If the tree is cut, you too will suffer in your science-derived cocoon

There is a system of goodness. The simplest code nature shows is of unified and interdependent co-existence. All things, phenomena, life processes and transformations give and take from the larger system. In simple terms, nothing can exist in isolation in this universe. Our little environment is supported by the earth, the earth is supported by the sun, the sun by larger suns, they in turn by galaxies, and the latter by super-galaxies, and so on and so forth. There is absolutely no such thing as individualism in nature. It’s all a collective behemoth, ever expanding in more and more transformative ways. So how can our very own happiness come from our own limited self, concerning and defined by just our little fights and brawls in the arena of life? We just take fractions of happiness from the bigger pool. Happiness is never complete, or you can say just cannot happen, if it is confined to the limits of the individual self. There are happy families in happy societies and happy individuals in happy families. You simply cannot have happy individuals in an ant-swarm of unhappy society comprising unhappy families. And you cannot have a happy society surrounded by an unhappy ecosystem. You simply cannot. And if you think that the conveniences created science are the modes of happiness, then you are mistaken. These are mere utilities. Utilities are just contributors to happiness like countless other things. You have cars, then you have pollution, and your lungs suffer, simply because trees are suffering. It’s just like everything and everybody is unhappy and suffering in a forest fire. In a flowery luxurious garden, on the other hand, everybody and everything is happy and peaceful. We are happy or unhappy as a collective unit, not individually. Well, this is how it is, if you consider the real substantial meanings of peace and happiness. The rest are simply temporary delusions, nurtured under the mistake of taking some scientific conveniences as the destinations of happiness, which they are not, they are simply some of the means of convenience. So nurture this habit of connecting to the environment around you. The natural environment is the base of our struggle and sustenance. So see the processes of life and learn the art of miraculous interdependence. And come out of this delusion that we humans can be happy and unhappy in isolation in our modern-day scientific cocoons.

Fears are directly proportional to the doubts we have

A sword fighter has a beautiful wife. She is in awe of his reputation and is almost daunted by the force of his persona. She respects him, but love is missing in the secret chamber of her heart. As it happens, she falls in love with somebody outside her marriage. As if that is a small problem, to make it still worse the lover happens to be their servant. Lies and deceit can be hidden, but love has the natural propensity to shine like sun from behind the clouds. It comes to the light. That is its nature. As per social norms, love usually stands out scandalous. The offended husband challenges the servant for a duel, taking it for granted that he will surely kill the illicit lover, thus giving him death and earning more laurels for his swordsmanship as bonus. The deed will not reek of cold-blooded revenge and his motive to kill the servant will lie buried under the fair game of duel. So it is supposed to be a sure death for the poor servant. The sword fighter hides his revenge and anger under the art and craft of his swordsmanship. Most importantly, he is sure of victory, because by the logic of it, how can it be otherwise, pitted as he is against a man who has just picked up the scabbard from his famed walls to clean it. And he being a master swordsman whose reputation chimes across the four corners of the state. The servant is thus sure of his death. He has accepted his fate, death. When you are eying victory, you are also eying safety to yourself from the corner of your eyes. And you have fear also, because without that the sense of victory cannot sustain. With a sense of victory you just cannot be fearless. There is something to fight for and achieve and for that you have to remain alive. This breeds fear. But the servant has accepted death and failure. His acceptance is hundred percent. He has no doubt about it. And when there is no doubt, you become fearless. The swordsman isn’t totally free from fear because his certainty about his victory falls short of the servant’s certainty of his defeat and death. He isn’t as sure of his victory as the servant is of his defeat. So, irrespective of the fighting caliber, the servant is more fearless of the two, simply because he is under less doubt. In his fearlessness he decides to let loose all madness in him before his death. He doesn’t hate the opponent. He isn’t angry. His acceptance of death enables him to give all to life before death. The sword-fighter on the other hand cannot give all in the fight, because he is fighting to save respect, prolong life, take revenge, and all these with further expectations from life. Life itself means fear. The offended husband takes maneuvers as per the art of sword-fighting. In pre-death fearless madness, the lover strikes with sword like he is striking with a stick. To all the conventional strokes of the sword-fighter, he hits back with the most awkward and unorthodox ones. Fearlessness in his eyes creates fear in the opponent’s eyes. The servant kills the master! Why? Because he is sure of his death, and because the master isn’t that sure of his victory! How can he be? He simply cannot. He is fighting to save a lot of things and fighting to save things cannot allow you to be cent-percent fearless.

