The puzzling game of life and death

 

12 June, 2025. Air India Flight AI 171 takes off at 1:38 pm. It was all over in a minute and a half. The flight was airborne for maybe just 31 seconds. It crashed killing 241 (of the 242 people onboard) and dozens on the ground.

A 40-year-old occupant of seat 11A, named Ramesh, walked out of the mountain of fire, alive, not seriously injured. But who can have an idea of the extent of scars and injuries on his soul? His brother sitting on seat 11F perished in the crash. Such a huge wall between life and death!

I don’t think the fire, explosion and the impact gave him even a fraction of a second to see, feel or know anything about his brother. Their mother’s heart torn in two—one happy for the son saved; the other crying for the dead son. Such tragedies mercilessly divide the same heart! But pain has bigger, stronger swiping powers. I’m sure the mother’s heart is all doused in sorrow. Her survivor son emerged limping from the mountain of fire and smoke. A strong man in white T-shirt, crew-cut hair, a patch of red (blood most probably—his or someone else’s?) on the right shoulder blade, oil marks, burn injuries slowly coming to visibility on his face and arms.

The survivor walked towards an ambulance, not yet back to life, still numb by the heavy hammer strike of death on hundreds around him. He waved off such puny, small motives of the onlookers trying to get a news byte from the luckiest man on earth that day. The hunger of professionalism tried to evoke some response. The crowd impulsive with the rub and rut of life where everyone always feels oneself farthest from the claws of death.

The miraculous survivor went dismissing mikes and phones raised towards his face to get a news-making video. Getting bombarded with questions while he still has to come to terms with the fact of his life among hundreds of deaths around him. Is it the time to pester him with such questions? Would he even be able to speak?

Irrespective of what happens to a few lives, it would still be the world as usual.

The plane was airborne for just 31 seconds after its tyres lifted off the runway. A few passengers were live on Facebook videos, feeling so close to life, full of excitement, sharing their joy with family and friends. It was all so-so normal till the last second. The nastiest and hastiest handover of life to death. The videos show happy chatter, smiles, the earthly objects slowly getting left behind. Then suddenly an explosion. Fire. A few cries. Not enough time for full panicked cries. Gone. Like a puff of wind blows off a candle.

Another video shot by a lovely cabin crewmember showing the staff walking with confident steps into the airport with their trolley bags. All happy people, walking with grace and poise to join the journey of hundreds of others.

The fire of death so pervading that you lose your moorings. A drop of water in the fire; a dewdrop of luck eaten by the sea of bad luck.

A girl missed the flight just by ten minutes due to traffic jam in Ahmadabad. You feel happy for her. For an instant. A dewdrop on your parched skin burning with anguish. Then again your conscience is swallowed by the mass agony, for the hundreds who weren’t lucky that day.

Hundreds of common happy stories turned into uncommon tragic ones in an instant. The senior pilot aged about 50, a bachelor. He lovingly cared for his 90-year-old father. The neighbors are all praise for him. Recently he had told his father that he will take retirement soon and will take full care of him.

A man came to India to fulfill his dying wife’s last wish—to immerse her ashes in Narmada.

A doctor couple with their three little children. The father worked in London. The mother practiced in India with her three kids. She had quit her job here. The family was now on the way to a united living in London. A happy family. Five happy people, as the last selfie in the plane shows, on the way to a fresh chapter in life.

A man had come to India for his father’s cremation.

A family coming home to celebrate Eid in India with their relatives.

A mother going to meet her daughter in London.

A sick man wanting to pass his last days in the land of his birth. His wife brought him to his native place. He passed away a month ago. His wife was on her way back to restart life in England along with her daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

Happy parents going to join the house inauguration ceremony at their son’s place who had worked so hard to have a home away from home.

A wife on the way to celebrate her husband’s birthday.

A nurse going back to rejoin her duties after spending lovely time with her family.

