One more drop of sweetness in a bitter world

 Scorching heat... spring died...flowers withered. But life has to continue till flowers bloom once again. With temperature around 40 and flowers gone, these honeybees look like desert travellers busy around an oasis. Water level in the tiny vessel was low, so many of them slipped down the edges while attempting to take tiny swigs of water. One can use love, care and help in any corner of the world. It polishes the aesthetics of humanity. A little practice to be more human. Goodness is qualitative in nature. It doesn't need quantity to get certified as a good deed. Main thing is one's emotion. So here I take my quantum jump in evolution by filling the bucket to the brim so that these little thirsty visitors safely perch on the upper edge and drink water without risking their lives. They get water, I become more aware of the godliness in me. Profit both ways. Vaah, what a fruitful day!

An interesting phase in Indian politics

 

The power equation has a very common thread among the power aspirations—you want to be the real controller of affairs; you have an impulse against sharing it with centralization-diluting people, groups and institutions. There is hardly any chance to come across a politician who doesn’t want all-out power in his own hands. The only deciding factor is to what extent he can manage it. So we can safely say that all politicians are basically cult aspirants. From this point, Modi is justified in trying to rise above his own party and the parent organization, the RSS. But the trends after two phases of parliamentary elections give rise to a pertinent question: Is cult politics (which can be safely called electoral autocracy) feasible in India?  

To seek answer to this question, we have to first find out where it’s practical and effective to operate the politics of cult. Of course the communist countries come very close to set up a system that easily digests the mythical cult of an individual because systematically the entire society is cut in the same fabric, doing away with socio-economic and religious diversities. In a beautifully manicured field, it’s very easy for one sturdy sunflower to stand in the middle and function as the all-go point of authority. It is also possible in the mono-religious, theocratic societies, predominantly Muslim countries for example. There is a firm, homogenous hold of faith over the people and in this evenly leveled society an individual can easily rise above and rule over the rest.   

However, cult formation in a massively varied society like India is a big challenge. There are so many regional disparities, economic variations, caste categories and religions. It’s an exciting jungle of different plants and trees having varying heights. How far you will go to be at the same height from all of them? You cannot serve as a common denominator to all of them as a cult figure unless you use brute force or do something as drastic as changing the constitution itself, both of which are virtually impossibilities in the Indian set up. There are so many centrifugal forces always pulling the power away from the center. You can have some moments of a total grasp but things will slip out of hand because India is an exotic Pandora box. And that’s where the uniqueness of this great country lies. We love our freedom of not being perfect. We are a bouquet of colors which is so appealing to this rapidly mono-coloring world. We are an exotic chaos which is far more interesting than any order. We have earned our freedom after centuries of subjugation and we would very much like to keep enjoying the spirit of freedom including the freedom of expression.  

You simply cannot rise above history by belittling past greats like Gandhi and Nehru. They had their own cult following but it was showered upon them by the people willingly and out of respect and affection. It wasn’t a product of their cult-formation direct endeavor. It was just an outcome of their sincere efforts for the welfare of their motherland.   

How big and effective a cult you can erect in such a diversified society as India depends on your personal capacity. And Modi has been the most effective and capable person since Nehru and Indira to rise above the hordes of power-diluting factors and rule as a supreme authority. Beyond judgments, I see it as a mark of his capabilities, his brilliant oratory and the spirit of keeping an unrelenting hold on all those around him. But in such a tight-gripped system in a democracy, there will always be tension among those whose powers have been diluted. They will look up to you with anxiety because you are keeping their loyalty by force. To maintain an unchallenged authority as the central figure it requires frequent purges like in communist and theocratic countries. But it isn’t possible to do so in its direct form in a democracy and that too the largest democracy which is always under the scanning radar of the world because what happens here has a direct bearing on the global democratic machinery. Yes the indirect tools of intimidation like ED, CBI, IT and other authorities work to an extent by keeping the opponents (both within and outside) cut down to a manageable size. But it is a deterrent only. You can just control your opponents till a point, not do away with them altogether.

One can feel a strong undercurrent of change in India after the two phases of elections. There is oversaturation with the brand Modi in people’s psyche. If you hear Modi-Modi one billion times, of course there will be a Modi fatigue. You lose that charm over people’s fancying spirits.

