The stamp of a tiny lesson on the love handle

The lockdown has spared a lot of energies with us. We are just looking out for the ways and means to unleash the reserves. My brother decides to use his extra stock on an abandoned, old and archaic water cooler lying in the barn. He is eager to set it into motion again. He finds it the real creative thing after the boring spell of work-from-home software engineering endeavor to get us more and more lost in the dehumanized world of software applications. So last night he raised a plume of dust, almost a mini desert storm, sneezed and laughed triumphantly as the rickety thing was dragged out of its grave.

Like any storm, the dust-storm left a casualty also. A stinging yellow hornet nest was dislodged. These days they survive on our garbage and left-outs. Whatever is of no use to us, turns of full use to them. But then we consumerists try to salvage the last utility even from our own dumps. Since it was night, the odds were against them. They droned angrily for a few moments. One of them even took revenge. It bit him on his finger. The salvo left him with a painful wince. He rubbed his finger and then all gets back to normal. The insulted insects took to hide and somehow see through the night.

In the morning, they are seen droning around angrily. They are aggressive and come very near the target, our foolish faces. ‘Don’t just take a swipe, even if it perches on your nose! It won’t have a reason to bite!’ I set out the instruction, having enjoyed the benefits of this approach many times in life. The principle struck very fruitfully even to ward off the angry hoard of the deadliest bumble bees, the big rascals of the stinging wasp family. Their group strikes kill humans even till date. And who can vouchsafe their deadliness more than my own family, having suffered directly. My great-grandfather, a tirelessly hardworking huge farmer, was returning in the evening after a day of ploughing the fields. The pair of bullocks had spring in their step as they mildly galloped back home for fodder and rest. The bells tied around their necks chimed the verve and happiness to get back home as early as possible. The sturdy great-grandpa had his plough on his work-beaten shoulder. An angry nest of bumblebees attacked them with full fury. The sturdy young farmer was bitten viciously. Well, that was almost hundred years back, my grandfather being just a child when he lost his young father. His terribly swollen body had hardly any chance of survival during those days when people hadn’t seen hospitals and doctors in their entire lives.

My ancestor’s soul must have nailed it in my little brain, I mean the instructions that I mentioned above. I was once cycling in my childhood and an angry scout party of bumblebees chased me down. They probably wanted to repeat the family history. But times had changed and even farmers had started to have some common sense. I had little common sense not to take a swipe or shake my head in any way. I just kept on cycling like before. They tried their level best to find any chink in my armor, and hence earn a right to attack. They devilishly teased the hell out of me. I could feel a few sitting on my hair. My face could feel the angry whispers of their drones. I but kept stuck to my credo. Thank you great-grandpa! You must have driven this little sense in my tiny farmers stock brain after having learnt the lesson in a tragic way yourself. So guys non-reaction saves lives. After a kilometer or so of them seeking a reason to strike, they were disappointed and left me on my fun ride.

This morning over tea, the topic turned to hornet bites. ‘These days bees and hornets have hardly any bite in their stings,’ my brother said while looking at his finger which looked almost normal. And both of us had our own share of horrible bites of master stingers in our childhood, when a bite would bloat the face and eyes for days. ‘Poor insects, they seem to have lost the battle! Harmless hornets and biteless bees!’ I had my Buddhist consolation and musing.

The talk then turned to our mother. A very strong peasant woman, who could walk 4 Km with 50 Kg fodder load of twelve feet long stalks of Jowar on her head, she had the softest, divine feminine heart of golden lotus and strong hands that could tame a male buffalo by holding its neck cord. But Mother had a weakness against stinging insects. We saw her crying after getting bitten by a hornet leaving me wondering, ‘How can Ma cry over a bite while she has the power to lift so much of load and tame buffaloes!?’ Lost in the fond memories of our Mom, I pointed out this fact about Mother in a little jest. She is part of everything now. I know she feels our pain for her leaving us. The moisture of love and gratitude for her must also be reaching her. In her lifetime on earth, she was too soft to teach even the littlest lesson to her children even at the grossest provocation! Well, now she must be looking at us in totality, and as a Mother must be feeling like mildly tweaking our ears for all our funny flaws. So she must have decided to teach me a little lesson about hornet bites after getting irritated over my remark. I would come to know about it an hour later.

