The history of my clan

 

Here is a brief history for my clan brothers, the Dahiyas. It’s better to know one’s roots. Well, the present-time Dahiya is a time-twisted derivative of Dahae. It was a central Asian nomadic tribe. Well, we have grown up listening to our elders telling us that long-long ago our ancestors migrated from central Asian steppes. Later on, academic research proved the substance behind those oral chronicles. The facts that are presented here are taken from many well-researched books and sources presented by many western and Indian scholars and historians.

The Dahae initially lived in the north-eastern part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, in the arid steppes of the Karakum Desert near Margiana, alongside the Saka groups and the Sogdians and Chorasmians, and immediately to the north of Hyrcania. The name of the Dahae, attested in the Old Persian form Dahā, is derived from a Saka language name meaning ‘man,’ based on the common practice among various peoples of calling themselves ‘man’ in their own languages. However, one famous Western historian maintained that it meant ‘stranglers’. Well, there is a possibility of it meaning the both because in traditional patriarchy like the one found among Jat clans including Dahaes or Dahiyas, ‘men’ and ‘stranglers’ would come out almost the same.

The Dahae people lived in the region to the immediate east of the Caspian Sea. They spoke an Eastern Iranian language. The area was known as Dihistan and Dahistan during the Sassanid period. There is still a place called Dahistan in western Turkmenistan—the land of Dahaes, almost like Hindustan is derived from a literary expression meaning roughly ‘the land of the followers of Hinduism’. Then there is Dahestan in nothern Iran also. It was the area of a branch of Dahae who moved into northern Iran. My clan (the present time Dahiya, a derivative of Dahae or the people of Dahistan) was settled in the east of Caspian sea in central Asia around Oxus valley.

There is an ambiguity whether we were almost religionless nomads or the followers of a cult that allied with Zoroastrianism. Settled on the north-eastern border of the Persian Achaemenid empire, the Dahae people spoke a dialect originating from eastern Iranian language. According to the Babylonian historian Berossus, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, died fighting against the Dahae. But when it came to fighting someone who was considered a foreigner by all the feuding tribes in the area, that’s Alexander the Great, the Dahāe fought within the left wing of the Achaemenid army along with the Bactrians and the Saka against Alexander the Great at Gaugamela in 331 BCE.   

Saka coins from the Seleucid era are sometimes specifically attributed to the Dahae. They are the Dahae, who along with the Kangs and other Jat clans, fought Alexander the Great, on the north of Oxus river under their leader, Spitama. A whole division of Greek army, was cut to pieces at Samarkand in the valley of Zerof Shan. By the time Alexander reached there to take revenge for the ‘first Macedonian disaster’, he found only his dead soldiers to bury. He had to fall back and establish his camp at Zariaspa, but the valiant Jats under Spitama attacked his main camp, too. Alexander failed to defeat them, so this brave world conqueror started torturing the women, children and other non-combatant population. Meantime, the Achaemenid Empire fell at the hands of Alexander. Now he could focus on torturing the civilian population of the Dahae settlements.

Jat mathematics of ‘16 multiplied by 2 is equal to 8’ is still popular. You can imagine its crude version almost 2300 years back. They had a very easy solution. Alexander was torturing women, children and the old but the Dahae leader Spitama won’t accept submission even after the strong Achaemenid Empire had fallen to the great conqueror. Those simple Jats had a far simpler solution. The Dahaes themselves beheaded their unbuckling leader Spitama, and produced his head before Alexander. Only then he stopped the mean persecution of the general population. Many of them then joined Alexander of Macedon in his quest to India as mercenary soldiers. In this way a large number of Dahae Jats then joined the Greek army and when his Macedonian soldiers refused to fight in the Punjab, Alexander threatened to move ahead with his Jat (Bactrian) soldiers only. As per Greek writers, the Dahae under Alexander, were the first to attack the army of Porus in 326 B.C. This was not the first or the last time, when Jat blood was shed from both sides.

Jats are known to break each other’s head for the real illogical fun of it. They are highly prone to fight among themselves. I can still see this propensity opening out in street fights at a regular basis in Jat villages. So there were Dahae Jat soldiers in Alexander’s army now. But they had their own clan brothers who dreamed of breaking their heads. These fellas aligned with Porus. In this manner, following their querulous ways, the Jat clans, looking for better land and pastures, started migration to present time India.

I can still see the bloodthirsty craze for owning more land in my clan. Every Jat settlement has many bloody feuds for land that resulted in killings and lynching. But we are changing. Agriculture has been our only type of culture but now with education we see more cultural colors beyond farming fields. As of now, there is a tight clump of fifty odd adjoining villages of erstwhile Dahae, the dwellers of steppe plains and Oxus valley, who still hold their distinct identity in Sonipat district of Haryana. The Sultanate came, the Mughals came, the Britishers came but we kept sticking to the lands we had occupied before them. So near to the centre of power at Delhi! That shows our propensity to stick to our land. They also realized that these fellows will bite back if disturbed. So the seats in Delhi kept changing but our clan kept sticking to its chunk of land at all costs. They killed, got killed in return, kept on killing each other as well, but stayed there.

That’s how nationalities form. The bloody fluidity of changing border lines and people moving this way and that way. The Britishers were the wisest of the lot who occupied Delhi. They knew the art of human resource utilization. They knew that these people are very quick with arms and very slow with minds, as Rudyard Kipling famously said about Jats. So to pamper to the vanity of our ego they declared us a martial community and put batons, swords and rifles in our hands. Even within my memory, I have seen and heard about many family feuds for lands where people have been killed. There have been honor killings, far more than you would believe as per official data. The women and female children have faced a lot of discrimination. But now Jats have cultivating their mind like they did in the fields. We have hundreds of officers in prestigious all India services. There have been commendable fighters for the army. There have been Olympic gold medal winners and scientists. But still a lot has to change I can feel.   

That’s how histories are made, willingly unwillingly. We assume, we accept, we ignore, we selectively choose, we deliberately ignore. Just to justify our present. Or our goals that we hold sacrosanct and higher than others. The tribe from the steppes whose soldiers were recruited by Alexander the great now form prestigious fighting units in Indian military. Times change. The rulers change. Nationalities get redefined. Boundaries change. Names change. People change. Languages change. But what doesn’t change is the same age old virus of hate, fear and greed. It keeps alive in one form or the other. What drove people thousands of years ago to beat their basic fears still drives in a technology-sharpened manner.   

The Window

 

‘The Window’ is a beautiful Persian movie. No big efforts at super-heroism, no ironies of heart-breaks, no bombastic romance, no gooseflesh rippling drama, no thunder-stricken rigmarole of saving the planet from the aliens. It’s not about chafing thoughts, it’s all about the frolicking gaiety of common emotions in the life of common people.

Beyond the grinding millstone of bigger caprices, it’s about sublimated emotions. It creeps genteelly like a flowery vine. It’s a long-drawn painting of beautiful hills, smatterings of snow on the slopes, chatty streams, green pastures and a sense of virginal peace to tow all these along. There are no chivalric, lionized doctrinaires delving into deep mysteries of human existence. It’s a gently flowing painting on a self-absorbed canvas. The human characters simply add to the soft shades of the softly evolving painting.

In his small world, little Ali takes soft, chiming steps to be a nice human being. With a working-man’s prudence, he contrives a canvas and paints his simple pictures using pomegranate juice, egg yolk, charcoal and leaf paste. He paints to bring a smile to a girl who is bedridden and cannot come out to play. The old, reclusive painter who teaches him to paint has an unfinished painting by his son who has gone missing.

