Some frost-bitten happy times

 

A rainy sunless January forces the plants, animals and humans to crouch down in defense. The cold is both spectacular and spellbinding in its grip on our fates. The fog, smog and mists seem to be sharing an intriguing chemistry with some invisible opponent. We hardly stand any chance without Father Sun. He is the primal cause of the melodious colors of the springs that bring joy and freshness in our lives. But mother nature has profound ways of expressing her belief in life and living even among the most adverse circumstances.

As the frost-bitten leaves get withered, turn pale and tumble down, and the trees stand with bent head, and the humans stay on a low profile, one little plant has added to its fresh and greeny verve that we usually see in the monsoons. Common mallow (also called cheese mallow, cheese weed or dwarf mallow) has come of leafy youth in the depressive weather. There are lush green clumps of them by the side of countryside paths. They make the most of the wet, sunless January days. It seems they hold aloft the signature emblem of spring with their aesthetically designed leaves—palmately veined fingers branching out from the palm, circular in shape and crinkled in appearance. I expect flowers, in whitish lavender, during the spring, with purple veins.

The cold season at its peak is a testing time for the honeybees. It means survival against all odds. There are a few dozen bees that are seen sitting on the ground. They don’t seem to have either energy or the spirit to fly. Why aren’t they in the hive? There can be many reasons. They may be the ones that are no longer useful to the colony and thus have been expelled. It means if you aren’t useful anymore, you crawl, you hardly fly anymore. These may even be the drones who just suck nectar and pollen and don’t collect it. So during the winters, when there is a scarcity of resources, they get expelled from the hive. As the rest of them snug together to keep the queen alive, the idlers get paid for their uselessness. The stored honey is the lifeline through the lean season. All activity is suspended till warm spring days when the bees will set out with an exalting, energetic and enterprising spirit. In the meantime, the redundant drones are left free to devise their own ways to see through the cold. Sometimes kwing virus afflicts some of them. It deforms the wings. A bee afflicted with this malady may not have enough strength to fly back home if it commits the mistake of setting out on a cold day.

Slow ways of rapidly killing time

 

Those were the easy-going slow-paced days. Elegant and alluring with their nostalgic strains, still affable with their withering charm, those moments behold the enduring symbolism of goodness that shone always brighter in the past. Bathing on the well-curbs was a particularly socializing act during those times. Beyond the modern-day clanking and urging sounds, there was silence and power in those laidback moments. Time moved with a very slow, holistic elegance. It wasn’t slipping away. It was in fact so plentiful that one could kill it to one’s satiation. And if the bucket fell into the well, it would offer a still bigger opportunity to slaughter time en masse. A hook would be lowered at the end of a rope and many faces would calmly stare into the muddled water as the harpoon was dragged around the invisible muddy bottom. There would be just a few phrases of success in the incomprehensible paperwork of the entire set of probabilities. The rope would change many hands and it would continue for hours. A basket retrieved after dredging by many hands amounted to a very successful day in the life of all those involved including the onlookers.

The pandemic of hate

 If you breed hate and anger, among larger groups through narratives or build a cult of hate centred around a few leaders and ideological posturing, the result would be social conflicts. The Britishers groomed communal hate among Hindus and Muslims by pampering the vanity of their respective leaders. The partition-time mayhem followed. Two million people got killed and millions were uprooted from their birth soil. The deep state in Pakistan nurtured a cult of hate for India and see where Pakistan stands today, its society ruptured by violence, conflicts and poverty. There are so many other examples of hate that turned entire nations into rogue states. Entire nations have failed just because their societies buckled under the bug of hate. On the other hand, cities have acquired the status of big nations--Dubai and Singapore, for example. Do you believe Dubai and Singapore would be what they are if the rulers allow this type of virus of hate in their social innards? 

