The story of a Tibetan sadhak

 

Tibetan Buddhism is one of the most pristinely preserved belief systems. There was a time when every Tibetan family had a full monk or nun devoted to keep the lineage going. Tibet had more monks than soldiers. Imagine the spiritual depth of this vast land during those times. Then tragedy struck. Atheist China put a big challenge for the Tibetans to preserve their unique culture and religion. Scattered over different countries in tiny communities, Tibetans still hold onto their faith with devotional perseverance.

I know a few lovely Tibetan Buddhist sadhaks, one of them a deeply, spiritually imbued woman sadhak. She is a good friend. She was out of radar for the last three years and I was worried about her. But the other day it came as a relief to know that she was fine. She was in a remote cave in a totally uninhabited part of Ladakh. Faith makes you quite daring on the path and pushed by the same force she carried her basic provisions on six pack horses and trekked for one full day to reach a remote cave. She meditated here for three years in complete isolation.

I am amazed at the spiritual passion of the Tibetan Buddhists to maintain their legacy. It’s a vast domain of esoteric, mystical practices. I myself don’t believe in extreme austerity on the path of religion and feel comfortable with Buddha’s middle path, but I respect such honest seeking by someone on the path of realizing the true Self.

She is back to her east Asian country at the moment and sends me a mesmerizing collection of pictures. The pictures from her spiritual hideout somewhere in Zanskar, Ladakh are unbelievably grand, almost mythically exciting.

It was a little cave-cum-room away from a remote hamlet in Zanskar, beyond the glutinous knick-knacks of crowded worldliness; in unmoored, unfettered, uncontrolled, untouched, unmoved, untrammeled barren hills; among stones and a few wild streams. Using her woman’s skills to mold her surroundings in the colors of her aesthetic sense, she covered the tiny hovel with colorful Buddhist murals, cloth paintings and carpets covering the entire walls. And there trying to come out of the zigzag course of follies, she—surrounded by the colorful syrupy souvenirs of faith—sits down to meditate to realize the straight, simple path to wisdom.  

Emptiness here is clearly defined by miles of barren brown canvas, pristine blue of the sky, pure white of the clouds, a rippling stream in the gorge down the slope and howling mountain gales. Here she would look into the distances, witnessing the nature’s avatar as a serrated knife on the one end and a wisp of wool on the other. As she sat exploring the miles of emptiness in her heart, the cutting mountain wind went harping on the sturdiest stones and the clouds melted in the pristine blue.

In winter she would sit down under the falling snow on the frozen banks of the once gurgling stream. The rushing blue liquid in a thin line between the frozen banks. Her maroon great cape cradling her physical body while the soul kissed the snows on the slopes around.

Mother nature slowly filled its few colors on the almost empty canvas. Brown fire on sunlit slopes. Blue snows on the shadowed slopes. Massive boulders beaten and shaped by the wind stood like ferocious demonic sentries protecting her isolated haunt. The sentinels of this isolation singing with the mountain winds. A leafless bush standing like a torn banner of summers; but still holding up the hopes for a revival. The subdued murmur of the thin stream between frozen banks carrying the prayers alive to burst forth with the songs of summer some day.

Her neighbor would be a tiny sparrow peeping with curiosity from the makeshift window sill, wonderstruck at the tiny cocoon of colors inside.

She would muse over a rainbow above the chocolate brown hills against dark grey clouds, its arc vanishing into the clouds suspended like hanging waterfalls of wool. Then the summer would have sparse grass and wild little flowers. She would hold a flower and muse over the irresistible force that life is, always fighting to come out of snows and stones; the iron will of a little seed to stay under the snows and burst forth with joy as the summer sun melted the snow sheets.

She would peek into the sky where the little fluffs of clouds floated in a mauve sea of tranquility. And all this would again transform into iciness, all cloaked in thick snows, just a few very steep snowless slopes visible. A perfect sun beating on a blinding blizzard of white. The sky flawlessly dark blue, not a speck of cloud. With the warmth of her faith cloaked in her maroon woolen cape she would sit to meditate on the snow. A drop of pious blood of life on the white icy face of death.

A few fluffy sparrows would sit meditatively with eyes closed on the little grain bowl. The snowy desolation making it feel remoter; the deep blue of the sky condensing the mystery even further, but drawing it still nearer to the soul. The strings of prayer flags hanging languidly with their sagged but discernible multiple colors: an effort of putting meaningful colors among the binary of white and blue prevailing around.