The missing young man loved portraying virginal, untouched scenes. He has left an unfinished painting of a lone tree on a hilltop against the background of snowy peaks. As a sort of gurudakshina for his old painting teacher, little Ali roams around the hills to find the location of the tree in the unfinished painting. He finds the place and this is where the old man comes across the grave of his lost son.

Then the caravan of life takes Ali’s family away. Before they move, little Ali gives their small TV set to the sick girl’s poor family. She already has started smiling looking at those softly drawn pastures, streams, sunrises and hills painted by Ali. Through his little acts he is learning to paint a real life beautiful picture.

Hunting for a Hunter

 

During our childhood, my brother loved birds, mostly as pets. Flying birds cannot excite a child like they stimulate the poets. He fancied catching a hawk and carry it as his pet. A boy with a hawk surely would go as the undisputed leader of the neighborhood urchins.

Shikra is a relatively smaller bird of prey. The wilderness around the village was yet to be tamed. It meant we had many shikras in the sky during those days. The bird hovered in the air—at one point in the sky like a helicopter—as it took aim at some field rat among the bunch-grass, sedge and shrubbery around the village pond.

The majestic hunter caught my brother’s fancy. He mustered up his band. They observed that the small hawk suddenly swooped down, literally fell over the rat. There would be a scuffle of few seconds before it took to air again with its take-away. And here the band of boys smelt a chance. They procured a big, wicker-worked fodder basin used to feed cattle. They planned to hide among the bushes and drop the instrument made of mulberry switches and canes over the hunter, while it struggled on the ground to tame its prey.

The thing was thrown hundreds of times over a period of weeks. And finally they had the catch. The cattle feed basin landed on an impressive cluster of bushes. The hawk made a timely escape. As they approached to retrieve their hunting gear, a big black snake hissed from under it. A snake being too much for a pet, they ran away leaving the snake with its nice kennel. An elder person had to go and fetch the thing after the snake had rejected its new home, finding it reeking with cattle saliva and sunlight filtering through the narrow chinks.

A Laborer of Love

 

The early winter of mid-November carries a sort of primeval magic and brings vanloads of smiles to the little garden. With its soft brush, the early winter seeks to iron out the flaws and wrinkles in our tangled fates. Everything seems fresh as if holding onto some newfound belief. There is a joyous yearning to bloom and expand.

The scarlet, yellow and orange marigolds are dew-bathed. They are unpretentious and decent in colors and soft in smell. They don’t lead an extravagant life and are the octogenarians of the flower world.

The festive spirit seeps into the Jesus thorn. The sorrowful writhings of its prickly stem take a backseat as its red flowers take the front seat in a modest show of flowery pageantry. It’s simple button-like flower with two dull red petals twirled around with a yellow centre. A kind of Taoist symbol of the merging duality. It’s aptly named—thorns on the stem and the Lord’s smile winning over the thorns.

The yellow English rose is shapely and attractive. It’s a hardy flower and stays for a few days. But there is no smell in it. The flowery soul is missing in the flowers that have no smell and look good only. The desi gulab is redolent with fragrance. It’s soft and malleable; its petals scatter without pain and sprinkle their perfumed existence on mother earth like in homage. The smell-less hardy English rose stays for a longer time. A kind of over-attachment. It turns into a piteous corpse while still clinging to the branch. It wants to retain its beauty. The petals start decaying making it ugly after a time.  

Coleus (mukundi or pather choor) appears to be an illuminating and intuitive plant. It has heart-shaped scarlet leaves with green frills around the edges. Its leaf itself seems a flower because it’s decorated as such. It’s said to cure many diseases ranging from cholera to cancer.

Did the honeybees go away for a few days to dupe the honey buzzard because he got greedy and started coming daily? They have returned now. It’s a bigger ball. Probably they allied with another little group of lost bees and formed a bigger one. This time they have chosen a strategically more secure branch on the curry-leaf tree. Late November has many flowers in my small garden and they need not go too far to collect pollen for honey. As I stand in the garden, a delicate fragrance of wild honey wafts around me. It’s better to have little winged visitors who go dancing on the flowers. It keeps your hopes alive if you have the delicate smell of honey wafting around you.

The birds also feel better. You can make it out from their songs. Asian pied starlings are very gossipy. They always land on a tree in a little group and are always very excited and talkative. They seem to have a lot of things to chatter about. But somehow they don’t seem bitchy.

The main advantage of having cats in the garden is that the squirrels stay away. They are great at stealing eggs, especially the eggs of scaled munias. The rufous little bird with a black and white checker-work on its breast is not quarrelsome. Their notes sound sweet even when they are angry. The nest is high on the branch where the cats cannot reach. So it looks a likely case of successful hatching this time.

These are hard times. To attract love one has to make a lot of noise and be at one’s showy best. The little guy, the purple sunbird, is in a flurry. He is excited to get some love. The Parijat trees have started to retain their flowers to make seeds as December approaches. The sun is emerging above the mist with its minute-by-minute evolving compassion to give warmth after a chilly night. The little bird takes a sip of the dew-laden white blossom. It then hops around in excitement, showing exquisite energy through its flitting and flashing maneuvers. It slightly twitches its tail and shakes its yellowish underside as the furtive notes of chik-chik-fich-fich-sich-sich-hitch-hitch pierce through the air.

Marvelous is the play of passions. Its magnetic appeal makes it both miraculous and mundane at the same time. Love, and oftentimes infatuation, keeps one hostage to the core of its melody. Flying with flamboyance, chirping out its ephemeral emotions, it is calling its partner. I hope she hasn’t ditched him for a handsomer bird.

You have to work hard and be serious to retain the love of your lady. Love might be mystifying but there are practical matters to attend as well. It jumps onto the banana cone, a scarlet leaf is unfolding at the upper end, exposing another row of tiny fingers with wispy, hairy ends. It takes a quick sip from a tiny banana finger and seems sobered a bit. It then gives quieter, sweeter notes of peek-peek-peek.

You cannot just call back your lady by being all out aggressive. Aggression is devil driven. It breeds emotional self-destruction. Pain and loss are its selfish sidekicks. You have to be magnificent, primarily with maturity. You have to show your softer side. It now looks a deadly charmer indeed. And there she returns, putting his soul at rest. They are very happy to be together again and go hopping around the neighboring trees.

A Miracle that Life is

 

The game of life and death is admirably enigmatic and stays as big a mystery as it ever was. The eldest woman in our locality is still going perkily to get her old age pension. A decade back her pulse was gone. It wasn’t tragic and scary for her family as one isn’t too serious about old people these days. She was very old even then. The only issue was that her daughter’s fire ceremony in marriage was just minutes away when she stopped breathing. The marriage function was irreversible at that stage.

A new beginning at the threshold and an old chapter closing. It made the situation a bit tricky for the family. So they shifted the corpse to an inner room without announcing the news of her demise to the public. The marriage ceremony was happily completed. The girl was seen off to go to her in-laws’ place. Then they decided to check on the corpse. They found her awake and in proper senses. ‘Why did you put me in the room, I couldn’t see the pheras of my granddaughter?’ she muffled her complain. ‘But you were surely dead!’ they exclaimed. ‘Yes, I was gone to a distant place but the big mustached fellow yelled, “It’s not your time yet, why are you here?” and they pushed me back.’

Well, a few people have shared a similar experience during their near-death experiences. But it remains a big mystery. Usually we take them as hallucinations of a brain struggling to survive. But I’m open to the idea that there may be more to the issue beyond the scientific explanations.  

