A protesting march in Febbruary

 This is the third week of February. And here arrives the first windy day with a clear call of the summers. But I prefer to view it as spring. The spring is a brief flowering pause in the north Indian plains. The soil that was clumped tight, as if shivering under the cold elements, is awake now and yawns as dry leaves and dust sashay around as the harbingers of the upcoming summers. Hundreds of Asha workers are marching as a protest demonstration to the mini secretariat, the seat of district administration. They are clad in the colors of revolution—red. The flag is also red with sickle and hammer. They have a long-pending demand for regularization of service and better pay. The march is under the banner of a labor union called CITU. Capitalism has but gone too far for the lurching cart of socialism to catch up with. The sensibility of making money is very steadfast.

Protests like this are just a tardy effort to keep the ideology alive; a kind of consoler march. The ideology is structured too loftily to fit in the sundry world of mundane desires, profiteering and moneymaking. It seems like a funeral march of the penitents whose dream has been marred by the ideological theoreticians themselves. They dreamt too wittily and it turned into a parody. The intent to revolutionize being too eloquent; a semi-parodic act from the beginning, something as futile as marching with its own head on a pike.

They move gallantly, almost with militarist strains. But the seed of the ideology is indefensibly impractical. A contrariety that appropriates the basic needs to a dream within the dreams for a utopian state. A vainly verbose effort at leveling the crop to the same level where each stem is fighting for the sunlight to reach the highest height. The people laugh at the irksome, unsightly speed-bump on the expressway of economic progress. The administration hardly bothers about this type of gathering. But they are highly effective in blocking the narrow, congested road as they file past the bazaar.

Most of them are very poor women from the lowest rung of society. They have bemoaning souls. They hold their manifesto, hoping it will create ripples in the corridors of administration. But there is an air of disempowering atrophy around. They understand that their demands are already discarded, there being no impetus for the state machinery to inculcate their demands. Their cause is no pretty-faced mistress to impress the political lust of the politicians. 

Being with small things in life

The winter has been pretty harsh. Its passage through the pathside grass tells the tale. As the February sun shines I can see the little patches of faded green that fought the cold and now give the wilderness a pleasant aroma along pathsides, field embankments, fallow lands and canal bunds—little sinewy hideouts still surviving for mother earth to keep her flag flying, to still somehow maintain the timeless sanctity of her duty, her divine principle. Gone are the days of large doses of wildly engaging swathes of mother nature. Well that is fabled past. This is enough for me, a middle-aged poetic man with lukewarm sensibilities, moving on the visual surface almost lost in the puzzling quizzes of existence. It’s a representational canvas and by its side is placed earthy palette. There is soulful stillness and I distinctly hear nature’s compositional effort to still get attuned to the changing times. These little ribbons of weather-beaten wilderness alleviate my tensions; a sense of openness permeates my being.

Wild sorrel or common sorrel, a leafy bouquet, stands as a green beauty among the winter-beaten grass. It welcomes me with its clumps of arrow-shaped leaves and juicy stems. It will have whorled spikes of reddish green flowers in early summer. Butterflies and moth larvae feast upon them. It’s not that useless as one may think it to be as you pass it. In Nigeria it’s used in stews. Indians who know about its properties use it in soups and curries. The Afghanis coat the leaves with butter and consume them as appetizers.

Disengaged from the world of utilities and economic valuation stand some stalks of great mullein. It’s a hairy biennial plant that can grow to two meters. It will add to the short spring waiting just round the corner when it will have small yellow flowers densely grouped on a tall stem, growing from a big rosette of leaves. It’s a prince of fallow lands and hosts a variety of insects. Its tall pole-like stem greets me with a very slight nod as a gust of wind eggs it to greet me. Its hermetic disposition has fetched it quite interesting names including Hare’s Beard and Moses’ Blanket.

Sardonically stand a few twiggy mulleins, a kind of spiky rosette of leaves, self-absorbed in their pleasant redundancy. Beyond the gloss and superfluousness of mankind’s manipulation, it stands as the unpretentious, anonymous engraver of the last lines of free nature on this planet.

On the canal bund stands a dwarf shrub called bluemink, or pussy foot or flossflower. Reaching up to three feet high its bluish and purple fluff-haired flowerheads are the harbingers of spring. It seems to be waiting for the first butterfly carrying the colors of spring. It knows how to defend itself well as it repulses insects by secreting a repulsive compound. Then it’s toxic to grazing animals because it causes some mild liver complications to goat and sheep. And the grazers know it through natural intelligence.

There are some billygoat weeds with attractive mauve flowers. It by the way is a medicinal plant and is used to cure dysentery and diarrhea. And the goats, sheep and buffalos don’t need medicines much, so they leave it to bask in its glory.

There is a very nice colony of annual ragweed. They are invasive by attitude and know how to grab their share in this competitive world. They have much-branched hairy leaves, 4-5 inches long, that can cause allergic reactions to some humans.

Riverside wormwood, also called mugwort, has long leaves and safe to be even considered a culinary herb.

Then there are strands of smut-grass, or call it pheasant’s-tail-grass, having whisk-like crown heads gently swaying to the late winter solitude.

Pampas grass defines the second tier crown of this little ribbon of wilderness running along the canal. Only occasional trees hover over them. They have razor-sharp leaf margins having whitish inflorescences on top of their stout upright flower spikes. They stand in clump-forming solidarity with their blade-like leaves. The dark brown and whitish spikes at the end of stems sway to the gentle accosting of breeze. Their clumps carry an indispensable air. They are the fortresses of birds of bush and reptiles.

