Father and sons

Father and sons—it has been a tantalizing equation. Father was a widely read man. He had a good knowledge of many domains varying across arts, science, philosophy, politics and sports. As we brothers were growing up, he put up his searching lens to spot any kind of budding talent in his pedigree. During my middle schooling, I copied a few sketches and filled them with cheap wax colors. Father knew about famous painters like Raphael. He got very amused at my works. He bought a nice compilation of classical paintings to boost and nurture the seed of a genius painter in me. I got nice sheets and lots of water colors. But I could never progress beyond putting a faint imitation of a picture put in front of me. I never had a flair for painting something original of my own. I sent my imitations for entries for kids competition appearing in Nandan and Champak magazines. Forget about winning a prize, I never ever came nearest to even being mentioned in the list of dozens of those whose works found appreciation at least. Father was wise enough to know that as a painter I had already hit my peak that wasn’t sufficient to get a name in the list of appreciated artists in children magazines. As a liberal man he didn’t force me to keep copying the easiest drawable lines. That saw my innings as a painter coming to an end.

I was a thin boy and like all skinny ones was quick and energetic. He must have seen me running around while playing. He was at least justified in assuming an athletic talent in me. Father himself was a grade one athlete during youth. He crossed twenty-two feet in long jump and ran impressive timings in many kinds of races. He filled up Mother’s iron trunk with brass trophies that he won at LIC national sports meets. It made him feel that his athletic genes might propel his son to at least a school-level glory. Our target was to hit gold at the school-level meet on children’s day. I prepared well. He would ask about my training after he arrived from office at night. Then the much anticipated day of the race arrived. That fateful race proved to be my first and last attempt at winning a gold in running competition. I was last by a big margin. In fact I was lucky enough to see all the competitors cheering for me to cross the line. ‘I drank water before the race, so got tummy ache,’ I lied. He knew the truth but allowed my lie to stay as the reason for not winning a gold.

Then in the high school I developed a pungent liking for cameras. As a well-read man Father knew about many talented photographers who had made a name for themselves. He got me a beautiful red camera. He then inspired and encouraged me to go clicking the best moments from the village life. Over the weekend, he scanned the pictures. The best was a village lampoon, who pleaded to be clicked, whom we made to wear his mother’s ghagra and stand grinning under a mulberry tree. The second best involved my brother on a eucalypts tree. But it needed special effort to spot the boy in the foliage. The reels were costly. Father thought it better to stop the supply. The camera stayed in the tin trunk for many years.

India won the world cup in cricket and the entire country turned eligible to dream of cricketing talent. We went crazy for the game. He was kind enough to buy us a few bats and dozens of balls. Cricket is a completely technical game but we would realize it during our middle age only. Our cricket was barely above the level of gulli-danda—a kind of hit and run madness on uneven grounds. We spent so many hours on this pleasant madness that even a snail would have rounded the earth in the meantime. Cricket was never going to gift us anything more than bumps and blues by the cheap, hard, heavy cork ball that we used instead of the costly standard leather one. Father realized it very soon and condemned it as the game of the idlest people on earth. He said it was nothing short of career slayer for millions of young people.

Then one fine day, I realized that real cricket was beyond our wildest imagination and self-belief. Moreover, it was a team sport where individual brilliance was always on the anvil of collective fate. Drawing on my sporting wisdom I chose an individual sport. Doordarshan had started to telecast Tennis Grand Slam matches. Steffi Graff, Gabriala Sabatini, Boris Becker, Goran Ivanosevich were its colorful brand ambassadors. I and my friend Pardeep stabbed deep into our little pocket money to pool resources to buy two rackets. Then we cleared a part of the fallow land outside the village to serve as a court. Three keekar sticks served as net poles and a jute rope as the net. Despite the best of our efforts it was a highly uneven open ground. Under a sweltering sun we would reach there with our gear including water bottles like typical tennis players. But our game never progressed beyond one correct serve in half dozen attempts and some lucky return that counted as the biggest rally. Most of our time and energy would be taken by collecting the runaway ball from the surrounding lands bearing scattered acacia and bunchgrass tufts. Tennis thus turned very tedious. After a few months of dehydrating effort we realized that any dream of playing the Grand Slam was equal to landing on the moon in a self-contrived village rocket. Those rackets are still placed in a dusty corner as souvenirs of those serve and volley days.

Badminton never progressed beyond breaking racket netting and shuttles with wild weird swings and strikes. Hockey was played with raw wood sticks cut from the trees. These were roughly shaped like standard hockey sticks with a curved lower end meant to strike and stop the ball. In the stampede after the ball cascading over irregular ground these sticks hit more feet, legs and shins than the ball itself. Football turned out to be lunatic running after the ball when someone would hit the hardest kick to send it to the clouds instead of the rival goalpost. So by the time I passed senior secondary school, all the sporting dreams had been summarily quashed. We had no talent for any of the sports or games.

