A little forest

 Sometime back I had thrown some tulsi seeds in a cleared-up part of a flowerbed. Little saplings grew and now it looks like a tiny tulsi forest. The beauty about lovable volition, the bhaav of love, is that it takes you above physical limitations. With pure volition of love and compassion this little group of tiny plants is as big as Amazon forest. It becomes as pure as any holy site on earth. If you can relate and feel like an ant crawling through this tiny patch of holy leaves, then you of course turn a little child wandering in a big forest. It’s only about the bhaav beyond acts, deeds, words, scriptures, holy pilgrimages. If you are in that bhaav, this little group of plants instantly turns your Gaumukh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Jerusalem or any other holy site. Right here, this very instant. A pure unconditional bhaav takes you above the limitations of space and time. Karma gets unattached from your consciousness during those moments of pure volition and you have the moments of liberation. Call it samadhi, enlightenment or any other word. Words are mere pointers.

As I stare into this little patch of green and with pure volition muse over a little insect going through it, I’m a pilgrim going through a deep forest. As I take bucket bath and chant Ganga Ma’s name with pure heart, I’m bathing in her holy stream. I don’t have any doubt about it. As I walk by a little ancestral shrine in the countryside and bow my head I know I’m having a darshan of Badri, Kedar, Tirupati. If you establish yourself in that unadulterated bhaav, Mother Existence gets everything for you right at that very spot. But we have to walk around a lot ultimately to realize and come back into stillness and divine pause at one point, that pure volition. Then you aren’t anywhere but still everywhere. Then it hardly matters where you are, what you are, what others think of you, whether you are moving or not. The small acquires mammoth proportions to inspire holy awe. The big becomes small allowing you to marvel and analyze at the level of mind. Well, that’s the beauty of pure, unlimited volition.

Digging the well of destiny

 In Chhatisgarh, an eleven-year-old boy fell into an eighty feet deep borewell. The water table is plunging down and the water-seeking holes are going deeper and deeper. The boy was stuck in the deep cavity for 104 hours. Around 500 rescue personnel worked round the clock; dug a parallel pit and a connecting tube to fetch out the boy. Meantime the boy was handed down six bananas, juice and ORS fluid. He had a snake and a frog as company all along. In the dark womb of oblivion, the primal fear rules supreme. One would love to have some company in such a dark, deep pit. So forgetting all predatory instincts and devouring orgies the snake must have cuddled the frog. The latter must also have, forgetting all fears and intriguing irritations, reciprocated with friendly croaks. It seems a bit sad that the boy couldn’t share his banana with his mates. It’s not clear from the reports whether the snake and the frog could be rescued or not. If they were not, and this is more likely given our valuation of life in human terms, then I would call it an incomplete rescue operation. Maybe with bits of nostalgic condensation they would have turned out to be the best of friends outside—the snake and the frog.

The elephant lost a human right

 So the court has ruled that Happy is not a person, he is an elephant. A court was hearing a petition whether the zoo-confined pachyderm in the US could have human rights superseding his animal rights. Had the verdict gone in his favor, he would have been released in semi-freedom in a big sanctuary. Alas, that wasn’t to be! I think all animals should have human rights and the humans, with their huge sets of ominous rumblings, will do pretty well with animal rights. After all, we are the strongest animal among the booming bedlam on earth. Mother earth is replete with the abundant sagas born of our criminal candor and odious excesses. So who else is the biggest claimant of animal rights?

Excellence and chance

 The golden boy of Indian athletics, Neeraj Chopra, has to carry our perpetually blossoming expectations born of psychotic obsession with gold on his strong shoulders. A bandana tied on his forehead, flowing locks of hair and triumphant fists present a picturesque imagination. He returns to action after almost a year since his Tokyo gold. He hits 89.30 meters at a tournament in Finland, bagging silver but more importantly, it’s his personal best. Sometimes your best gets you a silver only. They say it was a fantastic throw accompanied by his trademark warrior cry while throwing. It looked all set to qualify as an epoch-making endeavor and cross 90 meters and hit his passion mark to enter the elite group of javelin throwers. But a naughty gust of wind made the ascending spear swerve to left.

Well, that shows all we have in our capacity is to give our best throw. But the results are sometimes decided by the circumstantial, chancy winds. Sometimes the dangerous drafts of adversarial winds cold-bloodedly kill our throws. We primarily throw to challenge the adverse winds. Sometimes the winds turn favorable as well and give us bigger returns than we would have achieved otherwise. The moral of the story is that we shouldn’t complain about circumstantial winds. Give your best throw. That’s all that counts. If the petty treacheries of adverse winds rob you of your gold, believe me if you have given your best, you won’t be a mere helpless hayloft, you would be at least a respectable wreck. And that’s all that matters, not silver and gold.

