A sole yellow lemon among basketful of oranges

 

Bhola Rikiyasan is the sole Buddhist monk among hundreds of Hindu mendicants at the pilgrimage town. He stands out quite naturally with his separate religious identity. The other day he said to the group of saffron-clad sadhus around him that all of you are not at peace and that’s why you people are wandering around. An argument started, turned into a brawl and soon it would have changed to a fist fight, from the side of Hindu friars of course who looked very spirited to defend their dharma. A Hindu mauni baba negotiated peace with his loving presence.

Rikiyasan is from Gaya. He was a Shiva devotee for 26 years, felt stuck up on the path and converted to Buddhism six years back. Maybe that’s the reason the Hindu babas dislike him. Religious conversion is a serious issue in India. But look at the great syncretic tradition of India, he still has Bhola, Shiva’s name, in his official name. Well, he is 75 years old—I have to check his ID to confirm it because he doesn’t look three-quarters of a century old from any angle.

‘One meal a day and meditation to calm the mind are the reasons for it,’ he says. He looks at peace and joyful about life. I see a thick wad of money in his wallet as he stuffs ten rupees just offered to him by a man. ‘Just ten rupee notes. Won’t count for much!’ he laughs. ‘I’m collecting money for making a little Buddha shrine at my village,’ he justifies his collection. Well, all of us are after money for our reasons and I have talked to hundreds of sadhus in this regard. Most of them are after money to make ashrams and temples. The householders are after it for building houses and buying cars. I hardly see any qualitative difference between the two.

A couple of days ago he was bitten by a dog in the wee hours as he was walking in the street after taking a bath in Ma Ganga. A few hours after the painful bite I found him standing desolate at his corner with his brass begging bowl. He had tied a strip of cloth on the wound. The cloth was all bloody. It was a big bite. I hope his Hindu baba adversaries didn’t set a dog after him. I go to the small charity hospital run by a prominent ashram to seek help for him. They inform me that there is no anti-rabies vaccination available at their place. To get it one has to go to the government hospital a few kilometers away on the opposite bank.

I come back and tell him to walk to Ram Jhoola—it’s just 50 meters from where he is sitting—and take an auto to go to the hospital. He says he will prefer to walk towards the other bridge, Janaki bridge, almost a kilometer down the stream because if he goes from here the auto would charge 50 rupees and from there it will be only 10 rupees. But he can hardly walk. I understand that he would delay his treatment because he is in pain and can barely walk. And one needs vaccination at the earliest after the bite.

I wonder, why would he still bother so much about money even in such a situation. Well, I think baba or no baba, money is a big issue in the world. And like ordinary householders, the babas have every right to think that it’s their hard-earned money because they have to stand throughout the day to get alms.

Since he needs vaccination so I hire a scooty to take him to the government hospital, requesting the scooty guy to take him to the concerned block and guide him through the process. By this time he is in much pain and looks all ready to shed this miserable body. ‘I would be good if I die. It seems this poor body needs to be shed!’ he looks depressed, sad and sullen. I say an encouraging bye as the rental scooty takes him away through the crowd.

The next day I find him all freshened up with three anti-rabies injections, one on his left chuttar (as he puts it with a feeling of insult and pain) and one each on both arms. But the urge to live and be joyful and meditate has returned. He looks contended and at peace with life. I advise him to carry a stick. Maybe that can help him in religious debates and brawls with Hindu babas as well.

A lovely pet parent

 

As I walk in the busy little bazaar street on the banks of Ma Ganga, a sadhu and his dog meet my attention. The sadhu’s one hand supports the dog’s head like a soft pillow. With the other hand he is fanning the dog to sleep. The people get amused and laugh, thinking him to be a crazy baba. To be frank I also think so initially. But when I return after a couple of hours, he is still fanning the dog to sleep with the same loving care. I think there must be something wrong with the dog otherwise why would it lie so still and calm with closed eyes in broad daylight with hundreds of feet tapping the narrow street. So I sit down to chat with the baba. ‘Maybe the dog is sick,’ I ask. He laughs and points to a big food bowl, ‘No Badal ate too much and who won’t sleep with cool fan air and a palm to support?’ The dog’s name is Badal. ‘Badal also is Bhagwan’s avatar. If you can’t love a dog, how will you love humans, and if you can’t love humans, how will you love God,’ he elaborates his simple spiritual equation. He was offered to Joona Akhara by his parents at an early age. I ask him does he miss his parents sometimes. He cracks a big laugh, ‘What a question! He is the biggest mai baap!’ he brandishes his bright pink plastic hand fan towards Lord Shiva’s statue kindly looking at us from the top of a gateway. I feel embarrassed. Yes he is under the protection of the biggest baap!

Silence speaking of peace

 

There are sadhus in front of an ashram in Rishikesh that serves food daily in the morning. There are cows also. The sadhus are having the routine sweet-sour chit chat while having food. The cows are chewing cud, contended. There are drops of dung around. Then a cute roly-poly baba arrives, his presence silent and peaceful. He has a unique attire: a piece of sackcloth tied like ancient Romans across his torso, a woolen cap on the head and a small towel on the bare shoulder. His left hand isn’t visible. To be frank, I’m not sure about its status. It might be missing; it might be tied along his stomach in hard penance to take this worldly yatra with a single hand. I give fifty-fifty chances to both probabilities.

He has a lovely way of walking, a kind of spirited ease of a child. A trace of smile doesn’t leave his face even for a single moment. He is a mauni baba, the one who takes a vow of silence, so by default his tongue is restful, which in turn avoids unnecessary fuel to the chattering mind. There he comes and starts picking the cow dung with the joyful ease of a child playing on the beach. He uses his free hand to pick up cow dung and drop it into the garden across the street. The street is soon clean. In fact his lovely walk to and fro works like a cosmic broom to clean the air itself.

There are gau rakshaks who take to violence in the name of holy cows. I would say most of them are people with violent tendencies and take shelter under mother cow’s name to hide their violence. Gau mata doesn’t need rakshaks, she needs sevaks like this kind and loving baba.

The baba then cleans his hand under a tap, caresses the cows with the feel of a boy touching something precious. That’s when the wagging tongues between the Hindu babas and a Buddhist monk start the fireworks and before the tongues could handover the work to fists, the joyful mauni baba comes in between and dispels the heat just with his smile, silent nods and gentle wave of hand. It’s a divine feeling just to be in the presence of someone who is at ease with himself.

The money-hunters of holy banks

 

It’s a world of bitter-sweet experiences. For hundreds of sweet ones on the banks of Ma Ganga, one can’t help coming across a sour one. And that forms the basis of this muttering from Rishikesh.

When I’m at Rishikesh I simply go footloose. I just keep walking most of the time, soaking the smell, sight, touch, taste and listen all that is on offer at the pilgrimage town.

Seeing we walking with such careless demeanor, a woman ascetic with a brass kamandal tried to plunder money. She approached like a realized mother, all made up of course as a mendicant friar and asked for money. To begin with, she asked for food for the five of them. ‘We are five matajis, so 20 rupees for the food for each of us,’ she says. These are navaratra days, so I give her 100 rupees without bargaining. She probably thinks that I’m a sitting duck for cheating. Meanwhile she took a thief’s peek into my modest wallet as I took out the money to give to her. I want to move but she puts her hand on my head, trying possibly to play some psychotic energy game or magical trick or some sort of hypnotic maneuver so that she could plunder more money. With the blessings of Ma Ganga, I have enough energies in my head. She starts shivering. ‘Please take out two notes from your wallet. I take a vow in the name of Ma Ganga that I will give them back,’ she says. Before I realize she is tying a mauli dhaga on my wrist asking, ‘Are you married?’ I’m not interested in her queries about my matrimonial status.

