Ink-smudged fingers

 

The major advantage of using fountain pen was in having this proud feeling that you have worked really hard in the laborious, extremely engaging art of penmanship. Who won’t feel this way at witnessing blotches of ink on one’s fingers after writing a few lines? One surely felt like a hardworking ploughman. You feel like you have been busy on the piece for weeks and very near to contriving perfection. The ballpoint pen hardly leaves a mark on your fingers even after writing many pages, leaving you in doubt whether you have been really committed to the writing task at hand. 

A saga of diminishing libidos, love pursuits, PDA and PDL

The lethal most Public Display of Lust (PDL) I have witnessed goes like this. It was a bull in full heat of the moment—in hormonal terms. Sadly there was no cow in sight. The red-hot excited bull must have had a great sense of visualization. If not for this how would you digest the sight of a bull riding a scooty. The bull visualized  the scooty as a cow. There are always alternatives. Aren’t there? The scooty was parked by the roadside. A nice white scooty, smaller than a cow. So the bull raised its front legs and landed on it for lovemaking, mating, raping, call it whatever. It shocked and jolted the human senses for a moment but then everyone laughed, hollered, guffawed.

The craziest, all-defiant love pursuit I have seen goes like this. It was a massive male buffalo. A free-roamer allowed to graze in the fields in return for mating with domesticated buffaloes to sire colts and getting fresh milk in the family. It would go lumbering across the village streets, graze in the fields, cordially welcomed to fulfill the needs of the buffaloes at the time of seeding. The buffalo bull should have treated all the females in the village equally, with equal affection. But then it fell in love with a young filly. It was a very attractive young buffalo. He just went crazy for her. He knew that she would come of age soon and then he would get an opportunity to be the father of her colt. He lost interest in the rest of the buffaloes. She would be there in the shade of the barn and he would wait in the street, sitting in burning June heat, waiting for the evening to come when they took her out for watering at the village pond. Then he would accompany her to the pond, walking fondly with her, gentling shoving her, licking her skin. He won’t go into the fields to graze and thus was losing weight. Spellbound by her, he wasn’t be interested in mating with other buffaloes. The people started calling him Majnu. The owner of the young buffalo filly took it as an attempt to tarnish their reputation. People started joking it as if it was an attempt at the family owner. The farmer would beat him with sticks. But he would bear all this just to be with his love interest.

The grandest fight one gives to prove one’s libido even in old age was presented by the village’s one-eyed community buffalo bull. We called him Kana, for he had lost one eye in a fight with a rival. He was a massive bull. In his heydays he sired hundreds of colts in the village and was thus the cause of bringing fresh milk to scores of rural houses. But then age caught with him. He but would try to keep his fiefdom still intact. I remember it once when he fell down in an attempt to get onto a young buffalo. The onlookers laughed and made derogatory puns at his vanishing stamina and strength. Maybe the old buffalo took it to heart. And to prove a point that his power was just the same, he carried the momentum right there on the ground. We saw him convulsing with lust on the ground. The poor old bull was trying to drill a hole in the earth to prove a point. It was pretty hilarious that day. When we try to be what we are no longer, we simply turn a joke. Don’t we?

And just today I saw the bravest Public Display of Affection (PDA): A cow and a bull standing right there in the middle of the busy road at the entrance to the town; in full foreplay mood, licking each other with the very same pleasure treasure that each species seems to run after on earth. We respect cows and the vehicles would divert to the sides to allow them this holy PDA. And here I am going on my scooty marveling at their holy audacity. The only point of mismanagement was that he chose the wrong moment to try to materialize the peak of affection. He went for the heave just when I was crossing over. I was at a safe distance but still the shuffling and movement brought them precariously close. It was a momentary scare. He would have risen in love to the crest of ecstasy and I would have fallen as a fruit of their love. I’m glad not to have become the casualty of a PDA.

The over-smart spider

 

In an automated and mechanized world it’s not about good and bad; it’s primarily about good, better and best—strictly in terms of numbers. The entire moral façade crumbles and the vast potential of our fabulous brain is as much within the reach of the evil as it’s available for the good. With the equation of good and bad sidelined, the human race enters a hazardous zone. The quest for betterment, for more efficiency bypasses the check-dams of morality and ethics. It’s a blind race for achieving more and more at any cost. When there is no consideration for the costs that we have to pay, we naturally cross the balance sheet. We then beat even nature in hatching disasters and hazards.