Move on but look back sometimes with gratitude

 I think we can avoid abusing the things that keep us alive, that give us this day, that shape our life (in whatever shape it might be). Whatever the texture, shape and structure, it still is our life. It's still a flower (even if it's badly mauled and ruffled by circumstances) and it still belongs to the genre called 'life'. And the manifestation as a 'life' is an incentive by default. We are manifested and still get a chance to evolve and manifest more. A blade of grass manifesting its life in famished desert sands is as important as a luxurious devdar in rich, salubrious, rainfed hills.

This body, parents, siblings, friends, partners, deities, everything in fact has been responsible for this life that we see defining us at the moment. Irrespective of what we think of them presently, didn't they touch our lives positively and meaningfully when we needed them or crossed path with them? Please recall that spark and excitement when we initially met them!

We meet people on the way and move on and meet new people on the way. That doesn't mean the ones left behind were bad and the new ones arriving in life are better. They are equally good or bad. Everyone is equally imperfect but even with their imperfections they have something to offer to us and we to them, which shapes one phase of the journey. They are the ones who get us to a point of being positively touched by the newer people.

If I judge those who were left behind, it would be like condemning the lower steps on a ladder after getting to the higher ones. Would we have reached the top step--for example, reaching a stage of finding an ideal soul mate--if not for those nice lower steps, those nice people with whom we broke up in the past? The relationships are like a ladder. It's a journey basically. Different people that we meet are beautiful, strong steps on the ladder that bear the weight of our feet and help us take the next step. And we are just the same to them. We too were low at the time when we met them and that's why we stepped on that rung and found it helpful. So did they.

All steps, lower and higher, are equally important. All the people we connect with, all relationships, all situations and experiences are various steps on the ladder. The problem is that we judge them vertically like a ladder standing upright, in terms of high and low, good and bad. Life isn't a vertical ladder. It's multidimensional in nature. It unfolds in layers. All the people that we meet are equally high and low at various points. So honor the people that came along the way. They have given us this life as we see it now. We can avoid abusing these various steps on the ladder of life.

Acceptance of the uncontrollables in life and gratitude for what is done (ignoring what wasn't done) save us from abusing the things, situations and people who have helped us live one way or the other. Respecting them is as good as respecting life.

Most importantly, dear readers, always remember that there will always be more and new people, situations and relationships to help us see that life simply goes on. Good and bad will always come our way. But we have to ensure that we celebrate the former more than we sulk over the latter.

Just do it!

 The things which ought to be simply done, should just be done. Otherwise, their shadows linger in the mind. They grow heavier with the passage of time. This invisible weight is heavier than the stones we see around. Simple, harmless acts of appreciation, of enjoyment, of helping someone cross a stream are better done and closed with a full stop. It’s better for a healthy mind. Otherwise, they linger like conspiring shadows over our conscience.

A missed chance of being good will definitely cast a shadow on our mind. An effort to help the self in being good, on the other hand, will hardly leave any unbecoming imprint on our conscience for pinching reflections later.

Only goodness has a legacy and a future. Hypocrisy and meanness are just bad examples and leave repentance most of the time. To do good is instinctive for a human being, it’s however another matter that we stifle the urge most of the time. To be bad, on the other hand, is not intrinsic to our nature. It is wrongly reflective, a miscalculation, a tragic bypass of the instinct of goodness.

Nurture the seeds of the instincts of goodness. It’s a simple practice. It gives peace of mind, clear conscience and makes the journey enjoyable. Avoid it and you carry the burden in your mind.

Happiness

It’s basically we who repel happiness away from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set it as a goal too far down the line in future. Some house, some grains, some accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the years, and set up a wall between us and happiness. And happiness keeps on getting more and more distant from us. I will set up a home and then be happy. Happiness delayed. And then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between happiness and us. Relentlessly we just push on. Happiness stays thus a distant goal. Never to be achieved. We make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we die. Huge immortals they are. In pushing for them, we die. Separated from happiness that could have been the greatest gift of life, had we not pushed it away from us.

The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like we store some grains for the harsh winters, near us, in the safest part of our house. It has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Just being and living for a day. Separate being from becoming. You can be happy if you set your happiness free from the chains of your lifelong dreams.

You should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily, separated from the natural state of happiness which could have pumped our life with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free from the chains of goal-setting and placed it unchained from those unreachable spots in the future.

Let happiness be a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Do everything as a happy person; instead of doing the deeds to become a happy person. Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it in the condition we are in, or it just eludes us. Keep it with you while you fly. It will boost your determination to go far and high.

So the only way to remain happy is just to be happy, instead of slogging it out to become happy later. Fellas, kindly decide to keep happiness as a routine, let it take possession of your present, like a monkey eating fruits and the birds flying. All in the present. Now. Just being. Simply being happy.

