Evening shades

 Evening shades on the solitary trail..

The will to exist

 

Energy’s manifestation as matter is bound by the laws defining our survival instincts. And survival has the tools of attack and defense as the primary modus operandi. So ‘being’ is like walking on the tightrope, holding the pole with one end as ‘attack’ and the other as ‘defense’, sometimes tilting to this way to defend, the other times to the opposite end to attack.

Each eatable grain on the earth wants to survive. It has the multiple layers of defense and attack mechanisms to help it carry its journey forward. And we break through their defense portals by cooking them and make a pulp of their starch and protein by breaking these down. The grain accumulates lots of starch to lengthen its life, but we are smarter enough to break it down for our consumption. Primarily, a grain collects its starch for its own consumption. Getting eaten by the humans or animals is the least of its priorities. So to reach this rich source of starch and protein, we have to first defeat its first line of defense, the structural line of resistance. Grains have physical obstructions in the form of thorns, bark, husk and other protective armor. We go through it with our superior weapons by peeling and milling.

At the second tier of defense, the grain still tries to survive and here it engages the gluttony humans with its chemical warfare. The grains have certain pathogenic properties that don’t go along the digestive capabilities of the human stomachs. They also possess certain enzyme inhibitors that make the grains harder to be broken by the digestive system. It makes them very tough to be eaten raw. To break this line of defense we use the weapons of boiling, fermenting and germination. We even dupe them by soaking. Soaking actually dupes the grain into believing that it’s the first stage for the birth of a baby plant. As it gets ready for giving birth to a baby sprout, it withdraws the defense portals and immediately certain enzymes are born to support the baby sprout. And something eatable for the baby plant is eatable for us also.

So it’s primarily about attack and defense at all the hierarchies of life. What we see in the world at the tangible level of we humans is simply a representative of all that is going at the tiniest levels. So keep your defense walls strong and the attack portals (skills and efficiency) well oiled. The bubble will anyway burst but to maintain that bubble and enjoy the pleasure and joy of being, we have to give our best just like a tiny grain does. Learn from a grain. If not for this tough fight, how will a tiny seed grow into a majestic tree some day? A tree is the optimum actualization of a seed’s potential. Similarly, we too have the task of maximizing the potential that we carry within. Fight well!  

The countryside PDL and PDA

 

The lethal most Public Display of Lust (PDL) I have witnessed goes like this. It was a bull in full heat of the moment—in hormonal terms. Sadly there was no cow in sight. The red-hot excited bull must have had a great sense of visualization. If not for this how would you digest the sight of a bull riding a scooty. The bull visualized  the scooty as a cow. There are always alternatives. Aren’t there? The scooty was parked by the roadside. A nice white scooty, smaller than a cow. So the bull raised its front legs and landed on it for lovemaking, mating, raping, call it whatever. It shocked and jolted the human senses for a moment but then everyone laughed, hollered, guffawed.

The craziest, all-defiant love pursuit I have seen goes like this. It was a massive male buffalo. A free-roamer allowed to graze in the fields in return for mating with domesticated buffaloes to sire colts and getting fresh milk in the family. It would go lumbering across the village streets after grazing in the fields and was cordially welcomed to fulfill the needs of the buffaloes at the time of seeding. The buffalo bull should have treated all the females in the village equally, with identical affection. But then it fell in love with a young filly. It was a very attractive young buffalo. He just went crazy for her. He knew that she would come of age soon and then he would get an opportunity to be the father of her colt. He lost interest in the rest of the buffaloes. She would be there in the shade of the barn and he would wait in the street, sitting in the burning June heat, waiting for the evening to come when they took her out for watering at the village pond. Then he would accompany her to the pond, walking fondly with her, gentling shoving her, licking her skin. He won’t go into the fields to graze and thus was losing weight. Spellbound by her, he wasn’t interested in mating with other buffaloes. The people started calling him Majnu. The owner of the young buffalo took it as an attempt to tarnish his reputation. The people started joking that it was an attempt to malign the family’s honor. The irate farmer then would beat Majnu with well-oiled sticks. But he would bear all this just to be with his love interest.

The grandest fight one wages to prove one’s libido even in the old age was presented by another romoeo, a one-eyed community buffalo bull. We called him Kana, for he had lost one eye in a fight with a rival. He was a massive bull. In his heydays he sired hundreds of colts in the village and was thus the cause of bringing fresh milk to scores of rural houses. But then age caught with him. He but would try to keep his fiefdom still intact. I remember it once when he fell down in an attempt to get onto a young buffalo. The onlookers laughed and made derogatory puns at his vanishing stamina and strength. Maybe the old buffalo took it to heart. And to prove a point that his power was just the same, he carried the momentum right there on the ground. We saw him convulsing with lust on the ground. The poor old bull was trying to drill a hole in the earth to prove a point. It was pretty hilarious that day. When we try to be what we are no longer, we simply turn a joke. Don’t we?

