Every dog has a day

 

Those were almost decrepit establishments, almost filching with moralistic shame. Even the most liberal person would pass by them with a judgmental smirk. There seemed to be something incoherent about it, a kind of ashen-faced entity, almost embarrassed by its very existence. And its clients would seem to be trying to guzzle all their conscience and commiseratively—shoring up courage—approach the prison-like bars on a front defined by stale paint and peeling plaster.

The interior was laden with stifling privation in semi-darkness. Dispirited and caught in miry ruts of social chastisements. The racks inside—cold, plain, blackish shelf-racks—staring icily. A sort of implacable tragedy held up in the musty dim-lit interior. And the shop attendant behind the grills seemed a prisoner, sullen and brooding. But the bottles contained the magic potion of riotous revelry—alcohol.

That’s how the wine outlets of the last decade looked in the towns. Almost facile and nauseated. Then the number of drinkers busted the ceiling. The spirit had a temporary puddle to douse the scum of life for a few hours. And with a plum glee (like rain pattering on lush green foliage), the wine merchants prospered. Alcohol and spirits acquired mainstream position to douse the scab and slut of life. The ill-boding, nit-wit image was gone. The cloth wallet changed to fashionable Gucci purse.

The ultra-posh, shiny wine outlets are now making up for all the undemonstrative, ragged past. They glitter like jewelry showrooms with fancy lights and plush interiors. The bottles gleam with naughty assiduity in fancy illustrious displays. No longer the squeamish and morose attendant. It’s confident staff behind lovely counters. Of all the trades, alcohol industry has made the loudest mark in terms of change in the shape and look of their outlets. It just shows how much money is now pouring into its coffers.

Revisiting the town park

 

A revisit to the town park after a month; enough for father time to show you its freshly cooked plans. The female sweeper in peacock blue dress is working without her white lab coat today. But with more colors visible, although partly, she has a cute round girlish appearance. It’s the day after karva-chauth night, the fasting day for the welfare and health of husbands even if they spoil yours. Her hardworking hands have henna for the occasion, an indication that she has a tolerable husband whose life can at least be celebrated once in a year. Like the last time she sweeps quite methodically and instructively.

Instead of the old man today it’s a younger cleaner who comes paddling the rickshaw cart laden with dry leaves, the thin strands of not so prominent north Indian autumn. He gives a snuffling and moody appearance, in contrast to the peaceful and composed old man. Where is the old man, I get worried. Hope he hasn’t been fired or fallen sick. Some genuine souls—even strangers—leave you with invaluable keepsakes in your memory just with a few glimpses of their kind, gentle presence.

There I find him! He is doing something important today—preparing seedbeds for winter flowers. It’s a laborious task using a spade. But he seems to be a gardener first than a mere park cleaner. Any opportunity to create more blooms must come solicitously, quite naturally. Then sweating and hard labor don’t matter. He has worked on a long, narrow row along the walking track, freshly dug soil giving a trajectory of his nice work since early morning. Imagine the winter flowers along the track after a few weeks! He is resting on a bench, probably giving some respite to his stiffened joints. He has a grandfatherly ticklish look into my eyes, as if to say, ‘You can exercise with the shovel on the seedbed.’ I toddle on with a little movement of head, acknowledging his great flowering job in this deflowering world.

The election fever has gone down with the formation of a new government by the same party. So the politicking group is talking about mundane things that matter. The park feels far more calm in the absence of political vainglory. They are off the entranced political cart, hence the bass voice has normal drawl, no tension in tenor. Today I don’t feel the heat like I did the last time as I pass them. The old, gaunt, wheel-chair bound figure of last time, sitting languished and petering out of the stage of life, has improved. He is off the wheel-chair, and although still very fragile, looks taking a clasp at life in spotless whites, sitting on the ground doing pranayam while others talk about mundane issues of life. He has a very firm ostrich like face looking determinedly to improve his health.