Among all this passion for creating a niche in the sports I remember a school trip to Tara Devi near Shimla. After the eight class annuals, in March, we went on a trip to Tara Devi. It was a Red Cross sponsored camp. There were students from different districts in Haryana. Those fifteen days were so eventful that they need a little booklet to cover all the incidents.

One of the events was diary writing competition about our time at the secluded hill-top camp. I had filled up a notebook bearing a chronological account of our schedule and little innocent observations about nature around because I had seen the hills for the first time in my life. Ours was Hindi medium and our English teacher had to promote and vociferously recommend my Hindi scribbling to get me announced as a winner to salvage some honor for the district. That was the sole prize we won out of at least a dozen categories. So I returned with the diary writing title in my name. Father was ecstatic. To him it was almost like I had won the Booker prize. He saw writing talent in me and brought very attractive looking diaries to encourage me in the art of writing. The diaries remained unused and were later used as exercise books for algebra. So here was one more talent squashed to pulp.

Nobody cared to pick-up books in our class at the village school. Our family had, what can be called, a sort of elementary love for academics. Just because I cared to touch books made me the class topper by default. This made Father, and the entire village to go along, think that I was a very talented student. Our history teacher even thought that I had what it takes to be an IAS officer. So I was promoted as a talented academician. In the absence of any competition I had been the class topper throughout the tenure of high schooling. But I turned out to be an average science student in senior secondary schooling at the town. Father had cleared the written examination and the interview for the Officers Training Academy (OTA) but couldn’t join on medical grounds being under-weight by a good margin. He thought that maybe I had enough capability to reach at least his level in the selection process. So there I was appearing for the prestigious National Defense Academy (NDA). I passed the written examination but performed miserably in the grueling four-day interview. ‘Army needs average students, so maybe you are fit for civil services,’ Father reasoned. Many people agreed with him that I had the talent to be an IAS officer.

Till matriculation, I was decently comfortable with mathematics but after that the chambers of logic and straightforward reasoning seemed to have stopped in my brain. Quite mysteriously I suddenly lost footings in science subjects. It was a kind of emotional whirlwind where two plus two could be anything but not four. I took humanities for graduation and enrolled at the local college notorious for mischief amply carried by errant farmer boys. I rarely joined the classes. I graduated with a mediocre score in the vicinity of 58 percentage points. Then straightaway I started preparations for the civil service examination and scored 54.3 percent, a score deserving top merits. But in the most crucial personality test they gave me a measly 37 percent. Father was happy that I had reasonable talent to be an IAS officer. However some things are sometimes never destined to be. I was at last selected to the Haryana PCS. But then the politicians ensured that my selection doesn’t translate into appointment.

It was chronic boredom with life and I allowed myself to be pulled into export-import business when an opportunity presented. It was a venture with some friends. No wonder it was like a flute player going to the battlefield with his flute. It was a summary failure. I finally realized that it was time to grab any job that came my way. So I settled to be an editor with an academic publisher. Father was miserably unhappy to leave behind an editor son struggling among tomes of manuscripts in the editorial department of academic publishers.

Father worked at the LIC’s Delhi office situated at posh Connaught Palace. I had once gone with him. Walking through Sadar Bazar I got attracted to a little colorful dholak. We arrived at night with the dholak’s cord nicely slung around my neck. My younger brother took a fancy to the instrument. A dholak is nearest to the temperament of rough and rowdy farmers. The raginis, the local folk songs, are basically ear-piercing shouts and yells. Just because Amit would prefer to pound the little dholak with full force using his tiny fists, Father thought his younger son possessed talent for music. We would study at night and before going to sleep, Grandfather and Father would request him for a bedtime musical performance. Amit pounded the dholak quite well and shouted even better over the crude beats. These are primary requisites for Haryanvi raginis. I think Father was correct in spotting this talent in his younger son. In the village the people went to bed very early but Amit’s rehearsals at nine on cold winter nights shook many people out of sleep in their warm quilts.

We had annual function at our village school. Father thought it a suitable occasion to launch his son’s prodigious talent. Rehearsals were taking place for various events. Amit, dholak, Father and many of us reached the rehearsal venue and Father promised the teacher in-charge that he should be prepared for the performance of his life. It was early winter time and a soft sun beat on the grass of the lawn. Amit sat with his dholak in the middle and dozens of us formed a circle around him. The teachers were all attention with their arms crossed over chests. Amit took a long pause like a great artist. After all it was an all-important audition. But no beat would emerge. He got stage fright. Father nudged him many times but the little performer had surrendered. He won’t beat the drum and won’t shout. At least the teachers’ eardrums were spared of an assault. It was highly embarrassing for Father. He smiled apologetically. All of us walked very dejectedly to our house. Father continued with his lecture about talents and guts to show them. Amit felt very low for a day or two and kept a very low profile. He even abdicated the leadership position among the neighborhood urchins. Then Grandfather, much in good faith, requested him to sign off the day at night with a ragini. Amit seemed to pound his embarrassment upon the dholak. He shouted well and gave quite forceful strikes. The dholak burst. That was the end of musical talent in Father’s gang.  

