The mystery of nothingness

 The matter-like behaviour is a property of the cosmic mind, the universal intelligence throbbing as the energy. Mind, universal collective consciousness, is the primary cosmic constituent. The so-called matter is merely a manifestation of it, just a dependent property. Had it been the reverse, i.e., mind-type behaviour of matter, we surely would require the basic, unbreakable building blocks having intrinsic properties in terms of atomic and subatomic particles. But as we see it, subatomic particles have no intrinsic value and properties independent of the observer. With matter first, and mind just its behaviour, eternity would be mathematically impossible. However, a fundamental entity in the form of cosmic mind leaves an open ended, ever evolving field for the manifestation of matter in countless ways over eternal paths of creation. Simply because there is no intrinsic property or value to define and limit the material manifestation. Call it the cosmic energy or the cosmic mind. It's a dimensionless plane where any kind of material dimension is possible to draw out of nothingness. The limitless canvas. Wipe it, draw another. On and on. Is there any limit to imagination? No. Same is the case with cosmic mind's imagination. Eternal are its horizons.

The pointless point

 To look for ultimate truth, or reality, or absolute knowledge, the body would need immense amount of energy. Because the normal levels of energy would be sufficient to sustain the normal, collective perception that conditions our mind to settle for base-level actualization of the infinite potential.

It’s mankind’s destiny to go for truth, now or later, in this journey or the ones to come. It’s a natural evolutionary flow, it cannot be avoided. In an unawakened state this energy will go randomly, in dissipative ways, creating sweet-sour mischief, this worldliness. But it’s merely a matter of time—the time spanning various lifetimes—before it stabilizes, develops patterns of self-discipline to touch a peak in that very individual consciousness. It enables the carrier body to look for what lies beyond the simple perception-based reality. And the still remaining stumbling blocks in body, mind and emotions have to fall along; otherwise one learns the things in a tough task-masterly way.

This heightened energy finds different expressions like bhakti (devotion). Gyan (knowledge), karma (action), art and still much more that we don’t have a clue as of now.

The evolution in consciousness will never hit a dead end. It’s a cosmic soup of infinite potential. What you think, feel, imagine or act sets a new point of reality. And it goes on at every point of existence.

Faith-based expression of heightened energies is a very sublime form of expression. This dimension unfolds in the corridors of bhaav. It’s very near the soul, this channel. It’s warmly loving and draws warmth from the soul itself, the high point of joyous realization in the individual consciousness. It’s so easy to jump into the river of ‘relative bliss’ from this point because it’s very near to the source profound bliss. But before that faith has to shine bright in its purity and there will be tests through situations and circumstances, just like there will be in other paths.

In its karma expression, this energetic blizzard will sire a karma yogi in the carrier body. The carrier body will express its energetic storms in setting up disciplined, righteous energetic patterns (dharma) in the society around, like Rama and Krishna did.

In its gyan expression, the individual consciousness in its carrier body will try to know more and more, observe keenly, understand, draw logical conclusion in an effort to make a meaning of this mystery and chaos. It’s an effort to cut the mind with its own tools, using the basic faculties of the mind to undo its own framework. To allow mind to run as much as possible in its pursuit of knowledge, so that finally it stands helplessly, falls and sees a better expression across the cobwebs of its constructs.

There is another dimension of the expression of this energetic storm, a replica of the massive stars bursting somewhere in the cosmos. It’s kindalini awakening. It’s the most tangible of all the expressions. It’s a raw, naked force. It stands in front of you, holding you in its grip with a direct maneuver. It doesn’t take any diplomatic cover. It stares in your face. It shakes you. It’s nearest to the gross body in its expression. It’s so near to the base level of ego identification that you clearly feel its storm in the body as it breaks the obstructions in its path. I would say it’s a mixture of all the three above mentioned expressions. You are jolted off your safe zone at all levels of your existence. To make a meaning of all these psychic reshaping, the reformulation of the nervous system, the remodeling of the perception channel—which is usually tough with many instances of things going very wrong—the carrier body takes help of bhakti, gyan and karma (randomly, in various orders) as per the shifting surges of this psychic force in the system.

Whichever way it happens in an individual carrier body, I don’t think there is a final arriving. It’s an infinite potential. The so-called ‘final arriving’ in itself a self-set benchmark by the evolved consciousness who rose high, perceived far more than normal people and agreed to a point. It’s just like space travel. You keep travelling and never reach any edge and then accept a conceptually defined reality: Ok, let’s agree to set up this point as the boundary of the space.

At every point, in every individual consciousness and its carrier body, there is the seed of infinite expansion and potential and maybe that draws these energetic storms. And however far one goes with howsoever heightened energy, the mystery always remains the same. It all remains to be known after coming to know everything. There is always more to be realized after realizing everything that is to realize. A bit puzzling though, right? But we have to accept it logically, as long as we believe in the concept of infinity. 

A good journeyman

 You feel lonely on your path and a stranger comes your way. You both walk and smile and become familiar. And at some turn both of you drift apart. Who won't like to go smiling all the way till the end? But still people drift apart because destination is rarely the same. Pain is natural. Memories also cast long shadows from behind. All one can do is to commit oneself to come as a better, more evolved person if at some turn on the path, faraway in future, you come to walk by the side of that same person. This is what I would say doing justice to one's past without wasting present and losing a sight of the future.

Nurturing a soulmate

 I know we have an overestimated view of our own validity and suitability to be an idealistic soulmate, provided we come across someone suitable person for our pre-existing suitability to be a soulmate. Sounds a bit egoistic! In practical life, soulmateship is fabricated and carefully formulated with conscious effort. Soulmates are delicately worked upon relationships. We presume that we are a package and wait for the destiny to make us meet our soulmates. Well, guys it doesn't work that way. Soulmates are made. We never meet someone as soulmates. Don't expect to meet yours. Love, that initial attraction and biological pull, is just the first step. After that it's a long way to a careful walk on the road to turn someone's soulmate.