Schooldays

 

Those are the days stashed away in a dusty closet. But they hark my attention sometimes to those times of lovely sweet-nothings. The schools of the eighties of the past century in the villages appear like at the other end of the planet in the literary queue. These are fiercely creative and competitive times, unsparingly pushing us into the grip of selfish subjectivity. Modern education seems a savage downpour upon little heads.

But as students at a village school in the eighties, ours was a totally different world. Seeped in the sublimity of simple emotions, untouched by frustrated aspirations, we had all the time to be lazy within the premises, as if recuperating to go all agog after the school. We were all very lazy at the village school. The students and the teachers competed against each other in being relaxed and at peace with one’s being. The only time when the teachers showed some agility and quickness was while thrashing and shouting abuses with a cool nonchalance.

The students, in turn, were extra agile in evading anything distantly related to the studies. Laziness would get into an enchanting bloom during the winters. The winters would arrive with limitless grace to bestow the balmy days under the open sun for all of us to dose like a sunbathing python after a hearty meal.

It was a small world and the expectations weren’t high. In fact, there was hardly any expectation from almost all the students. As the temperature dipped, the main priority shifted to get extra Vitamin D. The classes would shift to the huge playground. Heavy on brunch, the teachers dozed on their chairs. They would bang the stick on the ground once in a while, throw some harsh word—they were very charismatic and ingenious in their favorite cuss words—and after the temporary fit of anger would again get cool under the warm sunrays.

We would also go into automation mode—like a drowsy cow mulching fodder with eyes closed. We munched upon the dry grass. We chewed a lot of it during the long-drawn days, waiting for the sun to cross the horizon. Doing jugali like a buffalo is a kind of meditative practice. It takes you beyond the hard edges of time. Time passes off without too much of a burden. The birds sang in the trees with a virtuous acclaim. And we would lose a bit of that poise only during the last period as we waited for the last bell to go active again the moment it was heard and go hopping for an active evening spurred by a voracious variety of childhood antics.

A Happy Man

 

Most of us are running after a job, car, house, man or woman under the belief that after achieving this we will become happy and joyful. The mirage keeps shifting and the misery of life follows us to the grave. Rashe but isn’t trapped in this game. I offer him two quarters of liquor for a small errand, a very small task in nature. He isn’t interested. I offer the option of giving the reward now itself with the additional choice of him carrying out the task later, at a time of his choice in fact. It doesn’t change anything. The fact is that he doesn’t require the thing today and taking the trouble of hoarding something for tomorrow isn’t in his dictionary.

Today his friend’s friend has a little function. Rashe’s friend will surely take him along. So why bother about a thing that is of no use today. I envy the stability of his mind. On the other hand, here we are the lesser fellows cowering under weightier issues, and forced on a precarious walk on a rope drawn between the poles of madness and genius. The walk is so heavy with the baggage of sizzling assumptions on the path of intellectual adventures. In a way, we are plagued with the fear of our own ideas. While he goes slowly and simplistically, moving like an elephant, coolly digesting all the melodrama around.

Tau's version of epics

 

Happy to be in his nineties, he would be still happier if he hits a century. He loves cricket and he knows the joy of hitting a ton and also the agony of getting out in nineties. He worked in the fields till a few years back and when his body could no longer keep up with his farming zeal, he tried his best to stay at the helm of the affairs and would lumber up to the fields and shout instructions at his son and daughter-in-law to do the chores properly. But even his vigilant overseer’s eyes failed him and his enthusiasm dimmed with the fading lights in his eyes. He now spends most of his time at home.

Well, farming has been his religion and agricultural tools his religious idols. His ears have also stopped keeping up with his enthusiasm to eavesdrop on what is going around. But his tongue is thankfully still prompt and spiffy. With all this background, Tau Hoshiyar Singh has his farmer’s version of Ramayan. We are talking about Lanka. ‘It was built by that devta who is often seen with his wife,’ he enlightens me on the subject. He means the God who is depicted with his wife in the pictures. ‘What name is that?’ he is asking his better knowing self slumbering in the subconscious chambers of his brain.

The problem is that lot many devtas are seen with their wives. We name a few trying to match what he has in mind but he clucks his tongue in a strong no. He then gives a clue. ‘It’s the one who has that snake around his neck,’ he hits the jackpot. ‘OK, you mean Bhagwan Bholenath!’ we chorus. ‘Yea, that’s him. He made Lanka but Ravana being a clever devotee and Bholenath being very simple, the city of gold was grabbed by Ravana as a reward for his penance,’ the story behind Lanka unfolds.

He has something to share about the masons and bricklayers also. ‘Lanka was made of gold bricks. Bholenath told the masons that the little pieces of bricks left out during the construction will be theirs as a reward. The workers but got greedy and would break far-far more pieces than required in order to increase their takeaway. In fact, they broke more than what was used in the walls. The angry God then punished them, “You guys will remain broken in economic means just like bits and pieces you have broken here!” So the masons and bricklayers are poor people. They keep on breaking bricks and however hard they may try they stay as poor as earlier.’ By the end of this narration, he felt sleepy and pulled over the sheet over his face and very soon we heard nice rhythmic snoring, giving enough clue to his bright chances of scoring a century of years on earth.

Artificial intelligence

 My first line ever on an AI-assisted tool happens to be a question.  "In what way you are different from a human's  creativity?" I ask.

ChatGPT is very honest I must say. It replies:

"As an AI language model, my ability to create and generate content is based on statistical patterns and algorithms derived from vast amounts of text data. While I can generate language that appears to be creative and original, my output is ultimately limited by the data I was trained on and the rules programmed into my algorithms.

In contrast, human creativity is often driven by personal experiences, emotions, and the ability to think outside the box. Human creators can draw inspiration from a wide range of sources, including their own imaginations, personal perspectives, and interactions with the world around them. They can also intentionally break the rules and patterns of traditional language to create something truly unique and original.

While I can generate content quickly and accurately, I do not have the same level of intuition, emotions, or personal experiences that drive human creativity. In this sense, my creative abilities are fundamentally different from those of a human being."

I, yours truly, find it more honest than most of we humans. But it can be misleading,  brutal, inhuman in the ways we can't imagine. Perfect lack of subjectivity has the potential to take it to the threshold of limitless objectivity,  which in turn may undo what we have created so far, or change the meaning of all the elements of human civilization as we know it. Of all our inventions so far, this one has the potential to turn the tables against the humans, as it introduces a mechanical replacement for spontaneous emotions, open ended volition,  fluctuating feelings, teasing Mysteries,  ever chiding curiosity and numerous other checks and balances that keep the destructive monster in us under check, somehow.  Now we want to hand over even our thinking to mechanized tools. And get busy in creating solutions born of our brain-substitute. AI-generated  mail drafts, chatting messages,  planning documents, summaries and reports...it will standardize the way we act, think, behave, even feel..a mass produced newage mentality and emotionality.  But then maybe it's inevitable.  It was fated to be. In our craze to surpass all life forms on earth, we were always expected to create something even above mankind.  It's not a doomsday portrait of a poetic man. I would accept it as one more dimension in evolution.  Moreover,  it seems a pretty communist concept,  this AI: A mass standardization of ideas, thoughts, emotions.

PS: This isn't tech-phobia. My only concern is that we get easily addicted to tools. So within a generation, we will be acting, planning,  thinking,  emoting the way algorithms want us. Then will we be the same humans, or some new avatar?

