A little glimmer of hope for the Indian democracy

 I can see some signs of recovery for Indian democracy. Teeming millions of poor disadvantaged people fought against Modi, BJP, bureaucracy, election commission, ED, CBI, IT and billionaires. The odds were pitifully pitched against them. But they asserted their power. They couldn't give an alternative because it was simply beyond their capacity in the face of such brutal power assertion by the government. But they have given a strong opposition which is necessary for the health of democracy. I hope the opposition will now be allowed to speak in the parliament rather than being heckled, silenced, suspended and thrown out of the house. I expect we will now see Indian media breaking the shackles and cast away the shameful shape it has acquired in the past decade. I hope the powerful government machineries will fulfill their roles with honesty and integrity. I hope the government will now work for the problems of the common people instead of just creating a showy façade on the basis of power and money. And congratulations Rahul Gandhi! He will make a good leader of the opposition. It will be a good opportunity for him to hone his skills as the future prime minister.

लोकतंत्र की क्षति

 लोकतंत्र में राजनीतिक दलों द्वारा एक दूसरे पर आरोप लगाना आम बात है। लेकिन चुनाव आयोग पर आरोपों का स्तर पिछले सभी रिकॉर्ड को पार कर गया है। ये आरोप कहां से आए हैं? यह चुनाव आयोग का अपना काम है. वह सिर्फ यह नहीं कह सकता कि विपक्ष अफवाहें फैला रहा है और छूट जाएगा। सरकार के पक्ष में चुनाव संबंधी मुद्दों पर इसके पक्षपातपूर्ण दृष्टिकोण ने आलोचकों को इसकी तटस्थता के खिलाफ उंगली उठाने के लिए पर्याप्त वैध कारण दिए हैं। पिछले कुछ महीनों से वह जो कर रहा है, उससे निष्पक्षता नहीं झलकती, इसलिए स्वाभाविक रूप से उसके खिलाफ बहुत सारे सवाल उठ रहे हैं। इससे भारतीय लोकतंत्र की छवि को बहुत बड़ा धक्का लगा है. क्योंकि अगर चुनाव कराने वाली मशीनरी ही अभूतपूर्व तरीके से संदेह के घेरे में आ जाए तो लोकतंत्र की बुनियाद हिल जाती है। इसके अलावा विपक्ष के ख़िलाफ़ सरकारी एजेंसियों का चुन-चुनकर दुरुपयोग करने का स्तर भी भारत में नये शिखर पर पहुंच गया है। इसमें कोई आश्चर्य नहीं कि भारतीय लोकतंत्र बुरी तरह क्षतिग्रस्त हो गया है। अब यह सवाल नहीं है कि कौन जीतता है और कौन हारता है। असल मुद्दा देश में लोकतांत्रिक प्रक्रिया को नुकसान पहुंचाने के बारे में है।' एक आम आदमी के लिए भारत के चुनाव आयोग की कार्यप्रणाली से निराश होने के पर्याप्त कारण हैं। यह लोकतंत्र की भावना को नुकसान पहुंचाता है. मैं भविष्य में भारतीय लोकतंत्र को कमजोर होकर निरंकुश रूप लेते हुए देख सकता हूं।

Big dent to Indian democracy

 It's usual for the political parties to put up allegations against each other in a democracy. But the levels of allegations against the election commission have surpassed all past records. Where have these allegations come from? It's the election commission's own doing. It can't just say that the opposition is spreading rumours and go scot free. Its partial and biased approach to election related issues in favour of the government have given the critics enough valid reasons to raise a finger against its neutrality. Fairness doesn't reflect from what it has been doing for the past few months, so naturally lots of questions are being raised against it. It has given a huge dent to the image of Indian democracy. Because if the very election conducting machinery comes under suspicion in an unprecedented manner then the foundations of democracy are shaken. Apart from this, the level of selectively misusing the government agencies against the opposition has touched a new peak in India. No wonder Indian democracy stands hugely dented. It's no longer a question of who wins and who loses. It's about the harm to the democratic process in the country. There are enough reasons for a common man to feel disappointed with the functioning of the election commission of India. It harms the spirit of democracy. I can see Indian democracy getting diluted to take autocratic shape in future.

