On a burning day

These are the musings on a fiery day when I'm afraid that even green trees might catch fire any moment at the cataclysmic hot noon:

Basically, the main recipe of the dish involves dishonesty and fraud. The so-called honesty is just a tiny ingredient used as a spice while frying. But however bad the times are, the table full of rogue, fake, swindled dishes won't be serviceable if not for those tiny sprinklers of honesty. That's the power of honesty and goodness. Its little molecule can carry mountain loads of lies and deceit.

Basically, the main recipe of the dish involves dishonesty and fraud. The so-called honesty is just a tiny ingredient used as a spice while frying. But however bad the times are, the table full of rogue, fake, swindled dishes won't be serviceable if not for those tiny sprinklers of honesty. That's the power of honesty and goodness. Its little molecule can carry mountain loads of lies and deceit.

Conjugal snippets from the past

 

Tau Devi Singh looked like a Frenchman from many angles, fine-featured, very sharp, and very fair in complexion. He retired as a thanedar in Delhi Police. However, our Tai was the polar opposite in looks. Those were the days when to be eligible for marriage meant to be simply a male or female. The family elders fixed the marriage alliance. Who got paired with whom was as good as a draw of lots. It churned out, sometimes, very interesting, though very funny pairs.

One of our Buas in the extended family was a wee bit shorter than four feet, while her handsome husband was slightly above six feet. Despite all the incongruities, the mismatching couples somehow managed to stick around. It was mostly because the womenfolk were as inert as the walls in the house. The slow fire of dissent, from the one who felt to have been more wronged of the two, smoldering in little-little insults, tart words, abuses—a kind of dismissive attitude that fell short of pushing out the unattractive partner altogether because that wasn’t the norm. Divorce was looked down by the society but slow-torture of the unfortunate wife (mostly it happened to be the woman in the pair) was also accepted as a norm. So you stood a chance to receive social agreement even if you beat your wife but fell short of abandoning her altogether.

Honorary Captain Zile Singh looked like a son to his prematurely old wife with pinched cheeks and shriveled skin. She had a blast finally when one shopkeeper at the town market kept addressing her as ‘dadi’ and her husband as ‘bhaiya’.

Till his old age, Tau Devi Singh kept his baton of dissent wagging with full force against his unsuitable partner. Poor Tai was the primary target of his ire. He had a great justification for his mistreatment of his wife. Whenever I gently pointed out his harsh behavior, he would stoically recite Chanakya in Arthashastra: ‘Vidyarthi, pashu or nari/Ye sab tadan ke adhikari!’ It meant the students, cattle and women were best handled with stick and sharp words.

My grandmother died quite young. The surviving grannies of her times told me about Grandfather’s relish for abrasive behavior targeting her. She had a sharp tongue and he always had sharper hands. In his late nineties, when Grandfather was bedridden—he was on bed during his last year—we had put his cot under open sunshine in the yard. ‘Grandpa, why were you so rude to Dadi? They say you used to beat her!’ I asked. Frail and slowly biding a bye to the world, he looked into the skies with his dulled eyes and all he could say was, ‘Well, everyone did the same. Maybe it was more of a custom during those times.’

As Father grew older and frailer, he still had a very stingy tone for Mother. Mother was a strong peasant woman and she bore his sharp words with nonchalance and sometimes dismissed them with a smile. A few people of their generation told me that Father was worse in behavior towards her in the past. But she bore it very calmly like all the women of her age and times did. They had taken it as a custom of the times. Tau Devi Singh’s wife also accepted his stinging barbed arrows with a smile. ‘Tai, you never seem to get angry at Tau for his mistreatment of you,’ I would say sometimes. ‘He is already angry for both of us,’ she would smile, adding, ‘Well, that’s the way he is. I’ve always seen him like this. It doesn’t matter son. It would have mattered had I seen him better. Then the change would have been painful. Now it hardly matters.’