Watching a movie with a renunciate

 KAKA MAHARAJ 

Kaka Maharaj, who has been staying in a hut by the canal, is comfortable in holding three satsangs with me in a month. That is the time when we share, discuss—and even debate—about our versions of truth. He remains tethered to his hut and avoids contact with people who he thinks carry too much worldly subjects within themselves which disturbs his sadhna. Once a month, he takes a solitary footpath to reach the temple outside the village where an idol of his guru is installed to pay homage on purnima.

He hadn’t visited the nearby town for more than a decade and seemed set to avoid it forever. But then he paid a little worldly price for holding satsang with me. He adores Dada Lakhmi Chand, the legendary folklorist from the area. A little test of his adoration: Suppose he is just about to break your head with a brick and you just happen to say ‘Dada Lakhmi Chand’ and he would stop to listen what you have to say about the Shakespeare of Haryana. I spotted this chink in his armor and enticed him to the town. It was a feat in itself.

There was a biopic movie on Dada Lakhmi Chand shown at the newly constructed swanky, posh mall in the town. Ask him to visit the sansar of town and his weed-lit red eyes would throw daggers at you. He may even throw some object at you. So I suitably rolled the invitation with the name of his hero. As a result, he didn’t jump at the mention of ‘town’ like he would have normally. I could spot my chance and built my orchard around the great folklorist. I built up an imaginary world extolling the virtues of the biopic in highlighting the great Haryanvi poet. The result was that I could convince him to watch a movie—unimaginable—at a big mall. He who doesn’t find the idea of even a television set in a house too becoming for a healthy life and living! He agreeing to watch a movie at a mall! That shows yours truly can fruitfully bargain with hostage takers as a profession.

On the appointed day I drove him to the town. He was dressed in a pair of kurta-pyjama that was lying buried under a sack for almost a decade and was surprisingly safe from rats.

(The rats would cut even his plastic jars and steal his meager supply of grocery that keeps him alive on one frugal meal a day. I have seen big rats scampering across the grassed ceiling of his hut. ‘They even jump at me when I’m sleeping,’ he once told me. ‘Maybe it’s a message from your guru that you aren’t supposed to sleep,’ I remarked. ‘Well, maybe!’ he seemed in agreement with my casual jesting remark. A monitor lizard once stayed near his hut and then there won’t be any rats. Kaka Mahraj considered it a friend. But then one day when he was meditating the lizard crawled onto the head of its sadhak friend. Kaka Maharak wasn’t aware that it was his friendly lizard. He swiped his hand and it panicked and jumped. The lizard must have thought that it was an attempt at its life. ‘It jumped and ran but stopped at a little distance and looked back. We looked at each other for a long pause. Then it went away. I never saw her again. It was my fear that startled her. This littlest ounce of fear has to go from the body of a sadhak. The body shouldn’t move even a little under such circumstances. I knew I had failed in my sadhna. So I cried that day,’ he told me.)

Now, coming back to the movie-watching trip. He found the town changed beyond recognition since his last trip. ‘I cannot find the old town anywhere!’ he exclaimed. It was understandable. The world around his hut has remained the same. It’s the same canal with the same flow of water. The only change he can make out is that the little saplings he had planted are big trees now. That’s the parameter of change for him. He looked startled and intimidated by the booming urbanization. Imagine a person who stays in a grass hut being taken straightaway to a showy mall! He was tentative and unsure on the slippery floors. The elevators, lifts, showy shop-fronts, food aroma from the food court, the humming of humanity, the glitz and glamor and among all this an old saintly man. He seemed lost among all this. He towed me like a little child follows an elder in a crowd. The scent of modernity in the mall hit him hard. It was completely opposite to the free natural fragrance around his little hut.

Inside the theatre, he sat like an alien trapped in a hostile environment. But when the movie started and a few folksongs from his hero blared and bombarded the eardrums he looked a bit amused. Then the folk-hero’s life history began with his birth. It was too much for him. ‘All this is a big lie! How do they know all this happened like this? It was more than a hundred years ago. This is fake! A funny drama!’ he shouted in my ear. I was thinking of making a respectful exit from the darkness. But he understood. ‘I know you like it. So watch it. I’m going to sleep,’ he assured me. Then Kaka Maharaj folded himself like a baby in the womb and slept off. His guru his mother. His faith the safe womb. He could actually sleep in a cinema hall where the music would rattle your bones. After the movie—sorry, after a sound sleep—he looked fresh and totally detoxified of the urbanized exposure I had brought upon his system. The modernist clatter and noise seemed to have no effect on him now. His smile and poise was back as he walked out of the mall. ‘Kaka Maharaj you could actually sleep so soundly in that noise!’ I exclaimed as we drove back. ‘Yes Tagore—he calls me Tagore for my love of books—I don’t know whether you believe it or not. I saw my Guru only on the screen. Then it was so easy to sleep,’ he said. Maybe his guru had sent him for a little test and I’m sure he passed the test by coming out unaffected from a totally alien environment. That’s the sign of a good meditator. He/she retains the inherent balance even after coming across conflicting situations.

