A slim sliver of hope

It’s an angrier world than ever. There are wars, violence, blood and gore. A very insecure world it is. Trust is falling apart. Faith lies sidelined and charlatans misuse trust and faith for parochial motives. The states are arming themselves with more and more deadly weaponry. There is a stampede for supremacy and one-upmanship.

Violence has been deeply institutionalized in the society. The states, intelligence agencies, shadowy players, business mafias, cartels, religious fanatics and many other actors have been covertly and overtly using institutionalized violence to further their interests.

Its effects can be seen in the society. Relationships are falling apart. The people are lonely and depressed. It’s a very unhappy world. And a very dangerous spin off surfaces: the individualization of violence. The stand-alone shooter mired in his lonely, unrelated world. Someone marooned on the island of pain. He too launches war, goes out with a sophisticated weapon and shoots innocent people out there for mundane activities of life.

There is so much of collective mistrust, hate, insecurity around. The lonely individual absorbs his share of fear, phobias and suffering from the air around. Then he goes for a blast. It’s a culture of arms. Imagine sophisticated weapons in the hands of lonely, anguished, depressed individuals. An unarmed depressed man might go for verbal assaults or fist-work at the most. If you are equipping him with sophisticated armory, you are providing predatory talons to his lonely suffering and anger. Isn’t it an aid in crime? Give him back his faith and love in humanity that he has lost, not arms.

The arms industry is running the world. They are the ones who finally decide which country gets bombarded or what innocent blood is shed in which part of the world. They are very dangerous people. The lethal-most traders they are. To them an ant squashed or a human murdered hardly makes any difference. They are sadistically addicted to blood and gore. It’s simply business. Commerce. To sell more grains you need more hungry bellies. To sell more weapons you need more wars and murders. And a violent society serves their purpose well. A violent society will have more violent leadership. There will be more wars, more blood, more butchering. So they are happy with the scenario of lonely, depressed human hunters.

Ironically, we started as hunters of other species. Now hardly anything is left to hunt in the jungles. So we are hunting our fellow humans—just for the sheer mad fun of it. Nobody is safe anywhere on earth. Anyone can be killed by anybody over anything in any part of earth.

Is there any chance of redemption? The scenario is very bleak but there is a slim chance. Almost hundred out of hundred mass shooters, bloodthirsty dictators, warmongering leaders, fanatical religious heads, mafias and other evil incarnate are men. The statistical truth is we ‘men’ have failed in managing earth. So let’s try with ‘women’ for a change. Let’s have more and more women in leadership positions. Yes, it will be a far more chatty and gossipy world but that is still better than blood and gore that we see around.

The spring's last day

It’s the last day of March and the month of spring leaves a soft, languorous nostalgia. There is a deceptive, denotative simplicity in the manner the trees, apprehending the boiling and beguiling summer, are shedding leaves to get a light-clothed summer look. Although there are still some honeybees, gloating with sensuousness, singing librettos to raise the spirits in the source of their food, yet the flowers are losing colors. The spring still holds its oblique ambience as is proven by many butterflies that flutter among the engaging crosscurrents of this brief interval between cold winters and hot summers.

The mornings have big dewdrops on the grass and the pathside shrubs and weeds. Under the rays of the rising sun these shine as culturally illuminating and beautifully layered pieces of marvel.

Hit by the unyielding whip of love and passion—inevitable for someone as young and handsome as he—the oriental magpie robin seems forlorn after diving in the unfathomable depths of love. Given its young age it’s yet to come to terms with loneliness. Its multivalenced sensitivities will gestate, germinate and grow as it matures to learn the value of solitude in old age. Its love affair seems to have been very short-lived. After wooing him with her oeuvre of feminal charms—catching him in the pools of lean, taut, bustling desires—she flew away. After parting from the honored custodian of its heart, the forlorn lover is now left to sing sad love songs. Going along the shading and layering of painful emotions, it’s sitting on the dry branch of a completely dead neem tree. The sadness inside maybe makes it feel comfortable in sitting among a matching surrounding.

This bird is a very bubbly imitator of notes. Its dynamic dialogues surely cross many birdie social interfaces across various species. That makes it seem a very confident little bird. However, as of now among the sadly dead canopy of the neem tree it’s singing the songs of loneliness. A male house sparrow is sitting silently just a foot away from the sad bird trying to overcome the post-breakup melancholy. Possibly the sparrow is trying to learn the amazingly varying notes so that he too can use the skills in wooing the best-looking girls of his species. Who knows, there might be another reason also. As of now the dashing magpie robin is letting out trilling notes. Maybe the sparrow thinks that a few girls of his species will get duped into taking this great song to be his composition and turn his fans. Well, irrespective of the reason they maintain their positions for almost half hour, while the sun turned hotter as it moved up the horizon. By the way, the magpie robin still comes to the little clump of trees in our yard to rest for the night.

The hosting parijat tree has gone crazy and is shedding its leaves quite madly. Possibly the magpie likes its nighttime resting house bearing a sad look of loss and paleness befitting its lonely state.

It’s the start of the harvesting season and the sparrows have gone. They have plenty of grains in the open fields to feast upon. The parijat has plenty of button-sized pods, the seeds of its fertility. It will stay almost withered till the monsoons arrive. It will then throw away its seeds with orgasmic delight. And then it’ll wear bright new shiny green clothes, a kind of celebration for an annual cycle completed, a kind of fulfillment of its natural duties.

A rufous treepie has delayed its going back to its home in the Himalayan foothills. Let’s hope it realizes that it’s getting late and flies for its little dale in the hills because the silence there awaits it motherly. 

The warrior baby

 I would say Maira is already a hero, just at the age of one-and-half years. A premature baby during the challenging Covid times, she was pushed onto the stage of survival, a mere 1,250 grams little baby after just six-and-half months of pregnancy. She braved the toughest tests in the NICU for the next two months. After a week of her birth she got intestinal infection in her barely formed intestines. A very critical and extremely risky surgery followed. A part of the ruptured intestine was removed and there she was with the end of her small intestine serving as rectal outlet by the side of her stomach; such a tiny life facing a very challenging medical process called stoma. It was traumatic to see such a little baby struggling for life and that too right from the beginning.