There is greater pond sedge along the water margins in the thickly overgrown sides of the canal floating over the water in a decided sense of agnosticism.

All these sentinels of wilderness greet me on my solitary march in the countryside. They have weathered a tough winter and now leave us at the threshold of a pleasant spring. 

Friendship with dogs

 A farmer has around seventy buffalos in his dairy in the secluded, forlorn corner in the countryside. Of course, they need security. So his staff has pampered a pack of five stray dogs through generous dose of lullabying words, chapattis and buttermilk. Left free to spend their time, unconcerned about the battle for belly, they growl and bark as the indomitable defenders of the citadel. Their view of ownership is far beyond the dairy premises. Everybody within sight is an enemy. So there they come dashing down the dusted pathway. I was at least half a kilometer away. Their body language gives big clues to their determination to growl, bark and bite. Showing fear and running is an invitation to taste the meaty slice on the calf muscles.

It primarily depends upon the human whether the dog turns out to be friendly or antagonistic. Show the intent to fight and they will keep quarreling. I think inside them they have a bigger quota of loyalty for we humans. The remaining quota of animosity is defined by their loyalty to some other human being. A dog has almost infinite sense of loyalty. You have to just calmly take your portion out of it.

They smell something blameworthy in my approach to their well-milked territory. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. They come fiercely at top speed, barking with deep growls. I stand and watch them coming, raising dust like an attacking cavalry. I smile and shout ‘Kalu’. He seems a hoodlum, his vocals strengthened by steady stream of villainous barking over months after months. He carries an extorting look as well. Now every black dog has to be named ‘Kalu’. Thanks to the norm, I hit it on the nail. My sweet accost meets his approval and Kalu screeches to a halt. ‘Anyone calling me by name cannot be an enemy,’ he comes hesitatingly forward. I tickle behind his ears. He is a friend now. The brownish-red ones are suspicious as if still shaping their response either to bite or sway their tails. ‘Lalu,’ I whisper coaxingly. Lalu melts. In fact both red ones melt in the momentum built up by Kalu and now carried by the two Lalus. Again the naming norms doing wonders. All dogs of that color are named ‘Lalu’. They came as attackers, now they tread and trundle in front of me as friends and escorts, befriended and enjoying the positive emotional convergence with one more human being.

‘Kalva, Lalva,’ The Bihari keeper greets them. He is relieved that I have been spared. Now thank goodness that the dogs can understand the dialectical variations of their names. ‘Kalu means Kalva and Lalu means Lalva,’ they can make it out very easily. The next day I take a chapatti with me and they get a piece each. A little token of friendship and love. They look at me with languid admiration. The friendship is sealed very solidly. They remember the smell forever. A sense of loyalty bestows them potent canine glory. I may forget them but they won’t. Their loyalty isn’t affected by mood swirls hence a lot of melodrama is avoided. It’s not about food. It’s an initiation ceremony into friendship. Now they will even bite for me. 

Ma's temples

Ma's two temples: A glacial one and a man-made shrine. The former for a journey within. As you walk in the opposite direction to Her powerful currents, She cleanses you of darkness. She roars past you, outshouting the demons within you. It seems as if She is ferociously rushing past you to decimate the backstabbing illusions following you. She sprays Her divine waters to cleanse your little little mistakes and stumbles that we unjustifiably term as sins. She emboldens you to stumble over stony path to finally find your footing. Like a mother looking over her toddler falling while learning to walk. She wants your tired legs to know the importance of pause and rest in the art and craft of walking (life). As She powerfully cuts massive mountains,  it seems as if a strong mother is assuring Her children,  'I will cut a valley for you. I will lay a path for you.  You just learn to walk!' And once you get the lesson and complete the little assignment given by Her, She is there with Her motherly smile to welcome you in Her man-made shrine.

Breaking the winds

Tau Chunni Lal was the reputed wind-broker of the village. He broke wind with great effect and that came to be his primary identity for the village level fame. You need to break wind with good effect to become a village's numero uno wind-broker. His windy catapults were almost like massive cannon shots in comparison to the normal pistol shots of the rest of the villagers. And he was always very humble and unassuming in the art. Perfectly detached in the matter. I don’t think he felt proud about it. He wasn't even bothered about the reactions caused by his windy fireworks. He looked so free and natural about it, no pretense, no effort at hiding, no endeavor to appear, or sound rather, what he wasn't. There was a marvelous acceptance and spontaneity about his situation. As a free citizen of India he broke wind with utmost sense of liberation. Tau Chunni Lal comfortably lumbered through the street, unleashing the audible symbols of his freedom. These were hugely impressive, arriving in multitudes of rumblings carrying amazing range of pitch, notes, frequencies and volume. I think he played a great role in sharpening the linguistic intonation of our little tongues during our childhood as we put up best effort to imitate his sounds through mouth. It's good to be remembered. He wrote his little history on the windy canvas through the pen of sounds.

