On the solitary trail

 

The green, shimmering, sashaying gown of mother earth fluttering to monsoon winds on my solitary trail. The rain-lulled path is indeed a solitary trail now. The thin ribbon of solace and verdant solitude is clad in grasses, bushes and reeds like a shy countryside lass.

A lovely musty solitary feel to the fern-shadowed trail. An emerald hush layered over it. You just inhale musty silence and sweating peace here. And each slow step on this wild-woven passage counting as meditation.

I quietly embrace this solitudinal offer from the moss-breathing earth and walk in acceptance and full humility, paying homage to these moments. Mother nature’s green-drowned footsteps on the monsoon-softened ground echoing in the form of an overgrown silence.

August rains have been far more in intensity and volume than the normal mark for the month. The solitary trail is overgrown with grasses, reeds, weeds and shrubs. One has to walk very cautiously at each step on the rain-scripted earth to avoid naughty snakes slithering in the grass-swallowed track.

It indeed is a solitary trail, almost untrodden green—with one exception, a sole presence (apart from me) in this calmly breathing wilderness and leaf-slick solitude. A lone man softly moving through this jungle-leaning corridor. A pilgrim of his own kind on the thicketed way. A little interjection in the otherwise undisturbed rain-held remoteness on this verdure-bound way.

He is rubbing hemp leaves on his palms to collect the black soot that will turn to weed for filling his beedis. Mother nature has been kind to him. There are long rows of wild hemp plants on both sides of the mist-clasped trail. He will collect a few beedis worth of weed on his palms.

The man isn’t in disharmony with the living quietude of the path. He is a silent, peaceful man, gently working on the leaves. His lean figure emanating laid-back and easygoing air. His persona almost earth-attuned. He is not overcautious like most of the so-called teetotalers who don’t touch meat, wine, drugs and weeds. But they carry their own nasha of power, influence, wealth and politicking. This silent man appears to be carrying an unruffled soul. With an affably detached self, he readily agrees to get videoed and photographed, just making a little request to not put it on ‘net-pet’ as he puts it.

Weed inhalers are generally mellow-hearted laidback people, not harming mother earth with overblown worldly aspirations like the most of us do. Yes, they harm their own interests and that of their families. But they aren’t over-spirited participants in the chaos that is being splashed around by the so-called sensible gentry.

The man is very soft-spoken and grounded in simplicity. He seems to be quietly amused by my silly eagerness to take his pictures and make his video while he peacefully goes rubbing the hemp leaves on his palms.  

I don’t support and encourage weed smoking. But these people are cool and contended in their own laid-back ways. Mother earth is burdened with over-doers, so such paused personalities can be digested to a little extent provided they keep it balanced with their duties to themselves and their families.

It would be an icing on the cake if they decide not to get married because marriage is a big responsibility and if you get yoked into the matrimonial cart, you ought to fulfill all responsibilities full time instead of getting into a relaxed trance through substances like weed. Marriage plus weed smoking don’t go together. Marriage means full-spirited action to be a committed provider for one’s family. Weed smoking means walking in a by-lane where those who shirk responsibilities try to escape to a different dimension of life which is not compatible with the ways and means of the normal society.

I leave him collecting the fragments of his peace and move on. Mother earth has more tales to tell through visuals, sights, smells and happenings on the path.

Sarus cranes are a symbol of lifelong fidelity, a winged constancy in their sacred companionship. In a world where real love is getting pushed into the corner each passing second, the sight of the enduring union and devoted pairing of a crane couple in lush green is nothing short of an auspicious sign. It’s a shy, grace-bound couple not too eager for the public display of their rituals of togetherness and mateship. They just kept walking, like they fly through their life with monogamous grace, and don’t allow the human-bird gap to be decreased by my curious steps. They don’t fly away at least and that’s their gift to this walker on the solitary trail. They give me enough sight of the quite foreverness and the unbroken duet of their life-song by just walking through the greenery.

There is this friendly drongo. She isn’t camera shy and allows photo shoot from close quarters. Definitely a confident, good-looking girl of the drongo world.

I approach a sad looking puddle of water on the way. This is what remains of the last natural wetland in the countryside around my village. Earlier it was a vast swamp covering many acres that would attract thousands of ducks and other migratory birds during the monsoon and winters. Now it’s just a tiny puddle with a few moorhens, ducks and a couple of kingfishers peeking into its sad waters from the wires nearby.