Congratulations China for Change'e 6 mission

China's robotic Chang'e 6 mission landed inside Apollo Crater at the giant South Pole-Aitken basin. With eternal optimism I would take it as the next step in mankind's quest for more scientific truths. So congratulations China in the name of collective human endeavour for scientific spirit, exploration, research, analysis and data. Irrespective of how many punches we give each other--as different nationalities--in the ring, this little planet will face common problems. Climatic ravages will heat, beat, treat us the same irrespective of geographical variations and national interests. Scorching heat will bake us the same. The floods will drown us the same. Pollution will ravage our lungs the same. Wars will spill the blood all the same. Some hostile alien life form will, this I consider very likely, treat us the same--the weird dwellers of a far off planet. They will twist our ears the same irrespective of our racial and national differences. So while we give each other bloody mouths with solid punches, it will serve humanity to chalk out a collective framework to deal with global level threats, dangers and risks that will challenge our very existence as a race.

A tragic comma in a fastly scrawled sentence

 

The other day, on the way to the town, a sad spectacle unfolded on the road. A hit and run case. A crime, unaccountable though because the life lost didn't belong to the Homo sapiens. It was a dog and since the law-books give enough space to the mankind in this matter, people drive rashly, trample over the so-called lesser lives, and move on nonchalantly. It doesn't even count as a happening. Happenings, or mishappenings, are classified according to their human-centric valuation and assessment.

The poor thing was lying on the edge of the road, a pool of blood by its open mouth, making its loud statement of a murder. But unfortunately such statements are majorly heard by poetic people or the ones carrying soft hearts. They at least ought to pay a silent homage.

Another dog was tentatively, after all death is such a big event, sniffing at the blood. It was a very sad sight. ‘What must this living dog be thinking? Has the event somehow changed its normal perception of taking blood as food?’ I moved on with my sad, brooding reflections.

Mother existence has her own ways of providing us the answers that we need. On my way back after an hour or so, I saw my answer written on the scene. The other dog was sadly sitting by the dead one; its front paws stretched out, head supported on them, sadly looking at the canine dead body. So this one was the friend of the dead dog, sitting there in condolence and companionship! Look at the bond. They must have played together so fondly and then some uncaring human trod over their bond, cleaving it apart.

Well, the law-books don’t have any space for such smaller murders. But at least the book of values in our heart and conscience ought to have some lines of empathy for the so-called lesser lives. Those unwritten laws should hold us responsible for our legalized transgressions. They should hold us accountable for the injuries and harm done by us to the so-called smaller forms of life. They should remind us to drive carefully in order to spare not just humans but cats, dogs and reptiles also.       

A page in the book of an old school guy

 

I know I'm from the old school. But here is a message for the new-age people grappling with the issues of relationships. Don't tear away the bond suddenly, turning the other one as a redundant item. Talk it over and transform it into a milder bond, put your case gently. If the person isn't suitable in the new phase of life, don't make him/her a dark angel at least. Transform it into friendliness (it's possible by the way—with open heart-to-heart talks) and drift away gently. There aren't bloody cleavages in this, leaving one party broken and the other one guilty. Why run away? If you run away in haste, you will carry lots of pain with you and this will draw you into similar circumstances with a different person in future because of its sheer momentum in your system.

I know ex-lovers can still become possessive and take your friendliness and nicety as willingness to come together again. But that's just an impulse at the initial time. If you maintain your courtesy, friendliness, dignified respect, impersonal aloofness and sufficient detachment (that separates friendliness from a love relationship), the other person will get the message very soon. Then you won't have a big block list in your phone. And blocks in our phones are merely forced attempts at negating a still nagging reality, an artificial attempt to bury a pain. It stands for either a feeling of victimhood or guilt.