A young talented girl going to pursue her M. Tech degree. Her father a poor rickshaw puller. She had been supporting her family by taking tuitions during her studies. They had taken loans to help her meet the dreams of higher education.

A crewmember who always called her friend, a fellow crewmember, after safe landings. They would call each other before takeoff and after landing. It went for 21 long years. One of them is left in the world now to hold onto those memories.

A young Indian-origin British couple visiting the land of their ancestors to celebrate their engagement.

Two doctor friends eating lunch together side by side in the hostel canteen where the plane crashed. One finishes his lunch early and leaves. His friend is crushed to death under the falling debris.

The cook in the mess left to deliver tiffins to doctors, leaving behind his wife and granddaughter to manage the canteen. Now he is waiting for their bodies to be recognized at the mortuary.

Dozens others perishing on the ground including doctors and relatives who happened to be there, including a 15-year-old son of a woman tea seller who operated her cart in front of the ill-fated hostel. He had brought her lunch. She went for some errand nearby leaving the boy to look after the stall. The calamity struck. A car is just lucky to turn off from the margins of death. A few more yards and it would have joined the inferno. The woman is running by the car’s side shouting for her son’s help. The son dies. She is trying to find him, bearing incalculable weight on her soul and fifty percent burn injuries on her body.

The bodies burnt beyond recognition. The relatives facing the trauma, giving DNA samples to identify their near and dear ones. Just a few bodies recognizable. Are they the lucky ones in the mayhem?

The flight will no longer be called AI 171. It’s AI 159 now.

The world as usual. A minister gets his impressive reel shot—with background sound—while visiting the crash site. The VIPs love photo shoots. Their presence is well marked. The plane’s tail tip jutting out of the gutted building. The VVIPs stand under it looking pensively into the scene of tragedy, asking questions maybe. The questions that they never like to be asked by others. The photographer must have lain on his back on the ground to get this historic angle. The VVIPs and the only remains of the ill-fated plane. The impressive photos cover the front page of newspapers the next day. Of course these are social media days.  

Sunjay Kapoor posted a sad, sympathetic condolence message on the tragic air crash. He wrote about life’s brevity and fragility. He died shortly after the message. A wealthy businessman, he died in the most unexpected way. He was playing polo; didn’t fall from his horse to suffer injuries. All nice buds of life encouraging for survival, joy and happiness around him. A safe cocoon, except a little dot of bad luck—a honeybee. He swallowed the bee while playing the elitist game. The bee stung him in his throat. The swollen windpipe choked him. A cardiac arrest followed. A chance arrow of bad luck (death) picking out a life from the arena of joy, laughter and prosperity.

In contrast, the seat 11 A survivor, sitting on the least preferred seat in the unluckiest aircraft that day—they say seats 11 A and 11 F are least preferred because they are right in the middle and the passenger can be easily the last one to deboard—survived. The luckiest man that day, surviving due to a chance arrow of luck (life) among the mayhem of death and fire in which hundreds were charred to death around him.

Two mysteries at two opposing ends, drawing the thread of good and bad luck (agony and joy; pain and pleasure) between them. The irresolvable ironies of life. A drop of water surviving in a sea of fire. Chance. A dot of fire surviving in a sea of water. Again chance. We can just marvel at the stroke of luck. The flash of hope. But that’s brief like a shooting star. Very soon we are blanketed by the weighty silence of darkness. The pain and suffering of so many for little strokes of luck for so few.

Futile human desires, ambitions, fears, jealousies cast shadows even on death, forget about life. Kuki-Meitei ethnic conflict, which has ravaged Manipuri society for years, has transgressed into the corridors of this air tragedy. Two female cabin crewmembers of the ill-fated plane, two beautiful young women, came from Manipur. Nganthoi Sharma was Meitei. Lamnunthiem Singson a Kuki-Zo. Local administration, police, and community leaders are holding talks to resolve the issue.