I don’t have a change in my wallet but since she has taken a vow in the name of Ganga Ma while standing on Her banks, I give her two 500 rupees notes expecting her to return them. The moment the notes land in her claws she folds them in her fist. The way she holds them makes it sure that they are in her greedy talons not to be returned. Now I realize the tales of the thugs who take money and play the magic trick of making it disappear with the clap of a hand.

I remember an incidence from early youth in the village. A street magician took 100 rupees from my friend and with a clap the money vanished. He had a lovely python and a flute to add to the charm of his street show. Now the 100 rupees of those times created a big issue. So we manhandled him, his pagri fell. One guy was just ready to break his flute on his head. That’s when the poor magician realized that the Jatland isn’t suitable for magic tricks. And the money comes out of his gullak. He holds the python’s mouth, pries it open, puts his hand in and draws out the money. Imagine the smartness. Magic money goes into the python’s mouth!

‘We will go to kedar with the money,’ the female thief in saffron says. To me it’s not about money. It’s about taking a false vow in Ma Ganga’s name. I don’t know what Ganga Ma thinks of me but I feel I’m Her ardent devotee. I shame the woman for being a liar, looting money in the name of Ma Ganga. I get really angry and in no nonsense terms ask her to return the money as promised. Somehow she hasn’t been able to make the money vanish. Good that she hasn’t a python with her. Somehow her trick of making the money vanish fails. Ma Ganga’s blessings!

She gives back one note, with a look as if I’m plundering her. I am firmly against such a sham sadhvi, so I point my finger at her and asked her to return the other note as well. She is trying to make me feel ashamed for getting angry, for losing control of myself just about money. Why should I be? I’m not a saffron-clad saint to be ashamed of my well-deserved anger on cheats. With a broken heart she hands back the other note all crushed due to the pressure of her talons. ‘I was just checking your heart for its grasp on money,’ she says as if I have failed her testing of my desire for worldly things like 500 rupees notes.

Then she tries to give me a rudraksh bead. I tell her I that don’t need anything from her. Neither her blessings, nor her bead. I don’t want at least from those who tell lies in the name of taking vow of Ganga Ma. Had it been a male sadhu I would have snatched away even the hundred rupees. But these I leave with her as a grace mark for her being a woman.

But Ma Ganga knows how to spin her lovely magic and change mutterings into musings.

I’m walking sullenly about cheats on the banks of Ma Ganga. But She is such a kind mother. She knows how to uplift the spirit of Her child. I’m walking in the crowd and suddenly see the autistic girl on whom I wrote a story a few years back. I see her with her parents on the banks of Ma Ganga. The last time, a mere child, she looked so unjustifiably deprived of her slice of joy among all that festival aura and with tears in my eyes I prayed so sincerely for her during my entire stay at that time. I wrote a long story of blessings on her. She is a woman now! I had prayed for the faith and health of her parents so that they would help her in her journey for as long as possible because nobody can take care of a special child like her parents. And there I see them carrying her in a wheel chair in the busy bazaar. She looks healthy and beautiful; a lovely young woman now. Her parents appear in good spirits and look healthy, happily carrying their responsibility.

Imagine out of the thousands of pilgrims, Ma Ganga blesses me with their sight to let me know that She remembers my prayers for this family.

Gau seva

 

Loitering on the banks of Ma Ganga I see the real beauty of India. The faith, seva bhav, love. A few sadhus and animal welfare volunteers have come together to treat the injured horn of a bull. Coming from a farming family I have seen such scenes in my village. When pinned down like this by the humans, the poor cattle think they are getting slaughtered. I remember that fear in the rolled eyes of the pinned down buffalo or bull. Those strong puffs of breath spurting saliva and slime on the muzzle. But here the bull is somehow relaxed. Its eyes aren’t popping out with the fear of death. This I feel is due to the touch of the sadhus. There is an assurance of safety, love and care. Their presence makes the bull behave well even in the face of such a painful, scary experience. Its eyes are normal. Its muzzle isn’t oozing with slime, which a cattle normally does with strong puffs of breathing under such circumstances. The bull seems assured of safety. The touch of loving sadhus mixed with the touch of caring animal lovers from an animal welfare foundation. It’s in safe hands. The injured horn is dressed. And the volunteers move away slowly releasing the rope, leaving only the sadhus near the bull as it gets up. The young bull gets onto its feet with wonderful calm. The sadhus pat it lovingly. ‘You are a good boy. Now don’t fight too much over girlfriends,’ says the young doctor. The onlookers laugh. The sadhus guide it to a relatively open space.

Ma Ganga's bidding

 

Pre-script: This one is inspired by my conversation with one of the best devotees of Ma Ganga I have come across.

Who wouldn’t like to stay longer on the banks of Ma Ganga? But She would like Her children to be active in the world as well. To me Her maternal touch is like prasad. Even the little bit of it gives a feeling of getting satiated and fulfilled that buckets of normal food won’t give. Frankly speaking dear friends, I feel blessed and happy whatever time She allows me near Her for my learning and growth. Don’t you see those who are born on Her banks and stay there since birth are even more common and worldly than those born in cities far away? I mean most of them are. Because to them Her presence is like food, not prasad. They take it for granted. The people like you, me and countless others who get Her presence like prasad now and then are really blessed. She calls us at intervals, gives lessons and new realizations, sends us away to find the meaning of life, come back again, evolve a bit more by Her touch and go back again—a real prasad in small bits. But to those who stay with Her all the time She is mere food, in abundance, and thus taken for granted. So bow down and be grateful for the loving prasad She has given you.

We go to the temples but not all of us stay in a temple to feel blessed. We can carry the spark of divinity that we get from the temple. To me She is a living temple. And whatever chance She gives to have Her darshan is prasad. I know She would love me to do my worldly role, which I do with a very balanced approach. I just told my view dear friends. I’m not saying everyone should feel like that.

Maybe She sends us away when She feels that prasad ought not to become food. Separation with an assured coming together: the loveliest subtle twine that binds the deity and the devotee. Subtle and effective, just like silence is the best language.

The result

 

Give Indians first a cheated fake result. Even the commonest of us have enough brains to discuss and chalk out the true success story of a fake result. We will then spin the success hypothesis to validate the false. You just need to cheat us and then leave it on us to prove with our shrewd acumen that it was no cheating, it was rather a masterstroke to achieve true, honest success. Well done Kumar sir! You did your job, now we do ours.

The dagger

 

There were killings, slaughter and genocide. Holocaust. From its fire a dagger was born. The Desert Dagger. Forged in the sandy, fiery furnace of killings, torture and annihilation. Enemies rasping at its edges from all sides to annihilate it. But that merely sharpens the edges. The Desert Dagger has a pointed tip, the pinnacle of all the sharp, serrated edges around it—survival. It has the soul of steel. It has one soul, one goal, one dream, one people— survival. It knows how to reshape its pain into hope and then turn hope into cutting-edge technology—sharp, precise, surgical, unsparing.

 The Desert Dagger cuts and writes its destiny on the book of life having sandy pages. It’s a mighty pen held in one hand. It knows what it has to write—the book of survival, the manual of survival at any cost. Where do the Desert Dagger’s soul, spirit and matter come from? It comes from the memories of the millions who perished in gas chambers. It comes from the teary, rosy dreams in the hearts—the dreams of the survival of a race. It comes from the razor sharp logic in the mind—the logic of fight when surrounded from all sides and kill before getting killed.