Chronicles of Ballu and Taqdir

 

Ballu is around 47 years in age but he is a proud grandfather for the last few years. That entitles him to leave an impressive heritage. The pangs of poverty make one petulant and self-serving. On the dirt-paths of survival, one becomes ever-perky and anxious. The frozen cluster of ‘need’ is unyielding in its grip. As a poor man liquor comes handy with its promise of unconditional surrender. He is no exception.

But childhood is all about ecstatic swings between dreams and reality. As a boy he loved horses. He galloped like a horse and made whining and neighing sounds of a horse even while we played monkey games. He was also far ahead of his times. At a time when any thought beyond cleaning oneself after ablutions with water seemed like shaking the foundations of the established religion, he cleaned himself Western style. Just that he had a green patch of grass to rub himself clean instead of the toilet paper.

This was a very nice little round patch of grass where we, saturated with childhood satisfaction, rolled in fun. We found it highly objectionable that he should use his ultra-modern style at that place. As a token of self-esteem, we plotted a scheme. We would fix acacia thorns, like booby traps, in the grass to wound the enemy. But luck was with him and we always missed the mark as his habit of continuous experimentation of seeking fresher grass for his rubbing fun saw him choosing the not-booby-trapped areas.

He came to know of the plot and knew that I was the ringleader. Naturally, he counter-plotted. He invited me to ride their old horse, saying it was the most docile creature on earth and hence would just tread at a snail’s pace, giving me the pleasure and fun of life. I enjoyed the slow ride, a kind of nice music with one note gracefully beckoning the next one with each step of the horse. Ballu then kicked the horse with full force from behind. The offended creature gave a sudden spurt and took to the capacity of its old legs. There was no bridle or saddle. I was holding just the cord of the neck-bell. As I perilously bounced on the back of the trotting animal, I slipped down to the neck and the human-garlanded horse went pretty fast. Thank God it felt thirsty and stopped by the pond and inclined its neck to drink water. I allowed myself to be dropped into the water like a little frog.

As we are talking of horses, mentioning another episode from those bucolic days won’t be out of place. Paltu Potmaker had a fine mare. Young Taqdir Singh had a penchant for horse riding. After grazing at the public lands around the village, the light-footed mare would return lumbering and tired instead of coming out fresh after grazing. It was an invasive trauma to the owner as he came to know about the adolescent boy’s fun rides on his mare.

Paltu was a startingly simple man, shy and self-effacing. But he felt offended in this matter. One day, Paltu was returning after relieving himself by the village pond. He carried his empty brass lota with him. Taqdir came full gallop raising dust on the majestic mare. In groove with the subtlest sense of time, Paltu gave the best shot of his life. Perfectly aimed. Paltu threw the brass utensil at the rider as he passed him on the path. The potmaker instantly proved that he had all the traits of a great marksman. He hit the rider on the forehead. Taqdir rolled over and fell in the sand on the path. The cut mark on his forehead continued to tell the fact that he was a once fine horse rider.

A poetic whisper in prose

 

Carried by our savage, irrepressible optimism, and the gutsy tradition to progress at any cost, our footprints now crisscross every inch of earth. Our penetrating feudalism now lords over the entire planet, forcing down the rest of the species into subjugation and slavery. With shrinking hearts and broadening brains, we are evolving grotesquely with our supra-physical desires and experimental mysticism. Stuffed into a definitive mindset, we sing the eulogies of human spirit in a monochromatic tone.

Open spaces are losing their relevance. The riveting drama is making us more and more insecure. There are lavish designs and props for the interiors. We feel uncomfortable with open skies and untamed wilderness. The gardens and yards are vanishing and so are the flowers. I’m but happy that my humble house is primarily decorated with the little garden and the unkempt yard. It’s a little world but sufficient to host a love-struck purple sunbird couple. They flit around spurred by their exulting, soaring emotions. After taking nectar from the flowers, they let out a full-throated musical ecstasy comprising duets, chorus or even an orchestra. I see them daily as they fly around in their little world. Their joy pervades the air with incorruptible lucidity.

A big party of brown house sparrows goes darting across the smog-blotted sky. It’s an assurance that, despite all the telltale signs of natural imbalance, there is still hope because the birds still fly and sing their songs amidst the taunting and tantalizing smog. We have hope till there are free birds singing joyfully.

There is an old dog in the locality. She has all the age-related issues including itching that hasn’t left a single hair on her body. We gave an injection. It helped her and she lumbered back from the door of death or deliverance. The fur is coming back. But maybe she has terrible pain somewhere and piteously whines at regular intervals. A puppy gives her ample company and howls to the histrionic capacity of his little lungs. He is learning the art of howling pretty nicely. When he lets loose his symphony, you get anxious as if the doomsday is coming. In any case, he seems a nice companion to the old dog in pain.

The kittens are handsome cats now. They spend most of the time in hunting for rats and female affection. They aren’t interested in purring around legs for measly human dole-outs. They carry a selecting and scrutinizing air around them. But they still remember the milk bowl as I find them sitting near it as I step out of the room in the morning. That’s my first sight of the day. They mew loudly as if blaming me for getting up late. They vanish for the day after taking their little share of milk. It’s a big world to explore, after all.

As I have said, there has been a proletarian revolution in the simian society. The band of lithe, cunning young monkeys has taken away the prettiest females from the ex-king’s harem, including the handsome most, curvy-limbed gal, his favorite. He has now the tail-less old crone to lick his scars. As a bruised scholar and beaten strategist, he is learning good manners now. I saw him taking lice off the funny coat of his tail-less old queen. He has to pamper her now; otherwise, she will also ditch him. Now I can understand how it must feel to lose one’s kingdom. His attitudinizing airs are gone. It’s a pretty methodical development as he doesn’t growl and threaten like earlier. Buckling under the episodic treatment of ill-favoring times, he just walks away sadly. Acceptance of the inevitable change is a good thing. But there are too many male monkeys, many of them sired by him only, and one of them will surely take away his old queen as well. It’s a narrative of love, lust, cruelty and revenge. Not willing to court any controversy, and far away from the burst of defiance and exuberant idiosyncrasies, his male callousness severally blunted, he seems sexually handicapped, all sedate and subdued. Life is all about farcical reversals. Now the elegant social capital—with its balls, music, gambling and reception—lies in the coffers of the younger generation.

जाट धर्म

 हरियाणा में एक कहावत है! जाट का हिंदू होना क्या, और मेवाती का मुस्लिम होना क्या। इसका अर्थ है: एक जाट केवल नाम मात्र का हिंदू है, उसकी मुख्य पहचान उसके कर्म से परिभाषित होती है जो धर्म, जाति, वर्ग और पंथ की सतही पहचान से ऊपर है। वह, एक अलग समूह के रूप में, अपनी मात्र धार्मिक पहचान से कुछ अधिक है, चाहे वह हिंदू, सिख या मुस्लिम हो। इसलिए हिंदू जाट, मुस्लिम जाट और सिख जाट अपने-अपने धर्म से कुछ बढ़कर हैं। वे एक विशिष्ट नस्लीय या जातीय समूह की अपनी एक विशिष्ट समानता, गहरी जड़ें साझा करते हैं, जिन्होंने समय बीतने के साथ विभिन्न धर्मों को अपनाया। लेकिन वे सभी जानते हैं और महसूस करते हैं कि वे अपनी मात्र धार्मिक पहचान से ऊपर और परे हैं। इसी तरह मेवाती मुसलमान नाम का मुसलमान होता है। यह केवल मुंडा मूंछ और टोपी वाला जाट है; बाकी सब तो वही का वही है: भाषा, तेवर, अल्हड्पन, एक खट्टी मीठी अपरिपक्वता, व्यक्तित्व मे एक ठेठ उन्मुक्त हवा का अह्सास। अभी एक प्रयास किया  जा रहा है की तमाम हिन्दू जाट अपने आपको सिर्फ हिन्दुत्व से परिभाषित करे। तमाम छद्म धर्मनिरपेक्ष और वास्तविक साम्प्रदायिक प्रचार को देखते हुए मेवातियों को भी मजबूर किया जा रहा है कि वे पहले खुद को 'मुस्लिम' मानें।