Hundreds have died in the conflict. Thousands displaced. Kukis have left Imphal and surrounding low areas and have gone up the hills. The Meiteis have done the reverse. They have their own armed militias for security. The central forces working like a buffer between the two warring communities.

Where will Singson’s body land? That’s the question. The Kukis don’t enter Imphal. Earlier her family lived in Imphal but they fled to the hills once the violence began. The police promised them a security cover in case they were ready to receive the body at Imphal airport. Imagine the plight of the bereaved families. The dead deserve dignity and respect.

There was a fear that they will be attacked if they went to Imphal. Even if the police gave them a cover, there was a concern that their own community members might get angry about their Imphal visit.

Kuki Students Organisation was helping the family in receiving the body. So it was a community matter now. They didn’t seem comfortable about taking the body first to Imphal. They suggested that the body be first flown to Dimapur airport in Nagaland and then take it by road to her place. The route didn’t have any Meitei areas on it. The other roads from other airports nearby passed through Meitei areas.

The girl had lost her father early. They had to leave their house in Imphal. The house was looted. It shows to what extent the societies are fractured on social and ethnic basis. Even the dead bodies can’t create a natural sense of respect and security to facilitate their passage. Perhaps people have seen so much blood to turn callous in soul. Hardened souls. They finally settled for the safe option—taking the body through non-Meitei areas.

The mankind has not been satisfied with being human. He wants to create something far more powerful—machine. The machine is more important. The proud creator. The creator of the religion of the machine. An entire system of business rituals around the Goddess, the brutal machine. Profit making, the sole dharma.

Aviation corporate is one of the biggest money churners on the planet. The budget of leading aviation companies can surpass the financial worth of entire continents like Africa. To keep the money-churning religion of machine going, the mankind takes the blame on himself, or puts it on fellow human beings, thus saving the sanctity of the machine.

Whenever there is some aviation accident all efforts are employed to keep the machine’s image and reputation intact and malign the mankind—the human error. This case is no exception. The narrative of one of the pilots deliberately turning off the fuel switch has been let loose in the news market. Even though aviation regulators had raised concerns about the plane maker’s fuel switch locking system.

Who cares about the reputation of a deceased pilot? He was a small fly. The corporate is a behemoth. The latter has to be saved. So an individual can be sacrificed on the altar to appease the goddess. Who cares about thousands of flying hours that made crores of rupees for the employer and helped thousands to reach home safely?

The aviation company’s stocks shouldn’t fall. The man is liable, not the machine. Money, money, money. Only money is left, mankind is no more there. It’s an obituary to the collective death of humanity among the Homo-sapiens by this poetic man.    

Luscious Ladakh

 

People run away, or rather try to run away, from multitudes of putridities and puerilities plaguing their mundane lives. The plains sound like cradle of corruption and the hills, clad in mysterious miasma, beckon with solitude and salvation. They have become the charging ports for the hapless society feeling sapped of enthusiasm for life despite all the material progress taking place around.

Ladakh, with its immutable serenity in the fertile womb of its outer barrenness, offers broad avenues to the ruffled soul to dilate the self and be in a dimension that is accepting, healing, motherly and solacing.

Me and my brother plan an yearly sojourn to take reinvigorating sips in the land of monasteries and mountain passes. One need not be a globetrotter to unwind the suffocated self and qualify as a typical ‘traveler’. Just open up yourself to the places which you can afford to visit. You simply have to block the strains of indiscretion and each place unblocks its wealth of experiences and lessons for your gain. Each place is a kind host; provided we are willing to be courteous guests.

Luscious Ladakh, full of pristine emptiness! So close to the unmanifest! A Zen-like peace echoing through its rarefied terrain. It pulls we brothers during summers when the lofty passes open the door to the outside world. The wintertime desolation melts and streams flow with ripples of hospitality, warmth and inexplicable joy.