In the eternal quest for more and more and better and better we fly too high, burn our wings and fall down. The unreined and unchecked impulse to go for betterment in every sphere of life churns out models of production and social norms that come with open-ended potential. They seem to facilitate a process but carry an equal amount of potential for adverse effects that require solutions. For example, artificial intelligence will of course churn out interesting and more and more media content, but it will put challenges in the form of manipulated synthetic media content and deepfakes. For the latter we need more and more technologies to manage the fallouts. After a time, it becomes very difficult to tell whether we are creating more problems or solutions. The confusion results in a melee. Just mere exhaustion and tiredness born of relentless march makes us believe that we are progressing. While in reality we are simply throwing arms in darkness, caught in the web of our creation, like an over-smart spider spinning a castle of web and then forgetting the way out.

The beauty of black dots on a white sheet

 

There is an age-old proverb in the villages. Making a child laugh and playful might not earn you a good name, but if she cries while under your care, it will surely earn you a bad name. Negative experiences leave a far bigger impact on us than positive ones. One sour word very easily undoes the sweetness of hundreds of beautiful words. This proclivity to lock the ‘negative’ in our mind while filtering out hundreds of ‘positives’ is the cause of strife, tension, anxiety and discomfort within. It also very easily sours relationships.

We simply judge people for the ‘exceptions’ in their behavior, ignoring the common ‘mundanities’ of their demeanor. We simply catch the black dot on the otherwise white board. It even seems that we are operating as watchdogs looking and sniffing for the chinks in the armor. I sometimes wonder whether we are actually companions while walking with someone or are we spies going with a mission to catch the other person on the wrong foot. No wonder we feel so vulnerable and insecure most of the time. A spy on a secretive mission will of course be on his toes and full of tension.

It becomes so easy to blame others for all the problems in our lives. But why would we always go searching for the tiny black dot on a white canvas? Why would we simply forget the rest of the white sheet? We are always looking, peeking, searching for those chinks in the armor. It just shows how insecure we are. What breeds this insecurity? It’s caused by the conflicts squirming inside us. The friction caused by our quest for the eternal ease of ‘being’ and the poor ‘becoming’ that we are molded into by conditioning, roles, stereotypes, expectations.

Most of the time we are self-charged on the grand mission of aggravating our own miseries. We are suitably helped all along by our ability to hold onto the master illusion that others are responsible for all the shit flying around in our lives.

We are always pulled in two directions. Very rarely we just 'are'--just being there without any direction of opinion and judgments. Then we feel the pressure of this pull and get scared. We are a scared species. In order to somehow clear our guilt for not being what we are supposed to be we put the blame on others. 

To have that conflict-free ease of being, we have to learn to retain our vision spread out to still see the surrounding white even though the black dots appear here and there. We have to accept and view situations and people in totality. We have to accept this law that an all-white scenario is impossible to sustain as per the laws of nature. It’s a dynamic canvas. Things and people change and shift in shapes, sizes and color. They aren’t stones that they will retain the same appearance. They aren’t dead. They too are evolving and growing, shifting and changing as much as we are doing the same.

It’s very easy to theoretically discuss, write and understand this fact. But it’s very difficult to bring it into practice. Anything that requires rewiring the habitual network needs a regular exercise. So we can remind ourselves regularly that people aren’t stone idols cast in the mold of our expectations. They are an evolving life. They will grow and change and come out of the mold we have created for them to fit our needs and desires. Accept this fluidity and sanctity of change in a live form and most of the judgments and conflicting thoughts and opinions will drop of their own. We then accept the black dots on a white canvas.

The family of liqor-lovers

 

It’s a family of five first-rate liquor-lovers. The elder brother is married and has two sons. His two younger brothers are unmarried and stay with them. All five men love drinking to the core. That leaves the sole female in the house, the eldest brother’s wife, in a precarious position. There are frequent quarrels; with so many liquor-lovers within a single house, family honor, or dishonor, goes vigorously public. Many relatives try to resolve the issue and fail.

It’s a democratic world where the majority has to have its say. She is always outnumbered in the equation between drinkers and non-drinkers. At last, a wise old distant relative, taking out the golden nuggets from the innermost precincts of his being, gives his sagely advise: ‘See you fellers, since it’s difficult for five people to change for the sake of just one, let’s try changing the one for the benefit of the five. Why don’t you guys include her also in your drinking gang?’