As I walk further on and reach a lonely hut, it further saddens me. The hut seems abandoned and is already slightly out of order. Kaka maharaj left his hut. He got angry about something and left this hut for a new place. This hut hosted him for more than two decades on his path of spirituality in the countryside. The tiny hut is now getting mixed with nature as grasses and shrubs grow with full freedom around it.

The hut is now packed with a different kind of action, a worldly one instead of the spiritual sojourn. The overhanging branches of a tree canopying the hut are now teeming with the handiwork of weaverbird boys to invite birdie girls to have a look and if they like it accept the suitor and settle for domestic life for the season. Some romeos have put great effort in elongating the grassy foyer to a great length. It’s always a fight for the most beautiful girl through most impressive means of wooing.

The mountains come to my solitary trail in the form of river sands. The Himalayan slopes are washed away by the rain-fed angry rivers and the mountain’s fragmented self arrives here in the form of canal sand. You can feel the essence of Himalayas in this sand. Take a fistful and smell. Yes, it’s that typical Himalayan smell.

My dear friend, the silk cotton tree, is happy at last. Couple of years back the sand mafia had scraped too much earth from around its trunk cutting even the main lateral roots. It turned sad and stood with its pale leaves. No fresh shoot, no flowers for two years. No smiles. Now the monsoon has been more than normal this season. The tree wears a new green suit like a handsome man freshly in love. So happy to see and meet him. I shake hands with him. I’m sure he will smile this season with his luscious red flowers.  

The auspicious art of acceptance

 

I give a big bear hug to all that is, was or will be—a holistic acceptance. The gentle courage of approving all dimensions of my existence—past, present and future.

Carrying an emotional hospitality; enjoying life in the pulsing pause between memories and desires. Because that’s how my body and mind’s biological apparatus—brain—operates to give me a concoction of emotions from the saddest to the happiest.

I take little sips of mammoth wholeness by being in touch with existential totality without the erasure of what happened to me in the past, what constitutes me now and what will become of me in future.

A graceful allowance for vulnerabilities, flaws and fragilities because that’s the scaffolding for strength, power and success. The making of most of my time—by holding it without any grievance, through unresisted presence, by a gentle witnessing of the self. And in the process, making peace with my own becoming. Accepting the dignity of what has happened to me in the past; carrying soft consent to impermanence in the present; holding my dreams for future alive, vibrant and fresh.  

I’m in acceptance of this leela that pulls the individual cart of my existence. I won’t judge my past or future at the cost of the present. A silent reconciliation with time and embracing the unfinished. That’s what pulls my creativity, my urge to be, become something more, something extra, something unique. To be a creator—a radical as well as gentle assent to being.

I carry the steak of this marvelous expansion of mother existence from my end. I just give a huge bear hug to all that was, is and will be on my path. That defines my life. That gives one more little line of cosmic expansion from my end.

Let’s celebrate our body and one of its states of being—mind. Let’s accept the body’s ways of survival through reflections about the past, present and future. Why belittle one at the cost of the other?

This is a lovely leela. Colorful. And it happens because there is this beautiful quality of the human brain to enable our body to be shoved in multiple dimensions. That gives poetry, art, science, and all that we witness around us. It is the driver of all this thoroughfare. Enjoy it. Let all this happen. In total acceptance is liberation from all this, not in negation.

That’s how I enjoy the sweet tension of being in the present moment as an admirer of life, letting it arrive as it is; stable with a feeling of being at home in all this apparent flux.

The pilgrim paying homage to the past, reverent attention to the present and graceful allowance and compassionate continuity for the future.

A rainy day in the village

 

A rain-soaked night in July. The rainy month weeps through clouds. Continuous drizzle in the dark. The night brooding, muddy, hushed and pensive.

The next day gloomy. Sodden. Greywashed. Rainy. A mournful sight like a stillborn child. All wet. But still earth-scented. And that’s the saving grace, if there is any.

Electricity is costlier now in the village thanks to the increased rates and strange new electricity meters, which run at high speed even with just bulbs on. That unsettles the fragile nerves in the village society. As people seek ways to steal power, there are many who play straight through renewable energy.

Lots of houses have installed rooftop solar systems. The rooftop solar panels are nice slanting sliders for the monkeys during fine weather. They hide under them to escape heat, rain and cold.

On this drizzle-soaked day, the trees dripping with water, the monkeys bear a somber expression, a wistful look in their restless eyes, their sense of mischief bruised and held in extraordinary quietude.

