The black and white television

 It was almost a milestone in the village history when Father brought home a small 18 inch, black and white ET&T TV set. There were just three or four TV sets in the entire village. The unfortunate bearers of these TV sets were under real assault on Sundays for the weekly movies because people seamlessly barged in despite all protests. Once the room was full and the door shut, the rest tried to catch the action by hearing dialogues from outside.

A kind TV owner thought of larger good and put his coveted item in the street for a public screening. The entire street got jammed to a long extent with the kind of crowd that you see at Rajiv Chowk Metro Station in Delhi presently. Then someone threw a pebble that landed dangerously close to the precious item. The owner shouted profanities that would surpass all the nasty jeers of all the villains in the film industry. The show went off.

The TV owners turned very guarded and suspicious after this incident. It was then Father decided to get us our little black and white television set. Doordarshan was kind enough to give us Wednesday chitrahar and Sunday movie. An antenna looked like a crown of the house. A house with television antenna was held in high esteem. Thank god, the village was monkeyless during those days. The frequency was slippery. Little elements of wind and clouds had the capacity to spoil all entertainment. Holding the antenna in an ideal position was a big challenge, almost an art in fact.

Then the path-breaking serial Ramayan started. By this time there were about two dozen television sets in the village. So the pressure per TV set had eased a bit. But the electricity would go off, leaving people in a puzzle if life was really livable anymore. I remember it was a much anticipated episode, maybe Lord Rama’s marriage with Mata Sita. The entire village looked up to celebrate the marriage. A day before the episode the electricity transformer gave sparks and got blown out. The village went into mourning. But there was a glimmer of hope.

Father had stealthily smuggled in a rechargeable battery with enough voltage to play the tiny television set. The news spread throughout the village. Our house was attacked. Never ever I will see so many people in a small house. The people got  onto whatever perch they could manage. I saw heads almost touching the ceiling. Potatoes were crushed. Some of our old brass utensils still bear the marks of that assault. The house would have burst out that day.

An old woman who could not squeeze in went lamenting through the street. She knew where Grandfather spent his days smoking hookah in a gathering of elders in a chaupal. ‘You smoke hookah here, but when you will go home you will walk over its rubble,’ she howled and hollered. Grandfather was around eighty-five at that time. He ran on his rickety legs to save his house. Then he gave the all-time best performance of his life in both words and action. He threw bricks, clods, sticks, fists, kicks amply accompanied with suitable tongue-lashing to clear off the door and continued throwing whatever came in his hands. Heavy brass utensils came very handy as weapons. His old-age burst certainly made it a war scene. People must have thought he was haunted by Ravan’s spirit that day. But full marks to Grandfather’s spirit. He created a stampede and forced the crowd to run away from the scene. Our small humble house bore the look as if a few bulls had fought inside it. And there he stood, fuming, but proud to have saved the house. ‘If you people go like this, you will find yourself on the open road one day,’ he admonished. That day Father had to be on the back-foot and Grandfather gave him a big load of advisory, admonishing hearing.

The law of reciporation

 

It was dreadful in the trenches during World War First. Millions of soldiers waited in anticipation of death or killing. There was a kind of no man’s land between the trenches of the opposing armies. Across a slowly smoldering front between the German and the allied troops in Europe, a German soldier was reputed for his stealthy prowl. He would stalk the enemy fleas like a predatory lizard across the buffer zone and preyed upon some lone soldier, disarmed him and forced him to crawl back to his side. He had completed a dozen such successful missions. On one such  mission in the dark of night, he overpowered an allied soldier. The allied soldier was eating bread. The initial impulse is to resist your enemy. Had he done so, his fate would have been like others who had been kidnapped by the German soldier. As the German soldier started to disarm him, the captive allied troop offered his bread to the enemy. If you offer something to someone, you put that person in an obligation, almost indebted to you. You feel like paying back. This law applies to all cultures and is one of the basic laws of human society. The German soldier found himself detained by the subtle chains of this law. He spared the soldier and returned empty ended.

My cricketing days

 India won the cricket world cup in 1983. The entire country got so inspired that millions of childhoods and boyhoods in the 80s and 90s of the last century were almost hijacked by the cricketing spirit. People walked, talked and ate cricket. We did the same in our village. It was more or less hit-and-run cricket on the uneven stubbed ground. It was all about wild swings and weird heaves. It hatched shocking and dramatic events sometimes. Farthest from any cricketing technique, the chance factor was the real master of the game.

Anand decided to be the fastest bowler in this part of India. I was maybe in eighth class then. He ran in from the bunchgrass shrubbery, beyond the boundary line, and would throw terribly unpredictable deliveries. He was concerned about speed only, so any direction, height, width, line or length hardly mattered to him. In any case these were very fast deliveries. Add to it the fact that it was a cork ball, almost double the weight of the usual leather ball, uneven pitch and the completely unguarded batsman (almost naked from the cricketing gear point of view). No wonder the equation turned almost disastrous for the poor batsman. In such conditions the bowlers were demons and they ruled the game. We played six or eight over matches. It was all that was needed to chuck out the entire batting lineup. The entire team’s score would be usually in measly twenties. Someone going into double digits was equal to hitting a ton.

