Walking

I walk far more than any ultra-marathon runner. In fact I beat all the runners combined in terms of walking and running. I walk with my mind. I walk on the legs of thoughts. They keep me on the busy highway. The other day, someone complained, 'You hardly go out these days, always busy with books!' Now how to tell that person that I'm always walking, walking in the mind. The best test is just to walk with legs only with the mind shut off. Because walking with both mind and legs can be very tiring. Walking on legs with positive feelings is somewhat better. But there was Krishna who walked on a blood smitten battlefield. He just walked on his legs. With no feelings and thoughts. What detachment! No wonder we worship him as a god now.

The homosapiens' last sigh

 Human mind is conditioned to hatch and plot more and more human-centric realities. Artificial intelligence and synthetic biology are the latest tools to further spread our intellectual wings and forge bigger realities. But ultimately the 'maker' will stand synonymous with the 'made'. Presently we can feel proud while looking at our products because they stand separate and lowly while we muse our our creations. But now there is a fundamental shift. The product isn't strictly outside our physiological body. The product is creeping inside us--into our neurons as artificial intelligence; into our cells as synthetic biology. We have been crazy about making something. And when there isn't anything left to make, we have started making a newer version of our own self.   It's just like nature produced we humans on this tiny planet but got devoured by its product. Similarly the homosapiens will be gradually absorbed by a new product, a new species. Just evolution, maybe. So why worry. Make the most of it as one of the last real homosapiens generation on this small planet. Enjoy what life and mother nature has still to offer.

The wordless language of silence

 Language is used in pursuance of intellectual truth, an edifice created by the mind on the basis of sense perception. It's a mere utility just like the birds have wings to fly. With words you can make a career at the most, be it any field. And intellectual truth is just a portion of the experiential truth which one feels in the moments of dissolving the self in beautiful nature where nature is cooing its real secrets through sighing winds, rippling brooks, waving trees, playing clouds, solitary valleys, wild flowers and more. 

The moment we really feel, not just theoretically because that again is mindwork, that thoughts and their end product, intellectual reality, is a mere sense perception based functionality, just like an ant's single-sense based craze to seek a grain of sugar, we take a quantum jump into higher dimension. We enter the dimension of experiential reality which again is a portion of the ultimate reality but it's far far bigger than the intellectual reality. It's a portal to the unknown.

From words to silence to unknown. It's just a matter of rise in consciousness. Words speak of something limited, something symbolically fixed to help us understand a tiny portion of existence around. Silence speaks, wordlessly, of its own self. Open yourself to it. It will embrace you in its maternal loving arms and transport you into a far bigger dimension. And obviously one feels better at an uncrowded place. Don't we feel better after coming to a peaceful hill station, leaving behind the hustle and bustle of bazaar and cities? In the same way our consciousness is also seeking avenues to a broader dimension, from intellectual to experiential, from materiality to immateriality. 

Happy be thy journey from noise to silence, from running (both in mind and body) to arriving home, from restlessness to perfect ease.

Oneness

 Look at your body and think, whether it exists in abstraction. It doesn't. This ecosystem is your extended body. Then earth is this ecosystem's extended body. Solar system is earth's extended body. The Milky way is solar system's extended body. Supergalaxy is Milky way's extended body, and so on so forth. Now can you guess what is the meaning of "universe"? It is "one song". If you still didn't get it, no need to waste time, carry on like before, but don't forget to smile and have fun.

The real religion

 If you relegate luxury of life to the paradise after death, believe me you will not be lacking in spirits to turn your own as well others' lives into hell here on earth. 

Joy postponed is embracing pain in the present. If you live just for outdated principles, customs and dogmas in the hope of hitting the jackpot of joy in paradise later, you are missing the point of life. Make love, compassion, joy, care and happiness the tenets of your living and you create your paradise here only. You hatch your fresh religion. You create a reality that is in divine sync with the teachings of mystics, sages and the ones whom we worship as gods. 