Father's Friend

 Once Father was getting some house-fixing job done. Some wooden rafters and beams were put up outside. A liquor-lover really appreciated them for the quality of their wood and make. ‘He will undoubtedly return at night to steal them,’ Father concluded. To guard his provisions, Father started sleeping outside. A charpoy was set down. The street dog Kalu became his new favorite for the guarding job. Who doesn’t want company in the dark? Kalu got pampering words and lots of buttermilk as remuneration for his help in the guarding job. On the third night he received even a bigger dose of love. Thinking that the canine part of the watch party must be feeling cold while sleeping near his charpoy, Father dumped two dry paddy bundles on the dog that had just retired for the night. Care is good but an overdose of it isn’t recommended. Moreover, the poor dog wasn’t aware of the scheme. It thought it was an attempt at its life. It bawled out into the night and continued to bark at Father from a distance throughout the night. ‘It’s good to be kept awake at least,’ Father consoled himself.

The first butterfly

 The real start of the spring for me is the sight of the first butterfly after the most frigid phase of the cold. A butterfly is the sublime gist of sunrays and flowers. I see the first butterfly on the twelfth of February. It dispels all doubts about the weather. The spring is here. The honey buzzard is seen again. The sparrows, crows and the rest of the birds that consider the village their home raise alarming chorus. The crows take themselves to be the sentinels of the birdie locality. They swoop up and down like angry fighter jets around the enemy object. The big eagle but looks a stealth fighter around which the smaller fighter planes appear the machines of the last generation.

And there is further hope. A neighbor has painted his little house with the greenest of the green lime-wash. It can put any parrot to shame. The green color is forever welcome. The forests and pastures are vanishing, so the green walls are good for the eyes at least. How I wish they would give oxygen as well!

Nevaan’s watergun has also smelt spring. Ferocious squirts of water reach up to a distance of twenty feet. So I have to run. Spring means one has to have spring in one’s gait to gallop with the Holi spirit pervading around well in advance, entitling young kids to shoot down elders with their water shots. After decimating me with the watery cannon, he is now trying it as a water sprinkler in the garden. A bad job done quite evidently. ‘How is it?’ he asks. ‘Very bad!’ I take my revenge. ‘So what? I like it very much!’ he says and targets me again.

I have to remember that he is a few months short of his fifth birthday and is grown enough to take things very-very seriously. He is very particular about wearing mask in the car and keeps an eye on the speed limit display on the dashboard. A car and the speed digits signboards are favorite items on the road. A car sign and 40 means you cannot drive over 45 at any cost. He keeps screaming about the policeman. He seems a very law-abiding little citizen of the republic. 

A ticketless busride

 Well, once we tried a ticketless ride in a bus. The 1983 world cup victory was roughly seven years old at that time. The momentum was carried throughout the country in the form of a massive craze for the game. I must have been thirteen or fourteen at that time. We had a cricket match at the neighboring town, lost it badly and thought of winning it against the state roadways. We didn’t return as a triumphant unit. We came back like a scattered, defeated army in retreat.

I and another dusted player in the one-sided match chose a rickety roadways bus, almost a jangling junk cabin, for it appeared to provide the best chance of a ticketless journey. Each of us carried a one rupee coin on our person. The rest was spent in devouring bananas to beat the pathos of humiliating jeering and abuses by the few dozens of spectators leering from the side of the host team. The fair was only this much, one crisp rupee or coin, so who won’t try to save the precious thing. We hid the property in our socks. The conductor approached for at least a half ticket. We lamented and cried a chorus, ‘No Money with us!’ He muttered his anguish but left us to our own fate.

We sat almost hidden in the corner at the rear end where the massive spare tyre dumped right inside the bus gave us a precarious perch. The roads were potholed and the buses went almost cascading as if jumping over the off-road ravines of the present day. It shook one’s bones. Maybe it provided skeletal strength to the people. All well so far. But the flying squad came in the way of this totally bumpy ride. The burly inspector knew the secret of the coins in the socks. He must have grown up doing the same himself. Our hidden property was drawn out and put at the disposal of the state government.

As a consequence we had tickets in our hands apart from critical reprimands regarding our immoral conduct. A village elder stared at us. We knew him well but he looked apprehensive as to our domicile. As young boys we had our screen of boyhood anonymity. We knew it quite well that if we got down at the village bus stand another round of grilling would be launched by the village elder. It would then leave bigger tidal waves that would reach our own doors. So we presented ourselves as boys from the neighboring villages as we confidently disembarked at the stop preceding out village and walked off, trying to drill it in his mind that we weren’t from his village as he suspected.

Our faked destination was two kilometers from our village. ‘He will think we are from this village!’ we chimed with scheming laughter. Then we walked across the agricultural farms for two kilometers with tickets in our pockets. It was a nice walk with roadways tickets in pockets. On the way we planned that we had to keep a very curtailed and low profile lest he saw us and grill us about the crime. The elders were very efficient informers during those times. They would share the news of such infringements to the entire village without fail. So we kept ourselves on keen guard for a few months and even afterwards avoided coming across that particular village elder. It’s good that the life in the old age gives dulled memories to the beholder of ripe age. Even many months later he just curiously peered into our faces. But thank God there was no direct recalling into the chambers of his conscious brain from the vague imprints of our mischief lying faded on his subconscious mind. 

Ice-candied days

 Those were the little lights of childhood dawning upon the summer-time dusty bleakness with plenty of slurping charms. Without them the baking noons would appear full of famine, agony and melancholy. There would be a sudden surge in our spirits. It was an item of instant gratification. Almost a savior to save us from the broadened, sprawling tyranny of heat and dust. And their carrier was nothing short of romanticized hero. It became so important that the rest of the items over the globe seemed inconsequential specks. The ice-candies with their lure and legacy!

