The base chakra - muladhar

 

A tall building has a deep foundation. You cannot be incautious about the foundation if you want to bring about an element of indestructibility, be it buildings or personages. A building with deep foundation can withstand malevolent storms and inveterate earthquakes. So don’t be willful, sprightly, gliding and hastening in erecting the façade; don’t be just expansively bothered about the above-ground decorously gleaming ramparts. The creation should be firmly welded to the basics—the ground level and the sub-surface set of realities.

The energetic system of our physiognomy too is a vertical stack, a building of seven storeys—from muladhar to sahasrar. Muladhar is negatively judged for its basic tendencies and worldliness. I would call it a jaundiced view, something ungracious. Most of the spiritual traditions feel vexed about the root chakra and quizzically look down upon it. And glorify the higher chakras as the plausible pathways to divinity. The lowest chakra is taken as something incorrigible that will instinctively draw us back to the base-level survival. It seems to be dealt with too abstractedly. In divine facetiousness, the spiritualists have devised tools and techniques that work on the higher chakras for raising consciousness to a higher dimension of experiences, thoughts, emotions and perspectives.

Kundalini yoga is one of the most straightforward means to leapfrog onto a higher platform and align one’s journey in symmetry with the vibration of higher chakras. In this hurry the poor, boorish lowest chakra gets almost jeered at. In their rush they simply bypass the muladhar chakra lying in its obscure lodging at the perineum, taking it to be the carrier of covertly topical tendencies to pursue desires and hence getting trapped in the cycle of pain and suffering. They dart about in full enthusiasm to pursue the higher chakras leaving the muladhar chakra dismally neglected. They hurry past it, leaving it weak and go spiritedly building the upper storeys. There you have a tall building with garishly upholstered rooms on the higher floors with a weak, almost decrepit foundation. A tall building with shallow foundations seesawing to the ordinary ambiguities of life.

If you want to know the proof of a tall building collapsing due to shallow foundations, kindly consider the cases of accidental kundalini awakening. The structure isn’t prepared, no plan, just a chance whimsical thunderbolt of energy surging upwards. There is a thin line between the devilish and the divine. It’s the same energy—misdirected in the former and well-directed in the latter. A tall vertical shaft of huge energy with no physiological foundations—which the muladhar provides—to keep it channeled and rooted. The body precariously argues with the new, unfamiliar energetic waves cascading through the nervous system. It falls apart in utter bafflement; overheated by the hyperactivity of the hyper-charged nervous system, the physiological structure collapses and various diseases strike. Madness of mind and decimation of body are frequent outcomes.

It happens simply because the body’s structure isn’t in alignment with this level of sudden nervous activation in the brain. There is a pungent discord in the nervous system. It’s too much for the system; just like a simple indoor 240 V cable suddenly gets a current of 10,000 V. Of course it cascades thorough the system wolfishly. It will burn, let off sparks. It capriciously grizzles the nervous system that is simply sufficient for the monotonous and expectedly tedious load of mundane life. It becomes a sneering hussy trying to even break the impenetrable silence deep in your being.

We crawl on the ground. We come from earth. We carry her in us as the most predominant element. But we look to akash for salvation; the akash whose just a minute portion is present in our energetic anatomy. We try to build a top-heavy tower with a narrow base. It falls. No wonder, the majority of the people on the spiritual path are more depressed than the simple folks grounded on earth.

So, o thou spirituality aspirants, work on your muladhar, strengthen and solidify your base, your foundation, so that your energetic tower withstands the thunderbolt of elevated consciousness. Bow down to mother earth; walk on naked feet; eat a well-balanced diet of satva-rajas-tamas food to nourish yourself with groundedness; do yoga, pranayam and plain physical exercises in balance; read scriptures but also go to watch movies for light-hearted, feel-good entertainment; read holy books but also romantic fiction; get into relationships; laugh when you feel like smiling only; be a creator. Let all this be on the ground and not in the heaven. Plug into the socket of divine possibilities for drawing your share of energy and harness it. Just keep working on your foundation, your base. Mother existence will Herself take care of your tower above.

The sultry charm of autumn

 

Why should one’s soul be in love just with the spring? All seasons have their unique offerings. Look at the lovely autumnal surrender. The trees shedding the extras for a walk through the cold winters. The fallen leaves must be murmuring a lot. Listen to their story.

These are old leaves rich with age, gladly abandoning their hold on the branches and falling down with the cool breeze. This is a beautiful version of what we call death, but which is just a transformation in the eternal cycle.

