The Voice of Insult

 

He belonged to one of the low steps on the caste ladder, and as it happens usually, he was very poor; so his place in the world was now limited to the pitiable existence of an insect in the dust while the higher world fleeted more importantly. Absorbed in countless agonies at every step of life, he had his little share of some tiny ecstasies. After all, nature does very little discrimination in opening her smile on the persons of various castes and classes.

At his nondescript settlement, as it opened its idyllic eyes in the second half of February, a whole array of mist, fog and dew danced on the bucolic stage in the pre-twilight aura. He got up early and visited the fields to relieve himself of the nature’s call. So early in the morning, his mind less burdened with the worries of survival, he peeked into the rising hues of light across the fog. Without any discrimination, the light, fog and mists became his playmates.

An hour before the morning twilight, the sky was clear and visibility on ground was perfect, then some mysterious climatic wand would be swayed and the fog arrived like a silvery bluish pall of strange expectance. As the twilight broke over the light fog, it appeared as if the day was breaking from the sky overhead, illuminating a bluish circular stage around him, making him the undisputed king of this small sleepy world.

Sometimes the layers of mist would just float in pre-dawn tranquillity, hiding the lower canopies of the trees and then slowly, playfully, gently the scene around him would change, determined by those naughty floating particles carrying tiny load of condensation on their backs. His imagination would float with their ease, making him totally oblivious to the fact that he was born in the scavenger community—the bhangi or balmiki caste.

Well, on August 15, 1947 India won its freedom; but it was decades to go for the dawn when the proud Parliament of free India would first bring in the legislation to emancipate the manual scavengers—the community to which Ramu belonged—engaged in wretchedly degrading and criminally dehumanising task of manual scavenging at the lowest rung of Hindu caste hierarchy; and many decades still further when the pious intentions of Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 would in fact percolate down to practice.

It was a province in India where the freer sun of India dawned a bit hesitatingly because the instrument of accession was still to be signed. The ruler was dilly-dallying with a multitude of interests. For decades, the people under the double shadow of authority—English and the ruler—had grown dispirited under the squeezing, oppressing talons of the two masters whose respective spheres of powers had sharp edges to tear their easy meat.

The monsoons had more or less done their task of turning the countryside lush green. Just like any other person of his caste, Ramu felt the brutal, confining chains of the obnoxious system of casteism. The real freedom appeared almost an unattainable dream. He wistfully looked at the casteless groups of birds flapping their wings in this natural pool of water on the outskirts of the sleepy township, which boasted of all the materiality of the ruler’s power and ordain.

The seven-year-old boy knew that theirs was the meanest and the pathetic most existence on earth. His father was employed as a manual scavenger to remove human excreta from the dry latrines of the training centre of the Maharaja’s little army under the tutelage of his British masters. Well, so much had changed in the form of lifestyles and fashion before the eyes of Ramu’s father. However, one thing remained the same which kept the deprived section pitted into the same horrible, ill-branded work of picking up human faeces manually. Ramu’s forefathers, the so called untouchables, slave chandalas, who were employed in cleaning the society of its most pitiable and dirty by-products, had a positive outlook towards the arrival of the Britishers. They believed that the enlightened white man will definitely do something by bringing some science in the domain of sanitation.

‘After all in their country there cannot be people like us. And still everyone must be purest and cleanest!’ his father wondered oftentimes.

However, why should the Britishers be unduly bothered about the mode of disposal of human excreta? In the enslaved country, they were fighting for bigger stakes, which demanded they must look over the social prejudices prevalent among the native population. So when urbanisation and industrialisation took first tentative steps under them, scores of manual scavengers were needed to clean both private and public dry latrines.

The twentieth century had seen decades of political movements in India and their patriotically charged reverberations echoed in princely India as well. Ramu’s father had his own dream-like versions of these andolans led by the Mahatma who had given them the name of Harijan, the people of God. Pocketed in this tiny province, where the free rays of India were still to shine, on this free morning, his fate came to be crushed by a British military expert, who shamefaced for the defeat and boiling in mood for packing his bags, found an outlet in this poor scavenger. The Englishman saw the cleaner affectionately offering a pure rose to his still purer girl child with his dirtiest of hands after he had removed the night soil from the apartment. He punished the cleaner by holding his face in the night soil. It proved a sacrament to his soul; this dip in the karambhoomi of his forefathers enlightened his soul. The humiliated man, as if unafraid of death and taking many clues from the freedom fighters, whose stories reached his ears through hearsay, got up, the filth dripping over his face. With a heaving breast, he yelled in the man’s face:

‘I’m not willing to live after this insult but I’ll live on to see you and your whole clan along with your shit being packed off forever from our land!’

He spat; not at the white man but on the ground, his soul heaving against his body. Meanwhile, his fellow scavengers trembled with fear. With firm steps he moved towards a water faucet, took a bath—all this while recalling what he had heard about the Mahatma—and once clean he thundered: ‘Safai Karamchari Andolan!’        

Ramu saw—as he came from the playful walk or rather jaunt—his father’s head and face turn a mass of pulpy red under the brutal strikes by the Maharaja’s sepoys, who under the spell of hurried loyalty went overzealous for the cause of their sovereign.

‘India gets freedom and even these dogs here in our Maharaja’s dominion start barking!’ a Brahmin sepoy gnashed his teeth. But he could sense the inevitability of the fall of his cherished sovereign.

Crying and shivering for the same fate, Ramu ran full 20 kilometres to his village, where the rest of his family lived. It was very late at night when Ramu beat his furtive palms against the rag-tag reed thatch door of their hutment. As fire was lit up and the monsoon clouds rumbled still at the tail end of their rainy orgy, he shivered in the lap of his blind grandmother, fatigued, torn, tattered and almost dead.

Next day, two of his fellow scavengers brought the body in a cart. ‘The word doing round in the city is that he turned a traitor,’ one of them said hesitatingly and his cowering eyes seemed to believe what his tongue was hesitating to put forth.

His grandmother, the old wrinkled black fairy, who couldn’t see but created and weaved a whole world through her words, was the one to whom he felt nearest in the family. In his otherwise ever-prostrating and servile childhood, sitting in her lap and listening about a world fantasised by her hollow-cheeked babbling, he would become the prince sovereign, who was casteless and beyond any stigma.

Of all her stories he remembered the one about herself with most vivid colours. She had once told him:

‘Even though not in the least ashamed of being a balmiki, somewhere deep down the heart, I feel that I’m a Brahmin, for I wasn’t born to your maternal grandfather. Years ago someone had dumped a newborn girl in a dry discarded well, half of which was full of waste and garbage. Blessed be Lord Hanuman for a herd of monkeys gathered around the well and started mocking at the human buffoonery in chattering, screeching voices. And who later became my father and the man who became your great grandfather rescued me and took me home for he had a big flock of boys only. He had some love in his heart for a girl child. Thus I was raised as a bhangi!’

Blind for the last 20 years, the sudden flashes of reminiscences would take her to childhood when during the scorching heat of June, the whole family dug a deep pit on a dry river bed to collect water. They had to fight for the protection of their pit, which was now moving laterally after going straight into the earth for 6-7 feet. Water quarry (open pit) we may call it. On this merciless hot day, when even the sweat beads won’t surface on their skin, for they had been dehydrated too much, the wind blew a sandstorm on the foot-printed soil around the pit. Twigs and boughs of dried bushes littered around like a cemetery. The water level was plummeting down rapidly and so was increasing their thirst. The father taking all responsibility on his head—for it was now very risky to get below the crumbling roof of the pit as the hole went laterally into the earth, while they anxiously watched from above—sat inside the cave precariously soaking a piece of gunny sack in the mud and step by step squeezed the coarse cloth to collect muddy water in an earthen pitcher. Their hearts beating under the impact of the risk hovering over the patriarch’s body they looked water-mouthed. There was more water in their mouths than in the fearsome pit’s guts. Much to its irritation, they had opened it too much and in trepidation it snapped its jaw. The earth overhead caved in and the family upkeeper was buried alive. Even with their maddest scamper, they could not bring him out before many minutes. The man had been buried under the fine sand for enough time to suffocate him to death.