When the monkeys are at play on a fine day, the solar panels serve as nice sliders for simian antics. Furthermore, the top-ends are great perch points to put their red bums on and covetously eye some monkey boy or girl. Now, in the drizzle-soaked silence, they seem to be looking forward to typical after-rain simian hustle bustle.

The solar systems’ wiring offers nice biting practice to sharpen their fangs to flaunt them with more sadistic glint during feigned attacks on humans.

On this rainy day, some of them are sitting well behaved under the solar panels. Waiting for the rain to stop and then come out and wreak havoc in the garden below—eating a few guavas and breaking dozens of branches and boughs just for the sheer fun of it.

And a sad sight. A big black butterfly with red spots has fallen on the ground. Upturned. Wings stuck to the wet ground. I think it’s dead but it flutters in protest as I try to pick it up. I hold it softly on a yellow guava leaf and leave it on a rose. It clings sideways, not able to maintain balance. A dying butterfly most probably.

The rain continues to fall and so does the butterfly. A very sad sight: a butterfly stilled. Dead. A young monkey defies the rough weather and jumps onto the electricity cables and walks like an acrobat. Mischief hanging above; sorrow settling below. The time fractured by monkeyish mischief and loss of a butterfly. A boy laughs looking at the monkey. The rain blurring laughter and sorrow.

A little story the rain writes on mud. My little nephew looks at the dead butterfly—silence learnt innocently; a child learning grief while looking at fallen wings. The boy maybe thinks that possibly the butterfly forgot to fly. The rain doesn’t know it’s a sad day in a little corner in the small garden of a village poet.

A feral cat gets bored with its hiding in a barn and runs out to get into some action. The play proceeds; the once winged life gone. The little boy tenderly lifts the winged corpse on a leaf. Learning love, care and empathy.  

The perennial plight for a home

 

I bought a flowerpot. So it becomes my pot. Earlier it was the flower nursery owner’s pot who had bought it from the pot maker, who in turn got soil and other ingredients from various places and players. Ultimately it had come from an absolutely sovereign, free source—nature. Finally it becomes my pot. Or does it? Wait, there is no end to the chain of claimants.

I planted holy basil plants in it. My sense of ownership getting denser because of my faith in Tulsi Mata. That takes the idea of ownership into the dimensions of holiness, faith, worship and rituals.

But then the chain of ownership doesn’t end with me. Now it becomes an ant colony’s pot also. They have been working on elaborate subsurface tunnels to adjust their bourgeoning population.

The ants have worked so hard on it that they have earned a right to consider it their pot from the same logic that I use for my ownership. In fact it’s their city, town or village itself.

The colony has prospered within months. I know it’s not good for my holy plants. When I water the pot I almost feel like deluging the ant colony, to scare them away, to force them to change their mind and see it as an unfavorable location and move to some other place.

But it’s a very stubborn ant colony. They are fighting it out. They will stay in contention as long as I keep the war within conventional limits like digging and watering and avoid the unconventional, unethical means of perpetrating slaughter and genocide using some insecticide.

It would be a sin. Committing a sin to continue with my pious worship of holy basil would be too contradictory. Moreover, the poet in me can hardly take such a drastic step.

I have raised my war-faring tempo to a big extent but always keeping it well short of unethical means. I count upon water as the main agent of my attack. My strategic planning behind this maneuver being that the ant commanders will finally realize the futility of staying in bogs.

But they turn out to be more innovative and practical than I imagined. They have drilled exit channels from top to bottom. The more water I pour, the more it comes out of the excess water exit hole at the bottom of the vase. They have smartly connected all the floodwater tunnels to the sole exit point at the bottom. Water gushes out within seconds of being poured on top. Smart ants!

They know they cannot do much against me, save some bite or two now and then. However, they can handle water, not by fighting it but by using its quality of flowing through suitable channels.

All I can do is simply watch with marveling helplessness.

Multiple shades of a mundane day

 

From the mirror of the past: a long-forgotten entry from an old journal.

September 21, 2007. World Peace Day. Maybe. For I am not sure of it. Even if it is, it’s just like any other mythical, unattainable thing, like the unreachable calls from the traditional past because there seems to be no real peace. Though they try to impose this mass illusion, this concept of peace. It’s not even a tattered veil to obstruct the rays of pinching reality from reaching us. It’s a make-believe, see-through medium through which we hoodwink at the aggressive eccentricities glaring down from the ebullient, hotter, fiercer, unclean face of the modern sun.