Autumn is basically a collective phenomenon of detachment. Stand in the mist of such mass-scale leafy drops; detachment almost raining with the leaves. Make the most of it; listen to their murmuring rustle of joyfully quitting the stage of life.

And when they quit life with such a soothing rustling song, it shows how fully they have lived.

The fuller the life, the less scary is death. Death then doesn’t appear like an abstract entity, something cut off from life. It then appears like life is shifting to a new level, a new dimension. It then gives a glimpse of a continuity, not something like a dead end.

Videos and thoughts can’t catch such a phenomenal experience. It’s like we try to catch air in our fist by clenching our fingers and it slips out. But open the hand and it’s embraced by the all-encompassing presence of air around. These are the moments when we are totally open with our vulnerability and innocence—like the open hand—and are embraced by a larger presence, undefined and unbound, which hands over a portion of its freedom to us and we feel joyful.

My slice of autumn has a flowery color to it in my yard. There is a flowery drizzle in place of falling leaves. I have collected a huge pile on my table. This is just a portion of the flowers that drizzle in a flowery, scented rain from the two parijat trees in the yard. Scented, dewy, flowery nights; and the rain of flowers in the cool mornings. With so many flowers around, no wonder I find my spirit dancing, intoxicated with the beauty of the countless blooms and the scented breeze.

A musty twilight in a village

 

As the day moves towards twilight on musty September evenings, and most of the birds already settled home with the setting sun, the wire-tail swallows go swiftly scouring the sky for midges, fleas, mosquitoes, dragonflies and other flying insects. The insects come carousing in the air in late evening. The swallow couple has successfully raised their chick. I see the three of them flying around. It has been a few weeks since it came out of the mud nest. In a bigger flock it might have started its independent life by this time. But the days of big flocks are gone. So in the grease and grime of survival, it sticks to its parents forming a perfect modern day nuclear family.

They have the word ‘wire’ in their name, so they have every right to consider the electricity wires and cables in front of the house as theirs. I usually see them perched on these cables. In late evenings a shikra also comes and takes a sniper-type patient stance on the wires as the tired day is slowly moving towards the twilight. It mostly looks for any casual gecko on the walls. But its presence is objectionable to the zealously roving swallows. ‘It’s our wire!’ they chip-chip angrily.

They can maneuver their flight like fighter jets, or rather fighter jets imitate them. They pester the small hawk, taking advantage of this aerial skill. They come chip-chipping in consternation, almost bang into him, take sharp turns, follow puzzling curves and fly away only to come suddenly with a big surprise and shock element— necessary for a dogfight midair—from another direction. They dash in from different angles, sometimes attack together in perfect dogfight formation.

Even their kid’s courage gets buoyed up as it sees the hawk perplexed and dozing to avoid collision with its parents. It also takes an attacking sortie and passes near the hunter’s head with reasonable accuracy for a beginner. The parents must be happy that their child is learning the art of life, which is basically survival at this level of existence.

They have botched the hunter’s crouching stance and hunting prospects. It leaves their wire petulantly letting off a shrill hawking sound and flies off to a place where it can hunt in peace.

As a sultry day hands over the ashy grey baton to the twilight, the swallow family is chipping away mosquitoes and fleas in swishy merriment. When they dive so effortlessly, dip easily, turn around and change directions it makes me feel as if they are in very jolly mood. A kind of merry and genial version of air itself. But of course the hawk would think them to be a nuisance.

Flying colors

 

It’s a gift to have a blue tiger butterfly among your peregrina blossoms. The status of the bearer of these crimson clusters of little flowers lies between a plant and a tree—a shrub. But give physical care and emotional support and it turns out to be your tree. A small tree but always smiling with its bright flowers. It’s perennially in bloom.

Throughout the monsoons and even later lemon-green butterflies have been feasting among the blooms. But today we have a visitor—a blue tiger butterfly. It has lovely black patterned with bluish spots on the wings. Butterflies can directly absorb sunlight on their wings to get autonomous flight. And we still boast of the solar panels in our satellites! The dark areas on its wings enable greater absorption of heat and fly with ease.

The blue tiger butterfly is bigger than the lemon-green butterflies who I think consider the peregrina tree as their residential tree. It bullies them across the clusters of flowers. It wants to have the entire little tree to itself. It just jumps into the flower where a lime-green butterfly is having tea-time snack. In this airy scuffle many ripe flowers drizzle—little drops born of a fight among the butterflies. Surprisingly it’s successful in driving them away. There it has the entire set of flowers all to herself and enjoys its time, flying from cluster to cluster. A bullying butterfly. But looks beautiful.