A flock of dozens of pigeons busy in searching among the partially visible dead grass on the frozen slope below her window, picking the grains of life, to fly, to play. Like an excited girl, catching to some innocent strand of harmless fun that she had in childhood, to see their fluttering flight in a flock, to play like a girl, to feel the excitement of the flight of the pigeons, she would move the creaking window. A lovely little prank with the birds in that snowy wilderness. And they would lift with a flutter and swoop down the valley.

Her only neighbors the birds playing on the snow-beaten dry grass, chirping to keep warm, grabbing some grass seed, some wisp of food for preserving life in this cold desert. Sometimes she saw flocks of gorals, the muscled, nimble essence of what the barren stones have to offer in the form of the beaten grass.

Then one day right in the middle of meditation two policeman arrived bearing a letter signed by the Senior Superintendent of Police-cum-FRO, district Kargil, copied to the SHO police station Zanskar. It accused her of illegally overstaying at Shadey village (for this was the nearest village) in Zanskar after the expiry of e-visa which had been extended by one year after the expiry of the initial one. The extension visa had expired six months ago. In her innocence she had even forgotten that boundaries existed in this divided world. She thought they would just forget her. So she hadn’t applied for further extension. The notice directed her to leave the country within ten days.

The policemen said, ‘Please leave India because your visa expired long ago.’ They were gentle people, didn’t scare her, so she served them tea and thought maybe she could mollify them. She replied, ‘I’m not going because I’m just meditating here and playing with animals. I am not meeting anyone, not doing anything bad against India.’ They laughed at her elementary schoolgirl’s pure innocence. How she wished there were no borders!

With a heavy heart she had to say a goodbye to the lovely pink colors of a dawn peeping over the dark brown hills as the day arrived. 

I had been sending her one-liner messages to know any update about her on Facebook and WhatsApp for the last three years. No response. The messages stood undelivered. Then she surfaced.

‘Hello, it’s me. I just finished a three year retreat in the mountains, everything is fine! Don’t worry! I will keep in touch with you,’ she assures me about her safety.

‘I’m glad mother existence gave you these golden hours of silence and seclusion. Let your path be showered with sunshine of awareness,’ I’m relieved that this nice woman, who reads my books and whom I met at Majnu Ka Tila Tibetan colony in Delhi over Tibetan tea and tsampa bread, is safe and well on her path to self realization.

‘I wanted to do a retreat for three years but now my visa is expired, so I have come back to Hanoi. So many wonderful experiences. I will tell you later. Now I am taking another five months of meditation and practicing speaking again. I have not spoken for almost three years now. Sometimes I will. Will send messages to you,’ she wrote.  

She seemed to be gingerly tottering back to the worldly clatter after that near perfect peace in the Himalayas. We had a deep exchange of messages over the coming week, I as a curious seeker and she as someone who is already at a very stable frequency.

‘You were in India all this time?! Vow… I was in Ladakh for two weeks this summer. Had I known I would have come to meet you,’ I’m excited like a child.

‘It would have been very difficult for you to access my hideout. I had to use six horses to carry my things and walk for a day to reach my hideout,’ she is very excited about this feat of isolating herself in an alien environment.

‘Are you into secret tantrik mystical Tibetan Buddhist practices?’ I ask because I feel that maybe she is into something very esoteric in nature.

‘I can’t tell you all. But I’m back home. The Indian police moved me, asking me to leave India immediately because my visa expired six months ago,’ I can feel traces of sadness in her messages. Why do the borders exist for such sincere mediators, I wonder.

‘Kindly share the wonderful experiences when you have time. I can try writing on these,’ I request.  

‘It is difficult to talk about my experiences during my days of retreat in the Himalayas. My mind was completely empty and there was only a gentle joy in enjoying everything around me. If you want to write something about it you must send me a list of your questions, because I do not know where to start and cannot describe to you my nameless joy. My meditation hours were always consecutive but did not put pressure on me. I did not use language but communicated by communion with the environment and the animals. Silence for me did not become heavy but a sweet absorption of stillness. I communed with the sound of the wind, of the river and the birds, the howling of wolves when the snow came. Each and every sound went straight to my heart and was very gentle. I can talk about my feelings all day long but for you to write it down you have to give me your list of questions, because I cannot tell you my experience in solid bullet points. I can only tell you that peace in emptiness always takes over me,’ her soul feels satiated with joy. I can feel this in each of her words.

I take closer looks at the pictures sent by her. It’s simply incredible. Even in virtual two dimensions they speak countless volumes about some mammoth dimension redolent with unbound peace and joy. 

