A musing monkey and a meditating monk

 

A musing monkey and a meditating monk are simply two of the aspects of ‘being’ among the infinite ways of ‘being’ in mother existence.

I celebrate life and its varied colors. I enjoy the musing monkey tricks of my own self (which I take as the mind, an all-pervading entity coursing through my psychosomatic system). I feel the joy of its calmer version as well—the meditating self.

To me mother existence is like a rose plant—lovely fragrant flowers, leaves, thorns, hard stem, roots, earth. Will the flower exist without the thorns?

There is a unity of being. One aspect supports the other. A musing and gleeful monkey is, somewhere and somehow, the cause (as well as the effect) of a meditating monk and vice-versa. The main thing is the celebration of life.

I enjoy the spectacle of musing and jumping monkeys. Watching their antics is a funny game. I deeply respect meditating monks—stable, peaceful people, carried by a cosmic frequency to bloom as flowers in their lovingly isolated (but subtly united) selves. But at a deeper level, these flowers are also the gist of the pain of many thorns. A thing of beauty is joy forever and for all. So let’s pay our respects to the meditating monks. But let us also take time to enjoy (and be) musing monkeys also. Because in the endless fabric of interconnected existence, musing monkeys and meditating monks are two faces of the same coin.

Basically, I feel like a bee musing over varied flowers (even thorns) taking sips of the nectar that I need both for physical necessity as well as the need born of the aesthetic hunger. It feels good to be able to appreciate something in everything. It gets you a kind of fluidity and flow in life.

Somehow, I don’t feel like getting cast in the strict mould of a particular ideology, belief system or sect. In my opinion, being cast in a particular belief system sets up a kind of rigidity around one’s existence. But it’s obviously one’s sovereign choice and rightly so.

We should never judge and compare. Every ounce of this existence is unique and that’s what makes it marvelous and miraculous, yet so simple and innocent at the same moment.

There should be absolutely no problem if you feel comfortable in a solitudinal space, which you work out for yourself with single-minded focus, ironclad determination and steely willpower. So my dear monks, hats off to you!

I really appreciate and bow down to those who show marvelous perseverance in setting up an oasis in their life while walking through a harsh desert. It’s like striving for the full flowering of the self. It’s as good for the others as it’s for the self. Isn’t a flower meaningful and helpful to so many lives—to the artist, to the bees, to a child? Isn’t an oasis a source of joy and life to many weary travelers who take rest in it after struggling the sandstorms in the desert?

So let’s celebrate this life, this marvelous interplay of forms, shapes, emotions and thoughts born of the same sea of energy, the ripples in the same sea. Let’s enjoy this innocent skirmish between two ripples—a mediating monk and a musing monkey.

There are no lessons to be drawn from this innocent interaction, no philosophy to be churned out, no morals to be spun out. Because these are mere slightly different paths of two seekers on their own journeys. Two waves crashing into each other playfully before moving on to take many other forms in the lap of Father Sea.  

The hunters and the hunted

 

The common people would never want a war. But they suffer the most in a conflict. The egoist leaders are mostly saved from the destruction of war. That’s why it’s so easy for them to keep yelling, shouting for more blood.

And when did any war achieve anything? Wars and violence just prepared the seedbed for more wars in future. A war is just tilling the land for more hate; sowing the seeds of malice and distrust—to harvest more fodder for future wars. And the fodder is the common people like you and me dear reader. Let’s say NO to wars in our name!

The world is always nearer to destruction in proportion to the greater number of strong, egoistic, macho leaders operating in different countries at the same time. So dear common people, we can at least choose lesser ferocious leaders.

Of course, all those who fight for power are predatory in nature just like their analogues among animals, birds, reptiles, bacteria and bugs. So, obviously, the clawy and dangerous people will definitely occupy the top slot in the social food chain. That’s inevitable. But we the common people must strive to elect the least fearsome from the power-hungry pack. The lesser the claws and incisors the ruler has, the better is the skin of the masses. Because the Alphas will fight and the fight among the extra-strong Alphas will result in the masses getting trampled unnecessarily.

So o thou rabbits at the lower level in the social food chain, kindly choose the leaders with blunted talons either because of a muted ideology or relatively humbler personal traits. Let’s have humbler leaders!

The perennial learner

 

Life is only about learning and continuous improvement. It’s just an ever-going journey. There is no final frontier. It’s just a little journey starting from nowhere and ending the same way. But in the meantime we get an opportunity to manifest more dimensions, colors and shapes of mother existence by leading a purposeful life.

