The ashes of poetic words

 

I do a little exercise. When I’m not on my writing desk, I usually write on little scraps of paper like bills, receipts, pamphlets and flyers. Just random thoughts. Later these develop into some piece of poetry, a passage or an article. Then I take the little scrawled upon slips, put them in a tiny heap and burn. It gives a strange feeling; something that bloomed, came into existence, served a purpose and turns to ashes. It’s like a holy ritual to me—a tiny replica of the dance of life and death, being and nonbeing. When the tiny pyre burns, the ash eating the words, I hum the beautiful Hindi film song ‘khilte hain gul yahaan’, whose translation comes to be: the flowers bloom here to be happily scattered to pieces.

A stoic garden lizard

 

All life-forms on earth are seeking a home; a safe and cozy home that makes you feel at ease; where you can drop your guard, rest, recuperate and rejuvenate. I feel that our garden houses nests of tailorbirds, oriental white-eyes, doves, silverbills, squirrels and flycatchers. They, on their part, feel that their nest houses our home. That’s why they raise such a ruckus when we humans happen to be near their nests. So basically, the feeling of ownership is a matter of perception only.

Most of the garden lizards have their houses among the leaves of flowers, shrubs and trees. They make their skin dull colored and sprawl on sunlit leaves, just like we humans warm our bones on sunlit terraces in winter. But one garden lizard has a unique house. A multi-paneled window faces the garden; its lower portion flanked by tulsi plants and above looms the clustered canopy of champa, chandni, parijat, guava and kari patta. The window shutters stay closed from the other side behind the iron grills. There is a narrow slab projecting over the window. On the upper end there is an abandoned potter-wasp’s mud house sticking to the grill. And here the garden lizard has made its home. An abandoned house turning into a home; the little shelter possessed so warmly by a cold-blooded little reptile.

It seems a stoic lizard. At noontime, for an hour and a half, sunrays engulf its house in their warm, embracing fluidity. The house owner sprawls in peace. It puts its chin on top of the oblong mud shelter, closes eyes and soaks as much warmth as possible to beat the December chill. At night it sneaks into the little space between the mud nest and the wood of the closed window, a space just enough to hide its main body. Its tail is visible from outside curled around the mud nest. I have seen it occupying its property for the past many weeks. I usually go and tease it, standing just a couple of feet away, peering into its eyes. It’s a shy one and closes its eyes to the uninvited guest.

It looks a very stable and contended guy: the same look, the same routine, the same acceptance of the uncontrollable factors of life. The stable chap doesn’t experiment much with life, which is a prudent thing to do for a reptile in the winters. Possibly it’s an introvert one and is happy in its little world, just comfortable to be what it is. I wish him good hibernation during the winters. Best of luck garden lizard! Given your stoic patience, the three winter months seem a cakewalk. Then one fine day lovely spring will arrive. You will then come out, get colors on your skin taking inspiration from the blooming flowers. You will then reclaim that much of life, which you missed in the winters. There would be colors, love, food, hunting, escaping, getting hunted, or call it flirtations with life and death. That will all come with the spring. Happy hibernation until then!

In a state roadways bus

 

The state roadways bus is lurching with archetypical languor. There is someone who catches one’s eye with conjecturing vivacity. A wrinkled, flabby old man is gawking at the person with open-mouthed, gap-toothed leer. His pinched, shriveled wife watching with repugnance. A skinny, bony adolescent boy is caught in a motley of hormonal storms. He seems curious and seeking answers to the questions that will plague him during this build-up of youth regarding sexuality, gender and more in the domain.

The bus conductor up-heaves his effort; he denounces the melodramatic passenger’s denial to pay the bus fare. ‘We’re entitled to travel free!’ the adamant passenger rebuffs in a bristling, vagrant tone. The tone has effulgence to drown the conductor’s stern professional pitch. ‘No! You have to take ticket and pay!’ the conductor is sticking to his point.

The passenger has the artifice and classical eloquence to catapult the arrows of maidenhood from behind subtle masculine ramparts. The passenger is a handsome-pretty eunuch clad in a yellow and orange shimmering shrara. The uncouth notes in the conductor’s voice don’t appear to be considerate enough to give her a free ride. She strikes her palms accompanied with a little bit of oratorical violence. The gestural escalade fails to perturb and slim down the conductor’s  rotund demand. He is a Muslim man. She greets him with ‘salaam aalekum’ to make some friendly bridge over the torrid flow of his duty. He is unfazed. She again gets into a rebuking tempest. ‘I will take off my clothes and turn naked here in the bus!’ she threatens. The kinnars view this act as the hammer of revolt against all social prejudices against them. ‘Do it if you want,’ he isn’t repulsed by the threat.