Later, a similar shock of ill fate took her eyesight two decades back.

The family patriarch named Musla, her husband, was a man of kaleidoscopic libido that allured him to have illicit relationships with many ladies of his caste. However, it became a crime when a lady of the higher caste took fancy to his titillating escapades. It became almost cataclysmic news. It’s as good as the natural laws reversing overnight. The society feels threatened and they react very vehemently.

After getting caught, the lady had the right to accuse the lower caste man of rape. Since then the man was incarcerating in the riyasat jail. They were already outcaste but now the whole family cowered under the additional stigma of rape also. This kind of position squashes you among the lowest of the low.

As a mark of further revenge beyond the state’s formal judgement, the upper caste males along with their servants raped the family females for as long as the hissing snakes of their anger and lust allowed it. In desperation and unbearable agony, his grandmother banged her head against the stone mortar repeatedly and went blind at least to the visual aspects of their miseries.

To prove their human side, they gave a job to the rapist’s son befitting their hereditary profession. All it fetched was one meal a day and in addition carried perpetual humiliation and punishment to the soul as bonus. So Ramu’s father, right from the start of his boyhood, became the manual scavenger doing his duty anywhere the overfed aristocracy decided to scatter its excreta.

One tragedy had closed the doors to light. Whenever fate punished her, she further punished herself by striking her head against anything her searching fingers found. It became a habit.  As a result, her forehead and skull had many scars, perhaps even more than the ones she bore on her soul. In order to prevent the final fatality, they kept an eye on her lest she struck her head almost as an instinctive reaction to her quirk of mood on account of some bad news. Apart from these sudden volcanic eruptions, she was cool headed otherwise, smiled ironically, talked gently and told numerous stories to children.

Now when the dead body of her son arrived, the people around failed to notice her picking up the grinding stone bowl and hit it against her skull with as much force as she could manage. With a mourning cry and equally fearsome burst of blood she fell unconscious. One tragedy had sealed the doors of light to her, now this one brought her out of darkness. The sense of sight that had been exiled by the striking judgement of some precarious time was now restored by the hammering judgement of the tragedy of her son’s death. On opening her eyes she gave a strange cry of joy and sorrow.

‘It’s you Ramu!’ she pointed towards a child of his age, ‘Oh...Oh...where is...umm...let me guess...’

Those around her thought she had gone out of her senses after the gruesome self-strike. Then with a new purpose in her life and the light back in her world, the old lady cried her heart out over the darkness hovering around the dead body of her son.

****

The poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low hardly perceive any further fall or the degradation or the wretchedness caused by the leaps and bounds of ill-fate and tragedies. They take it for granted, a kind of habituation to humiliation. Although Ramu grew up among ever-increasing adversities, overall the life seemed more or less the same to him. The once obstinate Maharaja had, without wasting much time, signed the instrument of accession to India. So Ramu was now a subject of free India, where very soon untouchability would be declared illegal. However, he was many years from the glorious dawn when the mammoth banyan of casteism, standing sturdy and sprawling from many centuries, would finally yield to the face-lifting, almost artificial, stop-gap legislative measures.

There was a new police station in place of the old one. However, the family that had witnessed so much came across one more onerous turn of fate. All records pertaining to the condemned rapist were missing. When some liberal elements, too happy to attain freedom, took up the poor old man’s case, his bail plea was rejected on the grounds that all records were missing. So the trial court could neither grant him bail, nor take up the case to its conclusion without any reference material from the old office. Now the prison authorities at the district jail were worried whether to keep him as an undertrial or as a prisoner. They sought directive from the court regarding it. Almost famished and finished, the rape convict was presented before the additional sessions judge sahib. The latter was much puzzled and directed the district jailor to prepare a fresh charge sheet based on the memories of the still surviving persons and relatives on both sides. The old lady, allegedly raped, came out of her shy, traditional shackles and after a single performance the new court of free India, basing its unbiased judgement on the base of fresh assessment of the victim’s testimony noted:

‘We are sorry that the cause of justice has been delayed so long given the situation prevailing; we owe an apology to the victim because the offender has been enjoying life in jail, so to put up the insignia of free India, we sentence this man to death for the rape of ... held culpable under section ... based ...’

The over-enthused judge felt heroic and proud for accomplishing this—for drawing this first blood—marvellous judicial feat for the cause of mother India.

An overzealous law of a still overzealous new nation ensured that the message of justice should reach across the masses. After the sentence was upheld by the higher judiciary the old man was hanged. A widow now his grandmother took first tentative steps to survive as the family matriarch.

****

The urbanised pockets with their squalor, filth, mud, garbage and stinking wastes offered some opportunities to the scavenger community; and they, with bright hopeful eyes, ogled at the filthy stage which looked brightly and alluringly lit up by a beneficent new sun. To play their scavenging part, the family—consisting of malnutritioned children, spent out and worn out middle aged persons and almost dead but somehow living old bodies—moved to a filthy slum stinking and sticking like a lice to an urban body. And once settling here, saving the pittance that they salvaged from the filth, they lost the rest of the things which were available so far such as an unhindered view of the nature’s beauty, the pond’s water and free walks through the countryside provided it didn’t cross the interests of the higher varnas.

The grandmother during her youthful, seeing days had been a proud participant in the community festival linked to the caste’s not too proud, almost animistic, belief system. Being very near to Mother Nature, the folk dance was rustically gleaned to the proportions of a mysterious exoticism. With new spirit in her eyes, she recalled how for months they prepared artificial animals like lion, horse and tigers using the complex yet so simple folk art. First a cane frame was prepared using water-soaked switches and later it was stitched with a covering of animal skins and clothes of all types. The final shape could put to shame any stuffed tiger adoring the walls of a rich aristocratic hunter. It used to be in the form of a huge mask (the animal torso) to be worn by a man on his head, while the other man stooped at almost right angle carrying the rest of the body on his back.

This year, the old lady hoped they will soak their miseries by dancing all night in the heart of this merciless town. With clever fingers and a quickly recalling mind, she started on her long forgotten folk art. Much to Ramu’s surprise, the shape of a lion emerged from those cane switches, rags and hides leaving two openings in the lower part. She also prepared beautiful dolls of sawdust and clay and painted them bright. There was also a lovely cart of dung, mud and clothes. He was extremely happy to get toys for the first time in his life.

****

Who cares about the health, hygiene and sanitation of those who are expected to be among the filth? The waste water of their dirty unpaved alley drained down an open dug-out nullah and emptied its odorous self into a pit. And there the mud sank into a mysterious pool leaving a grimy layer of water above.

Taking a plastic bottle cut in half to serve as a mug, Ramu went to collect this water, walked a bit further and eased himself of the thing that his forefathers had been carrying on their head. He then realised how blissful were those days when he used clean waters of puddles and ponds to wash him after his toilet. While his bowels emptied to add to the filth around their huts, he was lost in the gloomy darkness in the mug. However, it was still relatively clean water because theirs were the hands that had been assigned the role of carrying human faeces, dead carcasses of animals and stinking mud without any feeling of contempt and revulsion.

These littlest bits of gloomy reverie were driven away by his excited heart that was now galloping at the prospect of watching the clapping dance performed by the grandmother’s lion in the evening.

The afternoon but witnessed a heavy rainfall and it continued to rain towards the night, raising squelching mud around their huts in the narrow streets. The little open space among the huts that was to serve as the ground for the event now bore the nasty look of a mud quagmire. Undeterred they came out. The shiny and beautifully painted lion came in full majesty. But very soon the rain and the splashing and flailing mud turned it into an ugly monster. Even the playful lion of a scavenger has to look dirty. Even nature seemed to be kow-towing the human discriminations. It appeared like a horrible deity worshipped by the savage and filthy people.