A sixty plus grey-haired man with his unique set of exercises. He has a good athletic physique for his age; a focused man humming in accord with the fresh autumnal air. His shorts, sneakers and T-shirt muffling the bugs of age through a punctual exercise routine. He spins in circles with a vigorous shake of hands, as if redeeming energy from the not yet spent coupons of energy in muscles and nerves. He then jumps on one leg; then the other; followed by unique twists and turns; then copiously inhales morning air through anuloma-viloma breathing exercise.

Two gentlemen walking with firm steps, both of retired age, one carrying a jailor’s cane. His friend seems a jolly guy, somewhat undoing the rigid authoritarian air carried by the cane-wielder. I keep distance from him. The cane seems an extension of his striking promptitude.

A fat woman with hennaed hands and lots of sindoor in her hair parting lazily sitting on the grass. She is busy on a video call on her phone. Her face is slightly blotchy but lustrous black hair cover up for that. She has a husky, jeering tone. Given her happy spirits, no gainsaying that the man on the call is fond of her.

Another fatter woman, very short in stature, in fluorescent green top and tight dark leggings and shiny pink shoes. She seems to pursue the rapturous prospect of thinning, slimming rather, and gives an ominous blaze of enthusiasm, bulldozes past me, almost toppling me off the track just by the stormy wind unleashed by her passage. I’m shell-shocked for a moment but then with a benign look wish her many-many rounds and the fat getting melted from her body. But my exemplary, honorable thoughts come to a naught. She barely makes one round, runs out of wind, or maybe finds it silly and boring to rush around like that while better things can be accomplished. She dumps herself on a bench and gets busy with her phone, the best buddy who isn’t bothered about her weight. She gives me a brief look of vague hostility as I breeze past with my slim structure. Maybe she is wishing to pump some of her extra fat into my thin frame for betterment at both ends.

Two old women walking briskly. One thin, the other buxom. They waddle determinedly, chests thrust forward. Real mothers who fed milk to many kids. Their copious breasts bouncing on their stomachs.

A few old women sitting resignedly on corner benches. The last time they were singing devotional folksongs. But today the song is missing. In fact one of them is lying on a bench; one sitting with legs drawn up. It gives a sad, resigned look to the group. Their well-worn clothes evincing a hard-fought life in the villages, fighting the abominable reproaches of a patriarchal society, their fate wrung out as much by providence as by the back-breaking household and farming chores. Wriggling to forestall newer and newer tests. Then tiredly shambling after their sons who shifted to the town. Tagging up to bring up their grandchildren and forcing their way into new set of chores to keep them relevant.

Seven or eight high school boys in school dress; boys from poor families, thus going to the highly crippled state schools. Giving a free way to their unguided, precipitous, adolescent energies. They are setting up an infuriating new benchmark for the monkeys in the domain of silly pyrotechnics. Convulsively shouting, jumping, throwing cuss words, hanging from the upper bars of the swings, hurling big pavement tiles at each other with full intention of breaking bones.

An elderly man rushing in with the evident hurrying intention of finishing few quick laps. He has sprinted forward like a deck-based fighter jet on an aircraft carrier. But then screeches to a halt putting power breaks. His big car is parked by the park’s gate. He gets unsure whether he unlocked the car or not. There he raises the key remote in its direction, presses the button with owner’s pride. ‘Qui, Aye, Yes, I’m locked,’ the car beeps and blinks. He waddles forward and I exit through the gate, startled by the sudden activity in the car.

The slowed down time of a poet's day

 

A couple of uproariously adolescent monkeys, a lacework of mischief, with beet-red bums, jumping around for fun. They greet “how-d’you-do” to humanity in the morning; running to jump onto the electricity poles, shaking them with a sadistic pleasure; gratifyingly wheedling, spinning, twirling to leave a tornado of misbehavior. I watch bewilderedly. A gabbling spirit of youth an energy—fresh-morning youth with moistened tremulous lips.