Why wait to die for all this, or postpone living, to be almost a walking dead body, in the hope of living in future or afterlife. The only religion of life is to live a meaningful and happy life. To live by choices that enable us to actualise the potential to enhance our perspectives, create more meaningful purposes, contrive models of living that aid the fabulous expansion of life all around, to wade through the busy thoroughfair with a soft smile, to muse over grains in the fist as well as the ones slipping out of our grasp. 

Gods and paradise are better left alone in peace. The paradise must be crammed to the ceilings because there have been billions who chose to suffer on earth to get a ticket to paradise. Why be in such a hurry to join an overcrowded place. Our little earth still has a lot of spaces left for love and laughter to bloom fully. All we need is just to realign and reshape this life.

The pleasure of pressure

 Life is like a rubber string. It’s dead and limp without any stretching, taut tension in it. So guys if u feel stretched just enjoy the pleasant pull because that simply proves your lifefully throbbing status. We can enjoy this string-walk as long as there is tensioned tautness under our toe-hold. The pull and tension gone, we just crash-land and turn maggot feed. But tension under our toes is one thing, tension on face is quite another. We just have to be careful during the rope-walk. Later on we can even learn to smile while walking carefully on the rope.

Web weavers

 You always need new angels in your life, or rather we turn ordinary people into angels to fill the vacuum in our life, to rub off the slate and make it clean of the image of the former Angel-turned-dark angel-cum-demon. Our mind is a very suitable instrument to create new realities. We are very innovative with our justification for this dusting, cleaning job. Well, human mind is a wonder indeed. No wonder, we have so many parallel realities. A kind of complex web. Like spiders weaving web to catch prey. But spiders are better weavers than us because they don't get caught in their own weaving generally. While we get tangled in our own yarn usually. So fellers, keep your web simple. It's difficult to walk out of it.

The pride of naked nativism

Railways, airways, ships, computers, television, bra, lipstick, tops, sandals, phones, judiciary, administration, hill stations, cricket, political system, business,  commerce, almost everything around has roots in colonialism and the society of colonisers. Discard all that first, only then your naked nativism will have any legitimacy. But I was wondering what would be left then. Only false pride in naked bodies would be left perhaps. 

A,simple Jat cricketer was lamenting that Team India should be named Team भारत because the word India is rooted in colonialism. Poor chap, little did he realise that the game that earned him millions was started by the colonisers themselves. So now people are throwing bouncers at him, asking him and other prpogators of new-brand Nationalism to stop playing cricket altogether. Boycott 'India' would boil down to boycot 'cricket'. And if cricket is gone, half of India will die of boredom. 

Lekin agar har ek angrezi cheez ka boycot karoge to nange ho jaoge. Aage ki taraf dekho nahi to muh ke bal giroge.

Musings on a September morning

 Drinking is a peculiar thing. I mean when the liquor takes the driving seat in one's persona. I have seen mammoth men turning to bleating lambs after getting sloshed. They would topple a bull on impulse when not drunk. But drinking brings out the cute, peaceful,  all loving lamb in them and they would give everyone hugs of love. 

In contrast, I have seen wiry faint hearted men turning to roaring lions after the liquor takes the possession of their driving seat. In normal condition they would compete with the cowardest jackal on earth in being lily livered. But let the alcohol pump courage into them and they feel like stopping a train by force by standing in front of it. 

It means a stone has a petalous spot hidden somewhere in its hard muscles and a petal has stony semblance inside the mushy softness. Moral of the story is: never rule out any possibility or potential in anyone.

***

Fluctuations...sometimes I feel a very very old person, sometimes just a newborn, other times just like I'm yet to be born, sometimes as if I'm no more here, sometimes everywhere, sometimes nowhere, sometimes a holy being, sometimes a sinner...there are times when I have shot out of the bodily confines like a rocket and tasted the boundless...there are times when I feel like an immovable stone imprisoned in this worldly identity...the waves of egoistic stamp on the vast canvas of the sea. Let the tidal waves surge back and forth ... it's just the ocean's way of reminding itself that it exists.