The excitement and verve in Ramu’s frenzied senses was short-lived as the favourite lion became an ugly monster. The beautiful appliqué cloth—purchased with the whole community’s donations—turned tabby and evil looking. The success of this dance depends upon the foot coordination between the man bearing the head and the bending man bearing the body. The mud however spoilt the rhythm and the second man tripped and went down. The first one with a stick tied to his back that held the animal torso above his head continued to drag the legless mass behind him. A very strange warmish creature it appeared now. Many of them took turns to enter into the frame. After a time, both the humans and their made-up lion were unrecognisable. It appeared a gathering of muddy ghosts. Ramu, his face and clothes bespattered with mud, wept inconsolably.

That night his mother consoled him:

‘Don’t cry son! A scavenger should be the last one to weep for getting his things, clothes and body including face muddled and spoiled by the filthiest of things. That is the karma and dharma of a scavenger. If you don’t soak muck into your soul then it will go against your karma as a balmiki. I’ve heard that no amount of filth on the body can touch the soul. It always remains clean like these higher castes!’

‘But the beautiful, shiny, clean lion was destroyed by mud,’ he sobbed.

‘We’ll make another for you, son.’

‘But again it will go all muddy. Gods want us to be filthy with even our playthings.’

‘Well son, may be a day will come when clean balmikis playing with a clean lion on a clean ground won’t appear unclean to the God, the rain and the society!’                           

With the cleanest emotion of a mother, she took him in her arms to calm him down and he slept. The old woman kept awake for a long time.

‘Will such a day really come?’ she thought.  

The Blueprint of a Common Man’s Truth

 

Carpenter, vendor, construction labourer, hawker, electrician and much more, he has been through the rough and tumble of many professions at various points in his life. Now he seems contended to serve as a night watchman at a construction material godown. Here he just has to sleep and say ‘Who is this?’ from his room if he hears any noise at night, thus indicating the property is well guarded and under observation.

He is ready to take up more, some new assignment to add to his pocket’s weight. So during the day, he is the municipal committee’s official keeper of the ill-kept, stinking toilet booth. He loiters around in the dusty, noisy chaos that most of our cities are. Most of those who pulverize the property with their sprouts and defecations are his acquaintances, the wage labourers well known to him from the area. They would cajole him to give him a tea party instead of giving him a rupee they owe for their misdeed. So he is scouting for any chance visitor who is under the compulsion to enter the stinking box. The torture over and just as the poor person comes out dazed and swooning under the attack of stinking smell and disturbing sight, he attacks and demands the charges. To the strangers he is very authoritative.

Take as many avenues to earn a bit more, it’s never sufficient for a poor man. However, with a rich haul of experience, this 75 years old man looks content, like a battle weary soldier, happy in the knowledge that he has successfully fought at many fronts. A lifetime of grit and grind is barely sufficient to make a little story of few lines. Like meshing whole containers of mud, you get a gram of gold particles. It may not be sufficient but those decades of engagement as a faceless entity give rewards that are felt within if not acknowledged by others. It’s always worthy to have fought in a sub-world where you dig a well for a day, only to start digging another for a new dawn. There was hardly any destination above the one and only ‘seeing through a day’. A tough process but it’s all-consuming, it absorbs you completely.

Six decades ago, he arrived at the district town at the age of 15 from a small village in the countryside of the same district. During these six decades, he saw the district town changing from a big village to a proper city as it’s today, witnessed its changing colours, in the professional sense, and learnt to adapt to the swiftly changing circumstances and times.

His life-long dedication to the cause of setting up a family has entitled him to ‘a bit bigger than a slum hut’ kind of house in a poor locality. He had three sons. One of them died before marriage. The other one died, followed by his wife, after marriage. He left two kids. One he keeps, most probably a son. The other one, most probably a girl, is under the custody of her maternal grandparents. The third son plies an auto in the city and whom he sometimes sees and raises his hand to acknowledge their relationship. The son however keeps his eyes reserved for more passengers in his auto.

Though staying within the same city, the old man doesn’t visit his house more than twice a week. His wife stays with the son. On being asked why he doesn’t stay with the family, he says that it’s just to be independent and free. Possibly his daughter-in-law is a tyrant. He however doesn’t admit it openly.

He tells that one’s eyes should have patience and respect for a person at whom you look at. The other person will surely reciprocate. He will get into a pause and will listen to you at least. ‘Eyes, eyes!’ he emphasizes.

To kill time he has plenty of decades from the past to bask in their nostalgia. He doesn’t find even a single moment in which the present scores over the past.

‘It gets just worse from bad,’ he appears missing his youth.

And he still wants a new job. 

Frost and Fire

 

Usually, our fears are directly proportional to the doubts we have.

A sword fighter has a beautiful wife. She is in awe of his reputation and is almost daunted by the force of his persona. She respects him, but love is missing in the secret chamber of her heart. As it happens, she falls in love with somebody outside her marriage. As if that is a small problem, to make it still worse the lover happens to be their servant.

Lies and deceit can be hidden, but love has the natural propensity to shine like the sun from behind the clouds. It comes to light. That is its nature. As per social norms, love usually stands out scandalous.

The offended husband challenges the servant for a duel, taking it for granted that he will surely kill the illicit lover, thus giving the opponent a painful death and earn more laurels for his swordsmanship as bonus. The deed will not reek of cold-blooded revenge and his motive to kill the servant will lie buried under the fair game of duel. So it is supposed to be a sure death for the poor servant.

The sword fighter hides his revenge and anger under the art and craft of his swordsmanship. Most importantly, he is sure of victory, because by the logic of it, how can it be otherwise, pitted as he is against a man who has so far merely picked up the scabbard from his master’s famed walls to clean it. And he being a master swordsman whose reputation chimes across the four corners of the state.

The servant is thus sure of his death. He has accepted his fate, death. When you are eying victory, you are also eying safety to yourself from the corner of your eyes. And you have fear also, because without that the sense of victory cannot sustain. With a sense of victory you just cannot be fearless. There is something to fight for and achieve and for that you have to remain alive. This breeds fear.

The servant, on the other hand, has accepted death and failure. His acceptance is hundred percent. He has no doubt about it. And when there is no doubt, you become fearless. The swordsman isn’t totally free from fear because his certainty about his victory falls short of the servant’s certainty of his defeat and death. He isn’t as sure of his victory as the servant is of his defeat.

So, irrespective of the fighting calibre, the servant is more fearless of the two, simply because he is under less doubt. In his fearlessness he decides to let loose all madness in him before his death. He doesn’t hate the opponent. He isn’t angry. His acceptance of death enables him to give all to life before death. The sword-fighter, on the other hand, cannot give all in the fight, because he is fighting to save respect, prolong life, take revenge, and all these with further expectations from life. Life itself means fear.

The offended husband takes manoeuvres as per the art of sword-fighting. In pre-death fearless madness, the lover strikes his sword as if he is striking with a stick. To all the conventional strokes of the sword-fighter, he hits back with the most awkward and unorthodox ones. Fearlessness in his eyes creates fear in the opponent’s eyes.

The servant kills the master! Why? Because he is sure of his death, and because the master isn’t that sure of his victory! How can he be? He simply cannot. He is fighting to save a lot of things and fighting to save things cannot allow you to be cent-percent fearless.

The Lonesome Shadow

 

It’s Holi on March 13 and unusually cold for the season. It feels almost like late winter. It’s not the usual riotous Holi but still there are plenty of drunken shouts and stampedes of fun. In the afternoon he feels extremely weak.

Holi is celebrated to honour the most vibrant colours in our spirit. However, the festival has lost its footing in both letter and spirit. It now seems to bring the worst in us—muck- and mud-slinging, drunk driving, molestation and street fights. Many girls in Delhi have reported the cases of semen-filled balloons hitting them. This unethical, unpardonable sling-shot catapults the beastly mentality against women by several evil notches. Every girl has all the reasons to feel unsafe in Delhi. The semen-filled balloon is a representative of the deeply entrenched sexual frustration in the Indian psyche. It pours out in the goriest of ways and means. The more they pretend to ignore and suppress it, the more diseased they get under the veil. The children hardly get exposed to healthy information about their sexuality. It stays the most secretive and all-important topic. It grows like a creepy parasite in the shadows.