The big dark-grey goonish feral tomcat, the hideous scourge for the birds among the trees and plants in the yard, is sprawled for sunbathing. Tailorbird bickering, bulbul gabbling, babbler riling, squirrel tik-tikking. But they cannot come near because the foe has a crafty shiftiness in its eyes even while resting. Then the flycatcher takes the lead. It has a spurtling maneuverability in its wings; a rousing charge and dandyish twists and turns from a close range. So the beautiful agile flycatcher goes for a helicopter sortie over the cat; flicking, fluttering, flying at a point just a few inches above any world-record holder tomcat would jump to catch a prey midair. The cat looks vanquished and helpless. It gives a sinister, vicious scowl to which the birdie helicopter gives indignant, whinny clangor of notes in triumphant spirits from the side of all the birds.

Mating fleas taking a tumble on my newspaper. It has happened thrice in a week, so need to note this. Falling in a torrid unison of desire, like a little pebble on the soft newsprint, almost crashing through lesser news. A flabby and pulp love drop. Sweltering passion in cool October breeze. A spasmodic and riotous carousal humming in the wings and two sparks colliding into each other with lightening swiftness, giving good news for the flea kingdom on human newsprint.

I wring clothes before putting them on the clothesline to dry. Soapy water gets squeezed out forming a few little puddles on the brickyard floor. Three Indian robins make the most of this. Flicking tails, wetting wings and taking few sips in between. Rejoicing rills. It’s a lovely sight to watch birds playing like this.

On my solitary walk a spectacle of motherly love. In a marshy overgrown patch among the ripening paddy fields the angry trumpeting notes of a mother sarus crane. A mother would jump head first into danger to save her little ones. She has eggs here and some dogs have arrived sniffing the grass. So she dexterously feigns to be an injured and sick bird, not able to fly, giving agonized cries to draw them after her away from the nest. They follow her despairing notes and sickly strides, sensing victory in catching her. When they seem like catching her, she takes a few seemingly labored wing-strokes to just fly out of their mouth and land a few feet ahead and then run again to keep them on the hunt. And the befooled and lousy devils being drawn into the fading light towards the pink ball melting in the twilight dark grey veil lurking over the horizon.

Teenage romance with uncles

 

Teenage girls of the present generation are hyper-smart. They know exactly how to act as pickpockets on sweet-toothed, grey-haired, balding uncles who easily believe in fairy castles. Just to feel the breezy spring of youthful, naughty talks he has a few teenage girl-friends who keep stabbing his pockets for buying costly gifts for their real, young boyfriends. One of his little friends cajoled the liberal-hearted uncle with honeyed words to an extent that it found him joyful enough to open his wallet, fully allowing himself to be stabbed deeply in pockets. It enabled the little girl to buy an Apple phone for her local history-sheeter, goonish boyfriend who had grown glum after a recent beating by the police. So in a way the gentleman helped them in darning the torn collar of their shirt. Of course he didn’t know about the end point of his gift; wasn’t aware that his gift has landed in thuggish claws instead of her soft, fair, pinkish hands. He came to know about it from another source. He was bawling and snarling for a few moments but then his aggrieved energies subsided as they are supposed to be for a man in his late forties. With grating but muffled anger he told me that she had lied to him. ‘We have four cars and my father runs a business,’ the smart teenager had lied about their financial standing. She turned out to be the daughter of a small corner-shop tailor in a narrow alley where a car couldn’t even enter. Her father had a rusty moped only.

Another little one tried the same trick with me at a popular eating point, named Madras restaurant, in the town. I’m eating a dosa with unhindered zeal, having arrived from a trip to the Himalayas, and feeling ravenously hungry after the daylong journey. Maybe she got this sweetened assumption that a graying man in forties spiritedly gorging on spiced dosa is still caught in the unwearying aroma of youthful desires. This proclivity turns the purse strings of such men very loose.