I was facing the crazy speedster that day. He ran in like a rampaging bull from the edge of the pond and threw it with so much force that it came almost parallel and hit me on my left cheek. I instantly collapsed. I envisioned surreal crystallizations of night-sky constellations in broad daylight. Helmet, pads, guards were the things which most of us hadn’t seen even once in life. Still most of us dreamt of playing for India one day. Vow, the innocence of childhood! They lifted me and put me on a greener part of the ground. Very caring on their part I have to accept. It was terribly painful. But full credit to the bowler that he had hit it so perfectly, nicely we can say, at the luckiest point on my cheek that my jaw, teeth, tongue and bones cannot complain at the memory. There was no damage. A slight deviation in angle or positioning would have shattered my jaw. Yes, the cheek muscles can complain a bit because I carried a big laddoo on my cheek for many days. Our science teacher Master Surest chuckled with glee whenever he saw me. He hated any kind of game or physical exercise. Science and mathematics was all that meant to be the focus of cosmos to him. Looking at the laddoo he seemed to have drawn satisfaction that at long last the art of game was defeated by the art of science.

Bhindo also used to try fast bowling. Imitating Anand, he would also run from the boundary line. But he was so fragile and weak in limbs that his delivery arrived as a perfect spin ball and I would usually hit it to the fence. He possessed a very big calculating mind in a small body. Maybe chess was good for him but he stuck to cricket. I was the one who symbolized an all-encompassing rival to him, almost equal to an enemy in the childhood world. Only God knows why there was such proliferation of antagonism in him at my merest sight. Whenever I hit him for a four or six, he would cringingly walk down the pitch and would gnash his very cute buckteeth like a stinging rabbit, ‘Ma kasam, I would hit you for a six on your first ball to me!’ So trying with an incisive longing to keep his kasam, he got bowled by me on the first ball itself. Actually seething with anger and hate he blindly ran down the pitch and it was easy to scatter his wickets when he lowered his guard so madly. His kasam lay tattered with the wickets. The world slipped away from under his feet. His heightened sensitivity hitting a tornado, we found him crying profusely behind a heap of bricks. His eyes were red with tears and the unkempt kasam. I had to say sorry to save his life. Clean-bowleding such guys is almost like stirring a proverbial hornet’s nest. Who knows such crazy boys might run into a speeding truck to save themselves from the unbearable pain of defeat. I loaned him a few comics which he never returned; maybe as a revenge to settle the scores with me.

Bhindo was junior by a year to me in the school. A very hardworking student, he would mug up the content like a parrot and reproduce it on the answer sheet to lay claim among the first three in the class. Once during the exam, Bhindo was heard sobbing very painfully. It was already ten minutes since the paper started. Many students had started with a writing sprint like the athletes shoot off like a rocket in 100 m race. But Bhindo was caught in a logjam. He had forgotten the first line of the answer. He got nervous and more so as he saw his nearest rival, a serious and self-contained guy, scribbling away his answer at a smart pace. Every passing second was acute and upsetting. Sobbing and tears running down freely from his big male goat’s eyes, he was heard pleading to the rampaging rival, ‘Randhir, Randhir, don’t be so bad. Kindly tell me the first line!’ He could garner some sympathy for all his tears. A kind teacher had to stop his piteous sobbing by telling him the tormenting first line. Bhindo stood second that year. ‘If not for that pagal first line I would have beaten you fair and square!’ he congratulated the boy who had scored over him.

I was a slightly build boy but others held the view that I possessed stamina and strength normally expected in a hefty boy of that age. Acknowledging the energetic verve in me, the kabbadi boys would sometimes include me in the game. So I sometimes participated in kabbadi games as an extra. Bhindo felt crestfallen. Egged on by the simmering flame of competition, he also had to be a kabbadi champion, if I was taken as an extra by the muscular boys of that game. To be honest it was incredible audacity on his part given his fragile body. He didn’t know the risks of this game of raw strength. He nearly died under a heap of burly ruffian kabbadi boys. There he came out stumbling and floundering, the stems and stalks of his pride almost uprooted by the rotund boys of kabbadi. He cried piteously and blamed me for hatching a plot to break his bones.

If he saw me running, he would declare that he would break the national record in running one day. And he carried his vendetta with his growing years. When I cleared the UPSC mains and got interviewed for the coveted Indian civil services, a visibly shaken Bhindo paid me a visit. ‘Subhash Chander Bose had cleared this exam! How can you do it? I cannot believe!’ he threw it in my face. He declared in full honesty that I was spreading lies. I showed him the interview letter. He read it with shaking hands. The paper literally got burnt under his malevolent stare. He crashed into a chair with a heavy gasp, completely muddled and passive. I had to offer him a glass of water to help him overcome the shock.

To me it was light and entertaining. In the jolly backdrop of such mild skirmishes our roller coaster adolescence brought us to the threshold of youth and its serious matters about career and job. Thank God he got appointed as a government primary school teacher and I’m just a non-descript village-based writer. This at least gives him a semblance of solace that life is worth living at long last. 

