced marathon of your very own life. Choose your own pace and the miles to go and give it all that you have. Sweat out to get a thumps-up from your own soul.

Hey all you regular guys like me! Stick to your little mission very hard. And you and me have as much chance of reaching the finish line as any other naturally talented guy has!

In the long term, grit is more important than smartness and natural talent.

How to defeat emotional turmoil?

 Feeling the pain born of relationships, emotional turmoil and all the related stuff? Well, it's never about holding people, it's always about holding ourselves properly...if we hold ourselves appropriately, we come across healthy relationships as well...others are always the side effects...main thing is us...when things are not manageable at the emotional level, because emotions are sublime and intangible, take a grip of the situation at the physical level. Holding the horns in a fight at the physical level is relatively easier because physicality is tangible. When one is feeling in gutters, give a best shot at your physicality...go into narcissism...yoga, walks, gym...do all and more... physical exercise cuts on cortisol, the anxiety hormone which takes us into the gutters of depression and emotional turmoil. If we try to handle things at the emotional level, or through Emotional dependence through relationship, we are missing the Bulls eye. Because emotions hardly have any tangibles. We just kick around blindly and go further down. Work out a fabulous physicality regime involving multiple streams. It will boost dopamine and serotonin in brain. These are the wellness and joyous h0rmones that will beat the pain of memories. And as a healthier and happier person we draw better life circumstances which includes better people also. Long before we allow others to hurt us, we have already belittled our own self by not actualizing our real potential. Stay on course for continuous self improvement and there is no better tangible, and easiest, and which is firmly in our grasp, milestone than a sweet battle at the level of physicality. Best wishes!🙏🏻👏👍🏻💐

One little step

 Robert Maurer says, "Fear and anxiety are normal responses to change. They rob you of clearheaded thinking. Action dispels fear. If you can take small steps towards making your change, you'll feel calmer." 

Well, an iota of action has the power to melt a mountain. It may mean just taking a deep breath or a single step or a smile. Biggest of action has to have its initiation. A slight pause, a deep breath, a little step, a soft smile, all and more are the foot-soldiers of massive change. Taking things head-on with huge steps triggers the amygdala in our brain, the flight or fight alarm system of animalistic survival, letting loose a chain reaction of negative hormones, which in turn clogs cerebral cortex and thus deprives us of logic and reasoning. Love your little efforts fella. They bypass the alarm system of panic in our brain. So much for a little step! It changes your life situations in the ways you can't imagine. Don't ever belittle your very own soft, cuddly little steps out of the scenes of difficult and problems. Sometimes, taking a little step decides whether we are alive or dead. A little smile decides whether a relationship survives or dies. A deep breath salvages a situation from the clutches of catastrophe. I just love the little man in me. Nothing heroic about it at the bigger stage. It but stage stealer in the little drama of my life.

Synchronicity

 A dove-eyed gazelle,
Deep in a forest,
Steps on a dry leaf,
It murmurs with pain,
A thin crackling sound
and it falls apart.
Far away in a concrete jungle,
She has a sadistic smile on her lips
and steps over his heart.
The leaf in the forest
voices the shattering blast
of a broken heart.
A plum ripe fruit on a branch,
It grabs naughty semian attention,
A playful snatchy pull,
And the fruit goes off at its prime.
Far away, the death sharpens its scythe, chuckles heartlessly,
and harvests a young life at its peak.
A pale old leaf surrenders 
to the painless pull of gravity,
And swirls down to ecstatic oblivion.
Far away, an old man peacefully
takes his last breath in sleep.