Mindfulness: The next frontier in our evolution

During the ancient times, when our ancestors roamed merely as one of the animal species, saving themselves from the stronger animals and managing to stay alive on roots, herbs, fruits and killing the manageable games, the only fear to plague their mind was the instinctual, plain and raw fear to preserve life. It was the raw fear of fierce animals and horrible weather conditions. It wasn’t forged in the workshop of mind. It existed on the little stage of life, something concrete. It instinctively popped up like it does in a deer on seeing a lion: The plain raw fear instantly triggered by the sight of an object, animal or inclement weather.

The special neurons in human brain then started firing pretty extravagantly, giving us cognitive abilities within a tiny span of time, a sort of leapfrogging on the small-paced changes on the evolutionary scale. While the rest of the species would just react in the typical fight and flight manner managed by their limited neural abilities, the humans learnt to respond, not just react, in multiple ways, a whole lot of combinations of fight, flight and many things in between. The genesis of the scheming mind! We could defend also, mixing fight and flight in suitable proportions. Most importantly, we would remember the precious lessons learnt. We would remember to repeat something beneficial. We also remembered to avoid the harmful. This discretion, this mental evolution, provided another dimension to evolution which turned the physical dimensions of evolution almost redundant. Now the mind evolved. The shadows grew stronger and more substantive than the actual substance. The shadows took the lead and the physical body followed. A peculiar reverse engineering! In amazing series after series of cooperation and using exceptional neurons in the brains, most of the physical threats, the source of raw fear among we primates during the initial phase of our evolution, were managed. We set up institutions of various kinds as we followed the shadows created by mind and trampled and dragged the poorly littered around physical substance, this planet, along us in the wake. We contrived real weapons to defend the shadows and attack the virtual opponents. We set up social, economic and political institutions to strengthen the shadows. Religion was set up to reinforce the real concrete fortifications to save the shadows created by an ever-working mind.

Now we rule over every nook corner of the planet. All the species are subservient to us. The weather elements are explained through climatology. There is hardly anything to create a sense of raw physical threat in the natural world around. We seem to have done amazing things. Are we better placed than our ancestors?

Well, all our cognitive evolution and growth was triggered by our response to the raw physical threats around us. The networking within individual brains and within a group on the basis of shadows tamed many a substance around. In mind-born reverse engineering, we could contrive physical laws to pull the substance by the swift horse of the shadows. If hatching physical laws to prove substance from shadows has been our unique mind art, framing of social, economic, political, religious and cultural laws is merely a cakewalk. It’s as easy as putting air in any vessel as per the suitability. So the juggernaut moved on and we prevailed over one obstacle after the other.

We have been so relentless that even our fear appears to be scared of us and sunk deeper into the zone of virtual domain. It has learnt to survive, if not tangibly like earlier, but intangibly by spreading its mutants. It has crept stealthily into the complex networks of our psyche. All this while, as we triumphantly claimed one victory after another over all the physical adversaries on the planet, the cunning fear was mutating into something beyond the boundaries of innovations—I don’t prefer the term discovery—to physically tame the fierce animals and adversaries. It was breeding larvae in the cells of our very own mind which we so bravely used to tame the external threats. It is like the doctor herself catching the illness.

The solid block of ice, the raw fear, melted first and later vaporized to sublime forms and filled the very air we breathe. It infested the mind, the very same mind that claimed to have won the battle for us. Plain fear of physical threats, the mere substance, changed into the lengthy spools of shadows in the form of insecurity, hate, greed, lust, distrust, anger, jealousy, apprehensions. These are the phantoms of the poor raw fear. The more we broke the ice blocks of physical threats, the more copiously the phantoms did the round. Fear mutated very horribly from the physical dimension to the virtual dimension. There it acquires infinite ways and means to take any shape triggered by any little external stimulus. Earlier a mammoth created raw fear. It was a tangible solid block of ice. Now a mere look by someone can self-start the fission reaction along the phantoms of fear in the virtual dimension of the mind. The mind that hunted animals is now hunting itself. It has evolved to hunt, to stalk. Now it connives. It creates virtual enemies, the shadows, and attacks, defends, reacts and responds in crazily littered orbit. It has the fatal addiction to eat its own tail. It’s prone to grab any stimulus, some remark by someone, some bruise on the ego, some strain of jealousy, and boom-boom goes the explosion. The entire civilization load is a virtual fuel tank. A crazy machine it has become. It just needs a little sip of external stimuli, a tiny self-start, and the engine purrs to life like it has been doing for the last many millenniums.  

