The sad nights and vanishing fireflies

 

Probably we saw the lasts of big swarms of the soft-bodied beetle that flies with a glow—fireflies. Their habitats declined and the fireflies that spun the dreamy webs of imagination, poems, stories and parables vanished from the nights. What do they need? They just need that which used to come naturally with nights—darkness in the moist, shady bushes during the monsoon days. The days would be bright, musty and green and the dark nights had fireflies. Now when the lights remain on all night even in the villages, spotting a firefly has become a rarity. Too much light pollution. I think contrary to our negative impressions about darkness, it must be washing lots of lighted pollution that we unleash on a daily basis.

The fireflies dance using their bioluminescence, the males and females looping with their own types of bio-sparks. Aren’t they such beautiful dancing lights! When there is too much of bright artificial light, their bioluminescence becomes ineffective in the males and the females spotting each other.

The vegetation is vanishing, the nights are losing darkness and so the firefly love-festivals are gone too—almost. The agricultural fields use insecticides on a large scale. Where does it leave any place for this soft beetle? For those who might care to listen, let me inform you that when a firefly boy and girl go on a love-dancing date, they enjoy feasting upon mosquitoes on the dining table. So those who have had dengue and malaria should have empathy for them.

The slum inside a palace

 

A broken doorway. But the interior of the house still safe, welcoming and cozy. In contrast, an illustrious, ornate, imposing gateway, aglitter with form, design, authority, shiny paint and much-much more. But the interior broken, stale, unwelcoming, hitting you in the face with its unfriendliness. That’s how most of the people are, the latter category I mean. Brand new clothes, stylish haircuts, designer glasses, costly perfumes, fat attitudes, sophisticated looks, illustrious footwear, daunting language—massively adorned gateways to their personality. All focus on the superficial, introductory gateway to the their self; entire energy and resources spent on the surface varnish. But the interior—the real self—poor and neglected. The door of a palace enclosing a slum within. They would hit you with selfish venom at the littlest provocation. The first category are rare individuals—a poor-looking door protecting a palace inside. An oasis in the desert. Soulful. With a loving, healing presence. It needs mother nature to have thousands of the other type of people to bloom, nurture, protect one such person.

The tiny slice of redemption

 

We are heavily laden. We carry loads of guilt, shame, fears, secrets, judgments, hate, jealousies, malice. Sometimes it feels like we would collapse if not for the minor trace elements, the uplifting brief feelings of joy and happiness. They are almost weightless, feathery, floating; something like anti-gravity. They mysteriously manage to counterbalance the tremendous load we carry.

The eternal prisoner

 

Most of us are imprisoned. We are the prisoners behind the walls of fears and the wires, bars and grills of the supposed and assumed securities to ward off those fears. The wall of fear is the mammoth panic of death and the unknown; anything we can’t see beyond the normal perception field. The wires, bars, barbed mesh and grilled fence comprise the rules and conventions; the tools of collective securities; the expected; the commonality.

Revolutionary foolishness

 

Sometimes in our impatience to create the new—too hurriedly—grafting it over the old, we bring down even the settled old along with the unsettled new. Certain fundamental laws are broken in this storm. The naked passion, blind impulse and uncontrolled force are hardly the reasonable tools to forge something new.

So build slowly. The past is a platform, a foundation, a book of lessons about what to do and what to avoid. It’s a set of good and bad, but a box of lessons nonetheless. So handle the old with care while you go for making the new. Impatience with the past is a blasting revolution. Yes, it destroys the past quickly, but it’s very chaotic. It doesn’t lay a foundation. In the name of foundation it goes for repression, killings, deweeding. It crosses all limits, uproots everything in the name of change.

The dance of love

 It’s a beautiful sight in the morning. A loving precursor to the poem that would follow soon after it. The love dance of a peacock on my terrace. I’m the excited peeping tom looking from the terrace room.

The surrendering spectacle unfolds. The love-lynched bird spreading the wings of desire; swaying the fantail of passion to catch her, the peahen, in his airy love-loops. She stands still, full of wonder about this colorful show, the buzzing-humming shake of his spread out fantail. Her time stops as if snared by the net of love.