Defeating death with a joke

The legendary Indian soldier, Field Marshal Sam Makekshaw, fought as a junior officer in the British Indian Army during the Second World War. In a daring endeavor to catch a strategic hill in Burma, bravely leading from the front, he was hit by a light machine gun burst. He had nine bullets lodged in his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. His orderly Mehar Singh lifted his injured boss on shoulders and walked fourteen miles to reach a military field hospital. His torso ripped apart and bleeding like flooded rivers, the young officer seemed sure to die.

From the look of it, only death seemed a reprieve for the injured officer. The British senior officer, fully aware of the Indian junior officer’s brave fight, tore his own Military Cross (one of the most prestigious military awards) and put it on the chest of the apparently dying soldier saying, ‘Military Cross is given to only living soldiers. So hereby I confer it to you while you are still alive.’

The Australian surgeon, heavily burdened under the big tasks with limited resources, thought it wastage of time and medical supplies to attend a definitely dying soldier. Sam had a few traces of consciousness at that time. ‘What happened to you?’ the doctor asked ironically. And the legendary soldier’s answer would later change history, not just for India but for Bangladesh as well. ‘A mule hit me,’ Manekshaw joked, a weak smile emerging from his messed up body. The Australian surgeon was shocked. ‘If someone can crack a joke even in this situation then his life is worth saving!’ he said. He operated upon the soldier and extracted the bullets from his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. It was a bloody operation; a major part of Manekshaw’s intestines had to be cut out. But bravest are the ones who can smile and joke even in the face of death. By cracking the joke with death staring at his face, Sam had already defeated death.

The rest is history. Sam Maneskshaw not only survived but went onto play important roles in all the wars including Pakistan (1947-48), China (1962), ending with Bangladesh war (1971) when he was the army chief.

He was as much famous for his bravery and military strategy as he was for his sense of humor. If not for this sense of humor, the Australian surgeon won’t have even considered treating him. If not for this sense of humor, Sam would have died with a borrowed, consolatory Military Cross on his chest. With this sense of humor, he retired as a Field Marshal, living to the ripe old age of late nineties, holding the proud baton of a perpetual soldier who is entitled to a salute from the highest of the high in the country as long as he is alive. I think this unbuckling sense of humor won him the toughest battle of his life by defeating death.

So keep your sense of humor dear readers! Keep it alive! It’s precious because it defeats even death sometimes.

LOVE

There is abundance of love around, of family, of nature, of birds, of animals, flowers, everything in fact. When hate vanishes, love blooms and you soar high with such love instead of falling. You love all simply because you don't hate anyone. Love for a man or woman is the first step on the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, but don't just stop at the point. It's just a beginning. From particular to the universal. The limited love is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, universal love. So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

Love you all!

The infinite perceiving itself through the finite

 Nothing stands in isolation. Can a drop of water stand alone in the ocean? Can an ocean exist without a drop, i.e., with a hole in its heart and the drop missing? Same is the cosmos. It's one continuity in one or the other form. Sea is nothing but drops drops everywhere in the expansion of its geographical spread. Same is with the super sea of cosmic consciousness. It's merely individual consciousness everywhere. Now the question is: how come there is a perception of individual consciousness? Well, that's how the fabric is! Start dividing a sea into tiniest dots! What happens? All we have littler seas made of tinier drops! The threshold from individual to infinite intelligence exists and doesn't exist at the same time. Possibly the sea itself perceives itself like a drop. Divide it into countless drops, they retain the feeling of individuality. Individual consciousness is thus nothing but a point of perception in the transforming whirlpool where the elements are going cyclically. Is a drop fundamentally and qualitatively different from a big sea? It isn't! Coming to humanoids. The so called conscious is the littlest bit of perception surrounded by the subconscious, which in turn melts into the infinite intelligence and consciousness pervading all around. That's the ladder to spread yourself, to feel more meaningful. One's subconscious part of mind is most active just before sleep and immediately after waking up. That's when the gates open tangibly for taking a quantum jump from conscious to subconscious and further on into super-consciousness. Grab it. Put your affirmation and claim to a larger self. There are infinite possibilities. What you seek at your greediest best may not be more than a drop of water desiring to double its size. You have the pathway etched to be the sea itself. You already are. Just that all that remains to be done is to start seeing through the walls of conscious, watch eagerly through the windows of subconscious in those walls and get connected to the infinite right there in front of you. It's suitable to start with tangibles to break the virtual shackles, just like it's easier to start with body in yoga. The higher battles with more virtual demons are managed further on the path. At the mind front, it's more convenient to start with the conscious part because it's tangible through its operational part through thoughts and emotions. There starts the second tier of management leading to the subconscious part and further on to be out of the prison to come united with everything around. It's not mother existence's concern whether there are storms lashing a drop, pond or sea, or peaceful calm waters pervade. To her indiscriminating eyes all things are just as they are. What happens in the drop of your consciousness is solely your own concern. You create the storms or peace in the tea cup of your existence. And the tools to make and break are conscious thoughts and their shadows in the form of emotions and feelings. They majorly decide the energy pattern pervading across this specific pattern of awareness, this little arrangement of energy within the super sea of energy. Pain, suffering, disease, stress and tensions are mere effects, little obstruction in the flow of river, the life stream. And the repair work primarily begins from the conscious part of the mind , which operates through thoughts, emotions and feelings. So just like u go gymming, go gymming with thoughts. Work like a mason. And etch your reality, your better self on the subconscious, which in turn reflects as your truth on the endless canvas hung around with its infinite dimensions. Good luck!