Our Bua—we had nicknamed her Chalti, although why did we name her as someone translated as ‘smart walker’ with her tiny legs is a mystery—also bore the lifelong ire of her handsome six-footer husband. Despite all the repulsive shoves and even kicks she kept sticking to him—there was no other option, where to go, how to survive, what to eat, where to stay. She bore him many children, all of good height except one who took to her in stature. All along these years, her husband kept throwing his tantrums and even utensils at her. It made her a very strong, stubborn defender against the agents of fate that would constantly tug at her ego to revolt. But that would count as spoiling even the little she possessed. During his old, bedridden days she took a good care of him. During the fag end of his life, when there was hardly anything else to do with either hands or tongue due to imbecility, he would still somehow manage to topple the glass and thus spill over water, milk or medicine she was making him drink. It was meant to augment the inconvenience to her. Whenever he did it, she would understand and say gently, ‘See, do whatever you want in this life. Abuse me, slap me. I’ll fulfill all my duties as your wife. But don’t expect me to bear all this in the next birth as well. In this life I can guarantee that I’ll do it all. But for future births I won’t commit at all.’

I remember this old man during our childhood. He had gone completely blind. His wife was considerably younger to him. His blindness got some advantage to the woman because now he missed his mark with his throws of brass tumblers. The throws from the rasping tongue usually mattered very little to these rural women. Unaffected by his tantrums, she carried her old man on their horse, unmindful of his relentless mutterings and grumblings all targeting her as if she was the source of all his miseries.        

Far away into the future

 

Be prepared, dear readers, for a world that will outfox most of your imagination. You will have babies in the labs, genetically customized as per your choices of color, eyes, hair and height using the techniques of gene editing. These, I’m afraid, will be like factory products. Gone will be the glorious gamut of uncertainties which the free flow of life presents.

On a positive note, they have carried out a nuclear fusion reaction that fuels the stars—roughly clumping, crashing atoms into each other, instead of breaking them as in nuclear fission. They were able to produce more energy than the input through laser beams. The technology is but in its infancy, almost like the maiden flight of a rudimentary plane by Wright brothers in 1903. The nuclear fusion experiment carried presently is the embryonic state of a plan that will eventually help mankind in producing one ton worth of coal energy from just one gram of fusion fuel. But to make it feasible it may take almost fifty years of more research. That will save earth from carbon emissions and radioactive waste. But will we need clean nature by that time? I think by that time the human anatomy would be mechanized—through bio-engineering—to an extent that would make Homo sapiens a hybrid of artificial intelligence, chips, artificial limbs and organs, synthetic nerves and lab-grown flesh. We—the all flesh and blood version of the mankind—will create something that would ultimately break our monopoly on this little planet. These super-human species would then look at our remains just like we analyze the skeletal remains of Neanderthals and other prototypes of humans that vanished on the path of evolution, leaving the entire planet under the control of Homo sapiens.

Christmas musings

 

Christmas. A warm sunny noon is the best gift by the snow-bearded Santa. It’s cold and windy but the sunlight infuses enough courage in your bones to allow you to go for a noontime walk on the solitary trail. There are three little skinny puppies by a mushroom hut. They already have a sense of owning a territory. A big dog turns in their direction and the tiny chits of puppies let out a full-spirited spell of growls and barking. The elderly dog is amused and stops. It looks at them with respect. It then turns away, allowing them to have a sense of successfully defending their territory. You have to speak up for your rights, even in the face of far bigger rivals. Sometimes they just give you respect on principle.

It’s a narrow cart track among the farmlands. There are bushes on both sides. I see a snake’s crawl line on the fine undisturbed sand. It seems a beautiful signature of mother nature. It must be a huge cobra. The crawling line is at least wide enough to cover my palm. It’s still the same old world with such big snakes somehow still alive and surviving. I respectfully look at the bush. Maybe it shifted position to sunbathe on the southern side.