Despite all the male-female interpolations and undulations in her persona, there is an imperturbable streak of friendliness in her. She is young, her face an exquisite mix of handsomeness and prettiness. She has hennaed hands; bangles on masculine wrists; lovely, gentle, big eyes under boyish eyebrows; the jaw-line is manly but lips are lovely like a young girl; the hair having feminine elements of style on masculine girth. She turns coquettishly cheeky and cuddles him on the cheek. All this while she looks at other passengers and involves us for a sort of free entertainment. I am sitting across the aisle from her seat. She winks at me after making a mischievous comment.

She is no abashed wretch. She is joyful. Such setbacks—like the conductor insisting on taking the bus fare—are easily taken in a playful stride. After all, one has to trample such tiny heartburns to survive in a world structured on male-female binary; where all possibilities of love, profession, education and social standing are customized in the routine gender duality. It’s a calamitous contingency to have an off-beat gender. The mainstream society takes them to be foredoomed from the beginning. They have to claw their way into the main thoroughfare to survive.

She won’t allow him the entire way. ‘I’ll give only hundred rupees,’ she relents, calculating the conductor’s defensive portals. The fare is 120 rupees. ‘Twenty rupees on you raja,’ she teases him. She gives him 100 rupees. While he is making her ticket, she looks back at the passengers, makes a face and says, ‘I’m his wife. See, how unkind he is to me.’ The passengers laugh. She feels the malignant notes in the old woman, the wife of the oldie who has been leering at her with drool in his mouth. ‘Radhe-radhe mataji!’ she greets her. The old woman can barely shake her head in greeting back.

She has already won many hearts with her banter and friendliness. ‘O raja, I’ll reimburse the loss within no time,’ she defiantly says to the bus conductor and sets out on making up for the loss. I give her ten rupees and she affectionately pats my cheek because I have been nodding and laughing in support of her. She collects 80 rupees within two minutes from the moving bus. ‘Lost just 20 rupees,’ she says almost triumphantly. She goes to the conductor and asks his share of donation. He angrily shakes his head in a firm no. She pats his cheek. The passengers laugh.

She has two smartphones. Her Instagram account is full of her luscious photos and vibrant musical videos. She plays them for the young man by her side to watch. Then turns back to show them to me. ‘You look like a heroine,’ I compliment. ‘I was in Bombay for three years,’ she says with nostalgia. Photos and videos in sunshades, strappy bras, revealing tops, sexy leggings. She opens the keypad of her phone and moves it to me, asking me to dial my number. She has mistaken my support for her cause as my interest in off-beat sexuality. I look at her with a straight face and then smile and gently say no with respect. She understands that my interest in her is born of respect, curiosity and sympathy and not sexuality. And then she smiles a normal smile.

In a metro train

 

You feel better once you step into a metro train in the national capital—if it isn’t too crowded of course. It’s a respite from the polluted pestilence outside. You set up a type of narrative privilege if you are lucky to grab a seat. Then beyond the clutches of the outside chaos, the time elapses in peace. Traffic-born hassles seem superfluous. The train moves with sagacity. I have a seat and feeling quite at ease with life despite the smog outside.

Two women board the coach with their children. Both of them carry infants in their arms. A boy and a girl walk alongside. A man immediately gets up to give his seat to the ladies. The ladies settle in the vacant space. The man stands near the boy and the little girl. It’s not a casual, principled offer of seat. It’s something very human in nature. He is a Hindu bearing a tilak on his forehead. They are Muslims.

There is such a huge chasm between the two communities currently; the fissure nurtured for political gains in the communalized air. One can feel these invisible fault-lines at public places even when things look normal with the common people carrying on their routine life. It’s a livewire, invisible though most of the time. You can feel its slow pulse in people’s looks, gestures and words. But he is a very good man. He allays the tension. He playfully chats with the little boy and the tiny girl. It turns into a very friendly conversation, involving common people beyond the wars on religions. The children become relaxed in his presence; their mothers feel comfortable after the initial signs of slight tension.