In surprising disproportion to his medium height and slight built, Father possessed an amazing athletic talent during youth. When Amit grew to be a nicely built lanky lad by the time he finished his school, Father’s talent-seeking streak smelt an amazing athletic talent in his younger son. One fine day Father took him to the uneven ground outside the village and asked him to run at his full speed and then take a long jump in the sand pit. He appeared sure that his son will show enough athletic potential to at least cross the family mark in running and jumping. Amit looked a strong lad with long limbs, large feet, nicely jutting out knees—all the hallmarks of famed African distance runners. However, God has been very kind in gracing him with a restful demeanor. To be at peace is a precious gift. But in competitive sports you have to be a restless beast. So despite Father’s shrillest call to prompt his son for a lightening start like a deck-based fighter jet taking off from an aircraft carrier, Amit gently lumbered like an over-loaded cargo train. The historical jump broke the entire range of athletic dreams nurtured by Father. Father was considerably frail by this time—thanks to his philosophical resignation with life, the vacuum being filled with incessant smoking and serial slaying of teacups after teacups through the day. He looked sure that even he—at his physical worst—would have run faster and jumped better than his finely growing son. He was wise enough to accept the reality. That was the end of athletic strains still held up in his consciousness. He never ever asked any of us to run or jump again.

He was but bound by patriarchy and didn’t try enough to spot any talent in our sisters. Had he tried, at least our younger sister would have been a good weightlifter, boxer or wrestler, given her great strength and stamina. Sadly her potential remained untried and untested. All disappointed with life, and broken by the absence of any talent in his sons, Father would at least accept the latent (unharnessed) talent in our younger sister. ‘I would have died far happier if Binny was a boy and all you three just comely girls!’ he would say. That was his acceptance that he had failed to seek talent where it really existed among his children. By the time he realized it, it was too late. I also feel that maybe Father was bound by the thick chains of patriarchy in the rural farming society where seeking talent among girls was totally absent during those times. Thank God things have changed now and many girls from the villages are making a good name for their talent.               

A common Indian voter's humble appeal

 Election commission please always remember that when a poor laborer skips a day's wages and lines up to vote in sweltering heat, he has some fundamental belief in things taking a favourable turn for his miserable fate...and for the same he expects the elections to be a defining force in reshaping his/her miserable life. Elections are morning prayer hymns in the festival of democracy. Don't forget this and do your constitutional duty in a fair and impartial manner. Otherwise the Indian democracy will be dented irreversibly--or has it already been--and you will be judged very very strictly in the coming times. 

Election commission of India, we have a right to know from where and how these 1 crore and 7 lakh additional votes surfaced in your data published after almost two weeks of the polling. In the face of unsuitable and insufficient explanations by you, your role will be under dark shadows and the foundation of Indian democracy will shake. It will put the country embroiled in lots of internal strife post June 4. The people won't accept this infringement upon their democratic faith.

Yin and Yang

 

There is a lovely concept of yin and yang energies in Taoism. Yin is the female component, the all-embracing emptiness, the womb, the Shakti of creation. Yang is the male component, the all-pervading tendency for expansion, manifestation, materialization and fullness. No wonder they are cause-effect and effect-cause simultaneously. Emptiness is self-sustaining, but fullness can be an instinct at the most. No wonder men have such hunger to fill the emptiness pervading around, symbolized by women.

A relationship between a man and a woman is driven by the basic characteristics of these respective polarities. A man is basically looking for the same physical gratification in all the women he goes into a relationship with. But a woman is looking for an ideal form to fill up the cosmic emptiness of which she is a carrier entity, or a symbol. If a man has one reason to get bored with his woman (at the level of body), she has multiple times more reasons to feel bored with her man at the level of body, thoughts, emotions, soul-to-soul connect and still more deeper things. The search of a man for his ideal woman is relatively very easy because he is only seeking variants across hair, color, lips, breasts, hips and other body parts. A woman, on the other hand, has a very deep challenge, a deep peek into her own self, where she tries to modulate her expectations as per the silent depths inside her.  

The yin energy is too powerful and limitlessly empty. The yang energy is just the flash of twinkling stars of materiality in the infinitely empty corridors of the cosmic spirit. And man has always been afraid of the yin energy’s potential and insecure about his fragmented attempts as a filler of the emptiness. So at the level of flesh, i.e., the ‘matter’ of which he is the carrier element, he has tried to subdue and cut down the role of women in society. Patriarchy is born of a deep sense of inferiority, incapacity and complexes carried by the men.