A condolence gathering

 

In rural Haryana, to take anyone’s name properly is against the protocol. So Randhir becomes Dheere, meaning slow. But he is a quick and very agile dairy farmer. Wiry and fast. He is small but strong. He also washes the dead, puts them in new clothes, prepares arthi with bamboo and straw, and sees the dead on the last leg of their journey.

There is a condolence gathering. An old woman has died. They are talking about drinkers. All of them drink pretty heavily but those who drink throughout the day are considered the drunkard cases in the village society. The case they are discussing happened in a neighboring village. A young man passed out under the scorching rays of July sun after drinking too much. He was wearing just shorts. His once tanned brown strong body was found almost burnt black.

Dheere says that it would have been the same with Beere also. He saw him lying on the dusty field path outside the village, taking what he firmly believed to be the last painful breaths with painful jerks to his body. Dheere lies down on the ground and gives aching jerks to his body to give a demonstration of how he thought Beere was dying. Dheere waited under a nearby keekar so that he could take on his usual duties with the corpse. But then Beere stumped him. He got up, took cleaning swipes with his palms at his soiled pants and tottered ahead on the path of life, leaving all the yamdoots and bier-makers waiting and even annoyed.

Narender becomes Neender. He also is a part of the condolence gathering where they are discussing the matters of death so seriously. He also shares his quite recent close encounter with the guards of mortality. He is a fifty something stocky fellow. He got electrocuted while watering his iron-bodied cooler on the terrace. They found him senseless. The village quack doctor was called. He declared him dead. There was no pulse. That was all he knew about the matter and his set of injections and pills that he had assembled for common diseases wouldn’t serve anymore. He stepped aside with a sullen face expecting a full mourning blast by the family’s females.

Once the doctor said ‘no’ everybody clucked their tongue to nullify any plan to take him to the hospital at the earliest. ‘There is no use, he is gone!’ the unruly conglomerate around the supposedly dead man agreed in a loud chorus. Then a few chance words from a woman saved his life. ‘Put pressure on his chest and blow air into his mouth!’ a woman piped in with her enigma-injecting suggestion. She meant resuscitation. Two hefty ninety-kg fellows, at the peak of their rotund youth, got into the business. One fellow sat on Neender’s stomach and heavily pommelled his chest with his crude palms and fists. The other one blew blizzards of air to give him the hiss and kiss of life. It was a torrential action lasting a few minutes. Neender’s soul was sucked back into the body by the intense storm raised by the two youths. His ribs and muscles are aching now even after two weeks as the poignant symbols of their effort to defeat death from his portals. ‘They seemed bent upon killing me,’ he complains.

The Earth Overshoot Day

 

The Earth Overshoot Day is the day when we have used all that the ecosystem can replenish and regenerate in one year. On July 28, we have already consumed all that mother earth will be able to renew in a year. It means what mother earth generates in one year we eat it up in almost half of the time. So for the rest of the year we are borrowing from the natural coffers at the cost of future generations.

Mother earth’s bio-capacity is severely overstretched. As per the current consumption levels, it would take almost two earths to sustain us. There are countries that chuck out an entire year’s sustainable resources within just two-three months at the beginning of the year. For the rest of the year, they would be drawing from the deposited pool of resources, the pool that is diminishing rapidly and will surely go empty one day.

Well, I should abandon all gloomy thoughts born of these stats for the time being. An earthworm is not bothered either. After a spell of monsoon rain the earthworm seems all joyful.

The earth is all wet

and the earthworm is all set

to crawl to a new home.

 

It seems a huge effort by the earthworm to move. It has to stretch its length repeatedly and make a humpbacked U in the middle to stretch and bring forth the tail part by a few millimeters with each heave. An ant-swarm crawls out. The breakfast is almost steady, a slightly shifting breakfast it is to them. They would love to eat it alive. They have the numbers with them. Like the politicians have the numbers to eat our public money in one way or the other. There are hundreds of tiny bites. It wriggles with pain. I think we are like the ant-swarm and poor earth is like the earthworm. It’s wriggling with pain as we the human-swarm continue biting it non-stop, twenty-four hours a day and 365 days of the year.

The baloons

Of late, flavored condoms have hit sales to the ceilings in West Bengal’s Durgapur. The students have gone berserk. It should be encouraged if they are using contraceptives. But here poor condom is used not for love-making nasha. It’s used for a dangerous intoxication. It contains aromatic compounds that produce alcohol on breaking down. Condoms are soaked in hot water for long hours and the booze is ready. Once consumed it produces scores of health hazards but they are unseen and wait till they strike down the system. But for the time being they give a high and that’s what matters for the short-sighted modern generation.