When ideology turns into a raised slipper, all dialogues are closed

Well, sometimes even saffron robe isn't sufficient to save you from the neo-nationalists...Neo-naionalism is very safe and convenient. Most of the times, the web-patriots are into virtual, bloodless wars--but highly gratifying for ego--on the social media. Sometimes it shows its patriotic face through a mob lynching, which is as safe as a web war. But then you should at least spare an 80-year-old man. Not that I agree with this man's ideology, just like I don't agree to the ideological fervour of those running behind him. Just like parroting patriotic songs on social media doesn't turn a lampoon into a real nationalist, similarly wearing saffron is no guarantee of one's holiness. The man definitely isn't a saint. But then it throws poor light on the BJP supporters to run with slippers after someone who had come to pay homage to the former PM Atal Bihari Bajpayi's mortal remains. To a departed soul, and more importantly to the mortal remains, all that is left behind is just the same. 

The sun shining for mother Spotted Munia

The evening is laden with drizzling moments. After the day-long watery bonanza, the sun casts a momentary glance to find out how much more water may be needed. A pale yellow streak spreads under the black curtain of clouds. The spotted munia comes out and sits pensively by her hut. Chocolate brown and white and black speckled underparts. She utters feeble chirrups. The nest is a disorderly globular structure, possibly to confuse predators, with a semi-closed entrance hole. There are eggs under incubation. Probably she has come out to enjoy the rain-soaked evening with a silver lining.

The lady takes a break from incubating warmth to give shape to the formless liquid in her eggs

PS: There are three hatchlings. I can recognise them by their distinctive frail notes. The nest is a masterwork in deception. The outer rag tag globular structure having the main entry hole gives the look of an abandoned nest. The real seat of residence lies in a safer cocoon inside. I saw a curious squirrel enquiringly snoozing by the hole. It sneaked in and came out on the other side of the loose top ends. The little ones didn't so much as even came out of their sleep. Or they prefer to remain mum in Mom's absence. Hail cosmic intelligence. The flawless fabric.

A bit of sun at the day's end, splashing the horizon with pale yellow shine 

Grey dark skies and the new journey of tiny wire tailed swallows.

Perfect outing on a rain-lashed day. With excess of rains the day appeared even gloomy dark. But then the skies relented for some time in early afternoon. And a wire-tailed swallow couple arrives with their little ones. They fly swiftly but are yet to get the wires in their tales like their parents. Ma and Pa are swiftly darting in the overcast skies to catch midges and flies to feed the little ones. Parental duties going on swiftly. The birds are so colourful: glossy steel blue above, chestnut patch on head and glistening white underparts. Well, it's always a better world with more and more birds around. A shikra, crow-sized hawk, was seen around. The parents darted around and send warning whistles. Within a minute dozens of swallows arrived on the scene and darted in their majestically free ways to confuse the transgressor. They are always there for each other, without fail, despite fight, quarrels and brawls for midges. They never betray their instincts of love and care for each other.   

Wire-tailed swallow nestlings...out in the world

The stately Papa (lite typical males he is braggish with longer wire tail) giving a picture of poise and confidence

The happy family. Mother (as they are always, busy) hovering above.