The golden words arrive like a fresh gale with a subliminal hum. Now any other talk is a pointless distraction. The advice carries a unique versatility. They burst out with loud agreement nodding their heads in consensually festive air. The kindly advice has been firmly injected in their mindscape. The poor woman is inconsolable, ‘Any day they will pour daroo in my mouth by force!’ She is genuinely panicked and rightly so. Well, if they succeed I would say that it would hit the golden pinnacle of the art and craft of liquor-love.

A noisy neighbor

 

A tailorbird may weigh hardly ten grams but its indomitable vocals surely weigh a ton at least. They can drill a hole in the armor of your patience. Similarly, a butterfly is almost weightless but doesn’t it carry tones of colors as it amusedly swerves around. Coming to the tailorbirds, maybe one of their chicks has jumped out of the nest and is hiding in the flowerbed to get training before full launch on the stage of life. I’m all for peace and I need just a couple of square yards in the corner to read my morning newspaper. But they are unsparing. The angry Papa almost crashed into my face. Given their situation, anyone’s presence in the yard is an offense to them. Taking me as a threat to its kid getting trained in the cluster of flowers, the angry bird flew into my face with furious yells of sippi-sippi-sippi in hateful plentitude.

Well, that makes it sound very close to my mispronounced nickname. My father, surely the most read person in the area, gave me the pet name Sufi. He understood the mystical liberal chimes emanating from the sect so named in Islam. The liberal philosophy of Sufism was close to his heart. But to the work-broken tongues of the farmers such soft cultural nuances hardly make any sense. Scarcely anyone had any clue to the exact pronunciation and meaning of the word ‘Sufi’. Most of them started calling me Suppi, Soopi, Sopi, or anything for that matter except Sufi. It just didn’t fit with the bucolic tongue. One tauji had firm belief that my name is ‘Sukhi’ meaning someone happy and peaceful. Well, that came nearest to the real word, at least in meaning. And now the tailorbird has devised a rapid-fired version in its own birdie language. 

The citizens of a lesser world

 

In a corner in the garden some dry leaves are self-deposited by mother nature in its very own bank of silence, solitude and stability. Slugs crawl over them in safety without getting trampled. They leave a slimy trail as they slowly move at their snail pace. This silvery slime shines later as the hallmark of a snail’s path well trodden, or a journey successfully completed. This is a zigzag pattern of silvery lines, notifying a slowly busy world of a tiny colony of slugs. Walk slowly but substantially like they do.

Tailorbirds use camouflage to good effect while making their nest. It thus comes almost with a sense of victory to discover a tailorbird nest on the older parijat tree. Parijat’s is a big heart-shaped hardy leaf and the tiny birdie tailors love the fabric for sewing a nest. But the parijat is usually a small tree and the nest is always under risk. But this time they have chosen well. It’s on a branch that protrudes away from the canopy and the bough is thin enough to deter a cat from risking a fall in order to reach the nest. The leafing is dense. Where you situate yourself in life means half the battle won. And they have done so. I hear the softest of jangling chirps in the nest. There are hatchlings.

Squirrels are the main egg-stealers but they stay away due to the roaming feral cats. As if to keep the cats around they have placed it very strategically. To contain a smaller enemy you need to somehow bring a bigger enemy into the picture. On top of that they keep tweeting throughout the day. The cats get confused and spend more time under the tree. Little do they realize that they act as nothing short of guards for the tailorbirds above. It further means that a lot many other predators are also kept at bay. The tailorbird couple successfully runs their show given their tireless vocal chords.

A red-vented bulbul was seen curiously peeking over their little leafy cup and one of the parents crashed its tiny body into the bigger bird, startling it and leaving it almost off-guard. It flew away in disgust. There aren’t many who would mess with parents turning suicidal in their bravery to protect their children.

A bully cat is snoozing in the damp, shadowed part of the flowerbed right under the tree. The tailorbirds are pik-pikking nonstop. They just love doing it. It seems their Ikigai. They seem to be vainly joyful while raising the ruckus even when they are angry over something.

