Kundalini Shakti

 

This sharing is something deeply personal in nature, at the level of experience, in the domain of experiential knowledge. I’m not sure how many of the readers will relate to it. Still, its mere theoretical reading will make it interesting. This much I’m sure. It lies in the domain of spirituality wherein all the seekers have their individualistic experiences. There comes a time when one feels like sharing them with others after the initial years of closely guarding the secret as if it’s a treasure. There is no specific reason behind guarding the experience initially and there is hardly any reason for sharing it later. These things happen of their own, mere happenings.

All of us are essentially spiritual beings carrying lesser or more worldly baggage. The latter is merely a fuel for the journey in this lifetime, an accumulation born of our karmic balance from the journey so far. There is no fundamental flaw in carrying one’s own unique worldly baggage. But there is a temptation to take the fuel as the main thing, the essential component of life, while it’s mere fuel and is supposed to get burnt in the form of karmic dissipation, taking us to further destinations in a bigger dimension of perception and consciousness.

The theme of this discussion is Kundalini. I’m sure most of you must have some theoretical knowledge about this much fabled thing. Kundalini is an auxiliary dimension, a seed of potential, lying dormant in our psychosomatic system. It’s a short-cut, a gateway, a portal, a trigger point for speeding up of the evolutionary process of consciousness. Of course, just like any other short-cut it has its risks, dangers, possibilities, rewards, agonies, ecstasies, everything in fact.

The fundamental law of cosmos is primarily pure potentiality. Kundalini is a seed of that potentiality in the human physiognomy. It is a trigger point to unleash a sudden current of energy to take your consciousness to a level where it would have taken several lifetimes in the natural sequence of karmic resolution to help one solve all the entanglements and their resultant pain and suffering.

There is a set of controllables and uncontrollables in one’s life. I tried my level best to succeed in normal worldly terms like anyone around. But the set of uncontrollables at a level of existence beyond my efforts would always push me back to the starting point. Naturally that gives one a lot of pain and agony. One questions the basics that operate the world around him or her. And before you realize you are seeking solace and answers to your burning questions in a spiritual dimension after having failed to solve the puzzle in the normal thoroughfare of life.

I never had a guide in physical form on the teasing and testing field of spirituality. Based on my understanding of things I went into pilgrimages, bhakti of various deities and yogic practices. I was crazy about one particular yogic posture. It involved hammering the base chakra, muladhara, with relentless force. This chakra is the seat of the pure energy potential named Kundalini, which isn’t otherwise needed to live a normal happy life and that’s why most of us are born with it in its sleeping state. As I would realize later, this particular yoga amounted to forcibly prodding the sleeping coiled energy—the serpent—at its seat of rest. And the snake rose. The energy moved. It shook the world that was related to me involving body, relationships, career, family, emotions, thoughts, everything that had the slightest bearing on my current identity. That’s why they say that it’s a living death—you die to your former self in this lifetime only. But for that there is a lot of examination one has to cross through.

My organic structure wasn’t prepared for this sudden onslaught. Imagine a thousand watt current being suddenly let loose through a normal 240 watt wire. What would happen? It will heat it up, there will be sparks, and it may even burn. Similarly, the human system is for the normal flow of energy. The organs are adapted to a normal operation of energy, most of it getting pleasantly getting dissipated in our sweet-sour pursuits and just a fraction going up to activate our neurons which define the conscious part of our mind, the thinking mind.

The hyper current gave me many nightmares which manifested at many levels—thoughts, emotions, body, relationships, finance, career, family. It ruffles you forcefully, taking a tight grip on you, as if shaking you out of your slumber at lower levels of awareness. Literally it left me in a dark night of the soul. It was a karmic leap, a jump into the unknown. I was all alone to fend the onslaught for myself. If there were hidden forces supporting me I wasn’t aware of it. But in effect it was the toughest phase of my life. There was so much of agony, pain, fear and phobia to make life almost unlivable. I was running all around to clutch at any straw for salvation. I went on pilgrimages, roamed all alone in forests, went to ashrams, fell at the feet of holy men—all this just to save myself from getting sucked into a void.

Religious differentials melted. Spiritual solace was welcome from any corner. I would enter a gurudwara, mandir, masjid, church, Buddhist monastery with the same reverence and faith. Anything as long as it would save me from the darkness. I tried to be an unquestioning bhakt of many deities. I tried and tested yoga, pranayama, mantra sadhna, fasting, anything that was suggested to my dizzying mind. The blizzard of energy was making me dance to its tunes as if I was merely a lifeless puppet. The force of energy was seeking newer and newer avenues to hurl its fury into.  

Then about six or seven years back I started worshipping Lord Hanuman with full fervency. I kept Tuesday fast and read Hanuman chalisa from a booklet because I couldn’t chant it from memory. I had never memorized it fully. At that time I was visiting Osho’s Murthal ashram where Sadhguru Osho Shailendra—Bhagwan Osho’s real brother—gave mala diksha and sermons. Once I was lucky when he put his blessing hand on my head. I was ready. I was dry fodder. I have no other explanation other than to take it as a case of shaktipat. It triggered a chain of experiences that shook the theoretical foundations of my knowledge. Just recently I had been lucky to be blessed by His Holiness Dalai Lama as well. So I would say that was a lucky phase for me.