There are so many other examples such as Punjab and Srilanka where facilitating with dangerous elements proved so disastrous for the Congress leadership. And now Manipur and Gurgaon. And many episodes in between including Sikh riots of 1984 and then Gujarat. Spreading hate in the society is the hashish of politics. It gives instant high of political power. But it wrecks the system. The body realises a few years down the line how much cost it has to pay now for those momentary highs. The same with building social hate to kick-start social conflicts. It gives instant highs of power and perks. But the society feels the damage it has caused to the social anatomy with the passage of time. So as the agents of hate spin narratives to stroke the fires of division and conflicts in society, just like the Britishers did before independence, the brown rulers in the same seat do exactly the same by holding the nation-making wand of nationalism, beholding the pride of religion, racial excellence and what not. It's just the same. The only consolation is that we can try to convince ourselves that at least our very own people are doing it. In practice, freedom is the ability to do what others had been doing earlier. Right or wrong isn't part of the picture.

Anything for the country

 And finally I see a nationalist-brand rastrabhakt sacrificing for the cause of the nation. Communal violence has hit Gurgaon and the surrounding areas. Migrant workers from the minority community, poor people who work in households, restaurants, construction sites and factories, have run away to save their lives. The rastrabhakt was vocal in shouting and flying saffron flag to protect the country in a procession in the safety of police protection. But he loves mutton more than anything else on earth, be it wine, woman, country or the entire humanity. But now the mutton sellers are gone. He misses mutton. 'But anything for the nation's cause,' he helplessly says, with a faraway look as if trying to imagine a rotund Muslim skinning a fat bakra and rows of choicest raw mutton hanging from hooks. Well, who says, the paper patriots don't sacrifice for the country? They do, I bear witness to it.

GREATNESS IN PRACTICE

 

The honorable Chief Justice of India with his wife and adopted daughters.  These are the real heroes of India. The Honorable Chief Justice of India is like a lotus smiling in muddy waters. He is known for the honesty and integrity becoming of the beholder of the Supreme Seat of Justice in India. People like him are the true bullworks of democracy and humanity. As we pay salutes to him let's forget about the traders of hate who serve opium of darkness and illusions to blindfold the masses and then rule over them. 

Two daughters Mahi and Priyanka want to visit their father's place of work. To fulfill the wishes of his daughters, the loving father takes them to his place of work, the Supreme Court of India. The two daughters visit their father's workplace and are overwhelmed with joy. Their happiness is boundless today. One can see the glint of pride in their eyes for being the daughters of such a great couple, a combination of power and compassion. Father is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court - Hon'ble D Y Chandrachur. Mother is Mrs. Kalpana Chandrachur. And two beautiful smiling angels under their parents' care and love. The picture is taken at the Supreme Court complex. 'GREATNESS IN PRACTICE, NOT IN THEORY'.

The small world of a little boy

 

It’s a reality show showcasing the taut narration of skills and talents by Godly gifted kids. With enough melody to create any lyricist’s euphoria, a five-year-old girl is singing with unbelievable maturity. Every look at little Nevaan makes it plain to him that the onlooker wants him to do something in the field of ‘talent’. ‘It’s because of the mike she holds that her voice sounds nice. The mike is very talented,’ he gives his expert opinion on talent.

The talent show eggs him to do something of his own. He is all attention needed for executing something to flawless perfection. It’s his sketch-work with chalk on a pillar: two human figures drawn in straight lines with an arrowed heart in between. And the elders would always comment about the kid’s fancy with broken heart. By the way, the millennials are steely in nerves. They break hearts instead of being broken hearted.

He smells the prejudice, the notions of morality, etc., in my comment and changes the scenario. ‘Both of them are boys,’ he clarifies.

Well, two boys with a broken heart between them?

‘The girl was a bad one. Both of them are crying,’ he comes to the rescue of his gender.