I think almost hundred percent media control is counterproductive. It discards the basic principle of safety valve. Freshness and newness are the basic elements of news that keep people glued to the news channels. The electronic media is so saturated with Modi narrative that it turned very boring for the common masses. Of course the diehard zealots would love watching it but they number very less. Most of the people would at the most like a leader instead of turning blind followers.

In the absence of a safety valve type dissenting outlet in the mainstream media, the journalists and critics who had been kicked out of the mainstream media platforms found their outlets through numerous social media platforms including YouTube channels, which have been highly effective in presenting a different aspect of the situation. People liked these interesting, discordant voices for their varying opinions. They had the element of fresh news. No wonder these platforms will have a decisive role in the current elections. Cheap internet plans allow the people to stay glued to their social media choices, who is even bothered about the television.

In his place I would have kept the ratio of 75:25 in the mainstream media—75 percent my narrative and 25 percent for the opposing voices. It would have acted like a safety valve and so many tiny punctures in the tube won’t have surfaced in the form of mushrooming social media channels. Of course Modi government has its own mushroom sprouts in social media as well but their content has been a copy of what people see on the television, so that also lost interest and hence viewership.

All in all it will be a very interesting election during the next phases and Modi, the master he is of our emotions, will of course try to raise a blizzard, trying to flare passion and bring out the critically opinioned and imbalanced persona in us and flock after his cult. How much he will succeed is to be seen.        

 

How much attention should I give her?

 A small seed of thought sprouts a prickly thicket after reading Saint Gibran's little story "At the Fair".

How much attention a man is supposed to give to a woman to score good in her books? If he outrightly goes overboard in his affection and attention, she condemns him as unmannerly, lecherous and uncouth. Ignore her, she curses him as a bore, and in worst case scenario even impotent. Now how much of lukewarm attention is sufficient to a woman? Well, even an enlightened soul like Gibran failed to gauze the right proportion, what to talk of little mortals like us! Possibly it is a tug of war between complete, overblown adulation on the one hand and complete avoidance on the other. Basically it's a see saw, shifting, teasing game which pumps life into the man's pursuit and her feigned nonchalance while walking supposedly not looking but gauzing the scene from her extra sixth sense which is 100 times sharper than a direct look with normal eyes.

अबकी बार किसका वोट?

 बेचारे राहुल गांधी को तो चुनाव आयोग ने बकरी बना रखा है. वो कुछ भी मिमिया दें तो एक डंडा मारते हैं उनके सर पर और दूसरी तरफ महाशक्तिशाली बाबा को खुले सांड की तरह छोड़ दिया गया है.. वह कुछ भी रांभ दें तो चुनाव आयोग भाग के अपने ऑफिस में घुस जाता है...अब आप ही समझिए ये संस्था किसकी है..बोलना मना है...🤐सिर्फ सुनो...किसकी? जो हमेशा मन की बात करते हैं😷

हमारे परिवार ने भी बरसों से कांग्रेस मुक्त भारत का सपना देखा है। आजादी से पहले दादा जी जमींदार लीग के समर्थक हुआ करते थे, और जहां भी कांग्रेसी लोग सभा करते थे, सीधे साधे किसान लोग जो आर्य समाज के अनुयायी और जमींदार लीग के समर्थक थे, कांग्रेसियों की पिटाई करते थे। दादाजी बताते हैं कि काई बार तो डर के मारे कांग्रेसी लोग टोपी सर से उतार कर जेब में छिपा लेते थे। उसके बाद पिताजी की भी यही धारणा रही। उसके बाद हम और उसके बाद हमारे बच्चे भी इसी खानदानी राजनैतिक सिद्धांत का पालन करते रहे हैं। चार पीढ़ियों से हमने हर किसी को वोट दिया है, सिर्फ कांग्रेस को नहीं दिया है। और अब 70-80 साल के पारिवारिक राजनीतिक इतिहास के बाद एक बहुत क्रांतिकारी कदम हम उठ रहे हैं। अबकी बार कांग्रेस को वोट देंगे। हालांकी हुडा सरकार ने मेरे साथ प्रांतीय सिविल सेवा के मामले में बहुत बड़ा अत्याचार किया था, लेकिन बाद में खट्टर सरकार ने भी कसार नहीं छोड़ी। खैर व्यक्तिगत मामलों को भूलते हुए देशहित में फैसला लेते हुए यही सोचा है कि अगर मीडिया की दासता, गैर लोकतांत्रिक मनमानी, संविधान को बदलने की साजिश, व्यक्तिगत आजादी, बोलने की आजादी, पढ़े लिखे आदमी की इज्जत, घृणा मुक्त समाज की रचना करनी है तो हमारी वोटों का कांग्रेस को समर्थन देना ही बनता है। यहीं हम कर सकते हैं। बाकी ज्यादा आशा तो नहीं है, क्योंकि जिस तरह से संस्थानों को जकड़ पकड़ लिया गया है, उस हिसाब से मैं चुनाव के नतीजों में ज्यादा आशा नहीं रख रहा हूं। फिर भी..

