Givers and Takers

 I have seen a few wonderful old women beggars—even though calling them ‘beggars’ would be almost a sin but given my inability to find a suitable title for them I use the word beggar—who would put out their hand with such grace, dignity, motherliness, humility, kindness, gratitude and smile that it appears like a mystical treasure, almost a blessing like a saint. Remembering them I feel that it would be incorrect to call them ‘takers’ because even though a coin passed onto their palms they gave back something far more substantial and deep, something that touches your soul, enriching you in a profound way. And after getting softly, gently touched by their presence, as you walk away, the material burden on you minus by a metallic coin, you feel enriched in a mystical, soulful way.

In contrast, I remember many materially rich people travelling in costly cars, clad in brand clothes, adorned with gold and platinum, the ones whom we mistakenly term as ‘givers’. When they give something to a poor person, something very small that wouldn’t even match the cost of biscuits to their pampered dog, there is almost a malicious frown on their face. The frown, the outer lines of the poverty of the soul inside, conveying deep sense of fear, insecurities, dis-ease and absence of joy in life despite all the material wealth around. They appear to ‘give’ something but do they actually ‘give’? In fact they seem to ‘take’ something from the poor palm spread in front of them. I think with that look of hatred and repulsiveness they take away the last semblance of dignity and self-respect still surviving in a corner of the destitute person’s heart. They take away the smile and belief in humanity somehow still lying in tiny bits in the soul of that poor person.

So we have to think and observe it carefully. Not all beggars are just ‘takers’; many of them are ‘givers’ of some invisible substance comprising genuine smile, blessing, gratitude and kindness. They appear to take a little coin or morsels of food but in reality they are returning something very-very big in its subtle proportions. Also, not all rich charity givers are just ‘givers’, they are takers, almost robbers, of the last traces of humanity lying in a poor person. They appear to give something but in reality they are taking back something far more precious. 

The missing towel

 Early mornings in early winters have a mild chill. So here I’m draped in a chador, the best way the farmers and their ilk feel warm. Give them the best of a thermal clothing, which would keep one warm even in Antarctica, but the farmers would feel unequipped against cold in the absence of chador or blanket load over them. It only shows the level of habits in shaping our realities.

So here I’m draped in a light chador picking up fresh clothes to wear after a bath. The set of clothes slung over my arm, I’m looking for the missing towel. The towel has gone missing. It gives me concern as I go searching over the place. Then the concern turns to irritation for the inconvenience caused due to the missing towel. Then arrives self-justification. I’m sure that I always place my things at their proper place. So the reason for the missing towel must be someone else, not me. My family members can hear my uneased exclamations over the missing towel as I wander around looking for it. It’s not to be found anywhere. I’m sure that I cannot be so careless as to put it at a place where it cannot be found. There is a prompt conclusion that someone else has misplaced it—the very same old habit of putting the blame outside of one’s own self. ‘I always place it here, someone has misplaced it for sure!’ they hear my summarized mutter over the episode.

Then it’s found. All of them are staring at me as it’s found. It’ there on my shoulder, hidden by the fold of chador draped around me. That was the first item I had picked up but then the chador corner must have slipped over and while adjusting it the towel got hidden. So here I stand with my lost towel found now. The towel that was always with me. But for whom I had already gone searching out, looked for the missing cause outside and already made judgments about others as their cause.

It’s deeply humbling to be caught so wrong-footed, to be caught so unaware. It only shows the level of unawareness we carry with ourselves on a daily basis. Then we go for a frantic search over the missing towel, the towel that was never lost. We go out on a search outside and naturally look for the reasons for its misplacement in other people.

Well, the towel is always there. But it’s hidden in the deep folds of the chador of unawareness. The chador of unawareness spun of a conditioned and customized self; made of the threads of limiting beliefs, fears, insecurities. Unawareness is draped around us like a chador’s folds and hides the towel of our real self. And thinking the towel missing, i.e., our real essential self, we go on a frantic search. We believe it to be outside. And when we don’t find it, obviously we blame others.

Like the missing towel we have lost touch with our real self. The hiding blanket of unawareness draped around us gives us a false sense of security against cold and vicissitudes of life. The towel of our real self hidden among its folds. And we going on a futile search, feeling restless, wading our way through the network of family, friends, relatives, acquaintances. Assuming them or the larger world outside to be the cause of the missing towel. And we won’t feel the real rest till we find the missing towel. It but is nowhere to be found. How will it be found outside? It has been with us all along this time. But we have moved far and wide. We judge and blame others for the missing towel. We try different occupations, careers, faiths, belief systems and relationships to find the missing towel but fail.

The experience was deeply humbling. How our unawareness is the cause of all the unhappiness. From the missing towel to the estrangement with our true essential self, it’s the same germ of unawareness that begets us unhappiness and suffering. We just need to watch, understand and be aware of all that goes within and around us. Then maybe suddenly we find the towel slung right there on our own shoulder for whom we had covered miles after miles. 

The sunburnt rose

 I’m a sunburnt rose in the little garden of a common man. My smile is singed with scorching May heat. These are the scorched edges born of my battle to survive and smile and spread fragrance and give nectar to these little creamy white butterflies that flutter around. They draw life from me and I take inspiration from them. Aren’t they small flying petals bravely flirting with the hot wind in this scorching heat?

I won’t say the margins of my petals are burnt. I would say they are the embroidery work born of my flirtatious ways to kiss the sunrays.  Well, no shame in that. My law is to smile, flirt, kiss and get kissed and spread fragrance. If that gives me burnt lips that’s no problem. And no problem with the sunrays either. They are what they are. I don’t blame them. Their law is to warm, mine is to smile. Don’t they give life to my frozen petals in the winters after a frosty night? When the frost melts on my lips to make me the seductive prince in the garden.

Well, that was then and now is now. Why compare dew-fresh lips with parched ones? Both are beauties in their own ways. Most importantly, both are smiles in different conditions. So no problem with the furnace of sunrays. Now they give me this beautiful embroidered smile, marking their craze for me over the borders of my petals. They can’t help it. They are in love. I look majestic with the mark of their love on my lips. Don’t I? I do, I know.

We are a few flowery soldiers fighting for love, truth and beauty on a branch. I’m in the front and would take the lead in getting my authenticity singed and branded on my petals by the fiery kiln. Then my deputy stands in wait. He would be leading the smiley charge once my burnt petals scatter to the winds. And after him, the little bud that you see just getting ready to hold the baton for love and beauty will take charge.

Love, beauty and truth are what we convey and carry across our generations. No wonder, we survive as a single entity named ‘rose’. A symbol of beauty and love. And of course smile. So we have to smile at all costs under any circumstance. If a rose won’t smile, I’m afraid smile would vanish from this small planet.

‘I’ and ‘we’ smile simultaneously. ‘I’ and ‘we’ are just the same. Due to this sameness between ‘I’ and ‘we’, I can still enjoy the full handsome youthful smile of my deputy as if it’s my own. I’m happy that all of us are roses only, not Mr. or Miss x, y, z, etc. For then our smiles would scatter and turn to pieces and my smile would become different from other roses. Thankfully we are spared of that fate.  

A smile isn’t just for full, luscious lips. It’s there for dry, parched, thirsty lips as well. A smile on parched, thirsty lips is a smile of bravery, conviction, wisdom, fortitude and determination, like mine as of now. A smile on full, luscious lips is a smile of youth, of romantic dreams, adventures and excitement like that of my deputy. A smile on a child’s lips is the purest, a rose itself. See, can you see it in the little daughterly bud? Now forget all the nagging facts of life and smile for a moment. If I can do it under the hot fiery sun, you can at least do it with all the equipment there to help you keep safe from direct bombardment by the sun.

The book of life

Aha the book of life! Every day a new chapter. Each incident, happening or phenomenon a fresh sentence with profound meanings.

The new sun rising on a misty morning arriving with the message that there is always light after dark to help us see and realize the illusions and unwarranted fears that we imposed on us in the dark.

The setting sun saying ‘a smiling bye’ with a message that one has to accept and willingly dive into oblivion after a dazzling day, after touching the peak of brilliance, after a full-hearted bear hug with life, after completing an innings in career or a relationship. That a ripe fruit has to drop, that once very dear people will go out of life, that smiles will be followed by tears as well. Accept. That we have to accept this play of existence in totality and that includes smiles-tears, win-loss, falling in love, partings, birth-death. Everything.