The ice-candies would stand out as life-supporting oasis during the hot, dusty, sweltering days of summer. With colorful ice-candies around even the treacherous hot season would turn into a vintage climate. The sound of his rubber balloon horn would give him the aura of a regal chauffeur of our dreams. He carried the little vase of joy in his wooden chest box insulated with thermocol padding inside and iron sheet on the outside. And we would throng the bicycle with chaste passion.

The schools would be off for almost two months and the children waited for the ice-candy sellers to shout in the streets. The greed for these cheap colored beauties knew no limits. The children would plead for paisas from the elders, get some, take the candy, slurp it down and come back to the house to fish out some old book, copy, notebook, diary, glass bottle, iron wares, plastic discards or anything acceptable to the seller, get their candy, lick it away with even more greed and then more greed would turn them scrap collectors to roam the street, scamper over dry dung and waste heaps to salvage anything that would add to get an extra ice-candy.

It was a fascinating conquest of our fancies, unleashing unbridled gallantry in the heart of even the dourest ones to contrive some rancorous caprice to devise some extra means to get one more ice-candy. The children ran helter-skelter with overstrained nerves to lay their hands upon anything acceptable to the seller. Those who were successful on a particular day tittered affectionately while those who were yet to color their tongues with the bright colors carried a wearisome, damnable look in their lost eyes. They walked crushed and crestfallen, their spirits mutilated and they looked with dusty sighs at the ones carrying the lascivious item in their hands which slowly melted on their tongues with inundating delirium.

With the rise in temperatures and the rapidly thinning morals, the greed would further shoot up to burgeon into banditry. The mysterious charms of the little colorful pieces of ice would metamorphose into a pathway robbery. The more formidable ones among the ice-candy lovers would plot to plunder some cheeky seller. They would hide on the margins of the path just outside the village and pounce upon the wooden candy box loaded on the carrier. A bit more disciplined ones like me would watch from a distance and clap for the fortunes of the destiny-makers.

On one occasion, the wooden chest of ice-candies was on the ground and the owner thoroughly overpowered. A sturdy peasant woman ran with sickle in hand to defend the poor seller and save his provisions. The pointed thrusts of her kicks, slaps, whiplashing tongue and warrior queen kind swipe of her sickle saw the looters routed and running away from the scene of crime. She was able to save almost three quarters of his provisions. The ice-candy seller thanked her like he was her long-estranged real brother. ‘You ought to have some muscles on your arms to hold the bicycle and keep it from falling even if these little ones pull from all directions!’ she reprimanded him. He seemed to have fallen into utter submission and agreed to her thesis. In any case, she was rewarded with the best class of dark orange ice-candy by the humbled and dusted seller who offered his product out of gratitude. She had been harvesting wheat in a nearby field in the sweltering midday June heat. Profusely sweating and slurping on her reward she went back to her work. Well, that was a well-deserved ice-candy if there was any that day.

We had ice-candy looters right within the village also. They were civilized and respected looters using a smart tactic. They were the grandpas, like even I witnessed my own grandfather performing the feat from across the corner. They would begin with severally reprimanding the seller for spoiling the children, even turning them into thieves in their own houses, stealthily taking out wheat, jaggery, books and notebooks, thus trashing them as junk for an ice-candy. Thus reprimanded the seller would be instantly on the backfoot. But they had a solution. They paid a little tithe, a kind of goonda tax. The seller would produce a nicely melting glossy ice-candy as his answer to the village elder’s complaint. And the issue would melt like ice in the heat. Then the elder would slurp the cold, sweet ice-candy with hollow cheeks, completely forgetting that just a minute ago there was an issue named as ‘the ice-candy seller spoiling the morals of the village children’. 

The need for polyandry

There is a lovely concept of yin and yang energies in Taoism. Yin is the female component, the all-embracing emptiness, the womb, the Shakti of creation. Yang is the male component, the all-pervading tendency for expansion, manifestation, materialization and fullness. No wonder they are cause-effect and effect-cause simultaneously. Emptiness is self-sustaining, but fullness can be an instinct at the most. No wonder men have such hunger to fill the emptiness pervading around, symbolized by women.

A relationship between a man and a woman is driven by the basic characteristics of these respective polarities. A man is basically looking for the same physical gratification in all the women he goes into a relationship with. But a woman is looking for an ideal form to fill up the cosmic emptiness of which she is a carrier entity, or a symbol. If a man has one reason to get bored with his woman (at the level of body), she has multiple times more reasons to feel bored with her man at the level of body, thoughts, emotions, soul-to-soul connect and still more deeper things. The search of a man for his ideal woman is relatively very easy because he is only seeking variants across hair, color, lips, breasts, hips and other body parts. A woman, on the other hand, has a very deep challenge, a deep peek into her own self, where she tries to modulate her expectations as per the silent depths inside her.  

The yin energy is too powerful and limitlessly empty. The yang energy is just the flash of twinkling stars of materiality in the infinitely empty corridors of the cosmic spirit. And man has always been afraid of the yin energy’s potential and insecure about his fragmented attempts as a filler of the emptiness. So at the level of flesh, i.e., the ‘matter’ of which he is the carrier element, he has tried to subdue and cut down the role of women in society. Patriarchy is born of a deep sense of inferiority, incapacity and complexes carried by the men.