The lecherous oldies in the countries

 

A man from our village operates a chemist shop at a village nearby. The village chemists work more as a doctor running a clinic. They diagnose, prescribe and sell the medicines. In this way they fill up a lot of blank space on the health welfare map of India. I’m having a chat with him at his shop. A man in his sixties arrives at the counter, puts down twenty rupees, looks the other way and stealthily plucks away the pills put in front of him. Not a word was exchanged, or even a look. I’m curious even though I have some clue to the episode. My friend elaborates on the matter. This man belongs to the breed of the old men whose bodies have aged but the passion remains the same in the mind. So to fill up this gap between the body and the mind they take aphrodisiac pills. My chemist friend tells me that there are about fifty such heroes in the small village. Half of them still experiment outside their matrimony and the other half dallies within their four walls, including some who have nice amorous equation with their daughters-in-law. Of the last category, they are primarily pension holders and are still the main economic pillars of the family, entitling them to amorous times with their young daughters-in-law.

An inverse equation of adoration and hate

 

My brother spent some time in the China office of their company. He finds the Chinese people the most cultured ones. Their aesthetic sense of hospitality for a visitor is outstanding, he tells me. In comparison to the indisciplined chaos in India, he finds China a well-ordered peaceful, contended society. Well, I may not agree with him completely--unless I see things firsthand--but I have a belief that such an ancient civilization that gave birth to Lao Tzu and Confucius must be having deep-rooted fundamentals appropriately aligned with progress and evolution. Anyways, that's another matter. But I believe that with political reforms, and by quitting its ever-excited quest to get more territories, China can be a trend-setting country for the common cause of global citizenship. 

He tells me that Mr. Zia is the best built man he has ever seen. Zia, a very nice gentleman, tells my brother one day, ‘Brother, all the boys in the office hate you,’ he says as a matter of fact. ‘Why?’ my brother asks. ‘Because all the girls adore you,’ the handsome Chinese clarifies.

A small-time writer's skirmish with a bull frog

 There is a little group of bull frogs who wallop in the small street drain. They retire for the night under a culvert nearby. They are too big for the rat snakes hiding in the bushes a few yards away. The bull frogs look like miniature hippos walloping in muddy waters. They are very confident even while face-to-face with the rat snakes. One day I saw a poor rat snake helplessly staring at the mud-wallopers. They even turned their backs to it. ‘We are too big for you!’ they seemed to take a jibe at it. Then one of them got out to scout our yard for a suitable winter hideout. It showed the same attitude to me that it flaunts in the face of the rat snakes. I applied water cannon to shoo it away but it stayed adamant and turned my policing act into a bathing with clean water. I stomped my feet to shake the ground around it to scare it. It but stood solid. A very brave one indeed. I then used a stick to prod at its bottom. It got angry and stood on its front legs to increase its size. ‘Hey, I’m bigger than you!’ it meant to say. Then I give a small, gentle hit at its bum and there it galloped away croaking obscenities.