An evening on the solitary trail

 

Chance seeds and incidental sprouts

 

Brother, whenever you fulminate with pride, remember that we are mere chance seeds thrown around. If we land up in a corner where sunshine, soil, wind and rain help us germinate better, it’s sheer luck. Accept it with gratitude. Some other seed landed on a stony barren terrain, some in a bog, some in a drain, some on a waste dump in a slum. These seeds carried the same potential as you. They just landed in saddening, squabbling, feverish conditions. The potential withered in the womb of germination. They got stunted, fragile, poor, disadvantaged and enchained by crippling circumstances.

We are the products of nature’s unpremeditated plans—the open-ended process; the unplanned plan that progresses with fixed laws of nature. I know the flippant rhetorician in you will scoff at the proposition that we are the off-shoots of chance seeds. I know you have been customized to believe that the mankind has to forge his destiny; that we create our circumstances. But mind you, this boasting loquacity is simply a chance given to you by favorable winds.

One seed falls in squalor; the other in fertile soil—isn’t it already a favor to the latter? When you start acknowledging the role of so many circumstantial factors in shaping your better destiny—your birth in a better family, meeting supportive people, being present at an opportune time, favorable winds blowing, being healthy in your natural constitution—you will feel gratitude for what you have received. Once you feel gratitude, you will see the positives hidden behind the apparently tough situations you have faced in life. If the skin has a boil, you will be thankful that at least the bone inside isn’t broken. And despite all the routine struggles of life, you will accept that at least you are alive today, while so many died on this very day.

The death of a tree

 

Thus speaks a tree that has been killed:

 

They uprooted me. There was a murderous glint in their eyes. Pulled me out with wild enthusiasm. My spine, my main trunk snapped. My lungs shattered and dusted. My leafy head grounded. My fingers, my branches, chopped off. But my legs, my roots, had the sky to look forward to. So I pushed my roots into the sky. That would be my earth now. And they can’t rob me of it. Because my roots will grow into the invisible airy fibers. A reverse tree in this steely straight world. Or a straight tree in an upside world. Choose what you prefer to say it. But I’m a floating one definitely. I can just go like a cloud from place to place; laughing at human follies. Sad for them; joyful for myself.

The maker

 

At the basic level of survival we walk inwards, to shrink, to give more concrete shape to our interests. And the protective walls around us—that we inherit collectively and also that we make individually—look like our defense ramparts. Yes, to begin with we need defensive walls. These are necessary because we are born so weak and vulnerable. The initial yolk of our existence needs the protective eggshells. From that we acquire more specific chick shape. But doesn’t the shell has to be broken by the chick to grow further, acquire wings and fly to live life fully? If not, that same protective wall becomes a barrier, a trap for death.

Usually our protective walls, which we naturally needed to begin with, stay with us. And we continue—out of habit—erecting more individual walls even when we no longer need them around us. So instead of dismantling the walls we keep strengthening them. The foolish prisoner who works to consolidate the prison walls. Then these walls become a barrier, a trap for stunted growth; shackles in our legs; rings in our wings—to stop us from flying and maximizing the full potential of our seed of existence.

To become a maker, one then needs to be a breaker of these barriers. The eggshell that incubated us, but now needs to be broken and discarded. Be a grand laborer holding the hammer. Strike forcefully. Break the redundant shell. Come out and make life like an artist.

The new man

 

A tree sings through the birds sitting on it. Smiles through its flowers. Doles out charity through its fruits. Becomes a loving host with the shade under its canopy and the nesting space among its branches. When the wind blows, the murmurs and rustle of its leaves are the words filling the silence. And silence drips from its rustling words. The cut marks on its trunk are the eyes; deep seas full of unshed tears; vast stretches of water. The waters sometimes storm-driven by adverse winds; sometimes calm little ripples gently pushed by the breeze of sympathetic touch on its wound by a poetic heart.

In losing forests, lakes, pastures and rivers, we are losing a big part of our own self. We are turning strangers to our own self; weird shapes building within us. No wonder we seem like ghosts to each other. And the ghosts hardly listen to the message of love and peace.

The mankind seems mired in the bog of liquid melancholy. The species of living ghosts. Shame loaded over their skin in thick layers, giving them a sturdy armor, a shield against light, truth and openness. Lies and falsehood pile up in the body imprisoned in the armor. A junkyard.