The shifting shades and reshaping clouds in the sky brimming with the message of change and impermanence, of new forms overtaking the old ones, of a smooth transition, of the old changing into the new without any drama, without any hassles.

Mother earth holding this portion of existence on her maternal palm with unconditional love and the undying spirit of just giving all that Her children need. The message of giving! How much more satisfying it seems in comparison to taking! That we evolve by a great margin just by giving a smile. And ‘taking’ also is highly undervalued. If we ‘take’ with a smile and gratitude, doesn’t it create a ‘giver’ who became joyful for the act? Mother existence prefers a graceful and full of gratitude ‘taker’ than a cranky ‘giver’. Give with a smile of kindness and empathy; take with a smile of gratitude. To mother existence these are simply two facets of the same coin.

The chirping of birds conveying the spirit of keeping songs alive on one’s lips even while engaged in the day-to-day commitments and routine practicalities of life. Their free flights spreading the fragrance of freedom, the urge to fly on one’s own path.

The trees with the message of growth irrespective of the changing environment and the divine instinct of giving fresh air, shade to the weary traveller, inspiration to artists, nests to the birds, fruits for the hungry. A new shoot sprouting from the cut on their bark. The message  that we too can get fresh colors and shoots to our personality at the points of cuts, wounds, adversities.

The flowers with the message that smiles carry the touch of divinity, that fragrant petals and nectar fuel the colorful sorties of many butterflies, that we too touch many lives positively with our gentle manners, smiles and sweetness of temperament. That our rainbowed touch can make many people joyful like nectar-satiated butterflies. We smile, say soft words, treat them gently and they soar high and become joyful.

Beautiful relationships with the message that our travel-weary heart, mind and body need a soft touch, a cool brace, a healing bonhomie; that friends, family, relatives, partners, lovers are all there to help us cross a milestone on our eternal journey and then melt and get reshaped like clouds in the sky. But we carry the invisible imprint of their persona on our selves. It’s firmer than a line on stone. People might have tears on account of you, once the pathways have parted, but ensure that the tears are accompanied by a smile as well so that the dry tears don’t singe someone’s soul.

A river in the hills, furiously cutting big boulders, passing the message that we have to raise a blizzard of karma to later enjoy a peaceful flow in the plains and later merge into the bigger serenity of the sea. That we have to cut karmic stones to come out of the stones, walk joyfully on the plain of relationships, kindness, care, share and finally sleep in the lap of mother sea.  

The silence in a forest loaded with the message that this is what all the words and languages point to, the language of silence, the mother of all sermons and preachings.

The exotic chaos and cluttering noise in a city heavily pregnant with the message that all of us are destined to wade through inner conflicts, puzzles, trauma and tension like common people beautifully engaged in the sweet-sour poignancy of the cities.

Falling in love loaded with joy, pleasure, care and share. It tells how important these feelings are for our wellbeing. Just recall the feeling of bliss while freshly in love! Isn’t that wonderful?

Falling out of love, tears, pain and suffering passing the message that we always could have been better lovers. In any case, it’s always for the best in future. We just become better lovers after partings.

Everything around us is full of messages. The book of life! Observe it, feel it, understand it. It opens the experiential dimension in life. With experiential knowing the phantoms of intellect and mind take a backseat. They always bow down to the confident sovereign, the soul, the observer now fully aware of its kingdom, its colors, shapes, hues, everything.

The beauty of carefully reading the book of life is that we learn to touch our own self, our own body, mind, thoughts and emotions with more empathy and self-love. We fall in love with life overall. We simply come out of the definition of life within this particular body and feel related to the life overall. Then we touch many lives very-very positively. We become healers without trying to do it intentionally. It’s just a natural state of being in that dimension. Happy reading the book of life!

Balance. Balance. Balance.

 Uncontrolled emotions will turn us suicidal, depressed and at the most a brooding misfitted poet. Uncontrolled mind will leave us open to the chance workshop of the devil. Anything negative may come out as a dark product. Uncontrolled energies will see us lunatics. Uncontrolled biology will find us turning into sex maniacs and rapists. Having control over life is only meant to avoid a 'part' of our nature or existence from becoming 'everything', thus shadowing all other dimensions of life. We get hijacked by one impulse. Then it's a stunted growth. Holistic growth, call it evolution, needs Balance among various aspects of our existence. As Buddha said Balance is the key to a really joyful life. Keep the parts in place. Maintain all the impulses firmly in place. Don't deny any part of your existence but please don't allow just 'parts' to be 'whole'. It's a multicolored bouquet with fresh flowers of body, mind, emotions, energies. Maintaining Balance among them gets us a fulfilling life full of nice relationships, jobs, growth, faith, love, kindness. If we are driven by just one impulse then it acquires too big a force, driving us in one direction, imbalanced, and we turn mere products of our impulse and randomly developing circumstances. Use all the 'parts' of your existence and we become creators of our own self. Because there is no excess of one particular driving force. As humans we can grow and evolve only as creators, not as circumstantial products. To be a mere product would be degradation and disregard for the tremendous potential of awareness that mother nature has given us. So again remember: Balance, Balance and Balance. At least listen to Buddha if not me! Everyone talks of Balance but how to do it, one may wonder. There is a very simple technique for it. Allow yourself to be softly braced by various aspects of life that touch and test the different parts of your existence. Live an experiential life in totality and allow mother existence to caress your multilayered and multidimensional self in various forms at the level of body, mind, emotions and energies. Don't run away or shun any particular aspect of life. Embrace the experiences that come your way. And where all are sovereigns, nobody would emerge as a tyrant to manipulate your life in an imbalanced way. 

A dandy lizard on a summer noon

 A shikra is a light-built hawk, ashy blue-gray on the top and rusty brown underside. It loves open, meagerly wooded country. It’s a swift flier, almost incredibly elegant, with quick strokes of wings ending in a glide. It flies close to the ground and shoots upwards to grab a perch upon a branch with solitary sovereignty. Hereafter, it gives a desiccating look for any mice, small bird, lizard or squirrel who, perchance, lowers its guard for a moment that may allow it to sire a successful hunt. It may seem to carry a kind of effeminate nonchalance for a hawk but its birdie persona is interspersed with enough skill to dispense with the life of any little rodent that turns careless even for a moment.

The predator gives a piercing, harsh, challenging call. Well, now it eyes a love-struck pair of garden lizards in the branches of the curry leaf tree basking at the peak of heat with its exotic elegance. Tiny clusters of whitish flowers leave aromatic pools of air around the couple. There are honeybees and butterflies enjoying the feast even in the noontime heat setting up a lifeful rhythm. Tiny guys expertly, uncomplainingly facing life’s gubernatorial challenges. The bees, the butterflies and the in-love garden lizards make it festively buoyant. A melding interface of food, love, death; the elements juxtaposed so nearby, side by side. I muse with a stoic smile: a circumstantial texture peppered upon the small tree; dismal indices of smallish ironies; and God’s inherent instinct of eternality above and beyond all this.

The noon is meticulously bright. Swathed in the distressing pools of longing, the male lizard is bright orange around its torso, she a shy soft pink. Hypnotized by the jingling placations of love-lust combo, they are perfectly oblivious to the hawk eye peering at them through the leaves from a top branch in the tree. Then the hawk falls through the branches like it has been shot dead, a free fall. They are lucky that the tree has enough leaves left on it to make it a noisy fall. The sexual energy quickly transforms into panic and they forget the tentacles of love and take onto their heels, individually, separately, for life. They become invisible. The hawk changes many look-out positions to spot the runaway couple. They are not to be seen. Changing colors in league with the times, a nice tactic to dupe and survive.

I have seen them a few times earlier also, enjoying the moments of togetherness; looking out for a healthy moment to join their bodies for the full fruition of love-lust combo. Seeing them together is almost mirth-exuberating spectacle. Looking at the way he has to change many colors, I feel that he is forever trying to deal with fresh tantrums from her bountiful books. As a dandy lizard, the male carries a lot of confidence of cosmic magnitude, a sort of self-assured, heraldic march, especially when its girlfriend is around. It raises its head and stares at you head-on. I have no doubt that it wants to impress her with a brave stance against we humans. I have faced situations where he has stared at me with gutsy posture from just a few feet away. Comfortably ensconced in a successful love’s saddle, anybody would give the impression of a king feeling robustly positive and on top of this world after self-coronation. Aaah, the heat, follies and dew-moistened rosy auguries of love, or maybe lust, maybe both together, sometimes one over the other and sometimes the reverse! In fact the combo is highly shapeless to define it in a particular way. But I’m happy that it didn’t repeat the same folly while facing the hawk and showed a clean pair of crawling paws, otherwise the lady would have lost her love necessitating her to go seeking love again after a few sad moments. 