Likes and dislikes

 

I know it’s very difficult to like everyone around. We are primarily indifferent to the strangers. And that constitutes the major part of humanity around us. Then come those whom we know directly or even indirectly. Among these we have strong likes and dislikes for someone. Let’s start with the ones whom we dislike. Dislike is a pretty heavy value judgment. It leaves long shadows of emotions and thoughts in our brain that eat a lot of energy, block the smooth flow of pranic energy inside, leaving behind niggling tugs of restlessness at our being.

‘Likes’ also have their effects on us. Because likes change into dislikes as well. Change is the ultimate law, we shouldn’t forget. We create a web of dislikes to sustain our likes because the latter seem supportive to our identity. Ultimately both likes and dislikes have to melt because they are two sides of the same coin. But since dislikes leave direct negative impact on our psychosomatic system, it’s advisable to start with dislikes. Cut down on your quota of dislikes, gradually like a sculptor chipping away extra stones to carve out a beautiful idol. Chip away slowly. The extra stone of dislikes is a part of you. Accept it. But it needs to be shed to be the best version of yourself. This is what I mean by ‘making of oneself’. You have the choice to be the same monolith as you were born. There is nothing wrong with that. Just that at the end of the journey you feel guilty for having wasted an opportunity. After all, we have to pass in the court of our own conscience.

Try to be indifferent to the objects of your dislikes. The perception of someone as your enemy should dilute to indifference over a period of time. Once you have no enemies, you will automatically get away from the weight of friendly attachment. I mean you will still like those whom you consider your friends but your liking won’t come from your needs and a fear of support. It will be free of bondage.

Once you become indifferent to your enemies, you become more realistic and natural about your friends as well. You don’t hold too many expectations. Most of the time, our expectations and needs of security pass as our likes and friendliness. You still will have your core group of people who will stay irrespective of your attachment or no attachment. And dear sadhak, as you move in the middle of the path of likes and dislikes, equally distant from both, you don’t feel the rub and friction that you feel on the edges on both sides. Start with being indifferent to your dislikes. Then everything becomes the same over the decades of your life. It breeds a sweet indifference.  Enemies and friends melt in the same pot.

I’m no spiritualist preaching an all-encompassing love. That seems too idealistic to a common man like me. I talk about what is feasible. My only problem with scriptures of all religions is that they would straightaway ask one to be an earthly version of god, an all-loving, smiling, godly entity. It makes you guilty because you are human and would slip and the priests and scriptures stare like tough teachers in your conscience.

I try not to forget that it’s easy to say the most utopian things. But we are no gods. We are poor earthlings and we have our little journeys, the journey of a little species of nature. So my sadhna at the moment is just to cut down on my dislikes for my enemies, whom I sometimes feel like kicking at their bums for their errant ways, to a level of just mild irritated grimace, then to a slight burn at my ego, then to indifference, maybe later to forgiveness and who knows, if I’m lucky, even love them one day.

Dear brothers and sisters, why be a victim of too lofty expectations based on scriptural theses? I know I’m a work in progress. So why should I go itching for enlightenment? I will take my time. I decide my pace and feel happy if on the completion of another year on my journey I see some improvement. To be joyful about tiny gains is a wonderful art. I for one feel like celebrating the day when I am carefully walking and avoid crushing an ant. Why shouldn’t I celebrate? If I don’t have it in me to save elephants, why shouldn’t I turn joyful on saving an ant? Saving an ant keeps the hope of care and consideration alive in me. I’m happy with my little quota of kindness for it saves me from complete darkness.

Lastly, never take life too seriously. What appears on the surface is just an impression forced by our senses on the infinite pools of cosmic fluidity.

A walk on the countryside road

 

India is developing very fast. The roads are being built at a hair-raising speed. We see world class road building technology and engineering equipment at the construction sites. They make roads very quickly, a smooth cakewalk like a knife cutting through cheese. During good old days the money would start from the ministry and it would trickle down to a measly percentage as the famished tar and asphalt was poorly dumped. It would break up in the next rainy season. It was a slow world carried by slow-moving files and still slower archaic road rollers. Now it’s quick and lightning fast. The road-building machinery and construction firms have taken the game to a new high. The roads are good. Any give and take in the process, the subtle game between construction conglomerates and ministries is beyond the understanding of common people like you and me.

The other day I was walking on the narrow countryside road connecting my village to the neighboring village about three kilometers away. It’s a musty humid desultory evening. The monsoon has been lenient so far. There is plenty of grass and bushes by the sides, especially bhang. It’s almost a monotony over the farm-sides at this time. And the poor people who need to opiate themselves to forget the burden of life can have a free hand at it. They expertly move their hands through the leaves and gather the dust to smoke weed. Two old people are walking slowly and there they stand under a jamun tree. One of them, the physically better one, shakes a bough and there is a drizzle of ripe purple juicy berries. His still older companion gathers them in a little plastic bag. They will eat to their full and carry the extra stuff for their respective favorite grandchild.

The road is in bad condition. It is far away from the direct administrative scrutiny. Small-time contactors can take liberties as in the old days. A new layer of asphalt gets washed away after just one rainy season. The farmers hardly complain. Their tractors also don’t grumble about it. And there I come across something reminding me of the good old slow-paced days: the old-style road roller, a faded yellow iron elephant. They are repairing a little section where the road has completely vanished. The triple drum roller—three drums for wheels—slowly whines and winces over soil, gravel and concrete, trying its level best to do its compacting job diligently like an old worker. It’s all iron from head to tail. The diesel engine puffs and huffs, billows big bales of smoke. In comparison to the latest engineering vehicles, it looks a rudimentary horse-drawn roller of the last to last century. There is a lock on the fuel chamber. There is another over the engine chamber. The iron elephant has to spend lonely nights on a solitary narrow road at nights so its engine and fuel have to be saved from the farmers.

When I return by the same path after an hour, I find the iron elephant resting. Two Bihari operators are mounted under the iron canopy and watching videos on their mobiles. A third workman is sitting against the front roller, his legs spread out. I hope he hasn’t put up a challenge that to move ahead they have to go over him.

