Ice cubes on desert sand

Summers. North India has started to burn. Heat has broken the record of past many decades. Temperatures above 40 in the last week of March. In the desert state of Rajasthan things must be even worse. Sand as the birth soil isn’t too attractive. It must be having its nostalgia, but on a day to day basis it appears a curse. Ask the ones who are born there. So many people come out of Rajasthan to avoid the burning cauldron during the summers.

Two lanky boys are moving across the streets of this Haryanvi village. Haryana is a semi-arid state. But for somebody belonging to the desert state, semi means almost full: full with life; full with bread; full with water; full with green trees.

They are tall and thin. They have migrated from the desert state. Necessity has pulled them out of the sand like water flows from higher level to the lower one. They have to beg. But begging has its own share of pitfalls including reprimands and harsh words.

“Why don’t you study? Why don’t you work?”

So they have put the saffron sail cloth on their poor boat. To sail safely. Holding onto the winds of faith. Their clothes are soiled. But the saffron sashes around their necks indeed cover a lot of holes in their personas. They expect to be taken as wandering ascetics. They have even mastered the artful words of bringing blessings to the house they stand in front of.

The woman chides them the moment they knock against the rusty iron gate. They but decide not to be deterred by the initial rebuke. Stealthily they steal glances at the two small cars parked in the front yard. These are old cars. But to them a car is a car. Hummer or Maruti 800 doesn’t make any difference.

So they continue with their blessing words of good fate, long life, endless prosperity, and more. It’s morning and yesterday it hailed and rained a bit to take temperatures a bit down. To them it seems like a land of perpetual rain and prosperity, although it rains marginally more than from their homeland. They have thorny trees there; here there are some semi-arid varieties like neem etc. And that changes the world for the best. It’s a shift from worst to best.  

They see the woman cannot cross certain limits to turn outright abusive and threatening. This is the chink. They have to prod their way in.         

“You have hard words but heart of gold. You can never think ill of others even if you sound rude,” the elder one nails it.

“What do you want? No money I tell you! I can only give you some flour,” her voice mellows down.

They let their foot further in. It’s an opening.

“There is no better doing than feeding the hungry. A direct holy deed. God sees it instantly,” they take their chance.

She seems to be awaiting God’s attention on some front, so agrees. They barge in. It’s a spacious house with peeling plaster and mundane furnishing like you see anywhere in a village in Haryana. To them it’s an abode of prosperity. They sit down on the unplastered brick-laid floor in the courtyard.

It’s too early for the family to have their lunch, brunch or whatever. So she makes chapattis for them. The vegetable curry is already done. They can see the chapattis are coming straight from the tava, not the stale leftovers from the previous night that people usually give them and thrown to the stray dogs. Every times she comes to put another chapatti they are ready with more words of blessings from the God.

The younger one asks for ice. They must be having refrigerator he has guessed right. It is available in every household here. Ice is luxury to him. He comes from burning sands. Pitchers burn like hot oven there. They drape sack clothes around these and pour drops of precious water to prevent it from boiling. He has already many ice cubes in his water utensil. He opens the lid and checks out to see how far these have melted. He is concerned. It’s melting. He wants replenishment.

“Please give me ice,” he is literally pleading.

She laughs at him. “It’s not that hot this morning. There is cool breeze,” she says.

But he looks at her with eyes that are crying for ice. She has to get it.

As she pours the cubes from the tray into his utensil, she can see the twinkle in his eyes.

Ice that is just ice to her, is precious to him. He has seen fire in life. Fire that seeps in everyday life. In desert. Ice has a bigger meaning to him than anyone else place better than him.

She notices it now. His clothes are also wet. Not dripping exactly, but he must have been completely drenched thirty forty minutes back.

“What happened? Did you fall in water?” she asks.

The elder one is laughing. “Water turns him crazy. Hardly any water back home. We take bath almost once a week. When he saw the pond outside the village he straightaway jumped into it,” he is laughing.

Water that is just water to her, is luxury to this boy. She tries to fathom the reason for his ecstasy over ice cubicles and pond waters where buffalos waddle, but fails to understand. Little does she realize that people run out to count drops of rain on the sand at his native place. So water is luxury to him.

Like most of us fail to understand that the things that seem dustbin cheap to us might be luxury to so many others. That a broken doll on the garbage heap, a shiny wrapper, a single wheeled broken toy are still items of luxury to many others. If we do, then we won’t begrudge about the problems in our life.