As you present yourself to learn the chapters of life, you automatically take a turn to be a better version of yourself. That’s what the evolutionary forces of mother nature expect from you.

The game of learning and evolving is open for both lettered and unlettered enthusiasts of life. The book of mother nature has infinite lessons subtly expressed in the form of lovely seasons, trees, flowers, plants, animals, birds, clouds and scores of mundane happenings in the daily life of common people on a perfectly normal day.

Just smile and accept what life has to offer even while you are facing the testy atmospherics of fate. Don’t be touchy and sour with nerves taut on the verge of breaking with a twang. Be wholly there, fittingly orchestrating new avatars of your previous version. Be freshly awakened at each new dawn. Go diligently reading the script of life scene-by-scene.

Be someone who is replete with a sense of humor and most of the frowning wrinkles of life vanish of their own. Flow with the fairly cozy flow of the scented spring air and the bad odor of tough circumstances loses its effect on you. Feel the warmth of summers and the pinching rigidities of pain melt automatically. Feel the cool brace of winters and the hot lava of suffering loses its singe on your skin. 

I read, write, travel and observe small-small things with the curiosity of a small boy. I basically read books to learn and understand writing, which makes it ‘studying’. That makes me a student for life, an avid reader of the book of life. There is so much to read and learn each day and in each line of daily occurrences taking place around me.

As an Indie author, I have always strived to learn more and more about writing, editing, composition of pages, designing, making cover pages and marketing. I own my self-published books in totality. When I hold them, it gives me a feeling as if I’m holding my baby.

And now for some time I’ve been trying my hand at making my website of my own. It’s a tentative effort, pretty amateur but believe me it’s real fun.

So dear readers keep trying, keep learning. And very soon you will find yourself standing in your lovely self-created garden.

Fighting for a nest

 

A tiny mud nest on the verandah ceiling in a simple village house. Twice a year swallow couples raise their chicks here. One of the two annual hatchings must be that of the couple which built the nest.

This time a little group of house sparrows quarreled with the swallow couple. The noisy skirmishes lasted over two-three days. Finally, the sparrows, on account of their numerical superiority, captured the property.

Then the sparrows fought among themselves to be the first occupants of the swallow nest. The most quarrelsome among them won the rights. They moved in but it was no sparrow nest. The interior had to be done in the sparrow style. So they started ferrying wisps of dry grass from dawn to dusk to cover the tiny mud cup attached to the two-inch ledge of the iron girder.

There was hardly any space for the dry grass to stay and give it some slight semblance of a sparrow nest. The grass kept falling, they kept depositing. The floor would be a mess, needing cleaning at least four times in a day to maintain the least sense of a human house.

It went on for ten days. The sparrows but won’t give up. After all, the prices in the nesting real estate have sky rocketed because of the scarcity of nesting sites. The poetic house owner felt very sad for them. They just kept on ferrying dry grass, cotton strips, rolls of thread and wool to make a cozy sparrow home—out of sheer momentum of memory and habits in the cells.

The more easily the grass fell down, the harder they worked with panting beaks in June heat. The loose grassy assortment would hang like a bushy tail, acquire weight and fall down. After ten days or so they started losing their enthusiasm. There was not enough wind in their wings anymore. They flew with lackadaisical spirits.

Some other sparrow couple—coveting the property—took advantage of the situation and beat them away after a short fight. Now they started repeating the same futile exercise. They too lost their willpower after a week. Their sagging spirit was stabbed by a third couple who beat them away and started with the mission.

It was getting stretched too far. The floor in a mess for one month. The farmer’s genes in the poetic man showed their colors to settle the issue. His patience met an end. He took a long stick and gave a tap at the mud cup bringing it down.

I think we humans have been doing the same, coveting what others possess, beating them in competition, failing like them and getting beaten by someone else till the great stick holder loses his patience at the repetitive futile game and breaks the mud nest with a gentle tap—death.

Firing for a Ceasefire

 

The mean streets of geostrategic dominance. A racily written drama of power game where the plot skittles forward with unusual regression in human values. Crunching, wacky, tantalizing game of attrition. A soulless testimony to what we call progress. Incurably slanderous.

Many would naturally say that Trump is super-bright, idiosyncratic, staunch white supremacist. Hounded by the progressive intellectuals, the American president means business though. And ceasefire also. The latter as a means to the former. As a poetic man, I would always prefer bloodless business wars rather than bloodied battlefields with rotting human corpses.