Eying the same midget

Wire-tailed swallow... courtesy @ Salim Ali's book The Book of Indian Birds

Well, Modi Sahab will make it again simply because there isn't any alternative

I'm not much of a political person. Nor have I any tangible stakes in politics, like majority of Indians don't have any. So putting myself somewhere at the centre of the political arena, and looking around for relatively better leadership--mind you it can only be relative, because governance simply cannot be perfect on the scale of our expectations--I can very easily surmise, without any iota of doubt, that we need Modi Sahab as the PM, not just for the next 5 years but at least a decade. Strictly for the better of the nation. For the simple reason that he definitely is the best chief administrator of the nation as of now. Not the I absolve BJP and its RSS affiliates of the tactics of polarization on religious grounds which divides society and even results in violence now and then. It's the collective bane of Indian democracy. All political parties have their divisive and polarizing tactics in one form or the other. Issue based politics has never been the trend in a country where masses have struggled for the seven decades after independence. These are generational changes and with economic prosperity and better literacy we can only hope that things will change in future and real issues will take centre-stage, pushing the divisive tactics to the periphery. 

However, the state BJP government in Haryana has been a really poor show. In every sense of the term. We have not felt the warmth of effective governance so far. Khattar sahab is too honest, straightforward and simple to be a political head. I respect the honourable PM's decision to install a colleague from RSS days as the state CM. But then real governance is far above shiny nationalistic ideologies. You need a crooked, wily full time politician to run the show. And in the Haryana assembly we have a big bunch of such BJP politicians who have the calibre to outshine any other politician in being crooked and wily fox. I won't be surprised if they face some chin music in the next assembly elections. The only chance is Modi Sahab's charisma which may save the boat from sinking in the state.

The funny game of breaking the walls which don't even exist

It’s not a wall, this body, separating the world outside that our illusionary ego, the sense of “I” makes us believe, exclusively separating the self from the other. There are no separating walls. They appear so on account of the conditioned mind and the limited perceptions thanks to our sense organs which interpret the fragmented parts perceivable to them in the forms of feelings, appearances and shapes at certain frequencies. The latter are nothing but concentrations of energies at particular frequencies. Otherwise, it is the same cosmic energy, vibrating, evolving, transforming in endless chains. It’s nothing but an ever existing evolution, with balancing counterpoints all along the way. The apparent creation and destruction, the dualities, are nothing but the balancing acts as cosmic design unfolds. You can compare it to a pole-wielding rope-walker. The movement is onwards, but at each step the pole sways between the dualities to manage the balance and movement ahead.

So let’s start with the cemented identities of the separation of the self from the big scheme out there. At least accept that there are windows in the wall. Accept that it’s not an unbreakable stone wall around your flesh and bones. Open the windows and let the light flood in. By taking windows as walls, we just keep on piling a crust of illusions around our apparently exclusive self. Then it becomes a fortress, created solidly by the mind. A dark, sooty psychological crust around the self. It’s a narrow, confined world of insecurities, jealousy, self-centeredness, hate and complexes. The things which should hardly matter become life-defining parameters. Under the tar of illusions, our real self, our real potential, our gateway to success, plus peace, lies dormant in the dark.

The crust becomes too hard. But its brittleness increases with its thickness with the passage of time, as our age and experience tell us later. It is bound to crack. And when it does, we feel the pain. Our assumptions of happiness and success turn out to be flimsy and childish. It seems we just ran after a mirage. No wonder we die in pain and agony.

So guys start hammering down the crust. Practice opening the windows in the illusionary wall. Let the let pour in. It’s there, everywhere, the real you, with your potential of greatness and peace. As much as you pursue dreams in a competing world, return home to your real self in the evening for rest and repose. That is your root, the real origin. Nourish it. Leaves, branches and trunk are important. But these are the manifestations of the potential of your roots which lie there in the soil of unity and totality of one universal energy going on and on in countless transformations, following the same laws, diferent transformations at each stage. So nourish your roots to the real self. The branches will be sturdy, the leaves healthy and shiny.

Go and embrace the tree near you. It is the same energy, utilizing the five primal matters like yours, manifesting its tree form at a slightly different frequency that yours.

A sad pink-bum

I politely refused him guava from my small tree because last time he nearly dislodged it. This chap is too hefty, as broad-backed as a man. So he smirks from the neem tree and doesn't give a good pause to click him. Sadly looking at the raw guavas. Last time he just picked them raw and then threw these like grenades. The way he is looking at them, I'm sure he will return. By the way his bum is soooooo sooooo pink! This colour is the pick of the day.