Shortly after his blessing touch on my head, on one of my Tuesday fasts I was reading Hanuman chalisa from a little booklet, incense and oil lamp burning in front of the idol. Then it happened. An intense external force gripped me very tight. I was in perfect awareness but the body was under the control of forces that I cannot attribute to my conscious mind. I was twisted and turned in very tough yogic postures which I cannot even think of performing in normal condition. It was like a mysterious, profoundly powerful hand was twisting and turning me in tough yogic postures. I was helpless and allowed myself to be treated like a ball of dough being made into many shapes. Everything was unfolding by itself. These were no weird, asymmetrical contortions. There was a symmetry, a harmony, a precision behind them. As if each set of movements would complete a cycle.

Lord Hanuman’s idol was put on a little house temple of stone. The stone ledge in the front for placing lamp and offerings had a sharp edge. I was twisted in a lotus posture and my torso started going down, taking my forehead towards the sharp stone edge. The slow rhythmic descent to the stone edge was very precise to leave the middle of my eyebrow on the edge. Then the brow started drawing along the thin edge. Just a millimeter down and it would have injured my eye because the rub of the eyebrow on the edge was quite forceful. Completing the cycle on one side, the same happened with the other eyebrow on the other side. The divine synchronicity knows more than our fear, planning and calculations. There was flawless geometry and timing behind these movements. There were many such movements for around 45 minutes. Strangely, I wasn’t scared even for a second during all this. Some mystical assurance kept me convincing that all this is good for you. So there was no panic. How will fear and panic survive when one is straightaway linked to the cords of divinity?  

After that the force left me in voluntary control of my body. My spine got so tautly drawn and straight that I felt like a wooden plank. Then arrived the sweet aftermaths of the divine exercise performed on my body by the higher force—a prasada, a sweet reward. I found myself singing Hanuman chalisa all by myself. I hadn’t been able to memorize it in a yearlong chanting on Tuesdays. Now it was freely flowing from my mouth.

After that for about six months I would experience involuntary mudras and body movements that would play with me like a puppet. Then the crawling sensations started. I could feel the crawling movements across various prana channels in the body; like serpents crawling over the back and the head. There are little channels of crawling energies that I feel all the time. They aren’t painful. One gets used to them after a time. Different channels take shape at different stages. But the one on agya chakra is most forceful, keeps on sending streams of invisible energies down the bridge of the nose and on both sides. Another on the right side of lower back is also significantly active, and many along the spine. I know these are the pranic onslaughts let loose by Kundalini to remove the karmic entanglements still existing in my system.

Maybe all this happens to make us realize that we aren’t just what we think ourselves to be; or maybe to trash our ego that you aren’t solely in the driver’s seat of your destiny. Primarily, it’s to convince you that there are bigger realities and dimensions. At the body’s level, maybe it’s all meant to remove the psychic entanglements in our karmic structure. I know I have lots of karmic entanglements from the past to resolve and that’s why the rise of energy has posed such challenges. It isn’t necessary that someone else will go through the same sensations. All of us have unique genetic structure—an offshoot of our unique karmic arrangement—which responds in various ways to the exposure of this extra surge of energy. Still there are some common observations and on the basis of those experiences, observations and responses of the human body the theoretical framework of Kundalini has been set up to help us understand the basics of it. But one thing is sure, beyond the tiny framework of commonalities, the manifestations in different bodies are varying to a big degree. So we cannot generalize or compare one’s individual experience with others. These are mere pointers. I just shared my experience and it doesn’t in any way lay claim to any fundamental truth or law behind the Kundalini experience.

The journey continues my dear fellow travellers on the path. As the brain adjusts to this new surge of energy cascading across its hitherto unused neural pathways, I hear various types of sounds in my ears and the head. The story of sounds that you must have read one hears in Kundalini awakening is definitely true. I hear buzzing bees, tinkling bells, sharp chin-chin of anklets, drums, flute and rumbling of clouds. This is the divine music of high vibrational frequencies. Meditating on them can take a sadhak into very high dimensions of perception. But I’m a common man. I have my responsibilities and worldly duties to fulfill to resolve all my karmic issues still lying unsettled and creating my circumstances. So I travel on the path without any spiritual pretenses—balancing my path between worldly needs and the food for my soul.

I’m open to guidance. It always arrives from different corners. Presently, I have a hunch that His Holiness Mahavatar Babaji is guiding me on the path. And I feel privileged and blessed. I’m not bothered about the truth of it. Laugh at me, scoff at me but that’s my truth at the moment.

The story of a little bead

 

He is a saffron clad-baba, aged around forty, gently swaying his wooden staff to avail a lift on some two-wheeler. He is well built and a mere look at his ears bearing glass rings makes his identity evident. He is a follower of Nath sampradaya, a follower of Baba Gorakh Nath. He couldn’t have thrown his staff in front of a more suitable vehicle. With the Baba confidently pillion riding I ask him the whereabouts of his journey.

Becoming an ascetic wasn’t his conscious choice. His parents hadn’t any child even after many years of marriage and they made a vow before the holy fire in an ashram belonging to Nath Sampradaya that if they had children with the great saint’s blessings, they will offer the first born to the sect to be raised as a complete renunciator on the path. With the great saint’s blessings they had four children and keeping their vow they offered the first born to dhoona, the holy fireplace at the ashram. Now the very same sadhu is pillion riding my bike.

He has been to all corners of India on pilgrimages and evaluates people’s worth in terms of their disposition towards kindness. The latter aptly measured in terms of their opening the purse for charity donations. These are hard times. A baba has to have something in the purse to survive because everything is monetized. Literally every breath we take seems to come at some financial cost. So this baba too is entitled to innocently covet money like all of us do. I don’t have any right to expect too many spiritual and hard-penanced elements in this baba’s life because asceticism isn’t his choice. It has been handed over to him by his parents. Thankfully he seems to have accepted his fate and doesn’t seem to hold any grudge against them for depriving him of a role on the normal worldly stage.