His colorful invitation. Her curiosity, silence, acceptance; a space for the manifestation of the nonbeing to acquire the shape of a little colorful being. And of course the unnecessary worldly noise that is always seeking to spoil the love game, the futile barking of the puppies in the street who find it a nice case study to learn to bark.     

The book of easy codes

 

Full riot of life and colors embraced by spring flowers. Then in boiling summers, the flowers wilt, as if fighting to keep the memories of spring away. The dying petals seem struggling to get a whiff of long-forgotten smells. The force of disintegration meanwhile eroding big chunks of whatever is still present, the faded smile and feeble scent.

The dying flowers struggling, still hoping to build a bridge that would allow them to come to terms with this seemingly tragic transformation—spring’s luxuriant kiss to summer’s sun-burnt lips.

It looks the flowers died; but they changed to seeds. The dry, crumbling specks, wispy and hairy, will be scattered by the wind. And a tiny hairy speck of seed, carrying the entire code of flowery luxuriance, flows and flies and lands at some place to again blossom one fine day in another lovely spring.

‘Where is death in this?’ I wonder. Brothers, life is crammed with symbolism of the eternal truth. It’s a book of very easy codes. To read them we don’t need sophistication of mind; we simply need simplicity of heart. It’s a very lovely exercise to try to learn and read nature’s book of symbolism.

Dealing with weirdest dreams

 

Where does such a weird dream come from? I’m clueless. President Trump is working as an electrician in my depilated room. It’s the old style, laborious electric wire fitting he is working on. A lurching bamboo ladder laid against the wall, he has a hammer and a chisel in his heavy hands, making a little hole in the plastered upper wall just under the ceiling to fix little wooden bits in the grooves to nail narrow wooden strips on them. These were used to bind wires on them during the good old times.

The room has dusty green, peeling lime-wash coating on the walls. A green dust has settled on his lovely orange hair. Me and my father—who departed 15 years back—are watching him with intimidating curiosity. He takes a break and climbs down the ladder. We are embarrassed. Surprisingly, President Trump doesn’t seem offended or angry. I mumble apologetically, ‘You are the most powerful man on earth. I don’t know how do we land in your life. But I see the tough phase of the task is over.’ Frankly speaking I don’t have any clue as to how such a thing lands in my subconscious to surface as a weird dream.

Nothingness: The zero sum game

 

This existence is like a fiery dragon whizzing in a circle. It eats the same excreted stuff that comes out of its tail after the previous food is consumed in the guts for fuelling its fiery dash. The excreta then becomes the same stuff that was previously eaten by the time the head comes circling again at that point. At each point on the circle, what it now eats was formerly left out of the tail after consuming as fuel for its journey. Nothing added, nothing subtracted. But still such a rollercoaster ride! The question arises, ‘Who set the ball rolling initially?’            

The dharma of ruling class

 

When chaos is unleashed in the name of pseudo-security, pride and supremacy, the rulers take falsehoods, lies and dirty tricks to unprecedented levels. The ideal citizens then are the ignorant fools who can be customized to make them blind followers through fake news, passionate narratives and twisted history. The raised and ruffled passions divide the society. Falsehoods rule and become the new-age dharma. Under such conditions, the one who has a mind of his own, a simple man who isn’t blinded by the sandy blizzards and can see the reality, becomes an enemy.

Truth is taken as a sin as per this new dharma. Those who know the truth are viewed with suspicion by the rulers. And out of these, those who speak the truth are the outright enemies of the set-up.

The rulers aren’t afraid of the plain thugs and criminals because they are the foolest among the fools. It’s a simple law and order problem. In fact these bigger fools become great tools to be used by the rulers. So those who speak truth are the real terrorists for the rulers. They are systematically penalized. That was how it was in the past. That’s how it’s now.

The day after

 

I was expecting a pollution peak on Diwali night. Everything has been politicized and everything within politics has been communalized. I saw lots of social media content giving a clarion call to the Hindus to celebrate Diwali with clanging, banging gusto, especially when others can kill animals on their festival, so why shouldn’t we slaughter the clean air on ours. It had its effect. Despite a ban on the firecrackers in the Delhi NCR, these were sold in open, purchased with a right to unrestricted religious celebration and banged and burst with yelling enthusiasm. I also love to celebrate Diwali as a Hindu, but I care for our lungs as well, especially the elders.