A tiny bird’s little fountain

 

It's been a dry August and now September sun carries extra heat. The plants and trees need water. They droop their leaves to convey in sign language that we are thirsty. So there we have water flowing around their feet. The pipe carries a tiny crack forming a little fountain. Not much in human terms but a substantial funbathing spot for tiny oriental white eyes. They are very small green birds with a white ring around their eyes. I'm reading a newspaper going slowly around the tiny fountain. Then I realise I'm already an intruder. I hear complaining trills of innocent notes above my head. They are shy and want me out of their bathing place. Oriental white eyes love bathing under little squirts of water from garden pipes. The intruder off the scene and here they jump with joy and go for funbathing on a hot noon. It's a busy world. We are now running to grab our portion of the skies in the cosmos. Among all this pandemonium for bigger stakes, I think a tiny bird also deserves her little fountain to beat the heat with a shower.

The story of a wounded tree and his friend

 

We are a  monetizing species. We just cannot help putting economic value on whatever we come across. Earlier we would hunt for gold and other materials from the guts of earth. Then the desire shot through the ceiling and now we hunt for sand with as much seriousness like we did seek gold earlier. Sand is needed for the non-stop build-up to cater to our booming population and economies.

The 40-50 feet wide ribbon of wilderness between the two canals running parallel across the countryside would have a ribbon of wilderness. Desilting of the canals left a thick bedding of sand upon which trees, bushes, plants and grasses ran to take possession—free nature running to grab whatever sinewy pathways are available for its solitude serenade.

Walking for kilometers on the little footpath running through this untrampled part would give me the feel of walking through a silent forest. Majestic banyans, peepuls, jamuns, eucalyptus, a few silk cotton trees, wild flowers and bushes would shower me with greetings as they would do to any of the plenty of snakes hiding among these last hideouts.

I am walking on the same path now. It has been cleared. Sand is very precious now, almost new age gold. And sand mafia—just a front player for the invisible political-bureaucratic nexus—has taken truckloads of sand. The mighty earthmovers cut through the ribbon of wilderness to claw out gleaming fertile sands that have travelled from the Himalayas with the canal waters. The grasses, bushes, plants and wild flowers are gone. Just big trees are standing. They are big enough to somehow come out alive after the onslaught in the darkness. But they bear the marks of injuries and cuts and wounds. The greedy talons of the earthmovers would try to scrape every particle of dust from around them thus cutting their roots, bruising their barks, damaging the trunks. So as I walk on the bare sand on the broad avenue only big trees stand with their cuts and wounds.

The sand mafia is very powerful. It’s the corrupt governmental machinery’s invisible hand that works with legalized criminality in the dark of night. Heavy trucks and earthmovers work overnight carting away precious sand—gold like precious. You hardly have any say against them. Where will you go and complain? The place where you are supposed to go for redressal of your grievance is the very same place that is authorizing all this in the dark of night. The nighttime criminality is too strong for any feeble daytime legal action. I know all this and know the inevitability of things ultimately going the way as they open up before me.

I walk with sadness looking at the wounded barks, bruised trunks and bashed up roots of the trees still holding their balance. Sand is more precious than the trees. Maybe the oxygen-selling industry is waiting with gloating glee for a time when all the trees will be gone and they will monetize it as an economic model by selling oxygen just like now we have bottled waters once the drinkable waters vanished from the streams.

The huge silk cotton tree beckons me with its smile of pain and agony. They have taken away all the sand around its roots, cutting some major roots in the effort. It takes many years for mother earth to bloom such a majestic tree. It’s a big one. I remember its flowery welcome with its big red flowers during the winters. One had playfully dropped straight on my head as I walked under it lost in my poetic muse. A big, juicy, red bouquet of welcome as if the tree wanted to remind me hey how can you pass without appreciating all the dollops of beauty hanging on my majestic canopy. It was a beautiful sight. Red blooms covering a portion of the sky above my hand. After that the tree felt like a friend and whenever I passed under it I wouldn’t forget to give it a handshake by touching its trunk.