Ceasefire is a lovely term. With ceasefire, India, Pakistan and Trump all claimed victories in their own terms. Though it’s outright funny how can Pakistan claim any type of victory using any yardstick in a confrontation.

With ceasefire, Israel, Iran and Trump again claimed their own versions of victories.

Let’s hope there comes a day when the same word ‘ceasefire’ allows Russia, Ukraine and Trump to claim their share of victories.

In the ceasefire equation, it’s clearly visible that Trump is a nice catalyst agent. A powerful ceasefire agent he is.

He claimed that he used trade to facilitate the Indo-Pak ceasefire. He used B-2 bombers to bring about Iran-Israel ceasefire. Now the onus is on him to decide what catalyst role does he play to bring about Russia-Ukraine ceasefire. If he does it, I think he will be a very strong contender for the Nobel peace prize. There is always the next round of noble nominations Mr. President.

Above all, let’s celebrate this ceasefire between Iran and Israel. After all, millions of common Israelis and Iranians, who have no role in causing this war, can go to sleep peacefully after many harrowing nights.

Furthermore, let’s pray for peace in Gaza as well. The ‘two-state solution’ is the best option. Let there be a safe and strong Israel. Let there be a Palestine state. And let Iran remove the Israel-annihilation clause from its state policy. Just three simple one-liners in foreign policy and millions will sleep peacefully unafraid of bombs and bullets.

All (is/was/will be) well

 

Life is beautiful. Life is beautiful because we can remember the ‘past’, which brings sometimes a smile, sometimes a tear, sometimes anger, sometimes empathy, sometimes hope and gloom sometimes.

Life is also beautiful because we can imagine a future. It may create insecurities and fears sometimes, but it also gives dreams, hopes, the drive, the urge to move ahead.

Life is beautiful because I’m present ‘now’. From ‘here’ I can look back to the past and then to the future. The ‘now’ bracketed within these undervalued entities—past and future—is what drives and pulls this marvelous, challenging, exciting expansion of mother existence around us.

Our ‘now’ gets stretched in two directions. And that moves things. That means life is going on in all the ways that are there for it to flow and acquire multiple dimensions. Great art, great creations, great innovations, everything is driven by this tantalizing, teasing pull of the ‘now’ by the ‘past’ and the ‘future’.

I’m no sage but I know the value of ‘now’. I also know the value of the past and the future. All these are lovely dimensions of my being. I feel that I can’t exist without the lovely interplay among these three elements.

My brain, my body (which is just the envelop of my mind) have this feeling of existence in a condensed form, my identity, only because I can exist in three layers—past, present and future. I don’t judge any one of them at the cost of others. I’m in acceptance of all three—all that was, all that is, all that will be. A wholesome bear hug to my existence.

Why should I fight with my past? Why should I try to turn away from future? Why should I deliberately try to be just ‘present’ in the ‘now’? My brain, my mind (that’s my entire body) are a product of many biological processes taking place within me. My consciousness has evolved on earth, this tiny speck of dust in the universe.

This exciting, exacting, joyful, painful churning between these three dimensions of my existence defines my life. I give them all a big bear hug. All are great in their own ways. I don’t compartmentalize them. Why should I? They are part of what I think and feel myself to be. They are what that stretches a tiny line of my existence, to allow me to be, become and be still more. They give me these beautiful emotions varying across the spectrum drawn between sadness and happiness. They drive my creativity. They define me. They are me. I let them be. And try myself just to be.

When I’m in the past, I just am. When I’m in the future, I just am. O what lovely elements! They give me poems, articles, novels and stories. They give me my life. They fuel me. I keep my tank full of them. My fuel. And my fuel is a lovely cocktail of past, present and future.

There I move on my own unique path with my exquisite formula, unique philosophy—past, present and future are equally great in their own ways. We just have to give them a big bear hug.

The spineless foe

 

It’s easy to deal with an enemy who has a spine. The spineless ones are more lethal. Jellyfish don’t have a spine and that makes them a challenging foe for powerful nuclear plants. The slimy adversaries briefly shut down a huge nuclear plant in France recently.

Nuclear power plants need a regular inflow of water for cooling their turbines and reactors. To ensure continuous supply to the plant’s water intake pipes, the majority of nuclear plants are situated along coastlines. The intake pipes have grated screen to filter out the solid material from rushing in and clog the system. Further, nuclear power plants need millions of gallons of water every day to keep the system from getting overheated and cause catastrophe. Even a day’s water stoppage can wreak havoc.