एक विचार

 पंंजाब मे फिर से खालिस्तानी आतंकवाद सिर उठा रहा है। ये सब चरमपंथी, अति-राष्ट्रवादी विचारधारा के काले उपोत्पाद हैं। आप "हिंदू राष्ट्र-हिंदू राष्ट्र" का नारा लगाते रहते हैं और यह तरंग प्रभाव पैदा करता है। यह (बेशक गलत तरीके से) दूसरों को भी ऐसा करने के लिए प्रेरित करता है। यदि आप पूरे देश को एक रंग में रंगने वाले हिंदुत्व की बात करते हैं, तो अल्पसंख्यकों को उचित रूप से खतरा महसूस होगा। अति-राष्ट्रवादी हिंदू विचारधारा स्वयं कट्टरपंथी मुस्लिम मौलवियों के अंध धार्मिक उत्साह की प्रतिक्रिया है, एक ऑफ-शूट है. इस्लाम के ठेकेदारो ने मुस्लिम जनता में एक खतरनाक तथ्य ड्रिल किया है कि उनकी पहली पहचान केवल ओर केवल एक मुस्लिम के तौर पर है। नागरिकता, पदनाम, भूमिका या जिम्मेदारी जैसी किसी भी अन्य कम पहचान से पहले उनकी पहचान एक मुस्लिम की है। इससे प्रेरित होकर हिंदू धर्म के दबंग लड़के अपने धर्म के नाम पर भी शोर मचाना उचित समझते हैं। मूल रूप से कट्टर इस्लाम ने अन्य धर्मों के बीच गलत तरीके से उग्र भावनाओं को प्रेरित किया है। शांतिप्रिय सनातन धर्मियों में से कुछ अब त्रिशूल धारण करने वाले हास्यास्पद, शरारती तत्व हैं। इसमे मुख्य अपराधी तो संप्रदायवाद की आग है। यह अब कई सारे हिंदुओं के दिलों में जल रही है। लेकिन उग्र हिंदू हृदय अन्य धार्मिक हृदयों को भी प्रेरित करेंगे। इसलिए जैसे-जैसे राष्ट्रवादी सूर्य की किरणें भारतीय विविधताओं पर पड़ती हैं, हमारे सामने खालिस्तान आंदोलन का पुनरुत्थान होता है। यदि आप चरमपंथी विचारधारा को बढावा देते हैं, तो वे भी ऐसा करेंगे। आजकल की दुनिया मे, 'सही' की तुलना में 'गलत' युवाओ को प्रेरित करने में कहीं अधिक प्रभावी है। मुसलमानों के खिलाफ व्यवस्थित भेदभाव की नीति ने 1947 के बाद सांप्रदायिक आधार पर अलगाववाद की दूसरी लहर के बीज बो दिए हैं। और जब भी कोई ईसाई मिशनरी जंगलों में किसी आदिवासी का धर्मांतरण करता है तो प्रलय के अनुपात में शोर उत्तर-पूर्व के ईसाईयों को अलगाववाद से जुड़ाव के लिए मजबूर कर देगा। भारत इतना विविधतापूर्ण है कि एक वैचारिक रंग में रंगा नहीं जा सकता। चमकदार राष्ट्रवादी रंगवादियों को सरकार बनाने जैसा अस्थायी लाभ तो मिल सकता है लेकिन दीर्घकाल में यह भारत की नींव को दीमक की तरह खा जाएगा। गायों के लिए जब मुस्लिम युवकों की पीट-पीटकर हत्या कर दी जाती है, तो निश्चित रूप से सिख युवकों को भी सांप्रदायिक आधार पर उत्पात मचाने और पवित्र गुरु ग्रंथ साहिब को कानून और व्यवस्था को चुनौती देने के लिए पुलिस थानों में ले जाने की खुजली होती है। कल को उत्पाती हिन्दु लडके भी पवित्र गीता को ढाल बनाकर कानून को चुनौती देगे। अति दक्षिणपंथी विचारधारा शरारती तत्वो के पागलपन को देशभक्ति के रंग में रंग देती है। लेकिन इस अवस्था मे भारत में हमारे सामुहिक महल को गिराने के लिए हमारे पास पर्याप्त धर्मो की विविधता हैं। भलाई एसमे है की समावेशिता की बात करे। आम आदमी से जुड़े मुद्दों पर चुनाव लड़ा जाए। आइए, राष्ट्रवादी क्रांति के चकाचौंध करने वाले रंगों को किनारे रख दें और राष्ट्र निर्माण के सरल उपकरण उठा लें।

उपसंहार: सभी बहिष्कृत सिद्धांत के पालनवादी एक कमजोर परिसर, यानी श्रेष्ठता के परिसर से अपना पोषण प्राप्त करते हैं। यदि एक पुनरुत्थानवादी हिंदू राष्ट्रवादी के रूप में आप अपनी विशिष्ट विचारधारा में न्यायसंगत महसूस करते हैं, तो क्या आपको नहीं लगता कि दूसरे भी ऐसा ही महसूस करते हैं? क्या आपको नहीं लगता कि एक खालिस्तानी भी उसी तर्ज पर अपने विश्वास को सही ठहराने की कोशिश करेगा? या आपको लगता है कि संकीर्णता का आपका विशिष्ट अधिकार उनसे अधिक है क्योंकि सनातन धर्म सिख धर्म से पुराना है? वर्षों में वरिष्ठता के इस सिद्धांत के आधार पर, दक्षिण भारत के गहरे जंगलों में  द्रविड़ आदिवासियों द्वारा पालन किए जाने वाले जीववाद का धर्म इस विशेष भौगोलिक इकाई के धर्म-शोषित विश्वास पर कॉपीराइट रखने का और भी बड़ा दावा करता है क्योंकि आर्यों के आगमन से पहले वे पहले से ही एक मानव समाज के रूप में जीवनयापन कर रहे थे। आर्यों के आने से पहले, जिसे अब हम हिंदू धर्म के आरंभ के रूप में पहचानते हैं, उनकी एक विशिष्ट संस्कृति थी।

Pa and the Elephants

 

My father demanded peace. New clothes, with their authoritative tautness and showy bickering, pinched his skin, burdened his bones and ruffled his philosophical demeanor. ‘New clothes are very hard on the skin. They put a kind of weight on you,’ he would complain. ‘They pinch and intimidate you,’ he would add. So the new set of clothes would go into watery deluge for three or four days to beat out their pinch, showmanship and gimmickry.

As the clothes would wear down with usage and mellow down to old age softness under the rigorous scrutiny of hundreds of washings, he would get in groove with them, finally accepting their presence in sync with the repose inside. ‘The only problem is that when a pair of clothes is really worth wearing in softness, it’s the time to discard it,’ he complained. My mother and sisters won’t allow him to feel at his best and go decked up in extremely soft, read it tattered, kurta-pyjama just because he found them suitably soft and non-pinchy.