The new slogan ‘Chak De India’ is infusing fresh energy into Indian sport’s hitherto lethargic body. But now floods of adrenaline seem to be pumped through the sluggish veins injected with the big doses of catalyst brewed in the pumped-up hysteria of the triumphanism-hungry masses of a resurgent India who want to forget the past inefficiencies and present’s injustices to jump into—pell-mell stampede—the bandwagon of progress and materialism. They grab at every sinew to float their puny dreams to majestic distances in the choppy seas. Even if it means butchering, pruning, cutting, slaying, trimming the mammoth, majestically uncertain, saggily bearded tree of the once ‘gentlemen’s game’.

After all, modern dreams, passions and nostalgic hoopla are best carried piggyback on the fiery lean-mean, unsparing back of a utilitarian, fast, unclassy rocket. Twenty 20 is just such a machine, capable of carrying the hyper-sensitively frothing, bubbling dreams to higher and higher orbits. Cricket in its traditional form is too senile and classy to offer its back with limited, specified, specialized seat capacity to carry the mass, modernist passion. So the horde is humping down enmass to the faster trolley.

Last night we defeated South Africa to enter the T20 World Cup semifinals creating a mid-night hoopla all around the country. All the fears, inhibitions, pricked conscience born of inefficiencies firmly rooted in every nook corner of our beloved country were unbridled and the traditional elephant roared with the throat of a lion and galloped with the agility of a horse. It had galloped still higher when on the night before the last one Yuvraj Singh hit six sixes in one over of young Mr. Broad from England. An overarching swipe of jubilation across the length and breadth of this big country; burying the overstrained creaking, nervous, painful voices of its floorboards and wheels; turning the masses oblivious of the systematic perforation into its sheets, of tiny noises, of puny mutinies.

So on this day (September 21) when India celebrates the ecstatic lynchings of mass excitement among the cocaine-snorted, lion-hearted rabbits enjoying the mirthful bat-ball slaying in the unsparing, brittle, brisk, crisp version of the once gentlemen’s game, one little tragedy (on the scale of the nation) has fallen, crashing on my tiny being with its mammoth force. Cousin brother Andy alias Pintu alias Pardeep completed his journey on this eventful, fateful, excellent, majestic, tragic day.

The tragedy took place between eleven and twelve in broad daylight on the railway track at our local town. The place where there used to be the railway crossing for the district road, which but now speedily flies over the railway tracks carried by the massive concrete blocks and pillars of a new flyover.

Here poor Andy met his unknown, silent end while frenzied media blared the songs of sporty excellence. The tyres on the flyovers sped with burning hot rubber. The long metal snakes, the centipedes of common pride and individual pains hurtled over the merciless, straight, aloof, lifeless, cold, hot, hard, steely tracks. All these busy in making it another day.

Cousin brother Pintu, somehow, deliberately as well involuntarily (what else is alcohol addiction?) came between (like a comma unwanted in the metallic sentence’s rod rigidity) metallic speed and ever-receding destinations. And it swiped him over in one stroke. Just brushed him away.

His left foot mutilated, the symbol of cold, hot, hard grip by one of the rolling feet of the centipede of death and destination; his head smashed on the planks, rails, rail boards of concrete, wood and metal; his roundish bearded face lined with blood from the ears, mouth and nostrils.

By the time the rail workers took his body to the civil hospital, all the hoopla of the world peace day, sports victories, flyovers, railway tracks had ceased to exist for Cousin Pintu. And there his body lay in the emotionally immune, stony, unclean, depilated hospital mortuary. In an abandoned corner—overgrown with bushes and weeds—of the hospital premises. On the lifeless, mute, post-mortem concrete block.

The small frame of the thick set, heavily bespectacled doctor emerged after performing the task. Stone dead tiled walls stared at cousin brother’s peacefully, tragically laid out body on the post-mortem block. The last stage of hospital formalities for the corpse before packing it in the white body bag. And we the little punctuation-mark brothers of our swiped-away comma brother lined, wept, mustered up courage to roll him into white sheets to carry him home for cremation.

People say that he over-drank himself to death. But given the honesty of his conscience I would always spare him this flaw, chronic drinking. Even though he would have been a very successful householder without it, instead of leaving this world as a 35-year-old bachelor, weak of health and with a bit strayed mental balance during his last fortnight on earth.