A snapshot of future

 

For the last couple of centuries we have been a knowledge-driven world. We have been harvesting, inventing and discovering facts with greater speed with the passage of time. So data, and their derivatives called algorithms, will be the new god. A new religion, artificial intelligence, will replace all other belief systems. In medical science the algorithms based on medical statistics will equip the artificial intelligence tools to spin out diagnosis, recommend medication and perform surgeries. The lawyers who used to burn midnight oil to draft their papers on the basis of thick tomes of law books will get all that done at the click of a button. The writers will be replaced by content generation tools. Music, arts, painting, name it anything will see artificial productions. Now the question arises, what will the humans do. We will be the operators. Mere operators, not the doer of things.

See, in ancient times a farmer drew furrows on ground with the help of crude wood and stone implements. Then he used cattle to pull the plough. Still, later he did it with tractor. Now, in the last one he is a mere operator of machinery. So we will be a civilization of operators primarily. Drones, robotic soldiers, unmanned military vehicles will be operated by the soldiers in office. The politicians will operate narrative machines and brand management through social media and other artificial applications of socializing and communicating.

Human mind cannot stop at any limits. It has to continuously spin out newer and newer realities. Virtual realities are a reflection of its urge to break all boundaries and flow out, do more, acquire more, control and manipulate more. The operating minds will be as busy as ever. We will devise more complex structures, problems, institutions, authorities, industry and corporate to adjust the new quantum leap in what we can accomplish. We have to be busy. The population will increase and to adjust the cravings of billions of fresh minds to do something, new avenues need to be set up.

What about the human resource problem? Suppose a team of ten content creators is replaced by one machine and its smart operator. What will the other nine do? They will have to be adjusted in labor intensive jobs. But labor intensive jobs will dry up over a period of time with unprecedented increase in the automation of tasks and processes. I think the civilization will come at loggerheads: operators (the new nobility) on one side and non-operators (the masses) on the other. But it will be so easy for the operators to tame the latter or even eliminate them.

Maybe the institutions of marriage, raising kids, maintaining lineage will crumble up. That might cut down population growth. Or even the operators will find smart ways to check population growth and maintain it at a sustainable level.   

The September coup

 

I won’t term it as nothing short of a coup, September coup. The very same fragile, see-through nest had another dove couple setting home and hearth. A surprise—two eggs survived to hatch. Many factors contributed to it. One, the yard was catless during this period. Only one feral cat spent time in the garden but I doubt it ever hunted even a mouse. Even kittens would spank it. So it spent most of the time hiding and begging a few pieces of chapatti from me when hunger would break all limits. Fifteen days of shraadh also contributed. People left lots of eatables as ceremonial offerings on wall-tops for monkeys and birds, especially crows. So they were well fed, taking little interest in dove kids.

The nest is so small and fragile that one of the hatchlings fell and died. It was a plump kid. Then it rained incessantly for three days. The little one somehow kept clutching at the tiny, tilted nest. The hatchling looked bigger than the nest. Look at the seriousness of the parents in preparing a home for their kids! Hitting a jackpot of luck, it grew to look like a dove. Then it went missing on September 25, most probably served as breakfast to some predator. But still I would consider it a successful hatching from the dove standards because the majority of their eggs don’t survive. Here at least something grew at last to look like a dove.

Climate Change

 

Time sweeps the slate clean and draws a new picture, only to do it again. Climate change has seen unprecedented droughts world over—and flooding—especially Europe and America. As rivers and reservoirs dry, there emerge telltale footprints of the largest animals earth has seen, dinosaurs. Weighing dozens of tons and standing taller than even our buildings who would have imagined they would be wiped out one day. A comet or meteorite strike off the coast of Mexico—leaving an almost 100 mile wide and 12 mile deep crater—unleashed  tidal waves and global winter. The dinosaurs vanished from earth.

Presently, as rivers in France and Germany dry up, we see hunger stones exposed—a kind of famine memorial engravings—telling the tales of human sufferings. The engravers left them as a mark of severe drought and famine that struck the region. When the rivers dried up and the humanity hit the rock bottom of miseries, someone engraved this message on an exposed stone in the river: ‘When you see me, weep.’ Another famine stone has the message: ‘When this stone goes under, life will become more colorful again.’

Grandpa's story

 It was a tough life for Grandfather. His father was bitten to death by bumble bees when he was only twelve. Grandfather had three siblings, all younger to him, two brothers and a sister. Those were the days of family feuds over land. The extended family had lots of domineering males and fearing for her life Grandfather’s widowed mother left the scene. At such a young age Grandfather became the family head. A mother abandoning her children left a deep scar on his heart for which he perhaps carried a heavy grudge against the entire women race. They were so young and had been left to fend for themselves, so maybe he was slightly justified in his discomfort about trusting women in general.

Well, they had to literally survive at the mercy of the clan members who tilled Grandfather’s land. The children toiled in the fields and got survival crumbs. Grandfather was very fond of studies but his life situation never allowed him to go beyond class eight.

When the boys came of age, taking possession of their land was a big milestone to be crossed. A kindly but burly farmer stood by them as they, armed with hayforks and sticks, tilled their first furrows as independent tillers of their share of land.

From the standards of the rustic society, Grandfather was almost a mathematics wizard. The village patwari had to depend on him to calculate and measure land. Grandfather loved playing with numbers. It seemed to be his Ikigai.

He once enrolled himself in the army. A very athletic and agile man he was making a good mark in running and kabbadi as a trainee recruit. His younger brother was also in the army and in the absence of senior menfolk the wives and children faced a lot of problems back home. Seeing their plight, one of his nephews, a zamadar in the British army, got his name struck off from the roll, on the plea that his uncle had run away from home, leaving behind his wife and children at the mercy of fate. In this way, Grandfather’s army career was nipped in the bud.