Taoists believe that it takes seven years for a man to understand the rhythms of a woman’s body, the next seven years to feel her emotions and mind, and the next seven to know her spirit. In strict mathematical terms, I would say a woman is worth three men combined at the level of matter, energy and spirit. And man knows it and that’s why he tries to keep her limited to a third of her potential to keep her in a relationship. It works in conservative societies where menfolk have come together to formulate social laws and norms in terribly one-sided ways to keep the women enchained as a fraction of their real selves. But it fails in liberal, modern societies. With empowerment and choice, the women easily trample over multiple men at the level of matter, energy and spirit. So in liberal societies the women carry a bigger sense of their men being incomplete because here they aren’t dependent upon them for survival. Here their socio-economic freedom frees them from the helpless acceptance of their status like in conservative societies.   

I think the empowered, self-standing and well-educated women should be given the legal option of polyandry. She stands for the eternal void that can receive all the drama of materiality trying to fill up her cosmic emptiness. The reason why a really capable woman needs multiple partners at the same time is very simple. Men arrive in fragments. The rampaging bulls in the bed usually carry small brains. The brainy ones have little emotions. The artists and poets would lack dependability in worldly practicalities. The Einstein type genius would have their own eccentricities. The spiritual guys would be good guide but very hollow as partners because they are looking to save their semen through yogic practices. So why not legally allow them to have multiple partners simultaneously: one for naughty bed fun, one for beautiful poetry, one for hardcore logic and reasoning, one for spirituality. It will solve the problem of broken hearts. Because the broken hearts again go seeking solace and get again broken. Let there be an official trial with polyandry in developed societies at least.

There is another topic quite related to the yin and yang energies. Yin energy is essentially Kundalini energy, the nurturer of the seed of creation, the ground for material manifestation to take place. All the literature on Kundalini has been written by male followers on the path of spirituality. The basics of experiences and bodily manifestations have been gathered—even though individual variations happen across the male bodies as well—and we have texts dealing with the energy’s movement across the various pranic channels, the changes in physiology, the results of these changes and more.

But we have missed a very important point in the Kundalini discussion so far. It has been male oriented. And a female spiritualist reading the text might be driven to believe that her body will also experience the same as a male body. I don’t think Kundalini will manifest in her body in a typical male’s way. She is essentially Kundalini body herself. So in her case it’s not a fundamental transformation. It is only in the degrees of refinement of the same basic quality. A man will be transformed into a fundamentally different entity; she on the other hand will be further refined in the same genre. It’s like the man goes through a forge and a stone will be crystallized into diamond. It’s a fundamental shift. That’s why the process is so drastic and even mysterious in his body. In the case of a woman, it is like refinement of the same ore, for example, refining gold from its natural ore. So it’s not that drastic in nature as in a man’s body. These are subtle transformations, delicate and deep in emotions and thoughts. Her body is already a creative mechanism of yin energy, so the flow of extra creative energy in the form of an awakened Kundalini doesn’t test her system like it does a man’s body.

A man is primarily the dropper of the seed in the scheme of propagation. She but is the entire field where the whole scheme of evolution of a new life unfolds. So even if an extra dimension of energy unfolds in her system, it won’t revolutionize her organism like it does to a man’s system because she is already a carrier of the same essential energetic entity. Qualitatively it’s the same; it’s just a matter of quantitative variation in degrees. But a man’s system undergoes fundamental qualitative changes. It requires completely new rewiring of the system. Hence they undergo such hair-raising experiences. In case of a woman, it’s far too subtle, like her loving smile for her man would transform into loving motherly smile for all. So her transformation is more in thoughts, emotions, soul and spirit. At the tangible level it won’t be felt in the body like a man does.

The real freedom

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti (JK) was a free soul. He broke all chains of religious and spiritual institutions. He didn't believe in the guru-disciple equation in the strict sense of it. He dismantled the spiritual kingdom of Theosophical Society erected around him for making him its spiritual king. He was for the utmost freedom of mind; freedom beyond even spiritual syllabus involving spiritual texts taught by the spiritual masters in religious institutions. But the world cannot bear up with so much of freedom. We need our anchor points to feel at home. So quite ironically, Krishnamurti Foundation piled up around him while the thinker of freedom and ultimate liberation kept speaking against all institutions and institutionalization of thoughts.

Gurus have spiritual powers, just like politicians have political powers or rich have the power of wealth. And power has a tendency to manage things as per its chosen set of reality, its judgment and likes and dislikes. A mission is a mission even if it's holy in nature. Even in the case of spiritual empowerment, there is a very subtle trace of manipulation of things, even if it's for a noble cause, as per the likes and dislikes of the spiritually powerful person. They have their mission of nobility and it needs missionaries. I have read in the biographies of many holy masters that they were made to do all the holy work by the power and instructions of their gurus. They were given a task and they hardly had any option. They had to do it. This is where Krishnamurti went off the road from the main spiritual thoroughfare. He was for complete annihilation of any bondage including routinized faith, scriptural principles, ashram system and all the allied things in the domain. To me a best guru is the one who gives all he has to a follower, without expecting any missionary work, and leave him or her to seek their own destiny. Like a father who brings up his children in a healthy environment and then is all happy to see them setting up their own homes.