Dear reader, walking among them, slowly losing to melancholy, losing light and hope, your greatest fears will scare you. The slurs shouted at the top of their voice don’t hit that hard as do the silent hate, accusations and judgments pouring out of their eyes. Don’t just back off and run away. If you enter the ghostly cave and manage to keep walking, it will take you to an opening leading to unimaginable freedom.

A walk in the town park

 

I’m early in the town on some errand and have some time to kill—as they say—before the shops and offices open. The air still has some languorous contentment after the night rest before the awkward exuberance of the day shoves it alertness into the fray; thus notifying everyone to be ready for the engaging statistics of a busy, crowded day.

An inspiration to make time instead of killing it sprawls its arms quite expressively. I decide to use the opportunity offered by a fine little park by a road. It’s a long rectangular park with a newly laid chocolate-colored walking track. One complete round roughly measuring one kilometer. A senior citizen is walking quite briskly. The ruddy flush on his chubby face show hard determination. The shambling strides with bandy legs carry unabated zeal for an active life. The sight pumps enough inspiration in my legs to start walking and make time rather than kill it.

This is Monday late morning, the monsoons resting after many rainy days. Someone passes with knitting brows and gritting teeth for a bashful stroll. Good way to spend energy instead of pouring it upon someone as scorn. A woman is walking with impatient unmeasured strides. A girl looks tipsy but curt and agile—drunk with youth. A young boy with jaunty strides. An old man going sedately mindful of the lack of axle grease in the wheels of life at this stage. A middle-aged man looks amiably, another stares distrustfully and guardedly. Well, enough of spying on others. Let me mind my business and start walking instead of just standing and staring at people.

The leafy trees on the sides of the track and over the narrow length of the park full with green luxuriance, almost shading the stylish cast iron lampposts. There is a busy road on the one side; a housing block the other way with its caged-in backyards to undo encroachments by the man- and monkey-kind. The long narrow rectangular strip has overgrown grass. Assured of not being flummoxed by a predator, a rat is out on a stroll too. Seeing me coming it scampers off with a snooty frown and hides in its hole by the base of a long mercury light pole. A monkey sitting on a branch stares out of the corner of its eyes to ensure if I carry some eatables, and if yes how to waylay me at some isolated spot. A few squirrels playing on the track, flicking their tails and fidgeting coquettishly. One flounces this and that way, wrangling with uncertainty, a chance juggler or acrobat. I have to stop in order to avoid treading over it. One angry type runs with me in a retorting and obstinate manner as if accusing me of accidently barging into his girlfriend.

An injured monkey, its mischief all crumpled, is thankfully well behaved as I pass just a couple of feet from it. But a mama monkey is gripped with tension and mocks a cunning attack to help her son lick mossy water from a puddle nearby. Another one surreptitiously stares into my pocket. I put my hand on it to save my phone from getting stolen. He seems a hard-boiled character and slyly follows me with a jagged, jerkily swaddled walk.

A friendly Labrador is walking leisurely, while its pet father is exercising with tongue in a political debate. State elections are just three weeks away and thus consume lots of tongue energy among the masses. This I would call the real slaughter of time. I would prefer anything but not this. It makes me very miserable after political talks. Why kill time while the politicians reach the glittering zenith of fame, money and power, while we remain the same despite all the promises bombarded upon us during the election times?

A young boy is running. I really appreciate this—a kind of real polished insignia of youth. It’s better than moonlighting the nights with the phones and getting into internecine struggles over girls. Good going boy, first make yourself and then give yourself a break.

A young girl, student most probably, is sitting on a bench, surfing her mobile phone, caught in the thrilling myths of love, lust and growing up. Completely ignorant of the fresh air and the nice walking track, no wonder she gives a sickly feel. The heady smell of youth haloed in mist.

There are love-birds on a stone bench. Her dress, blue kurta and black salwar, clearly shows that she is a private security guard at some establishment. They have time till their office opens. She is sitting, he is lying; his head in her lap, surfing the phone; she rummaging her fingers through his hair. He must have used a nice shampoo this morning. I assume it to be an extramarital affair. Both of them look married but husband and wife would hardly have enough spirit and love left to allow it to spill over for a public display of affection on a Monday morning. Well, let them have their bleary ecstasy among all the clammy and artless folds of life.

A man is working in the open gym, adroitly ferreting out bundles of energy to pump into thick muscles. With edifying alacrity another man is walking backwards, looking this and that side to peer behind to avoid collision. He moves steadily and ardently. I hope he hasn’t been punished by his wife for some mischief to go lapping backwards as atonement. Swings and slides are resting. The children must already be in their schools wearily waiting for the classes to end and then feel the seething chill of freedom on the closing time. The swings will be creaking in the evening probably.