Now the externals—the little patrol for self starting stimuli—lie within the human society only.  Gone are those prehistoric real physical threats. We are more bothered about someone’s image in our mind than our ancestor was about a fierce mammoth. The mind cannot stop its factory of manufacturing war tools against the phantoms in the virtual dimensions. We have imagined the best and hence all these beautiful things that make life physically convenient at least. But alongside we have imagined the worst also. In lieu of one smile, we hatch dozens of tears also. Mind hasn’t stopped on its momentum of contriving solutions, reactions and response to threats, if not physical now, against the virtual opponents. It innovates its own opponents to keep rolling along the same direction. Because that is its tendency. That’s how it has evolved. But rampant growth in the virtual dimension loses its footing as the substance pulled along gets disconnected. How long the virtual shadows will pull the real chariot? The latter will lose its wheels. And once the chariot falls on the physical plane—with the cord broken—the kite of shadows takes death dives. Reverse engineering falls flat. Shadows can die easily because they never existed.  But the substance dragged along, battered and bruised horribly meets our eyes. We feel defeated. The leftover from the cognitive revolution!

No wonder mindless, undirected race of the mind has turned self destructive. Anything turns fatal beyond a limit. Same is with our mind. It innovated to kill. Then it innovated to save. Only to start innovating on something bigger to kill with. And then solutions again. It has been very clever along the way. It has set up the modern society in a way, through its blind competition, rapacious ambition, herdish education, plundering politics and everything else, that all our efforts to be human take a long detour to churn out bigger virtual enemies so that it keeps on handing us nice tricks to checkmate the threat and remain relevant and so dear to us.

It’s high time that we break this self-destructive momentum. People have been trying it individually through spiritual practices, the arts of managing the mind. However, the collective mind of Homo sapiens is so powerful that it swipes away individual efforts like a rapacious, spiteful flooded river tosses away little boughs and branches of the fallen trees.

Accepted that it has helped us reach the top on the planet. We are grateful. Now let us stop its juggernaut before it’s too late. Let’s break its age old momentum of first seeking enemies, virtual now, and then give us a helping hand. Let’s redefine education and learning to help spiritual pursuits of mindfulness. Mind is a wonderful slave and a terrible master. We never needed mindfulness more than now. The individual and collective mind has been allowed to function too mindlessly. It has become a despot. Absolute power corrupts. The mind has been corrupted in its reckless ambition. Let’s make it answerable to all its tricks. Let’s restructure socio-economic, cultural and political norms in a way that the mind sees the fundamentals of life instead of the infinite puzzlement in the virtual dimension. Don’t get scared that our ability to innovate will diminish. It won’t. It will increase as we will have surplus energy left out in our reserves. Come let’s tame our mind, systematically and institutionally. Individual salvations have been ineffective in bringing larger common good. Let’s target collectively now. Let’s put substance before the shadows. That would be more natural. Let the mind be tamed a bit to help this earth survive as we know it for some more centuries. Happy Earth Day!       

An antidote of democracy against the communist bug

China is crafting a suitable narrative to the Corona suspicion theories. As they find that the suffering world's prying eyes are now sternly focussed on the deliberate, or inadvertent, unleashing of the virus from the Wuhan lab, they are drawing the discussion and accusations away from the Lab to the animal market theory. They have raised the death toll in Wuhan by 50%. They want the world to believe that the only wrong they did was to cover up the number of deaths at the most, and that the virus spread accidentally from the food market, so that the bigger accusation of the virus being deliberately unleashed from the Wuhan lab gets into the background. So that the most serious accusation against them comes out to be that they tried to cover up the seriousness of the issue and consequently suffered themselves first. They are accepting a lesser fault in order to cover the main one. A note for sceptics who may say why would they allow their own people to die in order the wreak havok outside. We shouldn't forget millions have been eliminated under the communist ideology. So allowing a few thousand of their own people to die in order to achieve làrger targets is very much of a routine task to them. They themselves are infected by a more serious thing, which they consider more serious than Corona. It's the democratic movement in Hongkong. The antibody of democracy was eating into the vitality of the communist bug. They were scared that this bug will bite their mainland. So who knows they might have put a bigger bug in the global body. Just like they helped Corona spread through the world, the entire world should come together to facilitate the antibody of democracy against the communist bug. Right now we are in need of a vaccine against Corona. But the world peace in future needs the antidote of democracy against the communist bug in China. As they stand culpable in the Corona pandemic, punish them by forcing them to adopt democratic reforms in the country. Multiple voices are always more effective in forging a narrative. Build the narrative of democracy in China. It will be good for the Chinese people, 90% of whom are the most diligent and nice type. Just 10% communist thugs are holding the peace of their own people and the world at large at random. As the entire globe suffers Corona effects, let the Chinese communists also face the consequences. Let them get huge injection of democracy on their pride-swollen ass.