The night was breezy which dispersed the pollutants. In the morning there was no eye-burning smog. A cool breezy morning with tolerable level of pollution. Elated over this I carry my Diwali celebration into the countryside with a walk in solitude. Many parts of India are celebrating Diwali today because the lunar calendar overlaps two days of the sun calendar. It gives us the option to celebrate our festival on two days. Good for business; good for the people as well, enabling them to carry extra festive spirit.  

It’s a bright day, the horizon slightly smoggy in the distance. Mother nature spreads a breezy cool hand like a windscreen wiper to take away the pollutants. A perfect time to appreciate Celosia argentea or Plumed cockscomb blooms in a corner. All it needs is a bit of sunshine, dewy moisture, cool breeze and no human foot intruding, and mother nature offers a lovely bouquet of smiles to a solitary walker with poetic sensitivities. We humans might consider them as weeds but they are a perfect breakfast table for a flock of moths who are high on nectar. These are lovely finger-shaped creamy blooms with pink spires on the top. Plumed cockscomb indeed—fluffy with a slightly curved creamy erection, milky white head topped with a pink spire.

There is a lonely date palm standing in the empty harvested fields. Dry paddy crofts too low and lifeless to give it any sense of clothing and company. It must be missing the company of its brothers. Sadly, there will soon be a world when the trees will be barcoded and numbered. No worries. Let’s make the most of what is left. Thankfully we are the generation that is lucky to see unnumbered and uncoded trees.

In a corner there are golden shades of ripe paddy waiting to be harvested—a prelude to nice, luscious aroma on your table.

I stand under a blackberry tree and stare into the bluish haze in the east. A trickle of sunrays plays on my face giving me an insight:

There is light everywhere and darkness alongside. You have to position yourself in life to have your portion of light rays and your little puddle of shadow.

Zero

 

The zero. The imperfect. The perfect. Three basic concepts which the mind can hypothesize in trying to understand the cosmic equation. The imperfect is forever striving to become the perfect. That’s the basic functional element in the play of existence, the leela. The imperfect running timelessly and endlessly after the perfect becomes the infinity. The infinity is just the ever-persistent, eternal impulse of the finite to become perfect. And perfection is impossible because one point of apparent perfection is just a transient state, a mere beginning of a new stage of the imperfect looking to further its path to perfection. The flow. And infinity collapses to zero, the emptiness.

Festive silence in a poet's yard

 

It’s Diwali, the festival of lights. The two parijat trees in the yard have carpeted the earth below their canopies with so many flowery drops as to make it a flowered floor. What celebration! The rains have been good and the plants, especially tulsi, have acquired a bushy jungle shape. The tailorbird parents have their hatchling out, a greenish tailless funny guy almost as big as its parents. It hops around the leafy tangle during its post-nest training phase. It’s a mischievous guy. I saw it running after a good-behaved elderly Indian robin.

Everything is perception-based at this level of existence. So this particular section of the yard is the tailorbirds’ house, just like I have the same perception due to being born in the house. They deny my entry to their section. They raise a brain-hole-drilling din the moment I reach the spot. The wire-tail swallow couple does the same. They are agile fighter-plane type fliers. They dart with chipping sounds, coming dangerously close to my head whenever I happen to be near their mud nest on the ceiling in the barn verandah. I understand their position. We humans are also darting around with angry chipping sounds, insecure and afraid of losing our position, interests and stakes.

The white-browed fantail flycatcher is a distinguished bird having a white forehead with a black strip running from top to the nape, blackish top and milky white underside. It’s very lively and flicks and spreads its white-edged tail quite frequently. With its long broad white eyebrows, it flits around almost tirelessly. Flaunting white spots on its throat, it fans its tail, flicks its wings, giving quick hunting dashes midair. Fleas beware! It’s wonderful to have a pair of flycatchers in your yard. I love them for their midair antics and lively attitude. They look playing all through the day. These playfully restless birds consume so much energy due to this tireless physical activity that the entire day is spent in catching fleas midair. Can I ask for more? Make your hobby your profession. Like they do their midair antics while going with the profession of survival—playing and gathering food going side by side.