Whom should I blame? His madness in love for a girl belonging to a different caste whom he wasn’t permitted to marry and which basically caused his fall into alcoholism? Or the unsparing, caste-based society? Or his family’s inability to adjust his offbeat love chemistry in a society cast in rigid, conservative mould?

If I try to answer, so many ghosts from the past will come alive, a whole lot, with their pointy cause-laden fingers into the troubled, stifled relations in our family. I will talk of it sometime later. Presently, the death of a nice childhood playmate stares in its chilly abstractness.  

Childhood memories arrive like sunrays cutting across a curtain of fog—some carry sharp stakes of pain, some beckon with a pearly hiatus, some like bland soup, some like fidgety foragers, some heart rending, some making a passing reference.

Only the air is left, the air of memories, of what was once cousin Andy.

Cats in my garden

 

A friendly feral cat visits once a day, eats a chapatti or whatever else is on offer, and brushes against the legs of anyone who is comfortable with the feline touch. It has been going for the last few years. Every year she brings her kittens, leaves them in the courtyard, goes out to hunt for rats and squirrels. The rest of the dietary supplements are taken care of by her foster human family.

This morning her three children have arrived to fill up this year’s quota. It’s sad news for the garden lizard couple that has the entire courtyard to them. They would spend most of the time on the ground. The kittens are enough grown up to maul them to a funny chameleon pickle. They better be aware of the danger.

The tiny hunters are snoopy and are searching every nook corner. Suddenly they spring in the air and snap up some little house lizard baby or some complacent cricket from the wall.

There are nests in the yard. Squirrel, silverbill, spotted munia and tailorbird couples have their nests among the clump of trees in the unkempt garden of this nondescript, countryside poet. Obviously the bird parents are panicked. The squirrels are continuously tik-tikking and chit-chitting. The tiny chits of tigers roam the little forest with their typical hunter’s attitude and poise. Full of caution and opportunism. One of them was seen eyeing the silverbill couple with such amusing greed that I burst out laughing.

Well, it’s nature’s play. The cat has timed her delivery at this time of the season when there would be enough rodents to hunt. The birds have laid eggs in the monsoon season to cash on the abundance of insects. Little loops of food chains, overlapping, giving rise to this entire gamut of survival games.

The kittens sometimes spend a few weeks, sometimes a few months. When they grow up sufficiently they scale the walls to taste the feline freedom of a feral cat that is comfortable with human touch sometimes.

Imagine how it was just a day before the kittens’ arrival. It was a silent little garden. The birds had their nests. A squirrel also. The birds sang. But everything changed since the kittens’ arrival. Now It’s just an endless noisy day full of birdie distress calls. The garden lizards have vanished. I saw one of the kittens vomiting a semi-digested stuff. It looked like rotten lizard pickle. So my forecast comes true.

The squirrels who used the cloth line to go to their nest on the tree are playing safe. The tailorbirds, the prinias, the robins, the bulbuls all have to use a major part of their energies in shouting warning calls all through the day.

One of the tiny hunters was seen escaping with what looked like a sparrow tail in its mouth. Was it one of the prinias? I can’t hear their meek peen-peen-peen sounds today. The miniature leopards are taking full advantage of their light weight and reach nests tucked among the highest branches about 25 feet above the ground.

Not that I haven’t tried to bribe them with malai milk, that too pure buffalowala, in order to keep their hunger satiated. They but prefer the raw furred delicacies. They move away from the milk bowl with a mocking smirk and go hunting. It’s a play as well as dining for them. A lethal combo.

In just three days it’s a different world in my small garden. Even slugs get unnecessarily slain, for sheer fun because the tiny marauders don’t eat them, they just kill them for practice I think.

A shrew has been a garden resident for the last two-three years. I took it as a lucky sign. I’m preparing myself to come to terms with its mauled corpse one morning any day soon.

I just watch them helplessly. They are all male kittens. That makes it even more troublesome. Girls behave slightly better. I get annoyed at them for slaying the peace in my birded garden. I’m sad for the fate of my little winged friends who give me so many tales and poems to write. But when the big fat rascally feral tomcat came to kill them to keep his harem intact and unrivaled in future, I contrived with my brother to teach the lampoon a lesson. He got a stick strike on his bum from the hands of my brother.