Stay at one place and expectations creep up. They want you to take up their holy work. I have always felt insecure about being piously hijacked by a holy man for his humanitarian mission. So I have a strategy for this. I go to ashrams, have their darshan and before their eyes stabilize and start building plans for you, I run away. So dear sadhaks, take your nectar, and flutter away like a butterfly taking honey from various flowers. Go to holy places of all kinds, absorb and soak all the positive energy and keep hopping. Why get anchored in one ashram? Read scriptures, as much as you can. But don't expect them to be the reality itself. They are mere pointers. Never expect to understand or agree to everything written in a holy book. A holy book has something positive for all types of people. If you don't agree with certain portions, it simply means that part isn't for you. But you will have your agreements and likes further on in the same text. So filter what is suitable for you. Read scriptures, have darshan of holy men, go for pilgrimages, roam in free forests, bathe in untamed rivers, interact with people, do your worldly duties, keep moving...and finally all this seeking tires you out to help you stabilize within yourself. Happy journey!

A master of lies

 

This neighbor believes in his lies to the extent of turning his white lies into golden nuggets of truth. No wonder, it also means that he naturally changes any fact into fiction. It entered my mind to suggest him to take to writing, a profession suitable for creative souls like him. But then he thinks that writers are most negligible and mad people. In any case, he uses his creative instinct to milk situations and circumstances by twisting reality in a way to make him accomplish little cheatings and sweet little forgeries. It’s a kind of gentle milking, not an outright stabbing robbery.

A bunch of grouchy fellows

 

This particular petrol pump has a very combustible staff. They have frayed tempers all the time. It seems staying near oil has given them fiery tempers like the commodity they serve to the engines. Say anything, and they will speak very tartly as if that also is a part of their job. I have never seen anyone smiling at this establishment. I always keep wondering how come so many snappy, cranky people have been brought together by the chance winds. I once tried to infuse a flame of smiles there, but it aggravated the situation. So I also try to be like them when I’m getting petrol there. Do in Rome as the Romans do.

Just being so...

How will a stone know that it’s a stone? It knows how to ‘be’ a stone, that’s why it exists. From the tiniest to the biggest, from the moving to the unmoving, from the dust to a flower, everything knows how to ‘be’. In fact, the things considered as insentient by us know it perfectly well how to ‘be’. The atomic arrangement in them knows how to be a stone. But there is a tendency in the element of just 'being so' to 'become something' and that drives this multilayered flux from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’ ranging from galaxies to a dew drop.

At their essential core, ‘just being so’ and ‘becoming something’ are part of the same game; in fact the same thing. A stone looks just a stone, but it's becoming something as well at the same time. The process is very subtle. And what is consciousness? This is the force of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ itself. The debate is endless and the question will stay unresolved till eternity as long as we are compartmentalizing matter, energy and consciousness as separate entities. That’s a very funny convenience we create. But what else is this existence apart from the limitless potential to create? Mother creation is just an open-ended freeway of timeless and spaceless possibilities.

Coming back to the question of consciousness. If you segregate one fundamental entity into three different categories, like here in matter, energy and consciousness, you have infinite possibilities to create logic, analysis, hypothesis or any other output of mind-work. That’s our logical creation only. It hardly deals with the essential commonality between matter, energy and consciousness. It but serves a purpose. This categorization of the same unity into fragmented elements gives rise to fabulous brainwork in the form of science, religion, ethics, moral codes, education and culture—everything belonging to the blissful and agonizing maya that we create. Who can stop the little children from making castles, dolls, dogs, toys, sepoys from the same mud and clay? They are free to play and take it very seriously and believe their creations to be quite different from each other. But does that make any difference to the mud being just mud? The entire profession of consciousness scientists will turn redundant the moment we put up the little toys of energy, matter and consciousness into the dustbin and mesh them together to make them the undifferentiated clay.

This creation, this game, this play of energy, this churning of matter, this storm of consciousness is helpless in ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. It goes on. And all of us are entitled to erect smart structures of nations, religions, gods, deities, science, cars, planes, relationships, smiles, tears, everything. So keep ‘becoming’ all you ‘beings’. And once you ‘become’, again try just to ‘be’. It keeps us busy like every particle around us is madly busy in spinning. All this is just a tiny storm in the teacup, a little ripple in a tiny corner of the universe or multiverse, whatever you name it. And this play and expansion is so funny as to take itself very-very seriously and churn out wonders, new shapes and phenomena at every point of its expansion. But all this is the same primordial dust playing with itself, making different looking entities: consciousness trying to be conscious of itself. A sort of self-driving motive for its journey; a never-ending journey.