On the way back, he asked me to buy cumin seeds for him. I got two 250 grams packets, one for him and one for our own kitchen. ‘How much is this?’ he asked, gently weighing the little packet on his palm. ‘It’s 250 grams,’ I replied. He gently corrected me with a slight sway of head, ‘No Tagore, it’s only 200 grams. The shopkeepers would always cheat like in the old days,’ he said. Then I expressed my doubts about the difference in weight telling him that this is the town’s very reputed grocer and I don’t think they would cheat people like this. ‘Look at the packaging and all the stats given regarding weight, packaging date, expiry date, nutrition table, nice logo, nice material,’ I enlisted the indicators of quality. Later that day, I weighed my packet on the tiny kitchen scale and the weight came to be exactly 200 grams. I am humbled.

A few satsangs after this incident didn’t go well. He debated and cut my opinions as if with premeditated intentions. Maybe he was giving it back for taking him to a place that stood the polar opposite of his world.

A few months back, I found him visiting my room crammed with books. Possibly he got curious to know a bit more about me. He is into bhakti yoga and I could feel his discomfort while standing near the little hill of gyan marga. As we know one’s company of friends and people leaves a big impact on the person’s life. Maybe Kaka Maharaj got interested in books. Some days later he asked me for a book. I chose a book by a local saint, the combined works of Narayan Maharaj, thinking he would be able to relate to the writing because it was written by someone from the same area keeping in mind the socio-cultural factors prevailing in the area. Judging the psychology of reading among non-readers—they lose interest very easily—I suggested him to read the book randomly, not page by page. ‘Just open any page at random and read, maybe that particular page has a message for you,’ I gave my expert advice as I handed over the thick volume. He was sitting under a mango tree and took the thick volume with discomfort, almost suspicion. He opened a page at random as I had suggested. He is all seriousness as he reads the first line on the page. He throws the book into my lap as if he has received an electric shock. ‘It’s a sheer lie!’ he mutters. Well, the first line on that page happened to be the local saint's prohibition against weed, ganja and charas. Kaka Maharaj has been smoking weed as an aid in his sadhna for decades, so obviously he found it insulting. ‘See, I respect him. But that doesn’t mean he is correct about everything!’ he looks stern.

Imagine out of 500 pages, this page had to open and the first line—perhaps the only line in the entire book—happened to be the one that would offend the reader. So the book was returned just one-line read. ‘You yourself wanted to read books,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘No, no … books are suitable for you. Take it away,’ he instructed. So I returned with my thick book.

Recently he crossed a big milestone in his sadhna. I call it a milestone because I have heard and read about it that most of the sadhaks have to cross it sometimes on the path. At one night he faced the soul-rattling experience of weirdest apparitions, ghouls, djins, naked witches, ferocious demons, the strangest human-animal hybrids. ‘I was sitting in dhyan post-midnight. They just arrived in big numbers. You cannot imagine such strange and fearsome bodies and faces. Some of them came so close that I could smell their breath. The naked horrid witches stayed a couple of feet away, but they danced in a repugnant manner. My heart would have burst out with fear if not for my guru. I survived just because I kept focused on my guru and saw his image in my mind,’ he told. I have read many books of sadhaks meeting such experience. He is a simple man of faith, so it may not sound too much to him. But I know with my bookish knowledge that mother existence has tested him for fear. That day I felt very glad for him and left with a smile on my face—for him, for his sadhna, for his guru who saved him from a fall in the face of the devil. 

A fulfilling life

 He was nicknamed Pahadi by the villagers. Nicknames hardly followed any rhyme or reason during those days. Had there been any logic in naming another boy as Bodda (roughly translated as kamzor or weak), he ought to have been named thada (majboot, strong) because he was rotund and full-bodied like a double-door big refrigerator in girth. So Pahadi (hill) was no mountain but maybe being a big boy with somewhat mountain man features must have aroused someone’s creativity to name him as such.

Pahadi was my classmate from class one to matriculation at the village school. A robust, rosy-jowled boy who had, and still has, a propensity to unleash distinguished rolling notes of laughter at the littlest provocation. It must have given him loads of—almost a little pahadi—positive hormones. He has retained the laughing spirit that I witnessed in him as a small boy. And now as a grown up man he is the same one as far as laughter is concerned. He is a big man with a loud, booming laughter and that sums up his name-de-plume. His ever-green laughter seems to have given him a kind of timeless vitality.