Taoists believe that it takes seven years for a man to understand the rhythms of a woman’s body, the next seven years to feel her emotions and mind, and the next seven to know her spirit. In strict mathematical terms, I would say a woman is worth three men combined at the level of matter, energy and spirit. And man knows it and that’s why he tries to keep her limited to a third of her potential to keep her in a relationship. It works in conservative societies where menfolk have come together to formulate social laws and norms in terribly one-sided ways to keep the women enchained as a fraction of their real selves. But it fails in liberal, modern societies. With empowerment and choice women easily trample over multiple men at the level of matter, energy and spirit. So in liberal societies the women carry a bigger sense of their men being incomplete because here they aren’t dependent upon them for survival. Here their freedom frees them from the helpless acceptance of their status like in conservative societies.   

I think the empowered, self-standing and well-educated women should be given the legal option of polyandry. She stands for the eternal void that can receive all the drama of materiality trying to fill up her cosmic emptiness. The reason why a really capable woman needs multiple partners at the same time is very simple. Men arrive in fragments. The rampaging bulls in the bed usually carry small brains. The brainy ones have little emotions. The artists and poets would lack dependability in worldly practicalities. The Einstein type genius would have their own eccentricities. The spiritual guys would be good guide but very hollow as partners because they are looking to save their semen through yogic practices. So why not legally allow them to have multiple partners simultaneously. Like, one for naughty bed fun, one for beautiful poetry, one for hardcore logic and reasoning, one for spirituality. It will solve the problem of broken hearts. Because the broken hearts again go seeking solace and get again broken. Let there be an official trial with polyandry in developed societies at least.

There is another topic quite related to the yin and yang energies. Yin energy is essentially Kundalini energy, the nurturer of the seed of creation, the ground for material manifestation to take place. All the literature on Kundalini has been written by male followers on the path of spirituality. The basics of experiences and bodily manifestations have been gathered—even though individual variations happen across the male bodies as well—and we have texts dealing with the energy’s movement across the various pranic channels, the changes in physiology, the results of these changes and more.

But we have missed a very important point in the Kundalini discussion so far. It has been male oriented. And a female spiritualist reading the text might be driven to believe that her body will also experience the same as a male body. I don’t think Kundalini will manifest in her body in a typical male’s way. She is essentially Kundalini body herself. So in her case it’s not a fundamental transformation. It is only in the degrees of refinement of the same basic quality. A man will be transformed into a fundamentally different entity; she on the other hand will be further refined. Like man goes through a forge and a stone will be crystallized into diamond. It’s a fundamental shift. That’s why the process is so drastic and even mysterious in his body. In the case of a woman it is like refinement of the same ore, for example, refining gold from its natural ore. So it’s not that drastic in nature as in a man’s body. These are subtle transformations, delicate and deep in emotions and thoughts. Her body is already a creative mechanism of yin energy, so the flow of extra creative energy in the form of an awakened Kundalini doesn’t test her system like it does a man’s body.

A man is primarily the dropper of the seed in the scheme of propagation. She but is the entire field where the whole scheme of evolution of a new life unfolds. So even if an extra dimension of energy unfolds in her system, it won’t revolutionize her organism like it does to a man’s system because she is already a carrier of the same essential energetic entity. Qualitatively it’s the same, it’s just a matter of quantitative variation in degrees. But a man’s system undergoes fundamental qualitative changes. It requires completely new rewiring of the system. Hence they undergo such hair-raising experiences. In case of a woman, it’s far too subtle, like her loving smile for her man would transform into loving motherly smile for all. So her transformation is more in thoughts, emotions, soul and spirit. At the tangible level it won’t be felt in the body like a man does.     

Equality breeding Equanimity

 The questioner: What do you think are your favourite qualities in a woman?

Me: The same as found in a good man.

The questioner: And your favourite qualities in a man?

Me: The same as in a good woman.

The questioner: Why?

Me: Because both are equal and humans only.

A little brave flower

 

Treat of the day! The tiny sadabahar in the crack of the wall bears a flower. There are hundreds of bigger flowering plants on the ground having dozens of petalous smiles. What makes this little flower exceptional? An entire season’s rains slipped down the wall. It’s not in mother earth’s lap where she stores water for her kids. It just has a hairline crack in the plastered wall to cling to its moisture of survival. Thousands of water drops slip away and then just an ounce of water may be clings to the narrowest root space. Fed like pampered children, the garden has hundreds of flowers. But this solitary flower high on the plastered wall is special. Blossoming is no slave to the conventional parameters of height, weight, the soil around roots, nutrition, the amount of rain or any other circumstantial fact. It’s only about giving the best with what you have. Given its tough conditions, this tiny flower grew in millimeters, while the rest of the more privileged flowers on the ground grew in inches. Their life might be measured in feet and hundreds of flowers. But what is exceptional about the fact of their existence? They are the happy-go-lucky types. Their smiles stand on mother earth’s piety. This but is a brave flower. It clung to survival, just staying a couple of inches of a fragile sapling high in the wall in the hot sweltering summer heat. It waited and waited with patience for more rains and when they came it added a couple of more inches to its height and there comes the flower. It’s basically about reaching home and fulfilling your destiny irrespective of the circumstances. What we get isn’t in our hands, but what we do with what we have is surely our calling. The smile of this flower is worth hundreds of lesser mortals in the garden below. It’s a proud flower, no wonder it’s there high in the air above the rest. 