If you drift away gently, allowing him/her to see you walking away, sometimes looking back with a friendly smile, sometimes waving a bye, then he/she won't feel cheated or broken or dumped. Why leave someone broken? You have every right to proceed with your choices for the future. But why run away? Because if you run away, those same circumstances follow you in a similar relationship with another person. So walk away, if that’s necessary, into the sunset with a friendly smile.

Crawling fluidity

 

Have you seen a snake beautifully crawling across little spaces, tiny crevices, stony earth, prickly branches and thorny boughs? It slithers away so majestically; with a fluidity matching the water’s. I think a snake is almost a more tangible manifestation of water in fluidity; a crawling mellowness. So the next time you come across a snake, don’t jumpstart and put your body in panic gear to saunter away. Just gently stay there. Believe me it won’t turn back to kiss your skin. It has far better things to kiss including his woman for love and frogs and mice for hunger. So as long as you are an appreciating spectator it would mind its business and allow you to mind yours.

A snake crawls so beautifully even across the big heaps of prickly boughs and branches of thorny keekars without injuring itself. Its mellow fluidity allows it to circuit around the thorns and obstructions. I think a snake has a message here for we humans as we move on the prickly path of life. To move with gentleness, fluidity, acceptance and liberty across the thorns of judgments, hate, complexes, anger, fear and insecurities. These are the thorns put on our path through which we have to crawl. Run or walk with all the negativities and rigidities of fears and insecurities and they bleed our feet. And move with the streaming gentle fluidity of acceptance and non-judgments, we simply find ourselves beautifully crawling across the pinchy, thorny obstructions. Mother nature has scrawled beautiful life lessons across the vast sprawl of her book of nature. We just need to be a bit more aware to read it. Ahha, the wonders of the book of life!

Tau's knowhow

 

Tau Hoshiyar Singh is confidently inching towards the three figure mark, a century of years on earth. He has been a cricket fan and would like to hit a ton. If he gets out in late nineties then he might consider his innings a failure. So I would pray that he meets his target. A very hardworking farmer till five years back, when his grandchildren and wards forced him into retirement (because he would hackle with them at the farms trying to force his age-old farming techniques), he now spends time at chaupals. He has enough stamina left to compete with young idlers in card games, drawing hookah smoke in a long-long draught, and giving his opinions on political and social matters. From his enthusiasm, I’m sure he is up for a century of years.

He sometimes pays me a visit, special visits I would say. These are primarily to make me realize the real me and act accordingly. An illiterate hardworking farmer, he has been, like others of his ilk in the peasantry of Punjab and Haryana, a follower of Swami Dayanand. To them the Swami’s words on all aspects connote the ultimate truth. The simple farmers just deny any possibilities beyond that.

So he wants to have a modern-day Swami Dayanand. He has cutely misinterpreted my bookish ways as signs of saintliness. ‘You can become like Swami Dayanand, I tell you! Just that you need to simply leave your house forever, abandoning everything and set out on foot like he did! You have it in you!’ he would express his expectations from me. ‘Why don’t you quit this house and everything else?’ he has asked a few times. At those times I feel like pouring salt in his tea and chilies in his hookah tobacco. Don’t know why he is so eager to see me as a beggar roaming around. Anyway, he is an elder and he has his rights to expect.

The other day, he is taking sips at tea served by me, coolly taking out a flea that had fallen in it, saying, ‘You never know even this mix of flea and tea might do some good to the system of elderly people like me’. Well, he usually has a solid point to back his wisdom, so I generally avoid falling in arguments with him.

Now me being me, full of books in the mind, I have a tendency to start giving lectures on various topics. God knows how come this topic of cars arrived during the talk. I am soon lecturing him about the costliest cars whose prices go into crores of rupees. His eyes are literally popping out. To him money came in pennies at the cost of loads of sweat in the agricultural farms. So the talk of so much money leaves him slightly perturbed. ‘What do they call them?’ he asks me, his eyes wide after I have talked about Rolls Royces, Hummers, Jaguars, Volvo, Mercedes and more. ‘Cars, cars with different names,’ I expound. ‘Then what is yours?’ he asks, pointing at my little old car. ‘It also is a car,’ I’m slightly embarrassed. ‘Yours should be called something else,’ he is so wise.