Pahadi loved movies. Those were the VCR and cassette days. If someone brought a VCR player on rent for a night, it would turn into an epoch-making news in the countryside. Pahadi would walk for kilometers to watch movies at neighboring villages.

I met him recently at a new mall in the city. He looked happier and healthier than ever. His laughter also had taken bigger, longer notes. He has a new job—bouncer at the multiplex cinema in the mall. There are some guys who cannot help hurling bad words during the screening, targeting the female audience, especially the love-birds seeking dark corners to carry out their pleasant conspiracies. So in Haryanvi multiplexes you need to have bouncers as well, just like there are muscular order-keepers in bars and discotheques. It still is a stubbornly conservative society. The shadowy, chilled out corners of a multiplex sound like flower-banked altar to lovebirds.

Love always has had its enemies. So there are plenty of evil’s foot soldiers, the rowdy ones without girlfriends, itching to force their transient transgressions into the little love-tales blooming in the shade. With his impressive bulk Pahadi is a kind savior. Let there be a lewd comment or abusive phrase and there you see Pahadi the bouncer moving across the rows to catch the throat sourcing the nuisance. There are even guys—so thoroughly drenched in discourtesies—that sometimes he has to drag them by the collar and dump them outside. He is a kind of all goody-goody hero beating the villains. The lovebirds look up to him with a lot of gratitude in their eyes.

Nurtured by daily doses of movies at the glittering new multiplex, life seems a bed of roses. Compare it with the days of watching movies in a street on a small television set having a bleary and grainy screen, with a water drain gurgling nearby and sleepy street dogs yawning with boredom. And now all this! Do we still need proofs that life gives blessings?

The jolts of life are to 'make' you not 'break'

 On April 18, 1906 San Francisco was jolted by a big earthquake. Buildings collapsed and fires spread around. Many bedridden invalids suddenly got up and helped in saving others. It beats many a logical, well-chiseled paradigm. A paradigm-busting kick almost: meek shuffles and soft, helpless floundering in beds getting transformed into savior legs and arms; a burst of life, new shoots and saplings instead of steady degeneration, almost fossilization while still alive, in the practically lifeless museum; a rapturous run of blood cutting the individual super-failure with its saber-sharp counter-offensive to regain the lost ground. A kind of shock therapy, I suppose. It’s better to get jolted from time to time. It keeps you on the toes and engaged in the game of life.

The chip-chip sound of love

Researches have shown the mother turkey’s maternal strings get tugged by the chip-chip sound made by her chicks. It’s not about the smell, look or any other element. Mother turkeys have even agreed to hatch and lovingly adore the rouged and rolled dummies of antagonistic species just because they played the familiar chip-chip sound. The same may be the case about likes and dislikes among we humans. So cool down thou amazing, meticulously passionate enchanter! If you are feeling super-confident of your starry looks and mind-blowing glory because a gorgeous gal has fallen in love with you just for everything perfect in you. Maybe you make a chip-chip sound for her (your resplendent raylet) to accept you and possibly a funny jowled but quietly competent fellow gentlemanly making the same sound and emanating subtle innuendoes stands exactly the same chance as you.

A little prayer

 Lord let me be joyful to see my own death. Let my old self take a peaceful death right here in front of me. Let a new me take birth before I shed this body. Dying of the old self and the birth of the new!

Let the hand that would have hit on impulse die and take birth to go up for a blessing on the same provocation. Let the tongue that would have spewed out poisoned words die and take birth as the one that gently rolls out delicate words of kindness, sympathy and solace in the same situation. Let the face that would have snorted with anger and hate die and take birth as a smiling face of empathy under similar circumstances. Let the eyes that saw fault in others die and get reborn as the one which see the inherent beauty in the same people. Let the heart that carries anger, hate, jealousy take its last breath and rise as a kind and compassionate chamber of my soul in its new birth.

This is a beautiful dying that all of us have to welcome in our lives. The old self dies slowly, gently over a period of time and by the time we reach a stage of physical death we are already reborn as a new person. In that case the physical death loses its meaning. We already know that we have been reborn and there is more that awaits blissfully in changed dimensions and reshaped consciousness. Maybe then there is no fear of the physical death of this body. Maybe this is what they mean by getting liberated.

Wish you all a very happy Gurupurab. Let Baba Nanak’s blessings be showered upon you on this holy kartik purnima!     