Some boring lines from a Corona-shadowed corner

You read, hear and say only the same word these days ‘Corona’. All other words appear to have lost their footing. Thoughts and emotions are solely defined by the word ‘Corona’. An entire planetary culture hijacked by a single word! All discussions, opinions and analyses are centered on the same. News channels hold the highest TRPs, of course being given a tough game by Ramayan and Mahabharat. Three decades back, the roads in India would go empty when these were initially telecast. Irony, even now the roads are empty, for a different reason though. And people have Corona as the modern version of the evil in their mind as they feel angry at Kauravas and Ravana.

All fears have withdrawn and merged with the big river ‘Corona’. The small tributaries of mundane fears falling into the mammoth gorge of Corona to make it the most powerful stream at the moment. I hope this mass focus on ‘Corona’ isn’t feeding the devil. Such mass concentration on something on the basis of collective phobia, and resultant feeding of negative emotional energies, might be energizing the evil item of focus at the subtle level of subatomic movements of energies. Main thing is that our moral is very low presently and the enemy seems very confident and strong.

Right now with over 2 million infections, with one third in America only, it’s going pretty tough for human. It seems vital organs of the modern human body have caught infection and the rest of the body is shaking with fear. With all manifestations of consumer culture and materialism out of the scene, and humans locked up in their houses, things appear very bleak. It gives a feeling like a humungous elephant, a sky high pre-historic mammoth, has collapsed under its own weight. Lesser species meanwhile creep out of their hiding and smell and snooze around with part fear and part excitement.

The Easter mass at Rome Basilica went as a silent affair. A masked Pope led the mass at an empty church. Easter Sunday went so silently as if any extra noise will boost the enemy moral. Christianity’s grandest feast was no feast at all. Let us hope there is a resurrection of dreams on the day of resurrection of Jesus. But we have to ensure that re-living after the interlude commes with changed priorities. Certain values need to be overhauled.

The same was the case with Shab-e-Barat. It’s celebrated as a night when the destiny of individuals for the coming year are fixed. Allah forgives the sinners. The Markazis must be over-hyped in their prayers today to seek forgiveness. The Muslim festivity was forced down with only a few errant kids trying the sneak into the graveyards to light candles on the graves of their ancestors. The police chased them away. The Mecca altar is empty. The devout throngs are missing. The spacious yard is able to see the face of the sky. Churches and temples are empty, godliness trying to regain its footing. This is the time to seek godliness within.   

There are stars in the darkness. They twinkle with a promise of light. They promise a fine sunny day. At Narmada, an eight month pregnant policewoman is waging a war against the pandemic by still going for duties. Of course, there will be an end to the night. The only question is: Will we go out into the sun with our lesson well digested?

Misti, luscious sweetmeats, still holds its charm for Bengalis. It appears to fuel their decent set of culture and rotund brains. In Kolkata, sweetmeat-starved Bongs thronged a sweet shop, braving police sticks on the way, to grab something sweet. Those who succeeded must be really cherishing the trophy. Much as they love to sweeten their tongues, hearts have soured a lot during the Corona-lynched times. At Asansol, people created a scuffle and big ruckus. They didn’t allow the return of 19 well quarantined and declared safe residents of the town. They will bring Corona, they said. The administration had to lathi-charge them to get the poor people in. Their neighbours will definitely stare them as the agents of Ravana for the coming days.

Police is trying its level best to locate the still missing Markazis. The UP government has announced a reward of 10000 rupees to anyone informing about a still absconding Zamati. The ever persistent communal virus gets an accomplice now, Corona. The cocktail is lethal for India’s social fabric. On top of that Pak would definitely spare no effort to help the virus in India. The Haryana government has slapped Article 307, amounting to culpable homicide, against the hiding Zamatis. It has something to do with deliberate act to cause death and can be help guilty of murder. Well, prisons seem to always smelling for blood. With the crime rate coming down, and prison cells feeling hungry, the government gets them the prospects of a few good ones, for the carriers of Article 307 bring a special status on their errant self onto the prison yard.