A sip of happiness

 

Happiness is primarily an acceptance of one’s situation in life. It might not come to you even in a palace if you don’t really settle inside the walls and within your skin. You are a cranky host, so it will avoid you. And it will definitely come to visit your slum hut if it finds you an unashamed, guilt free, kind host. As an old, poor charwoman, whom Somerset Maugham meets after many years in 1949, when there had been lots of developmental works in the meanwhile, says to him: ‘They have cleaned up the slums and the dirt, and all the happiness and joy has gone with it.’

Musty evenings and dead butterflies

 

Musty evenings, a decoction of sweat and sultry mawkishness. This is the season of mating. A peacock hooting, scattering the suggestive fragrance of its desire to be caught by some coquettish brunette of its species. Creation is fortuitously bound to chance winds at this level. Sometimes it fruitlessly sails through the sky; sometimes it hits home and the dance of desire starts, the fantail spread to handover its thoroughbred royal blue hues to the next generation.

The yard bricks have moss, the air musty, the day grey and old. It gives a very ancient feeling. A little bit before the twilight hits, I light my lamp of devotion under a holy pair—tulsi and shami plants. My little altar is under the peregrina tree. The latter has ample leafy garments thanks to the rainy season. It’s aflame with crimson clusters of flowers—a representative of the smoldering sensuality riding the humid layer. Little grass-green butterflies flutter among the flowers through the day. The flowers are aplenty and hundreds of them drizzle over the place of my clay lamp after fulfilling their blooming duty. And so do a few butterflies that fall with the flowers never to rise again.

It’s a sad sight to see dead butterflies among the fallen flowers around the evening twilight. You smell the musty odor of death. But flowers and butterflies—even when dead—have enough colors in them to still hold the beacon of life. They somehow thwart the overflowing silence of death. And there I light my lamp of faith among old dead flowers and forever sleeping butterflies. A flicker of hope and faith, fallen flowers and butterfly corpses, musty moments hung with sultry detachment, the day slowly dying to finish its journey at the twilight, a humid night taking birth, a lone butterfly still dancing among the flowers owning the entire tree to herself, the birds retiring to roost for the night, and a poetic man witnessing this slowly shifting picture on the canvas of mother existence.

Monsoon musings

 

The monsoon has been vigorous this season, pouring down with fluffed obduracy. The earth stands expatiated, its pining thirst slackened down, softly yielding to the countless kisses. A greener world looks hopeful despite the wars and political intrigues. Kaka Maharaj has been pushing and prodding the realm of spirituality for the last four decades. He is nearing 78 years in age now. The coarse sheets of materiality slowly shedding; he has a sagely countenance now. Meanwhile I have been plowing the field of paperwork and books. But we somehow manage an effective communication—me with my theoretical knowledge and he with experiential one.

‘Now for the next three years I will stand in the pond water for tapasya!’ he declared a few months back. I let out a low-toned defiant muttering against such austerity in old age. We had a discussion on this and I’m able to convince him to settle for maun vrata, the vow of silence, now and then. Since then he has kept the fast of silence for a month on average and speaks only when someone like me makes it impossible for him to keep his vow of silence.

This time I visit him after more than a month. He has a rope swing dangling from a banyan branch and supporting his old torso on it he meditates on his guru. I find him very drained out this time. He slowly writes on the page of a pocket diary I have gifted him for the purpose. He is having fever for the last one week. He can’t feel his feet from the knees down. He can’t feel the presence of his head and face above the neck. Then finding the diary and gesticulations insufficient to convey all he has to say he drawls and forces out vocal sounds. ‘In any case writing and trying sign language is as good as speaking,’ he says in a feeble voice, his vocal cords waking up after a month of vacation and sleep. Then in measured tones he explains the matter. The story goes like this.

He saw a very strange and unique wild mushroom in the overgrown bushes and grass around his hut. A few insects were feasting upon it. ‘If these tiny ones don’t die after eating it, I’m a human after all,’ he thought. The mushroom was snatched away from the beetles in one quick swipe. Actually that’s how the ancient people must have discovered the medicinal herbs. It was something very nastily potent. Once it entered his system, stroke by stroke and pigment by pigment it almost turned his intestines inside out. ‘I’m thoroughly washed and rinsed from inside. I don’t think anything remained inside,’ he elaborated the after effects of that unknown wild mushroom. I’m glad that he has taken the bout of torrential diarrhea caused by some poisonous fungi as stomach cleansing. Of course it has caused some infection in his stomach which resulted in a fever. No wonder he is in bad shape. But he is very happy about discovering a detoxification treatment to cleanse the system.

‘I shall show it to you! And I will give it to someone looking to cleanse his stomach,’ he looks forward to spread the effects of that unknown fungi for the cause of humanity. I choke with fear. I tell him the story of Buddha’s nirvana. How a low caste devotee unknowingly picked up poisonous wild mushrooms and cooked them with devotional love for the visiting mahatma. The Buddha ate it despite knowing its poisonous nature. He didn’t want to belittle the hospitality shown by the poor man.

I try to dissuade him from risking his life by doing such experiments with unknown substances. He waves me off dismissively. ‘It has its purpose otherwise my guru won’t allow me to touch it,’ he is perfect in his faith. I also have some vague idea about the mysterious purpose it must have served in his system on his path.

Whatever is the intensity of ailment he never takes tablets or mainstream treatment. He starts laughing at the mention of the word ‘doctor’. He would be the last person to allow an MBBS to come near him even if he is dying. Well, he shows me his magical discovery. He has stored it in a utensil for some lucky person to be cleansed inside out. It’s tart black. Stinking. My head spins, ‘Maharaj, for God’s sake don’t give it to anyone. It will be plain murder. You somehow survived,’ I blabber with panic. Looking at me so serious and out of wits he somehow gets the message. I walk with him to the hand-pump to ensure that the last bit is cleaned and washed. I wish the insects good luck as he cleans and throws the black substance on the grass nearby. I’m sure it would count as a chemical attack on the insect kingdom.

At the end of a humid day

 

Usually the current days carry a severe air. And why won’t the days be heavy, laden with stress and anxiety? The modern culture suffers from the suffocating paroxysm of whooping cough—the cough of staying busy at all costs and milk every second for economic gains. But most of what we do as a species would sound as a practical joke from the perspective of those who seek the dimension of ease and just being.

A terribly humid, sultry, worn out and bedraggled day is downing its shutters here in my small yard and its little garden. Its pain and yearning melting away as it moves to the twilight, which is maybe just twenty minutes away. This is late August and after many rainy, cloudy days the sky cleared this afternoon with a feeling that we will have a few days of sunshine. A strange stability sets in; things settling down like a journeyman coming home after listlessly wandering in life without anchorage. The sky is full of dragonflies feasting upon midges and mosquitoes. They themselves are sometimes shot down by the swallows, neelkanths and bee-eaters. Some boys tattle and prattle on the roofs, their kites almost hung at a point in the humid air. These are slow but sweatily stupefying proceedings.

Most of the butterflies have retired for the day. Just a few of them still dance among the peregrina clusters. As I watch, a grass green butterfly that I thought was sleeping on a leaf nattily floated down like an old leaf. An imperceptible death. I pick it up. It’s fresh and beautiful but its ounce of life has flown away on an eternal journey. It’s a sad sight to hold a dead butterfly. I leave it among the flowers.

Two juvenile butterflies—siblings, friends, lovers?—are wise beyond their age. They retire early under a big tulsi leaf hung horizontally in a musty safe corner. Good night, have a lovely sleep you girls!