The art of emptying

Well before you take steps to fulfill your dreams, learn the art of emptying, of letting go, of letting out unwanted mossy dregs in the container of your destiny. Emptying isn’t defeatist. It’s not surrender. It’s a calculated step towards victory, towards fulfillment. It’s the preparation for gain, the beginning of filling up. Instead of running after the mirage of fulfillment, focus on emptying. Fulfillment is just a step away. Fullness starts at the moment of complete emptying. Wash, scrub, rinse and drain out the muck from the pot of your destiny. Wash away hate, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desires, phobias, complexities and overblown ambition. Drain these out. Let it be a perfectly clean and swanky pot of emptiness. The universe is expanding. It wants clean chambers to pour its energy into. It will sneak into the clean house in the form of your dreams and aspirations. The swabs clinging to the bottom are the repellents to fulfillment. Clean these. Work on emptying. Work on emptiness and you are in fact moving towards fullness. In a perfectly clean container there is no limitation on fulfillment, no hurdles to materialization of dreams, no restrictions on infinite cosmic harmony pouring its vastness into the container. A scribbled canvas has limitations of painting, a clean one has infinite possibilities of shapes and pictures. Scrub the slate clean before you start the journey. Even if it means a lifetime of emptying, it still will not be a loss. Even a second of fulfillment will be worth it. It will still be better than pouring the nectar of your efforts in an unclean pot, and just adding onto the stinking broth that never gives happiness and satisfaction. A clean empty house is a magnet. It pulls positive forces by itself. It's natural like gravitational force. It invites fullness. Complete emptiness invites fullness. Put your house in order. Set up your invitation to fullness on the door. Forget about the rest. Very soon you will hear the knock of fortune on your door. Like water flows to pits in earth, good luck naturally flows to clean, emptied, tidied containers. Come on, let your share flow in!  

The hypocrisy of portraying half-Muslims

Muslim women cannot wear burqa and men cannot support the typical beard that gives an Islamic man pride. Marriages cannot be held as per Islamic rules. Nikah is not allowed. Marriages are to be secular in nature. Polygamy is not allowed. No madrasa education in mosques. It has to be secular education. You are not allowed Ramzan fast. It’s Xinjiang province in China, the home of Uyghur Muslims.  

Well these are the basic roots a common Muslim identifies himself with his religion. Cut these and what is left? Does it mean the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang in China are half Muslims?

Pakistan, the self-appointed official voice of Islamic conscience, is comfortable with these measures. China is an ally. And Muslims there, despite all repressive regulations, are full Muslims. And China is the best prospect for Pakistan’s growth. One simple message: economic and geostrategic measures are far weightier than talks of religious rights. The latter, even if these are raked up, are just simple tools to score strategic battles having nothing to do with religion. Religion is just a tool of bigger battles and the instrument of spilling innocent blood.

Come to India. Triple talaq, an exploitative practice of female repression and which has been banned in many front-running Islamic states including Pakistan, still pervades in India. Mullas wear this right on their sleeve, brandishing it as an identity. Ramjanambhooomi, a place as holy to Hindus as Kaba and Mecca to Muslims, held in abeyance to pay service to the nation’s principled secular constitutionality. There is not even a single law in India that stops Muslims from following any of the ritual in theological rulebook. But to Pakistan still India is a Satan repressing minorities forcing its biggest minority into half-Muslimhood. And Pakistan gets diarrhea over this. China gives it the pill to cure it.  

Conclusion. Geostrategic animosities have bigger causes than merely religion in fuelling the fire. Religion is just one of the many dry woods that are hurled into the fire of hate-mongering.

Pakistan accuses India of repression in Kashmir. Every single Kasmiri Muslim can go to the end of earth in following his religious rituals. Indian state absolutely doesn’t exist in this domain. They even allow triple talaq, at the cost of thousands of lives destroyed and future of Muslim women put in dark, to keep the principles of secularism afloat. Indian security forces have absolutely no concern about the beard, Ramzan fasts, pilgrimages, polygamy, triple talaq, madras education, mosques and each and everything identified with Islam.

Still China with Xinjiang regulations is a friend, a benefactor of the champion of Islam. And India with its Himalaya high heaps of Islamic rules, customs and regulations with Maulvivs and Mullas sitting over them with their secular shield against any transgression, is a repressor.

It has nothing to do with religion and repression. It’s all about power and land. Religion is always a dry fodder, liable to catch fire. Throw the missiles of hate into it. It will burn. And it burns in Kashmir. At the cost of innocent lives

Is it a holy war there? No, it’s a dirty war of ambition and territorial aggression. It’s a simple power game. To substantiate their lip-service to the cause of Islam in Kashmir, Pakistan must openly criticize Xinjiang regulations against Muslims. Otherwise it exposes its hypocrisy in Kashmir. And with the hypocrisy exposed, it basically becomes a law and order problem in Kashmir. 