Prisoners are getting out on parole. The village has three native returnees. One murder charged man comes out from Tihar jail. One brat who was caught transporting illegal liquor into prohibited land of Bihar and who was languishing in a jail in Patna comes out. Another under trial for nearly killing someone in a family feud sees the free days for the time being.

Bhilwada and Agra model of containment have attracted international attention. It is basically about creation of hot-spots, sealing them foolproof and going for door to door testing. It means breaking the chain from building up a trail of infections. In Agra, a family was traced that had visited Italy. They traced the entire set of people who had got in touch with them. They completely blocked the 3 square km area and did extensive testing there. Hot-spots are the frontiers where the government of India is waging its war with its limited resources. It’s like attacking the enemy’s pickets and stopping it from adding to its army infection carriers.

With around 700 thousand infections and 25000 deaths, most of them in the financial and the modern cultural hub of New York, the superpower is on its knees. Wooden coffins are in shortage. They are using cardboard coffins and burying hundreds in long rectangular mass graves. An earthmover doing its duty solemnly. A person dying of Corona carries the ignominy of total alienation from near and dear ones during last days. To make it worse, the last rites get cut down to a mechanical affair with an earthmover replacing emotions and tears of many those who had known the diseased. It’s like dying an unknown death far away from home.

Delhi is feeling the Corona heat with hundreds of new cases every day. The CM has formed a 13000 member strong Foot Warriors to facilitate testing and quarantine. The administration is using drones to keep watch over curfew infringement in narrow lanes and congested bylanes because we Indians have a special liking for infringing upon the norms.

India’s stature appears to have gone up. Kuwait has requested the Indian government to help them fight the pandemic. The Indian government has sent a 15 member Corona Response team to plan, coordinate and train them in managing the affairs. High time that all governments keep pandemic response task forces in future against such emergencies instead of wasting precious resources on military build-up against enemies of the same species.

Sanitization tunnels are being set up to clean the bug from clothes. Hope they could kill the bugs of blind ambition also that hatch larvae inside our minds and hearts. Some fashion houses are making designer masks, fearing running out of their business. I hope even fantasies take a bit of utilitarian course where they help in substance instead of just being virtual symbols of human desires.

Cases of domestic violence have gone up. On March 8, women in Paris had come out protesting on the streets demanding equality with men. Now they have been forced back in. There has been a 30% increase in domestic violence. The increase in violence shows that so many people are in fact staying like enemies under the same roof.

This year there are huge mosquito swarms droning around almost like the airmen of the Corona army bombarding the humanity on back foot. The dogs howl almost continuously. Peacocks hoot night and day. All these are considered ill omens for the humans. I hope they aren’t deliberately stalking we humans to instill more fear in our scared guts.

International food chains have collapsed. Stock markets are almost redundant. Oil well left undisturbed. Materialism is missing. People are simply surviving on the basic minimum. One thing is proven: it’s possible to survive without most of the modern day things which we find irreplaceable.

Most of the government officials are working from home. A new model is emerging. Higher functionaries are using video conferencing.

My 15 year old court case seems to have been chucked out by the evil Corona. It appeared to a friendly lady judge. She appeared fairly sympathetic to this injustice lasting for the last 15 years. Like stubborn incorrigible brats the government attorneys kept on asking for more time pretty shamelessly. It seems to have served their purpose. Corona has helped them by forcing the courts to down their shutters. The current judge most probably will be shifted by changing the roaster and get some easy to handle judge and pull the strings like they have done for a decade and a half.  

An overenthusiastic Nihang Sikh chopped off the hand of a policeman on duty as he tried the religious zealots from violating the curfew. His evil mind, blindfolded by misplaced faith struck the policeman with such brute force that the hand was severed in one brutal strike. Thankfully after a 9 hour operation the hand has been fixed. That’s the irony, those who can kill are found taking shelter in the holy precincts of faith.

On the banks of the Ganges, some foreigners come out and are made to pay for their offense by the police by getting them write sorry 500 times. I am happy that they get some homework done after years. All of us can learn something at all stages of life.  

In Surat, the unorganized sector workers are thrown out. They are jobless and hardly any money. They get out on the street to protest and draw attention. The well off are sulking inside because they cannot come out to get onto the bandwagon of enjoyment. The poor are sulking because they are away from home and lost all sources of income.