In this recent instance in France, millions of jellyfish got glued to the grated screen thus clogging the entry point and as a result disrupted the water supply. In such a scenario, the inflow of water stops and the plant’s condensers, turbines and boilers groan with agony forcing the reactor to be shut down.

So when the jellyfish get unified, clamped with solidarity with each other, they can even force stop a nuclear plant. If you band together, you can clog the lifeline of your bigger adversary.

The instances of the jellyfish banding together to disturb mighty power plants have occurred in Japan, Israel, Scotland and Sweden earlier. So if somebody calls you spineless, take the insult but remember your worth. You are more fatal as a spineless enemy.

The spiny ones can be obliterated this way or that. Their brash burst of energy exposes them to chances of self-annihilation; their journey a chronicle of sordid madness.

It’s the spineless ones, with their quieter nuances and indomitable scheming spirit, who perpetuate blatant cheatings and give you more cuts than the ones with perfect spine and come to confront you from the front. 

Interlinked fates

 

There is an interesting report. Food experts have noticed a change in the Chinese palate. More pork and less duck and goose meat is being consumed in Chinese restaurants and homes. The rise in the consumption of red meat and fall in the birdie delicacies means the poultry farming business going down. Loss for poultry farmers; gain for pigsty owners.

There are other consequences also in different regions, especially India. The cost of shuttlecocks has gone up by as much as fifty percent. The lesser the duck and goose meat in kitchens, the lesser the feathers available for the Chinese shuttle makers.

China has near monopoly over the shuttlecock trade, hosting the premiere brands in the segment. So the Indian importers have to pay more.

Now, it directly affects the financial fate of Indian badminton academies. They have to spend more money on training young shuttlers. As a result, they are forced to charge more from the trainees, majority of whom hail from modest lower middle class in society.

Boys and girls from economically and socially sound families are not usually drawn to spend the crucial period of their youth in sweating out in unknown, unglamorous corridors of sports training. They have better choices to excel in academics, elite jobs, entertainment and business. Most of the sporty sloggers come from the middle and lower middle classes. They carry the weight of expectations from their struggling wards to make a name in the sports arena, earn loads of money and heave the family’s social status in one clear jump. So they are willing to sweat out with aching limbs and bruised skins.

Shuttlecock prices going up by as much as fifty percent just because the Chinese are eating more pork is a spin-off of the modern-day travesty—the countries are interlinked more than ever before; and they are divided more than ever as well. The countries are getting more and more interdependent side by side becoming more divided politically. Economics pulling this way; politics pulling that way. Like two hands churning milk. The fates of millions of common people getting churned by the economic-political churner—some of them being badminton players in developing countries.

And what will come out of this churning? It will be ghee for the select few corporate houses and oligarchs, sour buttermilk for some more people, and absolutely nothing for the teeming masses. The last in the category are sold forever-unfulfilled dreams. At high prices. They pay it through almost un-paying labor, hardcore bone-breaking labor. 

Thoughts are things

 

With every thought you make a new mind, and as a direct consequence, almost parallel with it, a new body. It’s a new you with each thought. So learn to think in linearity with personal growth and evolution; in spontaneity with life-sustaining natural functions taking place within you, with their own intrinsic trait of minding their own business.

For example, the second brain, the gut brain (having 50 million nerve cells and its enteric nervous system) is capable of minding its business almost independently of the brain’s central nervous system. The latter has to provide emergency push through its system of nerves when we put extra pressure on ourselves through anxiety, fear and nervousness.

Just feel the harmony, rhythm and sovereignty of life force within.

It’s rather unfortunate that you, with this feeling of being the over-concerned owner of all these automatic processes, put unnecessary pressure on so many biological processes minding their own business. We disturb myriads of natural functions going smoothly within us through over-thinking and random thoughts and emotions. The latter switching on the emergency measures available through the central nervous system.

The entire system works the best when there is no bombardment of unnecessary thoughts or overbearing emotions. The less they are, the smoother the flow of life within. That’s where all meditation techniques point to. An eased-up, relaxed state of being like a tranquil pond where one’s anxious self, with its overbearing thoughts and emotions, isn’t throwing pebbles in the water.

Just sit down and feel yourself present in the entire body, not just in the head. When we are feeling ourselves just in the head, we are concentrating a weight of clogged energies, which unleash various hormones that switch on the emergency mode for their corresponding organisms. It’s like an angry person himself hastening his own destruction.