Further complications followed. Her lungs would collapse. For the lungs bronchoscopy she had to be shifted to Delhi. The shifting was almost fatal for a newborn that had spent all her time on earth at the ventilator in the NICU. The farmers had blocked the road. ‘I cannot give you a guarantee that she will be able to survive this journey. But there is no other way. This is her sole chance at life!’ the doctor appeared to have almost given up. Literally chained amidst the tubes of the ventilator in the ambulance, she not only survived but would breathe of her own after a few days. But it was all pain in its raw, naked form; her tiny body ravaged by the scalpels and syringes to save her.

The waste around her stoma was acidic and would almost burn her soft skin. Then the stitching around the stoma started to give away. Just one stitch, miraculously holding itself on her skin, kept her away from the further bearing the trauma of getting it redone and the resultant extra surgery, more cutting and tearing of her barely formed skin. As she labored for her rapid, hard-fought breaths to keep swimming in the perilous sea, the stitching looked horribly close to come undone. So each labored heave of her tiny bloated stomach was as close to death as it was to life. But she held on.

A premature baby is at the risk of developing eye issues as well. Due to all these early infancy issues and trauma, some blood vessels in her little eyes ruptured, leaving little stains on her retina. It required multiple lager treatments to keep the retina from coming off causing total blindness. Well, she passed the test again. ‘Her eyes are totally safe now!’ the doctor gave a good piece of news after long, tortuous weeks. In the hospital she earned the status of a tiny hero for her ability to swim across the storms. The entire staff took a liking for her and she passed the test with flying colors; the discharge day coming like an emotional valedictory function.

At home, for the next eight months it was almost a tapasya by her well-caring parents to keep the body clean, to save her skin from infection around the stoma. The next surgery to correct the digestive system by connecting the small and large intestines to make her excretory system normal was done by a God’s child, Dr. Roberts of Bangalore. He did a miracle and within a month Maira became a normal child like anyone around. But she had seen so much in life which most of us don’t go through even in our entire lives.

Throughout the year, as her tiny body fought against death, we kept banging at the gates of God’s castle to have mercy on our little princess. Our prayers, fasting and pilgrimages seem to have helped the little hero and the medical staff in wading through perilous wasters.

Maira is my niece, my younger brother’s daughter. Now at one-and-half years, Maira is an enquiring girl, ready to start the journey on her doddering little legs and have her say with her learning tongue. Passing the critical tests is a good way of beginning one’s life. She is already a winner, having gone through so much which most of us hardly have to bear in our entire lives. Coming out of the fire, she is perfectly entitled to her favorite phrase ‘yekyahai’ (meaning what is this) mumbled with a slippery flow, a slurry drawl, pointing out anything from a grain of soil to planets in the sky. She has to know each and everything about the planet that made her literally walk through the river of fire to entitle her a journey here.

I think she is the biggest enquirer on the earth as of now. She is perfectly aware of the fact that she ought to know each and everything. It’s a big, testing world and you have to say a firm ‘NO’ to rule out misinformation and other’s manipulation of your life beyond a point. She is a big-time nay-sayer and shakes her tiny head sideways in robust denial of everything you propose. I think that the tiny lady is very sure of her version of things. I well remember the only time she meant to agree to my proposition. It was about the beauty of moon. It was a really shiny and beautiful full moon on a clear winter night and even she had to agree as she forced herself to affirm and put up an effort to slightly mover her head up and down in appreciation of the celestial beauty.

The cows are outside the house, so the entire world out there is ‘cow’. She points at the yard gate and sweetly mumbles ‘cow’. It means ‘please take me out of the house to see the wider world over there’. The buffalos, donkeys, in fact all quadrupeds are ‘cows’ to her, with one exception—hathi. There is a stuffed toy elephant whose trunk she has bashed and chewed to twist it sideways, even nibbled out a portion of it. So she knows that at least hathi isn’t cow. I hope she won’t expect a real hathi to have a twisted, nibbled trunk like her toy. Thanks to the mauling she has given to the stuffed hathi’s trunk, she recognizes the elephants very well, so much so that even a weirdly contorted ginger piece makes the sense of hathi to her. She doddered, fell, crawled and walked few cautious steps to me and showed me the best hathi in the world. Upon my soul, it looked like an elephant.

The cat is miau-miau. Imagine the plight of the babbar sher, the king of the forest, when he too is dubbed as miau-miau by the little angel. So the ruler of the forest with its regal mane is condemned the fate of a measly pussy cat. All the big cats in the picture books are poor miau-miau. The simplicity of a child’s version of things. I think the lions, tigers, leopards and cheetahs ought to realize that they are mere cats of varying sizes after all. The dogs are bho-bho or bhau-bhau. All my attempts at correcting her through mollycoddling words like doggy or puppy have been spiritedly denied with a firm nay-saying movement of head from left to right and right to left. ‘Bho-bho,’ she says and stares at me pretty hard and I meekly accept it.

We have introduced yours humble truly as tau to her, meaning her father’s elder brother. From that referral and perspective, she calls everyone bearing an elderly visage, even the people in their eighties who are entitled to be called great grandfather, as tau. It’s a cute belittling of high ranks.

Out of all the canine fates, condemned as a single entity named bho-bho, one dog stands out, a brown and white robust female street dog that sits in front of the gate for warm, ghee-smeared chapattis. She has a firm objection against stale, dry breads. Maira has come to know that this particular dog is Bhui (something denoting brown color) not a mere bhau-bhau like the rest. So Bhui is something more than a measly street dog.

As her little tongue is slowly trying to chisel the linguistic monolith to shape the phonetic figurines to finally carve distinct words, phrases and sentences, she has very simplistic tools to cut the phonetic complexities. So the portly hippopotamus in her picture book is a puny ‘hee’ only. Ask her to pronounce any troublesome word, she picks up the first letter and smartly completes her assignment. So as per the simplifying rule of a little child ‘Pani’ is just ‘Pa’. So any oxymoron-adcdefz is simply ‘O’. And we still wonder why children are so happy. It’s simply because they know how to simplify things.

For many weeks she was confused between Cow and Tau because of rhyming similarity. So when I would carry out her request for an outing, i.e., Cow, which is a buffalo in reality in most of the cases, she would stare into my face, as if in confusion regarding which one is the real Cow or Tau. Or both are same? Why then this one has no horns and tail and moves with two legs missing? Well, these are the queries she has to find out for herself as she grows up.  

The other day we shot a family video wherein all of us can be seen gesticulating like kids in brightest spirits. She is all attention and stares hard into our screen avatars and then seems confused. She first looks hard at the person on the screen and then scans its real version in 3D on the real stage of life, trying to make out how come the same person is inside the mobile and outside at the same time.