And just today I saw the bravest Public Display of Affection (PDA):a cow and a bull standing right there in the middle of the busy road at the entrance to the town; in full foreplay mood, licking each other with the very same pleasure treasure that each species seems to run after on the earth. We respect cows and the vehicles would divert to the sides to allow them this holy PDA. And here I am going on my scooty marveling at their holy audacity. The only point of mismanagement was that he chose the wrong moment to try to materialize the peak of affection. He went for the heave just when I was crossing over. I was at a safe distance but still the shuffling and movement brought them precariously close. It was a momentary scare. He would have risen in love to the crest of ecstasy and I would have fallen as a fruit of their love. I’m glad not to have become the casualty of a PDA.

Ganga garima

 

Sharper AI wit and duller human brains

 

In an automated and mechanized world it’s not about good and bad; it’s primarily about good, better and best—strictly in terms of numbers. The entire moral façade crumbles and the vast potential of our fabulous brain is as much within the reach of the evil as it’s available for the good. With the equation of good and bad sidelined, the human race enters a hazardous zone. The quest for betterment, for more efficiency bypasses the check-dams of morality and ethics. It’s a blind race for achieving more and more material gains at any cost. When there is no consideration for the costs that we have to pay, we naturally cross the balance sheet. We then beat even the nature in hatching disasters and hazards.

We fly too high in the eternal quest for more and more conveniences and better and better products. In the unrelenting quest we burn our wings and fall down. The unreined and unchecked impulse to go for betterment in every sphere of life churns out such models of production and social norms that come with open-ended potential. These seem to facilitate a process but carry an equal amount of potential for multiple adverse effects that require solutions. For example, artificial intelligence will of course churn out interesting and more and more media content, but it will put challenges in the form of manipulated synthetic media content and deepfakes. For the latter we need more and more technologies to manage the fallouts. After a time, it becomes very difficult to tell whether we are creating more problems or solutions. The confusion results in a melee. Just mere exhaustion and tiredness born of the relentless march makes us believe that we are progressing. While in reality we are simply throwing arms in darkness, caught in the web of our creation, like an over-smart spider spinning a castle of web and then forgetting the way out.

Imperilled democracies

 Capitalism was one of the hands -- that too indirectly -- which pulled the strings of the puppet of democracy. Of late capitalists have begun to pull the strings -- directly. Individual powerful capitalists now are a parallel force in the world's largest and strongest democracies. Democracy is now more or less capitalist democracy. Well, when the entire world becomes a bazaar, and tariffs and profiteering become the geostrategic forces, the world will have major upheavals. Other democracies will be stretched thin in the wake of this reshaping of the two major democracies: India and the USA. Against this background, communist capitalism will be viewed in new light. It might be viewed as far more normal than it has been so far by the world outside the iron curtain. It will no longer be an anathema merely on ideological ground. Democracies will possibly lose the high moral platform from where they have been taking potshots at the communist China. There will be more practical judgment of China and its system of governance. Basically the greed for power, money and authority carries the same muscles, bones and tissues under the varying skins of political ideologies and systems.

Now the sun of blind profiteering will tan all types of skins in the same colour. 

We get bored with what we have possessed for a long time. So don't get too surprised if the equations get reversed in future: democracies taking to communism and communists trying democracy. 😀

Honoring the dynamics of life in others

 

There is an age-old proverb in the villages. Making a child laugh and playful might not earn you a good name, but if she cries while under your care, it will surely earn you a bad name. Negative experiences leave a far bigger impact on us than the positive ones. One sour word very easily undoes the sweetness of hundreds of beautiful words. This proclivity to lock the ‘negative’ in our mind while filtering out hundreds of ‘positives’ is the cause of strife, tension, anxiety and discomfort within. It also very easily sours relationships.

We simply judge people for the ‘exceptions’ in their behavior, ignoring the common ‘mundanities’ of their demeanor. We simply catch the black dot on the otherwise white board. It even seems that we are operating as watchdogs looking and sniffing for the chinks in the walls. I sometimes wonder whether we are actually companions while walking with someone or are we spies going with a mission to catch the other person on the wrong foot. No wonder we feel so vulnerable and insecure most of the time. A spy on a secretive mission will of course be on his toes and full of tension.