The friend is now wounded after the night battles for sand. It stands with agony. All the supporting sand is gone and a few main roots gone. It seems as if an angry shove of wind will see it falling in the battle against the mankind. All I can do is to place a healing palm against its bruised bark and seek forgiveness from the side of we humans.

        My tree friend wounded after the nighttime battle with the sand mafia

I am not a revolutionary. I am a poetic man who feels their pain. I know everything is futile against the darker actors. They are too strong. So I do what I can do. I reach the tree in the evening with a spade and with my poetic hands slowly start doing the work of a farmer. Do it—however small is your capacity—if you feel something wrong has been committed somewhere. Sermonizing and vain poetics won’t help. I begin putting sand around the tree slowly covering its exposed guts. It’s a tough work for those who aren’t into routine farming work. But I’m surprised that I’m managing it pretty decently. As the dusk starts building up and moon rises to give me company, I feel as if the tree is absorbing the thick swabs of exhaustion from my body. Believe me I could feel it. I worked for almost two hours and there is the friendly tree with its wounds dressed up. It looks happy now.

                             A little dressing done by the wounded tree's friend

I leave a gentle reminder for the sand mafia who will be arriving during the night. It’s a scrawling on a cardboard piece; an appeal by the tree that please leave some sand for me also. I know they will angrily tear it away. But at least the tree has a right to voice its case. I fix the appeal on its trunk and leave with a little less sad smile this time because my tree friend is waving a bit less agonized goodnight.

            The tree's gentle reminder to the sand mafia that will arrive at night

I am not sharing this little story just to get three or four likes from virtual friends whom I haven’t even met. That hardly matters to me, and shouldn’t matter to anyone in fact. It’s just done with an intention to be the voice of a tree’s agony. The message is more important. It’s done with a hope that someone else too will take a little step under the same circumstances. And that spadework seems more satisfying than writing an entire book. We have to do whatever little we can do if we feel the need. Because that’s our own emotion. No one else is liable to it. It’s our own duty to act. However small it might be.

    

A bike ride

 I'm going on my old bike. It was there when I was in college and was a suitable partner in a few typical youthful follies. But that was then and now is now. Both of us are rusted and greying fellows with the shine of wisdom seeping inside. 

A big truck has collapsed leaving a narrow passage for the vehicles from both sides. There is a young man struggling to maintain his vertical. Vehicles have to crawl to pass through the narrow opening. He means to have a lift. Who would give a lift to someone who can barely stand. An old tauji almost kicked him away shouting, 'You will fall from my scooter and die if I give you a lift!'. And now I find him almost slumped over my bike's handle pleading for a pillion ride. I repeat the old man's retort that I just heard. 

Who says perfectly sloshed men are out of their senses? He can at least smell the feeble traces of humanity in me. Some vibes, the way I speak or look or whatever. He must have felt that I carry the maximum probability of allowing him to get onto the bike. Before I realise he has marvelously heaved himself for a sloshed out pillion ride on my vehicle.

A snake has the instinct to bite. A farmer's first instinct in such cases would be to slap at least. I carry the same farming blood. So the first instinct is to give him a backhanded smash on the face. But then I have been trying to convince myself that I'm on the path of spirituality and the people on the path don't react, they respond. So I take a huge gulp of anger down my throat. The effort nearly chokes me, because anger directed into the guts literally shakes you up. With my anger thrashing my gut now, I try to talk him out of his dangerous plan to ride pillion in such a state. We are both putting our respective cases, me in irritated tones and he in slurred, pleading humanity-arising notes. The passage is blocked. A fat man is dying to reach his house -- most probably to get thrashed by his wife -- and honks his car horn very madly, 'O hello, you two, resolve your issues somewhere else. Why block the path?' Both of us give him a very angry look and to make his blood boil a bit more I prolong my arguments in the drunken case. But then many horns are honking so I have to move my vehicle with a load that is swaying in all directions. 