A drizzle in Leh is as special as a mystical rainbow! A numinous feast for the eyes. I look and marvel at this heavenward arc of truth and beauty defined by human endurance, faith and rituals. I’m standing in a monastery overlooking Leh from a lofty craggy peak. The scented breeze of spirituality emanates from the ancient wooden balcony of the Namgyal monastery overlooking Leh from the top of this high hill.

Sublime, solitary and unhurried world of peaceful monks at the Hemis monastery about 45 kilometers from Leh. An elemental and monumental urge to discover one’s loftier self in dreamlike isolation. In the museum in the monastery, I marvel at the fossil of Lak Khyi. There is an interesting Buddhist myth about a wingless vulture pup that crawls on ground following its mother’s shadow. It’s considered to be very auspicious. The enduring myth, as sturdy as these barren brown cliffs surrounding the monastery. The specimen looks quite realistic. They don’t allow it to be photographed. But it’s an unforgettable experience to stand silently in front of this fossilized remnant of the mythical bird.

Turtuk, the hidden gem, the earth-toned paradise. The little village carries cerulean charm of deep traditional hospitality, spiritually nestled in the trans-Himalayan hushed, raw, minimalist milieu. Here is the pair of a sparkling son and its muddy mother: a pristine, crystalline glacial stream emptying into muddy rugged Shyok river. The sizzling snowmelt crisscrossing the cliffs like a glittering thread of life in the cold desert. And down the valley, the untamed feminine fury of the Shyok river.

The pristine azure noon sky; the ochre shades of the setting sun on the rugged brown cliffs.

The wild and furious tempest of the spating Shyok river near Turtuk—water’s massive, muddy and ferocious push against mammoth mountains. We walk on a swaying narrow wooden suspension bridge linking the asphalt road to a little farming hamlet on the other side. The planks old, worn out but resilient like the indomitable Ladakhi spirit. The wind buffeting, howling its songs of sovereignty. The waves in the river so big that they nearly kiss the rudimentary planking of the bridge.

One has to forget the habit of taking quick steps and walk with meditative awareness and prayer-laden poise, feeling the pulse of silvery calmness under this roaring, muddy, frightening stream. Each step transporting you to a gentle dimension underneath this hoary, austere face of mother nature. It’s like crossing the torrential stream of life using the bridge of a stable mind (a steady psychosomatic composite self) to reach the other shore.

Diskit-Shyok-Durbuk road is one of the most challenging roads in Ladakh. It traverses the remote barrenness along the angry cuts of the Shyok river in the valleys bearing telltale signs of the river’s flooding and furious capabilities. The muddy and mighty Shyok is unsparing. The gurgling glacial streams emptying their stormy fury into the mother valley swipe away the road at many stretches. The trek is absent at many places across the muddy plains. But as they say, the hardest routes lead to the most beautiful views. Travelling on this challenging road leads to a blissful destination: Pangong lake.

Let’s ignore the worst part and focus on the best one: The BRO’s tireless work in the mountains. There are road stretches in the Shyok valley that can put even Delhi roads to shame. As you ride on bike in these stretches, ancient stillness whispers songs of boundless solitude in your ears.

Pangong, the multicolored liquid gem in the navel of mountains. The liminal lake (transitioning between worldly and the divine) and the surrounding panorama are ethereal, transcendental to the last core of their molecular structure. You feel a monastic timelessness while standing on the sacred lake’s shore. A sun-drenched remoteness taking you in its majestic, wind-carved folds. A stark vastness takes you in its embrace. A touch of nomadic, snow-kissed Himalayan houri sends sizzles of otherworldly desire across mind, body and soul. Words fail to do justice to the beauty of this high-altitude wonder of mother nature.

This landscape is a living temple and Pangong lake is a beautiful Goddess. On the surrounding bare brown ridges a mystical, wind-sculpted monastic hush is layered over the harsh weather elements. I’m glad that people travel thousands of kilometers to have Her darshan. And they turn very childish in having fun on Her banks. Still it’s better to have celebrating children, drinking and carousing on Her banks, playing in Her temple yard. It’s far better than wars and tragic bloodletting.

