Superstition--the great leveler

 

Superstitions will have easy takers among the people of different nationalities, races, religions, ethnicities, classes, castes. We will easily fight over different gods and geographies. But when it comes to superstitions we drop the guard. A Hindu will take Muslim superstitions to ward off the evil eye. Because all of us carry the same primal fear. In the brotherhood of fear, we are just the same little children. It’s the same reaction. Like a well-organized and tidy person of any religion or nationality winces with the same reaction after cutting on the soft inside of his cheek.

The dreamy game of creation

 

‘Nothing’ wants to be ‘something’. The eternal emptiness is forever seeking to be impregnated with something (temporary). The endless flow of emptiness (eternal) briefly sparkles as a stream of water. Carrying its fluid independence, shaped by circumstances, moving without any ego constraints, following the natural free-flowing law of its mother, the stream of eternal emptiness. The line of water also has a smaller empty womb pregnant with a broad set of possibilities (but still limited in comparison to the eternal mother). It sires a still limited manifestation of the free eternal flow—a snake. The snake is a more conscious replica of its mother stream having flesh and bones. It’s still further away from the free flow (water), just like water itself is away from the mother stream of eternal emptiness. The fluidity and freedom of its crawl is curtailed by the impulsive fears and struggle for survival because it has to maintain its structural elements.

Similarly, from the eternal empty float of ‘nothingness’, the air manifests with smaller freedoms than its mother. Out of air the birds manifest and fly with still lesser free flow than the mother component. The grandchildren of the grand eternal ‘nothing’ have lesser and lesser element of free flow with the coming of new generations. The eternal simplicity turning more and more complex.

The eternal ‘nothing’ becomes earth, the earth becomes trees. From the eternal grand simplicity to a structural sophistication in each new generation. But this drive towards sophisticated manifestation—from eternal emptiness to rudimentary elemental structuring to complex restructuring further down the line—is like setting up check-dams of restraint upon the infinite force of eternal ‘nothing’. It’s a channelization for smaller streams.

An evolutionary path: the Big Bang, galaxies collapsing, black holes eating stars up the stream to a small wild flower and a honeybee hovering over it down the line. The blinding fury of the infinite now channelized to a beautiful little fragrant stream. The species like humans—who have a relatively bigger capability to channelize the little streams—have a special responsibility to take it further down the path of lovelier manifestations. A human blooming flowers is far more in symmetry with the eternal flow than the human who is making nuclear bombs to create more destructive forces. It’s like going back to the primal age of infinitely destructive forces.

This existence has already seen too many explosions happening of its own in faraway galaxies. It can definitely do without our little childish firecrackers. Evolution is to take us more and more away from the destructive forces. Because we have started from super-massive galactic bangs. Making weapons to create more death and destruction instead of helping evolve more and more beauty is like going back into the fire we started from. Let’s add to the beauty. Let there be sunshine on the layers of foggy illusions. Let there be more flowers and trees. Let there be a heaven on the earth where callused hands enjoy delicious fresh food and exquisite wine. Let’s accept that wisdom is basically about silence and just a tiny fraction of essential words. Let’s accept the commonality, our shared being. Let’s acknowledge the entangled roots that we have. Let’s be sensitive to the perceptible and imperceptible flow of pain in our veins. We carry the joys and sorrows of our ancestor forests in our body. Let’s feel it and be aware of it. That’s the soil that nurtured us.     

A little specimen of village childhood

 

Here are a few snippets from Shekhar’s illustrious life. In school the best piece of writing he accomplished (far better than any exam he wrote) was a  letter he wrote to his armyman father. His illiterate mother dictated the contents. The basic idea was about conveying his undisciplined, errant ways that were in reverse direction to all that was taught at the village school. It was to be concluded with a request to give him a spanking when his father arrived for his annual vacations.

He was ten or eleven at that time. She thought he wasn’t smart enough to temper with the contents at such a delicate age. But she was mistaken. Shekhar remembered at least the essence of antonyms taught at the school. So he wrote the opposite stating he was a good boy giving details of his obedient ways in school and nice helping tasks he performed at home. And all this, the letter concluded, entitles him to a prize, a cricket bat. So a couple of months later his proud father arrived with a cricket bat. But first it was used on his bum once he came to know about the truth.

Shekhar possessed great treasurer qualities. His clay moneybox full of coins, he was looking for the safest place to keep it hidden from his siblings and other thieves prowling the village streets. At dusk he went to the shrubbery outside the village, serving as open public toilet, dug a hole, put the treasure inside, placed the soil back, padded it quite firmly and put the locker of his defecation on the top as a firm seal of inviolable property.

He loved money and even at a delicate age understood that it takes lots of efforts to earn wealth. Ajit was a few years elder to him. He was tossing a one rupee coin with malicious glee. He was testing the money-making guts of the village brats. He pointed out a farmer’s big heap of defecation and challenged anyone to strike it down with a fist blow and earn the top prize.

Even the most rascally ones gave in. Not Shekhar. He made a ball of fist with his left hand, kissed the curled little finger at the base and struck with purpose and force, with enough power so that there was no space for the bet-maker to cry foul. The heap was flattened. He had a dirty left hand. ‘In any case it does the same every morning!’ he consoled the shocked group of brats around. After that he bathed in the village pond for half an hour holding the prize money in his right hand.

Apart from running his barber shop he manages a tiny dairy unit. It involves three or four cows whose milk his wife sells to get her share of pocket money to feel economically independent. There are plenty of gau and nandi shalas in the countryside where the farmers leave the surplus calves. It was a male calf that Shekhar had to leave at the cow shelter. Named Sanda, the baby bull was much pampered by Shekhar’s family.

Shekhar was very sad to leave it in the cramped space full of bulls of all sizes ranging from Hercules to motes. From behind the grills, they competed to eat donated chapattis, jaggery and other cattle feed. After a fortnight Shekhar committed the mistake of crossing over into the yard and call Sanda affectionately with a piece of jaggery in his hand. It recognized him and ran like a child rushing to meet his father. But a huge-horned bull got offended and as if accusing him of favoritism ran after him. When he jumped over the wall he felt a rough graze of cattle horn on his bum. It was a close save.

