A drop of love in the poisonous pond

Many, many full moons ago, there was a beautiful princess in a tiny paradisaical hill state. As the nature’s blooms touched new peaks, her beauty still raced ahead more to scale newest charms. The nature spread across the far-flung wild trails sang the songs of her majestic beauty. Cool gusts of pure breeze did its duty to spread the charming tales of her beauty. For miles and miles her fame measured distances in just arm-lengths. 

There was a handsome prince in a kingdom which was at war with the princess’s state. The effusive tales of her beauty seeped into his thoughts, imagination and dreams. A sweet pining lynched him. Looking at the state of affairs between the two kingdoms, it was futile to nurture such dreams. But he was helpless. Days became boring and nights turned endless. It was just impossible to drive her out of his heart.

The much famed face was haunting him every moment, teasing him, daring him for bravado. Then unable to take it anymore, he untethered his horse and set out in pursuit of his destiny. It was a dark stormy night. Owls were screeching ominously. Wind was warning of risk. And the darkness was daunting. He appeared a futile chaser running after a mirage in a tragic race. He cut all fears and darkness with the steely point of his determination and went full gallop into the corridors of uncertainty.

Untamed wind came to subdue his young heart, and spanked his brave, soldierly chest. But he moved without taking any rest. His heart was at rest only in the pursuit. If he stopped for some time, his soul felt unbearable, became restless, forcing him to move with more speed and sturdier determination.

After a month-long suffering in the ravines, he reached where the much acclaimed star of her beauty shone. There was a risk of getting recognised, caught and, surely, hanged. He wandered in her kingdom in impersonation. The very air felt so antagonistic, but the pull of her fabled beauty kept him in pursuit. The myth of her beauty came spooling out of every mouth here and there. There were very few who had actually seen the precious jewel of the kingdom. The rest had their boundless imagination and endless stories to satisfy their curiosity.

His eyes were aching to have a sight of her, at any cost, even at the cost of his life. His suffering, pining heart was laden with cold sighs. He had been trained well in all the arts of war and disguise. He was taking out every plan from his well trained mind and skills to meet his goal of seeing her. He was just waiting for a chance to get the shower of her bloom to drive away his heart’s gloom. In his frantic search, he grabbed a chance at last.

It was a full moon night. The moon was lit at its fairest bright. The princess came out for a boat ride in the marvellously calm lake. He stealthily waited in the shoreline foliage. His chest shook with a thunderous heart-quake. Like desert sand waiting for rain drops for years, he lay in wait. The moment seemed so near, and yet impossibly far. Each passing moment appeared like years.

He was just above the princess’s safe, secret bathing marble platform. The white floor exotically gleamed. The stage welcomed the royal lady with awed welcome. His heart achingly struggled as her boat arrived. Her maidens were giggling and teasing her for her beauty. He held his hand over his broad chest as if to calm down his thumping heart, lest it exploded to make a big sound.

The paragon of beauty was adorned with filigreed silky finery. In silent majesty she put her adorable feet on the gleaming, cool platform by the waterside. Waves rippled through him with a coquettish chide. Her hallowed figure distinctly glowed over the group of helping ladies. His thoughts stopped. His world froze. And time got stuck up in a trap. It was too overpowering for the senses to take it in a moment. He turned a stone, mesmerized by her beauty. The night was so tranquil, affable and disarming that she decided to take a bath. So her finery no longer covered her exquisitely carved curves. And the earth stopped spinning on its axis.      

The naked fairy jammed his nerves. There was statuesque glow of marble on her milky skin. Even moonlight appeared bathing along the curves of her extremely feminine body. A real life sculpture of utmost symmetry and fathomless sensuality! The moon-rays deflected off her curves and panting, pining reached his eyes. Every moment her moon-sculpted body acquired new vistas and highs. Her flowing tresses over her long, slender back lustily shook to her head’s gentle gyrations.

Her facial features were a bit lost in the milky mystique of the moonlight. But he heard the words spoken with mythic softness. He was but dying with the urge to see the face of the fabled carrier of the unparalleled beauty. So he came closer to fulfil his young heart’s only aim in the whole world. How can you stop a sunflower from turning to the sun? Nature suffuses our selves, our beings with certain helplessness. And such pining helplessness paves the way for what we make of our lives. They decide the path we take. They set up the course of our destiny.

