The Mother

Vivian Richards: “Test father, One Day mother and T20 their children” One of the greatest cricket players of all times has a big point here. I but beg to differ a bit slightly, or may be not so slightly. My common man’s corrected version would be: “Test mother, One Day father and T20 their children”.

Test is the genesis, the prolonged furnace in which the real cricketing destiny is forged. So shouldn’t Test be called the mother? Given her soulful, bordering on most selfless version of love seen in nature, contribution in formulating a new life, involving emotional and physical contribution before conception, and later in the form of irrigating the new seed with her own blood, and still later in 24 by 7 care and concern, when her own individuality melts and takes the shape of that little vulnerable life, doesn’t she stand closer to the prolonged cricketing game of agonies and ecstasies spread over the five day version of the game? So Test definitely is the mother! I have no doubts. Ask mother earth, how much of divine stillness and poise is needed to allow a new seed to sprout from its earthy womb!

Father is the One Day version, definitely. He is moderately rash, adventurist and huffs and puffs for a day. No wonder, his contribution might seriously come close to only one fifth of what a mother does for her children. No insults meant for all the fathers out there. But kindly have a close look at the story of your children’s rearing up, and you will realize the mothers have been out there like a slowly smoldering warmth, keeping the tiny shapes with the prolonged glow of her care and forever-existing duties. Fathers have a privilege of playing, tiring though, swashbuckling one-day innings and hot blizzards of fiery spells of bowing and rolling dives in the field. It has but its concurrent fun, this play of brawn and show of spirit. But the classic contours of a mother’s travails are spread out over a broad time and space, like some elegant tussle at the Lord’s on some autumn evening. Her efforts touch the horizons and mix with misty insignia of godliness.   

Well, no issues about the children being the vagrant, rampaging, arrogant, disobedient, running off the line T20. Effervescent, unorthodox, fiery, revolting, as many mishits as hits during the funny adolescent idiosyncrasies. We can spare our words from elaborating on the evident jocularity.

The Angry President

An angry Trump skipped lunch and like a pissed off kid raising a ruckus about going to school cancelled his Denmark holiday. Not being able to purchase a future's prime location, and present's last hideout away from the mankind creating concrete jungles (Greenland), to change its status from nature's estate to real estate, I hope there aren't broken windows in the White House. An angry businessman is scary man! It's understandable, there can't be a bigger loss for a businessman. My sympathies with him for his mood getting spoiled. And God save the dining set, bedside mirror, housekeeping staff and even officials in the office. All of us are mother earth's kids. But the tantrums of the fattest bully among the famished mass of we poorlings can be very testing. I pray to almighty that there is a surge in President's business to make him forget about the loss!

From booming, buzzing colonies to sad, solitary couples

It is a cool late August morning and a lot many hominids are having hasty breakfasts before catching onto the bandwagon of survival through the day. This little Indian yellow wasp, unfortunately maligned with a pinching adjective ‘stinging’, is not breakfasting on the dry bark of this dead Marwa plant.  With the unhurried ease of an artist, it’s scratching away little bark crumbs to use these in making its paper carton galleries to lay eggs and start the process of life from its end. In the slow-paced, unhurried smaller world, they use pollen crumbs and dead bark pieces to build their umbrella-shaped nesting hives, the little galleries to shelter eggs.
Well, it’s a sad tale from colonies to couple. Earlier, during the times when they stood a chance to stand, or when humankind wasn’t too imposing, they thrived in colonies and valiantly defended their citadels. The days are gone. Humankind’s heart has shrunk and his pest control arm has expanded well beyond his home and hearth. It now covers every nook corner of earth. So the colonies are out of question these days. All you have is just a wasp couple—he/she seen in the video and the partner taken flight to lay the foundation somewhere—sneaking like thieves and set up a little nest in some inaccessible part somewhere around overhangs, porches, eaves, attic corner, barn, porch shed, some abandoned ceiling, railings or door-frames. More than the artistry, it is about theft of temporarily stealing a little space somewhere. Just a tiny bulb of nest and a few eggs. All that is left of the maligned stinging nest. A little unbecoming projection at the risk of swatted out by the gentlest touch of a cobweb cleaner.
There will be many who feel like rapping my knuckles for speaking for the stinging wasps. Well, do they sting for pleasure? Let somebody come barging uninvited into your bedroom and then watch your own sting. Just because you hold man-made pares of the property doesn’t justify your sting, just like it doesn’t biggest wars for space and resources over earth.
Nature has a place for them. They pollinate flowers and control many insect species. Now don’t look at the insect species controlled by the wasps as the primary villains. They in turn must be controlling something else. In the two-way scheme of things, every species receives something in lieu of what it gives back. We have but turned the tables. We have re-calibrated the natural instinct to give back also. It’s a mad rush to take as much as possible, without willingness to give back anything. No wonder, we have raped mother earth. With newer and newer techniques to plunder resources, we are giving back long, long tragic tales of ecological degradation, extinction of species, wars, diseases, strife and unrest. Well, the list of our give-aways is endless on the negative side.