I am doing kapalbhati pranayam in an effort to channelize my physicality to get it in sync with my spirit to raise my mundane awareness. My funny baby bump in the belly undulating with efforts to manage my prana. I have eyes closed and in fine rhythm. The smile is ravaged suddenly. I wince with terrible pain. My hand instinctively takes a swipe at the still funnier love handle by the side of my belly. I have been taught a lesson in a painful way. Hornets are painful man and no surprise Ma had tears of pain after getting struck. The rascal offending yellow stinging hornet has literally struck with full force. It seems to have fallen in Dracula type craziness after tasting my blood. I have to tear it away. Either it’s a love bite on the funny love handle or a kiss of revenge. Both mean the same if it’s a stinging yellow hornet. I am rolling in pain on the yoga mat, writing in funniest of body contortions, rubbing the raped love handle, doing God knows what type of asnas in pain. I would call it ‘Hornet-sting-asna’. The side of my belly getting a bump, as if in some asymmetrical pregnancy brutally sired by the rapist evil hornet.

Lesson has been learnt Ma! They are indeed painful and give tears after getting struck. Love you, and thanks for gently holding me by ears and still being there to keep guiding me in the lessons of life and living.    

A Chapter from a Farmer’s Old, Dog-eared Book of Spirituality

In the rudimentary science of a peasant, matter is that energy which has slowed down from its free path of liberated flow to coagulate into a visible lump. It’s sort of speed-bump on the energy highway. Or it’s that energy which has slowed down to be visible in comparison to the fleeting invisible torrents that beat our senses. The super-paths of energy need these speed-breakers to define the path. Without this Maya, it would be pure nothingness. A void! By its very existence, matter appears like a sort of burden on the free-float of dimensionless energy. I take matter as the shadow of energy, a kind of resting stage for it. It’s a very trivial, limited dimensional stage of the dimensionless potential.

The unconsciously existing lumps of energy, the so called lifeless and tremendously slow to change matter, such as stones lie like dormant spring seeds of energy, taking years and years to transform into other forms of matter. The consciously existing lumps of energy, the so called living beings like plants and animals, are little flexible, open and closed in their own ways, reservoirs like a pool in the stream of energy. Here energy slows down at a more dynamic level. It’s a kind of transitory stage between a stone and pure, free, unbound energy. This dynamism to retain the matter, the living body, is fuelled by an inherent consciousness. Now, from stone consciousness to the living body consciousness, there is an upgrade in the dimension and level of consciousness. Doesn’t it mean that at the still upper level of energy forms, or transitory levels of material existence about which we aren’t aware normally with our limited sense perception, the quotient of consciousness will be still higher? It will become pure energy and pure consciousness at the highest level. Well, I have calculated as per my farmer’s logic.

In living beings, consciousness manifests through thoughts, feelings and emotions.  These are mere properties of consciousness. How will the sunlight know of its own existence? Well, it manifests through warmth. Possibly, thoughts, feelings and emotions are the effects of consciousness. Or the ways and means of the attribute-less energy to halt, pause and feel its own warmth for some time.

What about unconsciously surviving living bodies, for example, someone in a coma? Probably consciousness stops seeing through mind, but it exists nonetheless. The ego-construct of mind stops operating, but deep down consciousness thrives in cells because if it’s driven out even from there, the body will take the shape of an unconscious matter, leaving it to decay as per the natural laws. So is coma something like Samadhi? Strictly no!

I would compare, again using the logic of my farming ancestors, coma and Samadhi with two fruits lying on the ground. One is unripe and raw and is thrown onto the ground by a storm. The other is the ripe fruit simply dropping down of its own on the soft grassy land with a musical plop. Both exist on the same plane. In the former there is trauma, a pain, a cutting short, a sorry tale. In the latter, there is the divine spontaneity of completion, harmony, grace.