The next day is sunny and the peregrina blooms have dozens of dancing butterflies right from the start. But I find those two still asleep. Then one of them got awake a bit after seven and joined the revelry among the blooms. The other was lazier. It got up around eight to have its flying, fluttering fun.

Solitary trails

 

August rains have been far more in intensity and volume than the normal mark for the month. The solitary trail is overgrown with grasses, reeds, weeds and shrubs. One has to walk very cautiously at each step to avoid naughty snakes. It indeed is a solitary trail -- with one exception. A lone man rubbing hemp leaves on his palms to collect the black soot on palms that will turn to weed. Mother nature has been kind to him. Long rows of wild hemp plants on both sides. He will collect a few beedis worth of weed on his palms. 

He is a silent, peaceful man, gently working on the leaves. He is not overcautious like most of the so-called tee-tootlers who don't touch meat, wine, drugs and weeds. But they carry their own nasha of power, influence, wealth and politicking. This silent man readily agrees to get videoed and photographed, just making a little request to not put on 'net-pet' as he puts it. 

Weed inhalers are generally laidback people, not harming mother earth with their overblown worldly aspiration. Yes, they harm their own interests and their family's. But they aren't too spirited participants in the chaos that is being splashed around by the so-called sensible gentry. 

I don't support and encourage weed smoking. But these people are cool in their own ways provided they keep it balanced with their duties to themselves and their families. It would be an icing on the cake if they decide not to get married because marriage is a big responsibility and if you get married you ought to get yoked into fulfilling all responsibilities instead of getting into a relaxed trance. Marriage plus weed smoking don't go together.    

The green, shimmering, sashaying gown of mother earth fluttering to monsoon winds on my solitary trail. 

Sarus cranes are a symbol of lifelong fidelity. In a world where real love is getting pushed into the corner each passing second, the sight of a crane couple in lush green is nothing short of an auspicious sign. It's a shy couple. They just kept walking and didn't allow the gap to be decreased by my curious steps. 

A friendly drongo. She isn't camera shy and allows photoshoot from close quarters. Definitely a confident, good looking girl of the drongo world. 

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

Kaka maharaj got angry about something and left his hut for a new place. This hut hosted him for more than two decades. The tiny hut is now getting mixed with nature as grasses and shrubs grow with full freedom around it.  

The handiwork of weaverbird boys to invite girls to have a look and if they like it accept the suitor and settle for domestic life for the season. Some romeos have put great effort in elongating the grassy foyer to a great length. It's always a fight for the most beautiful girl through most impressive means of wooing. .  

The solitary trail  is indeed a solitary trail now. Clad in grasses and reeds like a shy countryside lass. A lovely musty solitary feel on it. You just inhale musty silence and sweating peace here. And each slow step counting as meditation.  

The mountains come to my solitary trail in the form of river sands. Their slopes broken by the rainfed angry rivers and the sand arriving here in the form of canal sand. You can feel the essence of Himalayas in this sand. Take a fistful and smell. Yes, it's Himalayan smell. 

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

Tears and black flowers

 

They emerge from the prodigality of entanglements, like mushroom sprouts from the savage and fertile humus in the human soul. Destiny chuckles with perfidious pleasure as it pushes them onto the stage—faceless, no defined character role, just fuddle-muddle-headed lousy slow-creepers among the smart stampede of noticeable boots. Most of them are pushed by abhorrent native circumstances. And they somehow float into relatively better parts, their existence as trivial as slut, scum and scamp. They move tactlessly, all of them bearing the marks of ravaging thunderbolts back home—civil wars, genocide, hunger, poverty, natural calamity, systematic targeting and the likes. All of them sharing the same pool of ineffaceable memories of pain and suffering. Destiny holds them tight. They are mere harnessed horses pulling at the traces and pathetically biting at the bits as if to douse their hunger with it only.

They come from different regions and religions but look the same—poor scum of the society. Snatchily squelching in the survival sludge, they chatter in various unknown dialects. But it’s the same language, the same script of poverty. It’s the same sobbing choir. They might be Rohingyas, Bangladeshis, Nepalese or anyone from the poorest parts of India. They share their very own unique nationality of disadvantages, oppression and exploitation. They simply barge in to survive, to stay alive. They aren’t welcome but they smartly swim in the stench of sewage drains, rapaciously picking up the discards like these are tasty, pickled raw vegetable slices. They pick up and eat and accept anything at which even the poorest local won’t even look. They do this so that they are seen to survive without giving competition to anyone. They pick up what even the native rag pickers won’t touch.

They know that capacious ears get pricked up to catch their presence. They stoop so low that no one feels slighted by their presence. Their glum disposition would enable you to see through them like you would through a pig. Thoroughly gnawed and devoured, they scamper stealthily like big rats in the sewage lines. Then sometimes malice and temptation catches a few of them, inflicting a cold-blooded derangement to the logical part—a small section where some sense still exists despite such horrible emotional trauma—in their poverty-knotted brain. In chocking resentment, depressed and downcast, the horribly miserable being slays someone’s good fate. Some crime is committed.

Ceasefire and reconciliation

 

We have been turning on our heels in antipathy—he moving away with a snarl and me with mouthfuls of cuss words holding something in my hand to ward off any potential attack from his side. But the profoundly irresistible dislike for him has melted a bit after his dusk-time play with the newly dug pole. The next time when I see him I offer a good banana. His imperial majesty looks suspiciously. In any case he will steal, I think, so it’s better to offer one myself and gather some good points in his books. The supreme monarch of the simian kingdom in the village is aware of the risks of fruit traps by the humans. Huddled in utter detachedness to my ceasefire offer, he simply looks away. I’m again on the verge of faltering, capitulate and cave into anger about his not accepting my gift. But somehow I retain my composure and leave the banana on the compound wall. He arrives casually after some time—as if he didn’t know about the banana and merely found it on the way. What attitude! He sniffed at it with extra-dilated nostrils. Vah, the royal connoisseur of the olfactory art! He accepted it in an off-hand manner as if his highness has done me a favor by doing so. I’m relieved that I have bought peace for just one banana—no broken branches, no angry snarls, no foul words, no mangoes mangled on the floor.

A couple of days later I see a lady monkey with her infant. Driven by the far-flung memories of encounters with monkeys, my initial impulse is to scare her away using hard words, stomping of feet, brandishing a stick and a lynching tongue well in toe. She makes a sound which only a mother can, a kind of request to hold my temper because her little one is there. Her red face peering at me from a space in the roof railing. I hold back my reaction and immoderately throw a guava on the roof. Immediately I see him emerging from his secret watch post. He claims the peace booty. So he was watching me! I hold another guava for the mother monkey, but two monkey lads—teenagers, his sons from the previous season of love—smartly gallop and one of them claims it. Meantime, he gives me an avid scrutiny from a distance. Ahaa the art of autumnal armistice in the monsoon season! It scoops a handful of pleasure and peace for both parties.

He sits solemn and recalcitrant while his brood is enjoying within limits. A miracle! His old wife, the one with the infant, has her tail missing. There are two young boys and one young second wife. I’m not in a querulous mood today; as a result neither are they. All of us play our parts in conflicts. If both sides don’t add their share, peace prevails. He sits like a monarch—with astute magnanimity. His lads fidget and dolt around, crawl on a cable to reach a tree outside the yard and pluck leaves and buds to eat. I laugh at their antics and natural laughter makes one amiable and solicitous. All this is harmony-augmenting stuff. Today I have not given them a fright; they haven’t reacted on their part. I know he is stealing glances at me while I’m suffused with the wonderful sight of his tailless wife showering maternal affection on her baby. She is relaxed and lies belly down, legs dangling on both sides of the parapet wall, her tailless pink bottom gleaming under the monsoonal sky, her chin supported on the wall, the baby playing in front of her face; tranquilly and lugubriously she braces it behind the ears to find out any lice. This is all-surpassing love and affection.