On a neighboring roof a peahen gets fed up with the noise and takes to its cumbersome flight all of a sudden. Peahens can fly more than the males of their species. They hardly possess the burden of the tail fan like their males. Very common looking in comparison to the grand romeo, they but have the advantage of flying greater distances to flirt and seek love. Thus builds up another morning in the little garden yard of a small-time countryside writer. And the time slowly moves with its day-to-day irritants and pleasures laden on its mundane apple cart.

The milky white pigeon

 

The sun is setting and its tired rays fall on the carcass of a cloud sprinkling it with pale saffron hues. It looks like the skeletal remains of some cloudy elephant. Ribs are prominent on display.

A babbler couple has just set up a nest on the smaller parijat tree in the corner. A young tree really comes of age once a bird sets up a nest among its branches. It gives the look of a confident adolescent young man. It gives me shade also as I read newspaper under it till late mornings.

A tailorbird couple seems to have successfully hatched one chick among the leaves of the young tree. They are chik-chikking nonstop for the last three days. These tiny birds are illustriously valiant in throwing around their beak in raising a birdie din. It can easily give a headache to anyone not too good on the tolerance scale. That is primarily done to dupe and distract any predator. Since I look like the biggest predator to them, I have to absorb all the insulting torrent throughout the day. It makes me more tolerant.

A beautiful milky white pigeon landed in the garden. The owner clips their wings to give them a small struggling flight; just like we get clipped by customs, conventions and other hampering snares that curtail our free flights born of free will. The bird had beautiful pink in its tail. There are cats so I followed it. It walked very softly and allowed me to catch it. There is a tremendous feel-good element in setting a bird free. You get a faint trace of how mightily sagacious God must be feeling when he helps in our flights to fulfill our destines. I took it to the roof, held it in both hands and gave it a flight. It fluttered and rose high to fly for some distance and reached its perch platform at the end of a long pole on the owner’s roof.

My little grain of truth

 By the infinite, ever-transforming and interminable elements of the cosmic math, a mystic sees truth beyond all versions of the so called mind-created truths. It's never your, mine, his, or her truth. Or for that matter anything in the cosmos, including humans, animals, birds, reptiles, insects, or anything else we may not perceive, is as far from truth as a common misunderstanding between two human beings. The only truth is that 'truth' lies equidistant from each and every ounce scattered till eternal distances in the universe, multiverse or whatever it qualifies to be. Out of this infinite option to pick up and churn out individual truth, the so called perceivable reality, the human mind also creates virtual reality. Mind you, it's as simple as you see games in virtual reality. There is hardly any qualitative difference. So we have our realities, some of which have been gathered to form collective realities in order to run this society in the form of common belief, social norms and conventions. We can't help this. This mind has to churn out our own individual reality, the so called our very own dear truth. That can't be helped. Our own truth almost seems to define the meaning of our life. Well then here starts the real problem. One's very own truth may sound a character assassination to someone from his/her point of view decided by their own truth. Why do we hurl out our truths? Possibly it's a means of survival mechanism. We probably try to unburden ourselves by letting it out. But man, our truth, the jewel it may appear to us, may be a dagger to someone. Avoid unsheathing it! Even if it turns a knife inside your own self. And starts cutting your own self. But if out, it can hurt someone even more. Why should someone else be its target? It's the keeper's responsibility to manage it. Accepted that if kept inside, it will be painful, but it will cut many falsehoods inside your own self, side by side giving a few painful cuts to the softer tissues. It but saves you from committing a verbal manslaughter. Good people prefer injury to their own self, instead of harming others. And mind u this can be practiced. My new year resolution in advance! To keep my version of reality to myself, even if it hurts. It's my responsibility to keep it, to manage it, to nurture it. Our jewel may be dagger to someone else. Be careful about your simple statement that you may take as simple facts, for these might be character assassinating poison arrows to someone else. It's not about the other person. The onus is on one's own self. So guys, her I go and keep my truths to my own self. That's the path of solitude. Possibly it leads to a place where even the last doubts vanish! God bless you all!

