Self-preservation

Creeping civilization! To be an ultramodern successful creeper, we usually use our tendrils like tentacles to reach the wall of our goals. Our tendrils and tentacles latch onto the softest sinews, even if that means killing and suffocating the tiny offshoot that needs help and support itself, on the way to hit our post. Sometimes I think, after witnessing the rawest elements of nature, this creation is imbued with self interest, and our pretty human selfishness is just a portion of the infinite force of self-preservation that we see around. What do you think?

Sage Dostoevsky and God

Sage Dostoevsky speaks about the idea of God:

“The mere fact of the ever present idea that there exists something infinitely more just and more happy than I am fills me through and through with tender ecstasy — and glorifies me — oh, whoever I may be, whatever I have done! What is far more essential for man than personal happiness is to know and to believe at every instant that there is somewhere a perfect and serene happiness for all men and for everything. . . . The one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men are deprived of the infinitely great they will not go on living and will die of despair. The Infinite and the Eternal are as essential for man as the little planet on which he dwells. My friends, all, all: hail to the Great Idea! The Eternal, Infinite Idea! It is essential to every man, whoever he may be, to bow down before what is the Great Idea. Even the stupidest man needs something great... They don’t know, they don’t know that that same Eternal, Grand Idea lies in them all."___ Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Start of Unblock Series

There isn’t enough steam left in the tottering economy to go for another costly blockbuster sequel, Lockdown 5.0. So for economic redemption, they are going for Unlock series. Phase one of Unlock gets on the way from June 1. The soldiers will come out of the trench, cautiously avoiding the Corona booby-traps, looking this way and that way like a scared hare lest the sniper shot travels through the hurts, lungs rater because the Corona bullet slays lungs primarily. One cannot win a war by forever hiding in the trenches. Living itself means taking calculated risks.

The market in the town appears shaken terribly like broken palm fronds on a cyclone struck coast. It will take hell lot of courage on the part of even the most money-crazy trader to come out of the trench and start with the same relish for money, especially when people run to wash hands after touching currency like it’s a sin. It will surely take a few months for things to get normal. The train has been completely derailed. It ran too fast and for too long. Nature intervenes to insert pause.

Dostoevsky: “Stupidity is of as much service to humanity as the loftiest genius.” We have lost the trail of our glorious stupidity while imprisoned at homes. The driving force of our civilization, our fabulous puzzlement of stupidities has paused and so has the chugging, huffing, steam-spewing engine of progress and development. This mad rush defines our being alive. Without it we hardly appear like human beings. We look more miserable without our miserable rut of life. A sort of addiction we have!  

Political croaking is swiftly overtaking the Corona chorus in media now. Well, it reminds me of a particular political system. Which political system do you think is inherently the enemy of true life and living? Some clues to the answer: they are the sworn enemies of freedom and individuality; they are the rascally advocates of a glorified mediocrity; propagators of an abominable shallowness; and the dark Angels of some grossly hypothetical equality minus individual freedom and dignity.

Tell friends, tell! I hope most of you have guessed it right. They prune the roots of individuality like one does with the potted oaks. The roots are repeatedly cut to keep the bonsai alive, stunted, well below the full blossoming mark to avail a subservient species. Communism does the same.

The population in China is QR-coded like they are lifeless products stuffed in a swanky mall. This kind of digital surveillance allows the authorities to scan each and every aspect of the citizens’ lives such as where did they go, which transport they used, what they wore, what they ate, with whom they did go, how much they spent, etc., etc.

All US—the land of individual assertion to optimize the full potential—needs to take an edge in the cute war is to puncture Huawei’s tentacles over the global communication network. The speed of the red car will slow down with one main wheel getting punctured. Keep your missiles safe and fire phrases like Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights, Uyghur Muslims, Panchen Lama to name a few. A political system strictly defined by the sanctified lines in the red book gets terribly ruffled by disturbing phrases which appear sacrilegious to the biggest hypothetical dream trapped in the tiny funny book.   

Ruskin Bond says, “To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beast.” How will such stunted spirits laugh? In gross standardization for the base level cut down equality, how will mercy survive as an emotion? Mercy thrives in an environment of freedom. Ever-watchful state system might create material prosperity but it quashes the spirit and breeds misery of the spirit. And miserable spirits hardly can be merciful. Does it mean communism is basically to dehumanize people, to make them nearer to animals than what we know ourselves as Homo sapiens?