‘This is paradise… a spiritual charging port for the willing person who is aware of this openness… beautiful… thanks a ton for sharing… I enjoyed watching these… So is it like charging the self, like we charge the batteries? But the batteries get discharged, so we get them plugged again for charging? So does your self also crave for charging after spending time in the city and hence you seek solitude again? It’s a lovely craving if it’s so…but how is it fundamentally different from other common cravings of the common people like me? Craving seems to be craving, even though it seems a holy one, but isn’t it still a need?

‘Do you expect to reach a stage where you feel the same serenity and peace which you feel in Zanskar in Hanoi itself? I mean an awareness when one is at peace even in outside chaos… like a steady lamp even among winds,’ my logical mind is full of questions.

‘Any mystical experience? I mean that would give some logical validation to the skeptics? Did you have any experience with entities and disembodied beings?’ my questions are endless.

The vacuum that she created in solitude is now spontaneously getting filled with explanatory words. This is very surprising because she has been very reserved during our interactions and hardly speaks during meetings, just silently listens to you. But now she has many words. 

‘Yes, I agree with you that true peace is when you are as comfortable in the middle of the market as you are in the mountains. Your emotions and awareness are not affected or get changed. But you also know that this is really difficult if you have not experienced true peace, and to achieve this you need to change your familiar living environment to clearly see how your mind and body work and how you recognize the entanglements from your mind. Being addicted to something cannot achieve true bliss. Sometimes you have to separate yourself from your familiar environment and experience different things.

‘I am not saying that living in the mountains will give you enlightenment or a super wisdom but I am saying that your experience with different living environments is important because only then you can separate yourself and observe how your mind works.

‘For me living alone in the mountains is not a challenge but a gift, I do not need to make any effort and when I return to the city I will have objective experiences when observing life in the city.

‘I want to experience contrasting ways of living so that I can observe how my mind works. That is my purpose when I withdraw from society and live fully with nature. Then I return to society and test myself.’

She is very clear about this lovely urge to merge with solitude on her solitary trail.

‘I can experience the mystical even when I live in the cities. It happens to me all the time, but living in the Himalayan environment and practicing silence there, it is always magical. I easily communicate with invisible beings and dakinis or angels. I can communicate with them mentally or I can see their manifestations through their transparent bodies. I can hear their music and smell their mystical scents. In short, I communicate with them as sentient beings with bodies. When I sing prayer songs in the mountains, sometimes they join me and sometimes I dance with them on the snow.

‘To others it may seem miraculous but to me it is normal communication. When you open your heart and immerse yourself in bliss you can easily feel the joy or suffering of all beings in other realms.

‘When you live in the mountains this is a great place for you to penetrate and communicate without words. This communication is completely different from verbal communication. You can easily understand every animal, every invisible being who wants to communicate with you and you can talk to them by opening your mind and heart to them. They will easily understand you.’

She expresses it beautifully. Yes, one’s experience is beyond words because words are fragments and are limited to our interpretation. But when we tell others, we are bound by words to convey what one has felt. But I have a questioning mind and I’m seeking answers on the plane where I have perceived things myself. She is talking of a different plane but she is graceful enough to try to make a bridge so that she can convey a portion of what she experienced there.

I’m trying to interpret her experience in my dimension, ‘You are right about the significance of exposing the self to different environments. It definitely enlarges the perspectives, gives additional dimensions of awareness and perception. So you mean basically it’s about exploring the mind, its ways, its patterns and impulsive structure. But can’t the mind mind its own business? The entire body is mind, each cell has memory and function and millions of spontaneous actions keep going without our conscious effort. So why should we mind the mind so much? Every thought, emotion, pattern, feeling, fluctuation is inherently part of the over-all cosmic pool of cosmic intelligence. So why should we just filter out a particular state to be better than the others, when mother existence is willing and ready to have the so-called worldly elements in its leela? You mean we mind the mind to that extent that we go beyond the patterns of impulsive thoughts and random changes in our feelings?

‘A very strong mind can manifest its beliefs. They say at the quantum level, there is no abstract reality without the observer. And the observed and the observer are interlinked. Tibetan Buddhism has concepts of dakinis and with conscious effort you manifest that reality. Maybe in that very pristine environment some Muslim or some tribal shaman from Africa or a Hindu devotee will manifest their deities and entities mentioned in their faith. Have you ever seen anything which is absolutely not related in shape or feeling to the dakinis mentioned in Tibetan Buddhism? Do they have strong likes and dislikes?