In pure evolutionary terms, the path charted out for human beings is: how much of consciousness we can salvage from the matter at our disposal. The ladder, of course, goes from rudimentary consciousness born of our senses to super-consciousness to pure energy, with many other forms of material bodies attached to the heightened consciousness between our human level and material nothingness or pure energy form or super-consciousness.  

For human beings, the path of evolution goes not through the negation of our thoughts, feelings and awareness, but accepting them. A denied thought, emotion or feeling turns a ghost to torment virtually. Thoughts, emotions and feelings are the carriers of our consciousness. Problem lies if we allow them to scatter in all directions to go from nowhere to nowhere, to be caught in the same material pool, in a sort of meaningless eddies. Mother Nature has given us the skill and awareness to manage our thoughts, emotions and feelings. By practiced awareness of our thoughts, emotions and feelings, we learn how to put them on the path leading to a specific destination. We ought to read our own thoughts, feelings and emotions as much as we focus on the external things. Under the stern look of the warden, that is, the real self, they learn how to behave well. They pass out as aware citizens. Keep journeying. Keep raising the bar of your consciousness!  

Life Lessons by a Child Monkey

Well, some lives are led extraordinarily. This type of living stands out like when a frog somehow pops out of the well and croaks in chronic freedom and licentious liberation of spirit. The adventurous song of their living echoes for some time, encouraging others for the same.

Many farmers, peasant women, laborers, servicemen, male, female, young and old have completed their innings in the village. We have witnessed their life, living and death. Most of them, like yours truly, lived the same rutted way, facing the same problems, arriving at the same solutions, happy for the same things and sulking for the same. It seems like only ONE life going like a river.

From the river of sameness, of collective pains and same ecstasies, a little creature jumped out and rocked and rafted its life in its own freeways. It was no ordinary life. The reason I still recall it with perfect vividness and not the scores of farmers, who have perished during the interval, vouchsafes its outstanding substantiality in life and living. Even after two and half decades, I can see that adventurer perfectly clearly in my memory chambers. Whatever I recall and tell about the gallant has been witnessed firsthand by yours truly.

Well, he was a few months old monkey, a terribly funny, mischievous, ever-hopping little creature. At that time there was a little group of monkeys in the village. When the people found him spending time on his own, separate from the group, everybody assumed he was motherless. He may really have been a motherless monkey; otherwise, a living mother monkey won’t condemn him to this type of fate. She would have kept him stuck to her belly till  the end of this world.

So this little funny faced flunkey started creating anecdotes that still chime in my brain. He was friendly and not scared of we humans. However, at the same time, he won’t surrender his freedom by hooking ownership to any particular Homo sapien. He belonged to all and none at the same time.

There was a funnily shriveled, oldest of the oldest farmer named Kannhi in the village. He himself appeared like the grandest king of the simian world. Parallels were drawn and to fetch jocular fun from both ends—I mean, the old man and the little monkey—the little bundle of mischief was christened Kannhi. To give you a clue to little Kannnhi’s standard and style of living, the crudest of farmers discussed his chronicles in chaupals around hookah. He must have been terribly funny to raise the bar of peasantry humor because we farmers are ourselves nothing sort of exquisitely funny and rowdy apes.

When Kannhi felt like going for a pony ride, he would hitch an uninvited and unsolicited climb on any farmer’s shoulder. Initially, people got shocked as the miscreant suddenly was seen poking his little fingers in the ear-waxed head handles of the farmer. Then all accepted that this little errant kid has a right to come from around any corner and hold anyone’s ear by sitting on the shoulder.

In the evenings, he preferred to loiter around the main path leading to the pond. The farmers drove their buffalos to the pond for wallowing. The nuisant Kannhi knew there was hell lot fun hidden in the mine of tomfoolery with cattle and buffalos. He would hide among the path-side bushes and suddenly come in front and jump onto the back of one of them. It would lead to a stampede as the panicked buffalos thought the God of death has arrived to drag them to hell for their sins of wallowing, drinking and defecating in the same water. I remember many such dusty stampede episodes.