Pa loved smoking, first huge cigars during dandy youth, cigarettes in the slowing-down middle age and coming to a chain-smoking spree of beedis in the later part of life. But ganja was a strict no. Once while visiting Rishikesh, he got inspired to taste the unfamiliar substance. An old sadhu was taking majestic draughts at his ganja-filled chillum. Pa followed as a well-obliging newly hatched disciple. Then standing at Ram Jhoola swaying over the watery sprawl of Ma Ganga and a cold wind buffeting down the valley, he saw philosopher Plato walking over the Ganges waters. Many will term it as hallucination. But to me these are the realities belonging to a different dimension. Pa loved the works of ancient philosophers and had thoroughly read Plato’s works. So maybe Plato decided to give him a darshan, albeit when Pa was a bit tipsy on the swinging bridge.   

Father felt it best when he visited Rishikesh. ‘I feel it so light in my being when I’m there,’ he told us. Once Father returns from his Rishikesh trip. The bag isn’t yet on the floor before he tells the biggest news spinning out of his time by the Ganges. ‘Elephants would have eaten us!’ he reads out the scary news. Maybe still under shock because elephants don’t eat humans, they trample them. ‘Oh did they attack you?’ Ma is concerned. We prepare ourselves to listen to the hair-raising episode. ‘Yea, very near to that!’ Father builds up the momentum of the scary news. ‘How?’ Mother is serious. ‘We were going in the forest and there we come across them!’ Father stops as if still haunted by the biggest land animals on earth. ‘How many?’ Mother wants to judge the scale of danger on the numerical ladder. ‘Well, must be a big party because there were many heaps of dung on the path. We were saved just by a whisker!’ Father’s eyes are wide open with fear. ‘You guys got scared of the elephant dung,’ Mother laughs in her simple ways of a hardworking woman. Pa is irritated, ‘They were just couple of minutes away because the dung was still steaming.’ It was winter and fresh elephant poop let out vapors as a proof of its freshness and hence the just recent presence of the elephants. Mother has to accept the gravity of the danger. ‘What did you people do?’ she asks innocently. ‘We took a U turn and tried to run to the capacity of our lungs and legs,’ Father seems tired like he has been running all the way from Rishikesh to our village.  

Mid-November Musings

 

A bluejay or Indian roller (neelkanth) sits silently on the top branch of a dead neem tree. Dry, dead trees are nice perch points for birds because they can have an unrestricted view of the surroundings. A brooding fellow it seems, a silent bird with stagnant emotions right in the middle of some breezy, fluid moments floating around its beautiful navy blue and reddish brown colors. Then suddenly breaking its scholastic insights, it gives a vocal blast as it takes off yelling pakrr-pakrr-pakrr. The resounding warning startles almost all the birds around. Maybe it finds the morning too boring and decides to ruffle a few feathers. The pair of hummingbirds that is enjoying on the marigolds, which seems a novelty in taste because I haven’t seen them feasting on the marigolds before this, also shoots off for cover among leafy canopies.

Marigolds, the sturdy, unassuming flowers that keep their smiles for weeks. I have seen honeybees taking a siesta under the warm afternoon sunrays on the marigolds.

A Parijat branch hangs low. Whenever I pass under the tree, it touches the crown of my head. I feel blessed. When a tree’s branch braces against you, take a pause and feel the touch. The tree is extending its hand to greet you, bless you, touch you to heal. We just need to accept it.

I missed it to tell you before. There was only one rockchat in the house to begin with. It spent considerable time in the garden, yard and the verandah, and sometimes in the room itself. It shared my solitude with an equal right to the house. It looked a lonely bird that seemed to somehow feel the solitudional vibes emanating from the house. Then one fine day it had a partner. In this species both the sexes look the same, so I would take the liberty of christening its gender as per my convenience. I would say he is a boy of the house who has wooed a lady after having a feeling of getting well settled in the house. Now both of them are very happy together. All of us are looking for a touch of solace through companionship. Now they are spirited enough to enjoy their playful supper till dusk. The mosquitoes are flummoxed by a sudden dive in temperature. They keep knocking at the window panes and door wire-mesh. The rockchat couple nicely jumps around to take airy morsels. The littlest inconvenience is that now I cannot make out which one is the boy who got his partner here.

The skies have a treat. A group of eleven ducks goes quacking in V-formation. These sights are vanishing. There is no free waterbody in the village now. I saw thousands in the village during childhood. The village pond is engaged for fishing. It’s almost a little lake but they have spun a wire netting over the entire area to deny entry to the visitors from the Himalayas. Imagine a world where the ducks are denied entry to swim. The fish swim, of course. But only till the net is cast.  

Quite miraculously, the banana cone is still there after many weeks. Its deep maroon leaves peel off very slowly to the tug of dew and mist. It’s lucky to be still there because there are monkeys in the village. The bully alpha rhesus male faces a challenge. There are many lithe, adolescent heroes who are lustily eying his harem. He carries a big scar on his right shoulder and seems to have lost confidence apart from the prettiest female with whom he loitered around with much majesty, pride and big-time pomp and show as his queen consort. The young swashbucklers have surely lured her away. Well, she is within her rights to choose the prince of her heart. This morning the beaten king was seen with the tailless old queen. He had forgotten her altogether. But now she provides succor to his bruised soul. Earlier he would turn back and challenge we humans right on the spot. Today he simply showed his beaten bum and screeched a bare-toothed abuse from a safe distance. Times change. Nothing is permanent. But he has already crammed the village with his pedigree and this thought should give him some solace.

We match the monkeys in more ways than one. We mess things around—ironically even when we suppose we are organizing things, we are in fact sowing the seeds of more disorder and chaos later on. Our gallant spirit has seen us launching 8400 tons of objects into earth’s orbit. Our space-conquering spirits have seen us catapulting 25000 objects into earth’s orbit. As a result, there is a huge amount of junk that is floating in space. The future spacecrafts and satellites will need decluttering of space. So we will have space kabaris. The trash pickers can take pride in their profession now. It will be much esteemed in the coming decades. Your trash is someone’s treasure, very aptly said. But we are mindlessly turning mother earth’s treasures into piles of trash.

I light a diya a dusk. It’s a beautiful, little beacon of faith that lights my path into the dark folds of night. The next day the clay diya has a left out cotton swab of the wick. I put it in the flowerbed. There are a few tailorbird couples. Cotton is the basic building block of their nest made by sewing three leaves together. They are nice, skilled chaps and expertly stitch leaves to make a nesting cup. I think to be a great human tailor, it must be mandatory to be a diligent tailorbird in the previous birth.

It’s mid November. Gone are the pure mists. We now have the metallic haze, the smog. It kills slowly. Right now it burns the eyes and gives the throat an itch. But the birds still have their morning songs and that is an assurance for the time being. We have to believe in nature to save us like it has done so far.  

During the winters, the entire Delhi NCR, covering many districts in the neighboring states apart from the national capital, gets shrouded under smog. Stubble burning by Punjab farmers is generally blamed for Delhi’s smog. If Punjab fires are majorly responsible for the winter fog in Delhi, then Chandigarh should be equally polluted in November but it stays almost unaffected. Stubble burning is just one of the factors and that too temporary. The political class passes the buck onto poor farmers every year and keeps ignoring the long-lasting issues that make Delhi a gas chamber throughout the year.

Whose right is it to be a bigger excluvist?