So dear friends, please avoid the mistake of cribbing about your circumstances of life. A lot many things definitely lie beyond our control. It’s better to accept certain facts. Take it as destiny. But that’s just half of the story. With what has been given to you by the quirks of fate, you are in the driving seat and juggle your pieces to make your own destiny. Like this little plant does. It blossoms a flower in the toughest of a situation and completes its journey, fulfils its meaning of being a flower. You too can blossom your flower with what you have been given. So forget about what you don’t have, just make use of what you have. You too are up for a flowery reward. Best wishes!

What a drama man!

 The tiles are getting so oily and smooth in fashionable houses that I have to walk like a heavily pregnant penguin on the Antarctic ice to avoid slipping. But we are up for leaving a grand impression on the house fashion scene, or for that matter in all types of fashion in all spheres of life. That's being cultured otherwise you are a sentinelese prehistoric tribal in Andamans. The floor tiles have become so slippery these days that I feel like a goat being taken to a slaughter house if some fashionable person invites me at their house. 

But credit goes to we humans. We are a gutsy race. We take risks. We are ready to take the risks of broken bones for being most fashionable in the neighbourhood. And so many slip and break their bones in fact. What floor is any worth if it doesn't carry the slipping potential and break bones and wink a flashy shiny smile as you fall? And we shouldn't forget that breaking bones are a boon for the medical fraternity. 

What car is worth its tyres if it can't go like a rocket and carry the prospect of trampling as many as possible on its glorious journey. But naughty trampling cars are a boon for the insurance industry. Isn’t it?

What music is worth its rhythmic hop if it can't burst a few eardrums? What dress is worth its salt if it doesn't make you look like someone from the farthest galaxy? And the dress that actually covers the body is no dress, it's an old hag. So poor clothing is up for a big challenge. It has to show all and still appear to hide everything. So we are busy fixing it. It's a very serious quesion. How much of cloth goes off from the bumside to cover the soles of feet. Or how much goes from the chest to cover armpits. One half of the mind working overtime to bare all, while the other half trying to devise an airy dress to avoid a complete fall. Imagine how much creativity it requires! What an art man!

And what is this boring, old model plain skin? It's a big canvas for art. Why waste paper for painting when we have our dear skin ready for the sadistic pleasure of the tatooing needle? So human body is the canvas now. Some tatoos go deep in the skin in proportions to the transcient emotions in the heart. But we have shifty hearts. So when the clouds of emotions scatter and take a new shape, the poor tatoo taunts as a sign of infedilty. So it has to be vanquiahed. So tatoo removers have become as important as tatoo makers. The other day when I put out my hand to give some money to a beggar I got a shock. He had a dragon on his hand. He appeared so empowered in comparison to me. My poor non-tatooed hand won't dare to go ahead. So I just walked away. When I see people with their sophisticated tatoos coming on the way, I involuntarily find myself moving away in awe and wonder to give them space to walk. They appear a completely new race to me the old model. Maybe tattooed bums, biceps, breasts and tummies have gone berserk and are now revolting to claim new versions after getting fed up with their boring old self.

And what gun is a gun that can't pierce a hill from a distance? So the human mind is making the best of a gun. But then what bulketproof jacket is that which can't stop a cannon ball on the chest. So one half of our collective brain is making the deadliest gun, while the other half is busy in making the best of bulketproof jacket. 

We are a very busy race. We can't stop. We have to scatter litter in the first place so that we can devise the most efficient ways of waste management. We ought to rechristen ourselves as busysapiens now. We have to first go into war and killings and then make UN and the entire set of peace talks and diplomatic corps for peaceful negotiations. 

I sometimes wonder maybe we are basically looking to create more avenues for problems so that the genius of the human brain can be actualized in managing those problems. I think the autonomous human mind is smartly using the slavish human body for experiments, like we do with toads on dissection tables, putting us in weirdest situations just to find whether there is a solution to this and that. What an experiment going on. It really is a big drama.

Old is gold

 Why be bothered about losing youth. It's just a phase, an unripe one as a character says in Oscar Wilde's novel: "What was youth at best? A green, unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and slickly thoughts." There is no fun in wearing the shiny livery for too long. It then becomes a burden. That's why nature sees it off. But we carry it in mind for a bit longer time. At least I did. But now the wonderful, gray, slow-paced times open their real charms. The aging gray lighter vestments of wisdom and age carry their own charm. They are very light, and ripe, and cosy to wear, and easy to carry.

A slightly better being

 Why be unduly bothered about the typical bugs of the mind like anger, hate, jealousy and others? Follow the trail of any of these, in an effort to track its cause or root, and it will take you to the same primary root. All the negative reactions of our mind, which make us feel guilty after their manifestation in the mind-body combo, originate from the same root. The restlessness at the core, prompting us to seek a higher self. If you have already started looking at your triggers of anger, hate, jealousy, fears etc, it means you already view them as alien entities, strangers to your real self. You want them out. You aren't ready to own them. It means you are already on the path of liberation. Just watch them, watch them, watch them. And they will slowly lose their intensity on your system. They will have a far less force on your system. They won't be impulsive enough to make you react. It's not about their total absence. It's about their being ineffective and not able to dictate our lives. They pop up and are gone. They surface, like a thief comes at a market place, and are gone the moment he sees a policeman. Really knowing a negative emotion or thought as it is, feeling its negative shades itself is the solution. Suppose there is some guy whose reality we don't know. He can easily dupe us. But when we know the truth about him, he won't have a big chance of duping us because we know the nature of reality about him. The same with these typical bugs of mind. The goal isn't about their absence. It's only about being aware of their true nature. Then they become mere bubbles. They pop up and are gone without leaving a big impact on our behaviour. Even saints have these bubbles in their minds. They will arise. It's their nature. But a sage's mind-body system is evolved to a level where these negative shades pass out without much impact. It's not about not having them. It's about making them ineffective. In the beginning with  action and stern look at them. And later, with practice, to ignore them almost on impulse. If we arrive on earth with an impulse to be driven by them, we can certainly develop an impulse to ignore them with practice. Then they may keep popping up. There won't be much turbulence in life.