One summer evening, as I was stoically sitting around the pond, waiting for my buffalo to be finally mindful of my miseries at the waiting game, Kannhi broke all tensions of life. A sturdy peasant woman was holding the rope of her Ox, as the diligent, hardworking cattle drank water, standing on the shore. Now, cows and her offspring simply detest water. They won’t be scared of even the hardest whiplash as they would panic about jumping into water and getting wet. Kannhi, fresh from a great swim and ride on the back of buffalos in the pond, had seen the little nick for another round of fun. The dripping fun-beast—he looked squeezed to invisibility with his fur all wet—walked along the shoreline. The sturdy peasant woman, who had the power to pince down even her rowdy farmer and tweak his beard while sitting on his chest, got scared like a robust buffalo. Kannhi pulled at the rope. He looked a menacing molecule of daredevilry. She let go off her hold on the rope. Now the sturdy Ox had his life stuck in his nostrils. Kannhi wanted the hardworking beast to take a bath perhaps. Now bathing and Ox don’t match. They simply prefer a nice scrub on their coat by rough hands and still rougher metal scrubber. The ox went numb with fear. The jocular zealot was pulling the rope from the water. He seemed so damn determined to pull the ox into the water. The ox appeared to have surrendered to its fate like they do when taken to butcheries. Its eyes popping out, its muzzle flared up in fear and nostrils puffed out saliva laden breath. Many a farmer had to run to save the poor ox’s life, as the culprit dived to safety and pop out its mocking face from among a group of buffalos deep in the waters.

One day, I was walking pensively dawn the path from the fields. I walked like a robo who is passive to the beautiful summer evening. You could expect Kannhi anywhere. He must have enjoyed a joyride on some farmer’s shoulder, so must have been returning to the primary scene of his fun, that is, village. I saw him a few paces ahead of me as it suddenly jumped from the branches of a tree. To go just like any other journeyman wasn’t in his metabolism. While we would walk simply lost in our little set of problems, he would squeeze the last drop of fun with his frail little fingers. The idiot terribly insulted me for my human commonness. Doing things as others do was the most difficult thing for him. My footsteps were mocked at. I saw him going somersaulting in front of me. A horribly ecstatic whirlpool of energy as the tiny creature whirled and hopped in an amazing series of somersaults. To be frank, I have never ever witnessed such gay abundance of free spirits in my life, never! So the funny ghost left me in peals of laughter almost doing the same on the dusty path.

By the village bus stand, there was a mossy water puddle by the road. There was a big crowd as I walked. I apprehended some mishap but then peals of laughter left me assured all was well. And fun and jestership had every right in the village as long as Kannhi was there. The scene opened as I reached. Kannhi was enjoying his life with master backstrokes in swimming in the puddle. Its funny little face out of the water, the upturned funny little turtle, it expertly floated around and would have ashamed many a fish and swimming champions. People whistled and clapped. Those were the days when there was no mobile phone with people; otherwise, Kannhi would have become an internet sensation with his funny antiques.

Like the black bugbears of rascality and tomfoolery, crude farmers take liberty to urinate with as much freedom as a bear does in a forest. The peasant woman however face disadvantage in this regard. During those times, older peasant woman wore long and heavy cotton kirtles, the tedious great-skirts having many folds. In full measurements it weighed up to 5 Kg. What a feat to carry it. It but also served as the mobile toilet box. Like a peasant woman had the advantage of suddenly sitting down on her haunches right in the middle of the sandy path on the pretext of picking something or fixing her leather footwear, papooshes, and pee. The wet earth will give a clue to what had happened in reality. One such old peasant woman got down to sit and go for multitasking, as she fixed her papoosh and attended the nature’s call. Kannhi but couldn’t beat the temptation of taking shelter under the tent like sprawl of the huge long-skirt. The peasant woman was lucky not to have died of shock. Kannhi too got equally scared as he ran away from the scene of crime.

There are numerous other episodes when he would sit on the charpoy and rummage through the sparse silver hair of some retired farmer, pretending to pick lice and even tweak his ears. People even tried to make him learn to smoke hookah. They held him by throat and tried to put the pipe into his mouth. But he had no taste for such vices and he sniffed and even bit a few hands so that they mended their ways in this regard.