Then he is asking what is different about those big cars. I am trying my level best to expound their specialties, which fall out of the zone of his understanding. ‘What happens if there is a traffic jam? How is this big car different from the ones like yours, which you also call as a car?’ he interrogates. ‘Well, it has to wait on the road like any other car,’ I reply. ‘Then what is the use of throwing away so much of money if it cannot even fly in air for some time and take you out of the jam?’ he asks. I hardly have any answer. My books haven’t equipped me with those facts. If I try to explain that these are the things in the mind, that’s the urge to stand out higher than the others, he won’t take this logic. Because as a hardworking farmer he cannot relate to the bugs of mind like most of us do in a consumerist society. So Tau takes leave but not before reminding again, ‘Why are you wasting your life? Leave home and hearth and become a sanyasi and turn Maharishi Dayanad and change the society,’ he advises the course of action. He basically means that I should turn a hardworking ploughman in the field of religion and spirituality.

Well, I understand from where the grouse originated. Tau was at the forefront of canvassing the rival army in fighting against my little battle of saving myself from the yokes of matrimony. He did his best to get me yoked into the lurching countryside cart of matrimony. He approached with many arranged marriage proposals, out of which I slipped out like a cunning, slippery eel. To him it’s foolish to stay unmarried and still stay in the human society. Such people must go to the forests. That’s why he wants me out and join the league of wandering mendicants of India.

A canine love triangle

 

This is a solitary trail running between the canals. It’s the last hideout for me and the wilderness in the area. I follow the solitary trail in the evenings. I go up and down the narrow path—a nice exercise of going with the flow and against the stream (psychological aspect only)—as the sun’s red ball dives into the silvery pools over the horizon. A cold night builds up, taking everything into its dark folds. But I see more clearly—the light inside, giving more awareness within the self. Little prinias have retired in their tiny grass homes among the tall pampas grass on both sides. Now and then there is a rustle.

I meet many dogs on the way. There are some fish ponds, poultry farms and mushroom farms on both sides. I reckon there are thirty to forty stray dogs in the area. They take up this solitary trail to cross over to this or the other side of the canals. The more cautious ones use a three feet footbridge over one of the canals. The adventurous types have their fording points across the canals. There is a big iron water pipe passing over one of the canals, half of it submerged under the water and the other half above it to serve as a nice little bridge for the canines or even the farmers in case they need to cross over to the other side. You just have to walk cautiously to safely cross over.

One day I’m walking on the trail near this pipeline. I meet a black dog with two of her male friends resting on the silt by the footpath. The canine lady and one of the males (a tabby black and white one) got up and easily walked to the other side over the pipeline as they see me approaching. The third dog, a dark brown male, is not confident of walking over the curvy little bridge. It stands on the buttress and sniffs at the iron, tentatively takes its paw forward but then withdraws it. It’s hesitant and walks to the little footbridge over the other canal. But this safe option would take it in the opposite direction of its love interest. It stands in the middle of the tiny bridge and growls at me as I pass, as if accusing me of spoiling its date.

Cross over the safe bridge to the safe shore, dog, if your fears drive you away from the call of your heart. But this safe option will take you to the other side of your interests and desires. After accusing me for its own fears, it again comes back to the pipeline as I have crossed the point by this time. I stand at a safe distance to avoid being a culprit for the canine fears. There it stands in a critical dilemma whether to cross over the pipeline or not. The love-struck pair on the other side is frolicking among the bushes. Jilted and jealous it whines in frustration. Little does it realize that its own fears are responsible for its frustrating situation. It’s afraid of a fall in the water from the pipe, a fall of mere 1.5 foot because the pipeline is half submerged in the water. Fall is its phobia. So it takes a safer option—it jumps into the water and swims to safety, all drenched up and shivering.