No flight lasts forever. Gravity pulls us down onto the plain of reality. He was noticed by the female arm-guards. Their well-toned, almost masculine, arms tossed into action and grabbed the sword hilts. Surrounded by trained female warriors he still had a decent chance of escape through a fight. But how could he put a blot on this night by getting into a bloody scuffle with her guards? No, he was in no mood to go to war, even if it meant risking his life. The female armed guards advanced and surrounded him. The prince was thus caught. The scandalous air of the happening filled up the moonlit panorama.  

The next sun rose with its curious, perplexed rays, eager to see the consequences of blind love. The tale of his reckless misadventure was doing the rounds. People were offended, more so because he was the enemy’s son. The king’s throne literally shook with the young prince’s impudence and mindless transgression. He was seething with anger.

Revenge, revenge shouted the petrified air. It was the enemy’s unforgivable crime. The king sentenced the enemy prince to death at his youth’s prime. However, even when blinded by the scornful blasts of rage and revenge, kingdoms have their own laws, the inviolable laws that hold their bastion even in the face of almost unpardonable sins. Well, that is the thinnest line dividing the domain of mankind from that of animals.

The prince’s royal blood deserved the fulfilment of a last wish before his death. When they brought him out for the public execution, the public was jubilant. How dare he enter into the private place of their fairy like princess!? He came out with the regal confidence of a prince. His face still carried the finest smile possible on a handsome face. When the last wish was asked, as the law demanded, he just asked the permission to see her face in full light of the blazing sun, no cover, no veil, just her much-fabled face. He simply requested an eye-full brace of her magical features.

God, why thou create such bewitching creatures? During his final moments before death he was led to the courtyard below her ornate, marbled balcony. He stood there like a victorious soldier. His head held high, his chained hands placed on both sides of his slim waist, his broad shoulders drawn firmly and chest puffed up with the pride of a journey completed.

The star of countless eyes was then led onto the balcony. She beat the sun in the dazzle of her finery. It was the finest creation of God he had ever seen. A smile curved from the corners of his lips and he took a deep breath as if to soak the moment till eternity. Her sad eyes looked down at him without any hate and malice. It was almost impossible to be otherwise with that beauty. The prince too was not less on the scale of looks. On his manly features the smile lurked with such ease as if it won’t be dislodged even by the gravest threat of getting killed.

The princess knew that her face had been the bait, which would soon seal this life’s fate. She looked deeply into his eyes and tears welled up in those almond cups of beauty and love. He looked at her with such unmoving intensity as to take a deep, deep imprint of her beauty on his soul, where no dagger would reach.

She was taken away. And he was led to the public square for beheading. His every step told the tale of a victory.

A sea of sorrow surged painfully through the princess’s delicate self. She fell at her father’s feet with an utmost painful entreat. If he, the prince of an enemy state, was ready to die for the cause of just a look at her face, she was capable of going a step further with her feminine bravery to save a life, an admirer, a brave man, a man having a heart full of love. It boosted her guts. She was ready to go to any length to save him.

“Father, it is not his fault, but the result of my well-meant kiss! He is not a stranger. Your daughter secretly tied the knot with him. If you kill him, sorrows and sufferings will cross ocean’s brim. A father would widow his daughter. For ages known will be this slaughter! And if you still send him to gallows, another death surely follows!” she was crying profusely and fell at her father’s feet.

The King loved his daughter more than his own life. He didn’t remember her tears through her lifetime, for he had always undone any cause which may bring tears to her beautiful eyes. How could he let this darling flower wither away? Thus, smiled on many fates a new ray!

A drop of love transformed the pools of poisonous, hateful waters. It turned a fountain of brotherhood, non-violence and cooperation. They were ceremoniously married. The decades-old animosity was buried. What a humane outcome of her wise, petalous whiff of courage! For the newlyweds a marital bliss, and for the two states a friendly kiss!

Long live love! The only substance that can consume the endless fire of hate!