On Holi, the liquor industry awaits gleefully. Drinking alcohol in excess is what we make of our festivals these days. 

He is heavy headed, a consortium of conflicting thoughts lying jumbled up like a pathetically tangled mass of ropes. Uncontrolled thoughts are like a mass of snakes slithering around viciously. There is a strange taste in his mouth. He rolls his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He feels some presence. The thinnest of hair in the mouth leaves him scared. He tries his tongue. He takes it out by scratching the tip of the tongue with a pinch of thumb and index finger. There it is! It’s a very tiny one.

He seems to have cold and bad throat and lies down to listen to Osho’s speech to power up the brain’s processes. Osho’s speeches on YouTube give him an unexplained peace. He can feel the words. It turns out to be a motherly lullaby and he dozes off. It’s a very sound and satisfying sleep. Words and phrases of the Holy Master sound like a dream. He wakes up very fresh. The audio is over. It has been three quarter of an hour. Sleep is a great saviour, without it we will just burn out with our worries.

This Holi completes 7 years since his father left this world. Father loved gardening. Most of the potted plants and roses that he had planted are still there. Sometimes the son feels his father’s presence in a fresh blossom on the rose he had planted. The son thinks his father is still around.

On this Holi, he is holding his 10 months old nephew, his younger sister’s son. The boy is fiddling with the light green fresh leaves of a plant his grandfather had planted in a pot, and which was later transferred to earth in the small flower bed. The child is running his fingers through the leaves. He closes his eyes and feels that the child is playing with his grandfather’s beard. He smiles, and again he feels his presence. Life has too strong imprints for death to wipe them completely. These are the dusty prints from the past. They keep bringing smiles now and then.

Wild Candy

 

The archetypal distressed genius, Maradona, who wrote the shimmering lines of his life with his left foot (and left hand), died on November 25 at the age of 60. He always courted skirmishes on and off the field. Beginning as a cheeky burglar involved in daylight robbery, the destiny catapulted him to become the audacious marauder playing tricks with feigns, passing steps, acceleration, stops and side turns. It flummoxed the opponents. 

He had a tendency to steer around the normal as much as he veered around the defenders. To him the world itself looked like he was in a stadium, sidestepping over social norms and sometimes even the law. No wonder, he remained a pleasant, unbridled, obese trickster even long after he hang his boots. An unfettered and effervescent spirit, we may say.

The stocky paragon of Argentinean pride inspired a fierce devotion. To the millions of his followers, it was a quasi-religious experience. You could love him or hate him, but you couldn’t ignore him. His innings on this planet has turned out to be a eulogy to a life in tantalizing excess, ranging from superstardom to drugs to domestic abuse to guns to cocaine to involvement with organized crime: A lotus out of the muddled tumult of muddy waters. Or we can say, it was an awe-inspiring darkness coupled with the silver-lining of his genius.

He flirted with football with an impetuous cunningness. Moderation and discipline wasn’t in his dictionary for his story is a testimony to excess in all he did and thought. A banner sums it up: ‘It does not matter what you have done with your life, it matters what you have done with our lives.’ He was indeed a heady rock star who commanded the stage.

‘I am Maradona, who makes goals, who makes mistakes. I can take it all, I have shoulders big enough to fight with everybody…’ He gave enough credit to his vaunting words through his Aztecan sorcery with football at the Mexico stadium.    

From winning the 1986 world cup indisputably single handedly to be unceremoniously kicked out of the 1994 event on doping charges, he dribbled between glory and ignominy. God was with him through ‘the hand of the god.’ At the one end of his excellence, he is credited with the goal of the century. But then his gluttony for goals in life included food, alcohol and drugs also. In fact, Maradona and moderation never fitted in closely. From a lithe demigod of an athlete, he went on to turn into a sniggering puffed up drugs addict. From holding the world cup, and the consequent slaloming into countless hearts, to barely holding his life in his fist after a cocaine-born heart failure twenty years ago, he had hit crest and trough of life without injuring his reputation.

The ‘Hand of God’ punching the ball into the English net during the 1986 world cup quarter finals. His ruggedness was pinching but his playing style was far more bewitching. In his football mad home country, he was the quintessential ‘Golden Boy’. Like he out-jumped the England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, almost twice his height, feigning to head but hoodwinking the referee by patting the ball with his left hand, to score the ‘Hand of God’ goal, he jumped over literally all norms to score goals and lead life the way his free-will dictated.

Who can forget the goal of the century!? Just four minutes after the ‘hand of god’, he hoodwinked all realistic expectations even from normal geniuses. His 44 strides in 11 seconds involving 12 touches gave us the greatest goal of the century. The 1986 Mexico world cup belonged to one man only. He madly burst into boxes. He crazily brushed off defenders. He maniacally squared off the ball towards the net. He magically outmuscled his tall and giant-type markers. His stinging left footers would be drawn to the net even from the toughest angle. Like a farmer ploughs through soil, his flicks and dribbles scythed through a slew of defenders and hapless goalkeepers. The blast of raw energy through his stocky bundle of animalistic muscles left him an autocrat on the turf.

Polarity melted in the photogenic blizzard of his dazzling runs. He was an angel as well as a devil, a rogue and a genius in the same vein. He was too far from the singularity of existence and very near some unpredictable multitude. He was reckless, brazen, desperado, sublime, elegant and graceful in a space of few minutes between the ‘Hand of God’ to the ‘goal of the century’, the latter almost divine in terms of its guts and audacity. He gathers the ball to his side in the stadium, swings and opens up two defenders, blazes on like a bursting comet, chest puffed out, his tongue leering and jeering and cutting across like a knife through butter, cutting the moorings of a posse of 7 English defenders to romp home to glory. This mesmeric run is unsurpassed. Those 11 seconds, and a run of 60 yards, beginning from his yard to the final romping home after rounding the English goalkeeper, involving stepping on the ball, setting right, left and forward thrusts like a brute steam engine, the opposition scattered in disarray, give us an unforgettable slice of history. Just four years after the Falklands Islands war, where his country lost to the opponents on the turf now, he had given enough to the entire nation to forget the bruise and celebrate victory on the playground. The sweet redemption, almost a kind of salvation for the millions of souls.    

The stocky and strangely built spiral of life, rising from a small shanty town to hit global superstardom, had glorious twists as well as dark knots of drug addiction in his stormy flings with life. He flirted with death with as much ease as he did with the ball, the crazy behemoth.

As the supernova preparing to die out with a dazzle, the tantalizing little giant had to be lifted out of his seat as a bloated behemoth during a world cup match in Russia in 2018.

Imagine his hold on the psyches of fans across continents. A band of Egyptian bandits freed a group of Argentine tourists after coming to know that they were from Maradona’s country.  A hero for the disadvantaged and unprivileged, his pictures on T-shirts boosted the morale of those who were born in slums but had stars in their eyes.

His moves, both on the field and in the larger arena of life, were sublime, uplifting, farcical, even tragic, all mixed in an out-of-normal concoction. His outspoken tongue gave a good company to his magical left foot in expressing the bulging life and spirit in him. No wonder he was a salvation to an entire generation of Argentina.  

His casket lay at the state presidential palace draped in the national flag and his famous number 10 jersey displayed before the final rights. Three days of national mourning becoming that of a head of the state. Here lay the almost singular hope of the country throttled by the military junta, economic backwardness and defeat in the Falklands war. Such full of life men come once in a rare while. Rest in peace brother Maradona!

The Smile of the Forsaken

 

He is sitting on the bench by the tea stall. The white woman, her face tanned by the tropical sun, sits near him and nudges his ribs with her elbow. She smiles and he cackles with childlike laughter. 

‘Ganja?’ he mumbles very naughtily leaning over her. She laughs and offers him a cup of tea. He looks like an elderly father who has something in his kitty that would make his little daughter happy. She is excited like a girl turns all smiles at the prospect of receiving her favourite candy.

‘It’s all gone, not even an ant’s worth to be found anywhere on my body,’ he chuckles.

‘Babaji you promised to give it today. My friends are here. They will jump into Ma Ganga and get mukti if it’s not arranged today,’ she keeps her smile.