The Corona fear has sunk deep. In Ranchi, a crowd protests against the cremation of an elderly Corona infested dead body, saying they will get the infection in the area. The police had to arrange for cremation outside the city. In Chennai, people took their fear several notches higher. A frontline Corona warrior, a doctor, who has fallen to the enemy, is criminally denied cremation in the city. People are adamant that getting the body into the crematorium will spread the deadly Corona. There have been numerous instances when administration couldn’t get gravediggers to bury the bodies of Corona victims. They had to use earth movers to dig the graves. Fear and the instinct of self preservation brings the worst in us.

Presently there are about 25000 Americans in India and they feel safer here than America. Out of the scheduled 800 Americans to board a special flight only 10 took the flight. The circle seems to have taken a full turn. Will it be India that will be leading the world under PM Modi? There is a high chance for this happening. India as Jagat Guru again!

Today is the last day of the 21 day lockdown. The PM gave a public address and extended it till May 3. There have been terrible economic costs but the humanism shown by him has done wonders to curtail the pandemic. In contrast, the country heads who had more attention on economy seem to have done terrible injustice to their people. Today is Baisakhi and Dr. Ambedkar’s birth anniversary. The political and cultural festivity of both occasions is completely overshadowed. The opposing forces on the divide have melted under the Corona shower. All ideologies are running to take shelter under the same roof. All are the very same scared Homo sapiens. Why cannot we stay like this when things are normal?

The PM’s speech giving the seven point formula to defeat Corona is hardly over, at Bandra you have a scary scene. In the afternoon, many thousand migrant workers rush out and stampede around the railway station. Someone has spread the rumor that a train is leaving for UP and Bihar. So people rush to catch the train of life. The think they will perish here even though the government is providing food and shelter. I think these people have forgotten how to sit at home, without doing anything. Taking rest is obsolete. All want to die at their native places. Quite surprisingly, none of the few thousand have any luggage with them even though all seem ready to jump into any train nearby bound for any destination. Mischief mongers are at play to spoil the hard-earned little victories in little skirmishes against the enemy patrols at numerous points in the huge country.

Finally, the spring stands almost vandalized by the hot summers. However, all reasons have their unique charms. If spring has luscious pout of youth, summers have the graying wisdom of ripe old age. A pair of collared dove is caught in the love loops. They are seen together on the roofs scouting around for a suitable place to start nesting. The cuckoo sends its sonorous notes over the crests of hot air to catch the flirtatious attention of the lady. The kari patta has little pale creamy flowers baked by the sun. The delicacy attracts honeybees and a romantic pair of Pieris rapae, a white butterfly with black dots. They take nectar sips and go diving and dancing in the hot eddies of the summer air. The bats are overactive as the twilight builds up. We never had so many in recent years. Probably they are feeling empowered because of their Corona-carrier status.

A sun-beaten old rose stands as the link between present and past, between spring and summer. It tells its little story to the summer angels:

I was once luscious red,

Now the colours get shed,

Spring dews nourished me,

Delightful to see,

Now the colours turn pale,

Youth, how thou sail!

Sadistically sun-kissed and old,

Death takes me in its fold,

I but hold with grace,

                                               My wise, toothless smile up for a brace,                     

Earlier only my skin used to glow,

Now the entire self in mystical flow,

I choose to smile till last,

Let the summer sun go crazy with blast,

I arrived with smile on my lips,

Now the entire soul takes divine sips.

Somewhere, in the safe interiors of central Indian countryside, a Rahat, water wheel, is still chugging out buckets of water in a corner where life is still in slow motion and hence enjoyable. This paused life shines brilliantly against the background of Corona-driven gloom. Still not all is lost. Things of utility still fulfill their purpose. In the gleaming waters of the swimming pool of a posh gated colony, monkeys are professionally jumping from balconies and giving expert strokes. And they have spectators from windows who are even scared to get onto the balconies. Very obedient audience indeed! Leopards come out and have a look in the spacious empty Chandigarh roads. They have sensed the unusual calm and serenity from the last hideouts in the neighboring Shivalik hills.

In a summer beaten flower bed, like an old sage an old rose appears to give some lesson in life and living:

Then, dew-kissed youth fed by nourishing spring.

Now, sun-kissed old age forged in the furnace of summers.

Then, kiss of life, love and living.

Now, kiss of death and decay.

Mother's kisses are simply kisses,

Just that our ego fumes and hisses!

Enjoy nature from your balconies. Within a month things appear brighter and cleaner. But don’t go just by the visuals. Visuals give a part of the picture. Have a pan-shop of the panorama. Then close your eyes. The other part of the picture will unfold in the brain through birds chirping, sighs of breeze, swaying of branches and so many others. As she smiles through flowers, she sings through birds. Her smile is charming. Her song is very sweet. Those who love nature will at least never feel shortage of love in their life irrespective of any kind of circumstances.