Dazed democracies

 

The democratic world is in a crisis. The concept of freedom is warping due to the tug-of-war between liberals and conservatives within the democracies. As per the latest trends, the far-right radicals are targeting the leftist liberals as if they are the scourge of democracy.

Radical conservatives are becoming more popular. The conservative leaders are basically the showmen playing with the jugglery of rightist ideologies. Their swashbuckling hysterics create excitement and passion among the masses on the basis of religion, nationality, immigration, or anything that can create insecurity and false pride in the masses. They sell dreams in hyperbolic terms. Jingoism. Drama. Lots of noise. Nothing much is done on the ground. But in shouting, yelling and raising banners, the people think they are contributing to make their nation great.

The leftist liberals accomplish far more things at a natural pace, bring out real change. But all this may go down as nonperformance given their subdued intonation. A classic example is the work style of PM Manmohan Singh and PM Modi. The former with his unassuming persona actually brought about real effective change on the surface. The latter has built a high-pitched public avatar of himself, which is disproportionally too big for the little change that has actually happened on the ground for the common man.

The major world democracies are shifting to radical rightist control under powerful monopolist leaders who find democratic institutions and consensual obligations too limited and confining to operate. They are pushing at the edges of democracy to give it a new shape. They are spreading their cult to the fringes of electoral autocracy. The spirit of democracy is seriously strained. The far right conservatives are looking to melt the democratic iron fence and take their newly created space to meet China-type communist authoritarianism.

These macho leaders feel suffocated by the checks and balances of democratic institutions. They find the leftist liberals bigger enemies even than the non-democratic authoritarian rulers. No wonder, one can feel that Trump and Modi are more at ease with Xi and Putin.

Democracy seems like a bloated amoeba. A part of it (the rightist conservatives) is trying to cut itself off from the main body and merge with the authoritarian regime. And in countries where this is happening, the people are slowly getting habituated to a new set-up. They still believe that it’s the very same old democracy. It’s out of habit that they still believe that nothing has changed even though so many things have changed gradually just in a decade. The fundamental character of once autonomous institutions is slowly giving way to a new normal where their political misuse is the new norm.

Oligarchs—in both democratic and authoritarian world—are in close brotherhood across the ideological divides. They are like a dismembered amoeba, having different limbs in different countries but still sharing the same soul even though there is no physical contact. They are a great cementing bond between the far right democratic politicians and the dictators in shadow regimes. Oligarchs would always prefer a closed, manipulated politico-economic system. It’s beneficial to their unique regime. No wonder they would naturally support and finance radical, rightist authoritarian leaders who will mold the economic environment for oligarchy’s smooth passage.

The colors within

 

Mid-March musings in celebration of colorful Holi spirit. Mother nature itself busy in springtime festivity of flowers, fresh shoots, verdant leaves.

Can you ever give something that you don’t possess to someone? No. To give a coin to someone, you first need to have it in your possession. We can really give something to someone only if we have it. Otherwise, we just pretend to give and such fake offerings are laid bare sooner or later.

How will one give love, joy, companionship, peace, support and guidance to someone unless he/she already possesses them? So own these things first and then offer them to someone. In relationships we assume that we are there to give these things to the other person. While mostly we ourselves don’t possess them. So we pretend that we are a real giver. While in reality we are in need of these very things. Imagine a situation where two takers are pretending to be givers.

An honest taker is better than a false giver. So be an honest taker, full of gratitude and acceptance, while you work on the lovely stock of joy and peace in your possession. And then one fine day offer it to someone in the form of a relationship. If you still have some surplus left with you, it will flow out of you in the form of grand emotions, art, poetry, healing words. Or say, your presence itself will become a conduit for the outflow of peace and harmony around you.

So blossom the colorful orchard of fragrant flowers within your self first. That is what Holi is about. Once we have the lovely garden in our persona, the bees and butterflies will come kissing the smell riding the air. Wish you all the vibrant, natural colors of humanity in your persona! Happy Holi!   

The small lamp of truth--Taoism

 

This is something in celebration of the Taoists. The great sage Lao Tzu maintained that real knowing is to know that the unknowable can’t be known. It leaves one with a clean slate at every instant, despite all the knowledge, information and analysis accumulated so far. It makes one an eternal learner, not learned. One flows with the flow. There is so much to learn at every instant, still one stays empty—an empty vessel where mother existence pours down a fraction of existence and a lovely unique manifestation happens. I’m glad that there are people who are in harmony with the Tao even in this post-modernist clatter and chatter!

The grating moan of self-loath

 

Self-loath is the genesis of all the hatred pouring out of us. It’s the seed that lies deep in us nurtured by the manure of guilt, sense of failure, shortcomings, and the things that make us feel incomplete. It grows and acquires its domain over those around us. We can’t hate anyone unless we ourselves hate a part of us. We just project it on others. The others just make us realize the existence of that hate deep in us.

In the same vein, those deeply in self-love will be able to carry it over to others. Otherwise, we are just trying to forget our own self-loath for some time in the form of a relationship. So fall in love with yourself. Go so deep that you become all love. Then your relationships won’t be a mere need. They become natural bonds like the sunlight has with a flower.

A perfect day in spring

 

A perfect spring day in the first week of March. An utterly wonderful day poised between contrariness of hot and cold creating a tremulous ceasefire between the two. The sun unceasingly bright with a steady radiance. A cold wind cutting the warm fabric of sunshine. Mother nature crossing the fords to bloom fully. An idealized conception between hot and cold. A lovely liaison between father sun and mother earth. A pulsation of procreation. The balance lying in a mystery box teasing with tender inaccessibility. The sky bright blue shimmering with celestial wholesomeness. Restarting of a frozen flow; a blooming up after the winters. The air carrying courtesy, cordiality, felicity.