I stop at a distance by the side but he is already feeling safe, all secure, holding my back and almost slumped over my shoulder. I remind him that if I allow him a ride on my bike he will surely fall and get crushed under some incoming vehicle. 

Now he is crying. Fresh, salty, warm human tears on my shoulder. 'Koi kisi ka nahi hai brother. Sab matlabi hain. Only you are a real good man!' he muttered holding me to avoid a fall. How can you act against humanity if someone has just declared you to be the gem of a person? So I move with utmost caution, at a very slow speed, just by the road's edge so that he doesn't get crushed under a passing tyre if he falls. He sways like a long, thin eucalyptus sways to the wind. All this while he is muttering, 'Diamong hai diamond. ..this brother of mine!' I was lucky to drop him safe at the place of his choice. He walked a few tottering steps and then sprawled himself on earth, the ultimate bed. Maybe taking rest before hatching a plot to get another pillion ride. A young man, soiled clothes on account of dusty tumbles due to inebriated senses, out of the driving seat of his life. It was a sad affair. Very sad. I moved on with a little resigned shake of my head. The government knows drinking destroys countless lives. But then the liquor industry pays billions in taxes so the government is happy with the affairs. And then it's for people like me to carry dead drunk citizens to their destination.

Far away from the maddening crowd

 

This peacock has a hand-length of plumage. It looks quite handsome with it, something of rugged little stubble charm of masculinity. Full fantail is cumbersome. It keeps it tethered to the centricity of amorous passion, making it a love-haunted soul. It also means a lot of effort while flying, almost bum-busting effort. And the total absence of plumage also gives too much of a clean-shaven look to a peacock. But with this short plumage, it looks dapper smart and can fly to its satisfaction.

The red-vented bulbul is seen after two-three months. I believe it had gone visiting some relative. Maybe got bored with the uneventfulness of life here. Now it looks fresh with profound and impressionistic attitude.

A cat got onto the neem tree. The cat has no business there. So a crow, a couple of mynas, three-four pied starlings and some babblers raise such a din that it has to jump off the tree. The compendium of birdie platitudes starts a little chain of repercussions. The intimidating squirrel, which has grabbed the millet bowl all for itself after shooing away the sparrows, now runs away trippingly. It thinks the cat has jumped with a decisive attempt at its life. The fresh-from-journey bulbul gives it a nice chase over the wall top. The sparrows shout in merriment.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Little Nevaan's small world

 

Nevaan’s words during the online classes are highly censored. A little soul’s words of innocence can expose mountains of elderly hypocrisies. Childhood innocence is startingly stylized for truth. It comes from a resounding depth of purity sustained by an unconditioned and uncustomized self.

One day he is given freedom to give his uncensored speech on the topic of mother. It falls with the force of classical weight on feathery modernity. ‘Mama is very good. She does all my homework. She gets very angry also and sometimes pulls my hair,’ his rare repertoire of praising words leaves his mother teary eyed. ‘I devote my entire day for his welfare and look what I get in return,’ she is inconsolable. But then she has realized that he is free in his opinions and is swimming with powerful frog-kicks in the pool of childhood independence.

So now he has to do his own homework. His mother has said a firm no to do it for him after his sting operation. He is asked to ‘write five lines on Nevaan’. He is seen very  busy for twenty minutes with the below given essay in the middle of the page:

‘Write five lines on Nevaan. He doesn’t like reading and writing. He wants to play all the time. He wants to watch cartoon TV all the time. He wants a roomful of chips.’

That marks his little summary of paradise. This candid and instamatic write-up brings more tears in the eyes of his mother. With a lyrical fluency, Nevaan is sauntering around to do full justice to his essay.