The moral of the story is that by surrendering to your imaginary fears, you forfeit your right to the entire set of possibilities. You already accept the worst thing that would have befallen you, a mere fraction of the possibilities, as you allow yourself to be cut to your minimum by the imaginary fears. What would have happened—at the most—if it had decided to walk over the pipeline? At the worst it would have fallen and get wet but still would have crossed over. But there was a big chance that it would have crossed over without wetting its fur, all dry and in high spirits. But by this time the other two already looked like a cupid-struck pair. Females hardly care about cowards. The moment when it struggled to the point where they were playing, both of them easily walked over to the former side. Now it’s standing at the opposite buttress, undecided whether to walk over or swim. It has already forgotten that it’s all wet and is now entitled to go all fearless. But our imaginary fears rarely leave us with enough sense—common sense I mean.    

A rainbow of energies

 

Recently mild earthquake tremors were felt in the Delhi NCR. It was afternoon and I was lying on the bed for some siesta. My body responded to the tremors in an unusual way. All our experiences are meant to help us redraw some more lines on the infinite canvas for understanding a bit more of the reality that we create with our sense perception. This experience also opened the niche a bit further to help me peek into the subsurface base of phenomena and understand the portion of 'me-specific' reality.  

The tremors that we inherit in our body, emotions and thoughts are simply a reflection of the energetic ripples whirring around, an invisible world beyond the apparent solid state of the matter. The nanoparticles whizz past almost without any obstruction. That's the quantum reality we have understood so far in purely scientific terms. A free-wheeling neutrino would simply pass through a boulder of stone, making its way across the vast spaces between the stone’s atoms, as if it’s moving through the most porous of a medium. The same happens to our bodies; just that we need to feel the waves cutting across us pleasantly with heightened awareness. They say primordial sound of 'Aum' is the combined sonic effect of all this non-stop energetic chatter. But before that a sadhak would hear different categories of sounds at various stages of opening the self to the overall embrace of the infinite grace.

There is a very simple meditation technique of aligning our own grouping of atoms, which defines our sense of we being as such, with the harmony and balance outside. Open yourself to the vast expanses of the starry vault at night. Stand in seclusion under the open night sky. Close your eyes, take a few gentle breaths and unlock the gate of your insecurities. Then allow your body to move of its own. It’s a very subtle, thin line between voluntarity and involuntarity or conscious effort and automated movements. Just like a self-start in your vehicle, you give an initial voluntary push with the key, and then leave it on auto-pilot. It will roll of its own. Allow your body to move around in any way it wants. It knows better about the best ways to twist and turn in order to uncoil itself from the stress that we have built and piled because of the hijacking of our conscious part by the scores of fears and insecurities. There is a natural rhythm inside that we always keep prisoned and chained under our too conscious fears, insecurities and worries.

Now as you open the gates, the subconscious (the gateway to the super-conscious) surfaces. It gets its free play as your body and limbs move gently in various mudras, asnas and kriyas of your own making. All the asnas manifested themselves when the sages went into a trance, allowed themselves (the conscious mind) to be off the scene, and the divine symmetry emanating from the super-conscious pools manifested in the form of body movements and postures that would unclog the stuck-up pranic channels. They observed all these random movements and these were later routinized as specific postures and the science of yoga emerged to help the sadhaks to move on the path. These were not devised or discovered. They manifested themselves. The same is with the entire science of Ayurveda where the healing nature manifested of its own through various properties in plants and herbs.

Try these movements as I suggested and you will have a feel of what I mean. The free flow at the subconscious level will ease-up the tension built in the core cells. It’s a guarantee that you will feel multiple times fresh and eased-up after just five minutes of these self-emerging Tai Chi movements in comparison to an hour-long meditation session. There is harmony around and by allowing the body, mind and emotions surrendered to it, it seeps inside. No wonder one feels better.