A sunburnt summer flower

I consider myself a summer flower on account of being born right in the middle of summers on May 5. Fiery summers making me feel like a sunburnt summer flower. But a little astrological fact sooths with its cool brace. It was the Budh Purnima day when I arrived for my current innings on earth.

Here I’m basking—sedate, pensive and sensitive—in the solitude of pale fallen leaves, sunburnt roses and some odd butterflies still darting about on this late morning of my birthday. It’s a small corner, a little peaceful niche in a world embroiled in lawsuits, lamentations and calumnies. Here I sit as a sovereign of my dwarfish, puny world; the sun a bit short of the baking point at this moment of the day.

The curry leaf tree is laden with clusters of little white flowers. These must be very succulent. Hundreds of honeybees are quenching their thirst on them. It creates an opportunity for the red-vented bulbul couple. The two of them stretch out their necks to pluck the bees. Four butterflies are also tastefully busy in enjoying a breakfast. The purple sunbird couple looks somewhat irritated at the nectar-sucking pandemonium. They think it’s their prerogative only, so they harangue their witticisms from nearby branches. It’s a buzzing, delighted, entranced little world at the cusp of gastronomical delight; a world with its refractory charm standing wholly for me with its indispensable fidelity.

The same tree bears the fragile little nest that allows the doves to lay eggs without putting an effort to make a new nest. One more couple lands to inspect. Denounce the dolts for their laziness. I always do whenever various dove couples lay eggs in the same nest, one after the other, only to lose them to cats, crows, gravity, et cetera. Thankfully, the tragedy is postponed for some time. The locality seems busier than their liking. In the stingy hubbub, a few bees bump into them and they flutter away, noisily clapping their wings, the take off somewhat loud for their peaceful nature. The butterflies and the bees also bump into each other. Well, everyone is entitled to participate in the feast on my birthday.

A tailless cat is eating the top ends of some still green blades of grass in a corner in the garden. The old women, they are all gone now, used to say that the cats and dogs eat grass as a medicine when they have stomach issues. He makes plenty of weird faces while taking his medicines, like children make while taking bitter pills. This particular cat is thoroughly wicked. Thinking that his poop will be mistaken as the deeds of my favorite cats, getting me angry enough to give them a hiding, the pettifogger relives himself on the terrace. But I know his tricks. Despite his vices and faults I allow him to take the grass medicine because depriving an indigestion patient of medicines would be a sin.  

Undaunted by the fiery summers, like rose-hearted guys still surviving in a stone-hearted, artless, brawny world, the petunias in five pots, making full use of their favorable circumstances—they have to face direct sun only till eleven in the morning—have enough blossoms to beat the sultry shades of sadness born of a yard littered with dry, pale leaves and a lonely birthday boy among them. Their infallibly pure, sprightly, indomitable, bright smiles wish a very happy birthday, gently offering lolling sympathies; a soothing balm over the burns, cuts and wounds, the result of strange antipathies presented by fate.

It’s a little flowery shrine with a potted tulsi in between: a live shrine with a living goddess with her living bouquet of flowers. They have to do a little less than half-day’s wage to survive. The sun can try to wither the blooms till only a bit past eleven in the morning. Till then they obey the law and bow their heads in reverence to the God of light, waiting for the wall shadow to creep over the edge. The rest of the day is manageable once they are out of the direct onslaught of the fiery streams. The tulsi reinforces her holy status each day as a sesame oil lamp is lit under it at the evening twilight. The holy incense smoke adds beautiful smell to the smile of the flowers around the venerable plant. So as good neighbors they share their part of offerings. That makes it a very happy neighborhood. Dozens of petunias of varied colors flash their smiles, beating the hot winds with their colorful spirit.

A lizard stays among these pots and the portion of the wall nearby hidden by the flowers and the pots. It’s her happy world carrying a unanimous and cordial air. Safe also. The fleas and mosquitoes who fall for the flowers end up finishing their journey here. She rarely misses her dinner. The bright oil lamp always has some moth or two, drawn by their passion for the flame, and then it’s the turn of the gecko’s tongue which is equally passionate about jumping at crazy, infatuated moths.

During the day, the life-giving sun tries to soak away all the life donated by it. It’s only the jollity, verve and optimism of the children that brings us back from the lolling lackadaisicalness onto the stage of life in the evenings. Rooftops and terraces are overtaken by the kite-fliers. And irremediably sullen monkeys, in heroic abdication of their foppery, peep over the parapets of the roofs, lost in deep deliberation to find places where there are no kite-fliers. They bear a sullen look, considering it as an infringement on their rights to rascality on the roof-tops.

There are two boys representing two types of kite-fliers in the locality. The one is the kind, his childhood in full bloom, who suddenly picks up a stone and throws it. In the same groove, he loves kite-flying without tail. The dives, ups and downs of a tailless kite present a real chance for fun and frolics. It’s challenging and adventurous. There are flurried notes with forceful, quick pulls and prongs of the cord. The other boy is a well-behaved one. He would just look over a stone on the way and thus maintain the level of happiness as before. He uses a tail for his kite, proportional in length to the speed of the wind. He wants a steady flight. The kite is safe against the playful windy shoves. The holder’s hands are relaxed because not much action is required. The adventurous one then decided to fly his kite in a windstorm. And taking inspiration from the kite-tails of the other guy, he used a forty feet long tail to give his kite a chance at survival in the storm. The windstorm ensures that there is even more excitement and fun with a tail this time. All this seems to be done in celebration of my special day.

Suddenly realizing that I may become a shuddering bystander in the game of life, struggling against the grip of self-denial, chastity and privations, I receive a special treat in the evening. A most welcome one: a few drops of rain in the season of dust-storms and hot loo. The drops feel icy cold and hit the sand to create one of the best smells, the smell of mother earth. The dusty leaves get a bath. It makes everyone very happy. A 100-year-old gypsy woman missed the moment though. She was dusted like the trees around; soiled with a century of age in addition. So her daughter-in-law, once the sudden downpour passes off, puts her on a charpoy by the side of the busy road passing the village, takes off her clothes and gives her an unhurried washing. Nothing special about it, it’s almost as normal as a little boy or girl getting a bath at a public place. A 100-year-old woman is shrunk to the cuteness of a baby. So a baby bath it is, at the most. 

Everybody has an allergy

Farmer Ranbeer drops in the morning. ‘Haven’t met you since many weeks, so came to see you,’ he greets me in my yard. He seems apologetic because he can easily read my mind that is full of thoughts whose summary is that the host doesn’t approve of the guest’s visit and considers it a waste of time. But farmers have thick skins. They don’t get bruised by such subtle hostilities. Theirs is a tough world where something has to be loudly visible and concrete solid to be taken seriously. So my feelings and thoughts are irrelevant and his arrival is supposed to be born of my invitation and his acceptance of the same.

Secluded in the yard corner, far away from the maddening crowd, basking in the soothing gaiety and enormous serenity, I’m reading newspaper. To me he seems a loafer tramping around on a mission to slay all traces of peace from the remotest corners. My face wears gravity even though he carries an affable personage. He is slightly stalled—just a trace of it—by my quirky countenance, and quickly grasps the affectionate strings ever-available in his goodwill for me. He considers it to be a very friendly visit and drags the chair very near, as would do justice to a joyous smalltime prattling between two idle-most people in the world.

His left eye is watery and blood red. Lost in my covert conjectures, I surmised ‘Eye flu!’ It strikes me hard with cold disdain. Eye flu, the harrowing word, boldly italicized upon my once editor’s psyche on the page of my insecurities. Knowledge, apart from being the solution provider to many challenges, is also the cause of many of our problems in the modern-day life. The farmer isn’t bothered much about my unease. Maybe the idlers and loafers suffer the least weight on their brains. The world of knowledge keeps us on the edge. I give him malicious looks. ‘You should take rest and not loaf around,’ I testily tell him, almost rebuke him in fact, my knowledge of the eye flu’s contagiousness giving me anxiety attack.