Ruskin Bond: "It's unlucky to call a tiger a tiger. My father always told me so. But if you meet a tiger, and call him uncle, he will leave you alone."

Well, given the arrogance and attitude of all and sundry that I see around, everyone should be addressed as "uncle" by me. I find them adorned with the majestic pride of a tiger. But problem arises with men in late thirties and early forties. They are the real claimants of the title of uncle, but the moment I address them as uncle, I mean tiger, they turn a rampaging bull, ready to trample me to death.

Corona you may keep spreading the guttery stench, I have feathered fragrance. An emotion can be far stronger than tons of muscles and physicality. Spreading the fragrance and colors of the land of paradise amidst the burning plains of North India, Kashmiri Gulab! It has delicious smell and its pink color and paradisiacal smell outshine the deadliest blaze of summer sun.

The Juggernaut of Corona has left soot, saplings, plants and trees trampled all along the way. We cry over the loss of mainstream trees and crops. There are wayside weeds also that might be inconsequential from the point of view of our economy, but for Mother Nature they are as good as any high value cash crop. In the mainstream demography, the stateless citizens, the wandering nomads, are like wayside worthless weeds. They too have their share of loss, just that their loss is almost no loss on the economic scale.  

Out of movement, out of petty trade, out of steam, the gypsy caravan is stuck up at a place for the last 3 months. Of all other deprivation and drudgery, they sorely miss their only right, the right to move. These are the intangible losses that would never be counted among the category of Corona losses by the mainstream society.

In 500 years since they took a vow never to settle down at one place after their leader Maharana Pratap lost to Akbar, these nomadic iron smith tribals have moved on the fringes of the mainstream society. They didn't compromise with their freedom and said a firm no to Akbar's offer of a settlement. Meanwhile, modern civilization contrived rockets. As change is inevitable, the gypsy rate of change is pleasantly swooning. The ornate, wooden ox cart is now being slowly replaced by the bike rikshaw. The jostling civilization scattered around is pushing and prodding them a bit harder to force them to move faster on their endless path.

Nearby, the sunshine gets strangulated and caught in high-tension electricity wires and mammoth metallic banyans supporting them to pin a hole in the skies, the wings of these free birds catch fire and they try to fly away and drop one by one.

The nomadic cattle herders who wander around with their hundreds of famished, huge-horned, bony cows now set out with tottering steps like the creaking water wheel over a dry well. How did they even survive while no movement was allowed? The cows scraped dry grass out of dust on a wasteland. Their dung lies littered like jackals poop, so small and miserable. The herder has a flaming red huge headgear, almost a crown of thorn. His gypsy shirt tightly squeezes his slim torso and the windblown dhoti sways like the torn, raggish pal on a lost ship. There they go escaping the desert sands, the nomadic herders from Rajasthan. Dust here means better pastures to them. How I wish we get used to be contented with what we have!

There has been torrential rain quite unexpected for the season bringing down the temperature to 30 maximum from 46. The honeybees take rest from their death-defying attempt at fetching water to cool the hives. Mother Nature has spewed enough water for two days at least. So they don’t return just out of habit. Theirs is a world that is strictly defined by basic needs. We humans nurture habits out of basic needs, which quickly leads to our typical greed. 

In the forest a honey badger is devilishly tenacious. An elephant may surely crush it like an ant, but the little stubborn rascal will stand on its way till the last breath. A jackal flip-flops among cowardice, caution and cunningness. Two extreme characteristics in two species. They test their skills in the game of rope pulling. Unluckily for the poor python, there was no rope in the forest for the contestants. So they used a python instead! As a common man I feel like being pulled in all directions by the smarter species. Poor migrant workers returning on foot on their hundreds of miles long march of misery is the mammoth, fat python that is now being pulled and hunted by the political hunters to get bellyfuls of political pie.