There are no stony stares and distrustful eyes, no scandalous alertness, no sly ingenuity, no tenacious passions, no gratifying deceit. Just a normal world with pulsating excursion. A soft and supple world that can easily turn treacherous and ferocious if we don’t hold our respective parts of peace. They are enjoying on the terrace. Today I don’t make them feel that they are marauding thugs; don’t snivel and dribble with cuss words. He has a despondent and limpid grimace on his face. I have to go to my den on the terrace. I’m moving up the open staircase with a book and the day’s newspaper in my hand. As I reach the landing, I see him moving along the railings just three-four feet away. There are no glowering looks on either side, just traces of timidity. He just double checks by sniffing in the direction of the book and moves away slowly and sits on the wall, his back to me, assured that I don’t mean any harm.

His brood is playing but surprisingly they haven’t raised the usual ruckus. I think like Moi and Noah tried to come to terms with each other’s presence in the ape movie, we both also should try to come to terms with the reality of our respective existence. I have to understand that he simply is a father fighting for his family. Theirs is a big fight for survival in the concrete jungles. I can’t expect them to be well behaved all the time. But are we ourselves as such? So I can try to buy peace like I did this time with a banana, two guavas and a behavior missing reprimanding words.

All of us should try to buy peace. It’s not costly; hate, anger and wars are very costly on the other hand. They burn relationships and countries. Let the bigger issues be decided by big authorities. I shall prioritize buying peace with the monkeys in lieu of some fruits. I mean with this group at least. They keep moving across the localities. But for the fresh truants I reserve my right to act, behave and jump in the usual ways when they will arrive to slay peace. And I’m sure they will.  

In the slow rural lane

 

A bright morning always has been the stuff of legend—even on sultry, humid monsoon days when the sun seems to accentuate the musty torture. The morning sun cuts through the humid air; the sunrays seep through the humidity as if checking the proliferation of poetic anachronism pervading in this little yard. The peregrina flowers are abloom with narrative vigor. Tiny crimson clusters playing cultural cameos for a brief time. The lemon green butterflies are busy among the flowers as if holding musical dialogue with them. The small crimson flowers hold their jam, soup and syrup on the breakfasting table. Happy breakfasting you little chits of flying colors!

Poets are merchants of dreams. I copiously inhale my profits from the sight. Beyond the stony walls of the gawky and showy world, I marvel at the unrestrained seduction of the butterflies by the flowers offering their nectar with graceful candor. Then my eyes go to the ground and meet a sight—sad and sweet. A tiny classical tragedy spun by death and its heartless desertions. My emotion is sweetly sorrowful. I pick it up. A dead butterfly. It’s not deeply disquieting as death usually is when beheld from such close quarters because the colors of a dead butterfly are still peppered with sweet life-giving allusions. Your eyes become luminous when you hold a butterfly even if it’s a dead one.

Life and death are always engaged in melancholic-joyful, lengthy-short, haunting-uplifting, bitter-sweet tussle of duality. A butterfly carries its colors with such astonishing simplicity! I hold the fresh butterfly corpse bearing the trademark of colorful flirtations with life. The rest of her ilk are busy among the flowers with elegant gaiety, unmindful that one of them lost the air in her wings and fell down. I’m sure it was a painless journey for the winged beauty. As I hold it in my hand, I catch the sight of a bright blue kite stranded in the top branches of a prickly keekar. Monsoon storms have mercilessly chaffed at its once flying self. The kite also flew with charming airy anecdotes, scurrying off in different directions, challenging the power of the holding cord. Aflame with desire for freedom, it swayed with suppleness and airy assiduity. Well, it had its mundane magic and handful of revelry.

Life is only about playing for big (or small) stakes. It’s our choice basically. Some have easygoing disposition, others are loquacious with an ever-faltering composure. The butterfly corpse is still endearing and demure with its feminine colorful liveliness. I give it a leaf burial.

The sky is full of dragonflies. They feast upon midges and mosquitoes. The bee-eaters and swallows scoop up the dragonflies. Relentless tragedies side-by-side to vibrant ecstasies. And the sepia-tinted trilling call of a bee-eater is a treat to my ears. How will this vocal beauty emerge if not for this game of life and death? Though steeped in commonness and stashed in ordinariness, everything is magically so-so special. And like snuffy scholars we have to seek and shape that beauty with our eyes, our heart, our sensitivities.

‘We have seen a big black snake just near your gate!’ many people have warned me. I can understand their spasmodic delirium at the sight of a snake even if it’s non-poisonous. I take their information with a pinch of salt. I expect it to be a harmless rat snake. A dangerous krait won’t usually be seen in broad daylight because it’s a nocturnal guy. Moreover, it’s smaller than the ones they point out with their arms stretched out to meet many feet. This one they say is huge, so they confuse it with a cobra. But a cobra will always announce its presence with warning hisses and a taut hood. So my choice filters down to the harmless rat snake. And I’m proven right. My sister comes raising a war cry against the snakes, ‘It’s there…didn’t I tell you!’ I rush to the spot and find a big rat snake inspecting our toilet in the yard corner. Its size scares the people. Still on precaution, I thump a stick near it. It doesn’t raise a warning hood, confirming what I think of it—a rat snake not a cobra. I just beat the ground near it. It slithers out and enters a little section of the covered drain in the yard formed under the steps leading to the toilet. It sneaks into the tiny culvert. My sister is jittery with fear, so I push a stick into the narrow inlet and prod it out from the other end. It slithers away with its curvy, crawling majesty.

A rat snake is very fast. It just vanishes from your sight in a moment. I think it will return at night. It is most welcome to stay hidden during the day and thus not scare the family females. But I know the benefits of its presence. I haven’t seen even a single mouse in months with this resident reptile around. And no frogs as well. During the monsoons there would be so many frogs in the yard that they would even challenge my right of an evening stroll after the meals. They would keep bumping against my feet during the pensive walks. They even leave a sticky substance on collision with you. It isn’t good for one’s skin. No frogs, no mice—welcome my snake friend!

But one frog is very clever. It entered the house while very young. It’s an old country house where a frog can hide with safety. It’s grown up now. I hear its adolescent croak at the dinner time from some hidden corner. It feeds upon fleas and other insects so need not go out and risk its life. O yes, forgot to mention it. I saw a cute little baby monitor lizard in the store. It isn’t gavera, linked to the myth of a poisonous reptile, as they say, which can kill a person. It has harmful bacteria only in its saliva. I am not too bothered about it. I hope it will go out when it comes of age.

A visit to the Ivy Cottage, Mr. Bond's place

 

Being an avid Bond fan, I once thought of writing him a letter—a real handwritten one posted through the traditional mail. Just the typical Ruskin Bond image sitting and looking from his window for inspiration is enough to lighten my being. He has written for fifty years from the same spot. What stability! I usually go to bed after reading some pages from his collections. It makes the world feel so simple beyond all complexities. Long time back I almost met him. Well, that is a good story in itself. Recently I thought of acting on my resolution of writing him a letter—a real handwritten one—and post it with one of my books. I’m scarcely confident about my handwriting but here I wrote carefully like a secondary school boy. The letter was never posted. The other day I saw it in the sheaf of papers and thinking of doing it some justice I reproduce it here:

Dear Bond Sahib,

Hope your cutely funny bone is still strong enough to help you keep going on the literary path. We need it. I’m an old man—into my fifth decade—pretending to be a child in my excitement while writing to one of my favorite authors.