Peace: The redundant wish

Worldwide peace and harmony doesn't need authority, power centers and hegemony to sustain. But the latter--authority, power centers and hegemony--surely need strife, wars, violence and bloodbath to sustain it. Peace has never been the focal point of geo-strategists. It it were, most of the issues we are fighting about become redundant by default.

Don't write with hate in your heart

If good writers write with a bit more sense of equanimity, they do more justice to the art. Falling off the fine line of balance turns them cynical, and it affects their art.

The only problem with "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" is that it's written with too much "hate" for the "religious hatred". It somehow taints the soul of the artist. Hate, even for a good cause, easily creeps up to turn to cynicism. The latter sours the spirit, which in turn smiles a degree lesser than in its unadulterated version. But it's human to have our prejudices, even if they come at the cost of losing our balance a bit. Otherwise it's poignant and moving beyond words.

Learn to smile big from your small corner

It's the smallest plant in my garden. But it beats most of others in bigness of flowers. In numbers and beauty also. It appears so happy to be just itself. No wonder, in a world obsessed with larger and bigger things, it attracts you from its little corner with big bouquet of beauty. It's so tiny and fragile. But has a huge blooming spirit. No matter where you are, in whatever circumstances, at whatever ladder in the scheme of things, you can bloom at your own level to the fullest. And when you are true to your own being, your own self, you attract bigger eyes by default.

Shut your mind's eyes and hypothetical projections cease to be

Well, nothing exists as long as I choose to ignore it. And who are you? My colors are my own unlike yours. 

A moment drops from the endless sea of existence

Childish bud, youth in full bloom and dead decaying petals of an old flower. Nature accepts the fluidity, the transition. Spot the impermanence. And grab your moment now, this very moment. Mystical handover of the baton: little bud to full bloom to crumpled petals. Accept the change because that's what keeps the nature alive.

My water

There may be seven seas around abounding with endless waters. 

But I reserve my right to hold the raindrops because those clouds rained for me only.

A birdie coup in the shrub

Olive backed sunbird hatchling. Well these tiny flirtatious birds have done a coup in the jasmine cluster right under my nose. Right under my gatecrashing presence. And I hadn't the littlest clue. I was just watching the progress on the Bulbul front in the slightly bigger world on the Harsingar tree above. Lo! Here is the swift hatchling! Straight from its tiniest of grassy hideout among the jasmine shrub. Not only it escaped my eyes, it also beat the cat in master camouflage. The way this one in the pic, and its brother or sister, already dash among the branches, I am fully sure of their survival and taking the world on their own! Best of luck sons or daughters! Fly safe for the next week and always obey your parents. Then you guys can scale the world on your own..

Brain-brewed whiskey: Anandamide

The world is full of those who need narcotics, drugs and alcohol to get a pleasant, forgetting, easy going state. These definitely give you some temporary solace but come with huge physical and social side affects.

Count upon your own self made, brain-brewed chemical of bliss and happiness, anandamide. It's available inside all of us. Just that we need to look within for the joys that we seek outside. So seekers, happy days and nights. Brew your own anandamide and stay blessed permanently. Happy spiritual boozing! Booze makers, beware!

I have started brewing mine quite copiously...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anandamide

The self-emerging pattern of nature through 5 gram superworker

A new home in making, fabulous work of a tiny pair of greenish white-eyed warbler. A perfect mix of natural and human merchandise, thin strands of fibre, cobwebs and threadings. The olive backed sunbirds succeeded in a coup, but not this one. I spotted ha ha. Don't you think there is a supreme consciousness, a cosmic intelligence which pervades across species and phenomena all over the universe, driving all of us knowing unknowing to the actualization of little little milestones in the river that life is?

PS: The owners are unbelievably agile and dart off at bullet speed, cocking snook at my amateur efforts to have them as models for my funny photography. So I gave in. Also their tweets from a neighbouring tree had started to sound abusive. Feeling a Gatecrasher, I just took my nose out of their affair... anyway best of luck you warblers...

