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The parrot and the old sparrow

After a long, hard and wearisome journey, the parrot realised it was no longer possible for him to fly anymore. The sundown was imminent and along with the great fire ball his willpower was ready to surrender and call it a day. His wings tired, his temper losing its balance, and his beautiful colours mired in the hard journey’s perspiration--although it was winter--the parrot landed on a branch.

It broke his heart, this inability to continue on his march to the lowest set milestone for the day. But then it had been a very tough, cold, stormy day. There was no sunlight during the day. When at last the sun prevailed over the icy chaos, it was the time to call off its duty and light the other world.

The winter was at its peak. And anxious, drooping, panting was his beak. With every precious moment left of the day, the saffron slanting rays were melting into misty bays. More emboldened, the cold was creeping up. Its pinch was becoming bold to take everything in its hold.

With sad eyes the parrot ogled at the setting sun. His run had been too long and taxing. He had long forgotten the flight’s fun. Where was that fleeting, winged pun? With each breath and laboured purr, restlessness crept further into his perturbed fur. Each moment passed, pinching him with a realisation of loss and failure. With each mile the journey had become a drag. The vigour and energy, which had lifted him with brag, were now dumped in a deep pit, from where it was not possible for him to retrieve even a bit.

Then even the last ounce of strength was hit. He was fighting to save himself from a fall. After all, he had so many miles to go. The height of his flight was becoming continuously low. Finally, he bowed before the eventuality and anchored his feathery weight on a branch’s restful bait. Halting, but, didn’t bring the relief it should after a long march because he still had far, far to go.

“Merciless, frost-fanged will be the night!” he thought to his misery’s delight.

As the warmth vapoured off his body, shudder crept over with incremental ease. Anxiously he ruffled his feathers as if to loosen cold night’s siege.

“Where to spend the cold night?” he pondered from dejection’s highest height.

Everything appeared alien, uninviting and antagonistic in this freezing twilight. The night moved closer with a scary chuckle across the gray shades of the twilight. The night so near! It again put him on his toes. He realised the importance and utility of the remaining traces of the day.

He looked around like the feeble truth emanating from a sad couplet. For miles and miles everything appeared surrendered to the gloomy pal of a freezing, imminent night. All woods looked solid, unwelcoming and creviceless, without that niche that can become a bird’s hall. His despair and agony touched another peak.

His sad reverie was broken. He heard a muffled, breaking-free, old, juvenile chuckle. It was an old sparrow. The greyish patches in his fur long put under time’s harrow. The oldie was flapping its feathers in a water puddle. So old and bathing in such freezing winter’s hold! The young parrot’s senses went into a chilly huddle while staring at the scene in the puddle.

Even to a tired body, dejected mind and subdued soul, advice comes very easily.

“Hey such a cold night is waiting! Take care it doesn’t become death’s baiting! Old fellow you must take care and should not extend your dare to the extent of catching cold, fall sick and lie on death bed!” the warning came with ease from his beaten, sulking self.

The old bather, the fun freak, stopped in the middle of an ecstatic shriek. But within an instant his seasoned enthusiasm regained its footing. Again the old punster squeaked and chirped to match the huge heaves of happiness sashaying across his old turf.

“My old coat has enough room for the water to turn to warm vapours and shun and beat the death’s creepers. Each moment has to be lived like a full day before I fall asleep forever. Before that I have to live, and fear nothing, worry about nothing, and get everything that can be drawn from each and every moment. I have to milk the time’s udder totally dry bro!” it tweeted, whistled and made a frenzied display of dancing in the muddled waters.

The old sparrow had raised a storm: a riot of happiness; a cascade of mirth. In between he paused and pantingly opened his beak to fill his old lungs for more life, more vigour and more strength. The young, beaten, subdued and defeated parrot looked on from the branch. It appeared silly and illogical to him.

“What could have happened to make this oldie so happy?” he wondered.

With his saggy, drenched feathering, the sparrow heaved his old bones to fly to him for a hearing. The moment he landed on the branch, he brought scaring, exciting, adventurous jolt of mirthfulness. The branch shook with the force of his liveliness. The young parrot tightened his claws and ruffled his feathers to maintain his perch. He was hardly done with it when a vigorous pat landed on his left tired wing. The old sparrow’s right wing landed with a casual, supportive and friendly force. Again the force of the old bones jolted the tired young bones.

“Tired!” the oldie asked.

“Yaa,” the parrot could manage a weak squeak.

“Well, most often we get more tired in the mind than the body,” the oldie puffed up his chest, ruffled his feathers, and twitched his tail to rearrange his gear.

There was a little shower on the parrot. He shook with a sense of cold and moved away a bit. The distance between them was too little for two strangers.

“New to the place, hummn,” the seasoned native of the land asked the visitor.

The branch was still swaying with the inertia of the vital last drops of life in the old sparrow’s body. The newcomer insecurely, apprehensively, worryingly gripped the wood. A cold night and darkness was all playing in his mind. 

“Where are you flying to?” the oldie asked softly, suppressing his enthusiasm, feeling the parrot’s discomfort.

“I have to go far. Shouldn’t have stopped at all. But then my wings gave in,” the parrot sighed, traces of defeat and loss all strewn over his green.