He was the only educated person in the surrounding area so he was then appointed as a primary school teacher. He held his tiny school in chaupals, where he taught all the primary students gathered in one group at a single place. These never exceeded a dozen or two constituting a single class for all the students at various rungs of academics from class one to five.

My granduncle was serving as a jailor of Multan prison and my father in fact did his schooling from the first to third standard from Multan. Later, Father would boast of his Multan schooling and fondly reminisced that the prisoners treated him like a prince.  

In 1947 the partition-time tragedy broke millions of dreams including Grandfather’s teaching career. There was an influx of refugees. Grandfather was relieved of his teaching duties and his position was given to some poor refugee trying to begin a new chapter here in India after the carnage.

A tragedy then struck the family. Granduncle died of tuberculosis followed by his wife shortly later. My own grandmother also died. So here was Grandfather all alone with his own son (my father) aged around ten and two little sons of the deceased granduncle, one aged five and the other just two. My second granduncle set up his separate family. So Grandfather had the task of rearing three sons singlehandedly. He stood up in his role as a crude version of father and mother both embaled in one unit. He didn’t remarry, fearing the stepmother would turn the life of the three boys very difficult. As I have said he had his own reasons to look at women with apprehension.

He then worked as a farmer and made several entrepreneurial attempts apart from his farming tasks. One of these was brick-making. Those were rudimentary brick-kilns where the bricks were baked in a heap under fuel wood, coal and dung cakes. Being a mathematician he was more into numbers and calculations, taking it as a big mathematical puzzle. His clever partners, who ran field operations, easily duped him while Grandfather was busy with his calculation books.

Grandfather appeared to be farsighted for those times. He found that Bengal had hardly any milk because their cattle were so small and famished. He mustered a band of like-minded farmers. They chose buxom-most buffaloes and these were boarded on a cargo train. The entourage chugged ahead on a long journey to Calcutta. Little did they realize that the Bengali babus hardly had a stomach for Punjabi lactose. They were, and still are, happy with their fish and scores of cuisines coming out of their cultural box. As can be expected the venture failed miserably.

Once, a farmer owed some money to Grandfather. The said farmer and his clan migrated to Pilibheet in Nepal terai and started farming there on leased lands. Grandfather knew how to keep his debtor still in sight. He followed them there with some calves. He thought that grazing on their land would fatten the calves and this would at least cover the interest on the money. The calves grew really well among the lush Himalayan foothill greenery. But there were leopards and tigers ready to pounce and take away their share from Grandfather’s debt recovery scheme. They smartly chucked away Grandfather’s interest earnings that manifested in the form of oodles of muscles on the growing cattle. Grandfather was left with one sturdy bull to show some proof of his venture to the villagers back home. He thought if he could transport that impressive bull to the village, it would help him save his name as an entrepreneur. The journey was stretched over many parts including walking and motor transport. During one leg of the journey the bull jumped from the wagon and broke its leg. Grandfather arrived at the village with a famished, limping bull.

Irrespective of all his setbacks he maintained his passion for mathematics. Its ripples would touch us till matriculation when he tried to solve algebra through his arithmetic techniques because algebra was outside his domain.

Rasleela

In the untouched, unmoving majesty of this virgin forest, an old, pale banyan leaf snaps the last sinew of its twigged bondage and flows down to enter the slumberous folds of the dusty bed prepared by mother earth. An end? Or a new beginning? Maybe both. Maybe none. It just is. But it’s a leap into a broader dimension to be a part of another game.

Isn’t there playfulness around? Beginning, ending, birth, death, life, living, all connote a play. Be playful. Like Krishna! A series of playfulness from rasleela with gopis to killings for dharma in the battlefield and lastly his own death by a chance arrow in a forest. A beautiful play! Embrace playfulness. Why be serious yar? Let’s leave seriousness for our weird, funny, scary, stony, sulky corpses once we exit this avatar.

Human Touch

Being a bookish guy, I’m not much into physical activities. But walking on pilgrimages seems to add a different dimension of physicality and I’m able to surpass my individual capacity and surprise my own humble self sometimes.

I share a special bond with my brother and we are here at Rishikesh at the yearend to say a bye of gratitude to the year going out and greet the new year with hope in the lap of mother Ganga. We bathe in Maa Gnaga’s holy waters early in the morning and start on the foot track to the holy shrine of Baba Neekanth. The track passes through verdant Shivalik hills of Rajaji National Park. It’s fresh and rejuvenating. At the grossest level it’s a nice exercise for one’s legs and lungs. For those who are looking for the nutrition of their souls, the names of Maa Ganga and Baba Neelkanth do the task naturally.

We go on day one and return pretty joyfully in the evening. The next day we again take early morning bath in the holy water of Ganga Maa and suddenly feel so reinvigorated to start walking again to the holy shrine. The same happens on the third day. And before we realize we have walked to the holy place on three consecutive days. Our schedule didn’t allow us to continue the walk on the fourth day, otherwise I believe I would have continued for maybe a week at least. Bathing in Maa Ganga’s sacred waters cleanses one of age-old sins. So getting one free of tiredness and fatigue is a mere cakewalk for the divine waters.

Each day, an old woman would greet us from a distance during the last stretch of the track to Baba Neelkanth. This is the offseason for the pilgrimage and very few people hit the track. She peers into the distances to spot some odd pilgrim. She is an old woman beaten by poverty, age, circumstances. Almost beaten by life and its leela, she has a pleading voice. It strikes you. Her helplessness and disadvantaged situation acting like a speed-bump, pulling at your conscience, forcing you to slow down, look at her. And that sometimes forces a few pilgrims to take out a coin or a ten-rupee note and offer it to her.

On the way up, the first day, we have given her ten rupees. She would continue showering blessings at your back as you walked away. I heard her till the next bend and waved and looked back a few times. On the way back, she again accosts us as fresh pilgrims. ‘Tai, you can see I know. We already met on the way up!’ I laugh. ‘Yes son, I know. But beta I have to ask from you even on the way down because I have collected too little money,’ she tells us very honestly. We give her a little money again.