So dilute your feeling of being in the head only; sit, walk, work, drive while feeling your entire body doing the same. It’s a lovely process of melting the ego; a tender technique to facilitate a gentle flow of energy in the system. You harness the art of an awareness and acknowledgment of the entire processes within you. An acceptance of their unacknowledged, selfless service for your (the you in the head) cause. The heavy-headed, pointed, weighty existence spreads to acquire a broader area. Of course you feel light, eased-up and relaxed.

It’s a habit basically. The more one goes into it, the more he gets rid of the unmaking, disturbing thoughts and emotions which disturb the autonomic functioning of the biological processes in the human system.

Hone the art of just being present in the entire body. It sends a soothing wave of awareness. A gentle spread of just being. It naturally happens when all the biological processes in the body are functioning at their optimum level. One grooms prodigious patience. It stalls the process of one’s hopes getting devoured by despair. Accidental living and conflicting providences slowly leave their grip on your fate.  

A little step to be a big creator

 

I exert myself to actualize my potential not for acceptance, applauds, rewards or recognition. I write and create basically to free myself from the rolling convulsions of my own fears, illusions, warring thoughts, assumptions and limiting conditioning. My endeavor to create something fresh, or for that matter all art, is primarily a process. It’s not a destination. It’s a path to liberate myself from what limits me. It’s a small pathway leading from a stern, haggard look to a healthy smile.

It’s also not something abstract, limited to my own self. I’m part of the collective as well. Every creation in this world will have at least one genuine appreciator to whom the creation would feel like her own, who will feel she is absolutely in harmony with the meaning coming out of that creation. This is as much her creation as the creator’s.

After my smaller self’s integration with the larger self within—which sows the seeds of creativity—the crop (art) blooms and harvesting is sharing it with the world outside. It’s never about money and numbers. It’s only about sharing. Creation itself is sharing. One feels overjoyed and rejuvenated. The heart that once shuddered and contracted now opens up.

A piece of art is a decorous and dignified outreach to the forces of cosmic creation. A joyous convulsion by mother creation. Its potential was always there in you but the moment you actualize it, give it a specific shape, you directly share it with the world.

As a creator you gracefully add to the lazily cantering cavalcade of life. So as a creator be not cumbered either with praise or condemnation from yawning, fuming critics or fawning fans. If you allow yourself to be affected by either positive or negative comments on your work, the stream of creativity meets a dead-end. The colors, scent and elegiac vision get diluted from your creation. The work stands shorn of its inherent purity. A piece of lost purity it becomes.  

The tiny escape route

 

A herd of sheep running away from imagined wolves. But then it gets bored with its fear as well and then the driver of the run takes another shape. It becomes imagined pastures. The latter again changes to some other imagined predator, which again shifts to become imagined water pool.

As a herd we are mostly running away, maniacally assailed by unbreakable predicaments, from our imagined fears towards imagined security. Very rarely we are resting balanced between fears and security.

It’s a meaningless stampede. Our impulses rampantly pushing us like rocket fuel in the mad rush. Logic, sanity, reasoning all clouded by panic hormones. So difficult to see beyond the cloud of dust.

The horde unconsciously christened for meek, blind followership. The large brood forever ignorant of the hitherto inaccessible pools of views, thoughts, emotions and creativity. Little brats stuck up in the much studied and much hyped syllabus of stupidity, the tools of hatching a stilling insularity from the bubbling potential of human evolution.

But the solution is just a step away. We can step out on a quite by-lane. It’s always round the corner, an individual by-lane, always there for you. It pursues you. It’s quite loyal. All you have to do is to accept the invitation. And step in. Everything changes. Just being aware of this by-lane is as good as expiating the voluntary, involuntary sins. It saves you from unquestioning servitude to impulses and reactions.

The clouds of collective phobias and mass dose of opium of illusionary elements of security are too big to pursue you and enter this quiet, narrow by-lane. Here you have to deal with little entities of individual fears and illusions. You are too big for them. You easily overpower them because you are well poised and not running away from hallucinatory hounds.

Once you see the light of your own little truth, you pass the test. Then you can easily come out to the main boulevard of life. Then you will be walking even in a stampede without getting pushed or crushed.

Well, that’s a miracle. Isn’t it? And be sure that it happens that way. You become a stable walker even in this worldly stampede. The snorts, grunts and confounding rigors of life hardly leave you shaking with fear like a rabbit.

Be aware of the patterns that control your life

 

We need to be careful of patterns in our life. They draw us into comfort zones; into easy choices. Yes, it begins with our response to certain situations in life. But most of our apparent responses are mere repetitive reactions basically born of our fears and insecurities. They are just escape mechanisms. Under their spell we start screeching with the searing passion of parakeets on their favorite tree.