They deboard a few stations down the line. He gets back his seat—in fact, earned his relaxation time after this kind deed. The boy and the girl look from the window as they walk on the platform. He waves them a bye. They smile. He has given them a priceless memory that will help them in becoming better human beings when they grow up.

Just before the doors would slide shut, a girl rushes from the aisle and drops the crushed cups and bowls in the narrow gap between the platform and the train. Well-aimed, clean drop of garbage by an educated girl. She has been eating with her friend onboard. They are modern girls clad in tight jeans and revealing tops, all decked up with freedom, the freedom to spread litter on a metro station. Look at the contrast: the man groomed a rosebud for humanity and the girls spread litter. Such contrasting characters so nearby! Well, that’s what makes metro rides quite interesting.

Open the grave to sunshine

 We rarely accept love as the inevitable part of our life. We take it casually and lose it. Result: the old lovers becoming new enemies. A dark, sad cloud of pain settling on one’s soul. Then we do what comes naturally to us. We bury the pain to prove a point.

But once you bury the pain sadness settles firmly. Dark, festering subsurface air takes possession of your lungs; soaks your once fresh-aired vitality. In such moments, all we need is to unbury the pain and face its decaying corpse.

There is an art and craft of unburying the pain. Exhumation. To bring light to the maggots eating the rotten corpse. It is about digging a hole, emptying yourself of the rotten flesh. Dig, dig, dig. Unbury the coffin of pain. It’s a surgery of the soul to regain the rain, the sunshine, the fresh air, the open sky—the treasure.

You can’t add anything to a full vessel. The empty jar has the potential to receive. So dig a hole and exhume the corpse of pain, which would otherwise take decades to decay and still its bones will remain like sharp needles in the flesh of one’s soul.

Unbury. Pry it open. Lay it bare under the fresh-aired churning of the surroundings. It’ll disintegrate, scatter and spread out; no longer claiming you as the porter, the miserable carrier. It’ll break into tiny pieces and the inviting wholeness will absorb it. You—the empty hole—will then be filled with fresh prospects of joy. 

Lessons from a parking lot

 

My friend gets diabetic retinopathy treatment at an eye hospital in Dwarka, Delhi. It’s a long treatment involving frequent visits to the hospital for routine check-ups and retina injections. On the days when his eye gets an injection, it needs to be patched under a dressing for a few hours, so he isn’t able to drive back to the town. On such occasions usually I drive him to the hospital in his car.

He understands that I prefer to use my time in reading and writing. So keeping me away from my study table for a whole day makes him embarrassed sometimes. That shouldn’t be a problem at both ends because what else is friendship. If someone can’t do even this much then he is a mere acquaintance. And helping someone continue reading the lovely book of life is always better than reading a few more pages in a book.

It’s a big, glass-fronted hospital, imposing like a corporate office. Rich people come here for treatment as one can guess from the series of big cars parked in the parking lot.

The other day we reached there early in the morning. He has an early appointment; before the normal opening time. The parking lot has a few cars, the rest of parking slots defined by yellow lines are vacant. There is a big car parked wrongly covering two slots. Many slots are empty on both its sides. I know the value of space—there are fights over parking space in Delhi, which sometimes result in people killing each other—so I’m parking by its side, leaving about three feet space between the cars.

The parking guard is frantically waving hands trying to guide me to park the car within the next slot because by adjusting to the first mistake I’m adding to the series of wrongly parked cars partially occupying their slots and transgressing into the next.

In my opinion lines don’t matter as long as there isn’t too much or too less space between two cars parked side by side. So I park the car as I deem it fit—partially occupying two slots, in balance with the first mistake, even though there is just three feet space between the two.

As I come out I see a big cloud of disappointment on the guard’s face. I tell him that if I park the car in the next slot, it will leave many feet of space between the cars and this space isn’t sufficient for any car so it will be a loss of space. The same will be the case on the other side. It means one car will occupy two slots leaving big gaps on both sides.

‘I understand but in this way the entire series will be broken,’ he points to the rows of yellow lines, ‘and they,’ he points to the people high up there on the swanky floors above, ‘have big issues with it. They say I can’t get even the cars parked properly.’

‘O come on, it hardly matters… such a small issue,’ it casually escapes from my mouth. I try to smile at him and cheer him up but he doesn’t smile, instead I can feel utter helplessness blanketing him.