It gets repeated on the second day as well. Somehow I felt very easy with her and talked and joked and she laughed. On the third day, December 31, we decide to give her hundred rupees as a new year gift. And what does a tiny currency note mean as a gift if you don’t sit by that person and have a word of empathy and kindness? So today we sit by her and offer her the gift money.

Then the spontaneity of those somber, kind, holy moments created a simple reality of human-to-human connect. Its real significance would strike me later and it does even now with a powerful effect. As we held her hands and offered her new year gift with kind words of happiness in the new year, the check-dam of her age-old emotions burst out. She started crying. These were tears of pain, happiness, suffering, hope. All mixed in one. She seemed a little baby crying for affection, for sympathetic human touch. My brother is a spiritualist in practice. I have a very high regard for his genuine values that he keeps on the practical platform of life. But what he does now even stumps me. I see him putting his both hands on her head, his both hands affectionately covering her head. He touches her like a father, like a son, almost like a god.

Her lifelong pains melt. She flows. She cries profusely. I have no doubt ours happens to be the first human touch of love, respect and dignity in her entire life. Her soul felt it. As a poor begging woman, the best she can expect from people is some charity money even from the kindest of souls. I felt she wasn’t prepared for this warm, genuine human touch. The way she gave into it seemed as if it was her first experience that made her realize she was also a human being. She is also something above and beyond a beggar. I know there are people who would throw a thick wad of money even without taking care to look how she looked. But will that enrich her soul that way this touch did?

We move onto the holy shrine of Lord Neelkanth. She is still crying with love and gratitude for that human touch and we can hear her blessings till the next turn. On the way back, I can see that she is peering into the distance to see us. As we reach her she greets us with a cheerful demeanor and smiles. As we sit by her to have some more chat, the sweetest fruits of human touch and kind words drop like a blessing on us. She opens her soiled, torn cloth bag and opens a treasure of human love. We get the best new year gifts by a devi. In our absence, she had hastened to a nearby pathside tiny tea seller and bought gifts for us. She gives us our gifts like a kindest mother. It’s a packet of Kurkure crunchies and a small packet of biscuits. We are the richest people in the world. I’m not a fan of crunchies but this one I would relish like a little kid. After all it’s a gift by a mother.

Did our few ten-rupee notes and one one-hundred note opened this lottery of human affection? No. Money is too small to buy human empathy and love. It was the human touch and kind words. Touch at the closed stony gates of a poor human and see what treasures topple out, the treasures that would have withered and died unseen if not for your touch.

We feel so indebted for the priceless gift that we offer her some more money and she takes it with confidence and faith like a mother receives her well-deserved share from her sons. She is very happy and points to her tattered sari and says she will buy a new one with this money.

As we get up to go and express our hope to see her again sometime in the new year, she starts crying again and says who knows she may not be alive by that time. Through tears she says that her life might be over before we come again on this path. I can feel that she would very much like to meet us—for that human touch. Thankfully there are enough kind souls who would at least give a bit of money which is also necessary for survival in this world. But how I wish there were more people who provide human touch as well, a touch that reminds a poor person that she also is a human being.

We moved slowly on our path, her blessings showering like rose petals from behind. It was a sad feeling, somehow; leaving someone behind with sad tears—even if these are of gratitude and love—is too much for a poetic man like me. I looked back a few times and waved and she waved in reply. At the bend I turned again, had a glimpse of her waving hand, heard a feeble reverberation of her blessings and moved on with the hope that she will be there when I return sometime in future.        

             

In celebration of life and living

 

Why would there be sense pleasure in nature? Can you imagine any type of life possible without it on the planet? Is manifestation possible at all without sense-driven gratification? Isn’t sensual pacification the gateway from the unmanifest to the manifest? When a flower blooms isn’t it a result of the black-bee’s sense gratification? When a rishi goes into the caves to launch his war against the senses, isn’t he himself a result of the sense gratification of his parents? When I aim for the ultimate gratification, the much cherished perpetual bliss, isn’t that a super gratification?

Poor sense pacifications, they are such a maligned entity. Their theoretical negation forms the base all the endless stream of words in holy books and scriptures. While the reality is that at the level of life’s manifestation, as it’s on earth, how will you even survive without this faculty? These are merely the faculties that have evolved with us in the game of survival. The key lies in their balanced usage for a wholesome life.

Those on the path of so-called spirituality start with an acute sense of some imbalance, some pain, loss, bitterness. The latter are just results of mismanaged, skewed usage of our natural faculties. I have seen very well-poised and balanced people serving as hawkers and rickshaw pullers in crowded bazaars; almost saintly in demeanor; at so much ease with whatever nature has given them at the level of senses and their use. And I have seen high priests, the careerist spiritualists, unfortunately most of them in fact, who are well decked up in the armor of dharma and holy look, but peace is farthest from their eyes. Many of them take a cute tumble with their lady followers.

It’s only about being at ease with yourself; nothing less, nothing more. One can use any kind of words to describe it. There is no end to words. They are the products of the faculty of our mind only. Sometimes back an old sadhu was ruminating that he got a nightfall which he considered a sin. Well, had you been healthy in your ideas about sex and women, had been balanced in your ideas and usage of this natural sense-born faculty, you won’t have been crying over night falls in old age, I thought. It’s not about negating sense-born desires. It’s not even about getting saturated with them. It’s all about balance. Like when you eat. Not much to give you ache, not too less to starve you. Like Buddha realized when he almost died after starving himself for months.

Learn to be at ease dear brothers and sisters. If you are sitting in a brothel and are at ease with yourself, you are your own saint. If you are occupying the highest seat of a pontiff and itching with restlessness then you are a novice still. So learn the art of being at ease with yourself wherever you are situated. Balance. Balance. Balance. In everything that life offers. Accept. Accept the windfalls of the pleasure of flesh with humility and gratitude and pay back with sincere hard work. It’s a beautiful world because of the teasing interplay of sensory desire seeking, not because of those who preach against it and keep smoldering with desire within.