Here is the end; here is the beginning

Mix the contradictions. Make a paste. Mix the duality. Grind it well. And you get nothing in the so called ‘everything’. Is there any hard and fast line between the so called two ends of our perception? Is ‘black’ only ‘black’? Is ‘white’ only ‘white’? No. They seep into each other and define each other, apparently, relatively. Dark is not just ‘dark’. And light is not just ‘light’. Dark is only ‘less light’. And light is just ‘less dark’. Duality sustains on our sense of ‘ego’. It turns our consciousness into self-consciousness. Is there any pure, unadulterated ‘pleasure’? No. Pleasure is a state of having lesser pain. Pleasure has a mild dose of pain in it. Always. Find out a person who has no trace of pain in him. Is there any condition of just having ‘pain’? No. Pain is just having lesser degree of ‘pleasure’. Pleasure carries pain in it, and pain carries pleasure in it. Our ego stretches the point of reality in two directions for suitable duality, of contradictions. Imagine ‘twilight’ when day’s rising light mixes with the night’s vanishing darkness. The balance. The melting of duality. Is there any state of something being perfectly ‘cold’ or perfectly ‘hot’? No. Cold is just lesser hot. And hot is just lesser cold. The reality just gives the illusion of apparently getting stretched in opposite directions. It’s the see-saw battle. We look this way, then we turn to the other side. By subduing the element of ‘self’ from ‘consciousness’ one can get a balanced vision. Then the funny mirage of seeing two avatars of the same thing becomes visible. The two things are inseparable, and are just our conveniently defined two points on the plain of reality. Death is not just death in itself. It is the beginning of life, of birth. Birth is not just birth. It is the beginning of death. Same is the apparent duality of creation and destruction. They don’t exist separately. For an event and happening to occur, there has to be a balance between the two. Like human body survives on the principle of the balance between creation and destruction. New cells are continuously being created and old ones are dying. The circle. It holds the key to the mystery. The reality has loops of the so called dualities going side by side, at all points, at all points. The counterweights. The balance. Going on and on in loops. The ever-expanding universe and the ever-dying universe. In loops. In circles. At countless points. Forever. Explosions and implosions. Blasts and suction. Circular loops. Creation and destruction. Creation and destruction. On and on. In circles. Expansion and suction. Going from nowhere to nowhere. And passing through the point where you happen to read it presently. 

Use the leftover spirits from Valentine Day and use it to cerebrate Earth Day

It’s Earth day today, passing off like any other inconsequential day. Valentine day makes a far bigger noise and catches attention. Media is full of it. People themselves are so eager to celebrate it. Nothing wrong with that. Symbolism of love and affection in relationships has its utility and importance. But it also shows how confined and limited, almost self-seeking, is our interpretation of love and care. Mind you it might even be merely skin deep, shallow and funny.

The best part of being human--our beautiful emotions and awareness of good and bad--has been imprisoned so tightly that we just trample ahead with our tiny boxed up, suffocating emotions, totally unconcerned about what is getting squeezed under our feet. We carry tremendous insecurity. Every fellow human is a competitor and rival to beat. No wonder the things that really matter, the matters that are make or break for all of us, the great common ground, hardly get attention. So the plight of mother earth is not that big an issue. It’s the nightmare that we simply delegate to the future generations to face and suffer about. If as parents we sacrifice our present to make our children’s future, cannot we just take a few more steps to be bothered about the future a few generations down the line?

There is a rat race of domination among all the countries. There are elaborate geo-strategic plans to capture the future for themselves. Plunder of natural resources and development of weapons of mass destruction, genocides, communal killings, where does it take us all. Mankind is certainly the most aware species on earth, but the most foolish as well. Of course foolish because what else it is to keep moving in a direction where, in complete knowledge of it happening, there will be fire and destruction. It’s as foolish as setting the house on fire, and getting full throttle creative about setting a luxurious bed for a night-long rest.

So the biggest stage—mother earth—is shaking and creaking under the hooves of prudent-most animal on earth. What value the victory carries if the place you have fought over is bound to be crumbled to pieces in future? What does a luxurious bed stand for if the house itself will burn? Hope the earthlings realize that the biggest reason for them to feel insecure is for mother earth itself. Other levels of insecurities, and the consequent strife, confrontations and wars, come later. Even the fights of ego need a solid stage. What does victory mean on a crumbling planet?

Suppose the aliens approach us. And they will definitely. It’s just a matter of time. Won’t we be simply earthlings in the face of a common threat? Then these caste, class, communal and national divides will melt. It’s high time that we realize that the great commonality which supports and sustains us, mother nature, is under threat.

There is a common enemy, environmental degradation, the result of our rampant plunder and greed. Let it be recognized as such and a fight launched against it. Let it be done before it is too late. Because the cycle of destruction, once it crosses the critical limit, becomes irreversible.

Save earth! Celebrate Earth Day with as much fervor as you celebrate Valentine day!

Highway Murder

Do you think only you have the right to tell you story? No man, no! Even we trees have the right to tell the tale of our life, especially when the main protagonist is man, the master of nature presently. So listen you all, humans as well as nature. The two are different now by the way. Listen!

Well, I am a great eucalypts tree standing by a road. They are killing me. The iron is hissing and kissing the rings of age in my stout trunk. I stand benumbed and in daze. But I have to speak out before I fall. Possibly you listeners will spot the crime and just—at least—have some of the pain I feel while I am being slaughtered.