A smile is the anchor of all hopes in difficult situations. A cicada unleashes its jarring jaw-harping notes that go buzzing through the air.

‘See, this cicada is so happy without ganja! Why do you need ganja to keep smiling?’ it seems the sadhu isn’t in favour of free-wheeling consumption of the substance.

‘It’s not for our smile Babaji. It’s to tame our shame, our pain, our loneliness,’ she is serious now and looks at the swift torrents of Ma Ganga.

‘Ma Ganga is here to absorb our sins, shame, pain, everything. Bathe in her like a baby rolls in her cradle. You will forget all pains,’ the kindly old sadhu puts a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. 

The touch of care seems to revive her spirits a bit. She smiles a bit and bends down to caresses his dog sitting under the rickety wooden bench. He keeps it chained.

‘Why do you keep him chained?’ she asks after a gentle reflection on the subject.

‘We are both chained, not just he. I am chained by having a liking for him and he is chained by his loyalty to me. I know this is bondage, even if a fragile one. But he is as happy with the real chain as I am with my emotional one for him. We have agreed to be chained to each other and walk slowly on our journey till almighty allows us to travel together. After that he goes his way, I will go mine. But till then it has to be a beautiful journey,’ the old mendicant is fondly looking at his dog.

‘Take it gudiya rani,’ her offers her a tiny paper pudiya wrapped around the tiny grains much in demand at the pilgrimage town, especially among a section of foreign travellers. ‘Feed your smile instead of drowning your pain in this,’ he tells her.  

He jumped into mendicancy 50 years back. The old sadhu has shifting, empathically rolling eyes. There is a glint of empathy as well.

He prepares a beedi with the substance of forgetfulness, takes a long, long draught of smoke.

‘Sab sunya hai. Sab gol-gol!’ he cackles with a mischievous laughter.

He offers the next draught to her. She happily takes her turn at the beedi and impresses him with her lung power as she inhales copiously for many seconds.

‘You can be a famous Babaji if you decide to organize your sermons,’ she sees a grand spiritual set-up for him and she as the head disciple.

He thinks he is not educated enough to speak out all that he has realized. He has this propensity of rhyming his speech. Sometimes he succeeds also.

‘The other shore has everything, roads, connectivity to the outside world, hospitals, offices, schools, everything. But here we have swarga. Nothing is left in those ashrams,’ he points to the busy business-like built up on the other side of the holy river.

‘This dog is my last worldly possession. I won’t have any more. It’s blissful to be dispossessed altogether!’ he inhales at his turn.

The beedi is spent. She pays for their tea. She wants to pay for the pudiya also but he says no.

‘Learn to live by adding to your smile instead of subduing your pain,’ he tells her as he takes off the chain from the wooden bench’s leg and starts moving to the solitary alley leading to the forest away from the ashrams and shops by the side of the holy river.

A beautiful, buxom night is building up over the rapid torrents of the holy river. The time is moving towards its mid-night mark. There is silence, serenity, cool breeze, yellowish mercury lights in the street. His dog walks behind him, looking happier than it would be even without the chain. If we are destined to have chains at all, let these be the chains of love. It adds to one’s smiles. Then there is no need to clamp down one’s pain by force. All turns well by itself.

She stands and looks at the retreating figures into the darker folds away from the river bank. She looks at the pudiya. A smile comes on her face. The easy merriment in his eyes still flashes in her vision. The little orphan girl who works as a helper at the tea shop is asleep behind the counter. Her smile further brightens up. She knows the story of this girl as she is a frequent visitor to the tea stall. She recalls the bright smile of this girl when she hands over the tea glass to her. Ironically, it’s the smile of the forsaken that comes as the brightest.

She walks down the steps to Ma Ganga, stands in knee deep waters and respectfully bows down to flow the pudiya among the all-receiving currents of the holy river.

She comes back and sits by the tired sleeping girl on the rickety bench, her feet on a chair and her hand clutching a wooden post nearby to prevent a fall. She caresses her head. The girl is too tired to be awakened by such a soft touch. She then holds her hand, replacing her wooden support by a real flesh and blood motherly hand. The woman smiles. She has added to her smiles. She would no longer need to drown her sorrows to survive. She has decided to get tied to a chain of love. She is going to adopt this little homeless girl and give her the best of life and living.   

An All-loving Dog

 

The dogs are supposed to be unfriendly to some people, if not all, to prove their loyalty and intelligence. An all friendly dog can be more mischievous than an angrily growling one.

This spotless black Labrador, the cute and kind devil type, was equally friendly to two claimants. The angry rivals went to the police to tilt its favours in their direction. They tried their level best to use all the hallmarked attitudinal signs in a dog’s behaviour that qualify the owner-pet relationship such as wagging the tail, child-like look in the eyes, cutely protruding tongue like a child and many others.

It was inconclusive as the impish black gem showered equal affection on both parties. The police station incharge was forced to go and conduct the dog’s DNA to settle the ownership issue.

It was necessitated to go for the test in order to decide the animal’s parentage that was expected to help in deciding the issue of ownership also. The police were put in a testing situation because they found it impossible to just shoo away the case as per their whims. One party was an influential journalist; the other was an impressive political activist. The police was thus, on this rare occasion, stretched beyond its comfort zone. The issue was already well fed by the local media by now. It could no longer be whisked away like any other petty issue that plagues each nook corner in the country.

The journalist was a Muslim. Three months back he lodged an FIR that his 3-year-old Labrador pet named Choko went missing. With the police having failed to provide any lead, and the media man being pretty enthusiastic in his own investigation, the journalist reported the police a week back that he has spotted his dog at the house of the ABVP leader, the right wing students union of a powerful political party. A dispute between a Muslim journalist and an ABVP Hindu leader over a dog surely is bound to raise hackles. The left wingers also chimed in to tilt the scale away from the right wingers. Left of centre and right of centre forces also threw their stakes as per their political suitability.

There were more voices to the left and the journalist, helped by an irritated police, took possession of his dog. The story but won’t come to a happy conclusion here only. The very next day, the Hindu outfit leader reached the police station and claimed that it was his dog named Foko and he had bought it from a place named X. The rival claimant appeared full of confidence, driven by a sense of grief and anger born of losing a lovely pet.

The police station incharge faced the dilemma again. Choko or Foko was again summoned to the police station. The two rival owners again fetched all fleecing, cajoling tricks from their repertoire of pet-parentage to get the canine’s affection. The dog but appeared intent upon having two masters simultaneously and shared his affection with both of them with such canine, clinical precision that again both of them had an exact 50% share each. The dog was indisputably equally comfortable with both the owners and names.

May be it was a very smart dog. The police should have roped in a third fake claimant to see if the loyalty dribbled down to one third for all. However, police being police, they cannot be expected to act so wise. They have to act with force and intimidation. Wisdom is for the village headmen of the last century. 

The journalist said that the dog’s parent lived at a place named Y and that is where he had bought it. Since the celebrity dog was already on the front pages of the local supplements of the vernacular press, the police was in no position to hush up the case either for this party or that on the basis of their clout. An impartial enquiry brings a lot of headache to the police.

The police sent cribbing teams to both the mentioned places to collect blood samples from the supposed parents. The district veterinary doctor collected the samples. He too got a shot at duty after a long and boring hiatus. Meanwhile, since the right wingers carried a bigger administrative clout at that time, the police allowed the ABVP activist to keep the dog till the reports arrived. When questions were raised about this for-the-time-being ownership, he said he has submitted all the relevant documents such as vaccination cards to substantiate his ownership. 

The test was then supposed to possess the key to the truth.     

The animal activist group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment to Animals) also jumped into the fray. The state PETA co-ordinator blamed the police for being insensitive to the animal’s welfare for they couldn’t take proper care of him, resulting in a high fever to the dog, under which it turned angry to both parties and growled at both, thus again leaving the situation indecisive like before.

The dog now showed all cordiality with the PETA co-ordinator, who got personal with the issue and went to the extent of demanding FIR against the police for tormenting the animal. He also demanded FIR against the wrong claimant under the provisions of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The dog thus joined inter-species bonhomie at the PETA facility. 