Inhale your portion of wellness

It’s a lush green forest around you. Birds are chirping. It’s early morning and a cool breeze is blowing. Nearby, gurgling waters of a brook add music to the stillness around. You feel better. It feels good. The external orderliness, peace and calm raise the bar of your better feeling. With the same set of your own individual, internal, self-specific problems, worries and concerns you feel better if the surrounds are better.

The desert sand is burning. It’s noon and forget about trees you cannot see even a blade of grass for miles. You feel horrible. You feel bad. Worse than your self-specific set of worries make you feel normally. You feel bad if the surroundings are not convenient.

We cannot inhale in isolation. If there is misery in air, it will enter your lungs. Use air-masks and air filters, do whatever. Life still will be stifling and genuine efforts just a struggle because we cannot help inhaling our share of the miseries. The solution lies in cutting down on pollutants. Not in wearing masks. But when it comes to our struggle to increase our happiness, the efforts are almost as useless as wearing masks when the air is polluted.  

Our own set of factors that make life either good or bad are not the sole deciding elements in making us happy or unhappy. If we are happy, then we are just sharing a fraction of the overall happiness surrounding us. Our lungs are safe just in proportion to the purity of air around. If the quality of air is good, only then the individual battles like quitting smoking, eating healthy and doing yoga to keep lungs safe will be meaningful.

If we are unhappy, that also is a fraction of the overall misery spread around. Individual is just a constituent of the whole. Happiness is drawn from the overall pool. How long the frogs will sing songs of self gratification in a vanishing pond? Its waters vaporizing. Its shoreline decreasing. Stanching green mossy puddle. What can be drawn out of it? Only death and misery, not life and happiness.   

A talented software engineer, with his tools of prosperity and happiness, is of no use at a place like Somalia. There is no surrounding prosperity to help him nurture his talent. There is no supportive economy and companies to help him contribute to the overall wellness and get a fraction of the happiness and feel good. A software engineer prospers in America because using his skills he can contribute to and earn back a fraction of the happiness spread around.         

The surroundings set the stage for either make or break.

“Love thy neighbor!” By loving others you are loving yourself. By caring for others, you are caring for yourself. By contributing to happiness, you are adding to your own happiness because your share of happiness and prosperity will be just a fraction of the overall happiness around. With your effort and skills, you draw a big portion if the social forest around you is healthy like the natural forest where each breath installs new vitality in you.

Long before you really start doing something to add to the overall wellness around you, start with a simple practice. You might be busy with scores of neck-breaking responsibilities, leaving you with very little time for real action on the goodness front. Start thinking good of others. Think good for your surroundings. Be happy over others’ victories. Smile over somebody’s stroke of luck. Feel bad for somebody’s loss. Say some sympathetic words as well. Over years, the goodness in womb will get healthy. It will deliver a healthy baby. And sooner or later you will definitely ‘do’ something to add to the overall goodness around you before you finish your journey.

You will then have a larger share from the pool of wellness. When the sun will be setting and you preparing to enter the night for rest, you will walk into the forest with well-meaning steps. It will be a far happier retirement than it would have been otherwise.

The hedge that is forever trimmed to maintain the power center

Political extremists (both left and right) and religious fundamentalists try to change the masses for the worse. Cut down the people to a fraction of their potential and you have nice governable puny-heads. They serve meow meow. For instant gratification. Hate, phobias, pseudo-greatness, anger and jealousy are very convenient tools to rob someone of sanity and get cast as a hallucinated pawn in the power game. Those who are power hungry—individuals, groups and institutions—try to disempower those to be under the influence of their power. It cannot be otherwise. The power pyramid has few strong at the apex and weak masses at the base. It can never be a square, having people of same realized potential from top to the bottom. Those ambitious for power can never think of empowering the masses. In that case the pyramid loses its standing. With pseudoism and populist rhetoric they rob the masses of the balance of their judgment. Hate does it. It tilts you off the balance. You fall prey to weakness. You become lesser of a human being. The power monger’s ambition draws on the peoples’ weakness of judgment. They try their best to keep the people to be nearsighted. To tame them in a sphere, with unrealized potential, from where the launch-pad of wisdom is too far. It draws votes for the power hungry, in a day to day life but it is paid in terms of racial attacks in America, brutal killings by Islamic extremists, attacks on Africans in India, and scores of incidences when people pick up hate and run after each other.