My friend’s car is a big one and incidentally I’m wearing formals today. He thinks I’m a bada admi with a big business or job. I sense that he is trying hard to take in a big draught of belittling insult; a situation where a better placed person can defy his little authority in his small job space in the parking lot. ‘That’s how it is! Who cares? Big cars, big people!’ he sighs resignedly.

My friend’s appointment time is nearing fast. Just a couple of minutes left. And before that the paperwork has to be completed at the reception. So we just rush in leaving him there in a sad mood.

Leaving my friend in the care of doctors, I come out. I see the guard sitting on his chair. A short, very frail man in mid fifties. I flash him a smile. He doesn’t smile back. Probably he thinks that I’m mocking at him from my position of a more privileged guy.

Usually I’m in my shabby track pants, rumpled shirts and worn out slippers. When they see me in my small dented car, the parking guards are very confident in handling me and show me the right path as if thinking, ‘He isn’t a bada admi…must be someone almost equal to us.’ Here bada admi means a rich man only. What other definition a poor man can have? But today the car is big and I’m wearing decent clothes. So he thinks I’m a bada admi teasing him after showing him his lowly aukat.

I go to him and say, ‘Sorry, we were in a hurry! Now we have all the time to do it exactly the way you want it.’ He is surprised a bit but gets onto his feet with a nice sense of duty to his job. I feel respect for this man as we walk towards the wrongly parked car to correct things. He is doing his job with dignity and commitment.

This time I follow all his instructions. A parking guard has a nice manner of moving his hands giving you instructions about directions. You have to trust him. His hand movement has confidence now. I park the car exactly the way he wants. And this time when I smile at him he smiles back. Who would withhold your earnings from your smile?

It feels so good to bring a smile to someone. In hurrying I had given him a grimace. Now I’m lucky to bring the smile back. What a dedicated man—parking cars exactly between the lines!

The one who is out of the rat race

 

The fog with adulterous traces to turn noxious smog. A chilly mid-November morning. Whom do we call the dimwits? The ones whom we couldn’t fraternize for forgery and cheatings required to outsmart others on a routine basis in daily life; who unquestionably can’t be turned shrewd like the smart majority; who have a void somewhere wherein the inherent innocence tranquilly stays in a safe chamber. Bo is more or less the same as I remember him during his boyhood. He has grown in body but the child inside is ageless, beyond societal spoliation. He must be carrying some nerves that despoil the spoiling agents’—the agents that ensure the transformation of innocence into shrewdness—best efforts.

Bo is a big man in his early forties. He can smoke as many beedis as you can manage to offer him. This is a foggy, smoggy, chilly morning. I see him working on his brain, performing a kind of exercise. He has spread his palms against a wall and hitting his forehead, gently with nice rhythm, against the plaster. He then shifts gears and hits the side of his head, then the other one, followed by the back of the head. Maybe he is shaking his nerves from the spell of irresolution, probably born of hangover caused by country liquor.

Normally he breezes past you with triumphal air without even looking at you even if you greet him with a wide grin and huge bouquet. Sometimes he startles you with ‘kya haal hai’ when you are least expecting it. But today after these soft penitent plummets at his head, he seems to have discovered some socializing fibers in his nerves. ‘How are you?’ he says. He doesn’t seem to ask because ‘how I feel’ hardly means anything to him in this off-course, uniquely poised state of being. Well all of us have our own peculiarities and eccentricities. He has his own. But I take it as a good omen when he speaks. I’m eager to reply to his statement but he has already moved on before I can send him my first word.

An evening on my solitary trail

 

We have been so well primed for apathy and moral degradation that anything contrary to the above seems off-the-cuff-remark, an inopportune adventure. Mother earth looks imploringly while it gets pestered with more smoke and fire. Uncomely, unsightly behavior. Perilous phantasmagoria. Hideous pomposities. A gnashing, unvarying sarcasm. Smutty, fetid, filthy, unwholesome plot. Avaricious. Putrescence.

Bombs, fire and smoke in the name of nationhood; industrial smoke in the name of inimical, coarse industrialism; more smoke in the name of lisping, detestable festivities; smoke arising with derision from farm fires. Gibberish, egotistic, debased haze. The metallic haze spreading like a colossal giantess. A roguish varnish that eats the colors of evenings. The evening colors melting in subservience.