Well, the elders might be busy in bigger struggles, leaving him as a newly born fawn struggling to its feet. But he is not a mere unsteady kitten. He has a crisp penchant for exploring newer things in his slowly growing world. Carrying a crisp vision, he has spotted a jewel on the ground. The elders, like grubby kids, are dealing with the spoilsports of the bigger world. The little researcher loiters around with inquisitive eyes. His find is something else also apart from being a jewel. It’s a bug also, a jewel bug to be precise. I make him feel that it’s his find, so he is very happy over the discovery. We take his find’s picture and he goes around the house, showing the new species he has just discovered.

The frigid cold leaves one in need of the warmth of love and companionship more than ever. The lone jewel bug, also called metallic sheet bug, is almost frozen. They feed on plant juices. They even have the option of producing offensive odor when disturbed. The oval-shaped little shiny creature looks like a beetle, but it’s a bug to be precise.

It’s a brilliantly colored bug with iridescent metallic hues. Its green metallic sheen with black and red dots is surely sufficient to make Nevaan feel proud of his discovery for the benefit of the world. Its pleasantly exotic colors inspire me to Google it for more information. It comes to my knowledge that they have huge, spiky, heavily sclerotized genitalia. That makes its mating practice almost ‘traumatic insemination’. It seems a marquee masculine mischief against the divinely feminine—a kind of evolutionary sexual conflict. The male bug tears through the female reproductive duct to deposit sperms, causing severe damage to the female in the process. I think all the lurid sadists out there must have a strong evolutionary memory of the jewel bugs coursing through their veins.

Maybe inspired by his discovery of a new bug species, Nevaan is adding to his clanship. His surname is Deswal. So the cats are Yellow Cat Deswal, Black Cat Deswal and the likes. So are the dogs christened along the same lines.

The pleasure of spotting a new bird

 

The knowledge of a new bird species is joyful. If you are studious type, you stand on sturdier conceptual pillars. I feel more evolved and loving, at least. Great Salim Ali’s book helps me a lot in this regard. It’s as comprehensive on the subject as the freewheeling flights of the entire range of birds in the subcontinent. Each word carries an enriching streak. The pictures give a brilliantly crisp snapshot of the ultimate birdie reality.

Here I see a new bird on the fence wall. I take long and short notes of its colors, wings, feathers, beak and everything possible about its appearance and run to pick up the masterpiece. With a great sense of an amateur birdwatcher’s emotionalism, I flip through the picture plates to spot anything matching my mental notes about the bird. Great Salim Ali will never disappoint you even if you remember a few basic points about the bird.

It turns out to be a white-browed fantail-flycatcher. It has a striking white brow. It has a distinctively white forehead and white underparts. It sometimes joins mixed hunting parties of insectivorous birds. So it possesses a pretty flexible, smart, circumstantial attitude. It flits, waltzes, pirouettes from branch to branch and tree to tree. As a tuneful tribute to the free-spirited winged birdie gods, it makes graceful sallies. Its call but is a bit harsh, a sort of authoritative chuk-chuk. But when it’s in love it makes delightful chee-chee-chweevi notes. Everyone mellows down after falling in love. Well, he is always welcome in my small courtyard and little garden as long as he catches flies as suggested by his name. There are plenty of them around.

Fahien, the legendary scholar-traveller

 

This is something from the yellowed pages of an ancient traveler’s book of life. With an unflagging persistence, he has written an indelible footnote in the book chronicling the cooing of adventurous spirits to know more of the world. It must have been astronomically breathtaking when he crossed the Himalayas and the Central Asian highlands. It’s about the legendary traveler, Fahien.

More than one and half millennia ago, Fahien set out on an arduous journey. He had been ordained as a monk at a very young age. One day, he came across a very old, tattered copy of Vinay Pitika (the rules of monastic order). The sumptuous literary opulence drew his heart with its velvety cord. He wanted to have a copy of the book at any cost. Showing amazing fortitude for his age—he was already sixty-two—he set out for India, the land of the origination of his faith.