‘In India there is this story of Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Swami Totapuri. It tells to what extent Ramakrishna had taken his faith. He had taken it to the extent of seeing mother Kali alive in the idol at the temple where he stayed. He worshipped mother Kali, a prominent Hindu deity. And he was stuck up with that beautiful mind construct, the image of Ma Kali. He needed to be convinced to stop manifesting this reality at the quantum level—the observed is always related to the observer. Swami Totapuri could feel that Ramakrishna is stuck up in the holy chains of his mind construct (attachment to the deity) and needs to be set free. Using the same mental construct, he guided Ramakrishna to behead that image. Mother wanted him to grow beyond Her image. To become mature, to grow into a highly spiritual man, a true son of the divine mother. Dense perception, dense concept, dense focus create a too solid image. It also somehow restricts one’s flow. In infinity there is no final limit. All remains to be known even despite knowing all.’

I have my counter logic inspired by what the quantum physicists say about the ultimate nature of reality.   

Logic is insatiable. No point was ever proved by the sword of logic. Ever. Because each and every logic has a counter logic. But sweet is the addiction to logic, the bane of modern man, so I’m still on my logical fusillade, ‘Those who know that they don’t know and can’t know all despite being seen to know very much, will say there is nothing miraculous. What we take as miraculous is a simple cause and effect in its own dimension, just that we don’t understand and feel it. In its own field, the apparent miracle stands like a normal existence of a flower in my domain of existence. So I very much believe in your lived reality. It’s a cosmic soup, infinitely layered with potential for self-manifestation of its self through various means, for example through a gentle, highly aware peaceful being. And that includes you as well. So I don’t have any doubt about it. Yes, I might have a vague feel of it myself—the words of the wordless, the language of silence. Everything manifests in the womb of nothingness. This is what I felt in Ladakh myself.

‘In moderate climate you have luxuriant manifestation of life forms. But there is emptiness and sheer sense of nothingness in harsh Ladakh climate. No tree, just stones, open skies, distances redolent with the possibility for the emptiness to unfold miles after miles. As you move towards Ladakh, you are moving from dense manmade manifestations in the cities to naturally produced forests in middle Himalayas to the lofty barrenness in high Himalayas… from collective pool of struggling frequencies, we are moving to more harmonized layers of energies. No wonder, we feel relaxed in open forests. Here, mother earth is responding to favorable weather elements, trees, meadows, grass. It’s more evolved type of manifestation than the cluttered cities, but it’s still manifestation… under the burden of being so… in trees you have the game of life, natural noise, romantic and poetic… but still there is some heaviness, simply because there is a struggle for survival in this manifestation.

‘In Ladakh, on the other hand, it is almost empty. It feels like we are moving from the manifest to the unmanifest in that pure, lucid stony high-altitude desert. One feels even more relaxed and peaceful… it’s beyond the game of manifestation… just open iciness… the open forces of nature, unbridled, untouched by competing frequencies… a still picture… the frozen moments of just being so… so near to the unmanifest on the roof of the world. There have been so many sadhus and sadhaks who could feel the joy of just being so.’

She knows the value of silence. A logical talk about what can only be conveyed through a wordless smile can only be met with silence—a nice, courteous full stop. She doesn’t reply.

I acknowledge it, ‘Your “silence” is the best answer to a “chatterbox” like me. Words can never give answers. Mere pointers they are. But yes, by being relaxed and at peace one adds to the beauty around. A peaceful mind is like a honey drop in this bitter world. Lighted be your path to peace and joy!’

Now she knows that laughter is the best answer in this situation, ‘Haa haa.’ I visualize her laughing; her lovely, narrow eyes closing with childish mirth. ‘Don’t worry, I’m just a little busy and I’ll reply to everything for a talkative person like you.’

A spiritual person can easily laugh off such minor irritants like talkative persons. I’m amused that silence here was work, ‘If you have the time to waste then most welcome because the more I speak and write, the more I know how irrelevant and illusionary all this is.’

I find typing too limited to carry on with such a profound discussion, so I propose why not we talk on the issue.

‘I really have difficulty listening and speaking after three years in silence and solitude, so please write to me what you want to say,’ she is comfortable with typing.

‘It has been a long time since I spoke and heard human voices. Yup, everything written and spoken is a product of the mind and being a product of the mind it is an illusionary thing.

‘When I write down my feelings to send to you and then I read them again, I still feel like I haven’t said anything, what I want to convey to you is still far away.