Corona has stalked Europe. People are suffering terribly. But the skies are free for starlings murmuration! The moments when the laws of physics, chemistry and biology mix in the divine fluidity of the unknowable ultimate law. Certain things are left unexplained. A sense of marvel is all that we need to appreciate the phenomenon of higher dimensions. Murmurating Starlings! One of the most joyful moments in the world. Mother Nature's way of expressing freedom and liberation to the core. Allow her to smile. She will surely help us smile in return.

Life is supposed to be a big, fat, intriguing and interesting book. Don’t think this is the end of the world. It isn’t. Life is literally a cascading cocktail. More the chapters, the better it is! So if a particular chapter goes stale, wind it up and save your book from becoming boring. No need to waste energies on a plot that isn't building up. Create fresh characters. Start a new chapter. We are the writers of the book of life. So keep creating life and living out of the infinite pools of cosmic energy. Keep your book interesting!

The fights over faith and religion appear so hollow when all the shadows of our misdemeanors has shifted off the scene. Javed Sahab has full 'faith' in his 'belief'. Sadguru has full 'belief' in his 'faith'. All I can grasp is that they are saying the same thing in different ways. Two sides of the same coin! When did you think that mere words will resolve the unknowable mystery. The rest is just professionalism, either spiritual or film making. And words help us in establishing ourselves in this physical world. They are as much carriers of reality as toilet paper is!

  

 

          

Nursing an injured butterfly

The night showers have turned this summer morning cool and breezy. Playing badminton under the sky’s fatherly muse carries extra fun. The air also gets a chance to play with the swirling shuttle. All this adds to the playfulness, the basic essence of all games, even though we have smothered it down on the anvil of competitiveness and caged playfulness in the iron equation of winning and losing. So the sky too plays through its airy racket, me and my brother have our own poor humanly ones. 

The China made shuttle is surprisingly holding up wear and tear even after a few weeks of enthusiastic play by amateurs like us. Possibly it has drawn inspiration from Corona which is also pretty durable unlike the rest of use and throw substandard Chinese consumer goods. The shuttle has ruffled plastic panels, a mark of the gamesters’ brattish gusto. A champion of orderliness would have thrown it away, but a disciple of disorderliness like me finds many more games in it, just because its ruffled, spiked look of an ungainly youth adds to the swerving dynamics and hence the playfulness, which is basically what I look for.

The summer sun is playing hide and seek through the big flakes of white clouds floating in the sky. A pair of Pieris rapae, a white butterfly with couple of black dots on each wing, floats with nature’s best playfulness. The nearby kari patta tree has little cream flowers. It must be delicious to the sucklers because usually a lot of honeybees and butterflies hover around. In majestic combo, the delicate feathered beauties take sips of juice from the plant and swirl full of love and bonhomie in the eddies of cool morning air. The manmade plastic butterfly, the shuttle, is also going this way and that way, marking the trajectory of the happy spirits of we brothers.

It has been a juicy breakfast for the butterflies. One of them takes a fancy for the flying man-made butterfly being beaten between two ends. It swirls around it as the shuttle glides without much force midway through its course. We find it quite playful. The butterfly is too agile and mischievously flirtatious to get harmed by the poor slow moving shuttle. Many times, it pleasantly glides past with amazing sleekness and show of agility.

Bad things are as distant or near as the good ones. To our horror, the butterfly—the innocent participant in our playfulness—tumbles down during one of its maneuvers. It has not been hit visibly, at least to our eyes. Some grazing may be. But we shouldn’t forget the softness of a butterfly. What appears a harmless graze to us might be fatal to them. It flutters on the ground and can’t take off. I hold it as delicately as it is possible and place it among the leaves of the nearby flowerbed. A sort of fragrant hearse for her! I have almost given up hope of its survival. Again a proof, how easily we fall into the pit of dejection and disbelief.

Its wings,, antennae and legs appear unbroken as I inspect. But the poor thing can’t take off as it tries its best to fly. In their dimension, flying is life; any extended stay is sure a harbinger of death. Here the only pause comes with death. Aren’t we humans blessed to have awareness to choose such reinvigorating pauses? I leave it to rest and repose keeping a keen eye on it. Meanwhile, unaware of the human-born fatalities, its partner is flying over the little tree. Its movements but lack that freedom born of unspoken support which a butterfly couple gives to each other without speaking about it. It too takes a fancy for the shuttle. Possibly it must have thought that its partner has become bigger. We stop playing to avoid committing double fatalities on the butterfly kingdom.