The wind-breaker

 

Tau Chunni Lal was the reputed wind-broker of the village. He broke wind with great effect and that came to be his primary identity for the village-level fame. You need to break wind with good effect to become a village's numero uno wind-broker. His windy catapults were almost like massive cannon shots in comparison to the normal pistol shots of the rest of the villagers. And he was always very humble and unassuming in the art. Perfectly detached in the matter. I don’t think he felt proud about it. He wasn't even bothered about the reactions caused by his windy fireworks. He looked so free and natural about it, no pretense, no effort at hiding, no endeavor to appear, or sound rather, what he wasn't. There was a marvelous acceptance and spontaneity about his situation. As a free citizen of India he broke wind with utmost sense of liberation. Tau Chunni Lal comfortably lumbered through the street, unleashing the audible symbols of his freedom. These were hugely impressive, arriving in multitudes of rumblings carrying amazing range of pitch, notes, frequencies and volume. I think he played a great role in sharpening the linguistic intonation of our little tongues during our childhood as we put up best effort to imitate his sounds through mouth. It's good to be remembered. He wrote his little history on the windy canvas through the pen of sounds.

Musings on Father's Day

 What am I? A tiny bubble of air, a breath, a cycle of inhalation and exhalation. I die every time I exhale. I merge with the unbounded, free air. I take birth every time I inhale. Little bit of air then fuels this illusion of body and organisms. I keep dying and getting born in a sequence. The duality stands as long as the illusion of this sequence of birth and death follows and guides our sense perception. But the moment they coexist, dying and taking birth, side by side, dying and getting born simultaneously, in and out, out and in turn the same. Then you feel that you just are, a 'being' beyond all illusionary 'becoming'. A pulse, a rhythm, a reverberation, a drop in water, a molecule in air, a speck in dirt, a fragment in ether...something and everything at the same time. And most probably 'nothing' at all as the perception in higher dimension seems to indicate.

And as I cast a look into the sky, mighty Father seems to send a message on this Father's Day. It's a rapidly greying, gloomy world and the Lord has to hide and peep through a hole to spot any trace of truth and honesty that may be lying around.

The treasure trove of real self

 It’s a beautiful, fresh morning. A fox is on hunt in the forest. The sun is verdantly casting long shadows from the east. The fox gets drunk with ego and pride looking at its long shadow. “I must be really big and powerful to cast such a huge shadow! So little rabbits and tiny rats aren’t worthy of being in my big body! I have to hunt an elephant at least. That will do justice to my true status and standing.” So all through the morning it roams around to get an elephant. Many a small preys cross its path, but swooning with ego and pride it just ignores them. It’s not before the noon time it sees an elephant. The sun is hot and brightly overhead. The fox stands in the elephant’s path. But before it even realizes what is happening, the elephant swipes it away like a dust particle with its trunk. It lands at a distance very painfully. It now runs in panic. While running it looks around its feet and sees the tiny shadow clinging to its scared self. “How come I’ve become so small after the fall?” it wonders.

Holding onto the impermanent elements on the shifting stage of life is the cause of pain and suffering. The externalities are the moving shadows. They give the impression that they define you. But how can such fickle, impermanent, transient, fleeting, temporary things and phenomena be the component of our real self? Peace and happiness lie in connecting with the essentially real self, the substance, the permanent entity. It lies inside all of us. But is of no use unless and until we spot it, observe it, realize and acknowledge it. But if it’s not recognized, it’s almost of no use like the beggar who died wretchedly on a hidden gold treasure.

A beggar died in most wretched poverty in his hut. The place just reeked of misery and suffering. After cremation they just couldn’t bear up with the stench, so decided to dig up the place to remove the signs of misery. To their surprise there was hitherto unfound golden treasure under the hut. There was gold just a few feet under and a man who had met a slow, prolonged, painful death due to poverty on it.

Same is the case with the treasure trove of our real self. Find it, acknowledge it, nourish it to be happy and be at peace, or meet a painful, discontented death. Much as we run after the shadows, the centre, the pivot lies neglected. Shifting shadows never give permanent joy. So go down, unearth and lay bare the treasure you are sitting upon!