‘It’s nothing,’ he laughs. It was nothing to his wife as well. Ranbeer had gone to the village chemist for eye-drops for some mild irritation in his eye. He got the drops, came home and settled on a charpoy to receive the eye-drops in his eye from the work-hardened hands of his farmer wife. She like all farming women was thrashed like a hefty heifer during her husband’s prime but now pulls all levers, including ears sometimes, as the hubby grows old and she still retains immense powers. In the Jat community the availability of power in the limbs is the main deciding factor in the game of life. You rule like an egomaniacal king when you have power and strength in your bones. You fall down to slavish level with the passage of strength from your body.

She has retained at least double of his, so she is a formidable and petrifying force now. Haughty, stern and austere, no wonder, she rules the kingdom now. From an earlier avatar of a tyrannical king, he has now fallen to the level of a grizzled old social democrat and she a ruling-by-fist communist autocrat. He has to hope that she soon acquires a weak memory of the past. Or if not, at least listens to the conscientious commotions of her female heart, forgetting all the poignant recalls from the past when the hubby was the king.

On his part, he cannot afford to fall into any misdemeanor born of habit. He has groomed a nice new trait in him: in response to her ravings he gives supplicating, meek looks of a puppy. He is ageing wisely, a kind of melting of the grand discordance (at least on his part) between a husband and a wife, a peeling away of chauvinistic sentimentalism, an ability to keep things normal despite the better half’s chastisements.  

She stares at the brand new medicine vial. She is illiterate but has pictographic memory. Everyone needs such skills to stay alive in this memory-crazy world. Her face turns very serious as if she is busy in solving the most puzzling equation in the mathematical world. She doesn’t open the medicine and carrying a doctor’s mien goes into the store room crammed with agriculture tools, barn equipment and discarded electric gazettes. She returns after five minutes from the dusty-musty place, some cobwebs jewelling her hair.

She is quite perturbed over Ranbeer’s spendthrift ways. She remembers his hard-fisted financial tyranny when he used to be the king. It resulted in her entire life being spent clad in a select few rumpled, worn out salvaar kameej and chunris. ‘It’s the same medicine. See, just same-same! Why waste a new one. There is a bit left in the old one. Use it!’ she commands. She isn’t, even with her pictographic memory, much concerned about the expiry date printed on the medicine. ‘The old medicine was at least five years older than the expiry date. But she has to spend the old one first otherwise our house will break down due to the wasting habit of mine. So in order to finish the old bottle, she drops the medicine throughout the day,’ he laments.

No wonder, his eye is blood red now. But worrying about such matters is not for them. He laughs away the petty talk as if nothing has happened. So it stands proven that worrying is basically a disease of the well-informed or rather too much informed. The farmer with a deep-red eye takes leave, jocosely looking forward to a restful day, leaving me still wondering and apprehensive about the transfer of the possible eye flu in his eyes.

It reminds me of my own episode of red eye and the people running away in office. I worked in the editorial department of a publisher during those days. It was an oral homoeopathic medicine that I was taking at the time. Editorial being a very taxing job for one’s eyes, I usually used some general eye-drops to relieve the eyes of the strain. One day, after a bad day at office and having lost my focus, by mistake I dropped the eye-drops on my tongue. My taste buds complained a bit, a small hint at change of taste, but not much. It was followed by dropping the oral drops in my eye. But the eye singed with pain. I had a blood red eye like Ranbeer. Next day my manager—always strongly explicit with disdain, disgust and aversion—ran away from me, grimacing with repugnance, as if I carried plague. ‘Eye flu, eye flu!’ I could hear him muttering. With my contagion strain I turned infallible and the manager a mere harmless slanderer. My teammates maintained a distance. ‘You should have taken an off. It’s clear-cut eye flu!’ my manager rued. I told them the reason but they laughed and took it as a joke. Keeping their sensitivities in mind I took three days leave. The ever-fighting manager, forever reaching higher and higher to the capricious cusp of his deranged self, temporarily forgetting his inveterate hate, morphed into a kind gentleman, in fact seemed very relieved about avoiding the eye flu pandemic in the office.

Ranbeer leaves but it seems a visitors’ day today. Very soon, Master Randhir, a retired teacher from a neighboring village, arrives and confidently occupies the just-relieved chair. His nose, turned bold purple due to the ceaseless rub of the hanky, is working to the fullest watering capacity. His hanky already sloshed due to his effort to stop the endless stream of water. It’s the nastiest cold, as worse as it can be. This is an apocalypse of pandemics, I shiver. To the hell with Corona-type symptoms! Socializing is very important. Go and live your life, embrace people in bear hugs, especially if you have a running nose. It shows how much you love your fellow humans.

The retired teacher is in his early seventies and hard on hearing. Doing me favors, he draws the chair even nearer. His major activity is wiping his nose all along. Nicely cornered, I resign to my fate, kill my irritation, slaughter my frowns and set out to entertain my guest.

Masterji is a considerate man, understands my feelings regarding pandemics—Corona isn’t too far in memory—and tries to assuage my apprehension. ‘It isn’t bad cold that others will catch. No virus and bacteria. It’s allergy. Nazla-nazla,’ he clarifies. Masterji is a long sufferer of this allergy, the triggering unknown substance lets loose his bronchial and respiratory system now and them, torturing him so much as to turn him on the path of spirituality. I bow down to the godliness in him for he thinks that I’m a great saint in making, despite my eye-rolling denials and even open declarations of my worldly shades, and wants me to cure his tragic allergy.

‘I can fill buckets of water with this tube-well on!’ he ruminates. ‘Santji there must be some cure. I know you can search and get me rid of this evil allergy,’ he looks expectantly. I feel sad for him. I feel sorry that I can hardly help him in this regard. But I can see that it has weighed very heavily on his mind.

‘Masterji, you feel sorry and bitter thinking that you the odd one has been chosen to suffer with this horrible nazla and that makes you feel sorry for yourself. But everyone has got a nazla. Some have the nazla of power, some of wealth, some of lust, of jealousy, of hate. See-see, everyone has got a type of nazla. Sab saale nazla se pareshaan hain. I can’t see even a single person who isn’t suffering from a nazla of his own kind. Go out in the street and spread your arms and shout ‘sabko nazla hai’,’ I spread my arms. Masterji cackles with laughter. He is consoled. He realizes that all of us have our own nazla, our own sufferings of mind, emotions and body. ‘Sabko nazla hai!’ he repeats and laughs as I see him off at the gate.

Just nearby a leery young dog, his tongue hanging out with paroxysm of obscenity, is locked onto an old hag of a bitch. The clumsy fellow seems to be repenting in the grip now and being dragged around—an aftermath of its inexpert endeavor, looking for a way out, its suppliant tongue out in submission. And she, the old, wise, clever and capricious one, has all the time to drag and publicly shame him for his impulsive storm. Aaah the hideous deformity of time—its seconds, minutes, hours (and weeks, months and years in case of humans)—after the love-ravage! The bitter fruits of basic instincts, gratuitously bequeathed by the still higher forces drawing the strings somewhere in the unseen mysteries.

Masterji is piqued for a moment but then regains his jeering spirits. ‘Inn saalo ko bhi nazla hai,’ he roars with laughter. 

The material costs of devotional love

The Russian Hare Rama Hare Krishna follower sincerely loves Krishna and Mathura. She has been here for four years. She has sea-green eyes. But then you need a real-life Krishna in your life also. So she is on Tinder to seek a human manifestation of the divine love. An acquaintance of mine, an enthralled connoisseur of wine and women, is also looking for fresher pastures of love most of the time. They hit a match, exchange numbers and start chatting. He is in the deep blue of love, lust, companionship; name it anything, all these mean just temporary escapades of the modern man to help him run from his restless self. He is expertly pulling at the long strings of his expertise in handling women to his advantage. His words are sweet and slippery like exquisite muslin. 'Female spiritualists in casual low-necked T-shirts are very attractive,' he shares with me, almost water-mouthed. Ambling along the tidal fury of raw passion he is slowly pulling the lines. But these are classy fishes needing still classier baits.