‘You asked me “but can’t the mind mind its own business? The entire body is mind, each cell has memory and function and millions of spontaneous actions keep going without our conscious effort.” Yes, the mind is not capable of doing that, because the nature of the mind is always fluctuating and uncertain. It cannot take care of the peace of each of us, but it is only an expert in creating fake problems and dragging us into them, so recognizing and observing the mind is extremely important for each practitioner.

‘The mind cannot be spontaneous, only emotions from our heart or from our body can be spontaneous.

‘The mind operates from our conditioning of knowledge and it habitually dominates all our perceptions and gives us the illusion that we perceive from our own spontaneity.

‘The intelligent universe is not present in the mind but in the cells that make up our body.

‘Buddhism has the concept that the mind is the greatest obstacle that every practitioner must face and recognize his mind and not identify himself with the mind. If we are not controlled by the mind, no practice will be needed and religion is unnecessary. As you know, in primitive societies when people were innocent and lived naturally with themselves and there were no laws to control people, religion was unnecessary.

‘It is very important that practitioners today are always interested in methods to recognize and control the mind because we have lost our innocence and we have overvalued knowledge over real life experience.

‘The masters have spoken a truth: outside of the mind there is no Buddha, god or devil. Our mind creates heaven and creates hell.

‘So if you are a Buddhist then the visualizations like dakinis will correspond to your Buddhist perception and if you are a Hindu then your mind will always have images or symbols of Krishna, Mahakali. There is no fixed or standard religious or demonic image, all images will appear corresponding to your mind.

‘There are so many religions in the world today because we have so many different types of minds.

‘You asked “have you ever seen anything which is absolutely not related in shape or feeling to dakinis mentioned in Tibetan Buddhism? Do they have strong likes and dislikes?”

‘This is impossible because you can only see them through your mind, if any form is outside your trained mind you cannot see it. So when I tell you that I communicate with invisible entities like dakinis, they all come from my Buddhist mind.

‘Now I’ve said it, any questions you have I will continue to answer until eternity.’

Words are the limited waves that temporarily surface on the ultimate sea of realization of the truth. She is very confident of creating more waves to make me feel the uselessness of wordy waves in getting profound answers. 

‘You have problem in talking and listening. I have mine of typing because I am typing on my laptop most of the time and feel saturated with typing. All of us have our comfort zones. But yes that’s how one feels when ego melts and one feels like a small medium for the expression of a few things,’ a person with theoretical knowledge of the experiential matters is a very irritating rival in a spiritual discussion. 

Since she has given me a free hand in wordy discussion by saying that she is willing to talk till eternity to answer my questions I carry on with my queries.

‘What exactly is the mind? The concept of mind itself is our creation and what we have created can’t be an entity in abstract from our biological operation. Mind is a very vague concept, a wonderful creation of our brain operation. To me mind is the entire body. And what matters is a balanced body functioning. This in turn will create a balanced output at the operational level and for convenience we can say it is to have a balanced mind,’ I ask the question and give my answer for the same.

She answers, ‘In my experience there is never a balanced mind, we can only have a balance between mind and body. Mind can never be the whole body. Mind is a big illusion of ours, it does not really exist, it is a creation of the karma accumulated from our body. Mind exists because body exists, when you lose this body the mind also disappears. Our whole world is created by mind, that is why the masters say that the world is Maya.’

The subject of mind has always been very significant for me, so my counter comes readily.

‘Whatever you have written about mind arises from an assumption of mind as an abstract entity, something having a separate dimension from the body. It isn’t. The concept of mind is merely a total summary for the way our biological systems operate in entirety. This extreme focus on mind is the root cause of all the problems. Why give it that much importance to erect an entire system of theology, religion and meditation practices? Why not accept one’s reality at the natural level without the concept of mind? An existence in totality, like the rest of the species.

‘First we create an entire mountain of the complexity of mind, give it a name, assign it a problematic domain and then we set out to cut it down. It’s very easy to live at ease, in totality, in the moment without giving too much attention to this concept of mind. I don’t look at myself as a mind struggling with the rest of me. It’s just me, pure me—my flesh, my energy, my thoughts, my feelings. I don’t segregate and first visualize a mammoth entity like mind that’s putting hurdles in my evolution or enlightenment. I see myself as something very normal, an animal like a cat or dog, weak in my areas and strong in some zones. Simple. And the more balanced is the body operation, one need not get haunted by the ghost of mind.

‘Sorry I don’t agree. There is no separate zone between mind and body. I accept them as one. Then one need not fight for balance.