New leaves emerging with easeful proficiency. Buds opening fascinatingly, artfully. Flowers blooming as angelic personification of some cosmic urge to smile. The butterflies will soon arrive with the message that life is all beauty and honey. A sort of fullness flooding a rose as it maximizes its potential to bloom and happily scatter its petals to a gust of wind—a painless dissolution. A flower smiling rapturously with youth. The trees waving their branches with stately majesty in the wind. A leaf fluttering tremulously.

The squeaky falsetto of a purple sunbird. Maybe the female prodding the male with questions. Plentiful squeals of a tailorbird. Bewildering, chit-chatty sonority of sparrows as a flock. Velvety, marvelous smile on a maiden freshest with love. The shambling gallop of an old dog feeling young in spirit. At the zenith of their resolution, the trees and plants having survived the winters, now getting rewarded with new shoots and saplings. Mother nature watching with methodical magnanimity. Everyone looking up to the future having ridden themselves of the lacerating recollections of the past. Enlivening. Invigorating.

Mahakumbh Snan

 

February 25, a visit to the Mahakumbh mela. The more we feel the pangs of profligacy, the more we feel the need of rituals awaiting antiseptically to treat the germs of guilt born of an inner feeling about our wrongs in actual deeds, thoughts and emotions. The growing spasm between the set of moral values that we worship and our actual deeds is impulsively held tight under our instinctive dive into the pool of rituals. No wonder we have a buxom blossoming of rituals even in the modern age. Sullied with sins, we take holy dips to absolve the self from sins.

Even tragic news are attractive. Many holy-bath aspirants have died in stampedes. But instead of deterring the people, it’s attracting still bigger crowds. The government of course has a political agenda, which is its right just like any other political party, in publicizing the event. Millions throng a limited space on a daily basis. Irrespective of untoward instances, the arrangement is commendable.

Since it’s the shahi snan on Mahakumbh’s concluding day, there is extra rush to Prayagraj. The bus starting from the town is full. There are many old people. A group of young revelers on the last seat in great festive spirit. They shout Lord Shiva’s name in not so decent slang, raise a ruckus, shout, play cards, drink alcohol secretively mixed in coke bottles.

A man is travelling with his wife. He finds the drunk din rising from the last seat offensive. There is an argument. A policeman—in civil clothes—is also going to purify his body and soul. I ask him to intervene. The couple is offered a seat in the front section, away from the din. The party at the back goes as before.

By the time the bus stops at a rundown dhaba for dinner an old man is moving on unsteady legs. He is clearly drunk but still has a quarter left. He buys a small coke bottle, empties half of it as an offering to mother earth and refills it again with the contents of liquor from the other bottle. He was the most sober voice when the brawl took place earlier in the journey. He had spoken like an elderly sage, ‘Brothers you should mind the fact that he is traveling with his wife. With a woman of course one would have less digestion for such fun and cry. Even you would have found it offensive if you were in his place instead of being the merrymakers on the last seat.’

Two farming women seem to be really loyal to their bedtime. There they lie to sleep in the narrow aisle, shaken to sleep by the rattling tin cradle. About 80 km from the destination the clutch system of the bus gives in. One can see smoke near the driver seat and a burnt smell fills the bus. The engine stops. Now is the time to chant Shiva’s name with pure intensity. The older passengers remain inside. The rest of us get down to push the bus. The driver has given up hope and wants us to push it to a patrol station a few hundred meters away, visible with its hazy mercury light. He intends to park it there. And then allow the things to take their own course. But surprisingly the engine flutters to life after a few meters of pushing. It continues to run till 100 meters from the Nehru parking, the final destination. We are happy to reach despite the technical snag. I have been chanting Mahamrityunjay mantra all along the journey. So I take it as my reward for my chanting the Lord’s name with focus and dedication. 

They are minting money at Prayagraj. From Nehru parking, we ride a bike (200 rupees/passenger), travel for 12 km across the post-midnight mercury-bathed sleepy holy town and get dropped about 3 km from the sangam ghat. It’s about two in the morning and a huge crowd is merging on the point of salvation. It’s a shahi snan day and everyone must be having the thought of stampede deaths that occurred a month back. One can feel nervous air around the mass of pilgrims.

Millions of people have been visiting daily for the last month and a half. The facilities have been stretched thin, almost to the breaking point. Temporary toilet boxes are literally gas chambers. They can blow you off your senses. A person with delicate nature will surely faint within a minute if locked inside. Most of the babas have gone to Banaras to pay homage to Lord Shiva at Kashi Vishwanath temple. It feels good. The probability of being beaten by an irate naga sadhu without any provocation is very less now. Many videos have gone viral showing the nagas abusing and hitting people without any reason. They seem to be enjoying the show like little children. It’s good that most of the people take the beatings as blessings.

The crowd moves carrying a hum of faith, almost sleepwalking into the arms of divinity. Me and my friend take many dips. Millions of Her children have dumped their sins in the stream of Holiness. The water is murky. But it hardly matters to anyone. It’s about being here with openness and acceptance. Emptying yourself of your strong sense of ego and Her blessings flow in like water filling an empty vessel.

Thousands of more pilgrims arrive with each passing minute. The administration is tense. There is a public announcement going on asking the pilgrims to leave immediately after taking holy dips to avoid overcrowding. As we get out of the bathing area, thousands are moving with us, humming with happiness for having taken the holy dip.

Again a bike ride to the parking lot. And just as we reach the spot, a UP Roadways bus to Delhi is waiting to be filled. We get the last seat. The suspension system looks rudimentary. It bumps up and down like a cart even on the smooth road. The jolts put the intestines in a knotted, defensive posture. It makes the task of forgetting the morning’s call of nature quite easy. The bowl movement gets driven out of rhythm. It shuts off its operations to deal with the jolting emergency. Because in such a crisis the intestines have to save themselves first. Performance is secondary. It helps though, because there is hardly any usable toilet all along the journey. The system would stabilize only after a night’s rest.