There is a trash site in the yard where we collect broomed leaves, little rappers and other dry discards for the day. This heap of dry waste is her treasure hunt site. Here is a big world to explore with her slow, cautious, unsteady steps, each fall training you to get up again and move on. She sneaks away to her treasure site and salvages some broken cup handle, a button, or some plastic fragment and turn very possessive about her discovery. After that no amount of cajoling or sweet persuasion or irritating instructions would be sufficient to help the discard regain its former position. She has her own sense of what is entitled to go to join her treasure site. So I have to regularly fetch my toothbrush, hair oil bottle and comb from the esteemed collection in the yard corner.

Here is a little unit of life learning the art of living on her shaky steps and lovely blurry shortcutting phonetics. She wants to impress me with the fact that she is responsible now and does household tasks. She sees the elders running around with things in hand and seriousness on their faces. So now it makes some sense to her that to be grown up means basically to move around with things. So all the grocery jars, bottles, cosmetics, kitchen utensils, buckets, brooms, mugs are having the pleasure of interchanging places thanks to her busy schedule of shuffling things born of a keen sense of duty and the art of learning to be busy.

The other day the dustpan was in the little temple shrine in a corner in a room and the Shivlinga was found at her favorite treasure-hunting site. I’m scuttling away to do something but she spots me the idler. She is very busy in rearranging the house as usual. ‘Baithja’ she invites me, orders rather, to sit on a peedha, a popular low stool quite popular among the peasantry. There I’m obediently sitting, corrected and made to do the things that really matter. She then walks to a tomato basket and brings one, hands it to me and goes back for another errand. So my hands, then the end of my chador are full of tomatoes. Then she observes more important things that have been misplaced by the elders, peas. There they land at the most suitable place, that’s me, one piece at a time born of each of her visits. Then the potatoes arrive. The urgent task slowly builds up. She already knows that we are a disorderly lot and is trying her level best to salvage some order among the chaos.

Tiny teeth are emerging on her little gums. It gives her the grin of the most mischievous imp. Beyond all feelings of shame and inhibitions born of self-consciousness, she shows her funny little irregular upcoming teeth and puts to shame all we elders’ sense of consciousness about looks and efforts to be what we are not.

Little Maira loves sweets, buffi being her favorite expression to give heed to the sweet tooth. The moment she mumbles buffi, she sees our taunting reaction. So she now thinks better of it. She has a way out now to have her sweets and receive some respect as well in its wake. She is well aware of the fact that ‘pasad’—standing for prasad—is something that is held in high esteem. So when she wants to have her piece of laddoo, burfi or jaggery she says ‘pasad’ asking for the holy thing.

She has very sweet ways of using her slow-motion time in her little world. As I eat, she picks up the boiled peas from my plate—one of her favorites in eating and playing—squeezes the little boiled balls in her fingers, drops them onto the ground, stomps over them to add to the culinary delight on the open pan of mother earth, picks her preparation very delicately, cautiously, gently, sweetly, with greatest considerations for my nutritious requirements, and offers them to me. Of course, I have to eat them which makes her smile with a motherly satisfaction.

She has a confusion about the sun and the moon. The moon was first introduced to her, she being allowed to ogle at it with her wonderstruck eyes. On a fine full moon night she mumbled her favorite phrase ‘yekyahai’ and on being told that it was moon she has moon as one of her favorites in the sky. So the sun is day’s muun. They are both the same just giving different shades. During the day, with her eyes narrowed and the face drawn with discomfort against the light, she faces the sun and points out ‘Muun’. Beyond the tormenting dualities, there is a mix-up of hot and cold—she calls both tata, that’s hot.

It’s an ever increasing stage of life to take a bigger hold in her tiny fists and cover a larger distance with slowly steadying steps. As a post-modern child, she has to assert her rights on the TV as well. I’m watching sports, she arrives and demands ‘mote’ which I helplessly hand over.  She points it towards the screen, pressing key x, y, z and all and informs me what is worth watching from among all the idiotic things the elders waste their times upon. It’s ‘motu’. So cartoon binge watching isn’t far away.

She is innocently unaware of the haggling dualities of life that keep the elders’ minds in constant firmament. Bored with life on the ground, she authoritatively points to the terrace saying ‘upal-upal—upal meaning upstairs. And after enjoying the little things of life that presently make a meaning to her—all birds are chia, all cats and monkeys are mere pushu and a flag that inspires her to mumble Om-Om because there is flag on the temple top, so all the flags including the national tricolor are mere Om-Om to her—she points downstairs again giving the instruction of ‘upal’ asking me to take her downstairs. Isn’t it a glorious equanimity? As they grow, we train them for puzzling differentials through education and customs, spinning a web of opinions and judgments and when the spider gets caught in the complexity of its own design, it hankers to achieve that very same non-dual state of mind through meditation and unlearning all that has been deeply drilled into the mind.

A shiny red chili grabs her attention. She picks it up and with her sweetly unsteady steps walks up to me. I’m having my lunch. She cutely puts the fiery red eatable in my plate and eagerly looks at me, expecting me to eat her gift and explode with taste and clap and say thanks to the kind giver. Well, maybe she wants to see smoke gushing out of my ears and eyes. She has enough experience of cartoon programs to know the relationship between red chilies and smoky ears. These cartoon networks turn the children wise a bit too early.

Red, ripe tomatoes are very much playable. She knows where they would serve best apart from the frying pan. It’s the chairs, and more so under some seat cover or cloth, maybe to protect them from harsh winters and help them sleep better. I have dangerously come close to sit upon safely sleepy tomatoes and make fresh tomato sauce under my bum on a few chairs in the house.

Well, little Maira now wants to be in charge of the affairs. Dragging the broom around on her exploring sorties is her favorite task. So this time when she asks for goddi, she prefers to keep her jhau with her. The broom is heavy for her little hand, but punching well above her weight she is determined to hold it dangling by her side as I support her on my arm.

I’m eating and there she stands, holding a bathroom slipper in her hand. There is some space in the plate and she is looking ahead to fill that puzzle with the great item in her hand. I have to be very quick in removing my plate to avoid the footwear from becoming a part of my menu. It offends her and she cries quite angrily.

As the days progress, innocence driven by curiosity takes a planning shape. She points to the potty seat. Her mom is happy that she will now learn toilet skills. But Maira is smarter than her mother thinks. She sits on the seat and demands cartoons on the mobile, which is happily granted under the assumption that it’s a suitable reward for her voluntarily not doing her potty in a diaper and thus avoid all the haggling of washing and cleaning. Maira composedly enjoys her show on the potty seat. There is no sign of potty anywhere near. It turns out to be a trick to lay hands upon the cartoon show on the mobile.