There is an overweight pulpy group of men in their fifties and above. Their nerves wrung taut. Garrulous debate, flushed faces, ominously forcing their points. They arduously drag on, stamping nuggets of their political truth, which is in proportion to deceit and falsehood. Among them one dried up wheelchair-bound old man looks flummoxed and puzzled. He is resignedly listening to the excited talk. Thank god there is national flag on the top of the round open pavilion nearby to remind them that they are all Indians and need not break their heads over different political flags.

The traffic is light on the road so I can hear the pleasant twittering of birds. A merry mynah. A vexed tailorbird. Beseeching, imploring notes of a koel. Impish guttural cooing of a pigeon. Rockchats with their morning-time pleasantries. Enchanted blubbering of a babbler. A crow cawing with uncertain pride.

A short old man takes a pinch of snuff to boost his moral. He is the cleaner with his rickshaw, doing his work gently with nice focus, piling his rickshaw cart with fallen leaves and other littler that uncaring people would always fail to put in the waste bins so prominently placed in the park. He walks amiably, almost with evocative courtesy, placing his steps with a age-born limp, dragging his cart around the park. He need not talk. His work itself is a big statement—the best use of time anyone in the park is having at the moment.

A plump woman in peacock blue salwar-kurta topped with a white lab-coat. Her broom is tied to the end of a long stick. She is seriously working, cleaning the dirt, fallen leaves and litter. I wish she had the rights to hit the political debaters with her long broom and remind them the purpose of the park—an avenue to shed some fat from their bulging paunches.

I walk for about 45 minutes and thus make time instead of killing it.

Grounded divinity

 We have created so much electricity that the stars have lost their right to light the earth with their soft, gentle, twinkling smiles. The night sky seems lost. Maybe the sky now looks at the earth for inspiration—to come down, not rise.

The glass is half full

 

A woman has lots of issues and grudges with life. Her life isn’t too bad; it’s defined by the routine Indian lower middle class challenges. But she puts herself under lots of stress while recounting all the lamenting stuff. I hear her discussing the tale of woes with her female neighbors so many times. I feel like gently reminding her, ‘It could have been easily worse than this. You could have been an Afghani woman, deprived of colors from your clothing, robbed of the sight of your own hair, deprived of the freedom to walk, talk, exclaim, look the way you like.’ But I don’t think she would get this, so no point in telling her all this.

Expectation

 

Overall, the sum of pain, suffering, unhappiness, agony, tragedies in life—both individual and collective as a species—is far greater than the sum of happiness and joy. Happiness is almost like a few diamonds in a deep coal mine; the shying crystals hidden deep in the womb of tons of mud, rock, earth, stones and coal. But that’s why we dig a mine. And exactly for the same reason we live; we dig the deep mine of life unearthing pain and miseries to finally reach the few crystals of joy. We walk through the darkest pits because we expect that life will someday get filled with color and joy.

Building stamina with the health food of faith

 

Given a choice I would just lie down all days, months and years, simply reading, studying, writing, learning. But this much of enormity of nothingness at the physical level will see the body rusting like an unused car in a yard turning to junk. So it’s better to move, shake, stretch, bend—chalti ka nam gadi hai, as they say. There are people to whom physical exertion doesn’t come naturally. They can take a detour to physical activity by setting up a target. For example, going for hiking and trekking in the mountains. So obviously you have to prepare. I mix another ingredient, faith. Since there are many high-altitude pilgrimage places in the Himalayas, I routinely plan to go on pilgrimages. So it serves multiple purposes.

I’m a Ganga Ma devotee, so going to Gaumukh nurtures my faith and the preparations to trek at an altitude of 14500 feet serve the body. It forces me to abandon books for some time and do some exercises. I won’t enter a gym unless an assault rifle is held against my head. Too much muscular intimidation for a poetic man there. I get scared. So I have my own exercise alternative—walking up and down the open stairway (22 steps) leading from the courtyard to the terrace. A nice cardio exercise, good for heart, lungs and leg muscles, all key players in mountain trekking, be it for pilgrimage or plain adventure. So here I go and move up and down the stairs. Slowly lumbering up, gently clambering down, the breathing getting more labored with the passage of minutes, the heart beating faster, the leg muscles tightening and exercise-born sweat emerging on the skin of a poetic man! It’s the eighth wonder brothers and sisters! I straggle up and down for almost half an hour. The drops of sweat fall on the steps. One, two, three… I count them. They look like big milestones of my effort. The little drizzle of my exertion.