If you are trying to be conscious of something outside yourself, the journey can’t be endless and later or sooner you will stop. But here consciousness is following its own tail, trying to be conscious of itself, like a cat chasing its tail in a circle, unleashing a blizzard of happenings. And that creates newer and newer avenues for latest versions. I hope you remember the ancestors of little house lizards were once mighty dinosaurs. All this maya is simply infinity trying to be limited and make a meaning of its meaninglessness through laws and generalization. And we carry the same tendency of the cosmic entity’s fundamental quest. We are a little ounce of universe chasing its tail, spinning on its axis to find some meaning of all this spinning around. From the so-called best to the worst, we finally convince ourselves that that’s the real meaning. But that again is a solace, a conditioning of our mind to accept something that seems to give us some respite from the mad circling around in pursuance of our own tails.

Whatever meaning you create, whatever toy you make, it hardly matters to the primordial clay. But yes, the clay toys that we create through individual and collective organizational set up in the form of nations, organizations, religion, faith, gods, deities, bureaucracy everything, that’s merely an acceptance, an agreement to behold the validity of our creation. It has no bearing on the fundamental mud and clay, the cosmic pool of consciousness, we are all wallowing in. I have repeatedly used the word ‘consciousness’ because we have all agreed to define it as such. So spin your webs well. Create your realities. Dance on the floor quite energetically. Contort yourself in your dancing as much as you want, move and shake in your own weird ways. Only caution, try not to trample others toes as you go dancing.

During the dynamic meditation sessions at an Osho ashram, people would let loose their inner emotions through crying, laughing, rolling on the floor, shouting or singing. Some would roar like lions and I would be scared that they might bury their molars in someone’s throat. I was particularly scared for one old tauji who usually turned into the cutest goat after every dynamic meditation session. He would crawl on all fours and move around bleating. That was when I got apprehensive that the lions in the group might pounce upon him for their dinner. Jokes apart, the cute tauji had every right to become a goat as long as he took care of not trotting out of the hall and enter the garden for grazing on well-tendered flowers.

Something from the past

 

Father could read, write and speak English as if he was a professor of English in some English-speaking country. A wonderstruck group of white tourists had given him the certificate of English proficiency like this: ‘Sir, you know and speak English better than our professors!’ So that is a kind of indication of his mastery in the field. He worked as a middle-level governmental employee in the Life Incorporation of India (LIC) and spent most of his working years at the LIC headquarters at Connaught Place in Delhi. He commuted daily by train to office. So his was a day stretched in contrasts—the day at the most cosmopolitan spot in India and the night at the most rustic village.

During the weekends he simple read books. He provided the money for the upkeep and Mother carried the domestic cart on her strong peasant woman shoulders. She did the household chores, took care of the cattle in the barn and managed farming as well. Father looked a saintly man, somewhat a worldly hybrid—in looks at least—among Swami Ramakrishna, Shirdi Sainath and Maharishi Raman. He was a very simple man and wore plain kurta-pyjama. So one day when he was in full form, giving a lecture in English to some young college students in the train on the way to office, a disbelieving farmer nudged at his neighbor and exclaimed, ‘This man is haunted by the ghost of an Englishman!’ Father heard it and from then on it became his identity in the family.

Well, I inherited his skills to a partial extent and the little group of villages in the countryside declared me to be the most suitable candidate to crack the Indian Civil Service (ICS) examination, the gateway to the most powerful bureaucratic positions in the country. So naturally I found myself preparing for the corridors of power. I was the darling of the entire village’s eyes. They wanted me to become a big magistrate or commissioner to have a part in the ‘power game’ so that they would have someone from the village to protect them when there were traffic challans, family feuds, drunken fights, bloody skirmishes over lands, etc. A few drunkards in the village were sure that life would be a cakewalk for them once I became a bada sahib and they would stay at my official quarters. One particular liquor-lover, whom I had seen falling from his bicycle many times, had already appointed himself as my future official driver once I became a district magistrate.

These days the Indian Civil Services examination has been pared down to test majorly the attitudional smartness of the candidates. But during our days it was a behemoth of syllabus literally covering everything on earth. The exams went through the year across various stages requiring one to be buried in tomes of books. There were so many books as would fill up a decent-sized room to the ceilings across its full dimensions. So that was a tapasya. It was just studies, studies and studies. It was just like a yogi buried in tapasya in his cave. For seven long years I was in day-night studies and hardly remember anything else from my youth.

I came very near to fulfill the dreams of my father and the entire village. I had cleared two stages of written exams and the final interview remained, the all-important half hour that could undo the entire year’s labor. I had scored very high in the written test, as I would come to know later in the final mark sheet. If things would have gone even averagely good, given my high written score, I might have been selected for the most coveted diplomatic corps, the group of elite officers who represent the country as ambassadors. But the higher forces! My brain went numb during that half hour. Something pushed the talk into the zone of negativity, non-confidence and arguments. I received the least possible marks in the interview to be summarily rejected. I had four chances, so for four years I futilely ran into the wall only to be recoiled into failure.