It’s a sad sight. A butterfly is made for flirtatious flights in the air. I touch its wings with the end of my little finger. There is life. It saddens me to be the cause of all this. Not that I am too sentimental to become self-injurious. Just that I see a glimpse of god in this tiny creature. If one cannot see godliness in such beautiful little winged creatures, I am sure he will be missing it somewhere among humans also. There is hardly any qualitative difference when it comes to having empathy for an injured butterfly or an injured human being.

I have heard that a bit of water can save lives. I decide to try the same formula that I applied to a house sparrow that had been hit by a vehicle on the road. Three decades back, as I walked to the farm-side, a bamboozling truck took a sparrow into its furious eddies and I found it collapsed by the road. I picked it up and went to a water puddle and put some water into its open beak. Its eyes were closed. Lost in my innocent concern I went cursing the driver. Holding it in my palm, I walked like a little birdie doctor. A few minutes later it opened its eyes and was in a position to sit on my open palm. I walked so proudly to have saved a sparrow’s life that will definitely become my pet without a cage out of gratitude. I completely believed in this possibility. To break all this childish belief, the sparrow flew almost perfectly one fine moment, may be after 10 minutes in my hand. I felt hurt and a bit irritated at that time. I am so happy now at the memories. Letting go is ultimately for the benefit of all of us.

So now I try my water solution. Only that the winged life is too delicate and tiny this time. I take a bit of water in the palm of my hand and moisten my fingers of the other hand to target littlest water drops around its mouth and the leaves around it. I cannot choke her to death with water. It is minute job, like a watch repairer does. I creep on all fours to accomplish the water dosage. Finally, I see the tiniest of a star just around its mouth. I see it fluttering a bit more lifefully. Definitely it has regained a bit of strength. The place is reasonably secure from predators, so it can bide its time. I go off the scene for some time. As I come back to check after a few minutes, it is not to be seen. I have a right to assume that it took off like the sparrow did. To confirm my faith, I see a solitary butterfly flying lowly on the opposite side of the bed where I had placed the injured one.

Never bind your care and concern in the quantitative scale. The sweet essence of a drop is as good as the entire sea.

X gets axed; Y gets sexed only to be faxed

Do we run for happiness, peace, contentment and joy? Or is our pursuit nothing more than an escape from our sufferings, our visible and invisible pains, the vacuums inside which threaten to suck us in, giving us this nagging restlessness, discontent and dissatisfaction? Both aren’t same by the way.

In the former, there is a bit of acceptance and sync with one’s present—however minute it may be—some restfulness, some taste of self-love, that lays the foundation of further journey with something in your reserve which you can offer to someone. You have a choice; you decide to move in a particular direction, simply because you aren’t running from your present like it’s a sinking ship. Here at least you know where you are heading because survival isn’t at stake. There is no emergency.

In the latter, it’s a blind escapade like one dashes out of a house on fire without having much clue about where one is headed. This is an emergency. You go by only survival instincts. And emergency measures hardly lay the foundation of a smooth journey. The basic instincts of survival turn us selfish—not that it’s about right or wrong, or moral or immoral—simply because that’s how creation is. We cling to life-support like a drowning person clutches at the straw. No wonder, we drown the support also. We want to grasp to survive. We rarely hold hands to walk together.

There is nothing basically wrong with these two scenarios. We are just humans. In the former, we are creating our circumstances. In the latter, we are the mere meek product of our circumstances. In effect, they manifest in either ‘make’ or ‘break’ scene, a sort of ‘creation’ or ‘destruction’. In the former, we are able to ‘create’ because we have a surplus of self-love to handover to someone. In the latter, we ‘destroy’ because we are dragging the fusion wire from the last burning house. The former has the possibility to redefine life for better. The latter can turn it meaningless altogether.

Unfortunately, the modern lifestyle and its consequent personal, social, economic and cultural contours hardly leave any room for a world of choice. It’s mostly about the forced necessities. It’s rarely about healthy options. There are loads of issues and problems crammed to the gills at every step. In pursuit of our so called economic growth and development, and the resultant grievously smothered social set-up, we have constricted life and living to create unsustainable vertical towers. Stability lies in horizontal opening up, not just in minds but in emotions and feelings also. Life gets caged in vertical towers as you are just looking skywards. You rarely look at the sideways panorama. Finally, you feel cornered. It’s like a house on fire. We haven’t too many options as we run out to salvage whatever is left of us. Very few of us go out on our own terms with a smile on lips to grab more of life and living, to waddle in the river of nectar just because we have tasted an ounce of it. Very rarely you have seekers of joy simply because they have tasted happiness and now are eager to upgrade their experience for the better. The thoroughfare is crammed with people running away from their miseries. They are exhausted and are prone to lean on any x, y, z shoulders accidently popping up nearby in the stampede.