The sweet old days for a man in his forties

 To have multani mitti (Fullers Earth or the Indian Healing Clay) for washing your hair means to belong to the older generation. The cosmopolitan world is beyond the reach of plain old earth. While growing up in the village, we had the singular option of washing and rubbing our hair clean with multani mitti. Now the dermatologists are approving the superb qualities of the good old multani mitti involving cooling, skin nourishing and beautifying. The desi shampoo absorbs oil and dirt. The natural cleanser is all goody-goody news for the scalp, especially the oily ones. It hydrates, prevents bacterial growth, inhibits dandruff, and removes toxic chemicals from the skin as a purifying agent. Now I realize how much science is involved in our age-old home remedies and concoctions. While I write this, I can feel Mother’s strong peasant woman’s hands giving a vigorous but considerate scrub to my scalp during childhood. But now to use multani mitti means simply to be out of fashion.

Storks in the sky

 It rained for almost a week in the middle of October, making it one of the wettest Octobers ever recorded. The slugs and earthworms got apprehensive whether it was the mythological deluge repeated. The ones that got scared too much headed for higher grounds towards the verandah from the garden. Then the sun shone very brightly and all their fears were belied. Now they had to retreat, at a great risk of being squashed under feet and picked up by the predators. I airlifted some of them and landed them home in the flower bed. It shows if you easily give into your fears, you expose yourself to an even broader range of risks and then salvation becomes a factor of someone’s sense of charity, or kindness, or pity.

What bigger proof do I need that winters aren’t too far than the sight of storks. It seems a beautiful world. A group of around thirty painted storks hovering in the village sky. They arrived flying in a V-shape pattern, did a few redesigned sorties, maybe reconnoitering the village pond. Sadly the water body isn’t free now. It’s tamed for fisheries with wire nettings cutting the free skies from the pond’s stretch. So they move on looking for some still free puddle. Wetlands are on a decline. But the sight of these Himalayan visitors freshens up my mood. And there is hope till the sky has enough free canvas for the birds to fly.

A simple man's financial management

 

Rashe is a soft giant. He owns huge strength, which is amply evident when he works as a wage laborer. He can lift huge weights but he is too cool in temperament to be agile. Once, after getting fully sloshed he fell faceward and being very relaxed and unhurried allowed his teeth to hit a brick without putting much effort against the fall. A free and relaxed fall we can term it. Now the door is open with three or four of his front teeth missing. This coupled with a slurred speech—the result of a horse kick during infancy, which jammed his jaw somewhat abnormally—makes him look and sound like a fresh species altogether. But he has a very keen sense of banking. He worked for me for a day for which I owe him 600 rupees. He hasn’t arrived to claim it even after a couple of weeks after the work assignment. He hasn’t any banking account, so all the people whom he considers to be honest are his bank. He keeps the money with them, postponing the settlement of his dues till the day he needs the money. ‘That saves the wastage of money,’ he provides me free financial consultancy.

The big man's little story

 

Petha is a huge man, standing at 6’4” and weighing in the range of 120s in kilogram unit. He grew to be a mammoth lad in the senior secondary school. The potential was spotted by one of his teachers. She passionately introduced him in the art and craft of pacifying the basic instinct. He may not have bothered about any other element of schooling but this lesson he has followed to the core of his body. He hasn’t looked back since then.

Ask him the biographical summary of the last two decades. He answers with the sincerity of a student, ‘I have simply come very handy for the women looking for greener pastures!' As you can very well imagine, there are countless episodes of his amorous passion. It involves the college-going girl of a minister in Djibouti, a very loyal secretary-cum-housekeeper-cum-mistress Fatima, a few nurses, teachers, college girls, peasant women and scores of ladies belonging to the trade of dousing desires.

Then in Ethiopia, he enticed the daughter of a prominent Sikh farmer—from whom he had taken some land on lease for coffee plantation—which earned him a jail term of two years. The African jail was brutal. He survived only because he had too much weight which got cut to a normal 75 kilogram after the prison brutalities. Now in India he keeps a well-oiled stock of afeem to qualify as a brutal bull in the art of passion. He is regular with four or five women apart from giving his own wife every reason to feel contended in matrimony.

What would happen if you are forever excited and high on adrenaline? After all, human system has limitations. It’s not solely made for copulation as people like Petha believe. So now he has high blood pressure. I recommend walks and jogging. But he has all the remedies in copulatory terms. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. One encounter with a luscious woman amounts to two kilometers of walking. By this equation, I walk several miles each day!’ he gives me the consultation talk about this new form of walking by simply taking tumbles in the bed. His mathematics is a clear winner, so I accept his point of view and silently move ahead on my customary walk in the solitude of countryside.