'Something' with a glimpse of 'everything'

 My tiny Tulsi forest! The beauty about lovable volition, the bhav of love, is that it takes you above physical limitations. With pure volition of love this little group of tiny plants is as big as Amazon forest. It becomes as pure as any holy site on earth. If you can relate and feel like an ant crawling through this tiny patch of holy leaves, then you of course turn a little child wandering in a big forest. It's only about bhav beyond acts, deeds, words, scriptures, holy pilgrimages. If you are in that bhav, this little group of plants instantly turns your Gaumukh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Jerusalem or any other holy site. Right here, this very instant. A pure unconditional bhav takes you above the limitations of space and time. Karma gets unattached from your consciousness during those moments of pure volition and you have moments of liberation. Call it samadhi, enlightenment or any other words. Words are mere pointers. As I stare into this little patch of green and with pure volition muse over a little insect going through it, I'm a pilgrim going through a deep forest. As I take bucket bath and chant Ganga Ma's name with pure heart, I'm bathing in her holy stream. I don’t have any doubt about it. As I walk by a little ancestral shrine in the countryside and bow my head I know I'm having a Darshan of Badri, Kedar, Tirupati. If you establish yourself in that unadulterated bhav, Mother Existence gets everything for you right at that very spot. But we have to walk around a lot ultimately to realise and come back into stillness and divine pause at one point, that pure volition. Then you aren't anywhere but still everywhere. Then it hardly matters where you are, what you are, what others think of you, whether you are moving or not. The small acquires mammoth proportions to inspire holy awe. The big becomes small allowing you to marvel and analyse at the level of mind. Well, that's the beauty of pure, unlimited volition.

Bold beauty

 Yellow Hibiscus. Nothing beats the fun of helping blossom baby soft petals smile at their best even in this 40 degree plus scorching heat. Summer flowers have their own charm! They look at you with the message that even in the fiery guts of misery, there are possibilities of smiles, provided we don't lose our faith in smiles! To the hell with pandemic, here this baby smiles so winsomely even after getting fired by merciless Sun's cannonfire through the day! Keep smiling, adversities are nourishment for being our best version! We always have the choice of cutting the soot of adversities and keep it a smiling plant and not allow it turn into a parasitic creeper suffocating us to death.

Remembering a winter walk

 

You cannot be more welcoming than to the sun that shines brightly on a winter noon after dispelling the frigid fog that has eaten away the earlier part of the day. I’m walking with solitary musings on the sunlit trail across the still surviving thin ribbon of wilderness running along the thirty feet wide space between the canals. This and the still narrower lines of wilderness running along the outer embankments of the canals provide solace and succor—a sort of last refuge to some reptiles, birds and a solitary journeyman like me in the area.

A majestic cobra has sprawled itself in the open for sunbathing. Is it the same that had shed its slough a month back. I had found the seven-feet long snake skin completely intact from the tip of its tongue to the end of its tail. I keep it coiled up like a real snake in my library among my books. In case there is some book thief, he will run away after seeing a snake among the books.

I arrive at a bridge and take a narrow road running through the farmlands. There are mushroom farms. A big poultry farm is buzzing with plenteous cacophony of cocks and hens sending out dinning chimes of mortality and suffering. The stench of poultry feed and bird drops overpowers any sense of pity.

The yellow of mustard and the green of wheat show mankind’s strength and grasp over nature. The vehicles rattle past and the drivers find someone still walking slowly a misfit, or even a lunatic because only they seem to walk along the roads these days. Human legs may turn extinct over the coming centuries.

I reach the brand new multiple-lane expressway authoritatively cutting across the farmlands around my village. It’s all about more and more speed. The passing vehicles rattle your bones with the windstorms raised by their speed. The tyres raise a nefarious noise to keep you scared all the time. This is the same dusty little potholed road where we had seen bicycles, buggies and carts in our childhood.

There is a little puddle of water among the bunch-grass and shrubbery by the road. A coot, a moorhen and a lapwing still hold the post for the birdies. Further on, a larger pond is lucky enough to survive. There is algae on the surface. The black catfishes are stoically floating on the surface. They look awestruck and surprised with their mouths wide open. They are actually allowing the algae to enter their mouth, just like whales open their mouths while passing through the shoals of smaller fish. I would call it peaceful hunting.

The bush-covered waste ground where we used to roll and play throughout the day is buried under the cement, asphalt and mortar of the swanky new expressway as it loops around the village pond. The village pond has more water than ever but not a single water bird. There used to be thousands of water birds in it during our childhood.  Now it’s tamed under pisciculture by a farmer who has taken it on lease from the local body.