I’m happy that I went for this holy bath. It had been playing in my mind for the last many weeks. It’s better to let the desires flow out instead of letting them stay in your system in a twisted form.

A little lesson on life and living

 There are people, lot many in fact, who have already died to almost everyone around, long before their soul leaves this body. The dead-alive or alive-dead, I call them. They are already buried under earth. Their existence just a little mound, a tiny bump—an unnecessary interjection on the landscape. Once in a while someone stumbles upon the tiny protrudation, pauses briefly, tries to find some familiarity, recognition or relatedness. But just a little earthen mound it is. He or she simply passes over.

There are so many graves of the living dead on the footpaths and in the slums. The least one can do is to acknowledge their life, their existence and hence save them from a complete death long before they shed this body. A smile, a greeting, a slight bit of acceptance of the little space they occupy is all that is needed to confirm their living status. That is a ray of hope, light and love—a tiny beam of light let into the grave. It saves the still living corpse from rottening.

Nurture life. This much you can do if you are lucky to be still alive to those around you. You save them from getting eaten alive by the worms in the feed trough of oblivion by temporarily unifying your lucky existence with the unlucky ones to give them a momentarily enhanced being. It’s healing in nature. They get a little respite from the rupture, fracture and parting from the living part of social fabric.

They have a hope in their heart struggling to meet the light outside. Their heart under a layer of dust forming a hard cake of dirt between the two. By pausing and acknowledging their existence, even by as small a gesture as a kind look, you let out a whiff of air from your mouth to remove the dust. Even that is sufficient.

Wounds are the cut marks but portals for new opportunities, new saplings, new shoots to grow—like a stream of life raising it little head from a branch grafting. They are an avenue for growth. Their—the living dead—entire existence is a big wound. The sun in your eyes and the compassion in your heart, just by a little gentle friendly brush with them, might help them in growing a tiny shoot.    

An old dog in the hills

 

High in Uttarakhand mountains, in a little hamlet situated in seclusion of one kilometer steep climb from the nearest road, a native Bhutia dog has reached the ripe age of twenty. Earlier it was a common dog owned by the entire hamlet. A common asset for vigilance against langoors and bears tearing the bark of apple trees. But for the last two or three years it has stayed at my friend’s house. Almost blind, most of the teeth gone, stiff weak joints. The dog has become a perfect representative for old age.

They say that for the last few seasons they have been expecting the old dog to call it a day. It would appear almost dying. But it has always sprung a surprise by coming back to life. They say the reason for this is that the dog has a good appetite and doesn’t stop eating even when it looks taking its last breaths. The black dog with rheumy eyes and long shabby fur soaks sunrays during the day and gives a proof of its good digestion by eating thrice a day.

They have another dog, a golden retriever. It’s very moody about eating and is all focused on playing and socializing. The old dog keeps sleeping even while the young one is jumping over it. In human terms, it’s as old as someone at least 125 years old or even more than that. I’m saying him bye, ‘Please be here when I come back again!’ The old dog can’t see properly. The old canine gentleman looks deeply at me, and having failed to see me clearly with its almost blind eyes, twitches its muzzle to smell the sense of what I say. It then shakes it old, bushy tail. Maybe it understood what I said and felt happy about it. Again it raises its muzzle in my direction and inhales the smell of the well-wisher who is expecting it to survive another season. Maybe it has clearly understood what I’m saying. I won’t be surprised if it understands human language after spending two decades with them.

My friend’s wife laughs loudly to hear my wishes for the old dog. But she is very positive about her responsibilities and I’m sure the old dog will get proper care as long as it is alive.

The haughtiness to this and that side of the center

 

When things are ‘wrong’ at socio-economic (and politics as a result), you have the far ‘right’ taking over, claiming to be the remedy for all that’s wrong. I’m right, I’m right, I’m right it says and everything else is wrong. When things go ‘very wrong’ at the socio-economic and political fronts, you have far ‘left’ taking over to bloodily undo all that has gone wrong by unleashing still bigger wrongs. The best political representatives for a stable society are the centrists on both sides giving each other tolerable, within-limits, bound-by-law punches.

The drunken torpor of existence

 

If you feel all the layers of sorrow spread around, you might feel gutted and minced with wet earth. Or you may see the light of love—sharp, pointed, clear, a shiny spot on the fabric of darkness. A white dot on the blackboard. The blackboard perspective. Or you can have the whiteboard view—feeling the joy that oozes from everything around. The dot of pain on this will be like a tiny dark well that sips little rays, eats them in fact. The whiteness having a black hole; the darkness having a white hole. They sustain each other. We have to accept them.

The prize-winning bull

 

Father’s death anniversary falls on March 1. Me and my brother go to a gaushala for donation. Here things are challenging and cramped for gaumata. But something is better than nothing. Hundreds of cows get food and shelter at least. And we can think of improving the conditions as long as cow shelters exist.

There is a bull whose front leg is broken from the joint leaving it as a crooked and unusable stump. It’s a sad sight. The caretaker is from Bihar. He has been working here for the last five years. He holds a scrubber in hand to give them a nice scrubbing. He tells the story how the bull got injured. The villagers bring their cows for mating. This cow was in heat and was tied at a distance. The farmer then untied the bull. It ran too fast in excitement. Love is blinding after all. Risky. The bull slipped on the uneven brick flooring in the compound and met a nasty fall. It broke its leg. Now it’s a very difficult handicapped life.

Golu, another bull, is standing nearby. It has won many prizes at cattle fairs. The last was a first prize of 51,000 rupees at Kurukshetra cattle fair. There are far more bigger and muscular looking bulls at the cow shelter. But Golu has beaten all of them here and at other shelters because it has a huge hump which gives it the USP and the top prize. Thus Golu is a revenue maker. One can feel that it carriers extra confidence in comparison to other bulls.