Growing up in the eighties, we did free advertisements for the newly launched Nirodh. We inflated them to full size and left them floating in the air. The big balloons floated and scandalously spread the message of family control in the conservative society. But we had hardly any clue to the slap-stick advertisement. The elders gave scandalized, embarrassed looks. So in a way we carried free publicity for birth control on behalf of health and family welfare department. But most of the farmers were greedily griping misers as far as pleasure, the sole form of entertainment at night, was concerned. They won’t budge and give away the tiniest slice of pleasure by using the free-selling contraceptives. They found the thin barrier thicker than palace ramparts.

Journeyman, set up your Lagrange point!

 

In the infinite womb of the cosmos, the interplay of matter and energy churns out newer and newer formations, births and deaths of supermassive bodies. The cosmic churn goes on and on. Stars burst, black holes swallow supermassive bodies and galaxies heave massive pulses across the space. It’s basically a super-storm going around. Cosmic bodies pulling, repelling, orbiting, colliding, sucking and maybe many more phenomenon beyond our perception range. But there are little points of peace, balance and poise where there is equanimity and balance in this cosmic storm. These are Lagrange points or Libration points, the points of ‘equilibrium for small-mass objects under the gravitational influence of two massive orbiting bodies’.

Usually, two gigantic bodies put an unbalanced gravitational force at a specific point, thus changing the orbit of any small-bodied object present at that point. However, at the Lagrange points, the gravitational forces of the two massive bodies balance the centrifugal force exerted by each other. It results in little Lagrange points that can be used for space docking for satellites, because here they can float almost unchallenged by any force in one particular direction and hence decreasing the fuel requirements. The manmade space objects can be placed at these Lagrange points for observing the marvelous chaos unfolding around. The satellite is very stable at this point and like a meditative saint can marvel, observe and make a meaning of all this meaningless unfoldment going around.

Human life is also a tiny replica of the cosmic upheavals, shifts, transformations, collisions going at a bigger scale in the cosmos. There are forces that pull us down and curtail our flights just like the forces of gravity tend to crash the objects back onto the ground. These are the forces of discontentment, fear and insecurities that pull us back to the base level, cutting our wings. There are repelling forces as well that keep our real self away from the essential core of our pure being. These centrifugal forces are anger, hate, jealousy and judgments. And being either pulled or repelled by one or the other we have to spend a lot of fuel in cutting through the rough atmospherics and vicissitudes of life. We feel the wear and tear of this struggle against the opposing forces. We carry the scars, the discontentment and lots of dis-ease in our being. Life feels a burden as a result.

Luckily, in this rough journey we too have our Lagrange points just like the satellites. Every individual has his/her own Lagrange points, where the soul-ship can be docked in the balanced zone; where it requires minimum dissipation of life-force. Here we don’t feel the struggle of it. We feel the light of just ‘being’. We can feel the ease of just being. In this zone of equanimity and balance, we can set up ourselves with least conflicts and dissipation of energies. The contrasting forces here neutralize each other. A conflict-free existence naturally provides a lot of comfort to the soul.

Now the all-important question arises: How to find one’s very own Lagrange point? All of us have varying situations, circumstances, advantages, disadvantages, insecurities, fears, skills. All of us know the things that pull us down like the force of gravity. We also are aware of the repelling forces that keep our real self from coming face to face with the egoistic one. In my opinion the Lagrange points for a common person are the intersecting zones between materiality and spirituality—the zone between desires of the flesh and the dreams of the soul. One can set up a specific Lagrange point for one’s being and dock the soul-ship there to see, observe, witness all the drama going around, just like observatory satellites placed at Lagrange points do their job. This is the zone where the forces of materiality and immateriality are balanced by each other, allowing us to just be a celebrator of life, a witness of all this seemingly meaningless unfoldment around. Maybe we observe a meaning of life then. Wish you all a happy, cozy and safe Lagrange point in your life!

Uncaring children

 

Cultural anthropologists say that the human society functions on the principles of ‘reciprocity’ and ‘obligations’, both at the individual and collective levels. All our relationships work on the principle of ‘reciprocity’. You feel obliged, even indebted, if someone has done you a favor. If someone has given you something, helped you in some way, or even simply smiled at you, the inherent sense of obligation will firmly ask you to return the favor whenever possible in whatever form. Most of our likes and dislikes are based on what people have given us. If they have given us joy, we like them, love them, feel indebted, and return the favor. If they have given us pain, we return the same. But we hardly do the same in case of mother earth. We forget the principle of reciprocity and indebtedness. We just keep on taking and mother earth keeps giving. That is entirely slyly slanted, one-way process. What we give her back is extraordinarily miniscule (in terms of her health) in comparison to what we extract from her.

Just to show our fellow human beings low, we are drawing longer lines of achievement by their side. The fire of competition persistently burning. The planet crashing like a fiery meteorite. We have already chucked out most of the attractive, holistic heritage that fell into our entitlement. We have taken mother nature for granted and the consequences are plainly scattered around for us to see. Her grievous moanings are no faint ripples anymore. These are piercing cries. Hear them!