We feel like protecting them; we feel like caning them for killing birds and lizards. It’s a strange feeling. They play. They kill. That’s nature. But it’s heartbreaking to hear the distress calls of my bird friends. I can just watch helplessly. I know this is natural. But would I be a poet if I accept this fact so easily? Well, I only pray that these hunters grow soon and leap away on hunts beyond our garden. Then me and my birdie friends will take a sigh of relief. But will they leave any bird alive till that time comes?

A few weeks down the line. Stronger and more lethal, one of the three rascally kittens, who have forcibly taken over this village poet’s garden, is sprawled in the yard as the king of this tiny forest around him. An image of utter relaxation, hind legs drawn backwards, the front paws sprawled out, giving maximum rest to spine and the rest of the body. The birds and squirrels all agitated meanwhile. Its one second of rest coming at the cost of restlessness of dozens of creatures.

All the garden lizards are gone, few of them unnecessarily killed for fun, some puked out half-digested forcing the poor poet to clear the mess. The squirrels lost all their kids, except one squirrel brat that doesn’t dare to come down from the tree. One of the rascals is always sitting there under the tree for a non-stop watch.

The frogs get mauled. The senseless maulers don’t eat them, they just play cats and frogs. A new game. A grandfatherly bullfrog used to come into the garden from outside, sneaking under the iron gate grills, after the night fell. The village poet saw it usually while having his post-dinner walks to and fro like an old retired lion in a cage.

The old frog—it looks really old—proved his wisdom when he stopped sneaking into the poet’s yard after the dark. But last night it committed a folly. It came in. And one of the rascals had the time of his life with the old gentleman. It hopped like a springbuck and would land on the old frog as it tried to sneak out with its tired gallops. The miscreant would go scampering over the yard and would come jumping like a springbuck with firecrackers tied to its tail and there it would land on the poor frog. Look at the expectations! Wanting playmates after such killing and mauling sins! At one point they vanished in a bushy corner and weren’t seen for many minutes. The helpless poet feared for the frog’s life. But they finally came out. The feline nuisance wanted the poor fellow to play with it and do the same kind of ecstatic jumping. Somehow the frog managed to sneak out of the yard after almost 15 minutes of playful cuddling by a cat brat.

The birds and nests are gone. The nostalgic poet hears only angry warning cries of birds from the surrounding heights alerting one another to avoid the forbidden yard where three killers roam.

The rainy season used to be the time when the yard and little garden had many birdie residents allowing the poet to watch lots of lovely tales of winged parents raising their kids. But this monsoon it happens to be the season of slaughter in the poet’s yard. Oofs! And look at the shower of relaxation drenching this hero who basks in peace after slaughtering joy from many birdie lives. Phew!

The poet wants nagraj, the big old cobra that stays in the messy clump of trees, grass and bushes right in front of the gate, to sometimes pay a visit and teach them a lesson. Nagaraj’s hooded hiss will see them tumbling over with fear and maybe wet and soil their pants.

The primordial paternal urge

 

Flatworms are hermaphrodite—one individual having functional reproductive organs of both sexes. Each flatworm guy (or call it a girl) has egg-producing ovaries and sperm-producing testes.

As a result of this unique biology, they engage in a fascinating competitive process of mating. It’s a ‘penis-fencing’ duel. The rivals try to stab each other with their two-pronged penis to inseminate the opponent. The winner carries the tag of being the father. He lacerates the loser’s skin with his lust-lance and injects his sperms. The loser becomes the mother carrying the burden of fertilized eggs.

They fight to be father because pregnancy and being a mother costs much at the level of investment of life energy. Being a father is an act. Being a mother is a tough process. As a mother, you launch the next generation by burning your own life fuel.

In nature there is this fatherly greed and lust to pass on the genes at the minimum energetic costs of reproduction, while being a mother involves huge amount of energetic contribution including pregnancy and post-birth rearing of the newborn.

The willing-to-be-father lancers raise their bodies to flaunt their two-pronged penises. The combatants give their best to stab the opponent. The successful stabber injects sperms into the rival’s circulatory system.   

Sometimes, both combatants end up lancing each other and carry the proud tag of being mother and father at the same time.

Basically, at this level of life’s manifestation, it’s about being stronger or weaker. Today’s strong guy is tomorrow’s weakling in the face of a smarter, stronger opponent. So being father and mother occurs in succession, or simultaneously in too closely contested matches.

The penis-fencing duels may last an hour sometimes. So this is no lovemaking, it’s plain war. Sometimes the smaller guys turn out to be more agile and get a better chance to lance the big, burly rival. Small guys also can win, as they say.