The crux of his philosophy that he told me can be summarized in a few lines: ‘Health is the biggest blessing a human being can possess. Health is as important to a fakir as it’s to a king. Both cannot follow their path with full commitment with ill health.’ Well, cannot agree with him more.

As he disembarks from the bike, I teasingly ask him, ‘Should I give you 100 rupees maharaj?’ As I’m drawing out my purse he comes to a fresher spark of life, ‘Of course beta, of course, some chai pani!’ The major advantage of being a sanyasi is that you get entitled to call everyone a beta, anyone from newborns to centurions. He has quick eyes to scan the contents in my wallet as I search for the promised 100 rupee note. The money is given. But these are hard times you know. Nothing seems sufficient, at least financially. I am expecting a smiling blessing but I find him serious and pointing to the lower side pocket of his saffron robe. The cloth is well-washed and looks quite new, not worn out at all. A bit of stitching has gone in a corner of the pocket.

‘The robe is torn beta. Baba would be pleased if you get him a new one,’ he sulks. I am about to laugh and say, ‘Baba, it just needs a stitch that would come for free, so why take the trouble of getting a new one for this.’ But I keep quite. ‘Maybe even a baba needs safe new pockets to do justice to the charity money by keeping it well guarded in sturdy pockets,’ I tease him within myself without giving any outward sign of my insights.

In any case he has decided to further lighten the weight of my purse which is already light. ‘I don’t have a clue to the price of an ascetic robe. How much do you think it costs?’ I ask him. ‘About 600 rupees!’ he tells smartly. Now I realize he has blessed the 500 rupee note in my purse with his kindly gaze and with this additional amount, apart from the one already in his grasp, the charity would match the price of a robe. I feel primarily sad at such times, if nothing else. So resignedly give into his charity-seeking enthusiasm and hand over a 500 rupee note to him. I casually look at the 100 rupee note in his hand. He instinctively puts both of them in his cloth bag as if afraid that I may ask for the smaller denomination to be returned in lieu of the bigger note.

Before I realize he has drawn something out of his pocket, grabs my hand and secretly puts something on my palm, folding his hand over my closed fist as if he has handed me the most miraculous nag mani, the gem of alchemy. ‘Keep it with you and it will save you from all dangers, make you a millionaire, make you the luckiest man on earth!’ his blessings are profuse. After all, 600 rupees in one stroke sometimes turns out to be more than the entire charity that they collect in a week. Most probably I have just contributed to his ganja smoke at the most.

I am about to burst out with laughter at his blessed gem but to help him assume that I’m in awe of his blessing I keep silent. It’s a five-mukhi rudraksh bead, that too a fake one, most probably. But to make him happy I keep it in my pocket. I have no reason to be angry at him. I cannot hold too lofty spiritual expectations from him because the path isn’t born of his conscious choice. He was just pushed into it, like most of teeming millions that we see robed in ascetic cloths across India.

He is still speaking and before I hear some other financial plan for the upkeep of his saintly ways I shoot away like a rocket. He was still speaking while I sped away. I don’t know why but I rode pretty fast after that. Maybe it was the reaction of my subconscious mind for losing some money because money has turned out to be as dear as life these days.

He was practical enough to ask my name and the village of my residence. ‘I will pay a visit to your nagri,’ I heard him shouting as I sped away. Most probably he finds me someone who is simpleton enough whose purse can be opened with the slightest effort. But he is grossly mistaken on this. I am happy to contribute to his ganja smoke once but if he commits the mistake of following my track to my village for further ganja doses then the baba will be in trouble.

Here is my plan of action if he is unlucky enough to follow the foolish scheme: I will welcome him at my place, offer him water, serve him tea and ask for food if he is hungry. And the moment he demands money—which he would most probably—I would produce the fake rudraksh bead asking for full refund.

That night when I went to bed I had a hearty laugh: ‘I bought a fake rudraksh bead for 600 rupees. Imagine my lack of business sense and with that sense I once—height of heights—explored the possibility of turning a businessman and scouted some countries in Africa, central Asia and eastern part of Asia.’ The plan lightened my pockets to almost perfect weightlessness. But this reflection at least assuaged those mild bruises of losses whose pinch I feel sometimes during nostalgic moments. No point in going into that all. That’s all the normal stuff as it happens to most of the people; nothing exceptional about that. But the baba has to be careful. Very careful.  

Skirmish with a ghost

 

I’m just a passing phenomenon. At the quantum level I have no boundaries. At the level of microscopic particles, the smallest that we have spotted till now with our instruments, I’m merely an assemblage of sparks; I’m just a boundary-less conglomeration of tiniest sparks amidst the same going around me. Now the question arises, ‘Who am I?’ I consider myself as a part of this overall conglomeration of the tiniest energy sparks that has identified with certain characteristics to automatically spin out a certain pattern in the energetic conglomeration to manifest at the level of body, my thoughts, emotions, circumstances.

Human body is a far-far short-lived phenomenon than we consider. Each cell in our body vibrates with millions of transitional movements each second. A massive force of change operates at the core of our assemblage whose effects we feel in the form of changing thoughts, passing emotions, shifting perspectives, fluctuating views and more. That means I’m just an energy field with certain predominant proclivities that is being—always—cut through other energy fields that are floating around, or I am passing through them.