As the village women made chapattis on their open hearths, he would go and sit with so much of obedience and innocence that it could even bring moisture to their eyes. He would melt their hearts with his suffering silent expression. He went there for a piece of chapatti but would come back licking his whiskers after drinking pure buffalo milk.

These are just a few of the funny anecdotes that I remember from my personal experience. If a research is done in the village, many more people will have still funnier episodes to share.

Well, in a span of just four or five months, he lived life so enthusiastically to create so many outstanding anecdotes that their echo reverberates even after two and half decades. Meanwhile hundreds of farmers have lived and died in the same manner.

The village wasn’t lucky to have this angel of fun for too long. One day, the news of his death spread. Street dogs killed him. Perhaps they felt left out and jealous because Kannhi was drawing all attention. But I am sure, even before death the fun-loving rascal must have done something horribly funny to arise canine fury and say a funny faced buy to this innings. He lived and died for fun and frolics. God knows, what hilarity he must be committing now in some corner of the cosmos!         

The gallant dance of a warrior princess

There has been another Covid-19 release, Lockdown 4.0. It is a far milder version of the previous lockdowns. The regional satraps, the state CMs, will get the primary power to set-up the norms in their territories.

How long people will stay indoors, so even though cases are increasing at the rate of 5000/day to take India precariously close to 100,000 mark, people have started venturing out. They come out like half-excited, half-afraid toddlers. And totter gingerly like they are learning to walk. The precautions against Corona have been crammed to the gill in our scared brains, so they take these measures and leave the rest to destiny. We are the most hygiene conscious generation ever in our history. Let’s hope our clean hands get used to doing cleaner deeds. That will be the real take away from the adversity.

Passenger trains, metro rails and air travel still remain out of bounds, leaving people skipping and hopping within little zones to gather the scattered sinews after the storm. In fact, the storm is still blowing around as much earlier, but then we have to start believing at some point that the worst is over.

The stranded migrant workers literally revolted and pushed against the check-dam. Miserably herded sheep leapt over the fence and go bleating out their unnoticed miseries at full blast. You have to sing out your song of misery, otherwise nobody cares. They have blasted out a loud chorus of their collective miseries. To them life with or without Corona hardly makes any difference. They have hardly anything to lose. Their fistful of identity has been blown away to nameless specks I the dust of poverty being trampled against the running boots. So the sheep panicked and broke the ranks as a clueless central and state governments watched helplessly.

One can stay indoors is he has something to give a sense of belonging. They hadn’t anything. Their only identity was their native soil which they had abandoned in crisis to earn a living. Now they remembered the kind, old mother and run helter skelter.  Instead of staying hungry and jobless inside their shanties, they set out. All governmental measures failed as they revolted in hundreds of thousands. Many are perishing in accidents, fatigue, exhaustion and psychological trauma. We are calculating Corona losses in infections and casualties and monetary losses. Who will measure the indivisible un-chronicled tales of the agony of these destitute people? They just took a leap of faith and set out on foot to somehow reach there little hamlets and villages hundreds and even thousands of kilometers away. Untold and unmeasured miseries!

China is as usual behaving like the rascal bully in the class, although cornered for being caught red-handed, threatening those who raise voice against it with tariff strikes and flexing its military muscles at littoral little nations around South China Sea. No need to stoop to their level in combating their menace. There is a very simple technique of irritating the hell out of China. The communist regime has 70 years of grisly skeletons of secrecy in its ideological cupboard. Demand facts, ask clearance of all the enigmas that they have built up. Train them in the art of being accountable. That will be the preliminaries to democracy. Start a worldwide movement ‘Democracy in China’. Ask them where is Panchen Lama? Ask what happened at the Tiananmen Square. Give a voice to millions of Chinese whose forefathers perished in concentration camps with the stigma of the enemies of the state. There is no need to bay for human blood anymore. Corona is sufficient for that as of now. Luckily, China and America are busy in the cute war of firing salvos through filing law-suits. In the US, Chinese linked researchers are being picked up for interrogation.