A reconciliation

 

He is sitting with a smug expression; in full acceptance of one’s situation, which brings restfulness to life quite naturally. He is sitting on the roof of the tall new house of my neighbor overlooking my low but resolutely sprawled out old country house. Looking down upon me, eh! The world below is busy with routine exhaustless rambling. Despite the unrestrainable threads of mischief in his species’ DNA, he hasn’t yet broken the terms of ceasefire. No slimy gamut of mischief in my garden from his side; no detestable shouts at his mere sight from my side. Both sides contributing their respective share to peace. The best part about investing in peace is that it gets you the handsome most returns.

He is all focus at some point on the distant roofs. Men will be men—he is either eying a lady or some rival. I offer him a fresh ghee-smitten chapatti on the window slab of my terrace room. He looks at it just once and continues with his stare at the more coveted objects. My ego feels bruised and lacerated. Peace is very fragile and ego a hard stone. But I would advise one to keep its glass façade because it allows lovely sunshine into the room of your existence. So one ought to pay even extra to maintain peace. It will still be better than breaking the glass and again revamp, replenish and reconstitute the entire façade. So I quash the germs of malignity, gulp down insult and move from the place, feeling bad that he doesn’t even look at my gift. ‘Maybe he isn’t hungry,’ I think.

I return a few minutes later to take away the chapatti so that the visiting feral cat could have it. There he comes hurriedly but with confident ease. I stand at a little distance. He still keeps the ceasefire and doesn’t snarl or growl. I stand hospitably and he takes away the chapatti as if it was his right and my duty. I think he is just putting up attitude, thinking that if he instantly jumped to my offer, he will appear like a beggar. So he takes it in a very casual way; as if it doesn’t matter to him at all. This is what I term as attitude.

A slow-paced day

 

Life is happy and good because I receive a big carton of pears as gift. Juicy pears enter even the most desolate parts and fill life with joy. But during the transport many big juicy ones have turned pulpy. Joy is never complete; it comes with conditions attached. Here the condition is that I have to ignore the loss. But there is an option to use these partially spoilt ones—instead of throwing them, I use them as ceasefire table items.

It’s Tuesday and the head monkey is visiting the locality with his family. His clan is bigger than the last time I remember. There is new addition to his harem. He is watchful as his clan eats pulpy pears. One little one is trying to catch butterflies around the peregrina flowers.

Fed with pears and the ceasefire still more reinvigorated I am going on my bike. I advise against being too bothered about the side happenings on the road. One has to be very focused on the job. One has to save one’s bones amidst the thundering prancing of the travelling bravehearts. But some things will always fall in your zone of vision. You can’t avoid them even with your brain all occupied in reaching safe amidst all the roaring runnels and gurgling gullies of driving passion on the road.

A massively fat policeman taking a lift on a slender splendor bike. The slim bike grumbles, the thin boy mumbles. I can’t see the boy at all as I catch up with them from behind.

Shri Bansidham Gaushala Society (Reg.) written on a gau seva banner at the back of an e-rickshaw. The narrow and longish vehicle purring to the destination with chapattis, grass and donated food.

A lone quail trying to run and cross the road, making several failed attempts as the vehicles keep rushing past. Mr. Quail, why don’t you fly a little and use your wings for a short flight? You will get trampled or get a two-wheeler guy tumbling on the road.

The infant lying on a cloth on the grass by the road under a forlorn acacia tree, and his/her three years old brother tending, keeping a watch over the baby. Already into the household duties! Their parents, the migrant Bihari couple, working on a construction site nearby.

A lapwing crushed on the road. The feathery carcass. I stop and as I pick it up to give it some dignity of a humble burial nearby, I hear the pittering, warning notes, maybe from its partner. A bird has little blood; it’s more of flying spirit, airiness.

I reach my destination, the place of enlightenment of a local saint. I disturb the watery meditation of a fish as I step into the pond to take a bath. It springs up in surprise and panic, missing my nose by a whisker, going several feet high in the air and lands at a safe place. I nearly fall down.

The saint’s soul reimburses me for the little shock as I, by chance, happen to enter his another ashram on my way back. The cook-cum-caretaker is a kindly man. He shows me the place—the guru’s resting place, meditation rooms, and serves hot milk and sweet petha. He seems a lovely human being doing tapasya through seva. Seva is a very noble form of tapasya. We hold a very nice discussion about the life and times of the saint who shed his body about two and half decades back. His fragrance still lingers and many take solace from it.