The villagers hadn’t yet lost their faith in me. The second most coveted bureaucratic posts at the provincial level (Provincial Civil Services—PCS) were still available to fight for. So my next three years were spent in this tapasya. Once you have cleared the ICS exam, clearing the PCS is very easy, so I was clearing the PCS exams pretty easily. But selection to the PCS involved lots of tests, not strictly falling in the zone of examination and personality test. One had to, at least till then, clear the written exam with very high score and for facilitation in the minutes-long personality test one had to either own a few sackfuls of currency as well as political recommendation from the highest political elements. I had none. So as it would happen, I would score very high marks in the written part but would be shown the way out in the interview, which used to be a gross mockery, a mere formality for manipulation, during those times.

That is when the element of faith entered in my life. I had realized that certain forces, bigger than any of my effort and academic capabilities, were stonewalling my efforts. And only faith in powerful deities can break those walls. There was this very famous astrologer who boasted about a certain mantra sadhna. He proclaimed that if done by serious students, he/she can easily enter the astrological chart of raja yoga, that’s a sharer in ‘power’ in the most coveted positions. It involved 125 thousand chantings of a mantra after taking the sankalp of that goal to be achieved. The mantra I would keep secret for its sanctity. It was in worship of Ma Tulsi, holy basil, the sacred plant, a representative of Ma Lakshmi. The ritual involved getting Ma Tusli and Saligram (a phallic representative of Lord Vishnu) married with a mauli thread tied for their sacred union and chanting the mantra 125 thousand times with a Tulsi mala in hand. Now please read carefully about my sankalp, my purported blessing from the sacred plant in lieu of my mantra sadhna. ‘Hey Ma please get me selected to the HCS,’ I sought the blessing in this literary presentation. It meant, O Mother Tulsi please get me selected to the HCS. Here HCS stands for the Haryana Civil Services. They become additional commissioners and sub-divisional magistrates, a step down from the all-powerful ICS.

My mantra sadhna started. It was rainy season. I had set-up the divine union between Ma Tusli and Holy Saligram in our garden and would daily chant the mantra, just lips moving and the mantra vibrating across my being, holding the Tulsi mala in hand, eyes closed, a butter lamp and incense burning in front of the deities, rolling my fingers over Tulsi beads. I would daily perform the mantra sadhna for three-four hours for about a month to complete the count of 125 thousand mantra japs. In between I got one of the worst malaria bouts of my life because there were mosquitos, it being the rainy season. My condition was really bad but I kept the schedule and chanted while lying flat in front of the little instrument of my faith for those two days when my weakness didn’t allow me to sit. But thankfully I was successful in completing the task. The mantra sadhna was complete.

The next attempt brought miracles. I was selected. Finally. So much for Mother’s blessings! To be selected for a post for which, even then, people would offer 50 lakh rupees in corruption money, for which a recommendation nothing short of a state’s Chief Minister’s direct recommendation would do the trick, me, a simple guy without that much money and that big political recommendation, was a miracle. Somehow things had taken a course as to facilitate me through the hitherto unsurpassable hurdles. The group of villages went into celebration. They would finally have a magistrate to shift little battles in their favor. I would always give extra affection to those whom others spurned, so the much-maligned liquor-lovers declared that now their woes are over, they would live with their dear magistrate.

I had asked to be blessed with an ‘HCS selection’ and with the punya of my mantra sadhna I had got ‘selected’. However, a massive ‘but’ remained. Destiny still chuckled with glee and anticipation over the futile efforts of its puppet.

Now I share the most important part in the game of mantra sadhna. You must have read stories about demons doing hard tapasya, doing rigorous sadhnas for a blessing by the devtas. The devtas would finally appear and ask them for a blessing. Now the little-brained—with loads of muscles though— rakshasha would blurt like a child and ask for the boon, foolishly wording it in a way that it left a big loophole for their own undoing even with the Godly blessing. I had done the same. I had demanded to be ‘selected to the HCS’ and Ma Tusli blessed me with a ‘selection’ in lieu of my mantra sadhna. I thought that was all that was required to change one’s destiny. But there was more to it. There is a big difference between getting ‘selected for the HCS’ and ‘becoming a HCS officer’. Then the unthinkable happened. It happened for the first time in independent Indian history that a duly selected PCS officers batch was denied appointment. Mother’s boon ended at getting me ‘selected’. In my folly I hadn’t insisted on ‘becoming an HCS officer’. I thought both are same because till then getting ‘selected’ was synonymous with ‘becoming’. So sometimes Gods would take the help of linguistic loopholes to still have their say despite all of your efforts.