She is a translator now. One morning she wakes up announcing to the world that ‘cow’ is actually ‘gai’. ‘Cow-gai, miau-miau-cat, bhau-bhau-puppy,’ she informs us.

It’s going to be a world of likes and dislikes. She prefers catchy songs koka-koka and paya-paya and raises her finger in bhangra celebration.

I find her mumbling car-car pointing towards the vehicle. We get inside. There is no key. She knows that a car without its key is no car, so keeps pointing towards the missing key, ‘kabi-kabi’ she reminds me, i.e., chabi.

It’s a great sight to watch her doddering steps acquire a bit more surefootedness. She falls lesser now on the way to her mission and gives long monologues in her own language putting in between a few words she knows. She now tries to climb the stairs all by herself, holding the railings, eager to become self-sufficient in going out and upstairs. She has now added to her knowledge about me and calls me tau Chhuppi, the latter linguistic pearl standing for my pet name Sufi. The tongue in its untrained free stage, but acquiring slight edges as she practices her words, imitating us, making cutely weird shortcuts over their complexities. That’s how life starts for a toddler, acquiring more control and the resultant sophistication. But the touch of her tiny fingers—untainted of any deeds, good or bad—is healing. It’s the touch of life, of just being; a soul’s selfless reaching out and touching you on your cheek, lips, nose or brow. Close your eyes and recall a child’s touch on your face. It’s pure, unadulterated energy. It seeps into you. A child will pay you back with its godly blessing, in the form of its touch and a smile, in lieu of all the cares and concerns undertaken by the elders.

Now, it’s a world of combination of choices. ‘Matar,’ she points out. I offer her a little boiled pea seed. She shakes her head in a firm ‘No’. ‘Roti,’ she says. I offer her a little piece, crushing it between my thumb and index finger. It also is met with a firm denial. Now, I realize she needs both. I make a combo of matar and roti and she gladly accepts. She is thus joyfully growing up with her slowly steadying steps, each step distinctly marked by a shrill ‘pee’ by the whistles installed in the soles of her tiny shoes. Each step a landmark, a reward celebrated by the sound.

She knows to survive one has to stand on one’s own feet. One fine morning, all fresh and looking beautiful for a new adventure, she crawls up the open staircase, falls, gets a bloody lip but finally reaches upstairs to greet me as I work on my book.

She knows it’s a big world outside there beyond the compound walls. I find her trying to open the gate standing on her toes, her little fingers bracing the heavy latch. But then she sees me and knows the value of human resource mobilization. She takes my hand and asks me to open it, walks out, looks back once before moving on to see a bigger world.

She knows the value of make-up as well. Me and my brother are brushing our teeth with a nice tooth powder. She asks both of us to sit on our haunches, dabs her little fingers in the powder on our palms and carefully smears our faces with the white powder to give us the fantastic make-up of handsome native chiefs of the red-Indian tribes.

She eats guava like a bulbul, no greed, with ease, leaving innocent needy marks on it with her little emerging teeth. It’s not like a grown-up’s clinical finish that shows greed. I have seen the guavas pecked at by the bulbuls in the little garden and those markings look exactly like what Maira leaves on the fruit she eats. 

It’s an open canvas for her to stamp her choices and preferences now. Here comes her first full sentence of all three words. ‘Chia neeche aao!’ she commands a starling that goes quite close above our heads as we play under warm sunrays on the terrace. Then follows the longest word, a few days later, spoken in the sweetest of a slurred effort. ‘Pigeon, pigeon,’ I’m pointing out. ‘K-boo-ta-ll,’ she corrects me.

She has now taken her first run in the game as well. I’m playing cricket for her with her little plastic bat and a rubber ball. She takes the bat from me, swipes at the ball and is seen running to the wall end. Only then I realize that she has scored her first run in the game of life. Of course, TV has a big role in preparing children for future. She has seen us watching cricket on TV and knows probably it’s about hitting and running. Let almighty bestow her a joyous innings in the game of life!

She is a champion of female rights already. The late winter has flowers in the little garden and a few butterflies hover around. I am lost in poetic muse. I feel a tug at my pants. Maira is struggling with brooms in both her hands. Her little fingers tightly holding the handles, she has dragged them from a far corner. She has a task for me in her mind. Why should ladies have all the fun with the brooms? Even the men should taste it. ‘Udhal, udhal, jhaau!’ she guides me to the part where there are some guava leaves scattered on the ground. She instructs me to clean the place. There I use both the brooms to clean the yard to her satisfaction.

It’s her ground now to run after the butterflies in the garden. It’s her sky now as she tries to catch the floating traces of smoke in the air. And hopefully it will be her world to fulfill her dreams and lead a joyous, healthy life. She has earned it at the cost of lots of sufferings right at the beginning. 

A special tea

 Naresh and Kaptan surpassed other students in rousing the teachers’ ire at the village primary school. The consequences aren’t hard to guess. The teachers thrashed the students on principle, most of whom considered anything related to books literally an embodiment of evil to be hated with the full force of soul. The beatings and thrashings were highly ineffective in the scheme of making the students love or like anything related to studies. At the most, it turned student-teacher relationship in the bracket of intrinsic animosity. The students played mischief without fail and turned brave-hearts and thick-skinned. Just an odd one, like yours truly, terror-stricken with the cane and nurturing his pusillanimous heart, would cram the lessons and he would inevitably emerge as topper in the class. Just don’t fall into the mischief, keep your conduct praiseworthy and very soon you will be walking up the carpeted stairs of achievements and glory in the little, depilated schoolroom; your future waiting to rise to the height of impressive ivory towers.

However, the teachers should have known it better than asking these two rowdiest—and hence the most thrashed—students to bring tea from the little teashop at the small bus stop by the road at a distance from the school. Well, they went all happily, thoroughly thrashed in the previous period. On the way back, with tea kettle and glasses in their hands, the duo felt the urge to drink tea. They had a cup each, in consequence of which the tea fell short. The emptiness born of idiocy in the head is a huge playground for the innovation of mischief. The village pond with its green smelly water offered its help. They washed the glasses and poured an equal amount of green slimy water—having a great spicing of buffalo dung as the big animals wallowed in the pond, cuddling the chew with pride and prejudice—to bring the beverage’s mark in the kettle to its former level. The pond being the favorite place of the buffalos; they just love to defecate in the water after heartful swimming.