The bliss of being 'common'

 I don’t want to be too good or too great to be finally get burdened under the weight of my own goodness. Conceptual sense of goodness and purity turns an obligation in the long run and one has to put up masks to keep it. I don’t want that divinity that would uproot me from the pains and pleasures of earthly humanity. I don’t aspire to attain too lofty a character to finally become someone who has to take up falsehoods as customs and rituals to maintain my persona. I don’t want to be completely detached, perfectly moral, neutral and aloof so as not to even hear the panicked notes of a little bird being pursued by a hunting bird and watch the game of ‘the stronger eating the weaker’ unfold with a saintly muse. I want to retain enough humanity to allow my kindness on impulse and throw a clod at the hunting bird. Even if it hits the bird of prey I would take the chance. I don’t want enlightenment or liberation that takes me away from the sweet, common scent of humanity with its mundane pains and pleasures.

Even Buddha kept quiet when his wife questioned him about the necessity of renouncing everything to get supreme joy for himself. He had abandoned a wife and a little son; severed his ties right in the middle of the night. That to me is causing pain to others for individual salvation. When he returned as a revered spiritual king, his wife requested to be granted a meeting with the great teacher. ‘It’s my right to be allowed a meeting with him in privacy as his wife,’ she said. And the great master agreed. ‘O great spiritual master and dear husband, you abandoned me and your child and the entire family for individual salvation. Tell me whether what you have attained could not have been attained without abandoning us?’ she asked. She spoke as an aggrieved wife with feminine authority and worldly conviction. The great master kept quiet. For the first time he had no answer to this. He knew all this could have been attained even without causing pain to his family. But it would have been a bigger challenge to attain all this, which he had availed as a sanyasi, while staying in worldliness.

So isn’t renunciation the easier way? Isn’t running away—even if it means to attain the salvation of humanity later—an easier path? It’s very easy to shut out disturbing mental situations from going rampant while sitting in a cave. The real challenge is to be a yogi within while moving on the worldly stage with all the earthly bearings of duties, roles, relationships, karma, dharma, everything. Like Krishna did. Like Rama did. They forged their saintliness ‘within’ right there on the stage of this drama.

I would prefer to run into situations instead of running away. To try to be stable on a shaking platform is the real challenge. It’s so easy to get poise and balance on a stable platform. The entire essence of being a spiritual person to me is just to remind myself of my core truths even while I’m walking across the illustrious, blinding bazaars of fakery and falsehood surrounding me; to be stable within even while walking in a noisy bazaar; to do my duties on the worldly stage with a perfect detachment and understanding that I’m playing this role in this drama and I have to perform it really well.

The saints are as much part of this existence as the common people like you and me are. If the God had been too partial towards the saints, they would have outnumbered the commoners by now. The real saints are joyful with the minimum that supports their life. The common people suppose that the drama on the stage will get them happiness. Not much difference, I think. To some super-galactic consciousness, taking itself to be a separate super-entity, all this would be just the same—the saints and the commoners. So don’t harbor vanity for being a saint; and don’t feel the guilt of being common. Mother existence stands equally distant or close to both the categories. Further, God certainly must be in love with his common children because He has so many of them.

If my sympathetic tears alleviate the pain of a fellow human being, I’m ready to cry. If my smile lights up someone’s life, I’m there to offer it. I don’t want to be an idol that turns liberated, impassive, heavenly and mute to all the fluctuations of fate and fortunes around me. I love being just like anyone around. 

And if you ever get judgemental over normal worldliness, either about your own self or others, always remember this: It's lonely enough in an increasingly difficult world. Pardon people for willing to find comfort by indulging in illusionary sweeties of life. Because all this is part of life; all this is meant to help us grow, evolve and continue with our journey. 

The little world of honeybees

 It needs a lot of effort by the honeybees to hold onto the edges of water bucket and take sips of water to save their larvae in the comb. It’s a risky gambit, many tumble down and swim very hard to get back to safety. Many drown in the process. But they don’t mind it. They exist as a species, not as Mr Honey x or Miss Honey y. It’s a humongous survival game on the tiny stage portraying extraordinary interludes of life and hope among the assault by brutal bayonets of annihilation. They are just near the bigger bank of survival, the monsoons; just three or four more weeks of ferrying water in this killing heat. Then the monsoons would be roaring. A few stinging yellow wasps also visit the bucket. They carry an advantage as far as drawing water from the bucket is concerned. They are bigger in body and have larger legs, which allow them to land straightaway on the water surface like a seaplane.

The tree above the bucket is a place of active engagement these days. A babbler and tailorbird nests cause this shrieking squalor. Both of them are very proactive verbal fighters. A tailorbird is far smaller in size but punching far above their weight the little couple even outshouts the babbler pair. The little guys are staunchly stubborn. I have seen even the bullying babblers turn hesitant and patchy in their beaky bombardment, calling for a ceasefire which is very surprising. And when both these noisy nest-makers are silent for some strange reason, it looks as if pure and primitive strains of silence have dawned upon the little garden.