 These are the dark spin-offs of the ultra-nationalist ideology.  You keep parroting "Hindu Rashtra-Hindu Rastra" and it creates ripple effects. It inspires (wrongly of course) others also to do the same. If you talk of an over-swiping Hindutva, coloring the entire country in one color, minorities will feel justifiably threatened. The ultra-nationalist Hindu ideology itself is a reaction, an off-shoot, to the blind religious zealotry of hardline Muslim maulvis who have drilled a dangerous fact in Muslim masses that their first identity is that of a Muslim before any other lesser identity like citizenship, designation, role or responsibility.  So the bully boys of Hinduism feel justified in raising a din in the name of their religion also. Originally, hardliner Islam has wrongly inspired fiery sentiments among other religions. A few of the peace loving sanatan dharmis are now trishul wielding mobsters. Main culprit is the fire of sectranism. It now burns in many Hindu hearts. But fiery Hindu hearts will inspire other religious hearts also. So as the shadows cast by the nationalistic sunrays fall over the Indian diversities, we have resurgence of Khalistan movement.  If you overdo it, so will they. The wrong is far more effective in motovating the mobsters than the right. The policy of systematic discrimination against the Muslims has already sown the seeds of second wave of separatism along communal lines after 1947. And the din raised to the proportions of pralya whenever a Chriatian missionary converts a Tribal in forests will force the Chriatians of north-east to think along separatist lines. India is too diversified to be colored in one ideological color. The shiny nationalistic colorists may gain temporary benefits like forming governments but in the long run it will eat the foundations of India like termites. When Hindu youths go lynching over cows, of course the Sikh youths also get an itching to go on rampage on communal grounds and carry Holy Guru Granth Sahib into the police stations challenging law and order. The far rightist ideology colors the insanity of mobsters in patriotic colors. But then in India we have enough religions to bring down our castle. Let's talk of inclusivity. Let the elections be fought over the issues that concern the common man. Let's put the blinding colors of Rashtravadi revolution on the sidelines and pick up simple tools of nation-making.

Postscript: All excluvist principles draw their sustenance from an atrophied complex, the complex of superiority.  If as a resurgent Hindu nationalist you feel justified in your exclusivistic ideology, don't you think others also feel the same way? Don't you think even a Khalistani will try to justify his/her belief along the same lines? Or do you think that your excluvistic right of  narromindedness is greater than theirs because sanatan dharma is older than Sikhism? From this principle of seniority in years,  the religion of animism followed by Dravadian Tribals deep in the forests of south India has even a bigger claim to hold the copyright over the faith of this particular geographical unit because they were already functioning as a human society with its distinct culture before the Aryans arrived and laid the foundation of what we now recognise as Hindu dharma.

At a Peasant Wedding

 

It’s quite tough to be a non-drinking member of a wedding party in Haryana. Everyone is drunk to be in an enlightened dimension, leaving me the poor earthling struggling with the ground realities. Since truth is decided by the majority, I feel myself clueless and almost an idiot. The marriage DJ starts blaring. The massive woofers and speakers of the music system shake the ground under my steady feet. The liquor-lovers look more sure-footed with their unsteady feet on a shaky ground. The loud blasts of music leave my ribs shaken.

Drunk peasants give a fantastic thrust to their spirits. They challenge all norms of established mindsets, cultural matrix and constitutional niceties. It’s madly adventurous to be among them, I tell you. If you aren’t a fellow seminarist to them, then be prepared for an onslaught by the agents of anarchy.

Hinduism is indeed very liberal. The starting song is a dedication to drunkenness. ‘Bhola takes a bucket of bhang and shakes his bum to ecstatic dance’ is the approximate translation of the rowdy Haryanvi song about Lord Shiva’s fondness for bhang. They are so happy that the Lord Himself loves drinking. Dozens of liquor-lovers turn ecstatic.

Flying drones is prohibited without authorization in India. And so is celebratory firing. But most of what we do in celebration falls on the other side of law. A young man is flying a drone to make it the best marriage party ever to have visited the village. Another is firing angry vollies of bullets into the body of a helpless sky. I try to add value to their fun. ‘A drone just hovering around is no fun and so is the blind and aimless firing into the sky,’ I call their attention. ‘You try your aiming skills at the drone,’ I propose the scheme to the gun wielder. ‘You prove your expertise in flying by taking it away from the bombardment,’ I suggest to the drone flier. Dozens of voices grab the option and they are egged on to start the game. Even random, close-eyed shots would have a better chance. The boozed man’s careful shot shakes the skies. An electric wire finds the aim. Snap goes the wire with a bang. The scared drone crashes on an attic, making it a perfect drone attack.

There is a spin-off from the same wedding. I come home at night, hugely relieved to come in one piece. But someone bangs fists at the iron gate. He is a most distant relative, so distant that you lose the trail of the relationship if you try to go to the source, who has come attending the same marriage function. He is curtly denied entry into any of the houses he thought had a duty to entertain his stay. Perhaps someone suggested that the writer is a good option under the circumstances. So here he comes to my place. He is unsteady in gait but very steadily holds his feeble right to stay at my place. What will you do, if even after you declaring his totally unwelcome status through your gruff behavior, he pretends to be most at ease as if flowers have just been sprinkled over him, making him the most esteemed guest on earth? You have to be an out and out rascal in bad behavior to help him accept his unwelcome status. The roughest cut-sharp notes are simply songs of welcome to him, so here he is sprawled comfortably on the bed and I take my bedding on a cot in a corner in another room. But before that he prefers to be more welcomed through talks. He is very proud about his vast travels. ‘How many places you have visited in India?’ I am finally forced to ask, getting curious about his far and wide travels. ‘I have travelled far and wide!’ he declares. Then he enlists a thorough sketch of his forced entries into the houses in the neighboring districts within a diameter of 50 km. ‘I have travelled a lot,’ he declares with the world-weary finality of a traveler who has just returned after taking a trip around the earth or maybe even beyond. Thank God, this feeling of world-hopping travel got him sleepy and he dozed off.

But well into the depths of night, another liquor-lover is singing his bawdy songs against humanity. He has drunk away his land and domestic peace. The last installment of the compensation money for his land acquired for a new road project was swiftly drunk away. All that was left was a lakh of rupees. A smart guy cleverly branded his old car at 1.25 lakh rupees. The real price must be around 75000 rupees. He gave a discount of 35000 and sold the car for 90000 rupees. The liquor-lover hits the ceiling in hitting the jackpot.

In return of the favor done to the purchaser, the seller gets a promise to use the vehicle as and when needed till he gets a new car himself. It will be an exception though, he promised to the new owner of the dented old car. In addition, there was another condition. This one made the liquor-lover really happy. He had to promise to take the old owner and his group on two trips to Haridwar. Fun trips, they promised. The two proposed trips to the pilgrimage town saw the rest of the money going out of the pocket. The borrowing of the car turned out to be a generality, not the exception as promised earlier. There is no new car purchased by the previous owner so far. The frequent borrowings result in repeated tiffs between the neighbors. And carrying the momentum from one of the numerous tiffs, he is now tearing apart the shrouds of dark night with his piercing shouts.  

A Few Small Moments

 

Time is creeping ahead block by little block. It keeps on ticking to set up the colossal canvas of happenings. And commodified into its pawns we are also shifted around bundled with all our inflated myths. Among the gigantic plethora of events, there are little tales of agonies and ecstasies. This one here seems a sad tale. Life seems to carry a timeworn and dilapidated myth despite all the hypothetical, slow-dawning effervescence about it. And death, the colossal figure, snatches raw freshness to its age-old, wrinkled self.