The US is formulating Plan 18 to beat China over Covid 19. To gain numerical superiority, it should have been Plan 20. It involves a host of military and economic measures in alliance with China’s neighbors to tame the rampant bully. In and around the South China Sea, an embittered and aggrieved USA is encouraging Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and India to create a stranglehold against the mighty red bully by supplying these intimidated neighbors with most sophisticated weapons in its kitty. Also, about 120 countries at the WHO have demanded an impartial probe into the Corona issue in China. And how many allies China have? A few rogue states like North Korea and Pakistan. Doesn’t it speak volumes about their international standing?

Even India is in a position to fire innocuous salvos at China as it gets ready to head the WHO executive board for the next three years. Many countries are now vying for an observer status for Taiwan at WHO meets. Ironically, those who have failed to manage the virus, and even the one that is possibly deliberately responsible for unleashing the pandemic, are the who’s who of the world health body, while a small island nation that has beaten the virus fair and square through expert management has to fight even to sit on the sidelines in the observer chair.    

We Indians have huge faith in God. Billions of rupees of holy money are lying unquestioned, untouched and untaxed in religious trusts and organizations. Why not ask God for help? He won’t mind blessing some liquidity to the cash-starved market!

Corona has shaken the social fabric in remote coastal hamlets. A fishing boat is heaving lugubriously near the coast. The fishermen are stranded as their fellow hamlet dwellers won’t allow them to return, lest they bring Corona along with the fish. Government has allowed strict local watch guards to take control of the affairs at the street and locality level. In the huge maze that India is, it’s unthinkable to manage the invisible enemy without their stern eye against any outsider in their locality.

In a hospital, a soldier has won a battle in an unfamiliar territory. He has beaten Corona. He is triumphant and rightly so. He is dancing to Bhangra tunes in the hospital corridor on getting discharged. A nurse in PPE also dances as the triumphant battle marshal to have won it for the soldier who turned civilian in the current war. The PPE is the august coat of armor in this war.

To give you a clue to how things have toppled down in slope. The world’s second largest cigarette maker, British American Tobacco claims to have made Covid 19 vaccine. Tobacco is the leading cause of lung cancer. Does it mean people need to be saved from Corona to die sometime from cancer? The only competition as of now is the race to develop the first vaccine against the virus to turn gold out of the gloomy coal mine of Corona. This is the only competitive game going on at the moment.

Corona is really helping our security forces in managing the clamp down in Kashmir in the aftermaths of the state’s changed status. At least here, Corona seems in league with the state to help impose and further legitimize the curfew.

Media is now fed up with the cumbersome ‘always righteous’ kind of reporting that we saw for the last two three months. To be frank, media is best when there are real news and problems; but they carry over their momentum quite funnily even when there is hardly any real news and they create silly news with their ever-boiling reporting temperament.

The cute weather war between India and China

The world definitely has to look beyond Corona. After all, it cannot just be a Corona-centric world forever. Lockdown 4.0 beginning from May 18 will definitely have easing of restrictions. As more and more countries have come to terms with the existence of the Wuhan virus, the easing of lockdown measures has begun. The real test of individual precaution and immunity will happen when we come out of the trenches and face the enemy in the eye. Let’s hope we have the vaccine when we decide to fight in the open.

If at all there has to be a war among we humans, let it be a cute war. Mind you, a cute war avoids bloodshed and gratifies our egos almost in the same way a bloody war does. Winning in a street pebbles game and at Olympics has the same parameters qualitatively. There is just quantitative difference. So why take animosity to the level of blood-bathing when we can have our innocuous brawls. Sanity has sunk in Indian and Pakistani minds. We have decided to engage in a cute war, the Weather War. Instead of going for surgical strikes in the POK, we have issued weather bulletins on the Pakistan occupied territory of Kashmir, thus implying that it belongs to us. Pakistan also hits back by broadcasting weather report of Ladhak. They but misfire even here. The hilarious goof-up: they say maximum temperature is  ̶ 4 ͦ C and the minimum is  ̶ 1 ͦ C. What a lovely and cute weather soldier they have at radio Pakistan. He is right as far as digits are concerned. But there is a thing called minus sign also. Pakistani government, kindly train them well for the weather war!