From here arises the concept of getting affected by entities, disembodied souls and all the scary world of ghosts and ghouls. All these are mere symbolic representations of the energy fields that leave effect on us, somehow interfere with our cellular and molecular structure, the energy assemblage that we consider ourselves to be us. Their manifestations in our system are in proportion to our own pain, suffering and fears. It’s just a synchronicity with that particular frequency. Of course a field of pain and suffering would look for an anchor point in a similar pool of energy. Then there are stories about their weird, fearsome shapes and appearances. Their nasty appearance is an assemblage of our own pain, suffering and fears. We generate a reality according to our imaginative fears. I have no doubts that some people see such fearsome, weird shapes but these are merely the impressions of their own fears, augmented by the foreign energy field of pain that is passing through them at the moment, created on the screen of sense-perception.  

Some say that most of the thoughts and emotions passing in us aren’t our own. They are triggered by entities. That’s plain and simple crap. They are simply responses and reactions born of what my energy and cellular arrangement—which I consider to be me—creates in its overlapping with other arrangements (bodily visible or not) as I walk on the stage of life. This is inevitable. That’s how it is, because at the quantum level I have no boundary as such and one part will mix and come into contact with the other with as much naturality as one portion of air is always passing through other portions all the time.

So my thoughts and emotions are my own, be that due to the passing of any type of energetic pattern (aligning with me or not) through the quantum space that looks like my body at the level of normal sense perception. How will your bubble stay aloof and untouched by all that is floating around you as you move on the journey? Put your body under the most capable microscope and it will show you as an assemblage of subatomic sparks surrounded by similar twinklings. So my thoughts and my emotions are my own; just a response and reaction to the stimuli of the vastness surrounding me. It simply cannot be otherwise. So take ownership for what goes inside you. As a conscious maker of your circumstances, as a creator of some meaning out of this utmost meaninglessness around, the onus is on us to manage our thoughts and emotions. The talks of tantra and ghosts seem fascinating; very interesting like a movie. Enjoy them but don’t give it undue importance. It is a merely a symbolic representation of the interaction of varying patterns of energy that happens by default because there are no boundaries among various parts at the quantum level.

My own experience in this domain happened about fifteen years back. I worked in corporate at that time and stayed on the outskirts of Delhi. It was a small two-storeyed house with some open wooded lot on one side and an abandoned house on the other. I was a regular worshipper of Mahakali at that time. My mother had prepared very sweet beshan laddoos for me. I was on cloud nine with soft emotions for someone and was on a late night call with the symbol of that affection. I was leaning against the parapet wall facing that abandoned house and eating the sugary laddoo. It was all smiles, laughter and goodie feelings, unbothered of the time and place. It was midnight, exact zero hour as my neighboring bunch of boys would tell me later. Well, eating sugary laddoo at midnight while leaning against the low wall looking over an abandoned house where someone had committed suicide. This statement didn’t mean anything to me prior to the experience. I wasn’t aware of the time, about sugary sweetmeat, about the suicide in the abandoned house. I didn’t know anything about it. Who would be bothered about normal worldly crap when he is on a late night call with someone special?

I was grinning, like a horse, with the solace of the sweetest emotions and lots of sugar in me, one big laddoo already in me and the other half-eaten held in my hand. Little did I know that it was otherworldly combination at the midnight. My horse-grin stopped suddenly. There was a buzzing humming vibration in the air around and I distinctly felt something colliding and barging into me. As if something entered from the back. It was so impactful at the normal perception level that I instinctively straightened up as if someone had pushed with force against my back. The outside agent was so palpable as to trigger a panic reaction immediately. All love was kicked away. By instinct Mother Mahakali’s name surfaced on my lips and hurriedly I came down the stairs. There I was lying on my bed, my neighbors, all nice gentle boys from Bihar, standing around me and looking with concern.

‘Bhaiyaa are you mad! Eating laddoo at midnight! The abandoned house by our side has a history of suicide,’ Radhe, the gentlest of them, was much worried. Faith is always stronger than any fear. I was a pretty serious worshipper of Mahakali at that time. So I was perfectly normal after that initial trigger of fear. I was joking, laughing, giving them a live commentary about how does it feel to have a ghost inside one’s body.  

It was quite an experience. That particular build-up of energy (which still spun around the cosmos with its pain and suffering after unnaturally shedding the body) cascaded around my system for around half an hour. It was quite a force, moving like tidal waves from head to toe, and then moving up again, as if scanning each part of me for some solace, some synchronicity with its own structure of pain. I could feel my body getting heated up from inside but there wasn’t any sweating. I gave a live commentary of all this with my share of jokes injected in between. Then the poor energetic structure of pain moved on. Maybe it found my jokes offensive. The moment it left me I could distinctly declare that I’m ghost-free. There was jubilation among the group of boys.

They really respected me as an elder brother. They worked in call centers and more than the salary considered girlfriends as the main incentive for staying in stinking Delhi for the pittance of a salary. I would pay for the kitchen purchases and in return I would have home-cooked food with lots of respect. So they danced and we raised a toast to our victory over the ghost. Sorry to disappoint my well-wishers who consider me to be a teetotaler because I have tasted liquor on special occasions and beating a ghost was one such occasion. So we all had couple of moderate pegs each during our post-midnight celebrations.

I have experienced all that is good and bad in life. Maybe mother existence wants to keep me level headed and not get egoistic about my purity which is the lighter version of addiction, addiction to one’s good image. Luckily, most of the people consider me a good man. 