The costliest wine

 Shyam Sunder and helper Bijender are repairing cracks in our old house. One day they work till late in the evening and get a bonus of 150 rupees meant to buy a bottle of desi liquor, their main incentive for extra work. They leave happily with the prospects of boozed-up relaxed moments after the daylong hard work. The next day, during a break, they are sitting on a bench side by side. ‘What is the cost, you can imagine, of the single peg of the costliest whisky?’ I asked. I had recently read about it in the papers and since then loved flummoxing the liquor lovers by baring the surprising fact. Shyam Sunder, the head brick layer, took a long-long draught at a beedi for inspiration and seriously deliberated over the question for a minute. ‘There are very rich people around. It must be around 10,000 rupees for a peg,’ he reached the end of his imagination about the figure. Bijender, being his loyal helper, promptly seconded him. Then I informed them that the figure is 4 crore 70 lakh rupees for a single peg of Japanese whisky. It didn’t fit in anywhere in their scheme even in the wildest of imaginations. No wonder they took it as a joke. A PJ in fact that didn’t elicit even a tiny peal of laughter. But we have to understand that it’s a small world for them where big sums appear a joke. If not for this, how will they even melt their bones under inclement weather on construction sites for a daily wage as low as a few hundred rupees?

A rainbow at the day's tail end

 

A gloomy, lukewarm, overcast early October day at the fag end of autumnal corridor. A day on the fringe of all seasons. A disowned day with orphaned feeling. And the sky shedding a few tears, as if in mourning for better times and climes. Some drops of rain leaving just scarring dots on the sand. Then some solacing ray of hope at the time of sunset. The sun calls it off from official duties a few minutes past six. The clouds in the west thinned and orangish curtains cast a faded glow on the darkish grey stage to the east. A little piece of sky over the north-eastern horizon slightly parted to allow the light’s protagonist to raise a beacon of hope. A little arc of rainbow smiled. A rainbow at the end of a gloomy tale proclaiming that there is still hope, that all isn’t lost, that there will be a balmy day tomorrow, or the day afterwards, or still later. But come it will for sure. Then the sun dived further low beyond the faded orange curtain. The little arc of rainbow was gently wiped clean from the sky’s slate.

A beautiful sadly sweet phenomena above and the bustling world below. The India-South Africa cricket match happens to be one of the numerous happenings. The Africans score pretty comfortably in the first forty overs. The Indians then make a comeback, allowing the visitors hardly a run a ball in the slog overs. To we Indians, it means great performance by our bowlers. To the Africans, it means a poor show by their batters. Both have their own versions of reality. Where does truth lie in the equation? I think it’s there in the middle, balancing out both extremes—the Indians bowled well, but the Africans batted poorly also. Doesn’t each of them support the other for its validation? The loser helps the winner in its victory; the winner also facilitates the loser’s defeat.

The story of a stylish, modern-day canine mom

 

Bhuro is a brown and white rotund bitch in the village street. She looks replete with self-care, in complete contrast to other maternally worn out hassled female canines in the locality. She eats only warm buttered chapattis. She doesn’t give much trouble to her lungs by unnecessary barking like the rest of her ilk. I have seen many famished, worn- and worked-out female dogs due to the heavy burden of puppy rearing. But in comparison Bhuro seems a glamorous, narcissistic post-modern girl. I have never seen her attending her maternal duties. Then the secret comes out. She eats all of her newborn puppies to maintain her youth, glamor and figure. Of course there must be some very significant reason to account for her weird behavior. Mysteries of nature is all I can reckon in this regard.

Her meaning of life is in stark contrast to an old black bitch I remember from my young days. She would embarrass even the human mothers in taking care of her newborns. Once her sole surviving puppy also died. But she won’t allow anyone to take it away for burial. She kept licking and tending to the corpse for many days. Of course, love cannot stop a corpse from rotting. I shooed her away using a feigned demonic show of waving sticks, shouting angry words and stomping gestures. Then I hurriedly buried the carcass, secured the tiny grave with a big stone and many thorny boughs of keekars lest the mother in her digs out the dead from the grave. To her canine sense of motherhood I was the murderer of her puppy, and for weeks it would howl whenever she saw me. It would leave me very guilty.