‘You say “mind exists because body exists.” Yes this is what I mean. Mind is a human-devised concept to indicate the operational output of our biological systems.’

My kind and loving mediator friend now realizes the futility of words and also that one cannot answer till eternity to curious, argumentative people like me. I feel she is irritated a bit and feel sorry for triggering this unorthodox reaction in her.    

‘The difficulty is that you have never had an experience outside of your mind and you are talking to me from your mind, this will be very difficult for me to explain to you clearly,’ she is coming near to accepting the futility of taking about mind, the ways to dismantle it using the mind itself.

But the whirlpools of conceptual mind have taken me in. I’m rather fighting my own battle with the concept of mind, ‘Why create a false enemy first and then create a huge system of religion to defeat the enemy. To me there is no adversary mind to tame it and balance it with body. To me it’s merely a thought, a thought about mind, a mere output of my biological existence.

‘I have had my own experiences of the so-called mystical  things but I don’t overvalue these and leave them as something that’s not yet comprehensible to me at this stage. I think you too are merely talking from mind because you are just centered around the concept of mind’

She seems to mind the talk of no-mind through the concept of mind, ‘Yes, you said “is no adversary mind to tame it and balance it with body... to me it’s merely a thought.” So what are all your questions for? What are all those books you’ve written for?’

She has a point here. I try to revalidate my position, ‘Mind is a beautiful thought but still just creation of our operational system at the levels of body and energies. It’s very easy to say to someone that you have never experienced anything beyond mind but I can say the same to someone that you haven’t experienced God, so you won’t understand.’

‘Yes. This is the destination where we use our minds to talk to each other, when we use our minds to talk or argue we can only go to this destination,’ she seems resigned to the futility of discussion about the mind.

Nonetheless I clarify my point, ‘I’m not asking you questions to understand mind. I just asked about your experiences as a fellow seeker. It’s you who said you will talk through questions and answers format. I just wanted to ask about your experiences like I would ask another friend who went to Thailand and I would say how was it. Just that. I didn’t mean to experience more about the mind or God through questions. It was your interpretation. I am just about experiences. And all the books that I have written aren’t meant to seek some meaning of the ultimate truth. They are written as a form of wonder, curiosity, acceptance of this game of life, in its entirety… just an expression… without any purpose… simple. It feels good to be in wonderment and trying to express my small view about this endless game.

‘I flow with life. I am not erecting check dams of mind to tame it and divert the flow to take myself to divinity. I accept the present, the way it’s… in totality. And when I feel totality, there is no mind, no body… just being so. That’s why I don’t find them contradictory in nature to be battled out for balancing them. We have to fight to balance them because we ourselves have conceptually set them as adversarial entities. To me they are one and I don’t find myself wedged between body and mind. I just feel the way it’s, something that’s just me beyond body and mind bifurcation.’

A smilie from her side.

I fill in the blanks, ‘Joyful be your battle with mind. Let’s meet over coffee sometime in India. I will try to speak less. Do you read these days? Or just meditate?’

‘I took a break from reading and just meditated and watched birds and flowers. I think I will read again in six months,’ she says.

‘Vow that’s lovely! You have a very interesting way of managing your life. If I may ask, when was the last time you had an erotic dream? And what could have caused it? Extra energy born of food, or surroundings, or memories, or plain old habits of the mind?’ the stream of my questions hasn’t yet dried out, especially about this unsolved puzzle about sex and spirituality.

She is very honest and open about it, ‘This happens on my monthly periods. It doesn’t happen usually. It’s not regular but if it happens it’s usually on those days. And I think it happens because the old habits have not been fully purified and because a women’s body and mind are strongly influenced by the lunar cycles. This is a big obstacle for the women on the path of practice, but if you have full observation at the times when it happens, you can turn this obstacle into an opportunity to come out of it completely.’

I know a woman is best placed to talk about it but I take it still in flow with the previous discussion, ‘So we can accept it as a natural thing influenced by uncontrollable elements like lunar cycles which have a cause and effect on our biological systems, right?

She agrees, ‘Accept with observation and understanding. Accept with observation and awareness and grasp the cycles of its occurrence.’

But my doubts won’t stop barging in, ‘Why should it then be taken as an obstacle? Something so natural. Isn’t it like taking gravity as an obstacle because it is a hindrance in our urge to fly? Because we are evolved to walk? And if we nurture a pious end to fly, then even gravity is a hindrance! Should we then get into hard core tantrik mystical practices to levitate? Why can’t be just staying natural be pious? Why is it taken as an obstacle? Something so natural as walking under the force of gravity. I mean why can’t we be at ease and restful with what we are? Why try to be something different?’