Presently the right of the dog centred around having its rightful owner. The reports that arrived were a shocker. Both Place X and Place Y theories were nullified. The journalist and the political activist both were equally near or far from the pet’s legal ownership now. Given their humanitarian—animalitarian rather—cause, the animal welfare body was allowed to keep the dog and put up a pet adoption advertisement whenever they felt the dog was ready to take a master.

Possibly it was an over-friendly dog with a mission of brotherhood and love for all. But then, an all loving dog creates problems also. And these are not the times for secular, unqualified, all-loving affections.  

A Spicy Slice of Cucumber

 

From Ramjhoola, a street moves up north, along the eastern bank, bordered with numbered kutis for the resting babas on the right. There are iron benches and cast iron open pavilions overlooking the Ganges on the left. The holy river, in this stretch, has a few little beaches dotted with massive, beaten, smothered, rounded boulders. The beaches are in fact the sand banks formed by the sediment deposits during the flooded monsoon season. The people love to have an oceanic experience on these tiny sand bars.

It’s the second week of April at about half past three in the afternoon. The sun is mercilessly beating very hard right over the valley. The sunrays sting and bite. The waters of the holy river appear mossy green. Steady streams of rafts glide down from Shivpuri. The sadhus are sitting lazily, consumed by a strange, pleasant ennui which full time devotion brings in its wake. Even in this strong heat, some foreigners are sunbathing on the beach.

There are many Yoga and Ayurvedic massage centres along the boulevard. Here one can enter the portals of spirituality and well being either by enrolling in a Yoga course or getting an aromatic massage with scented herbal oils and pastes. 

You can expect as many sadhus as the trees around. The rains of the last three or four days seem to have vanished completely, leaving hardly any trace behind. It’s as hot as you can expect at this point of the season. The mornings have strong gusts of cool wind blowing down the valley, carrying the message of divinity from the Himalayas. The noons but proclaim the hot, sweaty, worldly authority of the plains down south.

‘Kheera khao Bhole, Kheera khao’ she preens. The intonation then shifts to ‘Cucumber, cucumber!’

The linguistic shift stands out as a little milestone on some iron bench. She is a tiny, petite woman selling cucumber slices for rupees 10 and 5. She must be about 70 years in age. Most importantly, her features give a clue to the fact that she has learnt to smile over minor irritants. Life turns very easy with this kind of temperament.

Her family stays in Delhi. They even own a little shop at a slum in Adarsh Nagar. Once her sons got married, she took sanyas. However, it was with a condition—she won’t beg to survive. She gets something or the other to sell over the changing seasons—peanuts and gazak during winters, fruit chats during summers. All this helps her to manage a lodging for which she pays 1,500 rupees per month.

She has a gentle smile and an effective laughter. ‘When I came here, I requested Ganga Maiya to give me that much luck to earn my own bread as long as my hands and legs allow it.’

She seems very peaceful with her non-begging sanyas. Her little enterprise allows her to stay on the banks of Ma Ganga. This is the biggest blessing to her.  

‘It’s a blessing itself to stay near Ganga Maiya!’ she is saturated with gratitude.

‘I do think about my family sometimes. I know they are doing what makes them happy, like staying here makes me happy. There is no need to walk forever. Just walk only that much as it takes you to the place that makes you feel really happy,’ her philosophy looks very lucid on her peaceful face.

She has her reservations about begging by those who have renounced the world. ‘In my opinion, one should keep working for one’s bread till the hands allow. Begging should be the last recourse,’ she looks at a rotund sadhu who seems well fed at countless community langars. 

The sadhu clears his throat, even scoffs a bit at her, takes a turn to look the other way. He seems to have been affected by the remark.

She picks up a slice of cucumber and puts her special masala on it and goes to the sadhu. ‘I’m sorry beta if my saying so hurts you. I said about my life. Only Ganga Ma knows the truth. How can an illiterate, ignorant old woman like me know the truth? All of us are the children of Ganga Ma. She is the one who feeds us whether we work for it or not. All are same to her,’ she caresses the young sadhu’s unkempt locks of hair.

The heat of her care melts the tiny traces of frown on the bearded face. He smiles and takes her offering. ‘Who will you give your love to if there are no receivers of love like us?’ he laughs and starts munching on the spicy slice of cucumber.    

Short in Body, Tall in Minds

 

Most of us keep our ambitions very lofty like the fruits very high up there among the branches of a tall tree. Then we get onto our toes, stretch our body, protrude our arms upwards to get a handhold at the object of our pursuit. That’s how life takes its course with our ever-stretched self. We have a culture of high fruits among the branches of tall trees. The more we elongate ourselves along the length of the target, the better it is taken as. No wonder, being tall is perceived as a big qualification for the game of life and shortness is simply taken as a kind of ‘disability.’

The so called ‘disability’ landed in the little yard of a poor tailor. He measured people’s hands, torso, legs, waists, wrists and chest to make fitting dresses. For the chest measurement everybody inflated for a couple of extra inches and thus rise in the tailor’s esteem. For the stomach everyone did the reverse to reach as near to the size zero mark as possible. All we want is a bit more here and a bit less there. Very rarely we are comfortable with being as we are.

The tailor was crestfallen as his measuring tape stopped at the same point while measuring their dress-making stats. They advanced in years, without adding hardly anything to their height. It was a dwarf pair of twin girls. The poor couple usually shed tears of agony for themselves and pity for the little ones.

‘I will never have the luck of making a beautiful full-grown young woman’s dress for them. It will be a kids dress forever,’ the dress maker lamented.

Those who had their aesthetics in place pitied the girls. The ones who lacked the spectrum of sensitivities in their heart would laugh at them and enjoy the sight. The parents had a permanent aching, sad corner in their hearts. Their siblings had a walkover in typical childhood rivalries and competition.

The girls grew up in age, if not in height, with a dream of rising in stature by becoming doctors. Nobody took it too seriously, taking it just a dream as they are. Most of the dreams retain their virtual status in our lives. Their little limbs carried them to the long path of passing the senior secondary certification and be eligible to appear for the NEET exam conducted for the entry to medical colleges. The so called normal girls of their age were running faster, scoring more, smiling better. They had average marks and the dream of doing MBBS was almost on the verge of becoming another broken dream. They had tried sample tests and found their marks far less than the qualifying benchmark.       

Now they smiled even lesser and walked with still smaller steps. Their ladder to the rise in the people’s esteem was almost broken. The neighbours pitied them even more. The parents had a still larger aching, sad hole in their heart. It was rapidly turning into the bylane of a sad story. They had a dream of walking with upheld stature on the main thoroughfare of life but now their situation was pushing them into the side alley of grey anonymity. They felt the bigger world would just roll over them like in a stampede. They are there just like ants to be crushed by the taller humans, they felt. 

Moosa Bhai of a charitable trust could feel their plight as they arrived to pick up their medicines at an NGO run dispensary. They looked even more diminutive having abandoned their dream of becoming doctors.

The good samaritan beamed like the silver edge of a dark mass of cloud, ‘If a person of six foot needs 600 marks in NEET to qualify for the MBBS course, you need just half of that.’

That day they almost ran to get back home. The information given by the kind gentleman was enough for them to do a bit of a search and to their immense joy they found that their physical condition was in the reserved category for the differently-abled children. It meant they will have a certain grace in qualifying marks. 

Emboldened with the new input, the tailor dived a bit deeper into his modest pockets and decided to get coaching classes for his daughters. A prestigious coaching institution turned them away citing their issue of height. The gentleman from the charitable trust approached the institute’s Kota headquarters. A bit of kindness is what separates the ‘make’ from the ‘break’. The institute HQ at Kota admitted them with a 60% fee concession. Thus was laid the foundation of realising the dream and save it from nose-diving among its unrealised brethren.

The girls knew the importance of this opportunity. It was their ropeway to lengthen their stature and thus beat the limits that biology had put on them. They didn’t want to get crushed under the bigger feet and legs in the stampede of life, living and survival. The ladder to go high and see more of life was set against the wall and they put their short legs into action to move up the rungs. They dived into the studies with so much of vigour and spirit that they would forget having even the food.