These are very smart kids with their personalized set of endearments to fan the air of desire in the men in their forties. From their clothing and bearing they estimate the gentleman’s financial worth and calculate that thousands can be easily drawn out, while a young man would give hundreds only in terms of dining and petty gifts and would demand much costlier returns in privacy.

She is sitting facing me; her young, boyish boyfriend facing the other way. She ogles at me with love-drenched eyes—at my purse rather. I’m eating very spiritedly, so she thinks I have enough youthful strings to be hummed by the fingers of desire and lose my grip on the wallet. The maiden finery spreading sensuous shine for a liaison. She spreads her arms on the table, puts her chin on the back of her palms and takes a sniper-precision aim for long moments, spraying translucent bullets of fake love. The air around me is profoundly speckled with feigned love-notes. Little does she realize that I lose myself to books only. I smile, get up, pay the bill and leave gently. I take a last look from outside. She is grimacing. ‘Of no use anymore!’ she must be judging me. Well, I’m happy to be of no use in the way they mean it.

The new geostrategic chutney

 

Jinping wins (Tibet atrocities and Xingiang concentration camps), Putin wins (Ukraine massacres), Trump wins (Convinced felon), Modi wins (… ). Now is the time for us to be like three deaf, mute and blind monkeys or shift to some other planet, for which unfortunately there is no choice except Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and a few others. But Musk won’t take that option. He is the bright-eyed, super-genius macho man of the mighty Trump. The rest of the billionaires beware. Take your rockets out.

In any case, the mighty four have the power to dispatch anyone to some extraterrestrial planet—I mean if not in body but soul at least. The super-strong guys are actually eligible to share the same table and have relaxed talk over wine. Modi of course will have milk. Then who will be their common enemy? Maybe small people like you and me who think they have their own mind and feel like speaking the truth.

Democracy will get diluted like never before. It has already thawed quite significantly in the world’s biggest and the strongest democracies. I think Putin and Xi Jinping are the trend-setting big, bad boys, inspiring the rest to follow their steps.

Who will they hunt if not each other then? Because the most powerful can’t help hunting. They have to go on their predatory prowls. It’s almost natural. I think they will hunt the little voices of liberalism, freedom of speech, truth, human rights, equality, gender parity, etc.

Putin will be allowed to retain whatever he has captured in Ukraine. China will be allowed to take over Taiwan somehow (with the sham show of American opposition to that; and in return for substantial economic gains in bilateral trade with China). If India plays its cards well, it might have some more chunk from the PoK. And America? It will be allowed to have the symbolic chairmanship on the table of the four. The mighty tigers then will be free to play cat and mouse with the little mice, the liberal intelligentsia. But who knows the aliens, who have been taking reconnaissance of our small planet for decades, will finally step in and present a common challenge to the four. Then it will be quite interesting.

As a non-American global citizen I respect the Americans’ choice in electing Trump. I can’t analyze on bigger issues but I think the major gain from being mere Trump to become President Trump is that he will be able to terminate the federal legal cases against him and suspend the state cases till he occupies office. And of course more trade for himself and America in general. As a layman I view it as the major take away: the ability to become above the law. That I think is the real Power. President Trump, wish you a powerful, bombastic, fantastic time in the seat of Power! Our leader is also a big fan of yours. So we see benefits for India unless you get irritated with us.

Now I believe, President Trump, that you were supposed to become the American President. Fate saved you from death just by a millimeter. It had plans. To reward you with power over millions of square kilometers on earth. Sometimes being one millimeter short of death means trillions of square yards of powerful life. The world will be at the mercy of your temperament. Please rule with mercy, benevolence and wisdom of an elder. Because you are the Global Elder now.    