The sparrow gave an assuring, comforting smile. “During the day, do your best. Night is just and just for the rest. No flight can last forever. Rest is not stopping. It’s just the beginning of another league in the journey,” there was mystic calmness in his old, dim eyes.

The parrot looked at him and sighed. He wanted to say so much about his trials, tribulations and unmet goals and scattered ambitions. Too much was striking inside to pour out. He preferred to keep quiet.

“Why sit here and ponder over the path which you can’t even see in this impending dark? Dear I have no family and live in my palatial hole in the trunk of a banyan. Come with me, my place is at your service!” The sparrow spoke with the grace of an old patron.

There was almost no choice for the parrot. In the hot pursuit of another mile, he had missed many a nice shelters on the way during the evening. Little did he realise that one has to stop. Stopping isn’t a defeat. It’s biding time for the victory. And when his body and the day’s last rays both gave in, stopping was enforced. He had to stop and now take the option that presented itself. He thus followed the old sparrow to his wood-hole. The latter whistled all the way, chirped songs and hummed notes of strange happiness.

“What makes him so happy?” the parrot following the sparrow again wondered.

They sneaked into the cosy, warm confines of the sparrow’s wood-hole. It ran deep and appeared perfect for the best sleep. There was a nice bed of softest sinews. The sparrow’s raw, bursting enthusiasm had turned to a palpable silence, contentment and restfulness which pervaded the wooden abode.

Outside, the weather turned as bad as possible in a single night. A horribly chilly, stormy night. No light for miles in sight. A furious rainstorm lashed the tree as if to uproot the earthy shackles and set it free to fall. But the tree was strong. After all, it was the choice of such a seasoned player, the master who knew the strength and fragilities of the woods. The banyan withstood the deathly throng.

“I live here all alone, but in constant company of my peace, rest and happiness,” the old host spoke with half-closed eyes, resting his slightly crooked back against the wood.

“What makes him look so happy, no longer in pursuit of anything?” the guest again wondered.

“Though memories and reminiscences sometimes sneak in through my door to moan over my beautiful, active, youthful past. Darted when I fast. Wooed damsel sparrows with mischievous finesse. Raised families, driven by my instinct’s pull,” there was a loud thunderclap outside and the narrator stopped.

Lightening struck somewhere. It shook the earth. A sinister flash of lightening sneaked into the shelter. The parrot shook with fear. The sparrow laughed and assured him of safety. He had seen many such storms.

“The storms aren’t there to kill. They support life, even though it may not appear on the surface. I have seen it. Most of our fears are phantoms,” he chuckled.

The parrot listened. He again made himself comfortable.

“Well coming back to my past that sometimes sneaks in to disturb like this lightening did to you now. Age then caught with me. Most of the beauties lie at a distance, teasing you to run after. My eyes but no longer see them. Feeble eyes you know! When I completely shut them off, my eyes, they even sense the death’s blood-thirsty hound. So I open them and just be myself. Me with my weak eyes. I just see the small, dimmed world sprawled in close proximity to me,” the old host paused and pecked his saggy feathering with his blunted beak.

“So his happiness is a compromise with his disability and old age,” the guest thought.

“You know what,” the host broke the parrot’s chain of thoughts regarding the compromise resulting in a forced happiness. “To justify a well-lived life, when the force of youth is on your side to propel you towards your goals, the conclusion, the slowdown has to be also well-managed, well-paced, voluntary, not an accident. Ending is as important as beginning. With an accidental, aggrieved ending the essence of the beginning and build-up gets lost,” the sparrow’s slow-paced words again dispelled the parrot’s just derived theory of enforced happiness born of old age and weakness.

The parrot’s body was aching and he would have fallen dead asleep, if not for the question that was puzzling him to the extent of forgetting the pains of his fatigued self.

“So I live happily as the tail-end of a great life lived. The force of beginning, starting, acceleration! And the path of letting it go, losing the pace slowly, gracefully, receptively. The deceleration.  Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop finally. It can give as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the final rest. And during the slowing down phase, the time becomes slow, the world is a small puddle around your feet. You live like in a dream. A slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months, months like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, one can live a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode,” the old sparrow coughed a bit, and then with a smile, telling his guest that all was well, took a pause.

A sudden grip of sleep would have drawn the parrot into a deep slumber but then he heard the words again. He driven and lynched by the starter’s force; the other one leading the rickety carriage to its stopping shelter. A journey completed by two characters. A life lived by two characters, separately, but summary being of just one life. A beginning and an end. The latter part was so comforting that it appeared to seep into the turbulent phase of his own first leg of the beginner’s state.

“Enjoyed I the choices that fate sieved for me. Just grabbed my share. Now I pick up and play among those things and chaff discarded that remain unwanted above as the fine particles, much in demand trickled below. But it’s great fun I tell you. In youth we just think that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. Life can be equally enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and twigs. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone,” the old host, away from the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where faintest traces of warmth touched his old fur before moving into the cold darkness.

The majestic slow down, as important and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning. The source, the beginning, and the slowdown, and the end. A cycle.

“And try even to get bold against this winter’s hold,” the oldie chuckled, patting his faded fur with the end of his wing.