Climate Change & a Monkey's Personal Pool

 

Monsoon is a crazy, proud lover. It knows 1.3 billion people are seeking its date. It teases sometimes and gets late. This time she sanctioned June 30 as the appointment date with the Delhi NCR. It showered its pining thirsty lovers with soul-pacifying kisses through drops. When the monsoon hits the sandy burning lips, a mystical fragrance of the soil surrendering to water pervades around. Sadly, I missed the smell. A neighbor had lit up his heap of single-use plastic and the toxic fumes rode the backs of the low clouds and killed the trademark smell of the first summer rain. It was nice to see the first monsoon showers but sad to have missed the famous fragrance of the first monsoon rain. In any case, we will have to bear up with hugely curtailed joy in future.

Western Europe is burning in July. For the first time in its documented history, the UK records forty degree plus temperature. France burns at 46°C. Forest fires. Burning grasslands. Denmark also records its maximum temperature in history. The house is on fire. Do we still need more proofs of global warming? Spain, Portugal, Germany all are in the grip of heat that is typical of northern Indian summers. Now is the time to think of global warming. Hypersonic missiles, wars, superpower status won’t have any meaning if all of us get roasted alive.

Half of the world is caught in forest fires. The other half is flooded. The planetary system seems to be crumbling down while we are using time, energy and resources in developing still deadlier weapons. It seems as if the catastrophes born of climate change are not issues at all. It’s like bubbles fighting among themselves in a boiling cauldron.

The glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate. The Italian-Swiss border in the Alps is denoted along glaciers. Now the glaciers are melting and the borders are thawing and shifting. An Italian mountain ridge is now being pulled into different directions by the opposing nationalities. The melting snows and the shifting drainage patterns have shifted the Italian ridge into the neighboring country. Now, around two-third of the ridge is technically within the Swiss territory. So the man-made boundaries are melting. Mother nature is giving a message that our cartographic lines don’t matter much to her. High time that we all think now in terms of the planet as one entity and consider ourselves as citizens of mother earth first. The rest are all secondary denominations.

We have perilously shrunk within our civilizational interiors leaving the exteriors—everything non-human among flora, fauna and the rest that constitutes earth—as mere utilities. We have gone on the wildest of eternal quests in pursuance of the completely unending path of ambition. We have turned into extravagantly rich-bodied people with shoddily poor souls. And all these natural disasters are merely reflecting the chronic dissonance between what we actually need and what we try to grab out of greed. The seminally formative natural forces lay ravaged. The sprawling canvas of mother earth’s natural painting is replaced by a fractious abstract art drawn with grotesque sense of redrawing anything natural with artificiality—the human-centric abstract art that absolutizes the ultimacy of our madness to keep utilizing natural resources at any cost. The free gifts of mother nature that were once quintessentially common are now swiped away and grafted with our crass mundanities. The virile vibrance of our vigorous negativism eclipses the earth. Where are the starry skies that once crooned moonily? As the centuries old trees fall mother earth sadly applauds the feats of her child, the child who is engaged in a mega-larceny.

Here in our part of the world, the temperature may be around 40°C but it feels like 60°C. You feel being roasted slowly. In the locality there is a vacant plot with plenty of wild growth. The owner thought of putting it in order by cutting the weeds, grass and bushes. As a result, a few snakes, monitor lizards and other reptiles turned homeless. They crept around seeking a new home. It created a big scare among the humans. A big rat snake sneaked into our garden as well. It’s a non-venomous snake. But irrespective of the category of snakes, poisonous or not, our fear is in proportion to their length. The fact is that rat snakes help us by chucking out rats and mice. But their size scares us. We cannot believe that such a big snake can be harmless. Never go by the appearances.

Wherever there is a snake many people gather around because it’s a common enemy. One of my uncles killed it exclaiming, ‘It’s a big one and dangerous!’ All of us felt very bad about the killing. It was the first Monday of shravan. It struck our conscience as a sin but what to do. Our fears turn us helpless and critically limit our choices. But we have a suitable accomplice in all our deeds and misdeeds. We absolved ourselves by quoting certain scriptures that clarify that probably it’s not a sin to kill a snake if it enters your house.

And beyond all these scary climatic issues a monkey has found his personal pool of water to beat the suffocating heat and humidity on this clammy, partially clouded noon. He has expertly disposed off the lid from the rooftop water tank. There he sits on the opening’s rim, his red bum safe on the frame, his tail hanging down, his smart paws holding the edges. He casts the look of owning a rooftop swimming pool. After enjoying a look of supreme solace he goes into the water, wallows for some moments and comes out sleek and shining. I saw him enjoying this for at least half an hour which included about ten dips in the water. The family of course would be using monkey-treated water.  

A day in the life of ants

 

The ants are busy over a tiny crumb. It must be something delicious because there is a stampede over the item. The advantage of being caught in an ant stampede is that there is hardly any chance of getting crushed. Well, unless a careless human foot crushes all of them enblock.

The tiny crumb is covered with ants and looks an ant mound. A babbler, having yellow-ringed furtive and Machiavellian eyes, is attracted towards the busy spectacle. There are so many takers, so it must be something very tasty, the babbler must have thought. We usually go with our first impressions. Most of us fall in this broad stereotype. Here it comes energetically and takes the coveted item with a jerk of its beak, drops it a few times on the ground to make it ant-free and thus unraveling the prize. Many ants take a tumble and get scattered around. But the culinary item doesn’t meet the babbler’s taste. It drops it on the ground and hops away.