A pattern thus consolidated over a period of time becomes the mainstream of our life in which all the tributaries—our assortment of attributes, talent and skills—flow into and lose their significance. Believe me, it’s disservice to life. It’s falling into a hypnotic claustrophobia with a foolish smugness and taking it to be the proof of our realistic, logical hold on life. It’s heretical to one’s true self and real, almost infinite potential. 

Under the influence of a powerful pattern in life, we feel there is stabilization, but in reality it’s our acceptance and surrender to one pattern, one push. It has popular appeal and cherished theme. As a wide-eyed, shy and introvert boy, lanced by an entire array of pre-teen fantasies, the solidly patterned person stops evolving towards maturity, wisdom and creativity.

The masterful masquerade of mediocrity. The paying propositions by the pauperizing king of misers, the hypnotic pattern. No wonder, life becomes one-dimensional under the rule of populist potentate.

So we need to routinely analyze the predominant patterns of our individual life. Test them. Critically evaluate them. Dissect them. Once we do that, we open ourselves to multifold choices and opportunities on a broader plain of existence.

Most of the time, a pattern well analyzed and remedied accordingly leads us to a still more superior pattern. That’s inevitable. It’s as per the cosmic law of evolution. So start asking yourself about the major patterns in your life. Study your patterns of thoughts, reactions, fears, insecurities, anxieties, comfort zones, greed, lust and relationships.   

The little seed of sin

 

The seed has the potential to blossom into an entire forest. Similarly, little-little ticks and mites of tiny lies, small tricks, miniscule cheatings and puny short-cuts are the seeds of big forgeries and criminalities.

They look harmless in their tiny grainy avatar. But they germinate, grow and evolve drawing sustenance and nutrition from our ill-advised ego, the dark shade of survival through any means. The little mischievous opportunists get clandestinely cosseted in our moral fabric to eat it like termites over a period of time.

Spurred by an exorbitant spree of insecurities, the wild growth develops and takes possession of our persona. With the passage of time, small saplings grow into big ones. Bigger lies become tolerable. Larger illegalities don’t strike as vulgar and bad. They seem natural steps that one has to take in the name of practicality and convenience.

The seed hands over its potential to the tree. Becomes a tree. A natural evolution. The small saplings of immorality grow and cover the conscience.

So it’s essential to be mindful of the tiny seeds. Watch your little steps of short-cuts and tiny, selfish facilitations. It comes as an innocent child, but grows into a big bully and changes the course of your entire journey.

Among all your amiably performed squabbles take the pill of this humble advice on an empty stomach and go through the day conscientiously.

A kind farmer

 

There was a 250-year-old banyan tree. It stood on a parcel of land owned by a farmer named Balbir Singh. The land was acquired by the NHAI for road construction. The farmer tried to save the tree and requested to let the tree stay at its original place and divert the road a bit.

The kindly farmer had absolutely no problem about his land being acquired for building roads. He just wanted to save the tree. He was ready to offer more land for development provided the highway was re-routed to save the tree.

He told them that the tree would look beautiful as a landmark. But they didn’t listen to him. The roads go straight with a dreadful effrontery. Mere trees are just insignificantly irksome. The roads, on the other hand, are the swords cutting distances. They are cold hearted and cut trees, hills and homes in their wake. Unsparing insentient beings.

All his efforts to save the ancient tree went unheeded. The farmer really loved the tree and requested the authorities to replant the tree at a suitable place. He launched a campaign to force the authorities to replant it at a place of his choice.

A social media campaign was started to save the tree. Many activists, NGOs and volunteers also added their voice of support. They even reached the doorsteps of the local Member of Parliament.

His efforts at least convinced the authorities to relocate the tree to another place in his landholding. The NHAI officials, the local administration, horticulture experts and land acquisition authorities assured him that they would try their best to expertly uproot the tree and replant it at a different place. He was clearly given a word that the tree would surely survive after the scientific relocation.

He chose his own land for the grand old tree’s replanting and became the axis of the replanting drive. The administration kept emphasizing that the roots would be intact and the tree will be grafted using all the scientific practices to ensure it will re-grow.

Sadly, even after a good monsoon came and went, the tree didn’t grow a single new shoot. The farmer himself watered the replanted tree and took ample care. Even the horticulture experts visited frequently for follow-up steps. But the tree didn’t sprout.