“Has he achieved all he wanted in life to make him so happy?” the parrot wondered.

“During youth I flew majestically high to beat the cold with my blood’s warmth. Now wisdom swarms. I don’t go out in the storms. I just go along the gentle breeze’s pace. So I find ways to brightly light my days with these feeble rays. In this cosy wood-hole of mine, drunk I’m with my age’s vintage wine. I know that I may not go out of this hole to ride softly on time’s back at some dawn. When death will pick up the pawn. Leaving this old fur and feathering engraved in this wooden niche. But it doesn’t make me sick. That time hasn’t yet come. And I have the leisure of stretching moments till then to the capacity of my old bones. Also, that sleep doesn’t appear different from the ones I enjoy now,” a gripping calmness emanated from each word he spoke.

Outside, the storm was tossing with a self-ravaging fury, consuming itself, jolting everything around, breaking, snapping wood. The banyan was but sturdier beyond any storm’s destructive lust. It stood firm as if the calmness from the old sparrow’s restful soul was seeping into the wood, giving it strength.

The parrot had been in the hot pursuit of the orchards beyond the forests, deserts and ocean, where fruits of unheard sweetness lay more abundantly than the grass below, where the sweet cooing female parrots, of unparalleled colours and beauty, seduced youth to the pleasure’s farthest end. His happiness lay too far. How can he be happy till he got all that he desired?

“The pitcher of desires no longer exists. I dropped it long time back, realising its weight. If you have it, the desire to have it full can be a real pain, I tell you. Even if you kill yourself to fill it, and suppose you succeed, still there is no escape from the torment. Then the fear of losing it strikes. So where is the rest? I have been having beakfuls of fun. No storage, nothing. But I’m happy. It won’t be possible hadn’t I been happier earlier. To die happy, to happily slow down, one should have been happier earlier during the blasting stage,” the old sparrow tweeted and whistled as if recalling the happier times.

“This old fart must have hit gold during his youth, and now he is just rolling in happiness as a pensioner, munching the leftovers,” the parrot thought.

“The sinews holding life to my body have become weak and almost bloodless. These will not feel the pain of cleavage. It will be just like an autumn leaf being painlessly windblown into the oblivion. In this tepid existence of mine, between hot and cold, warmth and coolness pervade over my old bones in some pleasant, vague proportion. Pleasure and pain seem to have lost their specifications. Neither both exist, nor they are dead altogether,” the old sparrow looked at the guest.

The parrot appeared restless even in this cosiest of a safe hideout. How could he be? A bigger storm of unhappiness was raging inside.

“How come you look so subdued and sad?” the sparrow asked. “Have the conditions been so bad to rob all the real charm and leave the colour on the feathers and soul so dull and poor?”

The pain inside broke all check-dams of restraint and the parrot spoke out.

“Though I’m young but the spirit seems to have sung the last song of life. Too much has been the pain and strife. My courage appears to have run dry now, although the colour on my feathering holds somehow,” the parrot stopped and sighed.

Outside the storm touched a newer peak. The wind screeched. Rain lashed. Lightening struck. Some tree nearby fell with a huge snapping, cracking sound. The parrot shivered with fear. The sparrow calmed him down.

“When just a hatching, father was gone. Grew I up hearing mother’s moan. The paternal sun thus never shone. However, the biggest consolation was the mother’s caressing, preening, feeding beak. Ate I fruits at love’s supreme-most peak. As the sole nestling, I was fattened on her love’s labour daylong. And then went to sleep hearing her lullaby and song. Aha! Sweetest dreams came with a throng! My whole existence was tethered to her maternal pole. The brightest attractive-most star sole!” there were tears in the parrot’s eyes.

He was lost in his mother’s memories. The sparrow looked on sympathetically.

“Under her great grooming, colours on me came bright. Lavishly my green and red flashed as I fluttered and flapped for my first flights. Unbelievable was the pride and compassion as her souring soul’s maternal shades touched the brightest heights. In her eyes I saw a new light. How marvellous was the sight!” the parrot smiled and then stopped as if some painful recalling stabbed the smile.

“Alas, her incorruptible love of yore was arrowed by the fatality’s shot. Again cupid’s arrow came hot. I became a past, ignorable and with rot. She was now in another spring of love. Incipient love for the future in her womb, I was the past buried in a tomb. I thus became an orphan although my parents lived. After many cries and anguished, aimless flights bereaved, life’s burden with my soft feathers I heaved.  Young and handsome, I flew with time’s oblivion and balm. Intoxicating is youth’s charm,” the parrot paused.

There was a smile. The sparrow nodded knowingly.

“Inevitably I fell in love. Heartfully I cooed with my beautiful lady. Those love-drenched days when the heart was ever ready to sing an ecstatic ditty! Such abundance and happiness was in my kitty. So sweet, silent, mirthful and unencumbering were those acceptances of nuptial responsibilities. Those watchful, eager, searches for hollows in tree trunks for our nest. Tirelessly we looked around for the best,” the aroma of sweet memories raised the pal of gloom from the parrot’s face.

The sparrow beamed as if dabbing his old beak in the sea of happiness.

“Guided by the love’s brace, we found our place. In that comfortable, safe hole, nothing else but we had all the muse and role. Our identities melted into each other’s. How proud was I when I became a father!” the memory suffused the parrot with fresh gust of energy.