  

It brings me to the critical question of modern day relationships. Relationships don’t stand in abstract. They are mere manifestations of a generation. We see that all relationships are drawn taut, always to the snapping limit. There is always more possibility of things falling off the line than a smooth, mundane passage of the day. Why have relationships become so brittle, so fragile? It’s because we just take temporary shelters as we are running away from our house on fire, our dissatisfaction within, our personal pains born of our voluntary, involuntary alienation from our own self. In emergency measure, we are running to get our lives defined by others, simply because that appears the easiest of an option. Working on the self is tedious, but it sows the seeds of great harvest in future. We but grab a few corn-heads along the path as we rush out to survive.

We move into people’s arms predominantly as takers, not as givers. We hardly have anything to offer from our side. Our own emotional scars are so deep that the most we can do in a relationship is to ‘receive’. But our sense of ego will always try to convince us that we are investing; we are giving, which is rarely the case. A woman prone to emotional lynching born of discontentment with her present may think that she is indeed ‘giving’ as she pours out her agony to someone, alongside listening to the tale of woes from the other side. In reality, she is trying her level best to anchor her own footing. A man who offers his so called masochistic, gallant support to her mellowed and teary sea of woes presents himself as a solid embankment to redefine the scattered flow of her life. But just like she has grown too pliable to become a puddle without any course, he himself is lynched by the pain of his solid, stony knot of manliness, he wants to spread. She is a victim of her pliable softness. He is an equal victim of the stony constriction. The initial embanking support to give a course to her life turns out to be a check-dam in her new course as he manifests his pain to broaden his identity in her life through his insecurities and possessiveness. He blocks her and she deluges him.

When two people meet, they hardly talk about the best things in life. They open up the longest tales of their pains, woes and sufferings. That is when any relationship gets doomed right from the beginning. They are two poor ‘takes’ seeking refuge from their own house on fire. How can we expect a good chemistry between two beggars? When one is running away from the house on fire, even a temporary stay appears a wonder dream. In reality, there are simply two scared, lynched souls running to the well to survive. The initial sip of water is solacing like you feel when you get water after almost dying of thirst. But what after that? Do you turn a giver, a river of peace and joy? Very rarely! The fire is too much within. The fire is too big for the tiny sips of water that they both offer to each other. It vaporizes almost instantly. No wonder, these relationships are nothing more than temporary survival halts. Bubbles! They pop up with extravaganza and vanish like nothing happened. Nothing to surprise, we have such massive leap-frogging, literally a stampede of temporary relationships. Here ‘break-up’ is the chorus song. The x gets axed very smoothly and with mountain-loads of justification. Then the y gets sexed up only to be faxed soon. We just continue seeking. As a so called love-seeker on the path of relationships, x, y, z are mere numbers not leading to any destination. They just land one in a quagmire. The past with its ever-growing fires retains its grip on life. On the restless path, the past gets more burdensome because some new number has been added in the love equation.

How many daters we come across who have lovely things to share about their past? Very few! A person who has something to offer in a relationship will definitely have a lot of positive to share about her or his past. The moment you start with a positive past, you are in a position to give something in a relationship, otherwise forget it, you will always be a taker, irrespective of what your ego tells you about your contribution in the new relationship. Good relationships are built among people who are moving to a better destination, not merely running from their burning houses. The latter are merely accidentals bumps on the way. Only while you are walking with poise, deliberation and choice that you meet happy people walking to be happier.

   

There is nothing wrong in seeking love outside. But in running out too fervently to escape our own miseries, we miss one basic point. We hold our destinies in our very own fragile fists. External manifestations of love are mere catalysts. Unfortunately, we make them the main constituents of the equation. Be a nice companion with your own self before you take the responsibility of being someone’s companion. Without sowing the seeds of a ‘giver’—it’s as good as self-love (there is a difference between self-love and being egoistic and narcissistic by the way)—within your own house, you cannot expect to have a luxuriant crop of harmony in any future relationship. So guys, when you go for your next date to get a new x, y or z please ensure that you present yourself as a self-loving and caring person who carries fond memories from the past, who isn’t merely running away from a house on fire.