The obstinate colors of life on the face of derisive death

 

Mid February. An adamant winter giving a gentle, pleasant rebuff to the summer slowly treading ahead. The mornings dawn condescendingly on the vegetable market at the town, the town that’s itching with urban lust to become a city, then a metropolis and finally merge with some mammoth urban megalith. The clutter and chaos going up with the rising sun. There is an ineradicable typical smell of a vegetable market in a town. The seasons change but this smell remains the same. A myriad-colored smell—the smell of fresh vegetables entwining with decaying organic discards, mud and dung. It unleashes its assault on your olfactory senses with a squinting spurt. The dealers and sellers shouting hoarsely. The monkeys nimbly crawling on the wires, doing antics and jumping down to run away with something eatable, or at least fir for giving it a try to chew at.  

A bleak, pathogenic, primordial smell pervading the congestion. Paddlers and roaming hawkers arriving with their carts to buy vegetables wholesale and sell them in the streets in the neighboring villages. Householders, directed by their budget-calculating wives, arriving on bikes and cars to buy a week or ten days of vegetables in one go and store them in refrigerators and thus save money. An economizing tussle.

Life trying to ward off death. A dreadful chasm between the two. There are many who have fallen in it. The outcasts, born in hideous circumstances. Their faces speckled with haunting melancholy. The broken pot shards that feel they can still hold water in their shallow curves defined by jagged, broken, sharp edges. A soundless cry on their dark, unwashed faces. It’s a group of children. They walk around with imperious timidity. They compete with cows in salvaging the castaway fragments of stale vegetables from dirt heaps.

Are they Rohingyas, or Bangladeshis, or some tribals from India itself? Whoever they are, they carry the same passport of misery. Their eyes full of innocent but still vile determination to beat the stray cows and bulls in salvaging the castaway, stale, spoiled chunks of unusable vegetables. It’s a childhood copiously fed on spoonfuls of sorrows. Their lightless serious eyes furtively darting around on the filthy ground looking for their treasure hunt. Aaah, poverty the depraved seducer! The dung-smeared bulls move around with a sleepy enchantment and languor. Emphatically moody monkeys crawling over cables, jumping on the tin sheds with clang-bang jocularity.

Furiously flaming frenzy of survival. Harassing, haunting, gnawing, devouring. Horrible paroxysms of the will to live—an eternal tenderness beating somewhere deep down in the womb of worldly garbage. The ground-sloggers amidst rack and ruin. The hawkers and middlemen shouting with burbling, stinging energy. The capricious coax of currencies mollifying all vileness and crossness faced on the path.

It’s a bearable world as long as you can sell your stale vegetables dabbed in acidified colored water to make them gleaming fresh with false promises of health and nourishment. Consumerism sets forth lynching questions. The bloodhound is baying for your blood in the tumult. Scuddling along, it’s always sniffing at your strained smell. Its bestial fangs ever-present, ever-lasting. You have to keep abreast of its swift trot. Either you eat someone’s chance to life through adulteration, giving them a slow dose of poison—your buyer whom you give such a nice welcoming smile—or get bitten by the spiteful hound and find yourself in death throes.

Hard-driven by destiny, withstanding the shameless stumbles, spirits all cheerless and discharmed, absorbing the acute pangs, you try to emancipate the sour most morsels with some weird dignity. Destiny dastardly debased. The migrants pulled in by the delightful roar and potent frenzy of the bazaar. Running away from the monstrosities of life drooling at their native places. The frenzied, spasmodic, sobbing circumstances swatting them away like a gunshot pierces through the fabric of peace in a forest and scares away a flock of sparrows. Running away from nightmarish tormentors of deprived life, they land at a distant place and try to cope with the ingenious cruelty unfolding at the new place. Miseries hop along with a frenzied scampering.

They squat on a little space in the open area in front of the vegetable sellers. With a groaning and grinding effort, like the persistent rub of a rope leaving a mark on a stone, they wriggle, relentlessly haggled by the rival claimants, to get a foothold—their self-marked space to set up a temporary establishment in the morning. There is no legal right to it. It can be swiped away like any garbage heap on the market compound. They also have to pay some monthly money—some kind of protection money to the neighborhood bully who controls the unofficial market affairs—to further cement their claim. Then they have to fight with the visitors who come to purchase vegetables and park their vehicles exactly on top of their little space where they have been cleaning the ground before setting up their shop. They sell cheap clothes, utensils, groceries to the people who are exactly like them but are struggling to survive through some other means.              

They have to arrive early, lest someone takes their marked place, necessitating a brawl. They carry a swaggered dark, grimy look in order to ward off any competitor to the space just with a mere look. They arrive with huge bundles of their wares—clothes, groceries, toys, utensils—heaped on carrier rickshaws, pulling in with purpose. It takes about an hour to clean the dirty floor, pitch poles, draw strings and ropes, put their products in presentable order. They do it with a strained and flustered expression. They count upon the footfall of their own types who work as laborers in factories and farms.

Two little boys, aged six and eight at the most, confront the falsehood and misery of life. Their father has pulled the heavy sacks of clothes laden on their carrier rickshaw early in the morning. He has left them to set up the shop and gone to attend some other task that will add some more bucks to their meager purse. The boys are clad in their school uniforms. They perform the task masterfully. Setting up poles in the cemented holes, cleaning the ground, drawing ropes, spreading a tarpaulin sheet, laying shirts, pants, jeans, shorts, socks, caps, hankies and belts in nicely segregated order. The other day it’s their mother who pulls into the ground with the cart and does all the stuff by herself. She has a dull and drowsy look on her weather-beaten face having fine features.

A thickset short old woman sells peanuts, gazak, grams and colored rice crunchies. She scans the passersby with one eye; with the other she tracks the monkeys who rob her at the slightest lapse in concentration. She holds a big stick to ward off the robbery. She says that her son has betrayed her for his wife. To further worsen the already strained relations, he operates a rival stall nearby. Her husband is partially paralyzed. He moves dragging his left foot. Another paralyzed man operates a tea stall. It’s a tiny sheet iron box on a mobile cart.