The parrot stood, flapped it wings and preened it fur with it luscious red beak. The sparrow too got onto its old claws and stretched his wings to unstiffen his body.

The parrot’s voice had a strained note now. “I will not become like my parents, I thought. I will not be ensnared like they were caught.”  

Some traces of that determination still seemed to raise his spirits for a moment. “So I clung to my possessions with youthful pride. Alas, the inevitability arrived with chide. In full bloom of youth and colours, whole of my brood flew away. My lady-bird came to be infatuated under someone’s cooing sway. It was another fine day when she bade adieu and flew away,” sorrows ran through the parrot’s fatigued, sleepless body.

The old sparrow too sighed and stretched his wings.

“I embodied all forlornness. The loss was glaring in my face. Monstrously unremedied! So I decided to leave that place. And my sulking wings did brace to take up the longest possible flight from the place where such pains and unfaithfulness abound. So flew I as if pursued by fearsome-most hound. For many days I have been flying, my soul aching and wings crying. I won’t stop till I reach the place where happiness is not checkmated by such tragedies,” the parrot looked outside through the opening.

“Why should we enter into something and love somebody so completely if it is bound to go into gutters? Isn’t all such temporary dives into life’s stream all futile and vain? Aren’t we just mere cogs in the hands of those inevitable, unstoppable machines of fate that make us cheat on each other, abandon the once loved ones and more?” the parrot had burning questions coming out of his aggrieved self.

The old sparrow, full of wisdom, the undisputed king of his life’s small kingdom, looked with solace and simplification of age. Perched safely where youth’s dilemmas and puzzles no longer haunt with their pinch and rage.

The sparrow said, “It’s like a flower ruing and ruminating over other blossoms because its beauty will not last forever and will go to the glooms. Dear, it’s not we who are the ends, rather the beautiful phenomena like love, marriage, procreation that decide the trends. We are just means to these beautiful ends and destinations. So become a tool uncomplaining, tilling earth without any expectations. It isn’t that love exists because we do love someone. Love is the primordial sea without any limits of space, time and individualities. It’s we who sweeten a few moments of life with it till the full stops arrive with a stopping hit. Do we procreate to cling to procreation throughout life? No, we are made to procreate to become unselfish means for the propagation, for handing over our batons, to perpetuate these beautiful phenomena of love and relationships. We do not leave behind an offspring, but a possible instrument which may come in handy for the sustenance and survival of those very precious moments that got us the taste of love, happiness and friendship at their best. If we recognise it, our spirit gets a solacing rest. If not, we get caught in an acrimonious net. We cry and put up a bet that I completely loved her and became the cause of young lives. It was I who caused that buzzing in those hives. But such limitations would have been meaningful had our survival been unlimited, or say our immortality was uninhibited. But our journeys are to be ended. So just cherish those moments that you tended. If you cling to this stream of these phenomena like these are your inheritance forever, they then become a drag around your neck, making you a prisoner behind the bars,” the sparrow stopped and jerked his fur as if trying to find some last trace of such bondage.

“Liberate fella, liberate yourself! Just be a journeyman who understands that young flowers on a plant, young soots on a twig do not lessen themselves or the spring in not ruing over their wispy autumnal fall. They inculcate phenomena. They help perpetuate nature. They sustain the amazing natural gifts of love, beauty and bloom. They also served in a similar way, made some new ray, very feeble though, to defeat some gloom in some shadows,” the oldie’s dull, watery eyes sparked with hope, with satisfaction, as lightening flashed and reflected in his eyes.

The parrot was at long last feeling the vibes of happiness and rest that comes with acceptance of simply doing the duty and completing the task with full heart.   

 “So the only way to remain happy is just to be happy, no matter what the circumstances are?” the parrot had his doubts.

The old host chuckled, tweeted and cleared his throat. The visitor was near the point, although still with his doubts, which was natural.

“Yaa just be happy, no water what!” the sparrow lowered his voice as if in cadence with a divine mantra.  “It’s basically we who repel happiness away from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set it as a goal too far down the line in future. Some house, some grains, some accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the years, and set up a wall between us and happiness. And happiness keeps on getting more and more distant from us. I will set up a home and then be happy. Happiness delayed. And then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between happiness and us. Like frustrated human log-movers, whom I see in the forest, we just push on. Happiness stays thus a distant goal. Never to be achieved. We make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we die. Huge immortals they are. In pushing for them, we die. Separated from happiness that could have been the greatest gift of life, had we not pushed it away from us.”                                          

The long fabric of the stormy night was slowly melting over the banyan. Outside, stormy chilliness was fleeting before a promising twilight. Chances were there for a day bright. Clouds parted from the face of the sky. The parrot’s spirit’s appeared to cut through the shadows and soar high.

Holding onto the visitor’s traces of hope, the old host tweeted, “The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like I do store some grains for the harsh winters, near me, in the safest part of my house. It has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Living for a day. You can be happy if you set your happiness free from the chains of your lifelong dreams.”

The parrot smiled. It was the dawn of truth.