He is seen standing in front of Labrador Tuffy, the friendly pet from the neighborhood. Labrador Tuffy barks in a friendly tone. ‘How are you Tuffy?’ he asks. The dog wags its tail and replies in soft friendly barkings. Nevaan also starts doing bho-bho in varied tones. The conversation goes for about fifteen minutes. An objection is raised against Nevaan’s barking. ‘But we are talking in his language. I tried and thought he would reply in our language. But seems he cannot do it, so I changed my language to talk to him in his own,’ he replies in a prescriptive tone.

Easy times with a few birds in a little garden

 

An asian pied starling is carrying a few feet long thin strip of light fabric in its beak as it flies to its construction site. It’s a busy world engaged in making, breaking and remaking. She has an equal right to make something as anyone around. The tiny tailorbird plays mischief and takes a snipe at the lower end. The big group of house sparrows raises a laughing chorus. A brahmani mynah shrieks with delight. A peacock looks eagerly with the stately extravagance of its colors. A squirrel scuttles around with a kind of gestural vocabulary. On a neighbor’s wall an alpha male monkey moves with a haughty demeanor. Looking at him, I realize we carry a pretty hoary ancestry.

The honey buzzard hasn’t yet forgotten about its honeyed lunch. It’s circling above in the sky, maybe staring at me accusatively as I sit on a chair in the courtyard near the tree bearing the hive. I intend to write something here, but then he doesn’t know that it’s only a struggling countryside writer. He supposes that the honeybees have summoned my services to scare him. I’m thankful to him that he is scared because if he attacks I’ll run sooner than the honeybees.

There is an eerie stillness after the ripples of birdie noise let loose by the tiny tailorbird’s adventure. The little garden around me seems capable of maintaining a sustainable and dynamic paradigm. I sit with a retrospective aura, a kind of thin-veiled misty cloud around me born of engaging self-reflectivity. All of us possess multilayered individual histories shaped by the sharp edges of irony hitting at our existence with a kind of gentle madness. A gentle breeze blows with its suggestive touches at the leaves of the trees.

On the threshold of a colorful spring

 

The spring is always waiting in the wings; like a spiky creeper looping around her cold lover. Basant Panchami, falling on February 5 this year, amounts to sowing the spring seeds that would blossom smiles in March. It’s the start of sunnier days with a balmy tonality. The seasons have an amazing, tactical flexibility that allows healthy transitions and undisputed takeovers.

The festive occasion is but a kind of setback for the honeybees. They have been brave and tried to undo the limiting definitions of inclement weather to survive for sunnier days. Sadly, their nice round hive is attacked by the honey buzzard. His beak pecks with a notational intent. The hive gets misshapen as he steals away their precious store of honey. I watch from a distance. I can feel that something is missing. Dry leaves tumble down because the big predator’ wings ruffle the branches. We humans suffer the flatness of our sweeping conclusions. To my analytical wit, the eagle is an unsober and hostile bird. My reality is that the bees are buzzing in the air with a sense of loss. But maybe their truth is something very different from my feeling.

The eagle flutters away with a shrieking note. From my linear perspective, the hive seems like an amoeba now. But then my human-born pain withers away and some unconditional truth lands in my senses like a lyrical oasis. There is always a balance in nature. Still there is something left to build the house again, to make a new beginning. There is surely some reserve to last for some more days. They just need their queen to be safe for a riveting fresh start in the spring. The rest they will undoubtedly manage, especially now when we have the February sun smiling kindly. The spring will unfold its subtle coils and will unleash many flowery smiles.

Unlike we humans they don’t complain and waste their energy in the blame game. They have a vaulting clarity in their ‘being’ in contrast to our efforts at ‘becoming’ with our limpid ambitions. Within half an hour, the tattered house is far better in appearance. It’s not smooth and round like earlier. There are irregular edges as the bees work back to their former positions. The eagle is but still circling in the air. I’m sure it has taken enough for one square meal. There are so few eagles left and a small number of beehives. Looking at such little survival games, it appears as if all isn’t lost. It’s a bit assuring.