It turned out to be a special tea having some exquisite taste, as if the tea-maker had come across some unknown condiments to suddenly uplift the taste of his tea. All the teachers said it was unique. Only one of them said that there was too much ginger in it. The errant duo would continue getting thrashed for their revulsion to studies and continued to fetch the special tea. Thenceforth, mention tea and both of them jumped to their feet with a weird pertinence and would hand over the tea kettle with an acquisitive air as if they had a great role in the tea’s special taste just by being its carrier. Then one day the destiny created a chance to remove the streaks of ignorance over the teachers’ minds in the matter and one of them saw the real reason for the specialty. The enemies were assailed; the entire staff, invigorated with extra-special diet from the pond, jumped upon the culprits in highest earnest and thrashed them to their revengeful heart’s full contentment. 

The small world of a little boy

Nevaan is up for a hearty spell of laughter and he is putting a big effort to laugh louder than the cause and capability of his five-and-half years old lungs. I have been telling him some words of wisdom like we elders tell the kids. Now I realize maybe my words are the cause of his hilarity. So in order to justify his much-labored laughing I also start putting extra effort, bringing more buffoonery in my words and manners. Then he stops suddenly. ‘Mamaji, don’t disturb me! I’m laughing at something else,’ he informs me. The comic color instantly vanishes from my face. Like a beaten joker whose jokes have failed I leave the scene and look back after going some paces. He is laughing even louder now. ‘Mamaji, now I’m laughing real laughter. It’s real laughter. You look funnier when you aren’t trying to be funny,’ he throws a bright light on hitherto hidden gem of my personality.

Nevaan is inspired by a chef’s program on television. So he is reading out recipes and alongside making foodie castles in air. It’s a make-believe mouth-watering heaven of aloo-mutter-paneer-karela-lauki-subzi-pizza-burgers-cheese-sandwich. ‘This is my recipe for the best food in the world,’ he says. The name sounds otherworldly, or maybe classy. ‘So it must be super-costly?’ I ask. ‘Yes, not less than ten rupees!’ he brags. ‘But don’t you think ten rupees is too small for such a grand delicacy. It should be at least ten thousand rupees,’ I suggest. He thinks over and says, ‘Ok, ten thousand rupees then. But you have to give ten rupees also.’ Well, he is more familiar with ten rupees. That’s what we call being more practical.

Going with his relaxed ways, he reads very slowly. It seems his little tongue finds the words heavy. But there is a list that turns his tongue into the swiftest horses in recitation. It’s the laminated menu of a restaurant. Out on a dining night he fell in love with the masterpiece and we had to pay the owner so that he could carry it with him. Now this is his Bible, Geeta, Vedas all. The list unleashes waters over the tongue and removes the hesitating rust and there he catapults full force into narration. Samosa-kachori-dhokla-aloobada-bhajibada-breadpakoda-pohajalebi-rabdi-pavbhaji-chholebature-tikki…. It goes like the latest Vande Bharat train. Mothers are mothers. ‘How I wish they include a lesson on menu and recipes in the syllabus. He would beat all in that,’ hi mother sighs.

He has watched too many ghosts on cartoon networks and feels there are phantoms in dark rooms. He has to get his toy from a dark room. So he is all sweet words of request to me. ‘You are afraid to go alone in the dark,’ I tease him. He sits on a chair and implores me to go and get it. ‘No, I’m not scared, I’m just a bit more lazy. That’s it,’ he clarifies. So being lazy hurts one’s ego a bit less than being called a coward.

The washroom is in a corner in the yard. So he has to mend his ways after dusk so that the offended elders would not say ‘no’ to escorting him to the attendance of nature’s calls. But being a reformed boy from dusk to bedtime is too much. So he has to find some solution. In the morning one day I see him walking to the main gate with chalk piece in hand. I observe stealthily from across a corner. He has perhaps found the key to beat his fear of ghosts. ‘Bhoot! NOT IN!’ he has tamed the ghosts with the instruction on the gate.

The vacations are over and Nevaan is going back to his place. We are waiting for their train at the platform. An old man approaches and starts playing with him. ‘Give me money,’ he says. ‘I don’t have any money,’ Nevaan replies. ‘Then give me your shirt,’ the old man chuckles. I give him a coin on behalf of Nevaan. Now the old man is blessing the little boy and offering him the same coin. Well, neither Nevaan nor the old man is interested in a mere coin. Hard times. A coin has lost even its symbolic value. The poor coin is back in my pocket. There it requests a ten rupee note to take leave off my pocket and change its master. The old man is now satisfied as per the latest begging norms. He is a poor man from Rajasthan wandering on pilgrimages with little bits of charity money on the way. ‘He looks like my grandson,’ he compliments Nevaan in lieu of the ten rupees received. 

The lightness and heaviness of being alive

There is a marvelous lightness in ‘being’ alive. And a heaviness also that is beyond the dimension of the matter. The extra dimension of sentient life in matter (we may call it soul for simple reference) makes the matter very light. The same matter without this energy, or call it soul, feels weightier.

The birds are very light. Hold a living bird in your hand and you would marvel at its weightlessness. How can such a feathery thing accomplish such airy dances and sing-song chirpings?

A babbler entered the fenced yard. It seemed a suitable plan on the bird’s side to seek safety because it couldn’t fly. Maybe it was a sick babbler. It sat there on the ground sad, silent with a drooping beak. It would hop for a few paces and then rest. It sat near a water puddle and took a few beakfuls of water. I tried to feed it with a dropper but it won’t eat anything. When I held it in my hand it felt so light, just a winged representative of the air around.

It came in the morning and died in the afternoon. I found it in its eternal sleep in the flowerbed. As I picked it up for giving it a dignified burial I could feel weight this time. So there is a mystical type of lightness in being alive. Maybe the soul has a floating quality to make the matter feel less weighty while it’s in the body. The soul gone and the same mass feels heavier.

Maybe the soul is always acting in reverse to the forces of gravity, always looking upwards for expansion, always trying to expand and go up, trying to evolve into a higher dimension. Just like the lifebelts keeping the body afloat on water. Maybe that’s why it feels like to be in a cage, I mean that vague sense of being trapped, that niggling sense of something missing. Like air trapped in a balloon, floating the body around. And once the tendency to float, the inclination to expand, the urge to evolve—represented by a particular soul—is gone for a free float (before getting trapped again) the mass that remains behind feels weightier. Like a balloon would weigh more after getting deflated and the air gone out.