Well, coming back to the mild earthquake tremors. As I have already discussed, a sadhak feels various channels of pranic forces crawling across his/her body. Don’t go vain or proud over it. It’s just a different type of existence at an off-beat perception level. The sensitivities acquire a different dimension and you feel a bit more than what goes on the skin in normal conditions. The afternoon siesta means to me just to be a witness to the pranic crawlings in the body, a slightly puzzled but surrendered marvel at the strange happenings in the body. Kindly avoid going to a doctor for this. You would know by instinct that it’s beyond the domain of materialistic medical diagnosis. If your health obsession still takes you to a doctor for these energetic symptoms, the white-coats will welcome you as a new case study and give you a brand new abcxyz-syndrome. You will be the proud experimental dummy for the cause of medical science. 

The mild earthquake gently shook the Delhi NCR. As I was lying, cogitating at the pranic ripples in my body, suddenly the energetic ripples inside the body (whom I call my ‘new normal’ after feeling them for years) went into agitation. It was like tiny serpents going crazy in panic. Many other little rippling channels surfaced suddenly which go unnoticed by me in my ‘new normal’ with the typical crawlings going in certain parts. It was like the entire body was buzzing with crawlings. It was quite vigorous. I wasn’t aware that it was in response to the earthquake waves. The little shaking that one feels in a mild earthquake got magnified to a big degree and I felt my body almost jumping. It’s just a stimuli felt more deeply, at the deeper level of subatomic parts. As I said I am blessed not to be panic struck when Kundalini takes sudden new avatars and puts a different sense-perception causing something new at the experiential level. So I was just trying to convince myself that all this was due to the heightened agitation of the energies inside. Then I saw the rosary hanging from a peg on the wall swaying gently. Then I realized that it was an earthquake. But feeling it in this state was so different from the earlier earthquake experiences when the energies were in their usual routine state. If I feel ‘special’ about it then I would be coming down to the level of a dog because they can feel these tremors well in advance in their bodies. So no feeling of 'special status' please! Give them to the dogs and snakes first. Then claim yours. 

We are an outcrop of mother earth. Our body carries each and every ounce of matter and energy essence available in the womb of mother planet. So how can it avoid feeling the waves of tremor passing through the mother’s body?

If you are dealing with the spiritual art and craft of managing your heightened energies, you have to be prepared for any type of perceptional reality coming your way—from the apparently best to the worst in every sense of the term. (That’s why they always caution against any obsessive trigger of this energy in the system because you will die [the old you] even before they put you on the pyre to turn you to ashes). If you keep this fundamental fact in mind there won’t be a panic strike, there won’t be awe and wonder, there won’t be any unnecessary pride over being blessed, there won’t be anything that would look miraculous because all this is as per the natural laws of heightened perception driven by high frequency energies. A bat interprets its reality at the level of ultrasound frequencies, a snake does the same at the level of infrared light, and you dear sadhak (with your awakened Kundalini) sense an off-beat reality born of off-track energies in your system. So where is the question of you being a ‘special’ one? If you get proud about it, it would be just a snake or a bat proclaiming enlightenment for being more perceptive of a reality at the level of ultrasounds and infrared lights.

We, the common followers, are the ones who create divinity around the people trying to cope with an off-beat reality with the help of their heightened, super-sensitized, extra sense-perception. There is nothing wrong with that. We have all the rights to hatch an idealistic reality and out of that is born the art of spirituality. But it’s just like any other man/woman-made art fulfilling a small, practical purpose. The person who is trying to come to terms with the new levels of sense-perception driven by the new pranic channels is simply engaged in his puzzle like the rest of us are busy at our own level. He isn’t fundamentally superior or the rest of us basically inferior. The only difference is that the force of energies is so unorthodox that he/she is forced to adopt a totally different lifestyle and attitude to life. That’s his/her necessity. He faces challenges born of experiences that may range from the best to the worst as far as their effect on the body, mind and emotions is concerned. He is just busy in his private world of resolving those newer ways of looking at things.