Ghooming in ecstasy with Ghoomar

 

It's a lovely movie. Went to watch it at the newly launched multiplex at the town. Gadar 2 is making big waves because everyone wants to be a patriot these days. And the easiest way is to clap and shout at the screened versions of dusting your enemy nation in the game of both love and war. 

There was a stampede at the impressive small town mall. Black safari suits came thundering down the slow moving escalators. The world of the VIPs is too fast for slow moving steps. A big file of important looking people breezed past almost rattling my bones. I thought it was some big shot politician. Well, it turned out to be someone from the Gadar support cast. People were pursuing the VIP so it was all welcomingly cleared up as me and my friend ascended in the opposite direction. It's great to walk freely in a mall without getting trampled under busy feet. 

We waited outside the screen where Ghoomar would be played. Nobody came. Possibly they thought everyone will go following the star till Delhi airport. I gently reminded a staff there about our show. He looked at me like a kabab में haddi. We stood as perfect show spoilers. His boss came and before he could even say a word i acquired the posture of a porcupine ready to take on a tiger. I flashed our tickets, my phone rather, at him declaring like a firmed up Bollywood hero, 'It can't be helped bro! You have to start the show!' He could see my Ghoomar determination. So here was a chartered screening for the two of us. After half an hour of the start, a couple stealthily crept into the darkness and they went invisible in the darkness somewhere. They have their own stories to pursue dreams and desires born of curiosity about physical intimacy in a conservative society. So I'm a bit sad to share my personal screening of the movie as a love hotel with them.

All things apart, it's a lovely movie. And the best dialogue spoken by a broken former cricketer is: 'When the destiny slams the door shut in your face, you no longer open it, you just break it!' It's a lovely little story of things going wrong despite all your efforts that you could make. It's about staying alive and try to break the unjustifiably shut door through a blizzard of karma that defies all normal human limitations. And there aren't many who relate to such tapasya because it's a shortcutting consumerist world. You run crazy after support casts but why would you stop and try to imbibe some fundamentals of making your own destiny like a stone mason slowly carving a beautiful statue from a block of stone. Because destiny is now packaged and branded for us. We just shop for it. Pay and get branded as a successful man.

Abhishek Bachchan is fabulous, shows ample traces of the great Bachchan Senior. He carries enough depth to portray an unjustifiably dumped cricketing genius. Saiyami Kher as a cricketing prodigy who loses her hand in an accident, and her world alongside, looks realistic enough in her fight and make the unbelievable believable. It's a movie worth watching. And no need to repeat praise for the legend Shabana Azmi. She lights up the screen just by being there.

The Sage and the Sand (सांड)

 

Sage and Sand (सांड) combo..Kaka Maharaj is eager to graft an almost 10 feet tall banyan tree at a place of his liking. For this a huge pit has to be dug, almost 6 feet deep. And then an entire prickly keekar tree has to be dragged to put it around the newly grafted 🌳 to save it from buffalo and goats. We both struggled for an hour and then both of us crashed on the sand, sweating like pigs. 'Age and sadhna has wore me down. And books have eaten your strength prematurely,' he laughed. So we deemed it fit to take the help of Rashe Ram in carrying out the assignment. Rashe is really happy to sweat out like a pig. He is back to his favourite task. His brother recently tried to get him a job at a needle making factory. Rashe tried his hand at the task and found it funny and not worth his talent. 'They call that work! You just stare at the wire. Just look, look, where is the work!' he informs. Now he is happy with the spades and shovels. Kaka Maharaj has a strict protocol of grafting trees. The pit has to be very deep and an entire prickly keekar has to be cut and put around for protection. It took all three of us to give our best at the physical level to get a nod of appreciation from the saintly man. When we left him standing staring at the banyan, he called from behind, 'Tagore -- he calls me Tagore due to my bookish ways -- you are a good man. But try to avoid too many books. See, today they didn't help!' Beautiful takeaway from the episode: Kaka Maharj gets his mission fulfilled and can look at the banyan growing majestically from across the river; I get the great practical advise to use more of spade and shovels and less of books; and Rashe Ram is the happiest of the lot for getting two beedies of opium from Kaka Maharaj as a gift and a full bottle of liquor and snacks to go with from my side because he won't settle from anything more or anything less than this.