But what about the ghost? And the midnight? And the sugary laddoo? Well, of course when someone unnaturally exits the portals of life with so much pain as in a suicide, the bundle of energy spins around looking for succor, and some of us come across this part of air that obviously passes through our system, simply because we don’t have boundaries at the quantum level. It’s a houseless traveller looking for the alleviation of its pains and gropes around for some anchor support. It feeds on our fear and frustrations. But I believe more in being receptive to saintly energy fields passing through me. To make the negative energy fields ineffective against my house, my cellular structure, is the main domain of life—creation with volition and effort. That is what making one’s destiny is all about. To be a good manager of one’s own—again I emphasize these are our own, so no point in taking them to be the impositions from the entities—thoughts and emotions. What about sugar and ghosts? There is a very simple scientific explanation for this. Maybe the sudden bombardment of sugar in the system leaves the cells—and the quantum field around them—flummoxed, lazy, or overburdened, or some other tizzying thing, making them more prone to the entering energy field, where it can penetrate a bit deeper into the system to impose its pain and suffering into our system, triggering a manifestation of fear, agonies and suffering analogous to those witnessed by the carrier entity. What about midnight and ghosts? Well, most of us have our most optimum time and circumstances to be most effective. Light is healing and a sign of divinity. Darkness is chaos and pain. Maybe the energy system of pain operates at its optimum level in the absence of light.

Jai Mahavatar Babaji! As I write this, his big kindly eyes look at me from the picture that I have affixed on the wall. He is guiding me at the moment. It’s my truth at the moment. And who knows Babaji pushed a portion of his divine persona in my direction triggering a chain of thoughts early in the morning. Let’s smile, laugh and make the most of this phenomenon that we understand to be our individual life. And consciously take ownership of our own thoughts and emotions, manage them in a way that we are more open to love and grace of the saintly energies and get free of fear from the bundles of pain spinning around. 

Catching a few snaky, rippling moments from the past

 

Tau Tarif Singh, drawing lineage from my great granduncle, was a small man with a huge well-composed demeanor. Very gentle in behavior, soft with words and peaceful in movements, he hardly created any ripples on the stage of life with his presence. There was an exception though. There would be a complete reversal of his persona at the sight of a snake. He would be filled with lightening agility and within the flash of a second he would run after the helpless reptile, hold it by the tail, swing it around in a highly technical way and bang it on the ground with such force that it would make a second strike almost redundant.

Let him see a snake at his house, in the locality, in the village, in the fields or open grounds or even a forests, he won’t miss an opportunity to culminate its journey on earth. His biggest feat was holding two snakes by their tails simultaneously and swinging in his special way and banging them on the ground to finish their journey. Surprisingly he was never bitten in the task. To this day I wonder why would such a peaceful and calm person turn into a snake-annihilator at the mere sight of the poor reptile. Maybe some karmic entanglement with snakes; possibly uncle was a mongoose, a peacock or a garuda in his previous birth and his evolution into a different species still retained the predominant animosity against the snakes.

From the village standards, Grandfather was a reasonably educated man. He was in love with mathematics and that helped him in calculating things with logic without getting clouded by unnecessary emotions. Grandmother was very tart with her tongue and he matched her in the matrimonial equation with the agility of his hardworking hand. Their domestic life, like any other farmer couple, was defined by these skirmishes between the female tongue and the male hand. But she died quite young leaving Grandfather’s hands free to engage in more suitable occupations. Grandfather was neutral to snakes. ‘One has to kill them if they sneak into the house, but one shouldn’t bother about them in the open,’ he maintained. His closest encounter with a snake happened when he was around eighty. He was still active in farming till then. It was evening and he was lying in the field, his headgear bunched under his head and one leg raised in the middle and the other supported on the raised knee. He was smoking a little hookah, his head tilted to one side to draw smoke. Another farmer was sitting nearby. A black snake chose to keep its way straight, instead of taking a detour. Grandfather’s head was tilted in the other direction. The other farmer saw it when it had already crept up to Grandfather’s stomach. Then Grandfather’s mathematical logic worked to save him from a snakebite. He turned a stone, didn’t move at all and allowed the entire length of the fearsome snake to creep over him. After that Grandfather took the longest draught at hookah in his life. ‘I have never seen so much of smoke coming out of me in my entire life,’ he told me later. ‘She was your wife who came to scare you for all your agility with your hands,’ the other farmer joked.

Father was a philosophical man. He could talk better than anyone I have ever heard in my life. His was a world of books. He wasn’t bothered much about worldly affairs. He was an athletic man and could have been at least a national level player if things had gone well. He was brainy enough to be a senior bureaucrat if things had taken a sympathetic turn for him. His oratory would have made him a famous politician if things had happened as they usually happen in the life of a successful man. But none of these happened and he was contended to be a government servant with hundreds of books and a philosophical mind. As the family patriarch he had to take the responsibility of killing a big-hooded cobra that had crept into the cattle barn. Mother raised a hue and cry and before Father could realize anything she had handed him a stick to make him realize his worldly duties. Father killed that big snake. I was very small at that time. And the very next day as I scampered around to play in the street, I feel headlong and my forehead hit the sharp edge of a brick leaving me all bloody. I still carry the mark. ‘I hit the cobra’s hood and see the karma comes back in the form of this injury on my son’s forehead,’ Father drew his philosophical reasoning.

The biggest cobra that I have ever seen being killed also needs an account here. It was a moonlit night and a majestic cobra sneaked into the locality. The village was pretty open till then. A horse panicked and neighed a warning. The dogs barked. By chance, there were all children and female onlookers at that time. The stick was handed over to the only grown up male available. Dheere cowered with the stick. He was—sadly—nicknamed langda because his one leg was incapacitated because of polio. Dheere struck quite forcefully, missed the mark and his crippled leg lost footing and he fell down with the strike. But after that he regained composure and somehow managed to beat the entire ground with almost a hundred strikes in rapid-fire and by chance one of the strikes hit the cobra in the middle injuring it, cutting its movements and then the striker had it easy.