It becomes so easy to blame others for all the problems in our lives. But why would we always go searching for the tiny black dot on a white canvas? Why would we simply forget the rest of the white sheet? We are always looking, peeking, searching for those chinks in the armor. It just shows how insecure we are. What breeds this insecurity? It’s caused by the conflicts squirming inside us: the friction caused by our quest for the eternal ease of ‘being’ and the poor ‘becoming’ that we are molded into by conditioning, roles, stereotypes, expectations.

Most of the time we are self-charged on the grand mission of aggravating our own miseries. We are suitably helped all along by our ability to hold onto the master illusion that others are responsible for all the shit flying around in our lives.

We are always pulled in two directions. Then we get scared. We are a scared species. We put the blame on others in order to somehow clear our guilt for not being what we are supposed to be. To have that conflict-free ease of being, we have to learn to retain our vision spread out to still see the surrounding white even though the black dots appear here and there. We have to accept and view situations and people in totality. We have to accept this law that an all-white scenario is impossible to sustain as per the laws of nature. It’s a dynamic canvas. Things and people change and shift in shape, size and color. They aren’t stones that they will retain the same appearance. They aren’t dead. They too are evolving and growing, shifting and changing as much as we are doing the same.

It’s very easy to theoretically discuss, write and understand this fact. But it’s very difficult to bring it into practice. Anything that requires rewiring the habitual network needs a regular exercise. So we can remind ourselves regularly that people aren’t stone idols cast in the mold of our expectations. They are an evolving life. They will grow and change and come out of the mold we have created for them to fit our needs and desires. Accept this fluidity and sanctity of change in a living form and most of the judgments will drop of their own. We then accept the black dots on a white canvas.

 

The flow of life

 

Making love, a mere repetition; falling in love, a mere repetition; falling out of love, a mere repetition; doing this, a mere repetition; doing that, a mere repetition. I think we are creatures of repetition. And repetition is primarily born of habits. So most of the things we do are the results of habits. Why do we form habits? Possibly because we feel safe. And why do we crave to be safe? Maybe because we have fears. Well, then even fear might be a habit of the mind.

The moment we allow ourselves to be driven by the habits, we limit ourselves to a customized social unit, for our own safety. The society too feels safe when it sees fine creatures of habit swarming around. Habits define a safe zone around us. They breed convenience and that’s why we hanker after them. They define and limit us and give us a false promise that we will be happy in that little zone. But very soon we find that the happiness born of mere conveniences hardly brings juice and joy to life. It’s dry. We still feel something is missing even though we adopt more and more habits to erect sounder structures of safety around us.

The human spirit wants to fly and habits are the chains. It wants to be free. But habits hold it back. When we set out to chart out our own path, we have to break the mold of habits. Habits clip our wings. They condition us, limit our potential. We have to do everything in a way that it doesn’t turn a habit. Then whatever we do is an ode to the present. It’s open ended and creative in nature. We create and move on. The past doesn’t drag us. The future doesn’t make false promises. We flow. We fly. We live.

The spiritual passion of Tibetan Buddhists

 Tibetan Buddhism is one of the most pristinely preserved belief systems. There was a time when every Tibetan family had a full monk or nun devoted to keep the lineage going. Tibet had more monks than soldiers. Imagine the spiritual depth of this vast land during those times. Then tragedy struck. Atheist China puts a big challenge for the Tibetans to preserve their unique culture and religion. Scattered over different countries in tiny communities, Tibetans still hold onto their faith with devotional perseverance. 

I know a few lovely Tibetan Buddhist sadhaks, one of them a deeply spiritually imbued woman sadhak. A good friend.  She was out of radar for three years and I was worried about her...today it came as a relief to know that she was ok...she was in a remote cave in a totally uninhabited part of Ladhak...she carried all her basic provisions on 6 pack horses and trekked for one full day to reach this cave...and meditated here for three years, in complete isolation...I am amazed at the spiritual passion of Tibetan Buddhists to maintain their legacy 😮 it's a vast domain of asoteric, mystical practices. I myself don't believe in extreme austerity on the path of religion and believe in Buddha's middle path, but I respect such honest seeking from someone on the path of realising the true Self. This is the view from her spiritual hideout somewhere in Zanskar, Ladhak.