The wise oldie continued, “You should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily, separated from the natural state of happiness that could have pumped our life with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free of the chains of goal-setting and placed it free from those unreachable spots in the future.”

The parrot stood erect like a disciple in front of his master.

The sparrow raised his voice as if carrying his old furred body over to the peak of realisation. “Let happiness be a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it in the condition we are in, or it just eludes. Keep it with you while you fly. It will boost your determination to fly high and far.” 

The sparrow was beaming with such rest and repose, as can be given by being happy unconditionally.

The peaceful oldie looked out with hope. “The day today will be warm and sunny. The dawn promises sweetest honey. Youngman, I’m in hurry to go out of my hole, and play my chirpy role in the great stage set around. My feeble soufflés and dim light in the eyes are enough even for the down-hilly afternoons.”

The parrot looked on happily, deeply drinking the sips of solace and comfort pervading the wood-hole.

“You go high because the forenoons are there for you with their multiple hues. Go, so that you don’t rue over the day aimlessly lost. Do justice to the old spirit of your host. Take some lessons from my soft feebleness. It will boost your courage. Take clues from the manner in which I make a day out of my night! And top of all, decide to be happy before you take flight!”

The old sparrow came to the parrot and patted him with his faded furred wing. The parrot lowered his head in gratitude for a great lesson taught. Thanking the host, the visitor flew away into those swathes of promise, where new life, new love, new aspirations and new relationships held sway. But all that was secondary, in future and to be worked upon. More importantly, he was happy in the present. He had decided to keep happiness as a routine, like eating fruits and flying.

2117 AD: An alien research on earth's ruins

Since mankind’s occupation of the earth, by beating rest of the species through his main faculty, brain, everything has changed, from wooden wheels to spaceships, Gods to just weather phenomena, except one thing, happiness. Situation is the same. In fact, modern man is far unhappy than the ancient one. Simple reason is the use of logic and science for creation and destruction at the same time. One step forward, one step backward: Life and death overlapping. Where will we go? The net result is zero. So we stand at the same place where we started from. Medical research is doing wonders to beat mortality, overcome diseases, lessen pains, and increase the quality of life. One step forward, accepted. But then the destructive face is no less on innovation. Nuclear weapons which can wipe out whole of the earth, chemical weapons, missiles, warships, guns, bullets. One step backward. You make deadliest weapons to take as many lives as possible. Then you contrive the best means to save lives through bullet proofs, bunkers, shelters, helmets, surgeries and medicines. Ease of life through modern utilities, one step forward of course. Destruction of environment, one step backward. Doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. It’s simply going nowhere. It has been just hot pursuit. Ever since we surged ahead on the path of civilization, it has been always a rampant, mad rush to go ahead, at whatever cost. There has never been a civilazional pause, a hiatus, a break to ponder over, to think about the costs we have paid. A look back and around and calculation of the future. All civilizations nurtured the relentless thrust, to march on, with full force. Mind you, march on and on, the storm, the fire, these cannot go forever. Such hot-pursuit race cannot sustain itself. It has to come to an end. It’s as per the law of science. If you run forever, you will collapse. So one has to stop somewhere. Unpaused progress ends in a disaster. It just isn’t sustainable. In genetically ingrained and socially ordained hot pursuit, have we ever thought of contriving means of systemic pause and rest, for ourselves, for countries, for this planet itself? Only rest, peace, calm and love are sustainable, because these are not burning with the fiery energy. So before we continue rampantly and dive headlong into the abyss across the precipice, cannot we learn to devise civilizational pause, when this planet earth gets a holiday, for some time, its lungs getting a lease of life, its freshwater bodies getting lesser pollutants? Just like we have carbon cut quotas, cannot we have population cut quotas? It will help. It will save the earth from human ant-swarms, who will ultimately eat the environment itself that sustains them. Cannot everything be slowed down at regular intervals to save the critically exponential stats from nose-diving into deathtrap? Long before a superior, antagonistic extra-territorial life overpowers us, or a rogue planet crashes into the earth, or sun explodes, we will surely destroy ourselves long before any such eventuality. And when that happens, some alien researchers will sigh with wonderment, looking at our ruins and archaeological remains, much like we marvel at the ruins of ancient human civilizations such as Harappa, Egypt and Babylon, and think and research about the causes that brought about the downfall. 

A Dive into Freedom

The new item number is just too juicy. Voluptuous moves. Raunchy notes. Suggestive lyrics. The choreographer, the lyricist and the music director have done full justice to her curves. Everyone has had their own set of visualization of her while working on their parts in the musical number. She gyrates in half thigh-length tight gold-threaded dhoti and beaded choli. She has perfect figure, finest curves, very charming features and flawless skin. And millions gasp for breath.  

One thing goes missing in all this glamorous show. It’s her innocent laughter and child-like simplicity of mind. When she smiles, it’s a pure soft outburst of merriment untouched by any trace of malice and shrewdness. When she laughs, it also is pure like a child does when amused at a small, simple thing. But this unsophisticated self is covered up by her dazzling sex appeal. Even if it shines at all, people prefer to ignore it. They have more important things to gloat over, to quench the hunger of mind, the famed Indian hunger of opposite sex in the mind, beyond all outside taboos and evil talk of dirty acts like sex and all.