My own quota in the sins against the snakes involves killing two harmless little common wolf snakes that had entered our house and my panicked mother handed over the responsibility to me as the new family patriarch. I performed the job with shaking legs. The other partnership in crime occurred when I held the torch and my uncle pounded a harmless rat snake. Other battles against snakes involved throwing pebbles at the harmless water sakes in the village pond. They would dive playfully and would emerge at a distance. That was quite a fun for both the parties. I remember once I was walking on my little legs in the playground outside the village. It was a faint foot trail in the little grass. A cobra was also enjoying its walk on the same trail from the opposite direction. It stood its ground, maybe finding me small enough to turn a bully. It stood its ground, raised it hood to full spread and warned me to get off the way from a distance. I took to my heels and watched from a distance. Male cobra is arrogant I have heard. There it passed following the foot trail.

Now I’m more balanced and logical in my approach to snakes. I can at least marvel at the crawling majesty of snakes that I come across in my solitary walks in the countryside. They are just creatures like any other creature. In the Delhi NCR there are just two poisonous snakes—out of the forty species found in the area—named Indian cobra and krait. The rest are harmless long earthworms and get unnecessarily killed because of our natural instinctive fears. Knowledge is empowering. It dispels darkness. So now I am more adjusting to their presence.

Kaka Maharaj, who stays in a hut by the canal outside the village, has so many snakes around but this isn’t an issue at all with him. There is a clump of banana trees just by his hut. Once as I approached to pay him a visit I saw a cobra basking in the sun. It scampered into the clump of trees when I arrived. I told about the naga to Kaka Maharaj. ‘This land is for all and everything,’ is all he said. After our talks on the matters of spirituality I saw him stepping into the clump of banana trees to take out a basket he had hung on a frond. He went in quite naturally. He had even forgotten that I had told him about a snake there.

There is mother nature’s little air purifier just in front of our place. It’s a dense clump of trees and vines with lots of undergrowth. Aren’t these green leaves an extension of our lungs? But people take nature for granted and hardly anyone speaks in favor of these green tissues of our lungs. People usually complain of a couple of cobras that stay here. A few sightings and people go paranoid. Almost every other day someone is raising a hue and cry about their sighting by our yard walls. The gate is open with grilled portion on the underside. They can easily creep in. The night is theirs to creep. They are all welcome. But the day is mine. They have no business to be in during the day. They haven’t bothered me so far, so why should I bother about them. Why stretch your fears beyond a point. Just be careful a bit more, that’s all. Use torch while moving in the dark. Walk gently to allow them to creep away as you approach. And they eat rats and mice with relish. The area is almost mouse-free. And mother nature knows more than us. There were mice that’s why there are snakes. And to ensure that the snakes don't crawl at each human step, there are plenty of peacocks doing the rounds. They must be eating many little snake hatchlings to keep the number finely balanced. But who is there to keep a check on us? In our case only we can do it, individually and collectively.

A small speciality

 

Two spectacular events make October 25 a special day. First, I see a pair of coppersmith barbets. It’s a beautiful grass green bird with a trademark crimson breast and forehead, yellow throat, heavy bill and short truncated tail. They targeted the dead gulmohar and neem trunks—having forest mushrooms sprouting from their decaying bark, giving a little autumnal semblance of pristine forests. They struck the dead wood with a loud tuk-tuk like the strike of a wall clock, one strike per second. It sounds like a kind of birdie coppersmith tonking at his wooden piece in the distance. Maybe they tried to excavate a nesting hole but found the locality too noisy and flew away.

The second was the solar eclipse at the sundown. It proved to be a majestic sight. The big orange ball got a slice cut off and seemed like a bloated red moon crescent. Later, as the eclipse progressed, it looked like a big red boat sailing in a misty sea as the eclipsed sun downed into the mists lurking over the horizon.

There are always many special happenings and you have the choice to pick out yours to make you feel better.

A little boy's festival

 

Nevaan is six-year-old now. On this Diwali he has proved that he is entitled to be called a gentleman kid. On the neighboring roof some children are bursting firecrackers. Massive plumes of smoke engulf the surroundings. He coughs and says, ‘Diwali is a festival of pollution.’ Well, he is entitled to draw his innocent conclusions. ‘Diwali is a festival of lights, laugher and joy. But we turn it into pollution,’ I try to retain his faith in our traditional festivals.

Some moments later, the adolescent boys in the locality set off an exclusive cracker. It’s a serial bombardment into the skies, almost an artillery fire—explosions, sparklings, smoke, boom, bust. It surely sounds and seems like a wartime artillery charge. ‘Atankwadi aa gaye, atankwadi aa gaye!’ he shouts. ‘It’s a festival of terrorists!’ he yells. It sounds blasphemous and I correct him that the word ‘terrorist’ isn’t suitable for the festival-time merrymakers. But he doesn’t sound convinced. Well, given the already polluted air, any addition to the smoke undoubtedly seems like an act of terrorism.

Romancing with pause in a little world

 

There is so much to learn at each step I take in the countryside. Wild grasses, flowers, bushes and shrubs hold their secret for stiffed arrogant hasty walkers who go determinedly in pursuance of a monetary goal. But they smile, greet and lay bare their secret to anyone taking a pause, look carefully and caress some wild flower. There is so much to learn about small things in life.

Common water hyacinth might be called ‘terror of Bengal’ due to its invasive tendency, but here it’s no terror. The aquatic plant freely floats on water edges. Its buoyant bulbous stalks hold green glossy leaves. Some of them have lavender flowers.