To prepare us for a much transformed Lockdown 4.0, the honorable PM addresses the nation for the fifth time during the tough phase. His address isn’t Corona centric this time. He exhorts Indians to move ahead and become self-reliant. I think it’s the best way to cut China to its size by robbing them of such a huge market that we have offered them on a platter. The trade deficit is too much: we export worth 60000 crore; and import 425,000 crores. Do you still need to know where we should aim to hit. Again a cute war! Make their exports to India redundant.

The PM has laid down the foundation of a self-reliant India by announcing an economic package worth 20 lac crores in 2020. ‘Be vocal for the local!’ he gives the clarion call. He exhorts we Indians to look beyond Corona by coming out with basic precautions and see through the transitory Lockdown 4.0 to move ahead with reasonable protection to full scale progress and development.

We have the potential to become the manufacturing hub of the world. With 20% share, the Indian generic pharmaceutical industry is literally the pharmacy of the world. Let there be a vaccine developed anywhere in the world, they have to depend on the Indian generic pharmaceutical industry for mass production and supply.

In a globalized world, wars will be primarily economic in cold phase and biological during the hot phase. The heat of the hot phase we are all bearing currently. The cold phase in economic terms will follow. Australia has been vocal about international investigation to look into the virus issue in China. An angry China hits back by cancelling a beef order worth 2 billion dollars from Australia. Again cute salvos in a cuddly war. Let’s continue doing that. It’s funny and interesting at the same time.    

The one-party system in China has all that it takes to misuse power. There is hardly any balance of power. At the grossest level of existence, 'Truth' is a little candy held tightly in the fist of the hand that is 'Powerful'! A dictatorial regime twists ‘Truth’ to scatter it to dust around. It blinds the masses with the rising dust of ideology. Let’s—through cute wars only—ask them to have at least one opposition party, however weak it might be to begin with. It will help us to forget our injured democracies, if even the fake opposition in the Red bastion takes comic salvos now and then at the real power center. One cuter salvo in the cute war against China! Put Taiwan on the forefront at WHO meets to discuss the effective measures to stop and handle the pandemic. It’s better to throw chili in the enemy’s eye instead of throwing grenades.

Now another theory has surfaced. It says Wuhan had Corona cases as far back as September last. A team of doctors in masks and PPEs had thronged the Wuhan airport after getting the reports that an airplane passenger had collpased suddenly. They made it pass as a military drill to manage emergency medical situations. In October, Wuhan hosted the world military games in which 10,000 military personnel participated. Many participants now tell that they felt sick with influenza type symptoms. In fact, France has tracked its zero patient to be a woman who visited the store operated by the wife of one of the military personnel who visited Wuhan for the games. It was way down the line on December 31 that China announced the outbreak. If that is the case, it makes it equally serious to the theory of deliberate or accidental leak from the lab.

A smile is just one breath away, provided we give it a chance. Even in the fiery pits of burning summer, a blossom awaits our cool, caring shade to smile for life and living! Enjoy the smile of a sun-shaded rose! I have put the rose in a shade too give it a chance against the merciless heat. It dazzles the hot air in the shade. A winsome smile! This is what I do to stay meaningful to life and living within my premises. Creation is creation. I facilitate the creation of these little smiles. And when the afternoon sunrays come to kiss the shy, shaded beauty for a brief flirtatious moment, she opens her heart and gives a full smile. Guys, don't miss to smile even at those who mean to rob you of your smile. Our own frown eats our smile, not other's intentions! When you come out of the trenches, be your better version! I suggest a recipe as well. The recipe of a perfect human being: strong body, sharp mind and soft heart. I mean Shiva! Try to be Shiva!

At the personal level, it has been the worst time in my life. Here are the most meaningful words spoken to me during the last few months---as I tried to steady my feet after the most irremediable loss of my life---by a Tibetan Buddhist Friend. Truth seems to have showered her with the ultimate grace during her months-long meditations in the snow-clad caves in Ladhak. Thanks O seeker of truth for balming my bruised soul through such simple and succinct words:

"We have been born to learn about the love and impermanence of life, and we will have to learn this lesson again and again until we have eternal peace before every injury!"