It’s marvelous that just one breath keeps us alive and afloat, keeps us in the category of the lightness of being. Maybe the soul is just a breath. But look at its divine component of ‘the lightness of being’! We can easily lift a live being. Lifting a corpse is far weightier proposition. The floater is gone and the stickler is left behind. Just one breath gone and we have a piece of relatively heavier matter. One breath in and we have a far-far lighter being.

So we have this iota of infinite freedom and expansion trapped in this body. It’s always trying to float freely, like the air in a balloon taking it in different directions. But that is the irony with existence. To manifest, the component of absolute freedom has to be trapped in the confines of limited ‘matter’.

But why do the free-floats, the individual souls, again get trapped in the body? A spiritualist once told me that all the surrounding air around us is full of free-floats helplessly, even jealously, looking at we the embodied ones. They look like jealous children at the embodied ones. Probably we love and hate the prison in almost equal measure. A kind of addiction to being something. And to be something you need a body. Body is acquired, then what. The one that acquires the body, the cosmic representative of ultimate freedom (the soul), has the fundamental inclination and urge to be free. It breeds a type of endless love-hate relationship.

What is ultimate liberation or freedom? Maybe it’s the state of a free-float when it no longer feels jealous of the embodied entities. When a sage quits the body in complete freedom, without fear, without any attachment, without any desire or expectations, he goes for a cosmic expansion, so large that it can no longer be trapped in a confined body. Because a fragmented individual disembodied entity cannot beat the greed of getting trapped again unless it becomes a part of everything that’s there. The wholeness cannot be lured to be confined to limited ‘somethingness’.  

Maybe this is what they mean by getting ultimate liberation by feeling all and everything within you. With this unqualified trait acquired all that is trapped and non-trapped feels within you. Like free air feeling the trapped air in a balloon as a part of itself. So it won’t feel inclined to be trapped in a balloon to feel its existence.

So this body itself is the gateway to break the final barrier. It’s the portal to enter that unqualified state of absolute freedom. That is why they say being born as a human is a blessing because we arrive qualified to pass the final test. Best of luck for the examinations of life!  

A slim spring

 The spring is slim, a little crack in the windows when the bigger doors close and open between winters and summers. It’s a little blossoming phase between late winters and early summer. The temperature is already nearing 40°C in the second half of March. The small trees of neem, guava, parijat, karipatta, belpatra in our little yard are shedding leaves in panic. It’s a continuous crinkly downpour of leaves. They are avoiding loss of water because of transpiration by shedding their leaves. Dry golden-brown leaves make a loud rustling sound. It’s autumnal in spirit, just that temperature is increasing every day instead of falling like in autumn. But the keekars outside the yard wall are still in spring. A hardwood of arid regions they aren’t bothered about leaf-shedding. With each gust of wind, there is no harvest of dead leaves on the ground under them. One can feel a kind of desolation, slim weariness, a lithe tension as the sun turns hotter each day. The trees hardly think twice before shedding the extra stuff because it would extract bigger costs if not cast away.

Beyond the talks of increasing temperatures, in the month of March the birds are extra chatty carrying the songs of procreation. They sing a startling preface to resurrection of spirits. It turns a pleasantly noisy world before the onset of hot, pining summer. A male Indian Robin, for example, made such a rippling ruckus that it beat the purple sunbird in excitement and verve of quizzical notes. Despite all the man-born sufferings around, which we unleash with our anarchist zeal and principled arguments, the birds sound like they carry spectacular revival of spirits. But maybe they are congratulating the sparrows on the World Sparrow Day (March 20).

In a turbulent and notorious world, caught in the shadows and under the nemesis of the lofty thrones of powerful villains in leadership positions, the spring brings a marginal sense of relief to the poetic hearts. In a world shaken by wars and intrigues, it’s a relief and pleasant surprise to have a spring day named after little sparrows. As the supreme overlords, the deified faceless baddies, stretch their despotism to newer and newer heights, holding their plucky immortality in their razor sharp talons, there is still space left for the sparrows to make a comeback. About a decade ago, the village skies carried a strange stillness as the sparrows vanished from the skies. Our moral fulcrum crumbled to pieces under the hammer strike of our iron-willed, cemented, plastered steps to create concrete jungles even in the countryside and the sparrows lost their little holes. It’s a sweet surprise to see them back. Even their little flocks seem larger-than-life. They are enjoying the bright sunny day; a lot of chirpy gossips going around. Well, if you are lucky to listen to the songs of sparrows on the World Sparrow Day, you have reasons to feel gratitude for this nice little gift.

In lightening encounter with shimmering designs and colors, a peacock is in full plume now. He is unambiguously hooting his gospel of love. His fan-tail is spread laudably and the excited shake of passion shimmers and resonates through the colorful tangle of exotic designs. We have the king and his harem comprising three pea-hens. He is dancing on the terrace and they, giving respecting and revering looks, seem spellbound by his precious talent. Since the start of creation, the game of love, camouflaging as a gentler version of lust, pulling the enduring significance of propagation and evolution of species, has been the chief driver on the chariot of time. We can hardly comprehend the natural code of unrelenting innovation deceptively embedded in each and every ounce of space around us. The peacock gives a riotous shake of colors with love, lust and procreative passion.

The cool windy mornings flirt with warm sunrays. The flowers open themselves with a spirit of religious offering. Fragile petunias show a seminal spirit—red, violet and bi-colored (white and red; red and pink).

The nights have cool breeze and a few ducks, which had come to the plains for the winter stay, take nocturnal flights. Their soul-force guiding their need-based journeys back to some Himalayan lake, away from the abhorrent turmoil of the plains. They quack a ‘bye’. Peacocks and peahens hoot during the nights. During the day they perch upon the highest points on rooftops and look around as if lost in grander assumptions than the rest of the birds.

The few pairs of doves in the locality love being foolish. They are not to be impressed by the arrogantly styled stateliness of the weaverbird nests. They are contended with the same old house that has seen many tragedies in the past, the very same little, fragile nest that has become the common breeding point of the dove community. When unoccupied it seems a sublime memorial of a species’ looming extinction. The bird of peace looks in shock and awe of the human juggernaut. Caught in the dreadful constellation of unquenchable human desires, they seem to have given up and fulfill the formality of laying eggs in the same famished nest. From our standpoint I would call them most careless of birds. One can see the eggs just couple of feet overhead through the see-through nest. As if hurriedly saying adieu they lay eggs in the same nest one after the other. I haven’t seen even a single successful hatching out of dozens of eggs laid in the little clump of trees in my yard over the years.