Young shop helpers are rubbing potatoes in sawdust to give them a freshly dug look after dousing them in acidified water. These are then sold as fresh arrivals from the fields. All the sellers are looking to sneak in a percentage of stale products into the fresh ones to increase profit. While the monkeys scamper around to cut that profit by a little margin.

Spiritually, ritually buzzing Banaras

 

We deboard the bus and stand on the outskirts of Mahadev’s land. To reach the famous Banaras ghats we need an auto. Waseem the kind autowallah agrees to take us for 150 rupees while others charge more than 250 rupees. Political Hindutva is very aggressive. We can feel that he, as part of the minority community, is on the back foot. A biker bearing a big tilak on his forehead misbehaves. It’s his mistake but instead of apologizing he unleashes a sharp reprimand through his gutka-filled mouth. Almost hisses. At a crossing a carwallah almost bangs into the auto and carries on with his aggression through his obscene tongue. We came so near to a collision—his rash driving being the cause—that I closed my eyes. Waseem doesn’t argue. He just moves on with his business: to earn bread and butter for his family.

There seems to a tacit understanding that as UP Muslims they have to play safe. We brothers try to give an impression that India is still reasonably secure. We chat with him in a polite, friendly way. We ask him about the famous eating points in the city. So still on the way there we are sharing a lovely, mouthwatering delicacy with him at Bengal Chat Bhandar. Further on, we all three have tea at a place of his liking. He comes out of his shell, talks happily and shares his personal story. He used to work in Delhi but Corona epidemic forced him to move to his native place. It’s difficult to provide for his three children. ‘Corona took away everything… wife, Delhi job!’ he says with sadness. He remarried for the sake of his children but his second wife won’t love and take care of the children. To avoid the daily drama he decided to separate. Now his mother takes care of the children.

I think the key to unlock the treasure chest of goodness in someone is smile and kind words. The same applies to another auto driver Suresh. Give them respect and generally people would go out of their way to reciprocate on the same frequency. He tries to do his best to show us the beauty of his city. Like an expert guide he points out the famous landmarks falling on the way. The people are looking to share their stories with sympathetic souls. Very soon he is telling us about his family. He praises his wife because she takes care of his ailing parents. He is in gratitude to Mahadev that his daughter is lucky to get married in a good family.

On the ghats we come across a Tamil baba with an imposing danda draped in saffron cloth. He asks for chai, which means 10 rupees. He is very happy to get clicked. The frank baba is very honest about sharing his personal information. He takes drinks liquor two-three times a week, eats one vegetarian meal in a day, is not addicted to ganja but happily takes a few draughts of weed when offered by someone. He is very pleased to see his pictures on my mobile, gives his friend’s number and asks me to forward them to his friend on WhatsApp. The baba is joyful that his latest pictures have landed in his friend’s phone far away in Tamil Nadu and points to small gulls following boats in Ma Ganga and says, ‘I fly like those birds. I feel very light!’

Two babas in black with ash-smeared faces. You click their picture. Give us chai, they demand. One baba in orange with a carefully painted face is sipping tea. ‘Pay for my tea,’ he says while I click his picture. I don’t have change. The tea seller doesn’t accept digital payment. The baba gets angry and throws a cuss word. I hurry away lest he beats me because he seems capable of doing that. A baba with a long tower of hair braids is reclining on a platform. He naughtily waves at two white women. ‘How do you feel looking at them?’ we innocently ask. He gets offended and flares up, ‘All bitches have the same thing.’ He fumes. We placate him with gentle words and 10 rupees for chai. One ash-smeared baba is sitting on a stone bench right in the middle of the crowded bazaar opposite Daswamedh ghat. I raise my phone to click him. He brandishes a warning finger. ‘Then why are you sitting in this crowd with all this make-up?’ I feel like asking but think better of it because they have a right to beat anyone without any provocation. It’s good that common people have the patience to take their slaps as blessings.

The ghats are crowded and polluted under the throes of spiritual business. Ma Ganga is polluted beyond reparation point. The water is muddy green. I miss Her bright blue and green waters that one sees at Rishikesh. Touts literally drag you by force into the boats sadly chugging in the polluted holy river. The evening arti is elaborate in operations involving chanting of hymns, big prayer lamps and expensive rituals. A naga sadhu angrily shoves a few Brahmins roaming in the crowd with plates bearing arti lamps and receiving charity money. The ash-smeared naga seems angry and pushes the Brahmins to gather the donations himself. Most of the ash-smeared babas are very intimidating. They take it as their right to collect money and bathe first in the holy river.

The burning pyres of Manikarnika ghats have multiple pyres burning on big mounds of ash. It’s a chilly mid-December windy night. Standing near the burning pyres gives you warmth and the realization of death hugs you from very near quarters. The next day is Purnima and thousands of poor women from the villages are jutted against each other along the ghats amid stinking urine smell to take bath early in the morning next day on the auspicious full moon occasion. They huddle like a flock of sheep, taking warmth from each other under an open sky on this chilly night. Many are singing folklore songs and dancing. That’s how they will spend this cold night. The power of faith is warming their souls.

The renovated Mahakal temple complex is mythically grand and lofty in spiritual stature. Gyanvapi mosque built on the same complex is clearly an Islamic dome set up on a pre-existing Hindu temple. It’s as clear as anything else in broad daylight. Why do they even need archeological digging to prove it? The lower part clearly shows a temple structure and pillars. It doesn’t need expert digging by the Archaeological Survey of India to prove that a temple was vandalized to erect a mosque’s dome on top of it.

We have taken a mediocre hotel near the ghats. The hotel owner is an old gentleman. He doesn’t like Modi and angrily says, ‘We have been voting for him but he just tells jumlas, doesn’t work on his promises and this time was simply lucky to win from here through…’ I remember the honorable prime minister’s claims that he will make Kashi clean like Kyoto. But Banaras is stinking with pollution. I can hardly see any improvement apart from the temple corridor.