The banyan on the mound is scarred. The mound on which it stands has been chopped from all sides to create more water space to rear fish. Its strong, thick roots are exposed like opened innards at the water margins. The majestic tree is holding its world through three or four stumps, made of its hanging roots that have dug into the earth. The tree seems scared of a fall and looks to save itself by placing its hands on the ground as more and more roots are exposed to rear a few more kilos of fish. Aren’t we actually eating into our own innards?      

Settling the account forever

 

In its dealings with a person, destiny keeps its account book always open. The account is never closed from her end. It's always open. It needs a tapasya to close the account by the person himself, wind up the calculations forever, come out of karma's loop and take an indefinable shape on the canvas of eternity.

Sleeping in a cinema hall

 

Dada Lakhmi Chand (1903-1945) was a famous ragini and saang artist from Haryana. People call him the Shakespeare of Haryana for his folksongs. He nailed many bitter truths of the contemporary society. Further, the folk bard, in an oracular manner, sang about the harsher truths of the coming age also. Kaka Maharaj, who stays in a hut by the canal, is an ardent fan of Lakhmi Chand’s raginis. So when a movie based on the life and times of the famed artist was screened at the brand new multiplex in a mall at the town, I offered to take him for watching the movie.

He hardly leaves his hut and very rarely goes to the town. But he agreed for the sake of his folk hero. As I drove him through the town, he found it changed beyond his expectation. ‘It’s a new town altogether!’ he exclaimed like a little boy. He was stumped by the swashbuckling mall and still more by the elevators and lifts. It was all antipodal to his grass hut by the canal. But I think he graced the worldly set-up with his naked feet.

Waiting for the show to begin he had tea with a sense of bewilderment. It was a prime seat in the uppermost row. The movie was about the life and times of the great folk artist—a little biographical treat. He but had come expecting a full show of his raginis only. He found it meaningless and funnily dramatized. So he cozily folded himself in the chair and slept peacefully even among that ear-bursting din in the cinema hall.    

Wintery reminiscences

 

Daubed with dual shades the winter moves on. It’s a concoction of good-bad, pleasure-pain, joy-sadness. Laroop followed his drinking passion to the extent of pawning away the landed property, social dignity and domestic peace. But he earned something as well—the title of the craziest speaker and shouter of the words prohibited in all religions, castes and creeds. Most of these obnoxious verbal volleys were directed at his wife. I think he called her a ‘slut’ at least a million times in his life. But she had taken her vows as a bride around the holy fire to be by him, through thick and thin, come what may. As he created a mayhem of all civilities at public squares and streets, she would be always there like an unseen shadow around some corner or behind some column, keenly observing the vulgarized air around her dear husband. Let someone intervene to stop Laroop from his hellish torrent of cuss words, she would swiftly emerge and firmly stand between the keeper of social morals and the slayer of all civilized norms.

Then one day, at the age of roughly sixty-seven, Laroop, sloshed fully as usual, fell from a tractor and broke his back. He was paralyzed but God was kind enough to allow his tongue still wagging for letting out the still remaining stock of vulgarities. However, he was lucky to get his deliverance soon. The doctors had ruled out any chance of recovery. The gentlefolks said it was a respite for the tortured body and soul. Let’s hope he gets a good beginning in the next avatar. He left behind a genuinely grief-stricken and grieving wife. One gets habituated to pain and insults over the decades. The cuts and wounds take such a real shape that one draws one’s identity from them and gets puzzled in their absence. So maybe she still misses him much for all the insults he poured over the years.

However bad it was, but it’s sad to lose a human voice. But God is lenient to restore a voice that had gone mute. As I have already mentioned Kala had got a facial paralysis, leaving him tongue-tied. His hard-worked vegetable hawking skills lay abed. The streets missed enthusiastic hawking shouts at least, if not his not-so-impressive vegetable items. By the grace of God he has got his speech back after three-four months. There are auditory signs of a slurred effort in his hawking list. But his words, though slightly affected, carry enough clarity to convey the message.

He went for a desi treatment like most of the country folks do. I have seen many people recovering after taking the secret potions along with faith-healing by these people. They strictly forbid the patients from getting saline drops which the allopathic doctors do to begin with at the hospitals. ‘Don’t get the drips. If you do, our medicines won’t work!’ they admonish the patients. Thanks to their mysterious potions Kala gets his hawking voice back. He has to take medicines for at least six months. Let’s hope he becomes as fluent in shouting out his list as earlier.