The poor runaways

 It happened on a chilly winter morning in Delhi 11 years back. In the traffic chaos, a little ounce of tragedy was crying for a fleeting attentive moment from our big eyes. Delhi..a congested road with a multitudinous crowd hurtling to the never reachable destination. The beaten path almost a hissing snake eating into the last hidden holes of the rest of the non human species. The stompers in opposite directions separated by just 2ft road divider to avoid their collision head on. But we still bang into each other by the way. And there in all this chaos, lying like an unobserved needle in a hayrack, so inconsequential in its species and tragedy, a female dog with her tummy full of soon to be delivered puppies was desperately digging a hole into the little unpaved patch of soul in the middle of the divider to lie down for the moment of creation. Vehicles snarled by leaving angry plumes of smoke and torrents of abusive snarls. The unconcerned world just sped away. Most of us are running away from our own niggling bitter truths. We are addicted to our strife because this addiction helps us forget the subtle chiding by the all-seeing conscience. Ah, we the errant kids! We miss the direct effects of so many misdeeds born of our mindless development. We just prefer to dash ahead taking apathy to be strength of character!

Soulless, hybrid beauty

 

A hybrid rose can have nice colour and exquisite design. But it lacks the basic essence of a flower, fragrance. The beauty is skin deep, a mere cosmetic effort at the surface. It's haughty and arrogant, a kind of constriction within itself, an insecurity, a fear, an aloofness, a separation. The soul is missing. They seem too self-absorbed. Like so many apparently classy, well polished gentry. They stand with touch-me-not attitude. And the bees and butterflies stay away. They find it totally unapproachable. The marigolds, on the other hand, are little humble, down to earth flowers. They aren't showy. They are common looking. But they have a soul, a depth, a delicate fragrance. Most importantly, they have nectar to offer to the butterflies and bees. With their openness and genteel receptivity, they are buzzing with little winged insects. They have broader connection to life and living. I can feel their soul through their soft fragrance as I sit by them. They exist in a dimension where they touch many chords in my heart. The smell-less roses are as distant and soulless as a beautiful pic of them or even well designed plastic flowers.

The illustrated contraries of chance winds

 

This woman in the neighborhood has indomitable spirit and is firmly full of vigor for A-division street fights. She looks like a world class wrestler with shrill abusive words. No wonder people usually try to save their skin and bones. This morning she has put a big heap of discards at the little square and set it on fire. A huge plume of dark smoke engulfs my establishment as the wind is blowing into the house. If you commit the mistake of saying something against her on the issue of a smoky fire in front of your house, she would be more than happy to upgrade her endeavor and shift the fire right within your courtyard.

She seems to possess unrestrained optimism about the chances of her victory in street brawls. Keeping silence minimizes the damage these days. I do the same and brace myself for smoke-choked house for some time. But then the wind suddenly changed and her own house was completely lost among the dark plumes of smoke. It remained so for half an hour. The wind changed again once the smoky affair was gone. Now when it blew again into the house, it bought beautiful fragrance of jasmine flowers from the wall of another neighbor. Well, sometimes coming from the unknown interiors of the womb of happenings, circumstantial winds favor you if you keep silent. And winds are winds. They dutifully carry all the illustrated contraries. No use of pointless jibing at its ways. They have a duty to carry smoke as well as flower fragrance. Bear up with smoke sometimes and you will surely have your share of beautiful fragrance another time.

The loss of soulful connection

 

You don’t need to have just ears to listen. You can do it far better with your soul. If not this, why would one listen to the beautiful songs of silence in solitudional woods? The voice, whisper and songs of silence that come embracing you to console, to befriend, to comfort, to reassure, to rejuvenate. You need to ‘have’ a soul to listen. Of course everyone and everything has a soul. By ‘having’ a soul I mean one is aware of its presence, its lively throbbing, its guiding light, its essence, its imperishable nature beyond the bodily encasing. Its real feel, its vibrant awareness is what I mean to ‘have’ a soul. The trees, plants, grass, flowers, birds, snakes, earth, sky, stars and all and sundry have a soul. And they listen. I sometimes say a few gentle, appreciating words to the flowers and they smile better. Yes, they do! But you need to have a soul-to-soul connection to feel that. I tried it with a snake but it scampered away and so did I after that brief period of calling it a ceasefire along the human-snake line of fear-fire, the very same primal fear blocking soul-to-soul contact. The next time I intend to use the voice of silence and words of gentility through the eyes instead of oral words. It might work. You never know.

But sadly we are losing soul-to-soul contact. The once beautiful relationships are falling apart. Words of love are replaced by hard rhetoric and arguments. And looks have changed. The eyes are more used to stare these days. A stare speaks for thousands of hateful words. There is distrust and insecurity. There is a sinister willingness to get fitted in the angry stereotypes being cast by those who would benefit from a divided society. In Delhi a young man stabs another. The trigger was that they happened to stare at each other. The crime acquires more serious proportions because the stabber happens to be a Muslim. Someone stabbing a coreligionist stands a chance of being defined as one-to-one illegality. But in case of the two parties belonging to different religions it becomes something far bigger than a crime. Communal haggling, shoving and pushing followed the incident.