The farmer is feeling let down by the authorities. He is thinking of taking them to the court for making a false promise and breach of trust. Kisan Unions and environmentalists have been lending their voice in support of the farmer.

The farmer sees the tree as a legacy for his progeny. His ancestors had worked hard in the fields and rested under its shade. The tree was the pride of the village and was said to be planted by some Muslim family in pre-independent India. He fondly reminisces that cattle, animals, birds and humans took shelter under it in the scorching heat.

Well, it’s a glimmer of hope that there are people around who love trees more than the commerce of land. The cherry-toned whisper of love for nature in this post-modernist bewilderment. The soft-springed gait amidst the collective floundering rush towards the precipice overlooking a still nastier abyss. 

The entangled mirages of the mind

 

We always have a highly exaggerated sense of problems, tough situations and challenges. Our primal fears and insecurities stretch the minor possibilities of negatives to make them babbling pools of consternation and imaginary worst-case scenarios.

Highly exaggerated assumption of problems acquires the shape of a wall between us and the people over there. Testily we lose trust in people. In the throes of approbation, we glutter and stutter and become so insecure that we feel ourselves to be at everyone’s target around us.

This is plain paranoia. A causeless encumbrance. The journey quavering and the path trackless. Smothered by impulses the journeyman gasps for the air of truth (reality).

Just look into the past experiences of your life, you will find that mostly we acted on the impulse of being defensive or offensive imagining the worst-case scenario. But our ego will take credit that by acting in that manner we nullified the chances of that common threat from acquiring a nasty shape.

The simple fact is—we imagine a disproportionately big problem or situation and then we take credit for that thing not happening.

It’s all in the mind. Balance is the way out, as Buddha says. Balance will tell us to be cautious to what extent. It helps in having a realistic and logical threat assessment. Then our system doesn’t go into an overdrive due to the panic-button’s trigger.

I know it’s very difficult to beat these impulses. But we can practice to remember that most of the time our fears are overblown; that things are pretty normal most of the time after the brief sandstorms. Situational sandstorms are the moments that need a pause and composure with eyes closed. Haggard, impulsive and stifled look doesn’t help. There is no need to eat dust and getting blinded by the sand. The sandstorms surely die. Just remember this.     

Things aren’t tangled generally. They are just slightly out of order. Like the cord or chain of the necklace or amulet worn around one’s neck. Just a tiny incongruity. Meagerly abashed. It’s our chaotic effort that turns a slightly tricky loop into an irresolvable knot by randomly, indignantly pulling from chance directions. Chaos and disorder born of just pulling by chance. If we just hold it and allow it to untangle itself, it falls into place by itself.

Similarly, most of the time, the seemingly tough situations are simply slightly tricky loops. It’s we who pull at them randomly and discordantly, driven by impulses and reactions, and turn them into tight knots which are very difficult to undo.

An apparently tangled cord has very small wrong turns. But our reactionary effort, plentitudes of vexations, assortment of anxieties, faculties prostrating to the imagined fears, fearful fancies and silly suppositions put it into very tight knots and mess it up.     

The hierarchy

 

It’s a pyramidal socio-economic structure. At its any given point, there are less (in numbers) luckier people above and more (in numbers) unluckier ones below. That’s almost a natural law.

Prosperity softly narrowing down to a point at the apex; poverty and misery broadening to cover the entire earth. The ribald splutters of some unjustifiable, cruel derivation of the unknown cosmic laws. Millions on the burning, hammering anvil as a prelude to small shapes of luck for the chosen few. And mother existence looking with a kind of pre-selected apathy. Mass austerity for little lucrative fates.

Wherever you are placed, just analyze your standing in socio-economic terms. You will find that for dozens of luckier people (let’s say better placed people—both on account of inheritance and hard work), there are hundreds who are placed lower than you mostly by the accidents of birth, by being born in more challenging situations. Wherever you are situated, you are still standing on the soil of myriads of unluckier fates.

The baseline comprises teeming billions who are cast in the same mould of poverty, hunger, misery and numerous other disadvantages. They symbolize loss and pain itself. They are the benchmark. They have the luckier and unluckier ones only among themselves. There is absolutely no one below them as a class or group. They are the base field for any windfall, any successful parley, any congratulatory word buzzing around, any precursor to smile, any tiny step leading to quantum leap, any ounce of progress, growth and development in the world above them. They are the broad canvas of pain on which a few pictures of pleasure are drawn by the unknown hand. 