What else the ants symbolize except a gripping grittiness? The ants regroup and once again it’s the same world. Such routine mishaps don’t dampen their fire. A squirrel sneaks in tentatively and it too is attracted to the coveted tiny crumb. Again the tiny item doesn’t fall in the list of the squirrel’s culinary likes. It also moves on a bit confused. But the squirrel was a bit better behaved than the babbler. It didn’t pick it up with a quick jerk and scatter the ants. It just snoozed over it for a moment and left it. Maybe the ants have sprayed some repellent over their dinner to deter other claimants.

 

Fight like a little seed

 

Energy’s manifestation as matter is bound by the laws defining our survival instincts. And survival has tools of attack and defense as the primary modus operandi. So ‘being’ is like walking on the tightrope, holding the pole with one end as ‘attack’ and the other as ‘defense’, sometimes tilting to this way to defend, the other times to the opposite end to attack.

Each gain on earth wants to survive. It has multiple layers of defense and attack mechanism to help it carry its journey forward. And we break through their defence portals by cooking them and make a pulp of their starch and protein by breaking these down. The grain accumulates lots of starch to lengthen its life, but we are smarter enough to break it down for our consumption. Primarily, a grain collects its starch for its own consumption. Getting eaten by humans or animals is the least of its priorities. So to reach this rich source of starch and protein, we have to first defeat its first line of defence, the structural line of defence. Grains have physical obstructions in the form of thorns, bark, husk and other protective armor. We go through it with our superior weapons by peeling and milling.

At the second tier of defence, the grain still tries to survive and here it engages the glutton humans with its chemical warfare. The grains have certain pathogen properties that don’t go along the digestive capabilities of stomachs. They also possess certain enzyme inhibitors that make the grains harder to be broken by the digestive system. It makes them very tough to be eaten raw. To break this line of defence we use the weapons of boiling, fermenting and germination. We even dupe them by soaking. Soaking actually dupes the grain into believing that it’s the first stage for the birth of a baby plant. As it gets ready for giving birth to a baby sprout, it withdraws the defence portals and immediately certain enzymes are born to support the baby sprout. And something eatable for the baby plant is eatable for us also.

So it’s primarily about attack and defence at all hierarchies of life. What we see in the world at the tangible level of we humans is simply a representative of all that is going at the tiniest levels. So keep your defence walls strong and the attack portals (skills and efficiency) well oiled. The bubble will anyway burst but to maintain that bubble and enjoy the pleasure and joy of being, we have to give our best just like a tiny grain does. Learn from a grain. If not for this tough fight, how will a tiny seed grow into a majestic tree some day? A tree is the optimum actualization of a seed's potential. Similarly, we too have the task of maximizing the potential that we carry within. Fight well!  

From the past

 

In ancient times, when we lived dharma instead of just identifying with it at theoretical level, like today’s theatrical lip service to religion through rituals, we were so tolerant as to even take harmless puns at Gods. As a satirist in a collection of ancient Sanskrit sayings takes a chutki in Subhashita Ratna Bhandgara:

Sleeps Lakshmi on a lotus flower,

Shiva sleeps on a snow-clad mountain,

Vishnu sleeps on a milky sea,

I think all of them

Are worried about bed bugs.

 

Weren’t our Gods very tolerant? Blind ritualism breeds intolerance and an elitist zealotry, a kind of gratuitous superiority or egotism. The scintillating accessories of faith have turned it into a lucrative business. And where there is business, there is greed. And then you have the resultant mad crackling of fear and insecurities. We have become very stern and strict presently.

The poor are very rich in laughter and the wealthy are very poor in laughing. A tenth century work named Dasarupaka of Dhananjya categorizes degrees of poverty and richness in the laughter of the people of different social strata. High class people are either miser or very poor in laughing quota. They just show a gentle smile (smita) or at the most a chuckle (hasita). The middle class people perform somewhat better and laugh with soft sound (vihasita) or at the most a type of laughter spliced with a bit of shaking of head (uphasita). And the so-called low class people hold rich bank account and enjoy roaring laughter with tears in eyes (apahasita) which usually graduates to a convulsive, uncontrolled laughter (atihasita).

Family discords can take classical shape. Sas and bahu can call each other Kulavyadhi (disease of the family), Kalahapriya (fond of discord), Jatasura (matted hair demon), Ajnanasri (rich in ignorance), Vyadhisindhu (ocean of illness), Aturantaka (killer of the sick).

Here is a dig at unworthy officials in Sukti Muktavali:

Scarcely any understanding, knowledge or learning,

not even any skill except fawning,

Minister, how do you still feel unfortunate and unrewarded?

 

Here is something from a sixteenth century work Subhashitavali (Garland of the Well-said Verses):

He possesses the beauty of full moon,

and sounds honeyed as a cuckoo when he speaks,

His caress and kiss is swooning like a pigeon,

Walks he as if he’s a regal swan,

Almost crushes he a woman in his strong arms

with the raw power of an elephant,

Such is my praiseworthy spouse,

All women and girls worship him,

I can’t see any problem,

except that he is my husband.