Bravely fixing the jigsaw pieces of a perilous journey, he managed to cross the Himalayas. He wandered all over India, visiting many monasteries to get the book. Finally, he found the book in Sanskrit at a monastery in Pataliputra. Sticking to his mould, he learnt Sanskrit, translated the book in his language and sailed back home. He deserved a relatively smoother sea-ride this time to go back home at the age of seventy-five.

The resident oriental magpie robin

 

The handsome dainty oriental magpie robin has picked out a particular bough for its night perch. It’s suitably located among a dense clump of leaves to give it a comfortable night stay beyond the feral cats’ encroachment. And the winter takes everything in its icy folds. The moon looks shivery with its beatific three-quarter smile. The winter means submission. The fast and the furious streak in us turns slower as if in proportion to the slower blood movement across veins and arteries. But then all of us know the seasons inevitably change. The spring is patiently biding its time at some virgin locales. We also have to wait and allow the cold to spend its freezing stores.

The lonely oriental magpie robin is a warm company to the forlorn writer in an old countryside house. I can feel his position. It’s sad to be alone at cold nights. I believe none of us is in dumps and depression. There is hardly any sun during January. The stars twinkle sometimes at night but then the fog quickly takes possession of the skies. The smog flaunts its vile vanities—even in the countryside around the Delhi NCR. The winter air is like almost being in gas chambers but still we aren’t paying any heed to the urgent climatic issues and with a flagrant indifference are adding to the concrete high-rises, spanking new complexes and thousands of new vehicles on the congested roads.

Beyond all these pressing matters, the oriental magpie robin spends his nights among a clump of kari-patta, guava and parijat branches. These intersect nicely at a safe height. The location of his favorite branch is proved by the bird-drops on the jasmine leaves below his nighttime shelter. There is a natural intelligence in creation, far bigger than our thoughts. For its nighttime homecoming, it need not look at a watch. Its coming-home time is exactly twilight, at 6:20 PM in this part. I have confirmed it a few times. It lands home exactly at twilight and breaks the eerily quiet moments with its blithely uttered charrr-charrr notes. It seems a kind of prayer before retiring to spend a cold night all alone and see another day.

Shooting the stars now

 

A pig is genetically modified, its genes edited a bit. Its heart is then transplanted into a man. Organ harvesting will be a routine thing in future. But it would be interesting to see how the pig hearts function in our anatomy.

An Italy court has pronounced noisy toilets as human rights abuse. Well, if there is prosperity and you have well off people around then you have to eavesdrop on neighbor’s toilets to have a feeling of human rights abuse.

The effects of climate change are no longer ignorable. Our technologists have a grand idea. They are planning to dim the sun by putting scattering particles in the atmosphere to reflect away the sunrays. Didn’t I say sometime that we have long crossed the threshold and our hopeless solutions to our self-created problems will create still bigger problems?

The scourge of communalism

 The aftermaths of the politics of hate and division. After Manipur now Haryana is burning. And with the slugfest 2024 for power looming large, I am afraid the communal scourge will continue spreading. It's not a question of how many people died from this community or that, or how many shops or temples or mosques were gutted. The main thing is the spread of communal virus. A murder suspect cow vigilante, sadly still out of the bounds of law, uploads a video on social media that he will be joining a religious procession held by the Hindu rightist groups across communally sensitive areas. It was a clearly inflammatory step. The administration should have known there would be a reaction against him as the minority community still remembers the charred bodies of two of its people. Moreover,  the recent ghastly killing of three innocent Muslim men by a security personnel on board a train in a hate crime and the subsequent communal rant on video must have also added fuel to the fire. Sadly, such social conflicts will rise in India. They help certain groups to come to power but in the long turn they are sowing the seeds of another division of India. Those who claim to be the protectors of this country are in fact eating its foundations like termites. President Obama is right in saying that India may fall apart if this type of systematic and doctored division of society isn't stopped. But look at the Iirony, those who really love this country and cherish the dreams of India being a progressive and integrative society are surely to be termed traitors by the nationalistic hyperboles in mainstream  media and social media. Only God can save us now!