God's child playing

 What happened in the past was relevant, if not altogether apparently good...it involved some learning...some evolution that needed some closed setup within challenging situations... And as you came out and took tentative steps toward healing was also good...a flow after the stay and stagnation...all was well..all is well...all that will happen will also be good...the tough episodes are Mother Nature's indirect means to give us a gentle shove to nudge us to step out of the situational and psychological constraints and see more of life and living in this beautiful, exotic chaos of cosmos where we have to fix a few random pieces to make a meaningful life, to feel relevant, to be loved, to love, to live..go and pick your pieces of your sovereign choice...make anything you want... that's your making, your independent free will...the random pieces lying around have infinite permutations and combinations and hence you have the limitless potential to create. As a maker of something lovely and specific and beautiful you serve as an arm of God even though you are His children. Run on the beach of creation and play in the sands and give shape to all your imaginations: a castle, house, animals, birds, machines, vehicle, anything. It will be there as you play with childlike joy. Of course Father sea will surge His waves to wipe it clean for all the future children to play on a clean sandy beach. But till the high tide washes you and your creations into the bosom of the sea, play you have to with full enthusiasm.

The dance of life

 Fullest expansion is painless dissolution. Fullest being is non-being itself. A life harnessed to the full is griefless death. Isn't a tree just mother earth expanding and this air merely further expansion of the tree? Live and blossom so fully that you explode with ecstasy instead of burning to painful oblivion. And what are the fuels of this painful burning? These are the things that hold us back, preventing our fullest expansion. Fear is the primary roadblock. It breeds many other offshoots like anger, hate, jealousy, greed, judgements. Smile, laugh and explode with ecstasy like she does!

The petty neighborhood tyrants

Fight for a kingdom and be a king. That's your 'right' beyond the debate of moralistic right or wrong. But remember kingdoms have their consequences. It's very natural for the kings to be killed by their own sons. Just a natural consequence. You hand over the lust for unrestricted power to your son. He will be a worthy inheritor of your legacy and would dethrone you on the chessboard of power when he comes of age. 

In the same vein, if you have been lucky to have official powers and privileges -- for which you get paid and are expected to do your service strictly as per the contract-- you will sometimes get an itch to set-up a mini-kingdom by going out of your domain and misuse your power and privileges for unjustified gains. That of course is also your right. But remember your son will inherit the same mini-kingdom of misuse of your privileges beyond your official domain. He will dethrone you when his time comes. He will also kill you to occupy the little throne that you have set up by inflicting injustice through the misuse of your powers and capabilities. He may not slit your throat directly but will definitely do it indirectly. He won't respect you, he would be indisciplined and you will see your little kingdom falling apart under his erratic lifestyle. That is as good as a son killing his father. Again it's not about right or wrong. Simply cause and effect. 

The more you 'make' as an angry, arrogant and violent person, the more you expose yourself to be 'broken' by the bigger forces of similar nature. And the rot begins at home, remember this. Again, simple cause and effect. Nature doesn't operate on moralistic principles. It's only about what you are doing at what frequency. Life will give you back a hundredfold of exactly what you are investing in the same currency. If it's arrogance, ego, greed that propels you, the trajectory of your life will be defined by the same factors. Keep fighting. When will you ever stop? And if petty, tyrannical fights of this nature make you feel like a soldier, it's a nice cover for the demons inside to be decorated with honorable military dress.

If you see yourself in this write-up and get angry then I'm sorry. As a writer, I just hold a mirror in front of the reader. What you see in that is your own making, your own labour. If you don't like the image that stares back at you, change it. If not, keep the angry fight till your last breath. You may achieve anything but not peace. 

Imperfection: a stepping stone to perfection

 

I think we can avoid abusing the things that keep us alive, that give us this day, that shape our life (in whatever shape it might be). Whatever the texture, shape and structure, it still is our life. It’s still a flower (even if it’s badly mauled and ruffled by the circumstances) and it still belongs to the genre called ‘life’. And the manifestation as a ‘life’ is an incentive by default. We are manifested and still get a chance to evolve and manifest more. A blade of grass manifesting its life in famished desert sands is as important as a luxurious devdar in rich, salubrious, rain-fed hills.

This body, parents, siblings, friends, partners, deities, everything in fact has been responsible for this life that we see defining us at the moment. Irrespective of what we think of them presently, didn’t they touch our lives positively and meaningfully when we needed them or crossed path with them? Please recall that spark and excitement when we initially met them!

We meet people on the way and move on and meet new people further on the way. That doesn’t mean that the ones left behind were bad and the new ones arriving in life are better. They are equally good or bad. Everyone is equally imperfect, but even with their imperfections they have something to offer to us and we to them, which shapes one phase of the journey. They are the ones who get us to a point of being positively touched by the newer people.