PSS: The story ended on a tragic note. Nature has xounter points. Oriental white eye is just 10 cm square tailed greenish bird with a significant white rinf around the eyes. The nest had been firmly glued like a tiny hammock cup, joining three broad leaves, a cosy home of fibres. The lady was seen sitting most of the time. Its white ringed eye visible under the leaf canopy. All seemed well. It appeared too small a world to be noticed by predators. With their slender pointed bills they flitted across the branches to enjoy flower nectar, guavas and tiny ants. They made feeble jingling notes. 

Then arrives the counter point. Greater Coucal, the clumsy, black bird with chestnut wings. I heard its deeply resonant coop coop coop coop in the morning. It was loitering around in the cluster of trees where our Bulbuls have their touny one. I don't think that is catchable anymore. Coucal steals eggs and feeds on lizards and tiny mice .It is very clumailc sticky on the ground. I chased it away. It flew very unqillungly. God knows how did it spot the tiny cup of the white eye. So there it was in the afternoon. I heard the dluffifl of feathers and saw it sneaking out like an expert thief. The tiny warblers just gave very feeble notes which hardly escaped out of the shrub. I checked the tiny cup nest. It was empty. Felt vwrv sad for the tiny creatures. Greed is bad. After a couple of hours I heard the panicked noted of the little birds and went out to see the greedy thief stuck to the leaves poking into the cup for more. It was so engrossed that it siddid mind me approaching at all. Well it's truly lousy. A thief has to be watchful. The heaigh was just at a ateikist range with my raised hand. Well, I had all the chance to kill it in one big swipe. But then you can not engage with a bird at your own human level. That isn't fair, even if it has committed a crime. To mother nature it's no crime. So I used only that much force that would make it really painful for a bird of that size, without permanent disability. So here I went. It fell down, and took to airs with a seriously painful shriek. Well, the only take away of my strike can be that it may not dare to come again to poke into the neat of spotted munia just abobe on the tree. I hope so. I expect him to learn a lesson or two. I know I shouldn't interfere inthe achems of rhinth. But then these birds are my friends, so I use my rights to interfere.

Existential intelligence

At the low tide, I left a trail of footsteps on the soft seaside sand. Then the high tide came and cleaned the slate for somebody's fresh journey. We just write the same lines over and over on the same slate. Life is one. It's not a noun. It is basically living. A throbbing and ever persistent verb. Throbbing in totality, driven by an ever expanding code of cosmic intelligence  which allows a bird weighing 10 grams, and insects weighing in milligrams, to accomplish what we cant do with our two kg brain. And existence lives through different things, phenomena, processes and characters. It's just a quizzical interplay of earth, water, fire, air and ether. 

Girinika: God bless you with the gift of a cow

"...large animals, particularly cows, are aware of their impending slaughter well before it happens. Consequently, they experience high stress levels, which generate a tremendous amount of acidic content in their systems. This, in turn, has its own adverse effects on those who later consume the meat." --Sadhguru in Inner Engineering.

Now I understand why cow-eaters face so many problems... especially the ones who do halal, torture, before slaughter because it is just implanting them with poison. Well, the debate should be kept beyond religion. It's basically what is good for the human system and what is not. The benefits of a live cow, as an integral part of the rural economy, are far more than a slaughtered one. In Rwanda, the gift of a cow, girinika, meaning god bless you with the gift of a cow, is helping in rebuilding a society ravaged by civil, ethnic and tribal wars. The moment two parties at loggerheads gift each other a cow, it is accepted as a truce and confidence building measure. The President there has started a girinika program which has revolutionized the meaning of rural development, using cow as a partner in the rural economy.

In the power game, humanely inferior always defeats humanely superior

"A bigger civilization is always defeated by a lower civilization. India was continuously defeated because of her higher civilization. People were more at ease, not in the mood to fight. They were enjoying life. Those who aren't enjoying life, they are ready to fight. If life is beautiful, you can bless everyone. If your life is in difficulty, in turmoil, you can kill, you can become destructive."

Osho

Why India only, now we understand why Tibet was gobbled up by an ever-hungry China. Now we understand why the people from a particular religion are ever-ready to kill. The only exception to the above seems to be America. But then possibly we shouldn't interpret technological advances as a mark of civilization.