A little journey

 On our relentless march on the path of progress, we have turned ‘time’ more and more scarce. We are running against time, or maybe away from it. We have speedier vehicles, better roads, iron-hard will to arrive ‘within time’ but still we are losing the grip and time is always speeding away, forcing us to continue increasing our quest for more speed. Everything is in a whirlwind, spinning like a mad top, cosmic top with whirring galaxies, sucking black holes, exploding stars. Things have changed so much as to reverse the reality: waterwork’s vestiges on the Himalayan peaks and sandiest deserts where once there were luscious most forests. And we with our social prominence and feigned calm trying to outfox time that has outfoxed everything to the stretches of infinity.

As I go slowly clinging to the edge of the road on my scooter, the bigger vehicles go making war-like din and angry clamor. Some even shriek with a hungry terrier’s vengeance. People seem to be running almost madly. Sadly very few have the real clue as to why and where they are running to. It’s more of a habit to run, I suppose. There is not much to look around the road, at least in this part of India. There are sinews of self-destruction scattered around in the intensive lop-sided cropping pattern in the fields with wagon-loads of poison in the form of chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and weedicides. The vestiges of the erratic interlocutors hell bent upon writing a one-dimensional, human-centric legacy.

In any case, you hardly have the time to look at something that may assure you that not all is lost. You have to be spot-on in staring at the road to survive and not get squashed like we squash worms and ants as we hurriedly walk. Your chances of reaching the destination and a centipede crossing the road are almost same. But then there are brief moments that steal in because they fall within the range of your concentration. The gypsy caravan is an exotic chaos by the side of the road. A young gypsy woman untangles the little front leg of a baby goat from the tethering rope and puts some chopped fodder in the small metal basin in front of the tiny guy. A truck carries a pile of junk and sitting on the junk heap are junked humans, the laborers. Faces and clothes smeared with dirt and grease. Destiny-hounded men carrying just trifle measure of flesh around their ribs, while the capaciously potbellied behemoths of luck and prosperity go almost squashing them underfoot. You feel so lucky even on your little scooter amidst car-swarms of latest models competing to get bigger and costlier. Many a shoeless foot bleeding on the stony path, while at least you have your slippers and common ground to walk upon. If you ever feel like a victim and think that the hostile searchlight of fate always picks you out to test you, please remember that there are people who are in the burning kiln right from beginning to end without any respite. 

True knowledge

 True knowledge is just coming home with the realisation that all the information fed in our neural network is only a means for survival, a mere tool like a chair to sit upon. It also sets up the course for unknowing and unlearning, and the consequent swiping the screen clean, to be in sync with the intangible, but ever manifesting, intelligence in its undivided form. Logic, words, knowledge and information are mere chisels and hammers to chip away the mind-created stone from the huge rock of our assumed self, ego, and carve out a dimenaionless entity. So one's logic though can't take you to the Truth, but it can at least help you in avoiding the tricks of the false. So guys pic up your tools, but remember they are nothing more than a stonemason's instruments in his rucksack as he movers to his stoneyard.

Far away from wars and violence

 Mid-June is burning so excitedly and with such clinching ruthlessness that I sometimes fear the hair on my head may catch fire when I go out in the sun. Fierce loo is the triumphantly shrieking queen now. It singes your body and tries to parch your soul. It sizzles with its boiling sighs as if a red-hot iron rod is put in water letting out tempestuous sprouts of water and fire. And heart also burns with pain at the news of burning Manipur. Violence, hate and anger constitute a fire that burns all. It doesn’t compartmentalize its victims across religion, caste, class, ethnicities or any other differential that we humans have created in the society to form groupings. It was tragically verified in the ongoing ethnic violence between Meiteis and Kukis in Manipur. An ambulance was torched by a rampaging mob. A Meitei woman and her little daughter died in the attack. Meitei casualties from this perspective. But a Kuki man lost his daughter and wife as well. The dead Meitei woman was married to a Kuki man. So a Kuki casualty from this perspective. And above all, it’s always common humanity’s casualty. Politicians, leaders and other power aspirants will always trigger fire along the dividing fault lines. It serves their purpose. But in the fire the common fate of all groups burns with equal tragedy.

Beyond ethnic violence and imperialist wars, here in my little garden there is something that defies fire and is holding a little flag of hope, faith, humanity, colors, waters, flowers and spring. It’s a lemon swallow-tail, a butterfly. Gliding over the hot eddies, it arrives in the sun-thrashed garden to cheer-up the brooding, beaten, pale, stunted, withered plants. There are a few sun-burnt flowers, almost lust-ravaged by the fiery kisses, giving a sad smile as if they are the insignia of a proud but lost civilization. It lands among some almost melting, faded purple Mexican Petunia flowers still somehow managing their smiles under the parijat’s shade. The butterfly takes a few sips, and reinvigorated goes gliding almost through the fire. The air is so hot that it seems it will catch fire any moment. A little phenomenon, a transient slogger making the most of the few days bestowed by mother nature. Why stop flying as long as you have the wings even if it means flying through the fire? The butterfly flutters away in the hot, sighing wind, challenging its own colorful, soft pusillanimity, cutting across the snarling loops and deadly snarls of mortality. It’s a songfully fulfilling sight, a wholesale sortie of freedom, a quintessential assertion of free will. A grandiose gale proclaiming, ‘Burn my wings but fly I will at any cost!’ 