Banaras is so congested that going to Sarnath, just a dozen kilometers away, gives a totally new and refreshing experience. It’s almost opposite to the pleasantly chaotic, noisy Banaras ghats. The place seems very symbolic of the historical truth: peaceful Buddhism was churned out of the chaotic, noisy, hyper-ritualistic storm of Hinduism. One can clearly feel it.

Chaukhandi and Sarnath stupas bear testimony to the mythical whisper of silence and peace. Rows of east Asian monks going chanting mantras around the stupas. The sprawling lawns around the stupas still carry the layers of peace and tranquility that Buddha spread here centuries ago with his first sermon. The museum is full of grand Buddha statues dating back to many ancient centuries. There was a time when this land had millions of Buddha statues, temples and monasteries. Was it wiped out of India by force? Or did it naturally fade out? Or was it assimilated into Hinduism again? I believe it was a slow, almost natural process involving all these factors. Also, there are reasons to believe that aggressive Brahmanism helped in systematically dismantling it by force, cajoling and even spreading rumors.

Naresh is a small, gentle, patient guy selling Buddha souvenirs. He allows you to check his items even if you are clearly doing a free eye shopping. He even plays the instruments to give us information about them including a big conch which he plays with nice skills. He seems to be soaked in Buddha spirit and is happy to get whatever lands in his purse at the end of the day. A small conversation with him is sufficient to make you feel that he is a good human being.

Ashokan pillar is a 15.25 meter monolithic pillar of polished chunar sandstone with a tapering cylindrical shaft. It was once surmounted by an adorned lion capital which serves as our national emblem. The shaft is lying in the lawn around the stupa, the national emblem in the museum. The pillar’s broken lower shaft bearing some fragments in Maurayan Brahmi script warning the monks and nuns against schism in the sangha.

Chaukhandi stupa is a four-armed terraced brick structure. It was here that Buddha met his five disciples. The outer walls of the terraces are ornamented with niches having Buddha images. A brick tower, bearing an Arabic inscription, erected by Raja Todar Mal’s son to commemorate Humayun’s visit, stands on the top of the stupa.

Dhamekh stupa (Dharma Chakra Stupa) commemorates the place where Buddha gave his first sermon. It’s a solid brick-made cylindrical tower around 40 meter high. The circular stone drum at the base topped with a cylindrical mass of brickwork looks sturdy against the winds of time. Carved stones with geometric designs of swastika, leaf and floral patterns, birds and human figures create an aesthetic nostalgia for the ancient past. The East Asian tourists and monks are chanting hymns on the peaceful lawns and many are doing parikrama around the stupa. It’s wonderful to share the peace of this place, the place where the seed of Buddhism was sown from where it grew into a massive tree spreading the shade of its faith to far flung countries in the east.

Sarnath is a lovely open small town, its peace palpable as if drawn from the Buddhist sutras of love, kindness, peace and joy. There is a sad-looking Chinese Buddhist temple here. It was made in 1939 by an abbot from Beijing. It bears the traditional Chinese temple feature of entrance gate pagoda. The Boddhisattva hall has double pagoda roof and a monastery around a central courtyard. The walls are adorned with Chinese motifs. Hieun Tsang’s journey is pictorially depicted in attractive murals. The temple’s land was owned by China. Now a lone monk with hennaed goatee looks suspiciously at the visitors. He has central Asian mongoloid Muslim features. An interesting character, has shifty eyes and looks anything but a monk. He tells me that he is from Delhi and is taking care of the temple for the last decade. ‘A Thai monk is in charge of this place. He planned for the construction of a grand stupa. But he hasn’t returned after Corona. I myself almost died of gall bladder stone. Nobody cares,’ he is angry and sullen. I can clearly feel that there is more to it than he shares. After all, the complex is built on 12 acres of land. So definitely there are property issues.

Angarika Dharampala (born 1864, Sri Lanka) found the Buddhist sites in a deplorable condition. He established Mahabodhi society to rebuild Buddhist holy sites and restore sacred places linked to Buddha. The Bodhi tree’s branch cutting was taken to Sri Lanka by Ashoka’s son and daughter and planted at Anurudhpura. In 1931, a branch from the same tree was planted here by Dharampala to commemorate the place where Buddhism was born. Sarnath deer park, housing a few deer, is mobbed by some students on a trip. It was here that the first sermon was given. The first sermon of Sakyamuni Buddha, the seed, has germinated quite well and the mammoth tree of Buddhism is now luxuriantly spreading its branches for global peace and harmony. The tree is the grandson of the Mahabodhi tree at Gaya where Buddha attained enlightenment. I collect a few dry leaves that have fallen on the ground. I touch them with love and care—for inspiration to be on the middle path. I feel that I have a small connection with Buddhism for being born on Buddha Purnima.     

In grace with mother existence

 

Enlightenment is a mere word, and like all words, it’s an indicator of some fraction of reality. So it’s practical to use the word ‘enlightened’ for the ones who are in a joyful flow of life. According to me, an enlightened one is someone who, in the real sense, ‘knows’ that he doesn’t and can’t know. Because existence is ever transforming (and the so-called knowledge is simply a skill born of the operational part of our brain, i.e., mind; a mere capability like any other skill that helps us survive). To know that one doesn’t know brings a grace and flow to one’s life. It gets one in peaceful sync with what is. It in turn gives a joyful being, almost unconditional.

Who am I?

 

Who am I? Or what am I? Just a common sadhak, a seeker of a bit more than I know or understand or feel. Or not even a sadhak because I don’t follow any particular path. What exactly I’m, I’m yet to know. I consciously know the identities given to me by others, but at a subtle level I know I’m not any of these. I feel just like a little bird flying on its own path, wondering about all this maya scattered around; curious, full of wonder, observant; just a bird of its own type like the rest are. Or maybe, a tiny humming bird, to be more specific; flitting among different flowers of faith; taking small sips of the nectar of truth from various-colored flowers; taking little independent sorties while going from one flower to the other; belonging to all and none at the same time; loving and being loved by all.