I have seen you once in real life. In fact we had a short talk. It was in the autumn of 2006 or 2007. I climbed up the hill to reach your place, Ivy Cottage. And what a timing it was in terms of my arrival! There you were at your favorite window, restfully looking into the misty distances in the valley below. I’m an uncouth person—almost. I startled you by hollering some crazy fan lines from the road below. I hardly knew what I was shouting in childish nervous excitement. But I remember I had also piped, ‘Thanks for giving us so much lovely literature sir!’ Well, this I clearly remember. Probably it got you out of the marveling eerie born of my muddle-headed verbal volley from below. You were generous enough not to pour water on me. ‘Come sometime when I’m free,’ you gently said. How I wish I was some butterfly or a sparrow and land on your window sill to find out if you are free!

 

Well guys, the unsent incomplete letter carries a strange sad charm. Isn’t it?

Recently I thought of giving it a try to meet Bond Sahib. I plan to stay at Mussoorie for a couple of days and try my luck.

I’m walking on the Mall Road looking for a suitable accommodation. Something catches my attention. A glimmer of hope. It’s a small hotel named ‘Write Star’. Very attractive name so I go in. Something in celebration of writers, a rarity. And a writer looking to spend a night would obviously go to a hotel named as such. The boy at the reception has watery eyes and a guilty startled look, possibly due to being new to the job. I enter the tiniest lobby, hailing their naming sense in hyperbolic terms. But my enthusiasm startles him even more. After he uses all his brain to make a sense of my congratulating eulogy for their name, he manages to say, ‘Yes sir, Bright Star is a good name.’

Well, he thought they are named Bright Star! My mood dampened and I came out and started to walk up the Mall Road. I intended to stay very near to Bond Sahib’s residence, popularly known as Ivy cottage, to maximize my chances of spotting him.

It was a literary pilgrimage from Library Chowk to Ivy cottage, Landour on Lal Tibba hill. As I said I made it a goal to at least see the literary prince of the famous hill station, if not meet him personally. He is ninety and deserves to spend his time in the way he deems fit. So I thought of basing myself at some modest hotel in Landour Bazaar, a little down the hill from his residence. Packed like a mule I walked almost 6 km uphill, panting and exhausted. When was meeting with famous writers easy?

There I stood on the narrow road by the famous cottage whose window overlooking the Doon valley has opened so many pages of simple, beautiful stories, notes and sketches. From the frustrating chaos, Ruskin Bond, with his famous ease and poise in life, draws our simple, charming, funny, witty strands to spin lovingly flowing threads of simple words, which he uses to weave beautiful stories. He makes life look so easy and tolerable. In fact reading him at bedtime is almost healing in nature. It calms down your nerves. After a hard day his words have provided balmy support during cold, dreary nights. I feel like thanking him personally.

His house has changed a lot since the last time I remember it. It’s gratifying to see a writer’s economic fate taking a healthy shape. Ivy cottage looks very impressive now with new front tiling and fresh paint. I think they have added another floor. It looks a safe and happy place, solid and equipped to shelter and protect an old writer and his adopted family. It has a solid roofing now, in contrast to the corrugated tin roof that had given in on a stormy night, pouring water into his study. Now there were more impressive windows looking into the misty valley below.

Right in front of his house I had a brief talk a man whom I found sitting by the road on the bend. He turned out to be a kabadi wala. He tells me that he gets an opportunity to go to his study to collect old newspapers and other paper waste that he might consider to discard. He tells me that Ruskin sahab is still in possession of sharp wits and can walk enough to attend to his private needs.

The narrow, steep staircase ascending right from the road seems inviting. But as you crawl up to the small landing and look at the main door, a quite, respectful message on a plaque softly whispers to you to protect his privacy by not buzzing the doorbell. I hardly stand a chance of getting admitted. Then a group of about ten young men, fresh-faced collegiates, appeared on the scene. As the college boys enquired about meeting him, I sensed my chance of sneaking with them. He is children’s and young boys’ and girls’ favorite author. I think maybe he will oblige these young flowers. So I encouraged them to queue up on the stairs and somehow pluck out a chance to go inside. I positioned myself in the middle of the line so as to troop in with the young students.

They were well-behaved boys, lovers of books; not the ones who arrive here on thundering bikes with flashy girlfriends sticking to their backs and then go on to loosen the bed hinges in cheap hotels, spurting stains on the bed sheets, filling the waste bins with used condoms. I think in entire Mussoorie that day these were the ten odd boys, well behaved and lovers of books who came to meet Ruskin Bond. I am sure all of them will do well in their lives.

‘Please don’t ring the bell’—we are staring at the request. The polite author is still better in not putting a warning sign such as ‘Beware of dogs!’ They are decent boys. Reading the plaque none of them dares to break the rule and press the doorbell. We were whispering encouragement to each other to give a slight knock at the door instead. That won’t break the rule written on the plate. Then their maid came upstairs, squeezing through the crowded stairs. She was visibly irritated. Who would take the extra trouble of attending almost a dozen uninvited guests? She went inside carrying our request to at least see him from a little distance and just pass greetings.

She returned after a moment and told us that Mr. Bond was away. He was at Dehradun for his grandson’s birthday and would be available at Cambridge school on Saturday. We were knocking at his door on a Sunday—long way off the mark. But the boys had their fan moments, a very diluted one though. I talked to them as the self-published author of about 20 books. Since they were already in that fan mode, they readily accepted my writer status. We held a little discussion about the pleasure of reading. I gave them tips about writing and shared my favorite books and authors with them. They even took a selfie with me.

Ruskin Bond’s house on Lal Tibba hill is a great literary landmark at the crest of the queen of hills, Mussoorie. Having read many of his books, I could easily identify the places that have inspired his stories. So wandering through Landour bazaar, clock tower, church, post office, camel back road and cemetery gave me a surreal feeling of being in his tales personally for the next two days. It’s sad that I couldn’t see him at least. Although his maid says he is in Dehradun, but maybe he was chuckling from behind the door while he passed this innocent lie. But it was nice to have a feel of the places that have inspired the stories of one of India’s greatest and most admired living writers. Well, as I said, 18 years ago he had dodged me when I had caught him sitting in his famous window. It was a smaller world then. Mussoorie was far less crowed. His house looked pretty ordinary. And when I harked his attention he mischievously said, ‘Come sometime when I’m free.’ Well there is always another time and I’m hopeful.          

Considering with care

 Some parts are extremely fragile in us, our Achilles heel. Stay guarded about them. That’s where we need family, friends and partners to help us defend these weakest fronts.

Similarly, some parts are extremely hard in us. The sharp edges. We have to mind them to avoid those near us getting pinched and cut by them. Or we can use these hard edges to defend the weak, soft spots of our near and dear ones.

The rest part of us comprises plain normal, the lukewarm good-bad of life, the normal pitch on which we usually play. This is actually our living room where we spend most of our time.

As long as we are mindful of each other’s hard and soft spots, we can have a very lively time in the normal big part of ourselves.    