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/communal-violence-erupts-in-haryana-s-nuh-district-spreads-to-gurugram-5-dead-dozens-of-establishments-vandalised-101690914548639.html

The honeybees in January

 

There are little clues lying revealingly to help us in demystification of the biggest puzzles in the scheme of nature. There is a natural art of survival without a feeling of suffering and victimization. Its protagonists are apparently subservient and soft-spoken in stark contrast to the hyperbolic obituarists who loudly shout the vainglory of struggles and mighty efforts. Like the bees in this comb.

It’s harsh cold in the middle of January. It rained overnight. Everything seems beaten and surrendered to the freezing touch of the winter that is pervading around with unsettling bravery. The honeycomb has shrunk into a tight ball. There isn’t a single movement to be seen. There is a wellspring of holism in being tightly around each other during testing times. The magisterial aura of holding each other tightly saves many against the onslaught of time. They weave a tapestry of courage and conviction to survive till warmer days are there.

The bees don’t seem interested in shifting their positions. Those on the upper side, the front guards showing arresting quality of self-sacrifice, don’t complain. It seems strictly classical. They protect those below them. They have icy dewdrops over them. The leaves are dripping with dew and mist. A few freeze to death in the line of duty. It’s almost unthinkable for we humans with our fickle emotions, stupid covetousness and base pretentions to sacrifice ourselves for a larger good. There is grace, diligence and a sense of inviolable duty among the honeybees. They stand for each other. The March sun is just a month and half away. A juicy spring awaits them. Then it will be a happily buzzing place.

After being sunless for a few frozen days in January, you actually come to feel the orgasmic pleasure of the butter melting in the pan as the sun suddenly comes up and the frozen cells of your existence melt and come back to life again with the warm touch of life.

In the little clump of trees in the courtyard, a dainty oriental magpie robin retires for chilly nights. At dusk it lets out a sawing shrrrr call, the notes confidently full of inoffensive mischief, as if warning other birds about not barging into his home tree.

I have put a clay pitcher’s neck-ring on the fence wall. It serves as a nice clay basin for putting millets for the hundreds of sparrows that roost in the nearby trees at night. They flock around with enduring versatility. Some are brooding, others are peppy. Their songs carrying myriad melodies. But they make a lot of noise while picking grains. A few bully ones chase away the docile ones, scattering the little grains on the ground. A squirrel is attracted by the din. She takes possession of the property. It sits right in the middle of the grains in the clay ring. The sparrows now show patience and sit at a distance—a picture of somberness and solemnity. Maybe they are curious to know how the squirrel uses her front paws to expertly chew the grains. A few of them hop onto the ground and pick up what they had scattered playfully. The squirrel is taking too much time. The bullying ones then start pecking at its bushy tail from behind to remind it that it has to move away.

Little Nevaan's world

 

Nevaan is reading a poem to his father from a WhatsApp message on the latter’s phone. His father is correcting every word the little son pronounces. Nevaan’s patience is pilfered away and he shuts him up, ‘How will I finish the poem Papa? You keep quiet and only say, “vaah, vaah!” when I read the poem!’

‘Oh, it’s Thursday tomorrow!’ little Nevaan is suddenly startled. Well, it’s the ‘thought of the day’ day during their online classes. And he thinks not so appropriately sometimes. His thoughts sometimes border on big insults for the teachers and the school. His free-spirited thoughts give him ruffled hair and angry shakings by his much-worried mother. ‘How I wish there was no Thursday and just Sunday in its place! There should be two Sundays!’ he sighs very sadly.