The art and craft of optimizing life and living

 

I don’t believe in a fixed life term because we are a process; continuous shedding of the old and becoming new. So of course body chemistry can be managed to alter the lifespan. It’s also a fact that outer threats such as accidents are always present to undo all such efforts. There are also internal threats like something unreasonably going wrong in the physiological system. But within these possibilities we have the choice to create a third dimension of possibility, the possibility to change and manage our life with conscious effort and that includes how much time we want to spend on earth.

There is an art and craft of health optimization through proper nutrition and holistic practices to take body functioning to its peak performance. People are fond of hacking these days. So bio-hacking means slowing down the biological aging rate. Some have managed it to be 34% slower than the normal aging rate. Targeting longevity through healthy lifestyle is a nice goal. All of us can have personalized health strategies. So chalk your own individual robust health regime. It includes dietary and lifestyle overhauling.

The light, manageable burden of love

 

Osho tells a beautiful story of a sanyasi named Bhavani Dayal. He was on a pilgrimage in the Himalayas. It was a very hot noon and he was moving up the hill with his bedroll on his shoulder. The sanyasi was sweating and breathless because of the weight and the steep climb. In front of him, a small hill girl was carrying her brother on her shoulders. She herself was very young and that is why she was also struggling, panting and sweating. All breathless, the sanyasi said to her, ‘Daughter you must be feeling a lot of burden and weight on you.’ The girl said, ‘Swami ji the weight and burden is on you. Your bundle. I carry no weight. He is not a burden, he is my brother.’ The sanyasi was shocked. A small hill girl taught him a big lesson of life. Where there is love, there is no burden in life. It was joyful for her to carry the physical weight of a little brother, while he joylessly struggled under the physical weight of his belongings.

Digital arrest

 

A friend has a sententiously honeyed heart. He is as observant of the present carriers of youth—the opposite gender, of course—as I’m of book titles massed around. Recently his father received a WhatsApp call, ‘Your son is in custody on rape charges.’ The fake police officer spoke with gruesome, jarring authenticity. With exulting clamminess they continued, ‘If you want him out, pay money without delay. There is no time to lose because there is pressure to register FIR. If it’s done, nobody can save him from prison.’

The malevolent bluff is then surreptitiously changed into reality by the menacingly maneuverable algorithms of artificial intelligence, which gleans facts about a person’s voice, image, manner and produces a virtual reality—the life-like audio and video of that person. ‘Father please save me!’ his son is heard pleading in the background. The artificially generated voice of his son beckons paternal fears. His father finds it plausible just like my father would believe if the fraudsters had called him saying his son has robbed a bookstore. It was sheer luck that the old man’s account wasn’t plundered by the ultra-modern heathens. His grandson arrived as a grand good-luck gift. He called his father immediately who informed him that he was on the way from office.

The Sunday book bazaar

 

There are pirates crouched down in the crowded sea. They emerge suddenly and quickly rap your bottom. And here you are left with a Beslery or a Kenley. The bottles look exactly like the original: same shape, wrapper, color and marking. Just for the one letter difference. Nothing frightful apart from the fact that you drink simple tap water for twenty rupees. You get a livid look on your face once you have consumed it and then realize the difference. You have been tricked and feel like an utterly callow person.

Me and my friend have our respective Beslery and Kenley and reach the Sunday Book Bazaar at Mahila Haat, Delhi. The boy fraudster melted in the crowd.

There is a mute hawker of small items like socks, belts, hankies, purses, pen and key rings by the entrance gate to the book bazaar. It’s a smart geographical location because the clients are less thuggish if they are going to buy books. And who would bargain with a seller who cannot speak? At least bookworms won’t. But he is not deaf. He can listen and that’s more important. I have a doubt that he has a very nice tongue to speak. In that case it’s a nice strategy. He easily sells four sets of cheap socks to me without the slightest opportunity of bargaining from my side.

There is a lot of springiness in the air because many girls are buying books. It’s a lovely sight at the open-air book bazaar in late October. There is a great book lover moving diligently with a haversack half full of books.