The swift horses of autocracy

 

Strong leaders get themselves elected, and reelected: through media manipulation and misuse of autonomous institutions in democracies; through purging rivals in the name of corruption and changing party clauses in autocracies.

It is clearly visible that autocracy is a big inspiration for strong leaders in the democratic world to try to become all-powerful potentates because the concept of ‘power’ itself is built on the foundation of ‘becoming all powerful’. So the ultimate dream of a strong leader in a democracy is to become an unquestionable leader. It’s a natural progression: beginning with a leader to become ruler to turn an all powerful potentate.

Earlier there would be some odd strong leader in the democratic world and some odd extra powerful leader in autocracies. Following international norms of diplomatic language and behavior was the norm. A leader was expected to speak, act, behave and present himself in an image built on globally accepted norms of diplomatic protocols. And any adventure on part of some strong leader would be instantly viewed as misadventure, unbecoming and uncouth.  

However, in the present decade that critical line has been breached. In a world full of strong leaders trying to be extra-strong—using fears and phobias nationally and internationally—any type of verbal misadventure is now a simple reality; it doesn’t automatically get cast in the mould of diplomatic breach like earlier. No verbal adventure is misadventure now. Adventurism is now the new norm.

Putin started it on a big scale after honing his adventurism domestically for decades, clinging to power, crossing all limits to decimate opponents and become a new-age Czar. Then he carried it beyond the Russian borders by flouting all international norms such as sovereignty of a country by attacking Ukraine. It primed the world for offbeat behavior by powerful leaders.

Many world leaders now speak publicly like common people yelling on public squares. It’s quite normal now to see big leaders squabbling like irked neighbors. That typical image of a responsible, restrained, diplomatic leader lies in dustbin. The UN is operationally redundant. We have retraced our steps to the era of WW II. It doesn’t feel like we are led by guiding leaders; it feels like we are pushed by strong leaders.

Many strong leaders, who haven’t so far taken their behavior beyond national borders, are testing it domestically. They are flouting all norms followed so far. They are setting up a new normal of systematically curtailing free speech; robbing the autonomous institutions of their objective, neutral character; setting up capitalist oligarchies to boost their political agenda. All in all, it seems a scary world.

The herd of sheep

 

An experiment was carried out to assess the individual and collective evaluation of a situation or decision making. There were some jars full of coins. The participants were individually asked to estimate the number of coins in jars of various sizes. Surprisingly the estimates swung between two ends—too much and too less off the mark.

Then the sum total was carried out to calculate the average estimation. The average came very near to the exact number of coins. The plus and minus cancel each other to take a balanced position. But it’s possible only when there is no homogenizing influence to tilt the individuals’ opinion, calculation or way of thinking.

Democracy originated in small Greek and ancient Indian republics in the Gangetic plains. The population was small. The tools of mass influence didn’t exist. The majority assessed the character of a contender as per their own set of individual or little group beliefs, expectations and motives. The various ends of the spectrum came to a healthy average—the choice nearing the best leader of the lot (in strictly relative terms).

I would call it the utopian form of democracy. But things have changed drastically now. Under the onslaught of mass media and other influencers like the social media tools, very few individuals think independently these days. The people feel comfortable and safe in becoming part of a narrative, ideology or shrewdly set-up framework by the power aspirants.

The media, social media and various other tools of influencers now influence the masses in a way that thoughts become like factory products—mechanized, on a set pattern. So when millions go to vote to elect their leader or representative, it’s not the competition among millions of choices to give a healthy, impartial average choice. Rather, it’s simply a clash among a few categories of choices—just a few dozen on the basis of ideologies and narratives that are served to the masses through media and which the masses consume so copiously.

The minds of the masses are fabricated to act, believe and think as per a few set patterns that serve the interests of the power contenders. It’s about diluting the individual’s independent, sovereign choice and opinion and implant a pre-set option in him. So millions of individual choices have trickled down to a handful of options.

To what extent an individual can be influenced or primed to act in a pre-determined manner can be gauzed from horseracing punters’ cleverness. The cleverest better puts very high stakes on the weakest horse. His cronies spread the word. The crowd takes the weakest horse as the strongest contender. They put high stakes on it. The smart guys meanwhile win sacks of money on the real contender whose bets were ignored by the majority under the spell of the false narrative.

Well, democracy is about individual choice. But presently there are efforts to chuck out that choice.

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.