The BPL Card

 

It’s May and wheat harvesting is proceeding under the tyrannical fits of a blazing sun. The summers are getting hotter each passing season; the springs arrive with lesser flowers; the autumns have less windfalls simply because trees are vanishing; and the winters are losing their chilly pinch. We seem to have internecine conflict with mother nature, the same mother that gives us birth and nurtures us. The interminable monotony of growth models unrivalled; the capricious ingenuity to further dent mother nature. The economic models are basically the schemes of profligacy in which the rich are getting richer and the poor turn poorer. According to a survey, just forty wealthiest Indians hold wealth equal to that owned by 700 million people collectively. India might be gearing for five-trillion economy but this hardly matters to the millions of poor Indians. There are white-collar crimes that further tilt the scale in the favor of the moneyed class. Everything related to the poor people is getting into a pell-mell situation. So there are vertical towers of soft, upstanding class and horizontal slum-spreads of hard, down-standing people. But these ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ categories are just apparent surface realities. In deep reality, the poor people are very brittle, they crumble and scatter; the rich possess the hardness of wealth to give them a steel armor. But there is one occasion when the rich and the poor stand in the same queue, carrying the same worth—the election day.

The Government of India runs Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY), a kind of mass charity or bhiksha to make the beggary masses atmanirbhar by providing food grains to migrant, poor laborers and below poverty line families. Well, how will you make a beggar self-standing by giving him 5 kg food grains per month is quite a mystery to me. It also provides subsidized food grains at 2-3 rupees per kg from fair price shops under National Food Security Act. These are provided to Below Poverty Line Families (BPL) and Priority Households (PHH) who are issued a special ration card to help them avail this paltry grocery to keep the fire going in their kitchen.

I need Rashe Ram’s services for a task. I call him. I’m relieved that his number is working and his tiny handset is intact. His voice comes with overwhelming despondency from the remotest desolate corner. He sounds drained out, sounds indifferent and complaisant. He is cutting wheat so that they can store wheat for the season. I’m surprised to hear this. These days the daily wage laborers in the village avoid taking this soul-sapping brutal work with sickle because they get free and subsidized ration and use the spared energies for other wage tasks. The two brothers (both unmarried) and their widowed mother are cutting wheat furrows to get enough wheat in storage that would last a year. The youngest brother works at a needle factory at a paltry monthly income. It saves him from the sun and rain at least, he says. His wife rests at home and freshens up to launch reinvigorated tirade once the workers arrive home. That seems to be her task, which she takes very seriously as is proved by her shrill harangue that subdues all other lesser noises in the neighborhood. All in all, it’s a poor family, very poor I should say.

‘You don’t get free and subsidized ration?’ I’m scandalized. ‘No!’ the gentle giant demurely replies. The bizarreness of it strikes me. I have seen rich landowners (from the village standards at least) taking away bundles of free ration, most of them on bikes, and some even in cars (can you believe it?) so that at least their buffalos may eat that ration. My head spins as I realize that their cattle are eating a human’s share.

Morality, law and ethics are scrunched under boots by those who can manipulate the system at their level. They simply fix with the village head to get a free ration card even though they don’t fulfill even a single eligibility condition. Law is crunchy and crispy. It gives a nice grating, surrendering sound under thick boots of the strong. But it easily pierces the naked foot soles of the poor. So the local gentry has a heyday on the date of free distribution. Plunder, pillage, desecration, savagery, debauchery of the strong and the mighty—seeping from the top lions to the neighborhood bullies. I have a vision of poor Rashe Ram and his family—mute like a flayed sheep. They are undoubtedly the most eligible family for a free ration card in the village. And they don’t have it, while literally everyone from car-owning richies to the bike-owning filthies is having this almost ubiquitous item. You just wish for it; and there you have it.

To be eligible for it the annual family income should be less than 1,80,000 rupees. Theirs won’t reach even one lakh from all sources even if we add the sum of their mother’s own housework at the most exorbitant pay scale of a housemaid. The household is headed by a widow (another prominent eligibility condition); they have no assured means of subsistence or social support; two brothers are uneducated and single with no socio-economic support; they are far lower down the caste hierarchy; they are landless agricultural laborers, earning livelihood on a daily basis in the informal sector (which isn’t regular in the strict sense and work comes randomly not amounting to more than half of the month, the rest of the time they are idle). It’s an ideal below poverty line family deserving a free ration card—more than anyone else in the entire village—but they are left out. The system can be—usually is—merciless. I’m hit by piercing remorse and torturing anguish. My cloister morals nudge at my overwhelming poetic lassitude. I can feel how it feels to be denied your right.

I ask them to bring their documents. ‘And don’t forget to carry the registered mobile number for the Family ID!’ I emphasize. The government has futuristic conceptualization—digitalization. Every household must have a Family ID linked to a registered mobile number. His brother—a lanky, stoic fellow whom I have never seen speaking—stands in front of me with chronic somnolence. He has their documents in a green polythene bag, faded, jaded, frayed and holed. Poverty has a peculiar inertia. It will seep into torn polybags and prevent the fresh ones from replacing them even if these are available for free. I take out the documents. They carry the dog-eared smell and myth of poverty. Poverty gives spankings. It mollifies all confidence and courage with comic candor. One stands guiltily as if just by being poor he has committed a crime.

I drive the bike with virtuous and upright air. The lanky boy pillion rides with his documents, almost weightless and invisible, shaped by the grating struggle of hard labor on construction sites and agriculture farms. We reach the SARAL Kendra at the village’s other end that facilitates such tasks. I broach the subject to the young man operating it. He belongs to the village itself and runs his operations from a room in the village chaupal. Karne (real name Karan but who bothers about the real name of a poor man) stands in a corner with a mournful autumnal air. He wants to be invisible. I share the poverty-shaped bleeding reminiscences of this poor family. ‘And still they don’t get free ration and I see even people with cars carrying away free ration like loot!’ I’m at a loss of words.

The guy is slightly acquiescing but cold and taciturn to begin with. ‘Give me the registered mobile number for their Family ID,’ he says with professional air. The number is the key to the digital portal. No number, no entry to the digital world. Karne shares the number with lots of effort at mustering courage. As a poor man you hardly believe yourself to be a full human. You think you are sub-human and that makes you guilty and at loss of all normal sense of dignity. The man tries to log into their account. ‘Share the OTP!’ he demands suddenly and sternly. Karne is all focus on the tiny basic handset. No OTP. I fear the number is dead for not being recharged for a long time. No balance. The SARAL Kendra guy looks exasperated and peers at me as if to say what a dunderhead you have fetched here. I’m not the one to bungle even the slightest chance here—at least in this episode. My smartphone is the saving grace for both me and Karne. I take a chance and recharge their number. It buzzes back to life. Money is more important than even air these days. Dead phones come alive with money fed online. There is an OTP. Good news. I’m elated. Our efforts are bearing fruit. ‘Thank God the number wasn’t closed forever!’ I’m full of gratitude to the almighty.

‘In the Family ID records their annual income is shown to be three lakh rupees,’ he drops the bombshell. ‘This is the biggest digital lie!’ I lose my breath and fumble with words. Karne’s head must be swimming with shock after hearing this mountainous sum. They don’t earn even a third of it. He is sympathetic to my vexation. ‘See there are about 800 free ration cards in the village and not more than five or seven are eligible in reality,’ he is very honest about it. It’s easy business. The village head doesn’t want to antagonize anyone applying even if he has a big house, car, tractor, AC or large landholding. The personnel from the Block Development Office usually don’t come to inspect the applicant’s socio-economic status. Signatures of the village head, a member of the village council, the local government school principal and another committee member do the job. In fact the kind boy running the village SARAL Kendra himself puts the signatures of all these people to further facilitate the process and allow governmental charity to reach each and every home. In this scenario, whoever applies gets a free ration card and you have a big crowd on the day of free distribution.