‘Most of the people are chronically materialistic,’ she quips, with a mysterious light emanating from under her shadowy eyelashes during their chatting session. The guy sounds apologetic each time she utters the word ‘materialistic’ because he is always after money and women. ‘I need a MackBook laptop for translating my guru’s teachings into Russian…for larger good,’ she tells him as they seem ready to take on each other, testing each other’s worth at many levels. ‘And I need to go to Thailand for some time to mediate in peace and silence,’ she further elaborates her plan, expecting her sex-obsessed Indian Tinder friend, prominently cherishing a fling with a white woman, to come gallantly forward to spiritually meet the materialistic costs of this ascetic scheme. Well, the material cost of this immaterial wish—the gourmet choices of the stomach prevailing like the shadows of metaphysical hunger of mind—is at least two lakh rupees. The guy beats a hasty retreat. This love of a Krishna lover is too much for him. The immaterial demands of a devotee are too overwhelming for him.

I tried my level best to encourage him to fulfill these little demands of a devotee but he won't listen to me. 'See, I know you are very clever like an old fox. You will even convince me to lose this money with a smile. So it's better not to listen to your sermon,' he quipped and ran away from my sermonizing self. 

Brave summer flowers

 The last week of April with its baking hot 40°C days. The sun seems to have insatiable appetite to vaporize the entire pool of moisture from the face of earth below. The moment you step out it feels as if you have been put in an oven. So those who can help it have run to take shelter in the shade. But the wheat-harvesting farmers cannot help it. They have to face the apocalypse to beat the demon of hunger both in their stomachs as well teeming millions over the planet.

The pale, yellow, still left out leaves wilt and droop under the fiery onslaught. Submissiveness and surrender, in the absence of any alternative, is the mantra of survival and resurgence when the situations change in the future. Big trees fall in a storm. A blade of grass survives because it bends to the storm knowing fully well that it can have no say in the beginning or stopping of a storm.

Seamlessly and ceaselessly blazes the sun. The heat touches its peak between two and three in the afternoon. The streets get deserted. But right under the baking sun, two brave beings hold the baton of life. A boy is flying a kite. His boyhood’s armature blunts the heat’s knife-grinder to spin mauve loops of laughter and fun. It’s windy and the kite with its long tail sways to the hot endearment of the burning, sighing wind lashing against its paper. A little white butterfly also defies the fiery diktats and goes kissing nectar from little bulbous groups of red peregrina flowers. Well, let’s make it three—the boy, the kite and the butterfly. That’s what living is—swimming against the tide.

Put your feet on the ground, the skin may peel off. The sand is on fire. Exactly for this purpose, to save the humanity’s soles from burning, a hawker of bathroom slippers is plodding his laden bicycle with bright, attractive, multicolored footwear. His hawking tagline, punch-line rather, is very interesting. ‘Chappal lyo, gents lyo, ladies lyo!’ he shouts with confidence and brave clamor. Well, beyond meanings in spirit, in letter it means: ‘Buy slippers, buy gents, buy ladies!’

There is some water in the narrow, open water drain outside the yard wall. Beyond that there is a little patch of semi-wilderness, the last refuge of the snakes in the village. The snake must have been very thirsty to crawl out on the hot sand to take a few lolloping sips of water. It left a majestic crawl-art on the sand. A liquor-lover coming gyrating in the heat’s eddies sees the curvy lines drawn on the sand. I run out to stop him from breaking the rickety iron gate for he is banging with fists in all seriousness to warn me of the snake. ‘A huge black snake got into your garden,’ he warns. ‘The line stops at your gate. It’s surely inside your house,’ he wants me to faint with fear, looking expectantly into my eyes as if baiting out utmost fear and phobias. In the evening many people talk about the snake in different colors and sizes. The color varies to cover the entire range of spectrum. The length of course is stated to vary between a dozen feet to its half. The girth between thigh and bicep. Well, I think that’s how myths develop.

There are sun-burnt flowers still holding onto their belief in blooming and smiles. The bonsai bougainvillea has a bouquet of wispy-petaled violet flowers. I bought it from a nursery keeper who had worked in Pune for some time. The way I carry myself, I look barely a senior school passout.

The stay at a big city makes you feel more enlightened about things of knowledge and facts. Even though he may not have passed even primary school but that stint at Pune makes him take himself very seriously, especially about the names of his flowers. As we bargain about the price of a bonsai bougainvillea he has to correct me multiple times. ‘Yea, it looks a nice bonsai,’ I agree. ‘Yes, very nice bone size it is!’ he corrects me. During the time it takes to strike a deal he has corrected me at least four times. He is sure that I’m not educated enough to pronounce its name correctly. ‘Bone size sold really well in Pune. Very important educated wealthy people were my regular customers for this item,’ he is very proud of his bone size plant. ‘Thanks for the wonderful bone size,’ I correct myself at last. He is relieved at teaching me the correct name of his much esteemed plant.

The brave sadabahar in the crack in the wall looks unperturbed of the heat. Used to the extremes, I suppose. The garden trees have lost their shade. Thanks to a neighboring house, I can sit in the shade till late in the morning. At least in the morning there is dead-leaf charm and autumnal joviality which a person of poetic sensitivities can barely afford to miss. Despite the fire in the air, there are butterflies, simply because we have at least sunburnt flowers.

An episode of love and war played on a yellow parijat leaf nearby. It’s a horny flea couple. They take a tumble on my newspaper and finish the action while still rolling and fly off.

The ants want a pucca house. Who doesn’t these days? They have drilled a hole in the cemented bricks in the yard. A tiny heap of sand, a mark of the excavation work undergoing below the ground, stands as the testimony to their worksite. It’s a busy world with the ants happily carrying grains to their new granary.

The Indian robin, almost a resident bird of the small garden, hops around and tastes a few ants along with the grains in their mouths. But the ants aren’t bothered. They are so many as to not miss the few odd ones that go missing on the labor line.

Maybe there was a lizard on a branch near my shoulder. The shikra dives and lands on my shoulder like a missile. Both of us get startled beyond imagination. He struggles away angrily. I am not aware of the lizard’s fate.

A fat brown male cat comes panting, mouth open and the tongue hanging out due to the heat. He checks the yard and pees on the wheel of my scooter, sniffs at many plants and deposits himself on the wet ground under a hibiscus in a corner. He looks all set for a noontime sleep. 

Romancing with peace

 

Remember the wonderful time you spent on a beach facing a calm, bluish lagoon? Its soft bluish ripples gently tugging at your soul. Silence and peace seeping into your ruffled, wavy self. Remember walking on the soft sand of a desert on a wintery, windless day? The sand cotton soft and the sun kindly warming the rigid clods of pain. Away from the hot sandy blizzards, the mirage buried under the sand and you joyfully watching the footstep trail, gently tugging at your soul. Remember rolling on undisturbed pastures on a balmy noon away from the icy shrieks of windstorms? The grassy softness assuaging all hard knots of suffering inside? Remember a calm lake? Its soft ripples gentling tugging at the aggrieved self, asking why are you so sad? Remember the spotless blue sky of the spring season, looking amusedly over the colors that have sprouted below?

Stormy seas, heaving lakes, disturbed desert or wind-lashed pastures hardly beckon us. We move away from them. They remind us of the storm within our own self. Most of us carry tiny invisible storms within, invisible storms let loose by the onslaught of nervous energy. There are waves of random thoughts, overbearing emotions, fears, insecurities, complexes. That’s why the symbols of peace represented by the kind, peaceful face of nature appeal to us so much. They are like a healing pill, a medicine of peace that we soak, inhale and gulp down to do away with the stormy sea inside.

Most of us carry a choppy sea inside, tossing the boat of our existence. The wind howls and waves shriek as the nervous energy moves randomly like in a puzzle game, seeking a way out of the troubling alleys and corridors within. Shaken by this stormy onslaught from within, it’s quite natural for us to run around in order to seek solace. It primarily is the base of our eternal urge to connect, interact, build relationships, friendships, setting families, careers and all that we engage in order to make it somehow meaningful.

There are people within whom the storms have died; so much so that they are a human representation of all the peaceful scenarios given in the first paragraph. They possess the peace of silent, bluish lagoons in them. They have the serenity of a wintertime desert on a windless day. They have the gentility of gently rolling pastures. They have the flowering of joy like the spring season. They have the summer warmth of kindness and empathy to melt others’ icicles of pain. They have the autumnal surrender and detachment to carry an unconditional smile. They have the coolness of winters to undo the burning hot turmoil in others. The best of natural peace out there gets sublimated inside their persona. They come to represent the calm, peaceful, assuring, healing aspect of mother nature.