Traveling in a bus commanded by a lady conductor

 

It’s a UP state roadways bus plying between Agra and Delhi. The conductor is a woman in black; short, stocky but pretty in face and impressive in limbs. She is extremely efficient and confident about her duties. The tone is bold. She needs it to deal with unruly passengers. She manages it with impressive effect, keeps eyes on each seat to be filled, ensures each passenger pays the fare, guides and gives instructions about the further journey once the passengers deboard the bus in the puzzling maze of the Delhi NCR.

The bus reaches the boarding point outside Agra to take the Expressway. There is a slight misunderstanding. The driver has allowed a young man to board thinking there is one seat vacant. The boyish man panics when he finds there is no seat available. He finds it a betrayal. His father is some official in the roadways. He feels he has been wronged terribly in not being offered a seat. He calls his father on phone. A real papa’s boy. When will you grow up, you crying sissy? He gives the phone to the conductor. The father talks to the lady conductor. She expresses her inability to get a seat vacant for his dear son. The father official gets offended, feels insulted that his very own son has to travel standing. Shameful and unpardonable. What is the use of his position then? He fires on all authoritative cylinders.

There are checking officials waiting at the next toll gates. The bus is raided. The boyish man looks with an authoritative leer. They surround the lady conductor as if she has been caught smuggling banned items. They bombard her with accusations—the rules that have been broken in the episode. One of them is enlisting the probable actions that will be taken against her. She defends her position confidently. But they are like hounds. The very same patriarchal mindset. The lady conductor starts crying. A woman passenger seems to be trying to mollify the raiding flying squad.

It’s taking a bad shape for the woman conductor. She needs more people on her side. Me and my brother get down. Both of us engage two staffers and straightway get into accusations that they have delayed the bus, that we paid the luxury bus far to catch our train (there was no scheduled train to catch), bla bla. My brother looks like a six-feet tall wing commander in military style cargos. Imitating him even I’m smartly clad today. They think that even we have connections to be so full of confidence in confronting them. They turn defensive. They ask us to board the bus as if the issue is settled.

When I feel they are no longer on the front foot, I give them my sermon on women empowerment: ‘She is a very efficient conductor, manages it really well. Far better than scores of male conductors I have seen. She is a working woman. Don’t harass her in the name of performing your duties!’ I speak loudly at the mustachioed man, the most rascally looking in the group. The boyish man is puzzled. The lady conductor is shedding tears. We raise a ruckus. The penalties are forgotten. They find it advisable to stop the matter from taking an uglier form. The bus starts again. After half an hour we see that she is her normal professional self again. It’s good to help someone in having a normal day.    

Vaah Taj!!

 

The early December morning sun beating on the monument of love. Its beauty ablaze in full floral glory. The wonder in white marble with inlay ornamentation, carved plant motifs, inlaid creeper designs; silver and gold work on the ceilings; Persian inscriptions carved in ornamental cartouches; repetitive stylized creepers inlaid on borders; marble and precious stone inlay. How much your aesthetic sense can take in under the pleasant onslaught on your senses! The arches, windows, cupolas, panels with ornamental cartouches, incised painting in multiple colors… Keep watching and trying to have a knowledge of all these details. Then you give up. Not possible. It’s a sea of beauty, only there to be felt. So you surrender to the seductive arrows of beauty and then you simply feel it, bask in this white beauty.

Here you feel that stones have a soul, a dancing one. Go to Taj Mahal to see it and feel it. Tourists are loitering in awe on the spacious plinth around the shrine of love. With soaring spirits people look up to the Taj, lost in its majesty. This is pure appreciation. But there is someone who has crossed the threshold of appreciation, built upon it to achieve something more substantial—reverence. To him it’s a living temple of beauty and he the priest. The elderly white gentleman is in love with the deity, beauty. He is performing rituals. He has some physical disability which makes him walk with a slight droop on mildly moon-walking legs. He lights a lamp of love in obeisance to the shrine. As he and his friend move around clicking pictures, he stoops down to pick little pieces of paper and patches of green shoe covers which the tourists have to wear while going into the tomb of love. It’s his business to keep it clean, safe, at least as long as he is here; to contribute his effort in maintaining the sanctity of this place.

The tourists are simply clicking pictures, chatting, laughing, enjoying the proximity to this wonder of the world. But this man is in awe of the beauty in marble. Any scrap of paper is a stigma to the splendor of the shrine of love. It’s heartening to see him going slowly with his cleaning job. It shows the depths of his feelings for this wonder of the world. A girl hops onto a ledge on the monument from the platform. Her boyfriend starts clicking pictures. The shoe covers would spoil the picture. She removes them. The Taj might be spoilt but not the picture. The gentleman walks to her and reminds her that it’s forbidden to do so. We Indians don’t care about such things. They ignore him. He reminds her twice and then finding her to be inconsiderate enough to commit this illegality, he sadly walks away.

I would term him as the best tourist visiting Taj Mahal on this particular day; someone who felt the definition of love etched in its grand design, beautiful patterns and relief pictures. Every square inch on the beautiful memorial is a complete story of perfection and flawless faith to make something unparalleled. Every little flower, leaf or geometrical pattern shows the endless hours of artistic passion. You are lost in a maze of beauty.

The sanctum-sanctorum of love, bearing the graves of the emperor and his beloved queen, lies under the main dome. The lofty vault enclosing a rich history of love and pain. Every inch carved with chisels drenched with tears of ecstasy. It’s a sea. One can’t grab its immensity. So the casual tourist, clueless how to appreciate it or say anything, settles down to the base-level appreciation. The main high-vaulted chamber echoes with voices. So they shout their names and feel pleased to hear them echoed in the unbelievably lovely interior. Little do they realize that stones have petalous souls and these shouts count as pollution doing damage to this grand creation. If at all you have to say something, say the name of the person whom you have really loved and hear its echo.