For hundreds of merrymaking children, all it needs is to be one grown up person to clean the dirt like a caring, capable parent once the children have had their fun. Pangong is a mother, forgiving, allowing the children to have fun and leave behind litter on Her banks. I inhale the untamed, high-altitude contemplative air, get the message from my refreshed conscience and start doing what ought to be done instead of just cribbing.

To me She is a luminous Goddess. And here I perform my rituals. I light a lamp by cleaning about one kilometer of Her holy banks. She seems very happy. As I meditate on Her banks, I know it’s a different dimension, an ancient and infinite one. My rewards are the fresh experiential strains of knowledge as I mediate on Her bank. Yes, I have it: Her blessings in the form of the otherworldly whispering of the infinite; a spirit-cleansing touch of divinity. A few moments of being in the confluence of earth, sky, spirit and silence. And still more blessings by the sacred spirits dwelling in Her waters! She never lets Her children go empty handed.

A man comes strolling with his wife, raises his thumb to say, ‘Good job!’ To me he is even bigger culprit than those who spread the litter. He isn’t an ignorant child. He understands. Still just wants to clean his conscience by giving a good remark and raising a thumb, as if his duty is done just by this inconsequential action. ‘It’s not an act in abstract. It’s meant to inspire others to do the same. I expect you to do the same,’ I say. He is eager to leave the scene without dirtying his hands. His partner is visibly embarrassed.

I’m not bothered. I just move with my load of plastic and discarded cans and walk like a contended, timeworn, unhurried pilgrim on a very-very solitary pilgrimage trail in some remote corner of the world.

To others She is just a lake for having fun. But to me She is a living goddess and so I light my little lamp of faith by cleaning Her banks.

The bike ride from Pangong to Hanle gives you a taste of sepulchral, elemental vastness. Silence and solitude comingled with challenges now and then. The barren slopes almost intimidating you with their rarefied ruggedness. Not to stop you, but to give you lessons necessary to make you a better journeyman. Lofty brown slopes surrounding you like great ancestors, brooding with grand conjectures on their wrinkled faces. The bike labors. But the rider is kissed by sacred stillness emanating from each stone and crag in this enduring, beautiful barrenness. You go listening to stoic lessons of raw resilience to surpass all odds.

You come across some unique sun-bleached, wind-washed, pilgrimage-worthy landscapes, almost extraterrestrial in nature, enshrouded in a silent soliloquy. The wind carrying a mysterious and mystical whisper. Just the purring of your bike cutting a little line across the sandy plains seeped in otherworldly solitude. You can’t just help but inhale big draughts of nonbeing on this trans-Himalayan altar, the shrine of a goddess raw, silent and aloof but always there to bless you, guiding you with her all-powerful presence. 

Rezang La hill and memorial on the dusty plains. Major Shaitan Singh and his company of 120 soldiers attained martyrdom on a hill overlooking the memorial site. Carrying sky-hungry Himalayan spirit and bravery, they fought till the last bullet, killing 1300 Chinese soldiers in this most fierce battle of the 1962 Indo-China war. A heroic tale written in the majestic monochromes of motherland and duty. If not for their supreme sacrifice, we would have lost the strategic Chushul sector. People like you and me have the freedom to travel to this very remote part of Ladakh, which appears like Central Asian Pamir plateau, only due to the bravery of these soldiers.

Dizzying hairpin loops from Hanle to the world’s highest motorable pass, Umling La. They take you in their dizzying eddies and leave you uncluttered of the puzzles and anxieties you carry in your head. You just bow down, all reverent to the rarity of these moments on the roof of the world.