Won’t the people feel these peaceful vibes coming from such souls? They surely will. When we talk of enlightened sages and benevolent saints, maybe we have the vast picture of calmness, peace, tranquility, stability in a human form: A human representation of all the beautiful things in nature that heal and assure our tossed self. The gentle sea, the calm desert, the peaceful lake, the softly musing sky, the soft carpet of pastures need not say anything to us to undo our pain and suffering. They pass the message just by being there. Similarly, the vastly stabilized self of a spiritual person gently, invisibly strokes our hair, kindly embraces our presence without any judgment. They are not left with any possibility for judgments because these are born in a tossed self only. No wonder, the people will look for such gentle souls. They might be hiding in forests and caves but we somehow seek them out. Just to watch them, be with them and feel their presence. Because it heals. It pacifies the storms within.

Postscript: Inspired by the interaction with a gentle soul who is on the path of becoming exactly such a person.

Summerstorm

 The sun is getting hotter with each day as if driven by obsessive self-admiration over the heat and brightness. The noons are dazzling with soaring luminosity. The leaves are baked dead by the forty degree plus sun. The noontime is no doubt a big oven with everything for a nice roast. Just a gentle hot breeze and dry leaves rustle with a song carrying the essence of crumbling, charming prodigality of mortality, of shifting forms, of transfigurations and transformations. The parijat is a mere leafless sketch in black and white. A sandstorm in the evening and what remained of the pale leaves still precariously perched on the seat of life on the branches was also forced to let go of its worldly clasp and flow away. A bare almost lifeless tree it seems but there is semblance of aged but wise and graceful profile of an old man.

In the morning next day, I see a tailorbird’s nest-cup on the ground. The storm can break the branch but the nest is intact. It’s for nothing that we call them tailorbirds. They are meticulous in their art. A laborious, expertly weave of grass, hair and cotton. As I’m marveling at the master tailor-work, I see a tiny beat of life. A hatchling—mere half of the human little finger—is lying on the ground. The pulse of life itself has a big force even in tiny frailest of bodies, and that’s why maybe the ants kept away waiting patiently for the pulse to die down, as if paying respect to life, following a dharma. Well, it was lying on the ground throughout the night and surprisingly still possesses the beat of life. Where were the ants? Maybe they were busy somewhere or were conscientious enough not to eat something alive.

There are two more hatchlings nearby. One of them is considerably small and dead, the other has some movement. But these two are sticking to a thick strand of a buffalo’s tail-hair that had been utilized in nest-making. I hold the bigger alive one and its dead, almost weightless sibling dangles, swinging to the breeze, already on the path of dust-in-making. I know any effort to pull the dead one away would almost result in tearing the living one.

Since there are nestlings alive, I deem it my duty to fix the nest. I try to fix the nest, consisting of three parijat leaves stitched together with strands of buffalo hair and swabs of cotton, among the crumbling dry leaves on the sad-looking tree. It needs some tailoring skills to reattach a tailorbird’s nest to a branch. I use a needle and a thread to sew the system to a branch and put the survivor hatchlings in it including the dead one.

The parents return and throw lungfuls of abuses at the human whom they suppose to be the one who tossed away their house in the dark. They straightaway get into the business of parenting once they find that the nest is funnily reattached in an artificial manner. They soon arrive with worms in their beaks to feed their kids. Thinking about the last evening’s storm isn’t part of their nature. They live in ‘here and now’. After some time, while they are away, I get onto a stool to see the position of the household inside the leafy cup. The pair of the dead and the barely alive, strung together by a hair strand, is gone. The only healthy baby is sprawled comfortably inside the nest. Most probably they discarded the dead along with the half-dead, not having the means to undo the hairy entanglement. That shows their love is perfect, yet very practical in nature, bound to some primal laws of survival of the fittest.  

Clangy-blangy fall of a farming vessel

 The farmers keep a big tin pan, a basin rather. It’s used to gather cattle dung in the barn to take it to the dump site. We call it tasla. Not a great item to look at, on account of its task, it but is as important as the brass plate in the kitchen. When a tasla falls on the ground, it makes a thunderous sound as if war has been declared between two groups of rowdy farmers. It freezes the moment in the entire neighborhood. Its clangy-blangy notes spread out with the intensity of a mini-bomb’s explosion. Sometimes it startles love-cum-fight sessions between the peasant couples to whom there isn’t much of a difference between love and war. Lovemaking happens to be a type of war. And sometimes not just humans, the birds also get stalled in their beautiful moments by the storm-surge of a tasla fall, like it happens this morning. A beautifully fan-tailed peacock and a reciprocating dull-looking peahen standing face to face on a wall and just on the verge of a cheeky-peeky-beaky kiss. A tasla bangs on the ground in the locality. As the noisy tempest is unleashed, the kiss gets lost and the startled love-birds run for life.

We aren’t sure how many farmer couples, sparring on the charpoys, leapt out of their duels, but yours truly can see at least one more effect on a helpless animal. It’s a heavily pregnant cat slowly moving on the top of a seven-foot high yard wall, carrying its sweetly overloaded stomach with the majestic mien of maternity. It need not be told to be careful; natural intelligence at work. It’s there in every ounce of existence. But the clang and bang of a falling tasla can spoil all natural equanimity born of inherent intelligence across species. It jumps as the tasla slays peace, or even secret wars on charpoys, in the locality. But as a mother it has to be careful. It seems uncertain whether it should go down or not. It then very cautiously slips along the wall, her front paws scratching the wall plaster. The feline would-be-mom neatly lands with a very soft jump. And we humans think that our knowledge is a product of our thinking. In fact our thinking overshadows the infinite natural intelligence pervading around. Remove the dust and see the bigger picture. But not when a tasla falls. We all including humans, peacocks and cats share a commonality, a common trait of getting frozen for a moment when a falling tasla slays the status quo.

A skirmish between liqor-lovers and honeybees

 The liquor-lovers suddenly realize it’s very hot. The question of sweating like pigs during the drinking sessions can no longer be dismissed airily under the colossal caveats unleashed by boozed self. There they go expressly head-hunting for a solution to the problem. ‘As you sweat in excess, the alcohol inside seeps out through the skin-pores and that’s the reason we no longer get the feeling of sufficiently drunk these days,’ one of them explains in a metronomic tone. The nippy swirl of hot winds seems to conjure disaster by pouring out all the alcohol from their innards through sweating. They have enough willpower to go looking for a solution and find one in fact.

There is an abandoned storeroom in the locality. They decide to fix an AC in its back wall. As they break an opening in the wall to fix the air conditioner, an anxious and jostling crowd of honeybees attacks them. The group is semi-drunk while all this happens. They get defeated and retreat from the battlefield. The next day, they look indescribably beautiful—in their own ways of course—with swollen and strange-shaped eyes, noses, lips, foreheads, cheeks and chins. They appear to have come under a deluge of whiplashes by the angry insects. But it’s not over yet. The party with weirdly beautiful faces returns to the battlefield to settle the scores. It’s a war that is being fought over two days. The bees won the first battle skirmishes on day one.

The new-faced liquor-lovers raise a huge pal of smoke under the bee-comb. Many honeybee soldiers fall down beating their wings, gasping for breath. Under attack by the killer deluge of the smoke the honeybees move away, leaving behind their larvae and stocks of honey.

It was a very safe hideout for the bees, both against the heat as well as the honey buzzard. But then the liquor-lovers’ right to beat the heat proves stronger than the bees. I sometimes wonder that this creation is merely a series of bigger rights imposed over lesser ones, a kind of blatant supersession and expansion moving from lower hierarchies to bigger ones.

Since we are talking of the liquor-lover group, it won’t be misfitting to talk about one particular member of the group. As long as he can open his eyes, after getting sloshed to upper limits, he has enough willpower and strength to give a blow back for his wife’s attack. She is a strong peasant woman. So he full drunk and she all fury result in inconclusive fights. Both carry the marks of night battles to the next day. She then decides to tilt the scale in her favor. He is lumbering sloshed to guts and moves with unsteady steps, having just enough senses in him to somehow—miraculously though—maintain his shaky vertical against a fall. She welcomes him with a smile and lavishes the glory of her sweet words unlike the angry cat that gnawed at his face whenever he returned home fully drunk. She purrs like a joyful cat and seduces him to drink more. He happily complies and falls asleep, or rather not able to move or open eyes, a total blackout. With unconquerable dignity she then sits on his chest and slaps him to her heart’s deepest content. The next day he carried perfectly blue cheeks. ‘It’s the side effect of the spurious liquor that you drink. You are lucky that it affected just the cheeks,’ she explained.  