Yoga, kundalini, Bhakti, gyan, everything is meant to bring a kind of positive symmetry in body and mind's functioning so that there are more of positive neuro chemicals and hormones such as endorphins in the body. That makes us further less prone to infection by the bugs of negative thoughts and emotions. These are spiritual immunity boosters which make us strong against the attack by the things whom we consciously view as against our peace and wellbeing. Haven't you observed that when we are happy and joyful--it means we are overloaded with positive neurochemicals at that time-- we are less prone to irritation by the same stimulants that would leave us blasting in other state? 

So all this is holistic art. This keen observance, yoga, Bhakti, gyan, everything. Just like different types of nutrients for the body to keep ailments away. Use these various types of spiritual pills to strengthen against the bugs of suspicion, fear, discontentment, anger, jealousy. They will always stay in your system and surroundings as long as you are here on earth. Just like human body cannot do away with the harmful bacteria and virus around. They are going to be there. So what do we do? We increase the immunity to leave them ineffective on our system. The same is with negative bugs of mind. They will be there, wether inside you or in the people around you. The task is to strengthen your system to an extent that they don't shake your emotional health too much. Who are the siddhas? They are the robust most energetic systems upon whom the usual bugs that we humans find so troublesome have no effect. But rest assured, they have their own challenges to fight against, the challenges of different categories of which we aren't aware. So the challenge stays. Don't ever dream of reaching a spiritual stage where challenges will vanish. They will aways stay in one form or the other, just like harmful virus and bacteria around. 

Lastly, a smile itself kills a million bugs of the mind. So smile now!

Settling the account forever

 In its dealings with a person, destiny keeps its account book always open. The account is never closed from her end. It's always open. It needs a penance to close the account by the person himself, wind up the calculations forever, come out of karma's loop and take an indefinable shape on the canvas of eternity.

The caning masters

 Headmaster Pirthi Singh was a famous caning hero during our schooling days in the late eighties in our village school. Caning was the best as well as the worst of education. There wasn’t much thought behind education techniques. The students took schools as the symbol of hell on earth and the teachers—all of them pretty energetic caners—used brute force to quell the rebellion. Headmaster Pirthi Singh was the squadron leader from the teachers’ side. He had an impressive assortment of canes in his office, of different woods for various purposes ranging from casual rebukes to hardcore bloody punishments. There were mulberry switches to give an acidic, pungent taste on the skin. These were used for slightly built students. However, for the thick-set errant rascals bamboo canes came into use to rattle the bones with strikes.

There was a plant called basa that grew in plenty along water margins during those days. Its stem was juicy and moderately thick. It served a fantastic rubbery beating. The teacher was at liberty to strike with full force as the rubbery stem would rule out bloody scenes. But it would still give a pretty hard thwack on both the bones and the skin. The stem would break after a point. The teacher would emerge triumphant that he broke the basa cane on the path of justice and reformation. The student had his own victorious air if he didn’t cry and bore it with just wincing and contorting limbs. The students who didn’t howl while getting thrashed carried a lofty air around them.

Headmaster Pirthi Singh would hit upon instinct. The rooms would go silent and heads would bury in books as he came down the corridor scanning any opportunity to unleash further caning. There were occasions when the entire class would be thrashed en masse. It was taken for granted that a village boy wouldn’t study. The only way was to force them like the farmers forced the bulls into the yokes. A painful harnessing would follow. The same was the case with village students.

Pirthi Singh was so famous as a striker that many students got christened as Mutdu, Paadu, Haggu—the derivatives of the outcomes of nature: peeing, farting and shitting—as a result of the strikes. One chap was named Haggu as he belonged to the group who couldn’t stop their fear from turning their pants yellow. Haggu went onto become an SDM (Sub-divisional Magistrate) but was still the very same Haggu to his classmates. He was in full gratitude. ‘If not for the raw fear of his caning, I would not have studied at all!’ he maintained in full humility. A bit of slightly funny and mildly offensive name, but that was nothing in comparison to the success and the consequent good name, fame and respect in its wake. 

Lazy bums

 The dove indeed is a silly, lazy bird. They seem to have anchored their perspectives in some utterly laidback chamber of brain. And when the parents have such condemnable lackadaisical attitude, the children definitely suffer. They are averse to any type of cockiness that enables the parents in any species to fight for something more for their kids. They seem to lack that tact, prudence and bitchiness that enables parents, especially the wards like babblers, to turn their children the center of the cosmos. This artlessness makes the dove eggs and babies almost sitting ducks to chance factors and predators.