The Real 'Wrong'

Well, most of us commit our wrongs with a sense of duty, a sort of commitment, in a kind of frenzied sense of occupation. If not for this, so many of us will not be found ready, almost instinctively, to go the wrong way rather than volunteering to do something good. So, the ‘wrong’ seems to have its justification born of those perceived duties by the doer.

A hierarchy of sieving then decides not so common from the common-most crop. At the first level of filtration, the finest wire-mesh allows majority of the mob of wrongdoers trickle down into the dustbin of petty wrongs on the smallest stage closest to earth in crowded slums, stinking nullahs, mucking markets and laboring beehives, where the fight for survival saps most of the energy, leaving very little escapades of and on in frustrated minds. The bigger, fat, rascally particles stay above on the screened, perforated platform and engage in bigger wrongs on a more substantive platform.

Now, the second level of sieving takes place among the thicker rascal-heads, the bigger baddies, or the plumpier daddies of the trade. The holes in the wire-mesh are bigger than the previous one. A lot many foolish gallants topple down, so many die, get beaten, imprisoned and clobbered down to survive at the second tier of wrongdoing. They slide down the screening holes at the second tier and settle for bigger wrongs than the lowest mass. As expected, the still thicker ones get a chance to play the wrongdoing game at the next level. Here, the stakes are higher. The risks involved are bloody, but so are the returns, which hit the proportions of jackpots.

To qualify to stay above the screening mesh at the third level, the thickheaded pebbles, veritable stones, quibble, use brain as well as brawn, and mostly utilize the muscle of the toppled down smaller particles at the level immediately below, and the ignorance of the ant-swarms at the bottom.

In this final sieving, the biggest mafias, cartels and powerful politicians stay afloat to rule at the apex. Now they decide what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. All other versions of right and wrong at the lower rungs lose their meaning. There, at the lower orders, murders, rapes, felonies and thefts come to be mere stats in the law and order book. These are mere social problems and hardly matter as long as these don’t shake the foundations of the state, i.e., interests of the ones qualifying to be filtered at the highest sieve.

One can commit a murder on the lower rungs and still be considered a foolish nonmalignant element. However, if a sound brain, even in the frailest and most non-violent of a body, raises a verbal assault against the wrongdoers at the apex, he then becomes the most lethal anti-state, malignant criminal. The state is basically not bothered about the marketplace cacophony of petty criminalities like someone cutting somebody’s throat, or someone raping, plundering, beating or shouting abuses. These are local-police station worthy petty, minor pardonable wrongdoings. These in fact are the cause of creating the bread and butter for a whole damn law-keeping department. The real ‘wrong’ is the ‘wrong’ that shakes the confidence, or throws light, or exposes, the machinations and stratagems of the biggest rascals at the top. 

Dove in Love

Dove in love.
Impatient he.
Teasing she.
Airy swirls.
Hugging frills.
Breeze free.
Passionate spree.
Almost a fight.
Soul's delight.
Love.
Dove.
Love.