She has earned quite a bit of name in the industry. She gets interviews now and then in the mainstream media. On such occasions she is her usual unsophisticated self. However, the person on the other end seems on guard, like peeping over a fence, guarding himself from some strange reaction inside. And all the onlookers know and understand the inhibitions running inside the anchor’s head. They hardly seem to listen to her for their minds are somewhere else.

Even the skimpiest dress covering the barest minimum seems to irritate the masses. For each artwork of dance by her watched on the YouTube, they go back to the gray zone on the Internet and draw out ghosts from her past. Yes it satisfies the lust in them, those clips where they can see the whole of her. Not even a shred of clothing. They gloat over her curves, the act, the ejaculations, have theirs and come back to watch her feisty item numbers.

The ink of her past appears too dense. More than the density of the ink, people seem to just hold onto it. They simply don’t want to forego of the image. It gratifies the most overpowering sense, sex. Her item numbers just fan the fire even more.  

It has been a massive effort: the journey from hard porn to soft porn.

The roles she gets, apart from the item numbers, involve sex, glamour, intrigues and extramarital affairs: the sociable, bridgeable sexuality unlike the naked rampancy of outright naked game.

She knows hers is a humongous task. The road from being a porn star to a so called normal film star is riddled with countless obstacles. Sexual zealots fire bullets from both sides. She belongs to the lust in their ever-greedy minds, so she just cannot escape like this. They have to hunt her down.

Only she knows the amount of effort she has put in moving from full porn to semi porn. It is like traversing poles at the opposite ends. From being a naked stone in full public glare, you walk down as they run after you, and you struggle to cover yourself with normal human sensitivities of respect and being treated like anyone around. People somehow resent it, throw jibes and try their best to keep their goods to gratify their lust.

She has to dilute the dark ink of the past. Wipe it altogether and write a new identity, to feel normal like any other star in the industry. From porn to semi porn. She wants to go further. She is an artist. She is working on her acting skills. She wants the normal roles like any other actress around.  But she cannot enter each and every brain to wipe the past there, allowing them to see her present and appreciate her art. The directors, who approach her, have ready-made, predetermined formula of a feisty woman, the woman for whom men fall, creating ripples around, of sex, murder, extramarital and scores of lusty intrigues.

There are trolls as well, the social media crusaders, who yank reputations to shreds, pour their boiling scorn and burn the images from safe heavens. There are abuses, lewd remarks, pasted links of her online porn clips, gross invitations and still more. She no longer takes then head on. She simply blocks them. But the words haunt her for long hours during nights when she is practicing acting skills.

With the big, bossy judgmental world buzzing around, she sometimes gets judgmental on herself. Finds herself at fault for getting into the porn industry to begin with. But wasn’t that the launch-pad for crossing the jarring atmospherics of anonymity, escaping her adolescent nightmare of just getting sold by life without leaving any mark, and that too with such flawless skin, exotic features and dreamy contours?

The art of sex! It was a wild river, toppling the mountains and their biggest boulders. Ruthless. Like it will never stop. But beyond the fury, at the end of falling over a huge cliff face, in the slow-swirling waters of after-fall majesty, the man lying sprawled, spent under her, she laughs so innocently, with such unassuming vivacity that it instantly changes her persona from manhood slayer to a simple vulnerable girl. Even in her movies now one can see that innocent trill, like a little bell around the neck of a mountain sheep. A little jaunt on the green slope and the whiffs of tinkling carried by gentle air down the valley.

This little insignia of her vulnerability, this tiny pause in the journey of the stormy, heaving waves is missed by almost all the spectators. Almost half of the men who constitute the audience of her present movies have masturbated some time or the other watching the porn clips involving her as the temptress sucking away all lust from the planet. They own her in that part of their brain. The want the sensation to remain stuck in their groins. They fight to stop it from sneaking into the aesthetic corridors of art and beauty. The image, the customary stimulation is too much, too strong. It flashes in their minds as they watch her in movies now. They expect the same gratification. They look at something else, the character, and a different movie is playing in their minds. The more she tries to prove her acting credentials, the more they delve deeper into the Internet to grab handfuls of lusty morsels to satisfy their hunger.

With hard porn blazing in their minds, they are as much as comfortable till her roles are on the margin of soft-porn.

She is in the office of a famous director. She has the word that he is finalizing the cast for his upcoming potboiler. For the last two months she has been working on her acting skills with a famous acting school.

“Well, it will be too revolutionary to put you in the cast. The role is too, too….,” he hesitates.

She shifts uncomfortably in her chair. She can literally feel what is he thinking about at that time. The magnetic force of her past is too strong for her to completely escape out of its orbit.

“The role is too mainstream for you,” he says firmly and winks as if to convince himself of his logic.

“I have been working very hard for this role. Please take an audition, of any duration, of whatever intensity required for the character,” she tries to stay normal.

“Oh, audition. You know it’s more about suitability for the character. You know, all actors have certain affinity for the role they are most suitable,” he is driving it hard.

“But it’s not fair. I deserve a chance to be tested. I, I…,” her determination is melting, the typecast of her past is too strong.

“Why work so hard to bruise your beautiful skin on a path that is new to you. By doing the kind of roles that you have done so far, you have earned name, fame and money. You rule their hearts like none of the actresses around,” he laughs and looks lividly.