Hail the lovely people living a beautifully sweet-sour life born of the usual (normal) state of energies that most of us carry in our basic system! We are so cute! We see the divinity in this weird and unorthodox life and living of someone trying to cope with his extra dimension of sense-perception. This divinity is the faith of the masses itself that sees a holy man in a person who has withdrawn within himself, absorbed in a different world where the normal things of life look redundant and irrelevant. Otherwise in the scheme of nature there is no such tag of superior and inferior level of perception. They just are, that’s it. It’s the cute, innocent acceptance by the sweet people who are ready to be the followers and sanctify their faith as divinity. What is wrong in that if it gives solace to so many? There isn’t any in my humble opinion.  

Fate and Fortitude

 

Fate seems to play its cards almost randomly, just like a throw of dice to make everything incidental. If not for this, the divine hand cannot do such injustices as this. Kala, the hardworking laborer, had to change his vocation due to chronic arthritis. He turned a smart vegetable seller, expertly shouting the names of vegetables with typical hawker’s intonation. After much practice in honing the hawker’s art and memorizing the vegetable names, he now suffers another setback. A hawker’s voice is his basic skill that draws people to his cart. He was finely shaping in the art. Sadly the budding vegetable hawker suffers a paralysis attack. His tongue has gone immobile. He has lost his voice. A man who was earning fair bread with his tongue has gone silent. He isn’t even fifty. In contrast, Laroop, who is around sixty-five, is gradually getting his tongue rasped to avail more bite and sting. He gets sloshed daily and shouts the dirtiest, foulest, vulgar most words known in the dialect. His mouth is a stinking equivalent of gutter. God seems all too happy with his poisonous tongue that spews out muck, venom and profanities—a kind of vocal horror show.

The ultimate code-maker

 

In this apparently meaningless chaos of energy circulating around, there is an urge for seeking symmetry, design, a meaningfulness, a tangible manifestation. It blooms in flowers, beautiful wings of the birds, in leaves, in animals, reptiles, everywhere. This instinct finds the codes of genetics for the evolution of species. It then seeks still subtler manifestation in emotions, in beautiful sweet-sour urge for relationships, in companionship, in interactions, in thoughts. Spiritual quest is the subtlest manifestation of this meaning-seeking artistry. This is the quest for seeking the best design pervading across all the fractional designs floating around. So design well all ye artists, design with awareness; design your career, skill, relationships, art, culture in a way that it holds you safely in its bubble. The bubble will burst one day, but till then design your destiny and dreams as per your own choices within that little space. Happy artistry of life and the best of floats in your respective bubbles!

Monkey magic

 

Monkey magic for the day: a monkey is busy in eating a guava, sitting on a branch, tail hanging down, his pink bum safely tucked in a fork in the branch overlooking the street. He eats so cutely with both hands. So unhurriedly as if this cosmos is in a pause to allow him finish eating. Eat restfully as if this entire existence has the sole task of seeing you eating like a mother. He eats half of it—the stomach knows (better than the mind) how much to take in—and throws (why carry the residuals while there are so many promising things lined up the way) the remaining guava into the street. It nearly misses the most quarrelsome woman in the locality.

If you are quarrelsome, the same circumstances will develop as per the vibrational frequency of your mind. I don’t think it was intentional but you can never be sure about a monkey. She hurls a curse at him. He grins and bares his teeth in shameless fun and shakes the branch with vigorous fun. Why be affected by wrong accusations? Shake your bum at cranky, snappy people.

His woman has moved onto a neighboring roof by this time. She gives a loud recall. ‘Ouunn’. Always keep a watch on your man. Men are men. You can expect anything. So she is justified in reprimanding him even though he is teasing a female of other species. And he instantly pays heed to her call. Your woman will always overlook your diversions if you instantly pay heed to her snappy call. There he goes hopping over to her. The best mantra of maintaining relationships: if you can’t avoid doing certain things that create sparks between you, at least listen to each other.