There was another sweet canine mom who had such a liking for her kids that she would steal others’ puppies and rear them as her own. In comparison to these puppy-loving moms, Bhuro stands at the opposite end of earth in temperament and philosophy of life.

The political nursery

 

It was a hornet’s nest unleashed on us with the announcement of elections for the village panchayat, the village level governing body. Sarpanch elections have acquired such seriousness as to hold the entire village by throat and give it a very serious shake. The atmosphere is clouded with posters, pamphlets, banners and fliers, so many of them as we didn’t even see in parliamentary elections during our childhood. Politics is a lucrative career, in every sense of the term. It’s the biggest key to empowerment.

Most of the power aspirants have little clue about what is to be filled up in the nomination form even though these are in Hindi these days. So a big task awaits me. They appear on the edge of life, so much seriousness about the forms. God forbid if there is some mistake and it might get rejected. So they trust the bookish guy in the village. The form is almost an intimidating booklet with so many instructions and clauses. ‘It left my head spinning,’ one of them looked very sad.

I peer nervously at the form booklet. There are many pages devoted to the ongoing and past skirmishes with law: a record of petty as well as solid falling off the legal ladder. So the government of India fully understands that the contestants will have lots of FIRs, court cases and complaints against them.

But I felt further cut down to even smaller academic size the moment I reached the column for academic qualifications of the candidate. It was just one line at the end of the page, almost inconsequential. By chance the printing ink was very light here to make it even more insignificant item of little concern. So the government knows that the candidates will have just as much academic record as to fill up merely a half line at the end of a page in the form.

Sarpanch elections have acquired massive proportions. Campaigning has become unbelievably expensive. Lots of cash is also distributed among the poor voters. They even have loudspeakers mounted on E-rickshaws proclaiming the credentials of a candidate who would make it a Ramrajya with clean governance. One candidate spent one crore rupees. He did a lot of charity work as well. Many ineligible bachelors were lucky to get brides with the kindness and connections of this candidate. He took large groups of villagers for fully-sponsored pilgrimages as well. He raised a whirlwind with his tireless activities. Then his clever election committee built a narrative that he has spent each penny in his pocket and will commit suicide if he lost the elections. There was a sympathy wave and he won handsomely.           

The entire story of Rashe Ram's schooling

 

Rashe Ram went to school for four days, or just three and half to be precise. All families in the villages at least try to put their wards in the shafts of the schooling cart. Most of the yoked imps galloped to freedom without wasting too much time. They still do so in the villages but things have improved marginally in this regard. Master Sube Singh pulled little Rashe’s ears on day one. It was painful. A round of defecation on the carpet in the school verandah earned his ears to be literally pulled out on day two. Day three came with urination on the floor and a bite on the face of a fellow student, which earned him a severe shaking of his head, ruffled hair and big reprimand. Some repeat of the earlier tasks earned him a beating around mid-day on the fourth day. As he was caned, he took an impish opportunity to hit the teacher’s head with his wooden writing tablet. There was blood. He fled from the school forever. But he tried to keep his younger brothers Karne and Munna in school. It was done with a sense of inflicting torture on his siblings. They were in class five and six respectively. Bhoop would get drunk and harass the boys, plundered their lunch and eat it. It became a habit with the big-time neighborhood drunk. So Rashe, all of thirteen or fourteen, beat the liquor lover. He later beat the thinnest sloshed Raame over some issue. These are three violent acts that he committed in life. The rest is all love with three or four poor peasant women who surrender to his animalistic charms as an escapade from the hard facts of life.