“But, you know…,” he cuts her mid sentence.

“Ok, you can spread more pleasure than you think. Let’s have an audition,” he leans back in his chair and his eyes bore into her bosom.

“You know it’s a huge budget film. A make or break for many. It’s not that easy as you think,” he knits his brows and appears damn serious.

“Yaa I understand. But at least accept me as one of the competitors. I can prove myself. Hope you watched my last movie,” she sits erect in her chair like a thorough professional.

He doesn’t remember anything except the feisty dance on a raunchy number. Her curves swirl around in his imagination. He has closed his eyes and takes his memory still further. Away to the fantasy world of naked, unprohibited revelry. He recalls the minutest details of her anatomy. The shade of pubic hair, the genitalia, like so many others, still different, her rampant foray into sucking out all pleasure and spit triumphantly, and that innocent trill of laughter.

She is surprised, watching him with eyes closed for a long pause. She breaks the reverie.

“Sir, you know…,” she draws him out of that other world.

“Hmmm!” he appears a bit irritated. “You know it will be too revolutionary,” his brow-lines are drawn taught.

She doesn’t say anything. He is in his fifties. A strong man. He gets up to take out a file from the rack by the wall. He is aroused. She can see it. It’s protruding. He doesn’t want to hide it even, as if wanting to convey the message. She feels insecure, even sad and looks resignedly. On an instinct she adjusts her knee-length skirt as if to protect her.

He gets back to his chair. He is more relaxed now, possibly knowing that his arousal has been seen.

“You know it’s a fight. This world of actors and actresses. Specially for big banner movies. It requires talent, skills, luck as well, connections, image and even personal history,” he stops for her to absorb the bitter truth.

“You know ambitious young actresses go to any length to grab the top spot. And of course there are gentlemen who welcome such dedication,” he smiles, staring deep into her bluish brown eyes.

“Well. I, I am ready for …audition,” she mumbles.

“Then go for the audition,” he stands up.

He has already unzipped himself and the audition phallus is out. It’s an open invitation. A simple give and take. A short audition and the role for her.

He seems helpless. He is shivering a bit out of sheer excitement and the raw adventure. He has transposed the dream onto the plain of reality. It’s like grafting himself as the male character in all those plays of naked flesh.

Just the mere sight of it fills her mouth with the typical taste of it. She has done it many times in the past, with such gripping greed and madness that it felt like she was out there to drain all masculinity of its coffers of thirst forever.

He is shaking and imploring her to drain him out of his misery, of his frustration born of unquenchable thirst.

“Come on! After this there is no stopping for you. You will choose your roles,” he is gasping for breath.

There is a chance for her to be an actress, a real actress like anyone around. It’s tempting. She is holding the armrests tightly. But something holds her back. She has been working too hard, late into the nights to push herself further to come out of this soft-porn mould. And the deal seems like going back again into the past to redeem future.

She has a struggle ahead she knows it. She is determined to face it. She is not ready to go into the future with the life-support of the past she is cutting from her life. It seems unjustified, even unethical to both the past and the future.

She gets up and turns around the table to approach him. He is on the verge of fainting, with all those wildest fancies just about to clutch him into heavens of ecstasy. He feels her touch on the protruding phallus of his life-long hunger. Helpless he surrenders and closes his eyes.

He wakes up to the taut sound of his trousers’ zip. She has safely put his strayed self into the safety of his pants and closed the doors on it. He cannot believe it.

“Do you even know what are you doing! It’s over for you!” he flies into a blinding rage.

“Yes sir, this project might be over. But not all is lost for me. I have a struggle ahead and would prefer to work over months, even years, instead of taking five-minute short-cuts to reach there. That will take me back to where I started from,” she is very calm, and looking at him with unoffended eyes.  

She comes forward again and shakes his hand very politely and professionally and backs away. With even more politeness she closes the door behind her. There are tears of pride in her eyes as she crosses the floor. And a new wave of determination pervades her beautiful curves.

The undying flame of love

Many, many years ago, a sage was meditating on a Himalayan peak. Majestic dales and solitary vales sprawled around were all aglow with the divine streak.

Though the birds chirped songs, and rain poured down in throngs, he was unmovable, lost in a deep trance.

In winters, icy cold storms blew and snow around and over him was all aglow. His soul but was safe somewhere in the cosy warmth of transcendental realisation.

In autumn, wind-fallen leaves sailed down with slumberous tumble, and ripe fruits fell proudly, adventurously for a juicy, pleasant crumble. He still was somewhere else when the nature opened these marvellous jewels from her treasure trove.

In spring, wild flowers fully unfurled their fragrance and smile, and honey-bees engaged in dawn to dusk toil. He but was unmoved and transported into a state where the ecstasies of natural bounties don’t mean anything anymore.

Summer’s warm days sprayed desultory, eerie uneasiness around, and cool nights proudly embraced this son with his soul heaven-bound. Still it didn’t matter. He was undisturbed and was silently moving on his meditative path.

Once it was a full moon autumn night. A fairy was flying amid milky delight. A perfect calmness pervaded the solitary vales. Everything was asleep, bathed in the softest fluffy shades of the white. The fairy flew low over the peaks glowing under the moonlight. The seer was lost in his trance in front of his cave, the beauty of nature around meaningless to him.