Here my dollops of witticism won’t help me. I have no problem regarding ineligible people getting free ration. It’s a far bigger game—country level—so let the mighty lions handle it. They know it and if they are comfortable with it, I have no reasons to object. My only issue is that a truly deserving poor family should also get its due in the scheme. ‘Get an affidavit in his mother’s name declaring her status and income,’ he instructs the logical course of action. I feel mettlesome in spirit on this particular day. So there we go to the town to get the affidavit typed on a stamp paper. The notary is a full-of-mischief chatty guy. As his assistant types the affidavit he is giving most ingenuous schemes to a man whose wife has gone to her parents after getting beaten and he also getting thrashed by her brothers as retaliation. He is giving very crooked plans to use the law for the man’s benefit. Then he looks keenly at a cowering Karne and throws an advisory gem, ‘He looks mentally retarded, we can write this as well.’ For the first time I see some reaction on Karne’s face but he keeps silent. ‘He is at least mentally sounder than you,’ I’m about to say but let it go.

We return to the village with the new affidavit safely tucked among the old smelly papers. The affidavit needs his mother’s thumb impression. But we cannot locate her. We scan all the poor localities to find her, thinking she must have gone to some woman friend in one of the poor neighborhoods. We turn the cap inside out but to no avail. Maybe she went to some agriculture farm or to cut wood, we conclude. I leave the paper with him, giving him a gel pen with loads of clearest instruction how to lace the thumb with ink and put the impression on the designated place. Inspired by the mischievous notary even I doubt Karne’s mental faculties, so emphasize each point multiple times. Even he turn restless. But all my fears are allayed when he comes back after an hour with the task done to a reasonable accuracy. A milestone crossed, we have the income affidavit. The task will be smooth now, I’m sure. We again go to the SARAL guy so that he can upload the document and further process the application.

There is a fragrant ruffling of the sense of justice in me as he hits the keys and peers into the screen. Then there are traces of discomfiture on his face. ‘Seems like they have already applied for the correction of income figure in the Family ID. But they didn’t upload the supporting document,’ he brandishes the fresh affidavit. ‘So you can upload it now,’ I gently request him, acknowledging the silver-headed staff of authority in his hand. He shakes his head firmly, ‘No it’s showing the status as pending and we cannot restart the process for this particular application number. The system doesn’t show any upload option.’ So the system is already the master of its will, I silently rue and think about my misgivings about artificial intelligence. ‘Who guided you to apply for the revision of income figure without submitting the income self-declaration in the form of this simple affidavit?’ he sternly asks Karne, waving the useless piece of paper for which we had gone speeding like formula race drivers to the town. The poor guy looks as if he is standing in the dock in a court facing some criminal charges. I come to his rescue, ‘It must have been done by his youngest brother. He is fifth pass and knows a, b, c, d,’ I save Karne. ‘Yes, he spoils everything,’ the ever-taciturn Karne breaks silence. I’m sure his anger is targeted at his sister-in-law who harangues them profusely. I hope they won’t have a fight at home, accusing each other for depriving the family of free ration.

The guy respects my focus in this episode and is at least sympathetic to my cause if not the wellbeing of Karne and his family. He gives a call to the Block Development Officer based at the town. She trusts him in all the income verification matters. As long as he is there she need not bother about unnecessary hassles of the landed farmers sticking to the point of declaring themselves below poverty line to get some free ration for their cattle. So usually she simply asks this boy to get all the signatures done without verifications and all the applicants get free rations—the relatively poor ones for their kitchen and the better placed for their buffalos. It’s not that this particular pair of SARAL Kendra guy and the BDO are committing a scandal here. It’s the norm, almost a law. The government knows it and they are comfortable about it. The more the benefits reaching to all the people, the more the chances of votes.

They hold a talk over phone. I listen still holding onto the threads of hope. She knows the case. She even remembers the widow’s name. With a sullen face the boy disconnects the call and tells the story.

If an application for the revision of income figure stays pending without uploading the self-declared income affidavit, the BDO visits the family house to verify the socio-economic status of the applicant. So she had come for the inspection. She knew that they deserve this more than anyone else in the village. People with havelis are getting the benefits, she knew it all. But on this rare real physical inspection her hands were bound by the law. It’s a pucca house, a tiny pucca house with a concrete slab roof. And to be eligible for a free ration card one must have a kacha house apart from all other eligibility criteria. ‘But all the houses in the village are pucca and even palace dwellers are getting free ration for their cows because they have kacha houses on paper,’ I grumble. ‘But in the eyes of law they are kacha houses because there was no onsite inspection of the property and in the report they are poor households even if ACs are humming inside and cars are parked in front. But this house is pucca house as the report says,’ he enunciates the law to me the ignorant.

He is genuinely sympathetic and tells that these guys are just unlucky because on the day of inspection he was away and the BDO sahiba had to personally visit the site for inspection. Had he been present in the village that day she would have simply asked him over phone without coming and he would have given a nod like the rest of the villagers. To him all are neighborhood peasants and he cannot be cruel to anyone’s application. ‘After all, it’s the farmers’ own grain that comes back to them,’ he has a point. ‘The government loots us in so many ways, so if this little bit comes back we welcome it. In any case it’s ours to begin with,’ he elaborates. I understand his point and tell the entire story behind this so-called pucca house. ‘See, let me explain this pucca house story. Till ten years back they stayed in a 30-yard hovel with their horse and bales of fodder. The horse even bit Rashe, his elder brother, on the jaw and he still carries that slurred speech due to the resultant defect. Karne himself was kicked on his back as an infant. I remember him crawling till the age of four. I suspected the kick has deformed his spine and he would crawl throughout his life. Thank God, he got to his feet! Then their lame father died in a road accident. The rich car owner paid them ten lakh rupees for the out-of-court settlement. Out of this, two lakh were pocketed by the smart lawyer who managed this settlement. The rest they used in buying a 30-yard plot and build this so-called tiny pucca house. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t the poorest in the village and they fulfill every condition to get a free ration card. Their mother is a widow. They don’t have any landed property apart from this house. They don’t have regular income. They just work as casual farm hands or construction site workers for a fortnight at the most every month because work doesn’t come regularly. Sometimes they are all without any job throughout the month,’ I baulk out their poor story, its each line seeped in poverty.

He is sympathetic and feels sorry for the episode. He calls the BDO madam again and tells her the entire story. She also is very sorry for their bad luck to have a tiny pucca house that turns them ineligible for free ration card, while swanky marble-walled houses get free ration. She then suggests a solution. She cannot prepare a report today and nullify it tomorrow. ‘There is just one solution. Can you please ask the village head to give it in written that he granted money to help them build this tiny pucca house? If he gives it written that the village council donated funds to help them then I can afford to effectively nullify my earlier report,’ she tells the SARAL Kendra guy. It’s also confided from her end that there is no other way. So we are scuttling around to find the village head who is on an outstation visit. I have serious, practical doubts that he will write this declaration. The house is a decade old and he is just one year into the job. Even he has his position to safeguard.

My frozen pessimism begins to thaw under the onslaught of cruel May heat. It oozes out and makes me swim in the current of its comic tragedy. I tell them that their only chance is to visit the village head as and when possible, with their widow mother in tow, and keep beseeching for help to raise the prospects, which they diligently do two-three times every month. I sometimes meet one of the brothers on the way to their work site and ask for any update in the matter. ‘Yes we go there sometimes and sarpanch sahab says yes he will look into the matter.’ Hard work is a big bulwark against such sensitivities of life. They are busy in the rut of life beyond the concepts of justice or injustice. But sometimes I feel the dull rumbling of sadness for their failed cause.