Take a long walk before decising to marry

 In the year 1988, a Serbian artist named Marina Abramovic and her German partner named Ulay, much in love and looking forward to marriage, egged on by the unfaltering command of mutual infatuation, fully enamored with each other and eager to share the paradisiacal joy of matrimony, decided to walk from the opposite ends of the Great Wall of China. They planned to marry at the point they met on the historic wall, considering it an aesthetical and classical culmination of a journey to mingle into each other at many levels. It was a nice trekking from both ends. They walked pleasantly and finally met at some point. But they met with the realization—airlifted into the momentum of newer truths—that they didn’t want to marry and returned to their places separately.

Seeing the life through a fresh kaleidoscope, after going through multitudes of dew-fresh experiences, you turn a stranger to your old self. You are no longer held at ransom by the beliefs and emotions that defined your former sense of being. Maybe walking on open paths, with their daring allurement, with their untrampled and wild prospects, makes you see the truth better. The long-eyelashed coquetry of flimsy, skidding emotions gives way to a healthy pragmatism. Inhibited and repressed truths about the self and the others sneak out as you lose your grip on them. The bindweed and wild clover on unpaved ways, which you dismissed earlier as inconsequential clumps of weed, guide you to a mysterious unearthly splendor which any well-planned, properly paved and designed rosebed, properly gated and guarded with the grills and railings of our fears and insecurities, would fail to accomplish. The floating façade made of large-scale assumptions crumbles down. And the absurdly overstretched, congested self opens to glorious scenarios.

So all the couples who are in a dilemma about marriage must walk for a few hundred kilometers from opposite directions and meet on the way. Walking on earth gets us grounded and makes us realize the futility of staying on cloud nine forever. As you walk and see the naked realities of life, without pretentions and hypocrisies, with each kilometer walked you get better like wine with age. Your vociferous ideologies melt down and the smart, savvy, lionized self reshapes to acquire more realistic outlines.

The story of a snakebite

 Shekhar would call me ustad. Later he proved it that he meant it and as a sincere chela got a snakebite by, probably, standing proxy for me by sheer chance or mischance. Our group of friends was young and conjured up the meaning of life through persistent, relentless, regular walks into the dark countryside every day without fail. Four or five of we friends would loiter around, sharing our disillusionment and anguish with a creeping openness, talking about our youthful follies in the dark on the field pathways crisscrossing the cropped fields around the village.

Once on a dark night, on the way back, me in the lead like a genuine ustad, followed by four friends including Shekhar and my younger brother Amit. It had rained heavily. It was a narrow submerged passage of hardened cement sacks and stones, standing as a sort of fording point in a low-lying area around the pond. The rains had partially submerged the rudimentary step bridge. It was a world of brattish, tentative jigsaw puzzles, beyond the claustrophobic set of care and caution, torches or mobiles. A free world decided by the crucibles of dark and deep vicissitudes of fate, beyond the security and systematized steps as we have presently. Now even a rope would seem a snake in the dark and during those days even a snake would be taken as a mere rope.

As the leader of the party walking in a file, I would have stepped upon a snake fitted in a hollow among the partially submerged stepping-stones. But then chance denied it an opportunity to dig its fangs into my foot. As I took the step that would have trampled the snake, my forward foot in the air, the other foot slipped over the edge of a stone. In order to avoid a fall I took a long stride, almost jumped in fact. It meant I leapt over the snake hiding in the submerged crevice among the sacks and stones. Sometimes destiny extenuates you, quite surprisingly, despite all your hypocrisy, brazenness and indolence, and puts the share of the consequences of your very own step in the platter of someone else.

Shekhar, following immediately after me, walking behind step-in-step like a true comrade, completed the job pretty firmly. The snake bit him hard and repeatedly on his calf muscles. He gave a long and loud shriek and went hopping over the water like a misfired rocket. The pond-keeper arrived with a torch. Shekhar’s calf bore many bleeding bite marks because the reptile was trodden over very comprehensively. In this manner, my friend stood proxy for me for the dreaded experience of a snakebite.

My brother is a strong man. He being the strongest of the group took the responsibility of carrying Shekhar on his back, running over the pond’s earthen embankment to reach the road. We ran ahead to stop some vehicle to take him to the venom-curing doctor. Shekhar thought he was dying and supposing dizziness, which was in fact his acceptance of the fact that one turns dizzy by degrees after getting bitten by a snake, to be the call of his end of innings on earth whispered his death-bed wisdom in the ears of my brother. ‘See Sufi is a soft and kind guy. Take care of him after I’m no more!’ Well, I’m sure he didn’t know that he had stood proxy for me for the bite otherwise he would have spared this kind departing-time injunction.

In any case, we took him to the countryside snake venom doctor, famous for treating snakebites with his secret herbal concoctions. He prepared a bucketful of horribly smelly and terribly bad tasting brew and force-fed Shekhar the entire lot. It included some cuss words and raptor-sharp nape-grazing palm attacks on the patient’s stooping figure as he protested against the atrocious concoction. There were mammoth rolling waves of revulsion inside his innards and he vomited like a tube-well. It was the countryside method of detoxification. Shekhar survived the episode. Either the concoction was effective or the snake wasn’t too poisonous. But the incident left a spurious shadow of fear of reptiles on his psyche and he felt its direct effects on his physical health for almost six months. He would be justified in claiming that his snakebite treatment lasted for six months. In the meantime, he gulped down all the horrendous venom-antidote preparations, whose ingredients were family secrets, made by the vaidyas in the entire state. Thankfully he recovered to a position to claim full health. But he says he feels sleepy if he eats stale, cold kheer in the morning.

However, now he won’t stand proxy for me for a snakebite anymore. It’s a well-wrought lesson. Almost twenty years after the mishap he suffers from reptile phobia, and rightly so. Recently, on a balmy winter noon we were strolling by the canal. The canal had been desilted so a smooth silvery bed of shining sand was layered over the embankment. Usually dozens of harmless water snakes can be seen basking under the sun on winter noons. The soft, silvery canal sand was etched with slithery, crawling marks as the reminders of the reptilian sunbathing. As we neared the crawling lines, his phobia flashed live snakes in his brain as he saw the snakes drawn on the sand. He swears to this day that he saw real snakes. I am but equally sure to have seen only lines and no live snakes as it was broad daylight. He yelled in panic, jumped as if the crawling marks under his feet were live, writhing snakes and this time, playing safe and no longer willing to stand proxy for me for a snakebite, jumped up and got onto my back, drawing his legs as much above as he could manage. 

Selfie with a cobra

 A few years back we had lots of selfies with a cobra. I know most of you would term it as a bigoted banishment of the common sense. A cobra obviously isn’t an obliging, fake-smiling celebrity to gratify the demands of perky fans. Its anger has a lot of reach and range. In addition it has lots of attitude and arrogance which has a high chance of not adjusting to the demands of a selfie. But then it was a tired cobra, like an old aristocrat sitting among the ruins of his palace in an era of crumbling feudalism. Moreover, it was full of gratitude as we had done it a big favor. I would say that it was a mature reptile because it found itself bound to oblige us with a selfie in lieu of the favor done to it.

The cobra had fallen into a deep well. After two-three days of tiring drudgery to stay afloat, the seething spirit to hiss and bite ebbed down to the lowest point and there it lay like an almost dead rope. My cousin tied a neem bough to a rope and dropped the anchorage for the tired, sulking cobra. Forgetting all the malignant elements of the dangerous equations between the reptiles and humans, it got onto the bough and coiled itself safely among the branches. It was then hauled out and was cheered and applauded by the fans outside. It acknowledged the presence of the rescue party with its tired but taut hood. As a reciprocation for the act of kindness, it didn’t let out blasting, hissing sounds. It was so tired that it won’t get off the branch, taking it to be the ultimate savior. So we picked up the bough and had lots of selfies with the condescending cobra. It just stared at us with a mysteriously concerned curiosity. After an extended booming and euphoric selfie session, we put down the branch among some bushes, and suddenly it came out of its hypnotization and quickly came to life and dashed away at full speed. Maybe it was a wise cobra who knew the value of the favor done to it and rewarded us with some fan moments. 