Well, I feel really bad about it. I never thought the end will arrive so soon, without any notice. There is no storm threatening to uproot me. It’s a very fine day, and all the more suitable to the humans to carry out their act of greed. My killing but is unjustified because I have been fulfilling all my duties assigned by mother nature to me.

The way I have gone overboard in carrying out my task, I think I should have been lucky enough to see the majesty of upcoming wintery full moon. The moon-rays are very naughty I tell you. You may be lost in brighter self-created neon lights, but nothing can beat the beauty of full moon rays on a winter night. I pine for one more such night! Alas it seems impossible! I have to take solace by remembering the past only. 

See, you may not realise it but your tools of cutting, your axes, saws, scythes and blades are very painful. I have to impose anaesthesia on myself for I cannot even cry like you guys. Still I can feel the saw’s butchering the bloodless flesh in my guts. But poor me, I don’t even have the blood to put forth the evidence of a murder. Even though my flesh is as good as yours, but mine doesn’t bleed so even the sanguine interior as they saw through it, appears simple painless stone to them. But I feel the pain, I swear. Just want to tell. Please don’t take my cutting as simple as breaking a stone.

It’s a hazily sun-lit winter noon. It appeared such a balmy day. Looking at the people moving onto their destination. But then they suddenly arrived like hounds. I was even surprised why so many of them arrived and started prodding me, slapping me out of my languorous spell. I don’t even know whether to throw my almost harmless, inaudible curse at these fellows or the state itself that has authorised my murder to broaden this already fat road.

Let me be clear on this. It’s a murder. You may prefer to call it just cutting wood. But there is a life inside. Never forget this. Don’t I grow like you guys do? Don’t I do my duty of purifying air and providing shade and provide dead and even live wood, like you people claim your utility?

For many decades I have been standing as a serving helper to both man and nature. During older times, this metalled road, this carrier of huge traffic and so called your ‘progress’, was simply a dirt road. It was my friend taking your forefathers to their common destinations. Nobody was in damn hurry like you people these days. I stood here as a milestone reached by a tired pair of legs, by a rickety bull-cart, who halted under me, savouring the shade I provided. I felt so proud of myself.

This very path has turned a foe now. It’s a highway after all. The merciless, fast-paced carrier of growth. It has turned a parasite now. It needs more space. Damn it, they don’t need shade and pure air now. These can be easily managed in the metal boxes that hurtle day and night on it. So I’m redundant and old. I have turned a blocker of progress with my few square-feet of foot-hold.

Man, again I try to shout and remind you that if a healthy mass like me is no life, then yours is also not so important. By cutting us you are cutting yourselves, for you are nothing but merely an extension of our world. A mere reflection of the nature around you. We gone, even you will be gone. Haa fools, now I can afford to call you as such during these final moments, for you cannot even see the precipice you are heading into.

Man, now it is hurting quite a lot. But I have resolved to keep telling my murder story till the axes, scythes and saws send my tiniest of branches to be turned to ashes in some poor household’s fire-place.

We trees never wince with pain as your axes spray chips of our flesh. Just because our flesh is different coloured doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain. We do, man!

We had equal rights till mankind was just a part of nature, not the master of it. Now this saw going deeper and deeper into my bloodless guts reminds me of our inevitable fate. Every tree on earth now has a deadly date with the greedy most, treacherous and unforgiving mate.

Haa the cowards! Forever playing so safe! They know that I’m huge. Poor things are afraid of my fall. Little do they realise that a tree’s pride is in standing tall and upright. And we do it till the last ounce of our strength. I am not going to give in that easily. They have to earn my dead body. It cannot be a cakewalk. Let them have blisters on their hands. It will serve as a proof to my murder.

Little do they realise my commitment to my duty, my oath to mother nature. Even in the face of death, I cannot stop playing my part in nature. As they are robbing me of my few square feet of space on earth, my saplings are still giving them life, still doling out oxygen under this winter sun. I am helpless and bound to my sworn duty. I cannot be vindictive and stop fuelling life into the lungs even if they happen to be my murderers. Even my murder cannot change me, helpless as I am due to my nature.

Now the saw has gone pretty deep. I am getting the signs of that eternal sleep. There is also an unbearable pain in the so called painless mass. Death is death after all. Hope you understand.