Fast, faster, fastest

 

On October 1, 2022 5G services were launched in India. The most interesting marketing feature—that would inevitably see the millennials running to upgrade their network, forcing the middle-aged and the elderly to copy them later—is that a two-hour movie would be downloaded in just ten seconds. With the old 4G technology it takes seven to eight minutes. I’m not against technology but I think we have been running faster and faster to save time. With 6G we would seek to get it done in one second. Then the race would enter the echelons of nanoseconds. My only curiosity is when will we pause to enjoy the fruit of our time-saving technologies. Despite the best of our time savers, we are busier than ever. I think the race against time will finally burn us up—like a meteorite burns to nothingness as it crashes through earth’s atmosphere. And why do we run faster and faster? It’s due to our dynamic belief that found sitting, then walking, then jogging we give the impression of being backward. So still faster we have to run. We have now a vast human sprawl on this tiny planet. So running faster creates huffing-puffing avenues to keep the new load busy and engaged. But then we are heading for an explosion!

Father and Son

 

My brother Amit is a cool and composed IT professional. He has never been ambitious in the sense that we see people toppling apple carts to rise in careers and professions. A handsome six-footer he has never been too eager to shake the stage too enthusiastically to make his presence felt. At the beginning of planning a career he showed zeal for joining the Indian army and gave a serious try but things won’t work out. Then he dropped the yoke of career aspirations for some time. He took to farming on a part of our land and after finishing the tasks in the morning, he would settle down, after taking a relaxing bath, dressed very-very casually, to read newspaper under the neem tree in front of our house. Father had retired by that time and pulled the family cart with his pension money. Father would smoke and drink tea throughout the day. He still maintained his routine of leaving the house in the morning like during his office days. But now it was the little tea shop in the town where a few of his friends gathered to pass time. He would return from the town in the afternoon.

As he reached home, Father would—having failed to incite his younger son into a volcanic eruption regarding career even with almost cataclysmic fatherly outpours of care, concern and anger—greet the newspaper-reading gentleman with a question in great Krishnamurti’s style, ‘Sir, are you a retired pensioner?’ ‘No sir!’ Amit would reply with a slight embarrassment. Later on, Amit made a career in the IT sector, a bit belated though. But now is doing quite well in his job.

The common story of a common homemaker

 

Rajesh comes from a small village in a neighboring district. He learnt the most basic of education concerning reading and then decided to know about life in the living workshop itself. He worked as an apprentice to a lead acid battery maker, commuting daily to work at the town in crowded buses plying on famished roads. Discipline and diligence paid off and he evolved in profession. Now he has his own shop and sells both his own products as well as fancier brands.

His family stays in a nice little house at the town. His children go to an English medium school. Thanks to my buying a few inverter batteries from him, he is now a trustable friend. He seemed very concerned about my financially unproductive writing venture when I told him that I’m writing a book. A few months down the line, during our next meeting, after a frank discussion about the financial prospects of his battery business, he threw the ball in my court. ‘Have you completed that coppy?’ he enquired in all brotherly seriousness. To him writing, page, notepad, notebook, file, diary, book, tome everything is a simple ‘coppy’. I was clueless about this ‘coppy’. Then he picked up his dog-eared tiny pocket diary where he noted the stats of his business, mostly about the errant clients who delayed payments, and brandished it, ‘Yes coppy. You were writing a coppy na?’ So I assured him that my coppy was going well. At least it rhymes with ‘shoppy’. The latter happens to be the farmers’ version of the classical ‘Sufi’ christened upon me by my father.

The hollowness of words

 

Each word is incomplete, just an abstract, broken fragment born of thoughts arising in the mind. And the mind itself is a grainy fragment of the overall consciousness. Words are mere grains of sand. With sand grains we try to make castles, huge castles that we make in pursuance of the ever-missing meaning of life. Sand slips, we go for awkward flips. Words are mere broken arrows. How will one even win a battle with broken arrows? Words are mere sparks, temporary flashes coming out of the endless coffers of silence. They just give a little flash of light around our feet as we grope in the darkness seeking a way out of our puzzles. Words are mere temporary twinklings on the vast canvas of silence. They themselves tell their story of incompleteness, their own meaninglessness behind all the meanings ascribed to them. And the moment we listen to their story, we arrive at the moral of the final story. The moral of their story is silence: silence and emptiness behind all this noise and happening. And as I write this, huge rumblings of megh naad, the rumblings of clouds, buzz across my head. A booming cosmic storm that chucks out the outer shell of words, crushes the stones to spread the sand to go flying with the winds. The words getting sucked into a cosmic cascade and whirlpool of energy. And beyond that silence there is a void full of potential for all the noise.