 

And in the same work here is an ode to a genius:

Other’s words are meaningless to him,

Nobody can read his script either,

The eccentric thing is that

he hardly can make out

what he himself has jotted down.

 

And here is something my own: Many a time the triumph of law is simply a mockery of justice.

So we writers have had our own peculiar ways of taking digs at even the strong and the mighty.

The perils of communalism

 

If we look into the communal history of the last four decades, we find a disturbing pattern in India. Big communal violence has shaken our social fabric almost once in a decade: Delhi riots (1984), Mumbai riots (1992-93), Gujarat violence (2002), Muzaffarnagar riots (2013), Manipur violence (2023). Statistically a big communal flare-up jolts the fabric of our unity once in a decade. And during the lull period, there are little-little fireworks that are kept alive by politicians, vigilantes, hardliner religious leaders or anyone belonging to the power-aspirant group—the slow-smoldering smoke in the social fuel wood that reaches its burning point after a decade.

Polarization on religious grounds is a dangerous pill of instant profits. So the communal element is a big trend in our politics these days. But statistics point to a great danger to our unity if this divisive element isn’t weeded out from our socio-political stream. As we can see from the above statistics, minor communal haggling and rhetoric creates enough fire under the social ground that it bursts out in a big flare after a decade. But the law of mathematics doesn’t stop here at the once-in-a-decade big communal flare-up. The big-scale communal fires separated roughly by a decade will churn out something far bigger in nature after their incubation period is reached. For example, the exponential growth of hate like it happened in 1947. That was preceded by a communal bug that incubated for almost 90 years when the Britishers systematically introduced the element of communal divide in the Indian society after the first war of independence in 1857. And now, with year-long little communal propagandas going full throttle, resulting in a big tragedy almost once in a decade, we may reach the very same partition-time critical limit of social breach in 2040s, that’s almost hundred years after 1947.

Even impartial mathematics is pointing to the dangers to our unity by the communal bug if political parties, organizations, institutions, religious leaders and other influential groups don’t discard divisive communal rhetoric from their plan of action to gain power and influence. 

My noisy neighbors

 

I’m the most abused person this morning. You can say it with full confidence if you have a tailorbird couple training their just-out-of-nest chick in the art of calling, flying and survival. They have turned ultra-sensitive and start abusing with staggering impertinence the moment I step into the courtyard. My morning newspaper reading corner has been grabbed. The freshly hatched chick is flapping its wings for little flights from one branch to another in the clump of plants in the corner. It’s almost as big as its parents minus the tail. As I try to focus on the news in the paper there is a constant barrage of drilling notes into my brain. Even the noisy news items look so peaceful.

The longer-tailed gentleman is more audacious, comes nearer with warning tweets. He has a nice bow-tie kind of spot on the neck and carries a rusty brown head. Whenever I get up from the garden chair, they change their tweeting as a mark of victory, of the enemy being routed. Well, defeat might be surrender sometimes, but victory is a matter of perception only. They have a right to perceive it as a victory. Sometimes Papa bird comes very near as if to take a nibble at my nose. Luckily for me he missed it. Then they tried bird-dropping upon me but the tiny spot on my newspaper proved that they missed it as well. It seemed to make them angrier. Their shrill notes can drill a hole in any brain. It’s better to accept defeat.

The ant hole is just nearby where I sit. The ants have put on weight. Believe me, they have! If you look carefully, you can even see the ants putting on weight. They look darker and glossier now.

An ode to a snail

 

Next time you come across a snail give it a bit more respect than you did earlier. They move slowly as if carrying carefully cultivated, standstill reflections but they hold the recipe of beauty as well. Latest skincare products use snail mucin, snail secretion filtrate, which is found to be effective in skin healing, regeneration, works as a nice exfoliant, soothes and hydrates the skin, has anti-aging properties, removes acne scars and much more. Currently the Korean culture is high-riding the fame horse from music to movies. Snails have been a part of Korean beauty concoctions since ancient times. O thou conjuring satraps, whenever you come across a snail next time, slow down your pace to its own, take a pause, move a few centimeters alongside the guy always at ease, salute it. Maybe being balanced, poised and at pause holds the secret secretion of beauty.

Run your race

 

A Haryanvi woman, Rambai, aged 105, has set up a new record in 100 m sprint at National Open Masters Athletics Championship in above-100 class. Why should age cut on your burgeoning aspirations? She was the sole participant but that didn’t stop her from improving the record from previous 74 s to 45.40 s. The old woman with a young spirit set up a record, overcoming the old-age hurdles as if egged on by a kind of spiritually sustained surge. So sometimes the mere decision to run and participate makes you a champion. You start as a winner even before you take the first step if you have overcome the mental block and broken the conservative cliques that tame you. And how will you set your individual best if you choose not to run at all. Forget about nine something seconds. Focus on your own timing and try to improve it. However, a bit of competition is also handy in pushing one to better limits. Rambai would have done even better if there was some other octogenarian participant helping the champion just by her presence.

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.