One day he is feeling very happy. He has had two successive nights of dreams. This elderly teacher is very strict with him during the online class, so much so that we use her as the scarecrow to deter him from his mischief. He says that in his dream he went to the teacher’s house and she allowed him to watch cartoons throughout the day. Not only that, she gave him big buckets of chocolates, cookies, noodles and pizzas also. So he ate throughout the night. Inspired by his dream, he isn’t taking her as scarecrow in real life anymore. ‘Ma’am is very sweet!’ he gushes.

In the second dream, a dolphin with a huge face becomes his friend. ‘We play and swim together. Her mouth so big!’ he says. ‘She opened it and I went in for playing. We played ludo, me and she in her mouth. We played football also. Then we ate hot-dogs, burgers and chips. Then I came out and we played outdoors. Then we both went to what is below Leh?’ he wants me to guess. ‘Srinagar?’ I propose. ‘Yes, we went to Srinagar to enjoy.’

The tale of a sow thistle

 

It’s a tale of an industrious spiny-leaved sow thistle. It may not be a scenic introduction to a garden but it piques the senses with its meticulous as well as untidy presentation. Though a herb in the scheme of nature, it’s condemned as a weed by we humans caught in a morass of radicalism fuelled by our utilitarian spirit. While the little plant stands silently engrossed, swathed in incredulous silence, its tiny flowers carry amazing lightness in smile.

The fragile furor unfolds around. Bouquets and brickbats are flaunted on the basis of what is useful and what is not. The farmers have a particular aversion to its presence in the cropped fields. An entire range of poison has been contrived to kill it. The weedicides are highly effective. You see the revealing, spectacular remains, with our triumph incredibly detailed over the withering nuisance.

The entire farming community baying for its blood, this particular sow thistle looked for a safe corner beyond the farmers’ sickle and fumigation showers. It grows there in the circular skylight at the top end of the barn’s wall. Old houses with cracks are now perhaps the last refuge of the untamed and the wild strains of nature. The winter rains lashed with a delectable flavor as the sow thistle picked out the tiny crack where the mankind isn’t still at war with space, a little crack in the small skylight.

Earlier the monsoon rains lashed. It was well sheltered and a furious rainstorm would give it just a decent amount of water. It thrived with a well-conceived and well-preserved spirit of youth. Then the winter sneaked in with its icy power-trappings. Facing south, it simply soaked tumblers of sunlight in the afternoons as the kind sun streamed from the southern side.

The entire circular skylight is now covered with its luxuriant growth. Its bluish green spiny leaves carry the aura of thinly veiled fiction, a kind of delicate balance between facts and fables. As a mark of its triumph, now it flaunts little yellow flowers that look similar to wild dandelion. There are many flat-topped arrays of flower heads that hold the prospects of a dandelion-type smile on an old, withering wall. There is still hope—a wild plant having a foothold among we humans and smiling breezily. Well, some more flowers are always good for this world.

Rain Romance in January

 

The rains of January are not so gentle reminders by mother nature that She holds far more cords in the puppet show of our existence; that all our strategizing is unreliable and dodgy. Sometimes She flaunts her robust patronage of our fates through the harshest, cruelest and darkest trajectory. The January rains may not exactly qualify to be too much on the scale of the fact mentioned above but it has enough to convey her disapproving glare.

The clouds thunder at their best with a strange creative focus, a kind of stimulating contradiction in the form of water and sizzling lightning fire across its watery bowels. It looks a strange, awesome testing ground of hatching newer possibilities.

The cold rain comes lashing. We realize our limitations and withdraw. And a few days of leave of absence by the sun makes us realize that our life is a mere gift by the sun. A brief spell of sunlight amid the entire gloomy overcast day has the power and potential to revive hopes at many levels. The loud, garish proclamations instantly take a backseat as the tiniest of a ray peeps through the clouds. Delicately flavored is its touch; everything looks energetic and inspired. And despite holding the key to our survival, the celestial torchbearer stays so unassuming and unpretentious.