The beauty of such fights is that one starts at the subterranean level and by the time one reaches the point from where people generally start it has written a long chapter of invisible glory under the surface. Well, that’s what we mean by creating life. Blossoming a full flower from the faulty seeds is what we mean a real life. Not allowing the shortcomings to eat into your vitality like termites and get either wiped out or survive with stunted growth of character is what I take as a champion. 

The tailor’s so called ‘dwarf’ daughters, thus, rose above all odds to crack the NEET exam and look at life from the level most of us usually do without much struggle. Now they were not the kids who would look upwards helplessly to survive as becharis. For years their diminutive structures at 3.5 feet and 3.6 feet hijacked all their life, literally killing every normal dream. The qualification for the MBBS course turned them mini celebrities in the town. Their three other siblings, tailor father and homemaker mother grew in stature and were recognised as the family of the girls who had cracked the MBBS exam.

‘A doctor’s white coat of 1.5 feet is as good as that of 3.5 feet. It gets the same respect. With their little hands they will do big deeds. They will cover long distances with their tiny legs,’ the tailor said to his wife at night.

That night he had a very long and peaceful sleep as the proud father of achiever girls.

The Scented Mist on the Ganges

 

The Western society seems to have gone too deep into the recesses of impersonalized caverns. There loneliness strikes despite all the material prosperity around. We are human beings after all. We need to connect, build relationships, be happy and joyful with our friends and relatives. The chessboard of ultra-modernity shakes too vigorously and scatters away the pleasant pawns of our emotional connect and we find ourselves terribly alone in the congested bazaar. Spirituality workshops in the Himalayas hold the beacon of hope for many a footsore traveller who dump the materialistic bag and sit down for the food of the soul.

She is a very pretty European lady. German Bakery near Lakshman Jhoola looks on invitingly with its glass-fronted look of breakfasting spirit. The woman is sitting on a stone bench. A stray dog is lying in her lap. She is absorbed in caressing its ears. There are ticks and mites on the stray animal’s ears. She is removing this irritating burden very carefully. The dog is lying with closed eyes, its miseries melting under the warmth of her friendly touch. Her heart has a lot to offer. The dog himself is a big empty pool that is ever open to receive the streamlets of such affection.

The Indian men look at her more hungrily than any other skinny dog. They have their feast with their eyes even though they try to dispel the sinful thoughts at the holy town by the Ganges. Everyone on the path has hunger that drives him or her. Lust drives those who are yet to get over the physical and material cravings; love drives those who are acquainted with the illusions of physical desires and are looking for deeper relations of soulmates; care and compassion drives those who have absorbed enough at the lower rungs to feel the higher purpose of life; and ultimate liberation drives those who have come to feel the futility of all the aforesaid needs. 

She has disarming smile. She has come across whom she loves and who in turn loves her back without any conditions, without any pursuits and feelings of ownership and possessiveness. A lot many thirsty eyes cast fleeting, pining glances. The holy river moves quietly on its mission to purify, of absolving the guilty consciences of both real and imagined sins. It bears the imprint of the universe.

The noontime sun beats down at the peak of its energetic catapults. Fire and water mix for a cocktail of ascetic fluidity. The rippling surface has countless stars flowing down the stream. The mother river has the flowing expansion of stars and light in its veins. It has been flowing for thousands of years. It was there even before the Himalayas were born.

Two foreigner ladies are feeding banana to a monkey sitting on the railings. They want to click pictures with the naughty simian. An old sadhu, coughing under the force of a long draught of ganja, is ordering Sundri, a female dog, to attack the monkey. The obedient canine gives it a try. The monkey jumps up to catch the overhanging branches of a tree. The old sadhu cackles with laughter. The tourists are irritated. It spoils their chance of clicking a picture with an Indian monkey at the pilgrimage town.

The monkeys have chucked out a few bananas. They turn funnier now and assert their right to rascality. The male rides the haunches of the female and mocks vigorous thrusts. It’s an act of defiance and chronic freedom. The branches shake. Dry leaves and pods come tumbling down. The old sadhu cackles with fun again.

It’s but not sufficient to erase the almost permanent lines of sorrow and suffering etched on the piteous face of another sadhu sharing the iron bench.

‘Sab jindagi kharaab ho gaya!’ he mutters and repeats it a few times.

He is a Bengali and suffers from chronic digestive disorder. ‘Bhajan nahi hota, kyonki bhojan nahi ho pata!’ he ruminates, rolling his fingers over his stomach.

There are so many community langars that are running round the clock to give enough scope to mendicant paunches to spread their girth and look stately well-fed babas. There are many rotund sadhus around. He feels the pangs of complex as he sees them gobbling down copious amounts of charity food and digest it like bulls and then sleep and snore like healthy buffalos after smoking ganja. 

Pointing out that he cannot do full justice to the people’s spirit of charity, with a suffering look, he shares his story. He believes he was poisoned by his wife. Snake poison it was, he is sure. Vish! It massacred his innards, he believes.

‘She was a devil. My sister-in-law had advised me against marrying her. But I fell into the trap! It left my mind also cut down in size.’

Again he mutters, ‘Sab barbad ho gaya!’

I can feel that he is scared of death. I fake myself to be an expert palmist from Delhi. I hold his palm and stare at it like the last authority in the world on palmistry, even though I don’t know even the basics of the art. With damn shot seriousness, I tell him that he will survive till the ripe age of 100.

‘Now it’s guaranteed that you will live up to be 100. So choose to be happy instead of staying sad all the time.’

He is thoroughly relieved with the ghosts of death dispelled under the barrage of my oracle. Dent at the idea of death, its probability getting pushed away into the future, acts as a massive sedative. I see the pal of gloom shifting from his eyes.   

Allaying his fears I move on. Sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by luscious green, huge, majestic mango trees, absorbing the feeling of awe for mother nature and its bounties, and feeling a bit guilty that everything, apart from we human beings, in nature gives back to it in some form for taking its sustenance. We just not only plunder our share but the collective share of all other species of flora and fauna, giving back environmental degradation, pollution and chaos. In our effort to add to our share of comfort and convenience, we have, inevitably, let loose irreversible damage to the beautiful, self-evolving, counter-balancing forces of Mother Nature.

A small cow arrives and starts rubbing its muzzle with full and unconditional love. One just cannot say no to such unqualified dose of affection. I take out my sole banana from the bag and offer my share of love. The little cattle eats it. It but wants more, turns pushy, won’t go away, rubs its muzzle on my pants, licks my hands and pulls at my bag. I am forced to take to my heels. The overdose of unconditional love may hamper one’s capability to digest even the under-dose of conditional love. I am no saint, neither I am on the path of enlightenment. I am merely a traveller on the path with my motley mix of good and bad in varying proportions. So without too much guilt of conscience I run away from the holy animal. 

Life has to be lived with water-like fluidity. It’s not advisable to hit one’s head against the stony walls of virtues, just like it’s highly objectionable to jump full time into the pool of vices. Moderation avoids many a fall, just as it avoids many an airy impractical flights in the air. One is well grounded with moderation. Walk with balance brothers and sisters.

It’s wholesome and nourishing to be a footloose journeyman on the path that doesn’t pull you towards a particular destination. I walk for many kilometres along the banks of the holy river and as I am returning in the evening, the valley has fragrant mists over the holy waters. As prayers start in hundreds of temples, the incense fragrance mixes with the mists to give scented mists on the Ganges.       

An Azaan for Ramayana

 

And the follower of the frontier Gandhi, Mr Khan, landed himself in a big trouble. Radicalization was peeking from every nook corner in the world. The openness and friendliness of cultures was shutting its door to allow designed narratives to suit the power games. Taking negative inspiration from the numero uno Islamic radicalization, even peaceful and accommodative societies were using the tools of narrow-mindedness and rigidity to enjoy more power and pelf. India is no different now.

