A pair of cockroaches in the festival din

 

A huskily building twilight losing itself to the imponderable quest of the artificial lights in the town market. The whinnying tenor of shoppers conveying some oppressive clanging even among the festival chimes. This is Diwali eve. A dissolute sense surreptitiously serenading somewhere in the crowd’s eyes.

Shop fronts are glittering with lighted strings. Almost a hemorrhage of consumerism. Allurement lurking precipitately from tables, shelves, display cases and shopkeepers’ faces. A plethora of presentiment. Colossal and gigantic stream to buy and sell. The worshippers of gold gathered in swanky jewelry temples. Most of the hypnotized people bow with prodigious prostration to gold.

The sellers seem invincible today. And the consumers sleepwalking with some unknown enfeeblement of senses. Sweet-makers with mounds of sweets; offering sugar lumps against life’s embittering experiences. The collective enthusiasm going with colossus undulations among the crowd. Almost sepulchral sovereignty of profiteering leer. The crowd in intangible trepidation. It’s the occasion to look up and move forward. Guttural, hoarse hiccups of the consumerist, capitalist desire.

Lots of firecrackers selling openly despite the ban. Spicy street food stalls catching tongues with the adroit endeavor of a chameleon catching a fly.

There are insects on the dirty ground below, under new boots, sneakers and fancy heeled footwear. And there is a bigger pair of insects, let’s say bigger beetles or cockroaches. A father cockroach and a child cockroach. Victims of destiny’s selectivity in turning some fates to cockroaches and others to earthly gods. As the bigger world of festival eve humans goes with a burgeoning whoosh, the father cockroach broods over the baby cockroach that is lying like a little bundle of garbage.

The father cockroach’s clothes are so dirty and hair so wild, shabby and unkempt as to make him some humanoid form of mud in the drain. The child cockroach is lying on a dirty cloth. His head bandaged, yellow antiseptic visible at places. The feet are also bound in dirty dressing. In all probability he is a made-up patient, opiated and dumped by the father to gather some survival grains of human sympathy in the dust. A tragic little brigandage. They have made themselves so dirty and stinking that nobody dressed festively would dare and touch the child to verify the truth and would just throw a coin to move away from the ill-fated dirty cockroaches.         

A creation is bigger than the creator

 

I’m smaller than what I create—writing, art, good deeds, smile, positivity, architecture, innovation, discovery. Because I’m just a facilitator, a conduit, a mere humble means to a little end. I represent something indirectly; a mere reflector of it—light. But I’m bigger than my wrongs, moral lapses, negativity, hate, greed and harm. Because now I directly represent something—darkness. I’m liable to be judged by others (and by myself) as the bearer (not just representative) of that darkness.

Eternal nothingness

 

Anything can be written, thought, felt, analyzed and interpreted about an empty page. Its emptiness is the limitless, infinite womb of creation. Its nonbeing is the soul of the entire substance of being. The word is an echo of the wordless. The noise is a mere chiming announcement on the timeless clock of silence, intimating the eternal presence of silence. A buzzing, stirring, musical rhapsody—the sound of the soundless.

The manifestation is a mere indicator of the presence of the eternal, unknowable void. All that is perceptible to our senses is merely a motley bunch of thoughts, forms and shapes from the pool of a tangible wider wit, which itself is a known ripple on the outer margin of the unknown, the latter itself just a corner of the unknowable.

Cosmos, creation and chance

 

Do you believe in guardian angels? A man of faith will say yes; a man of science and logic might say no; and many others may just shrug with indecisiveness. A man of faith has belief in a beneficent external force, existing around to protect him, his interests and facilitate his journey. His belief would keep the thread intact despite many contrary, adverse experiences. So that is basically his inner force which keeps the little lamp of faith from being blown off by the winds of fate. This is a very sublime form of karma, a kind of invisible foundation on which, as a natural consequence, his physical world will manifest.

An atheist—but a practical, logical and confident man—carries the same light and dream. The only difference is that he needs more tangible proofs of being in control of things as a doer, as a manager of his affairs. He needs to pacify his reasoning mind to be assured of his safety and goals. Nothing wrong with that. The man of faith has lamp in his soul; the man of logic has a physical torch in his hand. But both of them have a source of light with them to move ahead.

One might sometimes consider gratitude to the guardian angels for putting us in a situation where we have more chances to life than the millions of deprived people. There are people caught in slums, genocides, civil wars, climatic catastrophes. Gratitude allows us to be more in love with our self as we are.