Elsewhere, a pack of asian pied starlings keeps the neighborhood pretty lively during the bright, balmy noons. They chat a lot. Maybe they love this season. The pair of treepies hasn’t yet returned from the Himalayan foothills for the wintertime stay. When they come, they don’t miss to intimidate the smaller birds in the locality. Imagine their natural GPS system that enables them to track this small neighborhood on their journey from the lower Himalayas. There also they must be having a little home among the few trees on a slope or in a little vale. They would return to it after the winter stay. Imagine the natural sense of belonging to a particular place!

Apart from all this, dear readers, there is a tiny jingling addition to the world. Feeble, soft trills of baby birds are a welcome addition to any yard or garden. Although winters are usually avoided by the birds for adding to their families, but there are some couples who take the odd way. Like this pair of scaled munias. Their globular grass nest has little munia babies, sending their softly tinkering notes swimming in the air. The squirrels stay away from the curry leaf tree hosting the nest.

There is a cat in the house. The feral cat considers itself to be a pet now. It was a scared, scrawny, feeble-hearted dark grey cat. The elders would have serious issues about its suitability as a pet from many angles. But then a year-and-half old Maira finds it very cute. The cat is afraid of the grown-up stiff fingers but it’s comfortable with Maira’s soft touch. The elders thus have to adopt it. It’s a laidback cat, not much interested in rats, girl cats or nests. It’s happy to have chapattis and sleep. It means the munias have a nice chance of raising a successful family. Anyway the nest is beyond the reach of even an adventurous cat.

Living with choice

 The things that we usually eat for our tongue ought to tasted, not eaten. The food that we are reminded to take for our stomach, must be eaten, not gobbled. But we do the reverse. We gobble down the things that must be merely tasted. And we flimsily taste the things that must be actually eaten! The forces on the periphery of our existence create desires that always drive us off the path, taking us into the puzzling pathways, where we end up spending our entire life and energy in banging our head against walls and moving just by chance, driven by random forces. On the other hand, there is the option of living by choice. The ability to live by choice increases in proportion to the distance we create from the outermost peripheral forces controlling our life. The more we move away from the fringes, the lesser becomes the chance factor in life driven by circumstantial winds.

The smile is back

 Mexican Petunia smiles after months! He was Ma's favourite little plant son, dazzling with violet smiles almost all the time. She really appreciated and mused over this little soldier of smile's spirit in outdoing others of bigger brand-names. Then she left this body to be part of everything to keep her evolution in another dimension. The plant seemed to go into mourning and stopped smiling anymore. It smiles again! Ma is surely smiling and watching with a motherly muse over my follies! Love you Ma!

Kiss me quick

 The dazzling pink pout of Kiss Me Quick flower. Her slender body creeps across the intimidating underbush to offer a little bouquet of smile. All is well, she whispers! Love and smiles are always eager to sprout through thick stony walls, barricades and difficulties provided we have the pause to acknowledge them.

The seat of ego

 The huge sense of self-righteousness has its origins in a very little dark space in our egoistic chamber where mammoth ghosts of judgement and opinions burst to their seams. They have been suffocating in a little dark space and that's why they run wild to assert and claim more territory in other's mind once the door gets unlocked.

On a secret mission

 

We have seen many cows peacefully chewing the cud right in the middle of roads. They serve a good purpose. The rampaging motorists have to turn careful and slow down, for their own safety at least. We think twice before hurting a cow even involuntarily. So cows on the road is a usual thing. But what about a dog sitting right in the middle of a highway? Well, it looks a clear attempt at suicide since stray dogs hardly carry any faith-born protection like the cows. The red brown dog seems relaxed in the face of death hurtling past at so close quarters.

I also rattle past the stoic dog in my battered, old little car. I’m on a mission, a secretive mission. The winter is quite harsh for my middle-aged bones now. With each passing season, the winters pose a bit bigger threat to my ageing bones. I deliberate over the issue and decide to buy some brandy to take little teaspoons in warm water at the end of the day. People have a particularly clean view of my persona, so even brandy, intended to serve against cold as medicine, is as good as buying a contraband item.