Mr Khan, the national convenor of the Khudai Khidmatgars, the Pashtun non-violent movement having its roots in the struggle against the British government, was denied bail and was languishing in jail for the last one month. The trial did not appear to take off any time soon, as the courts held only urgent matters due to Corona lockdown. His case was minor one, so all he could do was to wait for the normal hearings to start at the courts. Still worse he tested positive for Covid-19.

The illustrious milestones of the past are redundant now, except getting a single mark in objective question paper in some competitive exam for clerical level governmental jobs. The India for which the Frontier Gandhi had fought now stands almost unrecognizable, leaving even the memories of such movements historically obsolete. It’s sad but very true. This is what we know as change. However, things are changing too rapidly. The organization Mr Khan had revived ten years back now practically appeared an orphan with the patron behind the bars.

Despite all the hate and anger around, it’s only the smiles on faces like him that hold the ray of hope for our joint survival. He literally worshipped the Frontier Gandhi. Reviving the organization in Delhi, he plunged headlong into the noble cornerstones of helping the needy and nurturing communal harmony.

Azaans never stopped him from becoming a wonderful singer of Tulsi Ramayan. Let me put a little question here. How many of the so called staunch defenders of Hindutva can recite even a few verses from the holy scripture? Mr Khan’s recitation of the great Hindu epic was enchanting. Hindus of all hues got devotionally charmed by his pious rendering of the great epic’s verses. He rarely missed a chance to identify with the religious traditions of his Hindu friends.

‘Festivals, celebrations, goodness, hymns, gods belong to all,’ he maintained.

A group of his Hindu friends was going for Brijbhoomi pilgrimage, the karmabhoomi of Lord Krishna. With his interfaith group, he performed Brij Parikrima, the 84 kaus pilgrimage. All along the days of walking on naked feet, his religious sloganeering in praise of Lord Krishna and Ma Radha was as good and effective as any of his Hindu friends. On the last day, they reached the Nand Baba Mandir at Vrindavan and were ceremoniously received by the priest.

Carrying the inertia of devotional fervour, Mr Khan expressed his willingness to offer namaaz at the temple. The priest looked convinced and even agreed that since it was a sacred place he could perform namaaz there. He and one of his Muslim friends performed namaaz at the temple premises. In his enthusiasm for communal harmony, he made a short video clip and shared it on the Facebook. His friendliness and respect for all religions appeared to be the hallmark of the video.

There were many who applauded this interfaith endeavour. But then, we have so many small-time, career-aspirant politicians who find it the easiest to use communalism to climb the rungs of the political ladder. It’s a very lucrative short-cut to get noticed by the wielders of power. The majoritarian communal rhetoric guarantees a safe passage to the corridors of power these days. No wonder, the organizer of a local Hindu organization found it an insult on the face of sanatana dharma. He lodged an FIR against Mr Khan.

‘He is trying to convert temples into mosques! It’s the start of temple jihad by performing namaaz at our temples!’ they yelled.

The majority of people across all faiths won’t have any issue with such friendly gestures. But when did the majority have a say in running its affairs? The few who find such things objectionable have the means to turn the unobjectionable into chronically objectionable. Well, that’s the skill that really pays well for the power aspirants through the art and craft of politics. 

An FIR was emphatically lodged at the local police station. A tiny storm in the tea cup brewed as they even held a protest march across the narrow streets at the pilgrimage town. The police went into action. The offender was arrested. As they took him to the police station, he kept chanting the melodious hymns of Tusi Ramayan. The policemen looked sheepishly. Hardly anyone of those who got him arrested over the infringement on the Hindu territory knew even a single hymn.

Well, that’s the irony of the times. But can you stop a nightingale from singing its songs? Mr Khan was then heard regaling his fellow prisoners with his Hindu devotional songs.

‘He is a Muslim by mistake, must have been a Hindu in many, many previous births!’ the jail superintendent mused.

Till he got the bail, Mr. Khan regaled his prison audience with his melodic rendition of Hindu prayers, hymns and songs. Most of the prisoners respected him and addressed him very cordially as ‘Khan Sahib’. The so called hard core, officially declared criminals may be open to the idea of secularism in spirit, but the hard hammered opposition to it in letter by the practicing politicians is what runs the show.

Not even for a day did Mr Khan get to rue over his arrest because the prisoners felt they needed this nice dose of devotion in their lives.

Mr Khan thanked Lord Krishna and the almighty Allah for taking him to a place where his devotional singing was needed the most. Times surely change and he got bail after two months. When he was released on bail many steely eyes had moisture. The stony gaze of criminality was thawing on the warm hearth of his open-hearted faith.

In these two months, he had furthered the cause of goodness and religious harmony far more than he would have done outside.  

A Book, Bikni and Two Smiles

 

It’s a small beach, obscured by trees, rocks and kutis, somewhere between Ram Jhoola and Lakshman Jhoola at Rishikesh. The gradient falls steeply towards the water. Bathing is prohibited. There is a warning signboard.

‘The water level suddenly goes up to 1-3 meters. People have drowned here!’

Sitting cross-legged with waters up to my chest, I am chanting mantras. I am trying to emulate the advice given to me by a swamiji that if I do this, miracles will manifest. Well, who doesn’t want miracles in life? Everyone seems in dire need of them. I was thus no exception.

A sun-glassed white beauty arrives with a seductive gait and spreads a cloth on the sand. Her skin’s urge to get sun-kissed must have prevailed over the authoritative pull of the clothing that uses our feelings of shame and insecurities to keep us under the garbs. So there she drops all her clothing and lay sunbathing in her bikni.

At a distance, to the south, on the high boulders over the band, some Indians are looking over, mesmerized by the Goa-type spectacle. They but hesitate to come near. How will you come if you have your legs tied by guilt, suppression, lust and scores of spin-offs born of repressed sexuality? So they made the most of it from a distance.

A white-woman crazy Indian approaches her. She politely exchanges greetings. Her courtesy is taken as consent. The Indian stays staring at her. She picks up her book to tell him indirectly to respect her privacy. He moves away with defeated but terribly unwilling steps. The way he walks it looks as if a river is trying to go uphill.

She isn’t too far from me. Her bluish tainted glasses face me as I take a little slice of the spectacle from the corner of my eye, like a child steals a toffee from the counter jar while mama buys grocery. I have to keep my chanting holy, so I try my level best not to steal another toffee from the counter. All of us have our weaknesses. I can easily overlook a woman in bikni if I choose to, but I fail to ignore the spectacle of a woman reading a book at a public place, bikni, no-bikni or fully veiled. The book draws me to steal the toffee again. The title glares even more profoundly than her curves under the sun. Fifty Shades of Grey. I stumble on my chanting and I am caught picking up the entire jar. She smiles. I find myself smiling back. Isn’t this world better with smiles among strangers? She is engrossed in reading the events. Nourished by two spontaneous smiles between two strangers, my chanting feels even better now.   

A haggard looking tall backpacker is sitting near the shore, trying to explore the meaning of life. Two white girls, all aglow with the spirit of youth, run down the beach and jump into the water. They shout playfully. Their male accomplice is reserved in merrymaking though.

Two policemen wearing lifejackets arrive at the scene. They repeat the warning, impose their authority and the little bit of fun and floridity is disturbed on the hidden beach. The lost-looking tall foreigner moves up the boulders to go to the main path. In a small alley, a few steps down the main street his ears grab the calling of his heart.

‘Hello hasheesh!’ a sadhu whispers with mischief. They exchange the contraband. Money changes hands. As more foreigners walk along the path, the sadhu keeps trilling, ‘Hello hasheesh!’ The sadhus are much in demand and get a lot of respect from the tourists because some of them sell ganja.   

The peeping toms on the boulder get bored of just looking at the bikni woman and the book. So they also vanish. She gets plenty of sunny kisses on her skin and still more plenty for the fantasies of heart from the pages in the book, gets up, gets into her clothes, packs her things and moves back, but not without a wave of hand and a gentle friendly smile. I still maintain my chanting but smile back and wave also. Ganga Ma blesses with her cool shoves all around me. I have to chant for some more time for my miracle to happen, so I continue chanting.