She saw him and hovered around the sanctimonious air of his sagehood. A small, harmless mischief rustled in her young, innocent heart. She circled in the air above him. Her laughter touched the milky sea around him and created soft ripples. Her unbelievably soft dress rustled in the gentle breeze born of her circles. It but did not have any effect on him. He was engrossed too deep in the cosmic balance beyond the sensory contradictions and dualities. The more she looked, the more was the urge in her to bring him back to the beauty of this world, to fetch him from the deep ocean where his soul had dived.

His exquisitely masculine physique and persona created tempted sparks on her magic trick. She tried all juicily leering feminine tricks. But her desire-lorn swirls in the air failed to move him even a bit. Helplessly she descended on the earth. There were almost tears of hopelessness in her eyes. She sat in front of him with those rose-red lips pursed in a heart-breaking frown.

Her nymphatic eyes were lost in his handsome, bearded, sculptural face. It was mesmerizing. There was not a single worldly trace on his face. She herself was caught in a trance and lost the sense of time and the laws of the fairyland. The night sped away as if in a jiffy.

The day rose. The sun arrived with full earthly delight. There was terror in her eyes. The hope to return to her realm died. She had broken the law of her land by not returning on the same night after the brief terrestrial sojourn. The realisation crashed against her soft self like a thunderbolt. Her utmost sensuous bare shoulders heaved under the tremors of this unpardonable fault. A cry involuntarily tore through her slender throat. And then it was a still bigger violation.

His serenely flowing meditative phase met this sinful, full-stopping dot. His communion with the divinity was broken. His long-closed eyes opened. The world of his penance lay scattered. His fiercely burning eyes stared at the petalous flower in sobs and sighs. Her large flooded eyes pleaded for mercy. But the fire in his unforgiving eyes was unforgiving and cursing.

The fabric of his serenity was torn. The sage thundered, “You proud, vain woman of egoistic beauty, become an ugly bush of thorns!”

Mowed down by the spell of his cursing energy, an ugly bush stood in place of that angelic beauty. All shaken and ravaged he left the place. A thorny branch, meanwhile, got entangled in his loin cloth as if for meek, pleading forgiveness and brace. He but scornfully jerked it apart and headed to some other place for a new start.

Time then took to its heels on swift horses. The seasons changed. The spring’s colourful patterns were rearranged. The summer’s warm kisses melted the snows. The autumn’s harvest uncomplainingly fell to the air’s chiding blows. The winter’s snowy blanket covered the peaks. And rains lashed down in stormy freaks. This pleasant wavering of nature, however, couldn’t shake the sage from the meditative maze. Faraway down the hills, the accursed bush was shrouded in thorny haze. It struggled to sprout fruits and flowers. But even cursing has a testing time against soft, innocent glow of purity. How can something having a fairy core remain ugly and thorny for too long? Her pure soul entombed in that thorny shrine prayed for penance. And see, a flower of her fruits sprouts forth!

A flower blossomed among the thorns. So beautiful! Among the thorns and deadly pale brown branches, it appeared juxtaposed, like it had dropped from the heaven and got stuck there. It was the day when the enlightened sage arrived from the north. Contented with his cosmic realisation, he came down the beautiful dale. As he passed the bush, his purified soul sensed the thorny shrub’s plaintive wail. His feet disobeyed him and he couldn’t move. The lone flower among the thorns fell at his feet in holy-most obeisance and greet. He picked it up and was lost in its fragrance.

The thorn was ugly. The flower so beautiful and fragrant! What contradiction! Flowery heaven and thorny hell together! The latter born of his cursing condemnation; the flower born of the beauty behind the thorny bars. It was a jolting earthly realisation. Hadn’t he broken the beautifully set laws? Torrents of repentance gushed through him. He bid penance at the altar for a long time. His repenting self set around a reformative shrine. His soul drenched in painful chime. He braced the thorns with the love and affection purest of the pure. It gave him bleeding fingers so many times. He caressed and cared for it like it was the beautiful most flowery shrub. He was practicing his penance now, of love, of surrender, of repentance.

When his soul had been salvaged of the sin, nobody could bet against her for a win. There she blossomed in front of him. Beauty, charm and grace filled to the brim. Her smile was forgetting and forgiving. It was the beacon of her penance, of love, of beauty. Inside the stony walls of his heart, a new luminosity was now thriving. The sage embraced her. She, who had been separated from her loved ones, got the earthling she had fallen for. Happiness, bliss and calm opened a new door to the start of a fresh cycle of life, love and humanity.

All but the sage had been extinguished by the cataclysm. The lone and forlorn survivor he had been striking at the doors of heaven with his endless questions. Now there was no more pursuit. The endless had manifested in a small sip of love. Now they lived as a man and a woman. New hopes, aspirations and offsprings began to thrive.

Thus were sown the seeds of another spell and cycle of life, of creation. Their unchecked love in those flowery vales left countless exotic trails. Gurgling brooks gave company to her primordially sensuous laughter. His instinct’s procreating sprouts mingled in the mirthful waters of her receptiveness.