Somewhere in the capital, a man pounces on a woman and takes away her gold earrings. But gold is very dear to our ladies. She desperately clung to the snatcher. Her two daughter-in-laws ran and all three of them clubbed him down. But maybe he loved gold even more than all three of them combined. He swallowed the earrings. Now the police have the added task of admitting him to a hospital and ensure that the precious items are retrieved safely at the exit point. They will come out provided the bearer hasn’t the appetite to digest it and make it a part of his anatomy forever. And if the gold comes out it will still retain its value irrespective of its latest exit point, just like heroin and illicit drugs capsules retain their market value after they are successfully retrieved from bellies, anus and vaginas of the bearer by the client.

Turmoil, turmoil everywhere born of the loss of soul-to-soul connection. In Nainital there is a gross abuse of animal rights. A Muslim youth is caught violating the modesty of a cow. A severe breach of conduct even punishable under the laws concerning animal rights. But from the religious point of view it’s a sin. So riots follow. The more we lose contact with our own and others’ souls, the less we pardon. We turn intolerant and unforgiving. We then just need reasons to get angry and hateful.

The social sediments settling after long last

 

The gypsies seem to be settling down after centuries of whirlwind roaming. This is the time to settle history for once and all. Forget the past and begin a new chapter. But they start from a very disadvantaged position. They don’t possess anything apart from a few items they travel with. It’s a world fighting for inches of land. Common people fight for a few yards and the countries fight over few square kilometers. They too seem looking to drop the anchor finally. They have boarded the sides of their tents along a road in the town. They know municipality guys and the police will push and prod them to keep moving like they have been doing for centuries. So they add some weight to the anchor in the troubled waters. The national flag carries a lot of weight. So they have the tricolor flying full mast. Holy cow also carries a big load of faith and reverence. There are cows tethered in front of their sacks. The children of course may have some milk from the dried udders of the famished cows. They expect the patriotic guys to come to their rescue in case a municipal operation is launched to evict them from the premises.

Dissolution, expansion, evolution

 Joyful dissolution of the self! A flower blooms up fully. Opens its heart to the elements around. Draws every ounce from its potential to smiles and fragrance. Opens up completely. And then painless dissolve! This dissolution is further expansion only. Now the petals fly around in a broader dimension. Beautiful, self-surrendered parts of its previous existence now lie scattered as pious homage to mother earth. That is the purpose of life. We have to give back something better than what we took. That is evolution, expansion. Like this flower offers fragrance and smiles to mother earth in return for the sunshine, soil and moisture. The sole purpose of our existence is to be a better version of ourselves.

Kiss the storms

 Storms are storms. Just storms! Nothing else. They do not have much to offer both to nature and humans. They swirl, shriek, shake and prance occupied by an illogical spirit. It is just like nature throwing tantrums. But tantrums are never substantial man; they are just a fragile symbol of something going out of loop for some moments. Look at nature, storms are just temporary, tiny speed-breakers on its peacefully laid out benevolent road of survival, sustenance and evolution. It applies to our lives as well. So when the ship of our being gets jolted by the angry winds just remember this is not the substance of your life. It lies in miles of peaceful, dreamy and majestic waters waiting to kiss the hull of your ship. Coming back to the poor storm. It is just a puny piece of funny quirkiness possessed with suicidal and self-consuming dispirited and rampant self. It dances in pain. While it fizzes and fumes, it burns in its own fire. It dies. While its cremation takes place just be a good pyre-keeper and fulfill all the rights diligently. But keep a safe distance from the fire. It is sure to die. And, more importantly, you are sure to survive to see the flowers blossoming in that very dead ash. So please believe in peace, in tranquility, in harmony, in noiseless distances waiting for you while you feel the heat of the burning aberration. Be a spectator. Be a valiant survivor. Do it for the sake of normal, undisturbed nautical miles lined up to allow the passage of your ship to a lush green island of your destination, where you can drop anchor and enjoy the stillness of life for sometime. It has to be done. Because the course of normalcy is self-sustaining, kind, beneficent, forgiving and parental. The storm just burns in its fury. Allow it to do it. Harmony, orderliness and tranquility draw life-giving sips from their own substance, from the core of their own essence. So be a good businessman. Join the latter's bandwagon. For you own gain.