The good part about January rain is that it gives a nice wash to the trees and plants. It serves a still better role. The arrogant monkeys surrender to their wet, soaked fate. The eccentric display of misdemeanors vanishes and they start behaving well. The sight of a shivering, rain-sodden monkey on a gloomy, cold January day, moving with good manners is nothing short of blissful. Their foolhardiness slowly being asphyxiated, they carry a sullen visage. They don’t loaf around. No wonder, it’s really peaceful when they sit quiet.

Three days of winter rain and their roof leaks. It never was a home, always remained a house. The father-son drunkard pair always kicked the homely foundations. Disgrace, poverty and continuous pain define their existence. And now when the roof leaks in this cold weather, the daughters of the almost ruined house get onto the roof, try to stop the leakages by putting a tarpaulin sheet as an extra protection to their depilated house. The broken house still stands because there are three lovely daughters to support its crumbling columns.

And the winter slowly lumbers on as if following a self-reflecting trail. It’s very cold. The reptiles and rodents gone very deep for hibernation in their holes and burrows. Deprived of hunting opportunities, all the feral cats have smartly ditched their shyness and come begging. They raise their tails, making purring, flattering sounds and try to rub against one’s legs. It’s a problem of plenty. You don’t feel comfortable with all the feral cats gone friendly.

Some ray of hope in the winters. The Taliban have made a slight amendment in their behavior. I take it as a welcome change. They have ordered the shop owners to behead mannequins. Well, that’s better than beheading people in real life. One little step ahead indeed. But then they follow it with a big jump backwards. They are going to have a suicide squad as a regular unit in their army. This is scary. Someone blowing himself or herself seems the worst form of violence.

Kundalini

 Allow the self to be twisted and turned as per the the divine crawling of Her grace and blessings...it will seem overbearing sometimes...sometimes perplexing to the extent of getting you to the threshold of the dark night of the soul...don't crib and complain...have faith...making is a bit challenging but all this is happening for a purpose...to make you a better version of yourself...with volition and conscious effort we can do ourselves some favor..if not, it will twist us a bit more painfully...it can't be stopped because finally we have to get into a better shape as per the laws of evolving consciousness...so smile, take a deep breath and cooperate...and always remember: There is no goodness bigger than that we spot in others. There is no bigger evil than that we generate by our own hands.

January 10

 

There are people who once lit up your life with their warm smiles. The cold, hard icicles of your life melted under their warm touch like balmy sunrays giving a kiss of life after many snowy days. Later, however far you may drift apart, they are still inseparable part of your being. Your ego may deny it on the surface but the cells in your body carry those sweet memories. They set up the tunes of an unwavering harmony below the turbulent surface having ripples of guilt, complaint, pain and anger. The fragrance lingers on with its innate modesty. A frozen current inside you that still flows sometimes under the warmth of the nostalgic strains of distant memories. Its aching beauty, its divine sadness still sometimes comes acalling to refresh and revitalize your pain-lynched present self. It always exists to define your present. Always. Acknowledging the existence of countless such sweet memories in my mind, body and spirit! With grace, humility, gratitude and love wishing the source of these sweet memories a very happy birthday! Always wishing that special someone a profound, meaningful, joyful happy birthday on the tenth of January!

The story of a mother and her son

 

Naveen Baman usually set out on his hunt for the day after touching his mother’s feet. It was theoretically a very moral-heavy schedule. Much to matrilineal delight, his father would get a patriarchal heartburn as the son won’t even look in his direction as he stepped out for a well-paid day in many senses of the term, that included apart from money—his first love—winning some affection from some fresh female in his life.

With each minute ascending into relevance, the mother would wait for her darling son to return at night to serve him dinner, however late it was. She was always there, awake and alert, like a petite watchman on duty. The blooming mechanisms of a very interesting outdoor life got him curious about liquor one day. He tasted it, found it interesting, drank then, and led by an over-zealous assertion of free spirits gulped down pegs after pegs. From the top of an oozing enthusiasm, he toppled down suddenly and was blacked out.