A sluggard and idle saunterer, I’m walking witnessing this heartrending chastisement of mother nature by Her own child. There is swarming joy in adding more smoke to the poisoned air. The new world leader, Trump, doesn’t believe in climate cause. More smoke in the middle east; more bombs and explosions in Ukraine; more smog born of farm fires; more marriage celebration firecrackers gleaming in the maelstrom of smoke.

I’m walking on my solitary trail between the canals holding a crooked staff, a knotted and thorny stick, smoky exhausts hitting my eyes, nose, lungs with suffocating digression. The smoked air impregnated with the smog of hate and apathy. I squint and spot a flock of goats in the smoky distance on the trail. An insurmountable enormity of survival among beaten brambles and bushes.

The goats move slowly nibbling at the beaten grass. The shepherds are two gouty old men bravely holding their crooked baton of life in the gloomy, sooty parody. They are in their seventies, move with a monkish disposition, carrying decades of depositories on their soiled clothes in the form of poverty and low social status.

One is at the front of the herd, the other (still older) manning the back end. There are lots of baby goats and they gallop with childish verve, which seems so mismatching with the two old goatherds. But these little playful ones can’t escape on the sides because of the canals. It makes it possible for the old shepherds to manage the herd at this age. The slower their steps, the more time the goats get in nibbling the grass. In between they can take sips of water from the canals on the sides.

The front herder raises his hand in greeting as I approach them. We raise hands exactly at the same moment. I had seen him a year back. He has aged quite significantly since then. His eyesight has further deteriorated. He mistakes me for a farmer who has a little plot of land by the canal. The farmer is a bachelor and stays with his old mother. He was once drinking by the canal and invited them to share drinks. They chatted for a long time once relaxed by the cheap liquor. Such solemn reminiscences! I can feel the traces of appreciation in his eyes for that farmer.

The smoky gaieties have been grafted on the evening colors. It’s an early twilight. They are confused about time. They have to walk another kilometer to reach their village. He asks what time it is. ‘It’s ten minutes to five,’ I tell him.

Smoke has advanced the twilight by more than an hour. We know the obvious and ignore the listless fact. Instead he boosts his spirits by an enlivening talk about the farmer with whom they shared drinks. We talk about the economy of goat-herding, the sadness of vanishing grass and their sun-setting life story.

A human touch, acknowledging a fellow life’s existence with respect. ‘Well, it has been a good time-spending activity at least,’ the herder says about their occupation. ‘It’s an honest, honorable job,’ I reply. It brings light to his old feeble eyes.

The older herder doesn’t speak much but he smiles a lot, the wrinkles coming to life with wisdom. ‘What will we take with us?! It’s just greetings and smiles. Who knows whether we meet again or not! So it’s better to greet each other with a smile!’ he smiles again. My smoked self is relieved. I watch them slowly melting into the metallic haze on the trail. I pray that we meet again even if it’s on such a smoggy evening next winter because human life and smiles are precious despite all the hate and anger in the world.

Experience in the hut of a holy man

 

Kaka Maharaj, the old sadhak who stays outside the village, fell out with worldly elements and left his hut—where he was staying for the last two decades—in anger. He had groomed the hut with so much love in solitude. It’s a high energy place, one can feel its energy the moment one enters it. I have been trying to convince him to come back because I feel that he ought not to abandon his spiritual seat; it’s a cocoon of love for his guru Kude Bhagat.

The other day I went to check the hut and sat for meditation near his fireplace. It was a sad sight to see the place abandoned in one stroke after decades of careful nurturing. The ramshackle thatch door closed. His old, worn out mismatched pair of footwear placed in front. The little grove of trees he has planted, which is a tiny forest now, sighed with sadness; the tiny rows of vegetables lying like orphans without any parental protection. The open fireplace and the heap of dry fuel wood lying like the ruins of a historic site just within a few days of the master gone. I gathered few cheap, dented, blackened aluminum utensils that I found outside and placed them inside the hut, hoping for better days for them.