The main problem is that brandy is available at liquor shops. You stand out as a hardcore drinker if you find yourself standing in front of a liquor outlet in broad daylight. I’m at a town near the village but I imagine the peeping eyes of many fellow villagers even on strange faces. I have to be quick and hide the secret item quickly in a bag I’m carrying for the purpose. Nobody would accept that you are buying just brandy from a liquor shop. Even the shop assistant gave a disappointed look when I asked for a mere ‘brandy’. As if I had demanded a kitchen knife from a cannon factory!

I go for a half bottle. He demands 500 rupees for it. I’m ecstatic as the little squat bottle is safely hidden in the bag. For another half bottle I decide to visit some other outlet to get some other brand of the product. But only one brand is available at the town and finally I buy the same one. Surprisingly it comes at 400 rupees. So the other guy duped me for 100 rupees. Then I reflect, ‘Maybe I saved 100 rupees instead of losing. Because had I purchased both bottles from the same outlet that would have meant giving 100 rupees extra.’ 

The lone ranger

 

On December 18, 2022, a Sunday, almost the entire world prayed for Messi to win the world cup. The prayer was heeded and Argentina won the world cup after 36 years. Huge celebration comes at the cost of pain in some corner. So sadly France has to sulk. One man stood between Argentina, or say the entire world, and the coveted trophy—Kylian Mbappe. He is just twenty three and has shown enough artistry to be the next soccer superstar.

Argentina had lost their opening match to Saudi Arabia but finished as the champions in the tournament’s final game. So a botched up opening doesn’t always mean a painful end. You just have to stay focused and give as much, in fact even more, as you would have given in enthusiastic spirits after a good beginning. Sometimes you end up with tears of joy after starting with tears of agony. These are irresolvable mysteries. And victory chooses you rather than you grabbing her by the wrist because there are so many chance factors—the ball hitting the bar, the ball getting deflected off the mark, the ball suddenly dipping, the ball going straight, somehow. All this happens mysteriously among a melee of chances. But one has to be there right in the middle of it to allow some chance fruit to fall in one’s lap.  

Eco-heroes

 

A virginal forest is cut on a pristine island in the Andaman. I’m glad that at least we are paying a lip-service to the cause of environment. The government plans to compensate for this loss by planting trees in the Aravalis near Delhi NCR. Well, the world seems to have taken the cause of environment very casually. The expression of loss falls well short of awakening people to the fact of irreversible damage.

It’s befitting the fabric of a humane self to grieve over the ecological loss. As a beacon of hope, there are eco-heroes who are holding processions, dinners, benefit concerts, readings and memorial rituals to mark the dents and bruises suffered by mother nature. They have put red gauze flags signposting dead mangroves in Goa. Artists and environmentalists are setting up monuments to pay homage to the lost species. As mega-floods, super-droughts and super-storms come out shrieking, voicing mother earth’s agony, soft and sensitive souls get under a pal of despair, depression and anxiety. They hold gatherings to commemorate the extinct species. There is a memorial dinner for Dodo in London; there is a candle march and handwritten posts for extinct and imperiled pollinators. Musicians, scientists, filmmakers and academicians express their sense of loss at the death of a glacier. A memorial plaque stands for a huge majestic tree gone extinct. An Australian artist composes songs for dying reefs. In December 2018, Olafur Eliasson fetched thirty blocks of ice from Greenland and put them at public squares in London to melt away, hoping it would melt the ice clods in our hearts also. In Canada the creaking sounds of a dying glacier are broadcast live through speakers so that the office goers know what they are walking upon; so that they realize that a part of earth is groaning with pain and agony. Somewhere a glacier stops moving, groans, cracks, melts and dies. At least some people hold a memorial ceremony to commemorate the dying ice. In Oregon a funeral for Clark glacier is held. A coffin full of meltwater from Clark glacier is ferried to the steps of State Capitol building. And somewhere far away a lone tree holds the last baton for its species. It’s Wood’s Cycad, a native of South Africa, the only tree of the species left in the world.