You dear seeker, you ought to feel obliged to the teasing ways of desires. You have been given this beautiful life by an exciting play of desires between your parents. I am sure they were not meditating while you got launched into the womb. Desire is the force that’s catapulting the forces of creation and generation: at the level of species in mating urge, and huge galaxies expanding at the cosmic level. That’s the force that pulls this cosmos. Those who are running away from life, relationships, needful responsibilities, mundane pleasures need to remember that most of our gods, rishis and munis had beautiful partners, families and children. They are called bhagwan because they used their energies in an optimum way and managed their sensual faculties in the way they wanted. They used them in a balanced way instead of falling imbalanced to one particular impulse.

In balanced amount even poison serves like amrit. In imbalanced amount even amrit turns poison. A judicious mix of what nature has given is nothing short of enlightenment. Why put your fate solely in the pages of holy books? They are mere indicators, just creation of the minds who could write better than you and me. So ease up. Just be. Accept what you are. Why negate? As the component of being at ease builds up, the tendency to go into impulsive, imbalanced use of sense pleasure faculties will get transformed itself. New neurological circuits develop that drive more hormones of wellness through our system. It’s a very simple physiological fact. Why interpret it to mythological proportions?

The ultimate untroubled playfulness is a result of carefully nurtured well-balanced use of our energies and sensorial faculties. We come to a ripening. The impulses lose their meaning and desires drop off without pain like a ripe fruit drops by itself. The senses and their potential for pleasure still remain in the body but their use or no use means the same. They no longer drive our thoughts, actions and emotions. You get a choice and use doesn’t drive you crazy and no-use doesn’t make you suffer. In a way one rises above that dimension. Call it realization or enlightenment. It’s but merely more conscious, aware form of living; just transformation of energies for a bit more refined thoughts and emotions; a shift in perspective.

It doesn’t mean I find people in the so-called worldly dimension as lowly placed. Everything is just same in mother existence. It’s only about a choice to be something extra if our present sense of existence makes us restless and we feel something missing. It’s merely a choice to be at more ease with the self.

Just learn to stay in the present. This is the ultimate meditation. No need to roam in the Himalayas. Do it among the sweet-sour scent of humanity around you. It’s almost always about what we had been or what we would be. Very rarely we are what we are now. And thus dear brothers and sisters, we exit from the portals of life as ignorant of its meaning as when we entered it.

The flower bud opens with a pining majesty. Infantile petals ready to be born for one more fragrant, juicy season. The goddess of beauty opens another eye to see this world with more colors. But the de-juicing black-bee is also around! Things of beauty and joy are almost always accompanied by the greedy swirls of utilitarian air—two aspects of duality. But that doesn’t mean the things of beauty and joy shouldn’t smile and bloom.

I know it disturbs many minds who have accepted the superiority of particular paths in taking them to the exclusive class of refined and holy beings on earth. That also is another form of ego: the desire to be in a state from where the rest of humanity seems a group of meek ignorants who need reformation and enlightenment. So take this slightly bitter pill of information with a glass of water and be at ease. If your mind still feels disturbed then rethink about the utility of gurus and scriptures who haven’t given you equanimity of mind to even digest this. Then reboot. And smile. Then laugh. At yourself. It helps.

A skirmish in the village temple

 

The village temple seemed a sad affair. You cannot expect too much from a temple patronized by farmers. From the same equation, you cannot afford to have an ambitious priest in such a temple because the boons of rituals are meager. Some years back an ageing priest arrived with his wife. Two of his elder children, a boy and a girl, were already married and ran their separate houses. The returns from the village temple were meager but the services were in the same league. Pandit ji fumbled over mantras and coughed terribly during havan ceremonies because he was asthmatic. Since most of the farmers around the temple loved liquor, so he went along the popular culture and started drinking as well.

I remember the havan he performed on my mother’s death anniversary. The havan smoke triggered his asthma and as a result it was a rumbustious chanting of coughs. Hardly any mantra was audible. In any case he knew a little set of mantras which he repeated to good effect on all ceremonies ranging across birth, death, marriage, engagements and house inaugurations.

Staying among the farmers toughened his attitude by several notches. Earlier he would have verbal potshots at his wife but now he would even launch a physical assault sometimes. Then he fell ill and died leaving the panditayan in charge of the temple. She did not know anything about puja and rituals. The already neglected idols further slumped in neglect. Their dresses developed a thick coating of dust. There were cobwebs around. Shiva’s idol had a hole in thigh because someone left a lamp burning on it. Hanuman being viewed as a wrestler and fond of food would be forced to eat. The muscular idol’s mouth had eatables smitten on it and bees and wasps ate for his sake.

There were voices of dissent against her conduct. The people had to bring a pundit from outside the village for a havan ceremony. The majority of the villagers wanted her to leave the temple but four or five families wanted her to stay. The offerings to the neglected gods were sufficient to allow her a nice life of retirement. It became an issue and the two groups would engage in brawls. Finally, the majority prevailed and she had to go. During the conclusive brawl her supporter group of ladies advised her, ‘Before you go, leave the village under your curse.’ So on the day of departure, when her supportive group came to receive her farewell blessings, she showered her beneficence over them. ‘All of you become like me,’ she said. It meant all of you bear the same fate as me, roughly interpreted as being a widow and turning homeless. Some women from the opposing group laughed, ‘You asked a curse for the village. Since you are also part of the village, you too get your prashad as well. A curse through a blessing on your head!’

The story of an old man

 

Tau Bhoopan has finished his innings here on earth but the anecdotes he sired still fetch little nuggets of memories from the deep abyss of the past. He had a penchant and flare for flirting with norms. He was a certified flirtatious character; always water-mouthed for the opposite gender till late in his old age. So most of his stories deal with his disconcerting overtures to pacify and gratify the undying worms of desire in him. The people seem forgiving and laugh about it.