There is an icing on the cake as well—they aren’t too scared of my presence. Their confiding nature allows me to stand a few feet away and enjoy their fun as a spectator. Then there is cherry on top of icing—their song. It’s a melodious song comprising six to eight notes, ascending, sometimes descending. Sometimes they stop it midway, leaving you craving for the entire performance.

Both of them look the same but with the spirit of an ornithologist one can spot the difference—the female is slightly paler with browner head, while the male is black with greenish gloss. I had to do a bit of research to find out which of them is doing this tireless exercise in front of the little old car parked in retirement mode in the yard. No wonder it happens to be the girl in the pair! Who else loves a mirror so much?

The car is 21 years old and deserves graceful retirement as a vintage souvenir in the yard of a small-time rural poet. After all, it was with me during the challenging and complex cluster of life and events during my urban innings in editorial jobs. With our limited capabilities, both of us suited each other really well. Now it becomes the dressing table for the female flycatcher. She is such a narcissist. She spends her days ogling at her reflection in the rearview and window glasses.

It’s a rural set-up, so there is no problem of food, I mean fleas. The humans to fleas ration is infinitely in favor of the latter. She can continue ogling coquettishly at her reflection and take little bites of food as the fleas naturally happen to be within the range of her dressing table, dressing car rather. Such tireless flapping of wings requires lots of food. It means less fleas in the yard of a poet. I note that she drops her extras quite frequently. So cleaning the bird drops on my little souvenir at the day end is the service charge I have to pay.

She thus is a homely girl. Her husband, as can be expected, goes outside to loaf around. But he returns quite frequently to check on her. When he disturbs her dressing-car time she gives an angry, agitated, grating chuck…chuck…chuck…chuckrr reprimand. The moment he starts disturbing her self-loving ogling at her reflection, she throws these irritated notes and shifts to the other vehicle, a bit new and a tiny bit bigger than the older one, which seems to be her favorite. I hope she isn’t fed up with this guy—or suspects him of double dating during his sorties outside the yard—and has fallen under the illusion that a handsome prince is imprisoned inside the car and thus goes calling from all sides, asking it to come out.

Habituated for happiness

 

When the plant is happy, it gives you a flower. When the tree is happy, it gives you good fruits and shade. When the sky is happy, it gives you rain, sunshine, shade and prismatic play of clouds. When the birds are happy, they give you a song.

What do you do when you are happy? Think it over brother. You too are no less than any of these. You too give your smile, sympathy, healing touch on a shoulder, a bit of clarity, some kindness, a tear of loving kindness, a little bit of helping hand to someone fallen. You open your treasure when you are happy. I know we can’t be happy all the time. We have our off times when we fret, fume, snort and get sullen. Then we automatically close the vaults of our treasure. Happiness can’t be maintained forever, but we can keep it in mind. That’s an option. We can lure it back from the secret hiding place it retreats into after briefly spraying sunshine in our life.

There are times when you even hate yourself so much that you don’t even want to look at yourself and turn the mirror to the wall. No problem. Don’t worry too much. There will be more happy stories on another day. Just remember this.

A fall to rise

 

Jump from the pinnacle of your loneliness. It’s a nice height to go for a dive. Sometimes standing there, mulling over your bruises gets you in a sadistic attachment to them. They give you a sweet-sour itch. It’s on the surface—a big, spacious expansion on the outer layer. It doesn’t even teach you much. It’s shallow and shallow teachers aren’t good guides. Even if the little niggling thing—that grasps the outer layer of your attention and fuels your loneliness—turns to a scar because of a fall after the dive. You at least break the stalemate; you leave that point. You might get a bleeding scar instead of a mere bruise. It’s but an avenue for the pent-up darkness to come out. A door opens to the soul. Earlier it was a mere grilled, meshed window to the body. Yes, it will be a bit more painful, the opening of this door. But then light comes in. This is your little penance. This isn’t self-inflicted injury. This is healing. This teacher is deeper; will give you profounder lessons. The scar will be healed; its imprint on your body a kind of trophy earned during the journey.

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.