The beginning of Summers

 It’s the burning first week of April. The short-lived spring is more of flowery symbolism, a very delicate metamorphosis, far more in allegory than substance. In future it will be remembered through the poetic approbation of sundry sensitive souls. Gusts of wind loop around with a thirsty probity. Once out of the winters, the roses have given their best. They had ravishing, oracular dew-laden smiles to fulfill their commitment to the short-lived spring. Now they get some respite at night. But during the day the 40°C sun soaks away life and smile from the roses that still try to keep their smiles. It’s a slow-burning pyre now and they lose their color rapidly, the petals get crinkled.

A few pots of petunias have unleashed a rainbow of red, pink and violet. They are lucky to be placed by a wall where they have to see through the scorching sun till noon only. After that there is shade and the sun-beaten, bowed down, drooping flowers slowly regain their smiles as the afternoon approaches. They recover completely at night to smile at their best, all fresh, and welcome me with innocent fresh smiles in the morning before the sunrise. The little sadabahar flower in the crack in the wall has welcomed spring with high spirits. It has grown taller to be around one foot and has a cluster of little purple flowers. The thin crack in the plaster is its lifeline. Acknowledging and honoring its formidable willpower to survive, I sprinkle a handful of water around the crack. It’s just enough to moisten its lips but it seems enough to help it keep smiling. For sure it looks happy in its little world.

I look solemnly as the short-lived spring gets sucked dry by the thirsty sunrays. One must have sympathetic eyes to witness the fading signals of the retreating spring. Three butterflies go gamboling in the air, flirting with the eddies as if out on a pleasure party, going to dine on a few discharmed, sun-ravaged flowers that still keep their posts for their patron season. These are creamy white butterflies. I hope it isn’t a naughty play—a colorful threesome demonstration. What is a butterfly, I ask myself musing over them. It’s just the air taking colorful wings and fly around in a form so that we can see it.

A ladybird has fulfilled its quota of representing the air. It’s an illustrious form of earth now—orange with black dots. It’s a beautiful pattern in the soil as I sit by it to pay homage to a life that completed its journey. Well, the dead need to be honored. I pick it up on a leaf and leave it to turn to common soil in a safe corner among the still remaining flowers.

These are the times for the triumph of ‘extremes’. As extreme heat builds up, the sunburnt roses give a sad sight. The hot wind swipes its airy hand and scores of dry leaves tumble down. A green ladybug also tumbles over. As someone who is trying to keep his eyes grounded for smaller things in life, there I find it kicking its legs in the air. All it gives him is a backstroke movement on the ground. It may look good in a swimming pool but on the ground this expert maneuver gives scratches on one’s back. With the help of a dead leaf—everything happens for a cause; maybe the leaf fell near the ladybug to avail the services of my fingers to save the little colorful insect—I help it turn over and there it goes showing its beautiful back and scampers into the security of some plants.

The ladybug has to be thankful for not being spotted by the forlorn magpie robin who goes flying restlessly in the locality. There is plenty of urge for love despite the heat. But there are more claimants (takers) of love than givers. No wonder there is a shortage of love which has come to acquire the shape of a commodity these days. The ladybug was lucky in having an extended backstroke swimming exercise on the ground because the garden magpie robin has been busy in fighting for love at that time. He is fighting with a rival. They pinned each other on the ground, locking each other in a wrestler’s hold so forcefully that they didn’t move at all for at least two minutes. They are lucky that a cat isn’t around otherwise the love game would be the end game. The lady in contention looks curiously from a distance. They are a couple, I think. Our magpie robin is unnecessarily trying to snatch away the rival’s girlfriend. It seems to be fed up with its lonely nights on the parijat tree and decides to fight for a better half at any cost.

The purple sunbird couple is usually seen flitting among the trees and plants in the garden with their prodigiously arduous chipping notes. They are extremely chatty birds and are impassively in pursuit of each other from branch to branch. Either there is too much love or too much domestic bickering between them. There is a limitless barrage of swish-swish-swish-swish notes, a kind of rolling ruckus that startles even the noisy tailorbird. I’m not sure whether the couple is adherent of the religion of love or advocate of husband-wife animosity. But these spurts of either anger or love cooings peter out after brief intervals. It’s very challenging to maintain either love or hate at an intensified, pointed peak. People get tired of their hyper-excitement and come downslope, mostly on opposite ones. I would say it’s better to come down the same slope with experience and an understanding that staying in the clouds is too much asking. Be realistic. Don’t drift away, just come down to the level plain. You won’t be alone at least. Coming to the birds, if it’s a quarrel then they are drifting apart after tasting the peak of togetherness. If these are love songs, let’s see how long they maintain the tempo.

The game of love unfolds on an unusual and inexplicable chessboard. The pawns, we humans and even animals, birds and reptiles, are shuffled around for hits and misses, for brief pleasures and long pains, by an unknown hand that sits on the playing seat with unremitting zeal, playing for both ends, being victor and loser both with the same sadistic excitement. Love: toughest in philosophy to understand and simplest in feeling. As of now, it seems so simple in lovely companionship of a mynah couple. The top end of an electricity pole is their place of dating and the time is late in the evening when the sun has lost its sting. It has been a week since they have been arriving to meet on this tiny square at the top end of the electricity pole. They relax in close proximity and let out beautiful foundational notes. Brahminy mynah is a very talkative bird and they have a wide assortment of notes to converse in their birdie language. They must be having wonderful tales containing descriptions of the unobvious.

With broadening connotations of our taming spirits, confidently holding the hangman’s noose to tame the darkness on the surface, we are throwing beams to light up the stage for our ever-unfolding mind-work of creation and destruction. The village has street lights now. As I stand on the terrace at night, I can see the unfolding spectacle of our beams pursuing the darkness. And darkness seems to be retreating under the baffling barrage of our lights. But then maybe it’s creeping inside, vacating its posts on the outside, giving us a false sense of victory and is seeping through our skins to take a counteroffensive position in our hearts.

Well, I remember perfectly dark nights, real nights, in the village during our childhood. The streets were completely dark and the simple houses fought the dark with flickering oil lamps. And now we are fighting against the nights to have 24-hour days on earth. We may lose our nights altogether due to light pollution. Lights hold the enduring legacy of our stepping out of dark caves to enter the un-blushing charm of the brightly lit palaces of convenience and comfort. Lights, lights everywhere: street lights, bazaar lights, vehicle headlights, mast lights, blazing skyscrapers, fiery rockets, lights-lights and more lights. Now even oceanic depths are disturbed. The unshaded light flies off into the sky only to be scattered back by the clouds, gases and dust molecules in the atmosphere. The LED lights are bright but glow at the blue end of the spectrum. It gives them more penetration into darkness. In future when urban centers will dot all nook corners on earth, we will have far milder nights or maybe not altogether. Work-life balance rapidly falling in favor of work, the unsparing work culture will welcome endless days. China, cringing with egregious cynicism, in fact is trying to develop an artificial sun to keep blazing 24-hour non-stop over a city. A scenario of ‘no nights’ is highly likely and plausible in future. Just light, light and more light. Then darkness will be sold like bottled water is sold presently. We will have doses of darkness in closed chambers as remedies for the diseases born of too much light. 

A little pilgrimage

 There is an open large sewage drain, the mother drain of all the smaller sewage drains and nullahs, in the town. It flows with its black, stinking sludge. An eliminatory canal taking away the waste and refuge emanating from the overworked urban bowels. People grimace and cover their noses as they pass near it. But this impurity is what defines the purity of holy waters. There are little temples nearby. Here the people enter, open their soul and breathing to the incense smoke in front of the idols. 

I walked for a considerable length by the big open sewage nullah. It's a strong smell. The smell of our stress, pain and struggles. Of overburdened humanity. Of mass transformation of life into mere struggle. I love walking by holy rivers. But this also is an avatar of mother stream. The all-accepting avatar of primordial mother who is happy to accept all the dump Her children put on her. A mother unbothered about the urine and shit dumped on her by the infant child. My head spins due to the strong odor after 15 minutes. But this also is a little pilgrimage for Maa's blackened avatar. She is smiling even with all her filth. But she is after all the very same mother whose divinity flows in crystal clear mountain streams. As I move away it seems like a little pilgrimage I have performed.