In a tribal hamlet in Gujarat, far away from the maddening crowd and its still madder Corona offshoots, an old tribal woman drags a huge Kobra. A jittery forest official is lucky to shoot the scene on his mobile. She holds it inconsequentially like it’s a junk piece to be dragged out of the habitation. She walks like performing daily chores, holding the poor devil by tail, the latter clueless about what to do and what not. She drags it across the street without even looking behind. The deadly snake throws its hood in desperation along the crowd. She then simply throws it away like an unwanted unusable piece of old rope. The toothless wisdom of a grand-mom: A rope and a cobra are the same as long as your fingers don't discriminate between the two while holding!

Since the start of the Lockdown blockbuster series, there have been 5 occasions when mild earthquake tremors hit the Delhi NCR. Corona forces us to stay inside the box, and mother earth then shakes it to see us toppling out like scared mice. Five mild tremors in such short time doesn’t portend well. Geologically it may mean a big earthquake is waiting in the wings in the area. Moreover, crores of locusts are hovering in the northern skies like the nefarious enemy drones to chuck out crops. God knows what else this 2020 has in its store to stump us!

Dostovskiyan Samadhi

Samadhi is no domain strictly of those full time into spiritual practices. People across the world, belonging to all domains of life ranging from beggars to billionaires, artists to aristocrats, in all cultures, religions and geographies have experienced the touch of divine, the State of bliss, samadhi. The kundalini shakti inspires different people to manifest their realisations in different ways. Take a look at Dostoevsky for example. Do you think it's simply a writer speaking? No, it's someone who has tasted divine, his kundalini shakti pushing him into the zone of divinity, samadhi. Just that samadhi has been hijacked by esoteric cult practices that present religion as a lucrative business practice and a purveyor of samadhi. To me Dostoevsky is as good as a Himalayan mystic when he says in his work, Devils:

"There are seconds — they come five or six at a time — when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It's something not earthly — I don't mean in the sense that it's heavenly — but in that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect. He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear and unmistakable; it's as though you apprehend all nature and suddenly say, 'Yes, that's right.' God, when He created the world, said at the end of each day of creation, 'Yes, it's right, it's good.' It . . . it's not being deeply moved, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything because there is no more need of forgiveness. It's not that you love — oh, there's something in it higher than love — what's most awful is that it's terribly clear and such joy. If it lasted more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and must perish. In those five seconds I live through a lifetime, and I'd give my whole life for them, because they are worth it. To endure ten seconds one must be physically changed.I think man ought to give up having children — what's the use of children, what's the use of evolution when the goal has been attained? In the gospel it is written that there will be no child-bearing in the resurrection, but that men will be like the angels of the Lord."

Lost Trains and Aggrieved Pythons

If at all there is something like Lockdown 5.0, and surely there will be, it will be primarily left to the people’s individual sense of safety and security against the virus. People have rushed out and so are the cases that are surging at the rate of 7000 every day. These are official figures. One can very well imagine what the exact picture is among the millions of the poorest laborers on the way back to their native places. Definitely the infection rate is very high and many cases go unreported, and so do the deaths.

On a positive note, the majority of people are getting cured and success against the virus is more of a routine in the individual battle. But the virus carries far more weight psychologically than its real ravages on the body. The cash-starved government has recognized it and asked hospitals to discharge non-critical patients just after two days of treatments. The people know rest of the self-quarantine, medicine and precautions against the virus as much as the qualified doctors do, having crammed the same for three months while sitting idle at home.

A friend had to travel from Delhi to Goa in car to drop his relative who has got a job appointment. They had stocked their food and were on the road for three days. All along he saw endless trails of poor migrant labors walking beaten, burdened with their miseries, wounded, hungry, starved, carrying their remnants of their urban dreams in gunny sacks, their children kow-towing bravely, their little steps taking the miseries head on. These are the miles long signature lines of miseries that appear to have taken a lot of credit from the government in having managed Corona efficiently in the country. It goes without saying that the issue of migrant laborers could have been handled in far better way. There will be political repercussions. The Congress must be gloating water-mouthed like a crocodile as the beaten and starved wilder beasts continue on the longest walks of their lives. What will encourage and help them to come back to the cities again? What will the cities do without them as they stand on the blood and toil of these intangible and unsung pullers of urbanism? Perhaps hunger and poverty will draw them back as sheer panic forces them to flee. PM Modi will need a vast amount of oratory and gallons and gallons of poultice to balm the aggrieved hearts. If that is not done, the Congress enters the fray as a credible contender without any effort. That is the irony about Indian polity. Miseries of the masses are the seeds of opportunity for the political parties by default.