If I judge those who were left behind, it would be like condemning the lower steps on a ladder after getting to the higher ones. Would we have reached the top step—for example, reaching a stage of finding an ideal soul mate—if not for those nice lower steps, those lovely people with whom we broke up in the past? The relationships are like a ladder. It’s a journey basically. Different people that we meet are beautiful, strong steps on the ladder that bear the weight of our feet and help us take the next step. And we are just the same to them. We too were low at the time when we met them and that’s why we stepped on that rung and found it helpful. So did they.

All steps, lower and higher, are equally important. All the people we connect with, all relationships, all situations and experiences are various steps on the ladder. The problem is that we judge them vertically like a ladder standing upright, in terms of high and low, good and bad. Life isn’t a vertical ladder. It’s multidimensional in nature. It unfolds in layers. All the people that we meet are equally high and low at various points. So honor the people that came along the way. They have given us this life as we see it now. We can avoid abusing these various steps on the ladder of life.

Acceptance of the uncontrollables in life and gratitude for what is done (ignoring what wasn’t done) save us from abusing the things, situations and people who have helped us live one way or the other. Respecting them is as good as respecting life.

The unknown graves of Sufism and a Sufi Shahjada

Humayun's tomb was built by his wife Hamida Bano Begum...I like this emperor because he died in his library, not the bloodied battlefield. And his mausoleum is a beautiful precursor to the great Taj Mahal. The grand beauty of Taj doesn't stand in abstract and doesn't sprout on its own. This modestly grand tomb is the inspiration behind the majestic Taj. You can say it's Taj Mahal in infancy. 

Made mostly of red sand stone, with thin marble inlays, it contains many structures (containing about 150 graves in 60 chambers) within the sprawling complex. It's a mosaic of architectural styles blending Rajput and Iranian styles such as jharokhe (windows), projections of the entrance, arches having elephant trunks, arches having circular medallions. Interestingly, there is a structure named Bu Halima, probably named after a famous Arab dancer. 

Had Dara Shikhon, the Sufi Shajada, become the emperor of India, he would have been a great Sufi, philosopher and King combined in the rarest of a rare combination. To understand Upnashids and translate them in Persian one has to be the master of soul as well as languages. I'm mesmerized looking at his massive commentary on Upanishads... This is something phenomenal... simply out of this world.

 

His life is a testament to the fact that it's possible to be 'a prince with esteemed spiritual values'. A unique royal personality, he tried to walk on the unorthodox bridge between the royal palace and the Sufi Khanqah. He possessed keen interest in Hindu thought and philosophy and in pursuit of that interest he commissioned translation of many Hindu sacred texts into Persian. 

 

A prolific writer he chronicled the life of 400 Sufi saints in his work Sufinat-ul-Aulia. In another work named Risala-i-Haq Nama he sets up a treatise on the path to the divine. In Hasanat-ul-Arifin he delves into Hindu thought through Ramayana and Krishna stories. Most importantly, his translation of Upanishads into Persian shows the depth of his soul and vastness of his mind. The beloved prince of the masses believed that Sufis and Hindus share the essential core of mystical truth.

 

Had he become the emperor of India, it would have been a different India altogether. But he was killed by his Islamic zealot brother Aurangzeb who ruled with sword on hardcore communal Islamic principles. The latter left enough communal mud for the current Hindu nationalists to wallow in it for political gain. The voice of sanity and secularism lies buried in one of the dozens of graves in the Humayun tomb complex, unrecognized, unsung. Auragzeb was very punitive towards his secular brother. He buried him in an unknown grave. The historians haven't so far been able to recognize the Sufi prince's cenotaph. I think his grave should be discovered and a separate memorial should be built in memory of this great philosopher prince whose life symbolizes our composite culture.  

Poets of the past....eight centuries back... it's an overpowering feeling to look at their work at the museum ...sooooo impressive...the great poet Amit Khusro's works at the museum.

Amir Khusro's Shirin-o-Khusro (1298-1301) deals with the tragic love story of Emperor Khusro and Armenian princess Shirin. It's a grand feeling to look at a copy at the museum. The ancient book decorated with gold borders in Nastaliq calligraphy by a master calligrapher and containing many illustrations by a master painter. 

Imagine Rumi's 25000 couplets drenched with universality for love and compassion. That was the time when Sufism, the jewel in the crown of Islam, was at its peak. Sufism that stood for unity of faith across various religions, Sufism that was liberal, Sufism that was mystical Islam's loveliest prayer to the Almighty. Unfortunately Sufism too was buried in an unknown grave like Prince Dara by the hardcore, fundamentalist Islam. It would have been a different world had Sufism become the public face of Islam.