The handsome oriental magpie robin that sleeps among the parijat branches at nights went for a nighttime dinner. The washroom in a corner in the yard invited him with its bright bulb. The bulb shone with its appetizing flair of mosquitoes and moths around it. The dashing, dainty guy sneaked in and ate to its contentment. However, it became greedy. At last, I had to put off the light unless the problem of plenty gave it gastronomical effects. In this way the tempo for the summers is building up and just a few weeks down the line the scorching, burning north Indian summer awaits with a baking glee.

The visiting rufous treepie is heckling with the native birds, maybe reprimanding them before starting for the journey back to some little wooded valley in the Himalayan foothills.

A sowthistle has touched the prime of its species. With an ecumenical spirit it has grown to a height of above six feet. Blinded by the exacting smokescreen of our greed-based models of development, we may have categorized it as a weed, but it’s as lovely and likeable to mother nature as any other plant of great utility to we humans. I have allowed it to grow among the marigolds. The marigolds have dried out, after a heady assertion of their blossoming spirit during the coldest weeks of January and February, leaving little saplings growing under the dead skeletal stalks of their parents. Among them blossoms the tall sowthistle, an expression of mother earth’s untamed spirit of wilderness which we humans, with our vilified and misguided bravery, have been trying to quell with brute force, unleashing a downward spiral of nature, decimating ecosystems.

The sowthistle carries the charm of wilderness. It belongs to dandelion tribe in the sunflower family and its flowers look like miniature sunflowers. Just because the bigger sunflowers give us oil we define them as useful, while these little blooms don’t fit in our utilitarian plans, at least not till now, so they are just unwanted weeds for us. But in a world defined by man-made ethical tenets, when everything bottom-up from the ground dust to the planets above is eyed with a hardcore intent to extract useable juice, as a sort of ugly assertion of our right to rule the planet and still beyond, when the spring has been ostracized to few little wild blooms in patches of land somehow beyond our direct manipulation, these tiny smiles are specially significant. These little yellow flower-heads, of the size of a button (half to one inch in diameter) greet me with the comparable resonance of those times when our earth had real springs. They are not as useless as one may think. Sowthistle derives its name from old times when it was fed to lactating sows to increase milk production. Now, these little yellow flowers with frills around the edges carry the banner of spring in my little garden.

And the humans, in their glamorous villainy and manipulating fantasy, convulse with festive spirit on Holi, Vasant Kama Mahotsva. The farmers have their own version of Holi fun. It’s pretty rowdy and riotous to the extent that a city gentleman would surely recoil in horror if he witnesses it. This is the day when patriarchy is razed and attacked by the female warriors. The male elitism gets a day off and the females pommel the male backs, bums and legs with cords made of their head-clothes twisted around to give the sting and strength of a thick rope. Some of them even secretly interweave a wire inside the twisted cloth-cord and unleash all the pent-up vengeance pooled through the year. Its effect is evidenced by blue welts on the backs and bums of drunken farmers which they proudly carry for weeks after the festival. The menfolk pour anything ranging from street muck to fresh and stale buffalo dung all over the women. It starts with fun, progresses to shouts and changes to drunken brawls, squabblings and plain fights as the evening builds up. One of the drunken men poured deep dark oil on the tailless male cat to turn it into a hilarious mini tailless jaguar. I think the poor fellow has lost even the last chance of wooing any of the cat girls unless one of them has very sadist sense of taste for choosing a partner. 

The sullen petunia—that remained flowerless among a riot of colors on its brethren around—decides to celebrate Holi. It smiles with four flowers, four beautiful binary flowers having soft pink and milky white strips alternately designed across its frilled trumpet-shaped blooms. The handsome magpie robin is letting out a cascade of colorful notes as if celebrating the lynching of males for a change on the occasion. It’s a fantastic mimicker. In tune with the Holi-time fun and frolics on the ground, it’s mimicking the rapidly chipping notes of the purple sunbird. After all it’s a special occasion. There are colors in life. I have seen it alone during late winters. Now there is a lady in his life. It’s happy and goes for a fun-filled, excited, ecstatic hopping flight over the unruly fun unfolding in the streets below. It goes up and down and jumps from tree to tree. Meanwhile, his girlfriend looks pretty impressed from a branch. He indeed looks very happy to have found love in the spring after lonely winter nights.

In the late evening, the Holi show culminates with the aftermaths of a misunderstanding between two drunkards. One of them is lying like a log in the street. The other is busy in unleashing the fury of a hard kolda all over the fallen Holi-celebrator’s body. He is a strong lad and gives big, powerful strikes. His tongue gives suitable company to his hands as it raises a massive tornado of choicest abuses, cuss words and expletives in Haryanvi language. Their slippers are lying nearby. A lady dog thinks it better to at least put out the prospects of the footwear becoming a part of this war. She picks them up and puts them in front of a particular house. The peasant woman offers her buttermilk sometimes. Out of gratitude the cute canine lady looks forward to add to the collection of her patron lady’s footwear. In fact the temple goers have been complaining about their chappals going missing from the temple gate of late. They now know where to find their missing footwear. I think this lady dog has taken her job a wee bit too seriously. But then she doesn’t like anyone else doing her duty. Her patron had a visitor who left her slippers in front of the gate. The canine lady felt insulted over this transgression of duties, so she picked up the articles and put them in the middle of the square nearby. 

Playing on your own pitch

 An old tau told a nice story: A pair of cow and buffalo calves decided to play together. The more energetic cow calf proposed playful jaunts and prancing around the turf. So here they go sallying with full gusto. The cow calf went jumping over little hurdles and puddles of water. The buffalo calf tried its level best to be a good play-buddy but soon realized that it was no match for its playmate in jumping and hopping around. It got exasperated and called for a rest break. ‘Let’s play another game,’ it said. ‘What game?’ asked the cow calf. ‘Let’s sit and move our ears. Let’s see who does it better and longer,’ the buffalo calf explained the basics of the game. The lesson is: play at your own turf guys or bolster the little-little advantages nature has given you, like a buffalo’s irreproachable clinging to sit relaxed, chew cud and move ears. They seem like meditators of the animal world when they do this.