Hvaldimir

 

Sometimes fame would knock at your door beseechingly even if you aren’t seeking it and happen to be a whale. Fuddled with babbling public fancy, the strains of fame tugged at a particular whale’s fins. The animated aquatic fans celebrated the whale as ‘Russian Spy Whale’. The year before, it created a crisply sparkled ruckus in Norway as the government cautioned the people against any contact with the whale seen in a fjord near Oslo. It jangled the ears of common people like those of sleuths and spies. It was christened and given a name, Hvaldimir (Hval—Norwegian word for whale, combined with Russian name Vladimir).

As the people plentifully regaled at the sight, the whale also—quite surprisingly—looked at ease in human company. The beluga whale, initially spotted in 2019, stood at 14 feet in length and weighed 2700 pound. She had a harness apparently meant to carry a spy camera. The harness carried a marketing ‘equipment’ from a St. Petersburg company. So the people conspiratorially speculated that it was a Russian spy whale on a mission. Although Russia didn’t make any ownership claim.

Belugas generally inhabit far off frozen Arctic waters. But this one seemed to like human company. The people got fascinated by its sight. The white whale was known to stay in the inner Oslo fjord near a densely populated area. Then one day recently they found her dead. The news is heartbreaking for some people who had become its fans.

The creator

 

Life invincible. A crack in the concrete wall. Some chance seed of a flower lands on the barely visible space in the crack. The rains follow. The dew forms pearls on the petals. The chance seed makes the most of what has been given to it and germinates. There you have a little plant high on the wall waving in the breeze like a banner of life in a zone where life has no business to thrive. The plant then proclaims victory and you have a little flower on the top of this tiny plant.

The triumph of life, the urge to manifest from the unknown to the known. Is the flower separate from the stone? No. It’s mere extension of the stone from its cracked lip, its mouth open to the possibilities. I would say it’s a smile on the stone’s lips.

Even in its barren womb, the stone has the probability and potential for life. All it needs is a little crack, some drops of rain and a chance seed to transform that potential into reality. The stone smiles. The flower isn’t something separate from it. It’s merely an extension of it.

Manifestation is just a set of probabilities coming together from the infinite, ever evolving fabric of potential and probabilities. And of course it needs a set of appreciating eyes to witness this leela. It just needs some chance factors to acquire a structured pattern from the random factors sprinkled around like stars in the sky to complete one more little circle within the greatest circle ever; things going round and round; little cycles within the bigger cycles and still bigger ones to follow; going so big to again fall back into a point; nothingness and everythingness just the same.

Colors of beauty emerge from the stony ramparts of struggle, just like our very own journey through various challenges. There is an inherent inspiration in the cosmic fabric for this transformation. What drives this change, one may ask. Well, to the seeker of change, be it in terms of technical success or simple artistic evolution, inspiration comes from all corners. It’s basically hope. An assurance that life settles back to normal after the chaos; that a new day comes after the night; that lovely spring blooms after horrid winters; that the same people who mourn over the dead will be smiling on new births; that tears of loss lose value in the face of a smile after success; that even dead trunks give live shoots.

I know it sounds poetic but there is an essential core of inspiration; a creative urge to renew and extend the present status. I think it’s in sync with this cosmic expansion. All of us are drawn to expand the horizon in our unique ways in the fields of science, technology, medicine, arts, philosophy and much more.   

The picnicking elephant

 

Gajraj turned uproariously musth and became disgruntled and disapproving of the human bondage. He broke chains and ropes with immaculate show of hormone-boosted power, and tipsy on love-booze escaped into the forest with his six women—Chameli, Kaveri, Suheli, Pawankali, Kiran and Sulochna. They escaped into the solicitous greenery of the rhino reserved area.

Gajraj is a trained elephant in Dudhwa National Park. Basically he is a nice guy, cordially tagging around the forest officials in fulfillment of his duties, using his power with a well-checked iciness. But on entering the turbulent musth phase, he turned growling and fidgety; became forbiddingly aggressive and broke the shackles for love in free woods.

There are about 25 camp elephants in the national park for tourism, patrolling and conflict management in the zone of human-animal shared boundaries. Ingeniously timing the event he set out on the eve of the Indian Independence Day, making a big statement in favor of unchecked love in free woods.

The pachyderms are stationed at rhino rehabilitation area in Sonaripur range, a pristine 27 sq km expanse of sal and damar trees, nine lakes and mouthwatering grasslands. The area has 46 one-horned rhinos. I think he must have pushed them out of his playground in his state of heightened aggression born of increased hormonal activity in his system.