Sobriety--an exception

 Their fate went into petulant plunge, landing them into the pits of misery. The same old story of two generations of chronic drunkards. Peace goes out in an illustrious exodus from a house whose males spend most of the time in drunken oblivion.

The liquor-lover who quarrels and drinks non-stop is on a ceasefire today. The house was crumbling, the bricks losing their grip in the walls. It never was a home in any case. But even the namesake house, an assemblage of bricks and a roof overhead, was wearing away due to the negligence and constant strife and tension inside. The walls and the roof seemed to say enough is enough and started giving in.

A little piece of farmland was still in the family’s ownership. It was acquired by the government to build a road. The compensation money miraculously survived because the four daughters and their mother sat on it night and day. The entire female force rallied and banded together to ensure that the money was used in house-making only. The old crumbling house was dismantled. A new modest house emerged out of the ruins as the females of the family beat even the masons, bricklayers and laborers in contributing to the construction work. They worked full time with the construction staff to save the labor costs.

The liquor-lover seems sober today. The proud girls are watching with the immaculate dignity of caring daughters despite all the ill treatments by the menfolk under a patriarchal system. He is sprinkling water over the recently plastered walls. Holding the water hose he lets loose squirts of water like a child. He playfully wets his old father as well. It’s a big change because usually they squirt, sprinkle, pour and hurl the choicest abuses, cuss words and expletives at each other. The father also clumsily gambols a mild abuse. He teases his wife also and sprays water in her direction. How happy looks a house without drunken fights! Well, let’s hope the newly built house now becomes a happy home! However, there is not much chance of it being so given the liquor-loving father-son duo’s unswerving allegiance to the weird code of drunken conduct. But what’s wrong in hoping it to be a happy home at long last.

Urbanization

 The ones who stay in a village may have a notion about relatively cleaner air than the cities. But things are changing very fast even in the villages. In the villages also the disposable plastic per household is on the increase. The farmers keep dung heaps, not too far from their houses, which they use as farm manure at the beginning of a new crop season. In order to avoid the plastic from going into the fields they keep burning the little heaps over the weeks—a very simplistic solution to turn the plastic rubbish invisible in the air instead of seeing it in physical form in the fields. So I can smell poisonous plastic burning multiple times a day. Little do they realize that the very same plastic now goes into their lungs in another form. The day is not far when the hypothetical solace of breathing better air in a village will lose its relevance. The villages will turn as polluted as the cities unless we find a better way to dispose our plastic. It could be as simple as collecting your plastic garbage in a sack and dump it at the dumpsite outside the village near the town. But who will take that much trouble. We need quick solutions for everything these days.

New shoots on the old tree of patriarchy

 We still have pretty solid patriarchal roots in our social soil depriving women of their well justified position in various spheres of life. Take the case of football for example. Despite the best of facilities, fat pay cheques, world-class infrastructure, promotional tours, global level support staffs, the Indian men’s football team is ranked 107 in global ranking. Now consider the Indian women’s football team. Nobody talks about them because they hardly get any priority in the gaming scheme. In comparison to the men’s football team they get maybe just five percent attention, resources and focus. Still they are ranked far higher than the men’s team. The Indian women’s team is ranked 60 in the world. They have been twice runners up in Asian championship. The men’s ISL league matches are played under glaring floodlights, while the women footballers struggle in their league under merciless hot sun as their matches would start at 8:30 AM and 4 in the afternoon. Who would spend extra money by lighting floodlights for women’s football game? Let them play under the sun. It hardly matters to the organizers.

Recently Kerala Blasters men’s football team walked off the field during a match. The club was heavily fined for this breach of sports’ ethics. Who suffered the consequences? Will you be able to believe it? To offset their financial loss the club suspended their women’s team. The women pay for the men’s folly and unwarranted conduct! Isn’t it hilarious? Patriarchy is so deeply entrenched in our system that directly or indirectly women and girls have to pay when their interests clash with the males.

Take the ongoing wrestling saga where the champion daughters are fighting for justice. They are pitted against a powerful man. There are allegations of sexual harassment and severe breach of professional conduct on his part. But the system seems to be protecting him. In fact, there are thousands who are questioning the girl wrestlers themselves, asking for the proofs of molestation. As if a girl is always walking with a spy camera to present in the court as evidence. Very sad and disappointing.