Half-baked National Security

How many times you have seen the houses being attacked and burnt—except during organized riots and bulldozing state actions—by the causes outside the houses? Very few I’m sure. Most of the houses fall apart from inner dissensions, strife, frustrations of those within.

How many countries you have seen falling apart under foreign attack? There are many such cases during the world wars. But if we compare the instances of countries falling apart and failing due to inner conflicts with those due to foreign direct attack, the former will outweigh the latter by such a margin as to turn it almost negligible. Just look at the countries that are burning like hell on earth. They are the places where the fodder of internal conflicts is raging like inferno to make it veritable hell on earth.

India fell apart in 1947. Was it due to the direct attack of Russia or any other foreign power? It fell apart because the house within was on fire. The society was battered, bruised and fractured. Countries and houses fall apart primarily because there are inner conflicts. The outside factors might sometimes take advantage of that but the primary reasons remain the inner ones.

On this ground we need to reevaluate the concept of national security. It’s always heavily tilted towards tackling the external threat. Meanwhile the internal bugs that eat the foundations of our social harmony and cohesiveness eat the foundations. Much as we are trying to secure our borders and launch geostrategic games to safeguard our international interests, we need to give equal priority to the bugs that fracture our society thus imperiling the internal security.

The politics of divisiveness and polarization is one such termite that is bound to eat into the foundations of any society. It’s merely like showering love and affection on the branches of a tree while allowing dangerous chemicals into the roots. Temporary rhetoric to make India a major power outside may look catchy and might win elections but it’s building up chemicals of divisiveness and when the negative consequences will come home to roost their bloody hatchlings, the tragic history of 1947 might be repeated.

So the planning of national security must have a freshly evaluated domestic component which attempts to integrate the Indian society in a systematic, strategic way. All that the politicians do in the name of winning elections simply add to the social strife. After this, the talk of national security becomes a half-baked concept and exercise to keep busy in foreign visits and bilateral, trilateral, multilateral talks. Just like the house is on fire while the head of the family is busy in holding parleys for setting boundary fences, parking space, residential committee affairs. That is important but why not douse the fire within. Why care only for shiny clothes? Let there be exercise to make the body strong also by increasing its immunity against divisive forces.

Nurturing fears, phobias and insecurities among different communities are nothing but virus for the body. You can have QUAD and all that stuff but that seems fruitless in the face of parts of India burning due to hate mongering by the politicians. When will we have a political party that fights elections over developmental issues? All the parties seem the same old rotten lot. Meanwhile they are just making the national security issue merely an international security exercise.   

The game of maya

 

Long before a painter mixes colors on his palette, the colors are already there in beautiful flowers, verdant vales, in the sky, on the cheeks of a blushing lass, in the eyes of a newlywed bride, on the wings of butterflies, everywhere. And so are the designs, shapes and patterns in the form of ripples on water surface, in leaves, petals, sand dunes, clouds, on a beautifully scaled slithery body of a snake, everywhere.

Long before a musician makes a composition, the notes, the music, the rhythm, the harmony is already there in sighing winds, merry breeze, swaying trees, chirping birds, roaring sea, rippling brooks, in the soft whispers of dusk, in the smiling cooing of dawn, in singing nightingales, everywhere.

Long before a writer writes a story, it’s already there in the journey of a river from a glacier to the sea, in the love and bonding of species for their little ones, in the roaring silence in the forests, in the cluttering chaos in cities, in the solitude of an isolated vale in hills, in the crying corners of hearts full of grief, everywhere.

It’s already there. We don’t add or subtract to it. We are just means to an expression of all that is waiting to be expressed in a brand new form. That’s the only way for the finite truth to adopt infinite engagement. But all this is the same old wine in brand new bottles. Just shaping and reshaping around the same elemental fodder, the primal energy. No wonder we call it maya.