Gajraj was brought here in 2008 from Jaldapara wildlife sanctuary to keep a watch on the rhinos and patrol the area. He was ten then. He must have been on quarrelsome terms with Kamalkali because she didn’t go with him on this escapade. Sulochna and Chameli were his childhood friends because they had arrived with him at the park.

Dudhwa tiger reserve officials panicked with the elephants’ disappearance. Free love always meets a hoarsy retort. Love will always have its opponents, so the teams of forest workers, drone cameras and mahouts set out to capture the fugitives. A WWF team also arrived to assist the search operations. The tiger reserve spans an area of 2201 sq km richly imbued with greened freedom. A good space for the tremulous blizzard of elephant love. A zone of solitudinal sweet sighs as opposed to the stinking muck of captivity.

The park shares border with Nepal and if the lovebirds enter the neighboring country, it would be very difficult to get them back because elephants don’t carry passports and Nepal might say they are their elephants. They are spotted after a couple of days. But just two days of love in the woods with his harem aren’t sufficient for Gajraj, so he chases away the rescue teams. The teams kept pursuing them for the next two weeks. He turned his usual well-behaved self after a fortnight of triumphant and unhindered love in the woods. The love-satiated pachyderm was calm now when the rescuers reached him and escorted the runaway king and his six queens back to the camp.

Sizzling September

 

As August hands over the baton to September, you have a fluidic canvas of blue, grey, white and black—loafs of clouds floating to give sunshine and shade almost alternately. Some naughty little cloud wets the cloth-lines even though there is sunshine.

One can even beat one’s loneliness by looking at the shifting shapes and turn it into solitude.

After a brief spell of rain if you care to look among the fallen leaves under a tree, you may come across a dead butterfly. She too was a colorful flying leaf on the tree of mother existence.

The beauty of September rain is that it doesn’t upbraid you directly like the previous months when the monsoon was at its prime. The clouds cantering towards conclusion, the sunshine capering about them forming a frivolous game. Then suddenly a brief drizzle comes to wet everything. And before you realize you see the clouds drifting away; they have many interesting shapes and silver edges; leaving behind a green world full of freshly bathed leaves gleaming under the bright sun. The butterflies come out again. Sometimes you get rain and sunshine side by side. You cannot help gasping with ravishing delight because the rain wasn’t expected. But someone gets disconcerted because the clothes on the line are wet again. The September rain is in trilling accompaniment with mischief—old season’s young spirit.

One such naughty spell of rain catches a blacksmith gypsy woman off guard. She is selling plastic ware. Iron-forging days are over. It’s a world of plastic and fiber. The mass-produced items hardly leave any space for them to forge small iron implements and utensils in their little furnaces. So they trade plastic now. She still wears their traditional dress. But they are clearly struggling. It’s impossible to survive as a wandering nomad these days. You need to dig your survival well at a congested place. They are trying to move faster by changing their bullock carts into bike-rickshaws, their sides having a cheap imitation of the nail artistry that those sturdy carts used to have. The big caravans changed to lonesome nomads driving the tattered bike-rickshaw piled with meager possessions and the family. But this swifter movement isn’t enough. So they now turn squatters in urban areas at narrow strips of public land along the roads. They now expect the government to accept them as the citizens of India with identity cards, documents and some entitlements.

On a September evening, we have a brief but heavy downpour. Then the clouds part. The sun plays with clouds in the west. One ought to keep one’s eyes ready for a rainbow in the east on such occasions. If you are lucky you will have your multihued arc in the sky. And coming across a rainbow cheers you up; just like finding a peacock feather on the ground towards which both a king and a pauper will run with equal enthusiasm. The fact is we are seeking colors. So if you don’t get a rainbow on such a rainy evening, the clouds will make up for it. White, orange, red, yellow, grey blue, black—you have the entire range as the setting sun peeks through the rain-soaked veil.

The peacocks are into love games in September. Lots of dancing and you should keep an eye for their love-drops—master-colored feathers. If you find one, rush to grab it before anyone else, and hold it; it’s an asset in many ways.

A bulbul and a sparrow are having a tiff on a wire. The swallows are angry that the little hawk, shikra, is here. They want him out. A squirrel hurries in dragging a strip of rag. It goes up a few feet on the tree and then takes a pause to roll the strip into a ball to crawl up easily and then adorn her house with the new decoration. But while she rushed in, she scared an adolescent gecko. The latter simply panicked at the sight. The leaves drip due to the shower they recently received. Thus passes a rainy September evening. All this is so familiar, yet so-so different.