Being in the womb of non-being

 And everything, dear readers of life, turns out to be just moon-lit fog! Just a sea of shadows, non-being, rippling against its shiny beads of being!

A fleeting grey cast on a still fleetier darker cast, the latter itself a cast on further casting. Endless spools of impressions jumping from being to non-being and vice versa.

Dancing particles in murky haze on the dark stage. The eternal darkness, meanwhile, now and then flashing a smile to show the matter, her teeth, to bite a fleeting morsel of being from the primordial bread of non-being.

When she craves in self-love to embrace herself, she entwines her milky white, lightful, slender fingers around her dark breasts and grip her own dark curves with her white arms. And the shapes zoom in and zoom out in teasing, self-orgasmic delight.

Like waves, shapes merge in the shapeless fluidity. Being and non-being merge in matrimonial delight on the conjugal bed of holy union in the bedchamber of creation. Being mating with non-being to sire shapes and appearances. Shapes merely the stamp of 'being' by the 'non-being'. A canvas both within and without.

Shapes, sounds, appearances and disappearances, all that we perceive certainly exist, but with equal claim by my non-existence. It's just a microcosm between Is and Isn't. A little pulse. A beat.

Romancing with small-time moments

 A wire-tailed swallow couple is seriously on a lookout for their mud nest. They make chipping sounds as if discussing the suitability of a little terrace porch facing this countryside writer's hideout-cum-writing den. Yesterday it rained a bit and they were quick to lay the foundations by ferrying mud from the street and sticking it to the wall. The swallows usually leave a heap of drops under the nest. So in order to avoid a stack of bird-drops in front of my writing table I just stand under the new muddy foundations, giving them a message that there are humans around, expecting them to abandon their ideas about the safety of this place. But they don’t seem to mind it too much. They sit quietly nearby on the cable network wire. They have learnt, I suppose, that to survive in this world they can’t afford to be too shy of we humans.

It’s a busy birdie world looking to set up families in anticipation of the upcoming monsoons. But opportunities have been diminishing for the birds. The walls are plastered making it harder for the little brown house sparrow to seek nesting holes. As the fissures open inwards leaving us trying to cover up the exteriors through swanky posh interiors and cozy homes, the holes vanish from the walls. There is a half-inch plastic pipe across the wall fitted as a passage for electricity wires. There are no wires leaving it as a miniscule tunnel of possibility. A sparrow is struggling at the opening, flapping wings to stay afloat as its probes its beak for any house-making possibilities there. But the opening is too small for a sparrow, or for any bird for that matter.

The village is full of peacocks. We have poisoned the farmlands beyond their sustenance, so here they swarm into the village, pee-hooing day and night. They are respected birds. Indirectly we may take away their habitat but directly we need to show them respect so that Lord Krishna would become happy and shower more and more material blessings on our head. In any case, beyond what, why, if and but theirs is a pleasant sight in the village.

Oh, the doves, the lousiest nest-makers! They did make a change at long last. Instead of laying eggs at the same famished nest on the tree that has seen so many tragedies, they put the twigs on a not-in-use ceiling fan in the barn porch. The wire is disconnected to ward off even accidental start of the fan. From this angle it seems a suitable choice. They put some sinews on the fan-wing. But there was a storm and the fan took a few circles and the eggs fell. Sadly, again a very poor nesting choice and an example of very dumb parenting.

The babblers are busy through the day because a huge rat snake has been spotted among the little cluster of keekars. The giloy creeper has acquired every inch of canopy to give it the feeling of a few square yards of a real pristine forest. In the thickly leafy tent warblers and tailorbirds have ideal nesting site. There must be many nests for a coucal, the brown-winged big jungle crow, is busy at the site for the last couple of days. They are usually heard with their loud coop-coop sounds outside the village along denser shrubbery by the canal bunds. But this one has taken up assignment inside the village. Where there are nests, there lie the possibilities: possibilities of raising successful hatchlings and chances of successful hunt.