As you move upward, it becomes a journey inward. The peaks around don’t dominate, they instruct you, guide you. You soak silence once the initial inhibitions are shed and then you feel that silence isn’t absence of noise, it’s a pure and refined presence, your own undisturbed self.

The most trickily poised slopes and high peaks, almost standing equal to the sky, aren’t here to invite you for admiration. They just, like kids, need your attention for your own evolution. As you go spiraling across loops after loops in the highest motorable road in the world, you get the secret: Ladakh is a shy country girl. She won’t reveal all her charms instantly; she helps you master the art of patience by withholding her charms, leaving you in her pursuit across this fabulous vastness.

The Indus river moves somewhere hurried, somewhere loud, somewhere with gentility and patience. Cutting like ribbon of truth in the thin air. In the valleys, villages cling to barren slopes like firm belief against aggression and pressure.  

Somewhere, an unknown and unsung memorial of a martyred soldier far away in the cold desert. But mother existence seems to pay homage through little alpine flowers around it. A few moments of paying homage to this defender of the motherland. A tear. A bouquet from the soul.

Little alpine flowers in the meadows around a small village on the shore of a stormy water body, Lake Tso Moriri. Bright, gentle, slow mornings in the Ladakhi village. The soul-satiating hospitality, the warmth of wrinkled smiles on old faces, the calmness of lamas, the gentlest pace of life. The day almost a lovely picture.

Beautiful messages of wisdom and caution by the BRO and HIMANK, the two military institutions that can put to shame any corporate office in India in terms of efficiency, commitment and dedication to mission irrespective of the toughest odds stalling the progress. As you move on your path, it’s as good as reading the book of life itself. We move slowly and read the signboards by the roadside.

 

It’s not a rally or race,

Enjoy Ladakh with leisure and grace!

 

Heaven is a myth,

Ladakh is real!

 

Higher the hill,

stronger the will!

 

Slow is the speed that lets you see the mountains.

 

High roads demand low ego.

 

Nature ahead—drive as a guest, not an intruder.

 

Mountains forgive slowly; drive wisely.

 

Silence outside begins with caution inside.

 

One wrong turn can disturb a thousand years of calm.

 

The road is narrow, but your awareness must be wide.

 

Respect the height—life breathes thinner here.

 

Horns wake stones, not mountains.

 

Drive slow—beauty has no exit ramp.

 

Speed thrills briefly; Ladakh humbles forever.

 

These hills remember every careless move.

 

The lake reflects calm—match it.

 

Here, patience is better fuel than petrol.

 

You are crossing a landscape older than fear.

 

Fast driving shortens journeys—sometimes permanently.

 

In the land of monasteries, let restraint lead.

 

Every curve is a question; answer gently.

 

Altitude tests machines, wisdom tests drivers.

 

Arrive alive—Ladakh will wait.

 

Ladakh silent like a prayer that has been held for too long; vast like an idea which refutes bondage; still like a monk’s gaze at the rising sun. The mountains rise like unanswerable questions against the sky. Prayer flags fluttering, inspiring the habitual clingers to ‘let go’ of the unnecessary stuff of life.

At night cold settles firmly but with a clarifying wink. During the day, the sunlight scatters forgiveness, arming even the hearts of big boulders with acceptance and receptivity. Then the night arrives again, coming like a velvet curtain to take everyone in its deep and absolute folds.

The path curves with the logic and reasoning of survival; the journey is not always straight, but involves essential bending and needful curves.

The polished mirror of lakes where the sky muses over its own existence. The snow is nothing but silence resting and made visible for the benefit of humans. Horizons stretched around like breath held by divinity in wonderment. Life prevailing like stubborn mantra, repeated over and over in chanting and prayers in monasteries. Rocks nothing but thoughts abandoned and lying useless, the stray thoughts left to their own little self. The desert opening its heart by stripping itself of all the secrets to reveal truth, unadorned and naked.