‘It is only an obstacle if we do not observe and grasp it, but if we observe and understand it, it will be the door for us to transcend the physical. Your question is answered. Yes if you can be at peace with it, there will be no need for any question or any practice. If you can accept your whole body and mind as it is then you have come to ultimate enlightenment. Otherwise you have to search,’ she seems at a very stable frequency.

But mine is a speedy stream of questions and curiosities, ‘Why do we consider the physical urge to be a bondage? So as to transcend it. Why can’t we just accept the way we are? Just like a tree does. Is it the human destiny to try to be something else from what he is? Humans try to be scientists, artists, sports people, wealthy businessmen, politicians, stars. And just in the same flow, some of us try to be pious and holy and transcend the physical dimension. Isn’t it the same striving? To be something else.

‘I’m asking from your perspective, out of curiosity, because I hardly feel the requirement to know and be something else than what I am. It’s like just a child’s play to me. All this reading, writing, questioning are just in sync with what I already am; not something aimed at changing myself fundamentally.’

She takes a nice, cute, innocent jibe, ‘Yes, so you have attained the state of supreme enlightenment and I have not, so I have to search.’

I firmly deny this, ‘No. I don’t have the concept-bound mind regarding attaining supreme enlightenment. I just am. And while I search, seek, read, write, ask questions or give answers, all this is just like a child plays; for the sheer fun of it; not to become something extraordinary or supernatural. Ask a child why does he play? He doesn’t play to become something else; he just plays.

‘O my Tibetan friend, take me just as an argumentative Indian and meditate in peace. Joyful be your day!’

Then she used the best language befitting argumentative Indians. The language of silence. I believe she went into another long silent retreat. I just added to the noise around.

A message for someone

 

Fight for a kingdom and be a king. That’s your ‘right’ beyond the debate of moralistic right or wrong. But remember kingdoms have their consequences. It’s very natural for the kings to be killed by their own sons. Just a natural consequence. You hand over the lust for unrestricted power to your son. He will be a worthy inheritor of your legacy and would dethrone you on the chessboard of power when he comes of age.

In the same vein, if you have been lucky to have official powers and privileges—for which you get paid and are expected to do your service strictly as per the contract—you will sometimes get an itch to set-up a mini-kingdom by going out of your domain and misuse your power and privileges for unjustified gains. That of course is also your right. But remember your son will inherit the same mini-kingdom of misuse of your privileges beyond your official domain. He will dethrone you when his time comes. He will also kill you to occupy the little throne that you have set up by inflicting injustice through the misuse of your powers and capabilities. He may not slit your throat directly but will definitely do it indirectly. He won’t respect you, he would be undisciplined and you will see your little kingdom falling apart under his erratic lifestyle. That is as good as a son killing his father. Again it’s not about right or wrong. Simply cause and effect.

The more you ‘make’ as an angry, arrogant and violent person, the more you expose yourself to be ‘broken’ by the bigger forces of similar nature. And the rot begins at home, remember this. Again, simple cause and effect. Nature doesn’t operate on moralistic principles. It’s only about what you are doing at what frequency. Life will give you back a hundredfold of exactly what you are investing in the same currency. If it’s arrogance, ego and greed that propels you, the trajectory of your life will be defined by the same factors. Keep fighting. When will you ever stop? And if petty, tyrannical fights of this nature make you feel like a soldier, it’s a nice cover for the demons inside to be decorated with honorable military dress.

If you see yourself in this write-up and get angry then I’m sorry. As a writer, I just hold a mirror in front of the reader. What you see in that is your own making, your own labor. If you don’t like the image that stares back at you, change it. If not, keep the angry fight till your last breath. You may achieve anything but not peace.

Romancing with your lady -- the solitary trail

 

Do you know the significance of a solitary trail? All of us have a solitary trail, our very own secluded path where we are face-to-face with ourselves. Where the small worldly self walks with the larger Self. Where each step is a quantum jump in evolution. Where the destination doesn’t hark you, rather you become your own destination. You inhale wellness, you spread your wings, you float. Where you get a causeless smile. This trail is available wherever you are situated, even in densely populated cities. You just need to feel it and then follow its alluring call. Seek your solitary trail, own it, stamp your love on it. Then walk in solitary leisure and divine pleasure.

The architectural prelude to the great Taj Mahal

 

The liberal, mystic scent of Sufism was buried in an unknown grave. So was the fate of a Sufi shahjada, Dara Shikhon, who lies buried in an unidentified grave in Humayun tomb complex situated in Delhi.