The moment you pass out you turn small and insignificant. With monumental presence of mind, his drinking peers left him in front of his street and vanished into the profoundly dark swathes of night. They were well aware of the fulfilling bond between the mother and the son and hence were scared of the mother’s stormy tantrums when she would see her son heaped out of senses.

Clueless about how to proceed further, he chose half of the water drain and the other half of the street to lie down and snore. The air was laden with disintegrating gloominess. Much scandalized over her son’s thunderous misjudgment, the mother arrived at the scene with a few members of the extended family to salvage her son from the clutches of the corrupt and corroded episode.

They got into the act of hauling him up. Naveen had very serious objection to this disturbance. The mother was shouting amidst a flurry of teary promos. With his few traces of consciousness still in his grasp, he made out that this old, shrieking woman was the ringleader in dislodging him from his favorite drain. ‘Bhola, give me a rope. We have to strangulate this old woman. She has too big a tongue and prattles too much,’ he yelled to his cousin brother. The mother indeed was famous for her talkative tongue.

As they dragged him to the house, he kept on shouting, ‘We have to kill this woman by hanging!’ The father looked from a distance. He felt as if his son was talking sense now, even though under the influence of liquor. But truth has to be accepted in whatever form it arrives. So he felt happy inside.

Naveen started snoring after a tornado of proclamations to get his mother hanged by the strongest rope in the house. The next day, when he got down to touch her feet she kicked him. She did it for a week. On the eighth day, she put her hand on his head. ‘You are a nice son! Devils are the ones who made you drink,’ she declared.

Natural intelligence

 

This particular belpatra tree, in   a corner in our garden, has unbelievably big, dangerous thorns, almost  two inches long and so sturdy that these can be safely used as nails plonked into wooden planks. Even standing near the tree seems so scary. Its thorny mass is sprawled over the fence wall. It’s impossible to even think for the humans to put their hands through a few boughs. It’s a fearsomely barbed fence. But cats, monkeys, squirrels, chameleons scamper through it without much concern. The birds land upon it with as much ease as they show while landing on a flower.

I see two peacocks rustle through the thorny maze almost effortlessly. Their entire bodies seem to carry natural intelligence, allowing them to go along the path of existence with amazing fluidity. We, on the other hand, have too big conscious part in our brains, which clouds our natural intelligence with fears, phobias, illusions and false assumptions. No wonder, I get a prick as and when I try to pluck a leaf from the tree. They, the rest of the non-human species, don’t bother beyond a few basic points and glide joyfully in the process of living. We humans, on the other hand, carry a huge burden of awareness that usually brings us down instead of elevating us higher.

Village of the apes

 

As the ever-effacing scythe of time reaps on, it’s no longer the same world. We have turned out to be a sensationalist species. Our riling and abrasive march on the path has forced the lesser species to go hush-hush and move prohibitively, trying to stay away from our snipes and barbaric barbs.

But our simian friends, the co-sharers of our gloriously compulsive traits, still hold out the baton from the side of the lower species. Everything from flowers to jewellery is under risk. How can things be normal with so many monkeys around? The situation is grim. Sometime in future, I apprehend a ‘Planet of the Apes’ kind of scenario.

The rhesus monkeys aren’t simply driven by instincts. They surely have a strong intent to carry out their thuggery. They love breaking, ruffling, toppling and shuffling things. To watch their misdeeds is an illustrated treat in itself. They deftly handle the myriad strands of foolhardiness to spin out most outrageous of stage scenes. Their sexuality is decidedly warped like their more evolved brethren. I see two monkeys going normally over the top of a wall. Suddenly, the one behind jumps onto the haunches of the one in front and feigns vigorous, avaricious pelvic thrusts to pacify the pangs of lust lying forever unsatisfied in the psychic realms. It’s a blatant slap on our norms. A typical tome of their mischief.