Randhir is a smart man. A hardworking farmer he understands the value of each sweat-laden buck. He looks on top of this world. The old age pension is up by 250 rupees. He is freely eating my morning newspaper reading time. ‘I was going for a shave at the barber’s and thought of dropping for some time,’ he says. He has one 500 and two 10 rupee notes in the pocket of his kurta. It’s a great financial scheme to save 10 rupees. The shaving charges are 30 rupees. ‘I usually go in the morning when their box has hardly any change. So after the shave I push forward the 500 note. It gives them a nightmare at the idea of managing so much of change so early in the morning. Then I offer 20 rupees which feels like I have done them a favor even though I pay 10 rupee less,’ he explains his game plan.

Then he shares the latest update on an old distant relative of his. The concerned farmer is a big built fellow of nearly eighty. In the last five years he has fallen twice, once fracturing the hip and fracturing the leg the other time. ‘I asked his grandson to take care of their granddad but the young man appeared full of complain. “He won’t stop eating ghee like he was young,” the burly grandson complained. What has ghee to do with it, I asked. Ghee strengthens the bones. “You didn’t get me uncle. You eat ghee and you get energized beyond your years. You feel like you can jump around like a young colt with fun and frolics and you end up breaking your bones,” the boy explained. So according to him eating lots of ghee is the main reason for the old man’s broken bones,’ he is laughing.

Then the laughter vanishes. An angry babbler above in the parijat tree eases itself and the fluid drops on his pocket as he is spread out relaxed in the chair. It feels like a grenade has fallen. It’s not about the spoilt kurta. It’s always about the money. He looks flustered and in panic. He checks his bucks. A bit of tiny fudge on one of them but still workable. He is relieved. But that breaks his willpower to stay eating my time despite all my covert and overt signs and signals of wanting to be left alone. He gets up and leaves. I thank the entire population of babblers on earth. 

The smart beetle

 Anyone who has worked in the corporate must have heard about ‘smart work’ scoring over ‘hard work’. In the competitive corridors of corporate buildings the so-called smart guys rule supreme. The victory of smart work over hard work spawns many an anecdote. Hard work is symbolically very dramatic. But it’s the smart work that pulls the strings of the mules. It carries a progressive veneer; smartness coming handily convenient. Just like this little rove beetle does. The ants are the hardworking laborers of the insect world. So inevitably there are supposed to be smart corporate guys among insects to take advantage of poor hardworking ants.

The rove beetle is very smart. Using its skill of smell and touch it dupes the ants into taking himself as an ant larvae. The befooled ants protect the impostor and nourish him like their own. The poor ant parents believing they are raising a handsome kid. Meanwhile, apart from all the bounties ferried by the tireless workers, the rove beetle feasts upon the ant eggs and their young ones. Isn’t it a real smart work? Now take a close look at the successful corporate guys around you!

Natural tricksteries in nature

 There is a beautiful set of program hatched by two species of fish. This is a mutual agreement among a species of larger fish and a much smaller fish. Normally the bigger fish eat the smaller ones. But here the predator-prey equation has been postponed for mutual benefits. It’s a ceasefire; burying the hatchet for gains beyond hunger and food. The group of bigger fish becomes stationary, almost sedately retired, and opens their mouth and allows the smaller fish to enter their jaws. Once inside, the little cleaners pick up fungus and other parasites from the mouth. They continue their cleaning services all over the body as well. One party gets its dinner and the other gets cleaned up.

The question is, how has been this fear of the smaller fish for the bigger one stalled in the evolutionary survival chain? To signal that they mean to perform a clean-up service operation, the smaller fish perform a kind of ‘undulating dance’. The bigger fish forgets its hunger and the more pressing issues of cleanliness strike home the message. They stop swimming, open their jaws and turn relaxing like one lies for massage and pedicure.

But then there are always very keen observers of others’ behavior also. A little fish named sabre-toothed blenny has been keeping a keen eye on the housekeeping, cleaning and picking dance of the real cleaner fishes. So here they play smart and perform the same dance. The bigger fish allow them to come near without eating them. They mistake the looters for ministering angels. The cunning blenny then takes a bite of flesh from the unsuspecting host’s belly and scampers away. Well, this would count as paying the costs of cleaning services. But to a different species though.

It seems we can no longer solely count upon human frailties for the darker shades of character. We have co-sharers of the burden. There are species that are anciently ingenious in their machinations to loot, plunder, deceive and run away with their booty. In the game of survival, there is a highly creative incandescence that lights up the cells in all types of manifestations around.