There they go as a nice pair and then sit on the roof parapet to tease a pet dog that is barking out his lungs at them from the yard below. They feign very robust attacks. Vent out your mischief and anger against a common enemy. Then you will have less of ammunition to hurl against each other. Moreover, spending one's armory against a common threat instantly creates a subtle bond. See, it develops so elegantly even among strangers who happen to be gripped by some untoward situation. So the couples should pick out some irksome neighbor and plan and scheme skirmishes with him to spend their ammunition. There will be lesser blasts within your own walls then. So these are some lessons from the book of Monkey baba.

The anchor point within for outer stability

 

My cousin sister's son was once critically ill, aged just twenty-five, his liver ravaged by alcoholism, lying on the ventilator support for almost two months. His multiple organs collapsing, there were slim chances of survival. And we would look up to the doctor as the ultimate savior, the one who would claw him back from the jaws of death. He understood our pain. 'See, medicines are just external aids. It's for his own body to heal from within,' he said with sympathy.

These are very substantial words. They apply to all the problems and drama that we face in life. Since our sense perception is biologically outward bound, we naturally seek the solutions outside. We feel that dis-ease, discontent, stress, pain, incompleteness, the nagging feeling of something lacking and naturally we seek the remedies outside just like we apply ointment on a wound. But healing comes from within. Ointment and medicine is just one of the favorable factors. They aren't the final solution.

It's so natural to seek the help and aid of relationships in healing the pain and the fatigue born of the exhaustive quest within. Now a relationship is just a temporary balm on the bruise. It has a placebo effect like most of the pills we take. The problem arises when we put undue expectations from an external ointment to heal us to the core. It's our own bruise. The healing has to come from within. Family, relationships, husband, wife, siblings, children, friends and acquaintance are the temporary soothing balm on the painful boil. They are there for external help. They help you in creating suitable circumstances for your internal healing, growth and evolution. But they aren't the cause of this healing. They are nice support staff at the most. And we should never forget that they themselves are the carriers of their own bruises. We are the ointment for them. They aren't complete. They are as wounded as we are. They need as much external support in healing as we do. And they look up to us as their ointment. They aren't the all-powerful panacea; they are merely sailing in the same boat.

The moment we realize this, we can forgive the little sparks born of two ointments innocently seeking each other to heal from within. This understanding and the consequent forgiveness can cement the bond within families, friends and relationships. What else is the group of family, friends and acquaintances if not a band of sailors eyeing a common shore to land and then proceed on their own journey on the land? And two lovers are simply paddling their canoe across the choppy waters, to cross a phase, land somewhere at the point of common interest and move on their journey—in this lifetime itself if the relationship breaks, or after death if it survives the vicissitudes of life. But this relative shortness or longevity doesn't undo the primary fact that this coming together was just a temporary alignment of destinies looking for their complete healing, the coming home. So we should never judge our relationships in terms of their relative longevity. Numbers are just quantitative denominations. They never cover the qualitative essence. And the qualitative essence here is that all this is transitive pairing of destinies, irrespective of the fact that a relationship lasts for a few months or lifelong. Both are almost same on the infinite spread of the eternity.

The loveliest bare

 

The loveliest bare and the sweetest dare: a celebrity woman showing her baby bump. All other bare, and a bit hidden under bikni ware, is just the incompleteness inside trying to look perfect outside. But the cute urge to bare herself with her baby bump is fired by maternal pride: for carrying a life within, for being a symbol of the cosmic womb of creation. The glow on her face in this stage surpasses any range of cosmetics. The smile is all confidence. It's not that fake smile for dousing commercial passions. The posture isn't strained and taut in an effort to be something that passionate eyes expect her to be. It's calm, relaxed and mellow like a river in its final stages of journey to the sea. She looks magical, a goddess, carrying the light of future dividing within her cells. A beacon of hope. A healing smile. A mother selflessly giving her own worth for the continuity of this beautiful game. When I see a woman twaddling on the path under the sweet burden of future like a cute penguin, I feel like touching her feet. It's a beautiful sight.

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.