Like hangman’s noose, thick hemp ropes are tied to direct my fall. From a safe distance tractors are pulling to bring down this wooden bull. They are worried, but are assured of victory. There are too many of them, with steely human determination to win, to stifle any chance of failure. No, I don’t see any chance of a miracle. It’s as hopeless as it can be.

Now I feel it. The death blow. The pinnacle of their jeering selves. A  cleavage breaks through the portion still holding me to my mother earth. From softest saplings to rock hard tissues my whole self is panicked. But still I have to tell the tale of my murder before I finally fall. My saplings are crying like innocent children. The hardest of trunk tissues are shamelessly crying like the battle hard, handsome soldiers on their knees after losing the war. Death is after all death. Who wants to cease to exist?

Who cares? Nobody. This big snapping sound is my death cry. And here I fall with a thud. Yes man, you win. I am dead before I thought I will. 

The murderer and the robber are just an arm-length away

Feeling lucky not to have come across a real-life murderer with blood-ridden hands and a dagger in hand? Feeling at ease not to have faced a robber, with muscular barrel chest, eye-patch and devilish beard running away with yours and others’ money? Well think again for you might be grossly mistaken. There are murderers and robbers on the prowl around. And in far more numbers than you can ever think even in your wildest of horrifying imagination.

It can be your sheepish looking, harmless milkman, holding the potent weapon of slow death over the years. Yes the milkman with his passable crime, with little doses over months and years. In India the fight for self-survival is so rampant that poor milkman won’t flinch an eye before mixing urea and adhesives like Fevicol to make adulterated milk. It breeds death, slowly over months and years, with no sign of a murder committed. For the milkman all that matters is a successful day with all the pots empty sold out. What happens later is none of his concerns.

It can be the sweet-tongued sweet-maker pampering your sweet-tooth with an affable smile and still honeyed words. Yes the sweet-maker with his shortcuts to profits with fake milk derivatives and cancerous chemicals and colors. And there are many, as many as you count the sweet shops, except for the few moralistic ones. India is crammed to the guts, and the mere struggle to survive, at any cost and through whatever means, justifies the end and more bucks in the wallet.

It can be the poor-looking harmless fruit vendor. You even end up having sympathy for him. Little do you realize that the fruits you presume to add to your life are in fact cutting into your days. Artificial, cancerous-chemical-catalyzed ripening, waxing on the surface to make stale fruits look fresh and scores of other devil-devised machinations to get some more bucks at the cost of disease and destruction in others’ livers.

These are the murders on the safer side of law. Nobody dies instantly. Death comes slowly. It’s a causeless disease. Nobody can be blamed. They vend out poison slowly, in mild doses. They add a day to their survival at the cost of minutes from the lives of those whom they serve.

There are robbers around as well, in clean shirts and socially respected avatars. Law cannot touch them because they don’t rob out rightly like the condemnable criminals barging into a bank and running away with the whole vault of money and gold. They do it in slow sips over years, as invisible cogs in the corrupt machinery. In both governmental and private institutions and departments these legalized robbers sit on their desks with an affable smile and clean slate. It’s facilitation money. The extra money has to land invisibly into their pockets to move the process stuck at their check-post.  

Then there are countless petty criminals and transgressors, stomping their way to their destination at any cost. It’s an ant-swarm. Law never looks more impotent than in the face of such brazen frequency, everywhere, every moment. Spitting, urinating, defecating, shouting, molesting, eve-teasing, raping and countless other forms of violence from the mildest to the heinous most. It makes it seem as if the rulebook is just a draw of lots for all the criminals around. Only a few are unlucky to get their name taken out as legal offenders. The rest clap for their luck for being left out.  

So there are mass murderers and robbers all around. And law cannot sneak into each and every soul to arise either fear or conscience to think of injustice done to others’ in the struggle to survive. Poverty and greed make a person too thick-skinned to be sensitive to the world beyond the self. The only option is to hope for a generational shift when more people will be aware of the issues beyond the limited self.

Unfortunately with the Indian population ever-exploding, and more people fighting for diminishing resources, it seems a dream to visualize a society where the milkman, the fruit-vendor, the sweet-maker, the government officials will become humane enough to be self-responsible and follow the laws even if there is no apparent risk of getting caught.

Law-abiding instincts get honed over a period of time.  It’s like stopping at a red light on a totally empty road, in the depths of night, with absolutely nobody around, and no fear of punishment, but you still put up breaks, and smile. It gives a strange peace to be self-responsible for such tiny transgressions. Just looking forward to a day when majority of the Indians will come out of the pit of self-obsessed survival and be self-responsible not just for their own survival but for others’ convenience as well.