He indeed was a character. He once came across an English sahib in the privacy of acacia forest and finding him alone pounced upon him like a local panther trying to redeem the native pride. Both of them were strong for each other and huffing and puffing, unable to outdo the other, fell into a well. After a few minutes of water slinging they realized the importance of truce to save their lives. Then both of them yelled, joined the forces of vocal cords to draw someone’s attention. The help won’t arrive for a few hours and meantime they copiously consumed their quota of swearing, oath taking and cuss words in their respective languages. Once they were fished out, they had antipodal reception. Bhoopan was jailed for a few months and the Englishman was treated like a brave prince.

India then became independent and Bhoopan would always claim that he had fought for the country’s liberation from the foreign rule. In a free India, once Bhoopan had opened a tea stall by the road outside the village. He would get up at four in the morning, start fire in the hearth, set the kettle sizzling as a welcome sign for his customers. But he always felt that the number of customers never did justice to his seriousness about the job. He got itchy over the months and when a military convoy passed the road his check dam broke. He fell in front of the officer’s jeep and started crying profusely. The officer thought he was the most wronged person in the area. He asked him about his grievance. A profusely weeping Bhoopan told him about his plight, how the villagers were deliberately ignoring him, as he thought, to make him go penniless. ‘Please point this cannon towards the village once, please, you don’t have to fire, just the cannon mouth towards them will teach them a lesson. They are cowards, they will pee in their pants,’ he pleaded.

In his sixties he was struggling as a sugarcane juice maker. A woman ordered a glass of juice. He made it and while he was gloating over her figure a fly fell into the glass. ‘See, you have put a fly in the glass,’ she angrily complained. ‘Of course, I cannot put an elephant in the glass,’ he countered from his side. She threw away the glass which broke and paid him for the juice. ‘But what about the fly and the broken grass?  Pay for them also. Those were costly items,’ he hollered.

His mischief got hugely manifested in mind, as his body grew old and the basic instinct seeped into his old neurons from the body tissues. A young peasant woman was showing her buffalo, which had been giving mating calls at night, to a bull for calving and fresh milk in the family. It was a tiny grove of trees. Her farmer husband was not at home and fearing a missed chance at getting the buffalo seeded, she herself took charge of the situation. It would have been embarrassing in the presence of someone but since there wasn’t anyone around she tried her best to get the mating done. She pacified the buffalo into a position and whistled to inspire the bull. She had after all seen the process with stealthy eyes as the menfolk managed it. This bull was not that experienced in the art. It was willing, was in the mood and repeatedly getting on but missed the mark. She had seen how nonchalantly the menfolk would help the faltering bull by holding the pizzle and putting it into the slot. But it was a big block in her female mind, conditioned in the chains of patriarchy, to get this particular thing done. She seemed in two minds. She blushed even though there was nobody around. She moved her hand with determination but seemed lacking the courage to do it as if she was scared of it. ‘Daughter, why worry? It looks red and hot but it isn’t so. It won’t burn your hands,’ Bhoopan the expert spoke from behind a tree trunk. He was considerably old by this time and had expertly followed the trio, anticipating some fun that would tickle his lusty bone.

Once, this time older than before, he was urinating by a path. At a distance some peasant women stopped waiting for him to get done. ‘Daughters, don’t worry. You can safely pass. That which you are afraid of is firmly held by its neck,’  he assured them.

As he grew still older he would have lots of fights with his daughters-in-law, sons and grandsons. And people would try to remind him that an old man shouldn’t quarrel and fight with his family members. ‘If not the family, with whom should I fight then? Russia and America? Sorry I’m not capable of that anymore,’ he would say.

Fresh milk in a farmer's house

 

A buffalo’s mating call is melodious to a farmer’s ears. It brings the prospects of fresh milk to the family. At the slightest hint, the family patriarch runs to hire the mating services of a mater (either a public bull like earlier or a farmer’s domesticated bull presently). The males, as usual, are ready yearlong with their ever-active passion.

It’s the females who decide when the male luck will strike gold. Then sometimes there are false alarms. Maybe the farmer misread the female cattle’s braying, grunts and moans. Maybe it doesn’t like the husband presented to her to be the father of her calf. The situation turns tricky when she kicks and gallops to deny the water-mouthed bull any chance. The farmer gets irritated. They whistle. They try to get them into proper mood. The buffalo is tamed into immobility by tying her with ropes. I have seen farmers holding the bull’s pizzle to facilitate a forced entry. And many such forced adventures turn out to be fruitless. And then the bull gets a bad name. The aggrieved farmer, having paid for the seedless adventure, casts aspersion on the mater buffalo. ‘The bull is worthless, not fit for siring calves anymore,’ he taunts. To this the owner of the bull cringes with such pain as if he himself has been called impotent and sterile.

Beauty and truth

 

Truth is the mind and beauty is the heart of the ultimate reality, if at all we can have some terminology to comprehend it with our limited senses. And art straddles the tenuous bridge holding truth and beauty together, binding each to the other with almost a synonymous bond. Economics will hardly have any valuation for truth, beauty and art. The beholders of truth, lovers of beauty and practitioners of art may try to monetize their domains, but they mostly fail. Truth, beauty and art stand, somewhere, in the bylanes, in almost secluded corners, away from the mainstream commerce and monetization.

Ghosts floating in Tau's room

 Tau Hoshiyar Sing is nearly hundred and almost blind. Still he is smart and calculating enough to find his way using the bigger landmarks still visible to him and go for walks without tumbling even once. Sadly, he has met a tragedy at the far end of his honest, hard-worked farmer life. He lost his eldest son, Randhir (in his late sixties). Randhir was a very close friend of mine and a genuine well-wisher. So it’s a big loss to me as well.  

I’m sitting with Tau (uncle) in his little room, he lying on his charpoy and me on a chair by his side. Irrespective of age a parent would always feel the pain of losing his/her children. A slight tremor in his voice makes me feel the pain inside him, but otherwise he is as much composed like always, in full acceptance of life. His faith in God is as firm as usual. In my limited experience, I find him one of the rarest people who have such firm, rock-strong faith in the almighty even without going to a temple or worshipping a deity. I have never seen him entering a temple in my life, never performing a ritual, or going on a pilgrimage. But when I talk to him about God, he takes the name of God with such reverence and hundred percent confidence and honesty as to make him a highly spiritual person. And why won’t it be? After all, he has produced crops by irrigating them with his sweat, nurturing them with the nutrients of honesty and integrity. Nobody can point out that he committed even a single mistake that hurt someone’s interests. Godliness dawns in such people of its own. They are spirituality in practice, naturally, by default.