The railwaymen seem to have lost their typically rattling alertness as the engines cooled their exhausted innards, bogies rested their wheels and the endless entrails of rails slept peacefully after more than a century of relentless search. When the signal for getting back to duty comes in the form of a few Shramik trains taking the migrant workers to their homes, they show signs of restful hangover and perform comically. A Shramik train bound for Gorakhpur reaches Rourkela! Poor, moneyless, foodless and waterless laborers must have felt like tortured inmates being taken to concentration camps having gas chambers.

India fires a cute salvo in the cold war against China. Two of its parliamentarians attend the swearing in ceremony of the Taiwanese President, thus giving a semblance of recognition to the island nation. As can be expected, the red dragon spits still cuter salvos and asks its troops to enjoy still more solitary climes a bit inside the Indian side in Ladhak. PM Modi sends more troops and the armies are staring at each other. The war of eyes!

In MP, masked bride and groom exchanged Covid-19 free certificates before garlanding each other to start their matrimonial innings. Corona has come in between many a hug this season both authorized by law and unauthorized scandalous types. It has beaten romance like anything. Romance has withdrawn in its shell like a sulky old tortoise, but is sure to hit back with vengeance during the latter half of the ear.

Few domestic flights have taken to the skies with a jittery shake of the aircrafts like a sleepy bird shakes off lethargy from its fur and stretches its wings to start the day again. The metallic birds deserved some rest after decades of endless flights in the skies. The cabin crew walk along the scared aisles like astronauts packed in PPE kits on some inter-planetary mission where there are hazards at every nook corner along the curvature of space. A lot many air passengers in India think that staring at beautiful female cabin crew members actually compensates for the airfare more than the service itself. Such passengers will surely think the ticket is overpriced for the stale glamorless service presently. I hope they won’t demand cabin crew in bikni once things get normal to make up for the loss on eye-feasting gluttony.

Looking at miles long queues in front of liquor outlets, a Maulana is miffed. ‘Why not allow the mosques to be opened for 15-20 minutes when you can have crowded 2-3 Km long queues for wine?’ he has a logical question. Just that the economy of a crowd in a mosque gets beaten by Hindu drinkers who pump bucks to the money. Faith is yet to be monetized directly for our common senses to understand it the way the price of a candy is understood in terms of rupees; indirectly of course it drives the biggest business on earth, religion.

Trump has hailed HCQ as a wonder drug against Corona and he himself is taking it on a precautionary note. The WHO finds it not suitable for the patients and so officially bans it. Probably they want to advertize some drug taken by Xi Jinping. But the secretive regime there won’t allow even the type of food taken by the top communist functionaries behind the iron curtain.

The errant kid surfaces and allays many a speculative theories. Kim Jong comes out after playing hide and seek amidst Corona confusion and appears ok. His disappearance for a fortnight was so effective an international news item that it pushed even mighty Corona from the centre stage for a couple of days. He did it on purpose. The fat lad seems to love being in the limelight. Any day we expect him to start firing rockets again. He actually behaves like the street urchin crony of the local criminal, acting in this capacity as a crony of China to keep the area in turmoil, unsettling the plans of the neighboring countries by firing rockets. He just loves fire-cracking and cackles with laughter like a fat chubby boy. But what villainy hides inside the chubby fat!

Saw a video clip in which a smart hyena cunningly snatches away a deer from the grasp of a python. Poor python! It had worked so hard to tame and suffocate the prey in its coils, a back-breaking effort I tell you. Ironically, eating the prey, that is so much easy for the rest of the species, is far-far more tiresome for the reptile, in fact far more weary and tough than even killing it. The hyena just jumps and hops smartly to run away with the booty. The python actually appears like the ever-toiling and sweat-boiling working class that breaks its bones in digging the foundation and erecting the structure, while the smart select few run away with the real exploits. And when blizzards like Corona come they decimate more of pythons (who are least responsible for the happening) than the hyenas (who are primarily responsible for the storm).