Humayun’s tomb was built by his wife Hamida Bano Begum. I like this emperor because he died in his library, not a bloodied battlefield. And his mausoleum is a beautiful precursor to the great Taj Mahal. The grand beauty of Taj Mahal doesn’t stand in abstract and doesn’t sprout on its own. This modestly grand tomb is the inspiration behind the majestic Taj. You can say it’s Taj Mahal in infancy.

Made mostly of red sand stone, with thin marble inlays, it contains many structures (containing about 150 graves in 60 chambers) within the sprawling complex. It’s a mosaic of architectural styles blending Rajput and Iranian styles such as jharokhe (windows), projections of the entrance, arches having elephant trunks and circular medallions. Interestingly, there is a structure named Bu Halima, probably named after a famous Arab dancer.

Had Dara Shikhon, the Sufi shahjada, become the emperor of India, he would have been a great Sufi, philosopher and king combined in the rarest of a rare personality blend. To understand the Upanishads and translate them in Persian one has to be the master of soul as well as languages. I’m mesmerized looking at his massive commentary on the Upanishads displayed at the museum.  This is something phenomenal; simply out of this world.

His life is a testament to the fact that it’s possible to be ‘a prince with esteemed spiritual values’. A unique royal personality, he tried to walk on the unorthodox bridge between the royal palace and the Sufi khanqah. He possessed keen interest in Hindu thought and philosophy and in pursuit of that interest he commissioned translation of many Hindu sacred texts into Persian.

A prolific writer he chronicled the life of 400 Sufi saints in his work Sufinat-ul-Aulia. In another work named Risala-i-Haq Nama he sets up a treatise on the path to the divine. In Hasanat-ul-Arifin he delves into Hindu thought through Ramayana and Krishna stories. Most importantly, his translation of Upanishads into Persian shows the depth of his soul and vastness of his mind. The beloved prince of the masses believed that Sufis and Hindus share the essential core of mystical truth.

Had he become the emperor of India, it would have been a different India altogether. But he was killed by his Islamic zealot brother Aurangzeb who ruled with sword on hardcore communal Islamic principles. The latter left enough communal mud for the current Hindu nationalists to wallow in it for political gains. The voice of sanity and secularism lies buried in one of the dozens of graves in the Humayun tomb complex, unrecognized, unsung.

Auragzeb was very punitive towards his secular brother. He buried him in an unknown grave. The historians haven’t so far been able to recognize the Sufi prince’s cenotaph. I think his grave should be discovered and a separate memorial should be built in memory of this great philosopher prince whose life symbolizes our composite culture. 

The impressive museum on the tomb premises gives a nostalgic peek into the poets who scented the society with their sweet emotions about eight centuries back. It’s an overpowering feeling to look at their works at the museum. The great poet Amir Khusro’s works displayed at the museum whisper to you, conveying the message of love and peace.

Amir Khusro’s Shirin-o-Khusro (1298-1301) deals with the tragic love story of Emperor Khusro and Armenian princess Shirin. It’s a grand feeling to look at a copy at the museum. The ancient book decorated with gold borders in nastaliq calligraphy by a master calligrapher and containing many illustrations by a master painter.

Imagine Rumi’s 25,000 couplets drenched with universality of love and compassion. That was the time when Sufism, the jewel in the crown of Islam, was at its peak. Sufism that stood for the unity of faith across various religions; Sufism that was liberal; Sufism that was mystical Islam’s loveliest prayer to the Almighty. Unfortunately Sufism too was buried in an unknown grave like Prince Dara by the hardcore, fundamentalist followers of Islam. It would have been a different world had Sufism become the public face of Islam. 

The beauty of a prayer

 

If you find yourself praying for someone, take my word you are doing well my friend. This lovely urge to pray for others is a sign of divinity itself. Don’t hold any doubts about its effect. It’s effective and one need not find any proof of its effects. The mere reason that one does it is a proof of its effect. You need no validation by others in the form of effect or result. The mere fact that you do it is sufficient. And your prayers always have a positive effect in subtle dimensions, irrespective of whether you know these or not because such beautiful fine-tuning of positive vibrations will have its positive effect. It’s simple cause and effect, simple science.

Further, we can avoid comparing the extent and reach of our prayers. All prayers are lofty. They are equal. They are beyond the physical structures that can be compared. Whispering prayers for someone in the lovely chamber of your kind heart is a great spiritual exercise.

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!