The monasteries sitting on ridges, seeming like punctuation marks in eternity. Silence the daily prayer. Mountains ancient monks. The valleys like bowls receiving eternal truths from the sky. The unguarded infinity showering from the sky. The lakes mystical mirrors to reflect on your troubled thoughts to wash them away. And high-altitude villages fragile yet firm pauses in time.

Memories float on the wind, not noise.

It’s a divine paring down of the worldly events: an exotic stripping from ornamentation of forests, plants, birds and animals. A slumberous vortex on the threshold of earth and sky. Its eloquent barrenness speaking more effectively than the fertile valleys and greenery far down on the lower altitudes.

Well, that’s Ladakh for you my dear readers.  

The last hope

 

The sea of greenery is receding very fast. The trees are vanishing. We are now living in a barren and brown world. Today another tree was chopped down. A blackberry tree that stood at one corner of a cropped field, lovingly shading the engine room. Here the farmer and his friends enjoyed cool shade and delicious blackberries in the summer. Nearby, some panels of a solar pump occupied a little portion of the field, giving a clean source of energy. Then the farmer calculated, like we humans usually do: ‘These solar panels waste the corner of the field where I can’t sow my crops. Let me put them on the roof of the room. That will clear the field’s corner for sowing.’ So he decided to chop down the tree because it shadowed the roof where he planned to relocate the solar panels.

And in this way, dear readers, the tree was chopped down. It was just preparing to give them another season of ripe, delicious blackberries. There it lay with its raw, green fruits. Its leaves losing life under the scorching sun. Wilting and melting. We humans very easily forget about all the things that a tree has given us for years—shade, fruits, clean air. We would chop down a tree to clear a few square feet of farmland to sow some more pesticide-soaked crops.

Mother earth has been critically overexploited. Every square inch is under stress because we humans have broken all sustainable barriers. Consequently, even the plants, birds, animals, reptiles, insects, bugs, fungi, bacteria and virus are fighting in a cramped corner. The birds are fighting for some odd nesting site that is available in the urban jungles. Under our barn roof, there is a mud nest clinging to an iron rafter. The swallows use the same nest season after season. Earlier the bird nests were just temporary camps set up by the winged nomads roaming freely in the skies. But things have changed. The skies have wires and planes. The houses are plastered. The trees are vanishing. So even nests are becoming costlier, on account of the rarity of suitable sites, and hence acquired the shape of almost permanent properties.

The swallow couple always returns for their next hatchings here. Sometimes the swallows fight among themselves to grab the property. It’s a very noisy fight. Then recently even house sparrows thought of taking it by force. Soon the fight between the sparrow and swallow couples tuned into a community affair between the two species. A few sparrows and some swallows fought for a couple of days. Finally, a sparrow couple has grabbed the property—after another battle among themselves. It’s a small mud nest. It doesn’t have enough space for a grass nest which the sparrows are trying to fix on top of it. They keep fetching dry grass and the stalks keep falling down. I am sure they will realize the futility of it all—that it was a useless capture. It’s so symbolic of what we do in our competition and fight with our fellow humans. 

These are the sad reflections of a poetic man walking on some odd uncluttered trail among the farmlands. But what does a poet need to uplift his spirits? Not much. Just coming across a new flower uplifts his spirits. I come across a beautiful painted leaf flower! A natural coating of bright red on the green leaf! A summer beauty! And we think we have innovated the art and craft of painting our houses. I think we are mere small imitators of the grand design that mother nature is. This flower helps me in regaining my smile after the tree-cutting episode.

And then the ever-smiling sadabahar says, ‘Don’t worry! Cheer up! There is hope for humanity till there is even a single flower on the earth!’

Further, these little trumpets of four o’clock flowers give a little pep talk: ‘See brother, we don’t lose our smiles even in this 40 degree Celsius heat. We have adapted our smiles to thrive in this fire. Similarly, you too need to adapt your flowery heart to the fire that’s going around in human affairs!’ 

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.