This is late October and this little patch of wilderness between the canals is adorned with its blooms. Urena lobata (Caesarweed or Congo jute) are tender shrubs. They have small pink-violet flowers where a little group of white butterflies is having a peaceful nectar feast on this noon.

There are eucalyptus, neem, sheesham, mulberry, peepal, banyan trees along the canal bunds safely holding the undergrowth around them. The local forestry department has planted some blackboard trees (scholar tree or milkwood). The latter have prospered well here. Their glossy leathery leaves are found in whorls of six or seven.

Carrot grass (Congress ghas or Santa Maria feverfew) has grown very well without feeling guilty about its invasive worthlessness. It’s not maligned as an invading weed here in this little free ribbon of wilderness between the canals and on the outer bunds on both sides. But its tiny white flowers can cause pollen allergies for those sensitive to it. On the optimistic side, some researches are proceeding to look into its heavy metal removing properties. Mother nature still holds lots of secrets in her coffers for we the kids to explore.

Common cockle bur has hooked projections. The burs stick to the clothes of solitary loungers like me, probably recalling our attention to their medicinal properties.

Prickly chaff flowers (devil’s horsewhip) have spikes with reflexed flowers arranged on a long peduncle. Not too suitable to caress and go near, but they have uses in dropsy, piles and boils.

Common mugwort (riverside wormwood) forms a lush green carpet of little frilled leaves.

Senna hirsute is a smiling yellow-flowered beauty crowned with joyful butterflies hovering around.

Pampas grass flaunts its rustling silvery inflorescences. It’s the stalwart of the grassy world reaching up to four meters, almost forming a second-tier tree-line below the bigger trees. Their blade-like leaves make rustling music as their cut the breeze to contrive natural percussions.

Saccharum spontaneum (kansh grass) is a perennial grass growing to three meters. It’s useful for making thatched roofs.

Then there are reeds having their resident colonies of weaverbirds and warblers.

I caress yellow common wireweed flowers as I walk gently in this little slice of solitude on this noon. There are some fish ponds at some distance from the canals. Black kites and cormorants fly to steal fish. This is a little strip of solace for me. It holds a few units of wilderness in its ribbon-like sojourn across the cropped fields on both sides of the canals. You cannot see much on both sides as kansh grass and elephant grass provide a suitable fencing. When I take gentle footsteps across the shrubs, bushes and grass, I get the feel of a forest. Especially at noontime the quotient of solitariness goes up by several notches as the farmers have returned home and even the distant voices cease to exist to cut across the natural fencing.

A slow walk with a goatherd

 

There is still some space left for their goats where the farmers won’t harass them. It’s a Tsunami of ‘development’ propelled by the parasitical growth in the Delhi NCR. There are more and more roads and industries planned to relieve Delhi of the unbearable urban pressure. The agricultural farms are rapidly changing into industrial plots; district roads into national highways and expressways; and the dusty farm-side cart tracks of yore are now tarred single-lane connectivity. It’s a business boom; the air is buzzing with the talk of money. The value of agricultural land is going up to reach crores of rupees per acre. There are bigger cars, swankier houses, louder talks and mountainous pride and prejudices. The countryside is shifting to a completely new shape.

There are last traces of wilderness among this progressive clang and clatter. Two canals go side by side, taking easy turns, giving each other a rippling company. Their embankments have almost a free growth. The forty-feet dividing bund between them is covered with pampas grass, weeds, bushes and grasses. Walking on a thin foot-trail running across this growth gives you the feel of serenading in a peaceful forest. Tall growth on the outer bunds provides you a natural wall to nurture your moments of solitude. You hear the sound of tractors but you cannot see them, hence you feel miles away from the humanity’s banging and clanging ways.

He is a man in mid-sixties; his companion a lad of maybe twenty. They have a combined goatherd of fifty goats. They are Balmikis. Their day starts around eleven when they set out with their goats on the unclaimed, free patch of grassy ribbon between the canals. Their goats can freely graze here. They cannot enter the cropped fields on both sides, so it avoids kicks and abuses by the angry farmers. There is fresh water and plenty of grass for the goats.

The old man is clad in shabby all whites. He looks full of wisdom and contentment with his thick snow-white beard on a weather-beaten dark face. They talk, walk, lie down and even stay silent through the day. The bigger world, though not too far in physical distance, is far-far away. They aren’t into calculations and numbers. ‘How many goats do you have?’ I ask. ‘Well, this is all we have. Maybe a few are behind the bushes,’ the elderly man introduces his assets. ‘How do you come to know which goat belongs to either of you?’ I’m carrying the inertia of ownership of property from the village. ‘The goats know better. They all look the same. But once they reach home, they are smart enough to segregate and walk into their respective homes. There is never any confusion. They know better,’ he shares the goatee basics of wisdom.

Both groups have a bull each and the patriarchs are on good terms with each other, knowing that there is nothing to fight about. Things are clearly sorted with a natural understanding.

They sell some of the grown-up goats whenever budgetary requirements arise. The goats graze and contentedly live; the owners also manage a small slice of life almost on the same level of hierarchy. ‘A good goat sells for ten thousand rupees,’ he tells the basics of their economy.

He hasn’t got his old-age pension even though he is eligible for it for the last five years at least. He has adhar card, voter card and ration card but the crucial age proof is missing. The age on the mentioned documents isn’t sufficient to validate his pension entitlement. Those who have attended school can present a registered proof from the school’s past records. Even then it’s a tough job and one has to bribe a few months pension to avail the right. Those who haven’t got a school leaving certificate and a matric mark sheet have the option of getting an age certificate from the civil hospital. There the doctors believe in your youth. They won’t believe you are sixty till you are seventy.