A scratched placard fittingly displaying old classics stacked in compact horizontal rows on the ground, their spines up to catch the bookworm in you. Bookworms get a tremulous kiss by the fair-lipped maiden—the urge to buy books. There is a problem of plenty actually. As a book lover you have to squabble with your urge, an onerous task—to not buy everything on account of how much weight your wallet and back can carry.

There is another real book lover—a lovely wayfarer amiably walking pulling a trolley bag to fill it with books, the lightest and the loveliest weight one can carry.

A girl in aromatic rumples of sleep carried by her purple maxi. She looks just out of bed after the soundest sleep. A very short guy with her walking with the longing of a lightening bloodhound. He gives the feeling of pork; she stewed vegetables. I’m lost in books, my friend in her loose hair. She flicks her hair so suddenly that I’m startled out of my book-spell. She looks back at us with an unreconciled haughtiness of the young for the uncles nearing middle age—as if reminding us that we were born too early; that the dreams of our youth are a common stale reality now. Aah, unsubmissive youth! My friend feels the pangs of inter-generational enmity. His spirits plummet, the steps lose energy and he walks as if clad in grave-cloths, his mood swaddled in burial attire.

Rising above pain

 

It requires character not to be defined by one’s losses. Because if not, then you turn out a very sour, bitter fruit. Don’t allow the loss, the rape, the plunder to define you. Growing with a feeling of victimhood is gross self-injury. A degradation. It’s better to be defined by life and hope beyond that wound.

The futility of human existence

 

And who would triumph these days? Faker than the fake most. Not probably. Definitely. And who would rule? The fakest among the top fakes. A darkness that eats the little silver lines of light. That’s its diet. Darkness rushes in from all sides to eat the tiny slivers of light, just like a flock of goats and sheep running to nibble a few dry wisps of grass in the desert.

On the edge of darkness

 

Sometimes you have to walk to the edge of the roof of your being, your existence—to stare at the depths below, to gauze where do you stand in life, to evaluate your position. For security you might decide to step back and be in the little safe square around you. But sometimes you ought to just give a long, hard look into the depths below. You evaluate by focusing at your lowest point. The low point lying there among the dusted ground realities far away from the lofty heights. And if the call of the journey assures you of the sweet-sour pain of a fall, but with a reasonable chance of survival, you then just jump and make your path beyond all confines and fears. You untangle the messed-up spools of the past lying in the shadows of those low points. That’s when your real journey begins.

Lucky by chance--the incidental paramour

 

The winds are drifting. That’s their nature. The fragrance of rose from this side. The scent of jasmine from that. And other lovely smells from other directions. So if you happen to be someone’s rose at the moment, don’t be haughty and vain about it. The wind is merely blowing from your side at the moment. Just that, nothing more. And if we simply, naturally raise our nostrils to the wind to inhale, it’s plain normalcy at work. That’s our nature. We are needy. We need fresh fragrance to beat the routine boredom-born odor of life. But then the winds shift as well. That’s their nature. Now that special person, the apple of your eyes, inhales the scented breeze coming from a different flower.

The random swipe by the cosmic hand

 

So many destinies are poorly scrawled, almost illegibly, by adverse circumstances. Millions of meaningless destinies—except being meaningful in pain and suffering—shaped by wars, natural hazards, poverty, social strife. Destinies decided by the random casting of the cosmic dice—just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And amid all the sad scrawling, a few nice lines, legible, the chosen few with an apparent meaning. A few people at the right place, at the right time as well. They serve as beacons of hope even though there are daggers of jealousy thrown at them by the poor and the destitute. They are the lighthouse in the dark, choppy sea, beckoning the struggling, gasping swimmers to join their league.

Natural intelligence

 

As the 22-month-long pregnancy nears its end, the female African elephant starts eating Boraginaceae plant leaves to induce labor. Has anyone taught the elephants about it? No. There is natural intelligence. It pervades around in sync with natural laws. It guides natural processes across the species.

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.