Well, the talk of taus reminds me of a few granddads in the village who still have the ‘urge’ for the luscious aspects of life. More in the mind than their creaky aged bodies, I must say. Feeling the torture of this gap between desire and reality they go to the naughty village chemist. The chemist then gives them mind-body gap-filling pills with a rascally grin. The granddads then become heroic, boosted by the pills. They try to force their mind’s imaginations on the surface of reality. The reality involves their daughter-in-laws. The latter flabbergasted and scandalized tell their husbands about the oozing lecherousness of the oldies. The sons then repeat history. They thrash the fathers like they themselves used to be plonked by them in childhood. 

A few moments in the spring

 We have a solid proof of the spring—a peacock spreading its fan-tail for some dancing moments. Brand new tail feathers, sleek, sprightly, strong, long enough to be flaunted and not too long to be cumbersome—like early youth free from the limitations of both childhood and mature age. To be too fashionable comes with its costs. Walk a bit unfashionably and you get some arbitrary windfalls on the way. And some of these give a sheer sense of freedom, the freedom of not being bound by anything or any routine. Too much of fashion is a reflection of our peculiarities, a veritable remonstrance against the simplistic tidings of the soul. And going with the worldly illusions, it romanticizes the path towards perilous excursions.

The squirrel is greedy. The grains are primarily meant for the sparrows. It not only eats them to its heart’s content but ferries jowl-fulls to its house somewhere in the group of trees nearby. It’s very pushy and chases away the sparrows. A few brave ones try to nibble at its fluffy tail but that isn’t too effective. There is no discomfort at the squirrel’s end. So as the octogenarian fixedly nibbles down their share, the sparrows wait on the nearby branches. Patience has some intrinsic value. In our confusion and hurry we just thwart the fruit of patience waiting at the next turn.

To consecrate this truth a babbler arrives. As far as quarrelsome tone is concerned, a babbler is an ever-exterminating tyrant. They hand out impious, bitter reprimands to the less noisy birds. Now it’s the squirrel’s turn to run. It tries to stay its ground with some impertinent attitude but the babbler is too quarrelsome for it. The babbler now occupies the property and seems to hold onto its version of truth like a conventionist holding onto his powerfully twisted myths.

A tailorbird—not a party to the issue and hence in an ideal position to enjoy it as a fun game—is hooting, applauding, shouting. Chik-chik-pik-pik-tik-tik-lado-lado-maro-maro. Full enjoyment. Or maybe even some painful cries as if it has got a boil on its buttock.

Ultimate freedom of expression and right to live—the right to sleep rather: a puppy sleeping right in the middle of a street having its routine traffic of two-wheelers, tractors, walkers, cattle and much more. I see him sprawled to deepest slumber. He is still in it as I return after a couple of hours. There is still peace in the world. Well, you have to believe in it first in order to have it. You have to believe in the kingdom of silence and peace with its invisible gold insignia.

There is another freedom of expression, a kind of swooning and frenzied liberty, that I witnessed by the side of the road. It’s a group of adolescent boys on a trip. The bus has seen wide open fields on its journey. But then an all-open option might mean no option at all. You need a milestone to mark your arrival. So the driver, looking for a suitable clue to an appropriate clearing, stops in front of a power sub-station on our village’s outskirts. The long front wall is freshly painted. A beautiful mushy cream milestone with bright blue border and orange stars in the middle. So a few dozen of them get down finally and line up to relieve themselves of extra water.

You certainly need milestones. The open fields were too dull for the momentous event. They leave ostensible but somehow artistic wet lines on the wall as a mark of their arrival, of utilizing the basic freedom of expressing themselves through relieving in the open as we Indians love to do with our inflexible sentimentality for being natural and open with the nature’s call. The time has a traitorous abnegation of our footprints. So put firm prints of your arrival. They move on with a deep sense of satiety on their young faces. Well, for the time being at least they have assiduously left a mark on their path.  

A little boy's romance with life

 Nevaan: ‘When I was small, I used to do like this.’ Me: ‘Oh, as if you are old now. You are still small.’ Nevaan: ‘Mama, don’t call me small!’ Me: ‘OK, you are old then.’ He brandishes his watergun and aims a squirt at me. It’s still cold enough to get scared of a watergun as if it’s a bulleted one. Me: ‘OK, you are still small.’ He is angry: ‘Don’t call me small!’ Me: ‘What do I call you then?’ Nevaan: ‘Call me young.’ Well youth has many takers. Even five-year-olds are its suitor now.

Nevaan: ‘Ma, please give me a gold coin! Just one!’ His mother is speechless under the weight of the demand. How I wish that gold was as light in our heads as it’s in the heart of a child—a mere plaything. There are infinitesimal shadows in the grown-up minds; mountains of the little molehills of substance. The physical faculties grow and they blindfold the innocent in us, splintering us from being ‘within’ and fall prey to the call of the faraway mirages. 

Little Nevaan’s truth: ‘Ma I’ve started telling lies.’ A child’s lies are better than grown-ups’ truth. Their incertitude far more sure-footed than any iron-hard logic of the elders tethered to the certitudes cemented as wisdom and experience. Their imprudence livelier than any discretion of the older bones.

Thanks to the extended two-year Covid-enforced sabbatical, he has developed a cute little paunch and chubby cheeks. The world came to a halt and tiny children got far more addicted to cartoon networks and mobile phones. So his mother, my younger sister, is worried about his chubbiness. He has come to his Mamaji’s place, yours truly, and we force him to play football with a very soft ball, just a bit heavier than an inflated balloon. He kicks unwillingly and walks off with a limp. The next day he remembers the sports injury. He takes a stick and gives a nice demonstration of limping walk. ‘It’s a big sprain I think,’ he declares complete rest. After half an hour I find him limping with the other leg. I pass on my observation to him. He is caught unawares about the information but then recovers well. ‘The problem Mamaji is that the pain keeps shifting from this leg to the other. It’s a strange game injury,’ he clarifies.

The other day we were trying to fit him into the school dress knickers at a shop at the town. Laziness puts you out of league with standard sizes. We try to convince him about the benefits of running and skipping. He isn’t much interested. He isn’t much bothered about the shower of advices poured by all including his wards, the shopkeeper and other parents at the shop. He is interested in a digital slate that catches his fancy on account of its red frame and electronic built. We buy it for him. But then it creates problems for him. His laziness has seeped into his writing as well. He writes very slowly. So his new toy is a headache for him as we ask him to practice writing on it. He but is more interested in making weird demon faces with my name under them. When the order to write is passed more sternly he sits over it very seriously. From a distance I can see that he is writing very cautiously. I go there to check his progress and this is what I see written very firmly: ‘I don’t want to write.’

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.