He is happy because he doesn’t believe that even he can get a pension. An amount of 3000 rupees/month can surely help him a lot at this stage of life. ‘You have already lost 180000 rupees of pension money during the last five years since you turned eligible for it,’ I bring hard commerce and economics in this little slice of solitude. I myself feel the pinch of his loss. But he seems unaffected because he doesn’t expect it at all.

He is landless, illiterate, unskilled, and very low in the so-called caste hierarchy. From the pit of his existence it’s impossible to look high and think of pension. Life itself is such a big loss right from the beginning, so you don’t care about smaller losses. ‘How much money I will lose if I live to be hundred?’ he asks. I calculate the sum and give him the figure. It’s a big sum in lakhs. ‘And you lose all this because you cannot arrange a bribe of 10,000 rupees,’ I tell him the reason for his loss. ‘And who would think of pension if had 10,000 rupees to fill their pockets!’ he laughs loudly. I’m ashamed of my calculative ways. Now it dawns upon me that he is happy in his small world, where he has some little rights of free grass on a ribbon of wilderness. Any additional information from calculating and educated people will disturb his peaceful world. At least the grass is still free. Let’s see how and when even this thin ribbon of free wilderness vanishes, making him possibly the last goatherd in this tiny world.

The Unknowable

 Talking about the ultimate reality, Osho said it’s that stage in the journey of a seeker when after knowing everything still more remains to be known. Material science tried to crack the code and frantically searched for the fundamental particle that cannot be further divided. If ever they arrive at the primary material constituent, they can claim to know all and everything. There won’t be any unknowable. But as they have found, there is no fundamental entity. All the previously assumed smallest entities kept on subdividing, finally merging into the endless depths where everything merged into nothingness, leaving them clueless where to spot the primary constituent. All this merges into the never-ending spools of energy, sparks, vibrations and frequencies. It’s a screen where even our thoughts, emotions and feelings—which itself is a movement of subtle energies as substantial as the gross manifestations of energy movement on the visible level—can project our own creations. And creations of physical sciences have created many means of convenience for us.

I would even deter myself from calling it maya, the illusion, because we can call something illusion only in relation to something permanent. There is hardly any permanent entity, apart from the unknowable rule of the rules which says the first part of the statement.

If there is no ultimate destination, one may ask, then why should one go on a quest to know, realize or feel the secrets beyond the boundaries of our ordinary sense perception. If all remains to be known after knowing everything then why take the path. Why this quest? In my opinion, it’s our humble attempt at upgradation. Consider for example, the routine life of someone defined by the basic driving forces of sense perception, the life set on the most basic, littlest stage where basic instincts of fear, greed, anger, jealousy and hate confine life into a tiny ghetto which is very engaging. This is no moral judgment against anyone who sets up life in a tiny cell. It’s never about morality or immorality or a higher life or lower life. In my opinion, it’s about the actualization of the potential. All are free to choose. If one can be joyful in the little so called prison, then what is the problem? Why then hatch a bigger one?

Coming to the life at the most rudimentary level, I however take it as a life spent in a tiny cell, its boundaries defined by self-set parameters, majority of them simply adopted in the name of conventions and prevalent beliefs. Where is the creator, the godly faculty with us, if we spend life merely as a product, as a creation? The problem with spending life in a little hovel is that there is hardly any possibility of becoming one’s best version. One doesn’t become a creator. The things that pile up in the congested space narrow down the space further. The grip of the prison turns to literally enslavement. As one sees things piled so precariously overhead in such a narrow space, we get further scared of its fall. We crib because we hardly have the space to move.

Doesn’t a prisoner feel very relaxed, if he is let out from the cellar and allowed to go into the yard outside? He feels relaxed. He will feel still better if put in a spacious garden, and still better in open spaces. Same is the case with us. We want to evolve, to liberate, to move freely, to feel relaxed, a sum and summary of that nagging pinch of restlessness that always reminds us that something is missing in life. Under the open skies and the vision set on the distant horizon, we get opportunity to create, the real destiny of mankind in this avatar—not in relation to anything in particular but freely as per our benchmarks. We know that there is still something beyond the horizon—and the horizon will keep shifting as long as we keep on moving in our quest—but we don’t feel imprisoned because there is no fixed boundary. The limitation of our vision to make us see till the horizon doesn’t create a fixed boundary. One can move on and on and be part of a larger and larger reality. This is what I call creation, the basic steps towards liberation. Liberation is not about reaching the boundary, the final destination, because in that case one will still be a prisoner with the ultimate wall blocking the view. Liberation is in moving towards an ever-broadening horizon. Out of the open possibility, we change the congested cell into an open panorama where the unknown doesn’t imprison, but keeps on beckoning us through a see through walk-able horizon in the distance.

I don’t differentiate too much between knowing and awareness. Knowing is the seed that sprouts the fruits of awareness. Knowing is the beginning of awareness. The awareness of more and more leads to the realization of something beyond even knowing and awareness. Call it Samadhi, moksha or liberation. The enlightened ones whom we revere are not the ones who have cracked the code. Nobody can. The honest ones will accept, the businessmen types will create more wordiness to drown the primary question within itself and earn some more respect from the followers. The revered ones are the ones who created the most. Who walked to the distant most horizons, who walked to the brink of liberation and realized that come whatever may, it’s the same circle beginning and ending at the same point. One spreads and spreads the awareness to finally realize the point. Awareness spreads so much to be sucked into a point. Realisation is all awareness condensed into a point. A divine sublimation. This is the creation of the little seat of godliness. They inspire, they guide, they heal, they do most of the things we believe them to be capable of, but beyond that all remains still as much unknowable as before.

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.