The batch got into political controversies between rival chief ministerial candidates fighting an internecine battle for power. And it was messed up. The case is still gasping with feeble breaths in the courtrooms even after 20 years. During this time I have seen the grossest of misuse of power by judges and powerful politicians. There were sometimes very shiny days in between when all were assured that finally justice would be done but it would soon get undone by a sudden squall of unexplained events that would again cast gloomy shadow on the case. I can report all those mysterious, sudden events but it would take several pages. Anyway, of that sometimes later. I’m still involved in the litigation, not for power or pelf. What do they matter now? But it’s just out of habit maybe, or possibly an inclination to stick to the concept of justice. It just draws me sometimes to keep the case alive.

I don’t blame corrupt judges and powerful politicians for the episode. They are mere puppets in the bigger game unfolding around. If at all there are some lacunae, they are there in the wording of my seeking the blessing in lieu of my mantra sadhna. Like a cute little demon, seeking boons and blessing in return for tapasya, I left a linguistic loophole which allowed destiny to fulfill my wishes as well as guard its own mysterious plan.

And I don’t have any complaints against Ma Tusli either. She knows better what is good for the child. Recently during the rainy season, I slipped horribly and landed like a log on the stone floor. I landed near a pot bearing holy Mother Tulsi. The fall was so hard as to leave me numb for many minutes. There was absolutely no pain or injury. Like a grounded child, rattled out of my senses, I looked at Ma Tusli. One of her branches was broken. Didn’t she receive me in her embrace like a kind mother and took a looming fracture on her own? I haven’t removed that dry broken branch till now. It reminds me of what she has done for me. Then it becomes so easy to forget and walk over what wasn’t done.   

The web of relative, referential, shifting truths

 

The teacher asks a rich student in the class to write a story on poverty. The boy writes:

‘There was a very poor family. Their car driver was also very poor. The gardener, cook, and other servants in the house were also very poor. Their car was also not as good as those kept by the rich people in the city. The children couldn’t go to Europe for summer vacations like the rich people did. It was a very poor sad family.’

So this was the boy’s meaning of poverty. Well, all our individual truths are in fact mere funny judgments and opinions drawn from the relatively higher or comparatively lower reference points. And they will keep shifting. With more money in the said boy’s family, the definition of poverty will shift to a new point. The shifting facts can never hold real universal truth in their grasp. Debates, discussions based on shifting facts and varying truths will at the most give careers, business opportunities, one-upmanship but the universal truth stays hidden. It hasn’t any worldly reference. Its only reference is that it strictly isn’t in reference to whatever we perceive with ordinary sense perception.

What is the way out left then? The interesting web formed by these relative, referential, shifting truths—mere judgments and opinions in reality—is so seductive, so alluring. It seems so real.

Well, crawl through the web and go into saturation with the pursuits. If that gives you real joy then you already are a saint, somehow detached from all that engages you. But if you feel the restlessness and meaninglessness of all this then start filtering out. Neti, neti…not this, not this. With your experiential realization you will walk through the clutter and see the charming futility of all this. Maybe then the self-sustaining, self-standing, immovable eternal truth will grace you with the profoundest meaning of all this meaninglessness exploding around.

Self-love

 

Charity begins at home. Self-love is the seed of the overall tree of love that grows to cover the surroundings. Self-love is the source light of all that can be seen beyond all the darkness. But there is a very subtle, thin line between self-love and selfishness. The latter might even impersonate as the former. But we have to understand, self-love is born of joy. It's something positive in nature. It's a high frequency emotion. The other is born of our fears and insecurities. It carries a low frequency. This is basically a contraction, a primal instinct for self-preservation. Self-love is expansion, evolution. In strictly material terms, they might appear the same numbers. But they are antipodal, like 1 and −1, 2 and −2. They move in the opposite directions on the axis. One sulks and sucks; the other smiles and expands. But at the operational level, it’s a very thin line. One has to be very careful because it's so natural to enter to the other side, the zone of negativity. And constant awareness and continuous asking the self about the difference between self-love and selfishness will do the task.

The childish excitement of fear

 

Nevaan is six-year-old now. As expected, cartoon programs on the television are his first love. His concentration on the shows is so hard that batting even his own eyelids seems a disturbance. We find him staring at his cartoon heroes so hard that his eyes get watery. The other day, only one cartoon channel was live due to some network problem. It’s a ghost program involving a ferocious demon as the villain. Nevaan is seriously cowering with fear but he cannot let go the only option available during the cartoon slot allotted to him after his school homework. He is crouched up in a corner on the sofa, trying to make himself safer. Then he demands a heavy blanket to further insulate himself from the ghosts in the show. He has already switched on all the lights available in the room. There he is watching the scary show from under the heavy blanket, bundled in a safe corner on the sofa, only his eyes popping out to make the most of the show.

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.