Sitting by the fireplace inside the hut is like plugging into an electric circuit of high energy. Despite my clear intension to sit still and meditate, I couldn’t sit still. Involuntary movements would start the moment I closed my eyes and stilled my body. I just allowed myself to be a witness. It was surprising so I thought of recording them in order to watch as a neutral observer later. The moment I shut my eyes, the rhythmic movements would start of their own. I think the energy meridians try to get into alignment with the energy frequency around me. I suppose that’s how the yogic movements were revealed to the mediators. They try to bring the body in alignment with the larger energy meridians. One feels light like air, almost flying. I think the conscious mind takes a backseat during these moments, opening the portal to the subconscious, which further builds up the possibility for entry into the corridors of cosmic consciousness. I think pranayam and yoga postures are a means of opening the portal to the subconscious.

In any case, I feel very sad about the fact that he has abandoned such a lovely, peaceful place. I prayed to his guru to bring him back to the hut. I prayed because I feel the decision was taken in anger, and he should come back to resolve this little chaos of negative energy that got unleashed due to those uncontrolled moments. I clearly feel that he has developed a lot of energy at the place, which will help him in his journey.

An injured tree

 

This is for the history-minded common people who care to know about small things. We trees are highly underpaid and under-appreciated. What’s something preposterous is that it’s we who have sired the evolution of mankind and now we depend on him for our survival. We are numbered now—from that countless status when mother earth was lush green earlier—and there will be a time when the heritage lobby will be fighting to keep our ruins as a memorial for the past when mother earth was alive. There will be machines all around and the human brain itself will be replaced by artificial intelligence.

I’m a seemal (silk cotton) tree standing by the canal-side pathway. It used to be a beautiful thin ribbon of solitude between the canals overgrown with few trees and lots of grass, bushes and reeds. A poetic man would walk in somber profundity on the path. Then the developers hoeing the dirty grind of parasitic business arrived. The sand mafia would arrive at night and scoop away the sand from the canals and the path between them. The chauvinistic pigs would scrape out as much grains of sand as possible to build their big buildings. The earthmover’s claws were lucid, pertinent and driven by soulless precision. I’m scared of an earthmover more than anything else. It works with a pure sense of abstraction. Its steely zealousness cuts the upper lateral roots of we trees to dig out more and more sand to fill the truck to the brim. The solitudinal luminosity for the lone poetic man was gone; the grass, reeds and bushes obliterated; the smaller trees fell and bigger ones like me survived the onslaught with bruised limbs and big gaping wounds. The cast and crew of development are too big actors now.

When the poetic man came and saw my big roots exposed and cut, he put a sad but healing hand on my trunk. The edifying notes of his love touched my innermost rings in the trunk. He made a very little effort, this is all he could manage being a poetic man, and sweated for a couple of hours to gather soil around my wounded roots. For me the spiritual symbolism of this love is beyond its physical limits. It feels good to be cared and one’s pain acknowledged. But a small group of thugs took away even that little heap of earth this man’s poetic hands had gathered around me. I think they did it specifically to make it seem self-mocking to the poet—that your kind of emotions are meaningless in the modern age; that this artistic outlet is nothing more than a speck of dust in the face of the horses of greed on full trot.

Since then I have tried to muster up courage to the extent of granitic endurance just for that poetic man who sometimes comes and puts a friendly hand on my bark. But I missed my flowers this season, the beautiful big red flowers, one of which I had intentionally dropped on his head as he walked under me. That’s when we became friends. So there have been no flowers because I have been using all my energies in keeping myself up with the remaining roots. My foliage also has been the same for the last one year. It’s pale without any new shoots. I’m still in mourning, you know.

They have cut a little square on my bark, a sort of numbered nameplate declaring my number, a kind of my leasehold to stand on this small portion of earth till they decide to terminate it any time. I sanctify their insinuations and grotesqueness by oozing my sap, my tears, through the square marking. This disquieting incision on my skin keeps reminding me that I’m their numbered property under some forest law that easily allows some thugs to lacerate me.

I have a message for the bloodhound. I let out a yellowish sap through this little square of licensing cut. It coagulates to a meaty sanguine blob. I have obliterated their despicable number that they had assigned me. It’s my revolt. I don’t agree to their lease contract under whatever forest laws they have. The law that doesn’t provide me any protection and leaves me open to be vandalized by any thug whose spirit itches to play truant.

The poetic man sometimes comes and puts his gentle fingers on the protruding sanguine crust oozing from my guts. I see his mournful countenance. This human touch is astonishing. It snaps off the thread of pain for a few moments. How I wish more humans could touch we trees like this! How I wish more humans realize that we are half of their lungs!

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.