Given their silently brooding ways, they look perilously nudging the baseline of extinction. The other birds, with their heightened activation and rich and vibrant forays into grabbing more of life and living, appear to be the powerful leaders of the birdie kingdom. The doves, on the other hand, given their characteristic simplicity seem shrouded in obscurity.

I haven’t seen a single successful attempt out of a dozen nestings that I have witnessed in my courtyard over the years. The day I am lucky enough to see a dove hatchling successfully taking its maiden flight would serve as a charming memoir. The hatchlings, if the eggs are lucky enough to survive, look so helpless, tiny fluffy scapegoats to be toed around by the murderous incertitudes of circumstances. The mere fact that there are still doves in the world, despite such dismal success ratio, proves that there is larger intelligence in operation than the human mind. It mysteriously functions and creates exceptional, lucky chances to help some odd chick to survive now and then. The cosmic intelligence spins out what we consider miracles with random lucidity. Otherwise, the doves seem all set to cooperate with the negative forces of the annihilation of a species. Suppose all the predators are taken off the scene, still the eggs and hatchlings are under as much risk as when the sky is crowded with the enemies like flies.

Have you seen a weaverbird’s master art? Their nest is a stirring symbol of safety and coziness. Its dazzling tautness equips it to stand safe and sturdy against inclement weather and hostile predators. The tangled and entwined repertoire bestows it a syncretic sense of safety where their little ones enjoy highly efficient upbringing. The sturdy nests hang with an appellate authority. Their nesting colonies on a safe tree are almost celebrated landmarks of the birdie architecture.

The doves are plain stragglers in comparison to the weaverbirds. Theirs is the weakest of a nest, a see-through, fragile, careless assemblage of few dry twigs; very small, just big enough to accommodate a few eggs; a sullen and grumpy assemblage; a living legacy of being in cahoots with the forces of destruction. If the hatchling is lucky to come out of the egg, every minute spent by it seems bizarrely traumatic. The pathetic chick looks shorn of any prospects in future. It survives only if the goddess of mortality is on some elusive excursion for some time.

You can count the eggs standing under a dove’s nest as it’s at a suitable height for a person of average built to raise hands, stand on toes and take them off. I have to be brutally candid on this. From even average parenting standards, the attempt is gruesome, distasteful and perverse. The eggs would look safer anywhere except the nest.

The doves look innocent but now I feel they are plainly dumb. From aesthetical point of view, one may take them possessed with admirable restraint but from the standpoint of parental duties it looks a repository of foolishness. You need front-end courage to defend and save your brood. The rising and falling beats in the game of survival need a stern attention. They show lovely character and good disposition when they perch on the top of a wall and coo. But all this vanishes when it comes to the practicalities of being parents.

The same flimsy assemblage, on the curry-leaf tree in our courtyard, at a height of eight feet has seen four breakfasts for the cats, crows and even an eagle. And now another one is on the way. They just lay eggs, but hardly bother about making a safe nest. There are two or three dove couples in the area. They are thoroughly lazy. They simply make love when the nature calls and lay eggs that are easily whisked away by the egg-mongers. Then they are free from the tensions of raising their kids. I think it will require some wise owl to gather them and put up a lecture about some safety measures while preparing a nest. 

Little happenings at a small place

If mother nature takes away, it gives back as well. It wipes the slate clean and then ascertains that there are fresher lines drawn symbolizing resurrected tales. The bees are gone and the empty hive gives a pinching sense of alienation. But the hundreds of sparrows among the group of keekars just outside the yard wall keep it alive and buzzing. They are very chatty, suspenseful, always busy in their birdie gossip. When they change their notes, it makes them sound as if they possess multi-lingual creativity. They flit around during the day, with a kind of self-effacing candor, taking the major portion of their meals from the millet that I put on the wall.

A giloy creeper has completely covered the clump of keekars. It has shed its leaves during the winters but the network of stems is still dense enough to provide a finely netted ceiling. It harkens the little brown sparrows with a welcoming ambience. They find it safe enough to spend their nights here. The little holes among the densely twisting barren stems of the creeper are like tiny hutments flooded with winged visitors.

The very next day, once the honeybees left, some of the sparrows arrived to roost among the little group of small trees in the yard. As if they were waiting for the bees to leave the garden. So the garden turns a big chiming birdie funfair at dusk. They chat a lot before retiring for the day. But they are very respectful to the night, not a movement, not a sound, paying homage to the goddess of silence. They arrive ten or fifteen minutes before the oriental magpie robin. The dashing fellow is still keeping to his perfectly timed twilight arrival. His biological clock is in perfect sync with nature with the days slightly longer presently. But he has to quarrel now to retain his paw-hold. Some sparrows must be sitting on his favorite branch for the night rest. It leaves him in a grumpy mood and so there he goes with his querulous notes. And finding it to no effect, like a naughty imp he head-butted straight into the bough and reclaimed his lost perch. He fights for it every day. Sometimes, in the middle of a cold, lonely, long night, the magpie robin lets out a sudden note as if all its bottled up pathos are suddenly let out to sail into the cold atmospherics like a song of desolation and loneliness. 

A little exercise

The main charm of dewy autumnal mornings is the shower of little Parijat flowers that covers the ground, like offerings to mother earth. It's a little exercise in nurturing care and consideration in my farming gene pool. Walk carefully so as not to crush even a single flower. If you sensitize your conscience to at least this level so as to avoid crushing a flower, there is hardly a chance that you will crush a heart, an organic representative of thousands of beautiful, multi-colored flowers.