A ladybird seems dead in the water bucket. I bring my fingertip near the drowned little colorful flier. Instantly crossing the vast chasm between life and death, it uses its energy held in reserves and crawls to the hand of the species that has destroyed countless fellow earthlings. I look at its beautiful red wings speckled with little dots. It gives gleaming insights into the vast array of natural colors and self-evolving designs.

I try to put it on the night jasmine flowers but it looks full of gratitude and moves up the finger. Getting it off is a very delicate, and tough, job. I am not aware that someone is watching me very closely. A rockchat has witnessed the rescue operation. It’s keenly interested in what I’m doing. Its dull rufous brown color is misleading. It’s not that dumb as it seems. Smartly it picks the ladybird and darts away, giving a triumphant chick-chick note that carries a wry sense of humor. Probably it thinks that I’m offering the little colorful beetle to it.

It’s one of the pair that hops around in the verandah and the yard and the garden ticking out ants, spiders and other little insects. Sometimes they sneak into the room and are very keen to explore the cage of we humans. They survey the room from the ceiling fan and their dark little eyes seem lost in the encyclopedic fog spread by our hopes and desires. I would say it’s a very inquisitive pair of birds and they want to know more about me. Once, one of them, boy or the girl I’m not sure, sat on my writing pad and very comfortably and assuredly eased down a drop on it. Maybe it gave me an autograph.

Sometimes, the rufous brown Indian rockchat is mistaken as female Indian robin, but it lacks the reddish vent and is slightly larger in size than the robin and carries a slightly curved slender beak. It flies like thrushes and redstarts and loves to hop and fly around human habitations. No wonder they have laid claim to the house. They slowly raise their tails as they take little jumps on the ground while picking their feed. They help this lazy countryside writer in keeping a check on the spiders in the verandah. Sometimes they come out even at night when there are moths around the bulb. The pair, quite unlike their unassuming dull color, has a vast repertoire of calls including territorial calls, begging calls, feeding calls, distress calls and roosting calls. But the usual call is a short whistling chee delivered with a rapid bob and stretch. Sometimes, they give company to the tailorbirds with their alarm calls, which is a harsh chek-chek. And when they are very happy after a nice lunch, they sing like thrush in their moderate, few-numbered notes. They are naughty sometimes and try to imitate the sound of other birds.

The honey buzzer got greedy and regularly flew down for three consecutive days. Now the bees aren’t just there to go flying around and gather honey for it. They left the site in irritation. You have to take away only that much as it won’t spoil the game altogether. Sadly, now my little garden looks incomplete without the bees. The flowers will miss them. Hope the tiny winged visitors won’t forget the garden and will come back some fine sunny day to get pollen for their honey and more flowery smiles for the plants.

A little rodent moves quite cluelessly in the flowerbed. Is it a shrew or mole rat? I’m not expert enough to know the difference. To a layman’s eye, there is hardly any difference between the two. I wish it to be a mole rat because they say it brings luck. What is the harm in wishing oneself a bit of luck? These are hard times after all. It’s twilight and a bluejay (Indian roller or neelkanth) suddenly swoops down from the neem branch, where it was sitting stoically for the last half an hour, and takes off a gecko from the compound wall. The gecko will have a nice flight till its carrier lands. Stay indoors you wall lizards if you don’t enjoy flying in the twilight.  

An Elephant Ride

 

I was once walking on my little legs by the side of the famished pot-holed road passing the village. I was coming back from the fields. A road-roller and an elephant were going side by side on the tattered pot-holed road. Three PWD guys on the road-roller, a bulky iron elephant itself, went with a lumbering muse. The real elephant carried four sadhus who maintained the mammoth creature for their mendicant journey. They had exactly the same slow, unmindful pace, none of them willing to overtake the other. Traffic wasn’t much during those days. Now and then a bus, truck or tempo would crawl respectfully from front or behind and carefully maneuvered the crossing by taking its tyres below the road on the opposite side.

I walked behind watching the spectacle unfold. Who would mess with a road-roller and an elephant on the road? So the vehicles maintained their distance. The PWD guys and the elephant-riding sadhus looked very confident on account of their solid occupancy of the road. They even chatted in a friendly way, going slowly side by side.

The sadhus had opium chillums in their hands and the PWD guys got desirous of some free spirits. They requested and it was accepted by the sadhus already in free spirits. Two sadhus got down with a chillum and got onto the road-roller and the driver enjoyed the smoky bonhomie. The road-roller rolled almost of its free will. The other two PWD guys stood in front of the elephant as it put its trunk under their bums to hoist them on its back and there they enjoyed the inhalations of freedom with the couple of sadhus on the elephant. And there I walked behind looking at their merry ways. It was a far gentler world then.

Chand the Great

 

Chand is in his early fifties now. He is unmarried and works as a truck driver. He is a simple, unassuming guy. You hardly notice any airs around him. But he has a specialty. Presently, the current generation has lots of social-media ventilated issues to talk about. But if we go two decades back, Chand was a solid topic to be discussed about, especially among the endowment-size crazy youngsters. Without any competition, Chand was, and most probably still is, the best-hung guy in the village. Literally, every male would lose confidence in himself at a mere look at Chand walking dourly.

Chand was childlike in this regard. He never wet his shorts while taking bath, sitting innocently on the tube-well’s water tank wall and giving himself a nice scrubbing bath while dozens of eyes stared in awe. And the legend spread. He was almost a poor man but people far higher in social standing gave him respect due to his USP. People joked that the reason he is still unmarried is because no father would put his daughter in trouble.

There was a story of mythical proportions that even nautch girls on the GB road in Delhi refused him service. One tormented woman, who had taken the risk and accepted money, bit him and escaped while it wasn’t yet over for him, saying, ‘Who wants to be hospitalized for his bloody 100 rupees!’ She slapped him very hard and threw his 100-rupee note on his face. After that he was spurned by one and all in the area.

There was a famous gupt rog vishesagya, the sexologist, in the town. Dr. Lubhash Chugh’s name was scribbled on all walls in the region ranging from temples to schools to private houses. Wherever there was space, he got it painted with his offer of turning docile sheepish males into rampaging horses. That was the only form of advertizing we saw while growing up because he didn’t leave an inch of wall space for any other product or service. Apart from this, secondarily though, he claimed to treat venereal diseases also.

He had grown sagely old after decades of groping his fingers among people’s groins, gleefully looking for the weak spots. The people joked that he had taken nayan sukh, solace for his eyes, of ogling at one million guptangs, secret organs. But the old man was at the shock of his life in his eighties. He still loved the art of checking guptangs. As fate would have it, Chand got a painful boil on his special thing. It forced him to visit the venerable doctor. The old doctor gasped, gasped for life in fact, as he stared at the thing. His mathematics of male anatomy gone haywire, he gasped for words. ‘O my God!’ is all he could manage to mutter as he struggled with words. He was lost in thoughts as if his life’s philosophy had crashed. Then he suddenly flared up, ‘Take him away….go and make it sit down…how dare you insult a doctor by coming with an awakened thing!’ the proportions obviously made him think that it was wide awake. ‘It’s perfectly asleep sir!’ Chand said meekly. Then the old sexologist had a careful second look and slumped into his chair as if he had been finally defeated. ‘Did anyone ever allow you to even touch herself?’ the doctor asked at long last. He had forgotten about the patient’s boil. ‘That’s why I’m almost virgin,’ Chand answered stoically. I think the old doctor would have been more than happy to retire after hitting this milestone in his career.