Whenever I meet him I joke that he can hardly see and uses his experience and smart brain to cross the streets and make others believe that he is still able to see and present right there in the race of life. And he always protests that he can ‘see’. So whenever I see him, I stand in front of him, change my voice and ask him to recognize me. Of course he fails to recognize me. When I laugh that see didn’t I tell you that you can see far less than you claim, he would slowly, dismissively say, ‘I had seen you clearly but I forgot your name because my memory is somewhat affected now.’ It means Tau takes the importance of eyes far more than the mind.

So in a light-hearted manner even now I’m prodding at his soft-spot regarding his eyesight. Then Tau is irritated a bit and lowers his guard. He then gives me a clue as to why he is trying to protect the honor of his eyes. ‘My right eye is almost gone. I can see only bigger things hazily with my left eye. So this left eye gives me a slight idea of the world around and allows me to walk. But all that adang-dhadang (honky dory) stuff is visible to my blind right eye,’ Tau tells me. I get straightened up with interest. I know Tau has entered the talk of the paranormal world even though he hardly believes in it. ‘I see much ulta-pulta with this blind eye. Like many people coming and going through the wall, appearing over the ceiling, someone going to the barn to get fodder. They aren’t scary in any sense. All of them well behaved. And always in clothes. The women also hold purdah over their face. Earlier I used to get curious about them. But now I don’t even think about them. They keep doing their business,’ Tau tells me with total indifference.

Well, his age seems to have given him extra-sensory perception. He surely sees disembodied souls floating around. After exiting the body, the individual consciousness still retains two elements out of the five. These are air and ether. So the disembodied souls float around with their two elements, carrying the predominant tendencies and inclinations found in their five-element body before death. Time trapped, they say, they float around to somehow fulfill the karmic balance before taking a body again. They are mere bubbles of air and ether floating around, looking at alive humans with jealousy for having a body and being able to carry out so many things. While in their endeavor to do something, they can just float around and sometimes interfere with the weakened energy systems in certain individuals. But what will they do to a robust farmer like Tau? He is very much comfortable to see them as companions during lonely nights in his little room.

But isn’t this interesting that old Tau sees entities with his blind eye? By the way, he doesn’t believe in ghosts. And what will ghosts do to someone who doesn’t even believe in them. Tau has put all his belief in one super-entity—God. And that too without having to go to a temple, without performing rituals, or going on pilgrimages. He has established it—his faith—right there with a firm farmer’s foot. And the ghosts play around him on lonely nights.

‘You are lucky Tau in that you get a free movie watching with your blind eye,’ I laughed. ‘Hmm!’ he intoned again pretty dismissively.  

Little Maira's small world

Playing with my two-and-half years old niece Maira is great fun. Coming down from the levels of burdensome intellect and going down to meet her innocent joyful being is elevating and uplifting in many ways. It seems going down but it’s going up in a substantial way. The joy up-shoots like anything. One tastes ‘the lightness of being’.   

A child will help you in breaking many barriers that one has built around himself. As a clown with lisping tongue, acting funny and speaking even funnier, you slay stress like a shiny knight in armor.

We are playing on the sunbathed terrace on this balmy winter noon. A flock of Asian Pied Starlings floats lazily in the sky. They chatter and twirl, taking gentle, unhurried turns and loops in their flight. It’s a playful flight, not the one for survival and sustenance. Little Maira goes ecstatic at the joyous sight. And here I’m habitually trying to put more knowledge in her little brain. I point out that these are Asian Pied Starlings. I repeat it many times so that she remembers the name. Then I ask her what is their name, pointing to the flying flock. She is worried for a moment. ‘Birds!’ she shouts and jumps with joy.

Yes, birds they are. The simpler, the better. Why get bothered about sophisticated nomenclature that our intellect-obsessed mind carves so much for? Enjoy the creatures that fly as birds only. Or, in Krishnamurti’s lingo, see them just as ‘life’. Nothing more, just plain life.

Then Maira knows how to go suddenly invisible right in front of your eyes. It’s a child’s magic. All she needs to do is to put her little hands on her eyes and disappear from the world around. It’s her beautiful truth that she too is invisible to others when she cannot see anything around with closed eyes.

How I wish that we too had the belief and conviction of a child in closing our eyes to all that is unbecoming and painful! We can at least try to close our eyes to the painful past and go out of its sight.

The hawker

 

Kala walks, hawks and talks like an expert vegetable seller now. But if you make a list of their success rank, he comes last. There are very serious quality issues about his vegetables. ‘But how will I purchase better quality if you don’t buy these from me, giving me some profit so that with the money I can get the premium class,’ he says. Well, he has a point here and makes some sense in this. To help people to give him more profit he generally overprices his substandard veggies.

He is from the village itself and more successful ones are migrant Biharis who visit from the town. So he brings personal touch in the bargain. He shouts people’s names also after the list of his items. He would shout your name for ten days at a stretch. If you never even say ‘no’ and stay hidden in your house, it doesn’t affect him. The next day he would call you with the same sweetness. He called me for ten days and I kept hiding. Finally my own conscience reproached me and I came out of my hole like a crab from the seaside rocks. I could see his triumph for having drawn me out. He gave me his severely substandard bananas at eighty rupees per dozen. At the city you get very good ones at sixty rupees only. But then you have to pay extra for being specially addressed by your name by a hawker.

His vegetable-hawking song went like this: aloo,  piyaj, tamatar,  bhindi, tori, ghiya, kheera ... suppee (this one for my name Sufi). It sounds like he’s selling suppee along with the vegetables.