Just consider this point. Most of the seeds have almost the same potential to grow and expand to luxuriance. And if there is some variance in fertility within, doesn’t it prove that again it is a chance factor because tell me of a seed that had a choice to determine its fertility or some patronizing force that bestowed more fertility to some seeds at the cost of others.

The seeds are thrown randomly. One falls in a sewage drain and is gone as sludge; another falls on a barren patch and is eaten by dust; one lands in a swamp and rots; one gets trampled under the feet; one is eaten by a bird; one germinates but wilts under the harsh sun; one grows luxuriantly but is eaten by a goat; one grows well but suffers an infestation; and one grows to be a beautiful tree. The last one is almost a miracle of random favorable circumstances, which allowed the seed’s potential to bloom fully.

The chances of disorder and chaos, of things going wrong are open-ended and countless. Every individual has millions of his very own sets of probable things going wrong. The mere fact of survival is a miracle in the face of so many undoing probabilities. And if we happen to be lucky enough to creep out because of favorable chance factors accept it with grace and gratitude. This I consider to be our set of guardian angels—the set of protective probabilities that allow us this journey in body, thoughts and emotions even though so many things can go wrong every moment. Bow down to it because you just can’t imagine how lucky you are in this form while massive stars are getting sucked by black holes and galaxies are breaking apart across the cosmos.

Autumnal charms of ceasefire

 

Mid October—a season of mild acclamations by both summer and winter. An inexpressible, unspeakable dewy delight when nature seems so restful and poised, almost balanced. A beautiful cocktail of cool and warm. The highlight of the season—the parijat flowers in full bloom. Do they bloom for the fairies at night and drop so peacefully in the morning? It’s mother nature’s quintessential sweet conspiracy. I let it stay as a piece of wonder only. It’s a kind of flower shower if you are happy enough to feel it.

He also seems very happy this morning, an astounding whirlwind of energy hurtling ahead with its inexhaustible sense of mischief and playfulness. In complicity and connivance with mischief, from the terrace he jumps to the top end of the electricity pole and gives it a vigorous shake. Then he sits comfortably on the parapet wall maybe feeling giddy due to the burst and explosion of energy. The ceasefire is still practicable, the skirmishes on hold. The ceasefire is always quivering and fluttering and one party has to contribute extra to counterbalance its tremulousness and give it some stability. I understand its grave significance and accept the role of this extra contributor.

In league with typical simian gaieties and pleasantries, he has broken into the house a couple of times during the peace times as well. But it has been more like an uninvited guest instead of his earlier robber avatar. I have to understand that he has to cope with titanic heaves of mischief to give the smaller bit from his end to maintain peace. I digested the fact of his taking away the bananas and coupled it with faith for Lord Hanuman. Overall, I think he is trying his best to hold ceasefire.

I offer him a stale chapatti from below as he peers from the terrace railings above. It takes a few cajoling words for him to come down onto the compound wall and take it. We have to give our best to maintain peace and not leave it to be decided by the fate’s swinging scale. There is tension at both ends. He hasn’t yet taken anything directly from my hands. So it’s almost a snatching as he hurriedly takes it away. His lack of enthusiasm in straightaway gobbling it down bears testimony to the fact that he isn’t too happy about the stale gift. He likes them fresh. But since he hasn’t thrown it outright proves he has improved a lot in manners. He pulls apart the softer upper layer to eat it with casual munching, as if doing it to keep the friendly terms intact. The rest lies in pieces around him.

Seeing him better behaved today, I offer him a carrot. This time he takes it—not snatching—gently; there is no rush or overcautious pull. He thinks he should peel the outer unimpressive layer to eat the inner substance, but ends up peeling to the core. He takes a few unwilling bites and chews with cutely drooping eyes. Then he finds chapatti better in comparison and picks up the discarded pieces and chews with better facial expression. For a change of taste, he stretches his muscular arm and plucks a small, raw guava and takes a few bites. It has no taste either. He throws it away. Then a small tailorbird nest finds his attention. It’s smartly snatched away from among the leafy camouflage. Thankfully it’s an abandoned nest. He tears it apart. No broken eggs this time.

He is sitting with his back to me, his way of telling me that we aren’t at least foes now, if not good friends. No typical apish snarls from him; no angry cuss words from my side. As humans, we have to invest more in buying peace because it’s we who have made it a rarity. I do it from my side in this little human-simian equation of peace.    

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.