The same applies for the few odd people at the pyramid’s apex. They have nothing to look up above their heads. The well-heeled elitists can just look within their peer group for some relative perspectives. But for the majority in the pyramid, it’s just dozens of luckier people and thousands of unluckier ones.

 

Afghanistan is a beautiful but bloodied land. So many dreams die even before they take birth. But a 13-year-old boy dreamt big and high. He took a gutsy step to fulfill his dream of going to Iran. A brusque and curt plan propelled by boyhood’s innocence where there is hardly any difference between facts and fancy.

On a promising Sunday morning, dressed in white kurta-pyjama, he managed to sneak into Kabul airport and got mixed in a queue of passengers going to board a plane and occupied his free, unauthorized seat in the plane’s rear wheel well, his private business class in the internal compartment housing the landing gear.

He had come all prepared. His luggage included ‘a small red-colored audio speaker’. The boy must be in love with it. Perfect. But he boarded the wrong plane. The plane was bound for India rather than Iran.

Flying over 40,000 feet, where temperature drops to minus 50 degree Celsius and oxygen just a small fraction of what it’s at the sea level, he landed at Delhi airport after the 90-minute flight. A miracle survivor in the unheated and unpressurized wheel well. Hypoxia and hypothermia make mortality rate as high as 80 percent for such stowaway passengers. Then there is a great risk of getting fatally injured by the movement of the landing gear. Or one may fall during flight or while landing due to the sheer shock of it.

The boy has entered the elite club of 132 such passengers who travelled in landing gear compartment between 1947 to 2025 (according to the US Federal Aviation Administration). But the boy didn’t know that it takes more than boarding a plane to successfully reach the destination. He could barely feel the solicitous sensation and playful air of a boy realizing his dream. He had no clue how and where to go, so was easily spotted by the security personnel. Sadly the Indian authorities had no ways to reward him for his feat. Under the immigration laws there was just one option. He was made to board the same return flight in the evening. But inside the aircraft this time.

Well, his stowaway journey earned him a stopover at the IGI, New Delhi and a normal ticket back home apart from the status of few rare surviving stowaways. He is still a kid and I’m sure will retain his spirits and share all about his popular journey with his friends. He definitely has dreams of flying. But he needs to work, study, turn wise, skilled and then board a legal flight to pursue his Iranian dreams.

Given his raw cache of guts he can surely do this. He has lots of stamina apart from bundles of courage. But courage and stamina should never be put to such wayward, random plans. There is always a proper, legal way of realizing one’s high-flying dreams.

His courage is irrefutable and incredulous. He possesses the seeds of a handsome stalwart. He just needs to tone down the thundering pitch of raw valor and guide it for proper objectives. Rather, the Afghan authorities need to take note of his potential and guide him for better plans than stowaway flights.

Undirected freedom: the agent of atrophy

 

If you can’t balance the internal push to assert your almost absolute sense of freedom with the outer restraining pulls of laws, rules and regulations—and can’t prepare yourself to be tamed by the prevalent customs, norms and traditions (the overall collective acceptables) which put duties, responsibilities, laws, injunctions that seem binding and suffocating to you—then you have to abandon the certainties and safeties born of such a customized mould.

If you have the courage to spare your sense of identity from being comprehensively stamped with collective safeties, you have your entire energy to pursue your own path. But one has to be very careful with this untamed spirit or un-caged energy. It’s a storm basically and unless you have a specific path leading to a clear meaning of an alternate reality, the spating fury of this untamed river will consume you. You then become a self-predator—eating your own self.

The whirlpool of random energies is nothing short of a demon. It will manifest in random, accidental, chancy, impulsive bursts—which give the illusion of being the expression of freedom—that will shake, ruffle, push and pull you as per its own weird sense of randomness.

This is as good as—or as bad—going mad. You end up being a king or queen waging a war against your own self, taking it to be a fight of freedom against others. Even the slaves to norms are better than such kings and queens.

So if you believe in absolute individual freedom and take yourself to be free from the cast of social conditioning, you should have an idea about what to do with your un-caged, un-customized energies. You should have a roadmap to create your own version of alternate realities. Moreover, you have to be prepared for reactions, ridicules and judgments. The latter won’t affect you if you have been honest about your path of individual freedom. But these will lance you if you have been dishonest and taken your pleasure dives as expression of inherent freedom because in that case it’s mere escapism—escaping from duties and responsibilities and unjustifiably wallowing in your rights only.

We have to pay, in the form of commitments to the larger collective or to the solitary self, something in the form of duties to allow ourselves the set of rights including the right to the so-called ‘almost absolute sense of freedom’.