Rotdu

This chap has carved out a unique identity in the locality. While the rest of the street dogs in the locality are lost in the same old canine ways, standing out almost as an inconsequential common noun, this spotted red and brown champ stands out not for his color (as they usually get christened on the basis of color in India). This one has a fabulous perseverance. He has stuck to his point among all the chaos. It has won him a well-branded identity.

His unique persistence in the vocalization of his needs, wants and fears puts him in a separate league. Among the riotous canine chorus buzzing with interesting vocals including purring, yodeling, snarling, screaming, barking, whining, growling, howling, sighing and groaning, this fellow maintains the same tempo. He sticks to his copyright tone in all situations from the best to the worst. He piteously whines, whimpers and howls, accelerating his sad, heartbroken song in the given order.

Barking is synonymous with being a dog. They just love barking! God knows whether it’s out of anger, joy, fear, need or frustration. While the rest of them are in a merry chorus, as we humans get jittery during Corona times accompanied by dozens of mild earthquake tremors in the Delhi NCR, indicating all is not well under the earth, this brown-white dirge singer has his own ludicrously howling composition. It appears as if he is offering his doomsday song well in advance. While, the rest of them go into long spells of yodeling and barking in varying joyful notes, as if they can smell the soon to break in fault-line underneath, this champion vocalist but stays on his same old frequency. While the rest of them are shouting ecstatically, we can pick out this one’s piteous howls as if he wants to spoil their game.

Offer him a chapatti, its anxiety and god knows what pains spurt out through a sad whine that beats even the customary dog’s tail-wagging on being offered food. So the moment you offer it a chapatti, it will start eating but give you a guilty feeling as if you have given it something very bad in taste. It whimpers, whines and then lets loose a screeching note of howl in gratitude. May be he is not comfortable with anything at all in the canine as well as our human world around and goes cursing. Eh, the perennial naysayer!

Growling also is the sovereign right of a dog. They assert their arrogant dogliness through it. What dog is that which doesn’t growl? This one doesn’t. He can’t even if he tries. Because the moment he puts pressure on his vocal chords, the muscles appear to have stuck up at one place to give the same very old whine, whimper and howl. Suppose some skinny outsider dog enters the locality and all the natives are barking out their machismo spirit at full speed, and there being almost no danger as the skinny outsider cowers in the street drain, this champion participates in the defensive force with his full-hearted wretched howls, as if he is on the side of the pinned down outsider. In this he unsettles many of his companions, who give a break to their lungs and actually stare at him to find out if they have bitten their own buddy by mistake. His lowest of a rumble automatically catches onto a sad song of pain and cries.

When a weirdly dressed gypsy hawker enters the locality, the dog squad gives more pressure to their coiled tails and set after barking in a line after the hawker nomad. He doesn’t mind their barking. He walks confidently, thinking of himself a majestic elephant who isn’t bothered about barking pathetic dogs. They on their part think this strange one will have a share in their chapattis and ladies so needs to be thrown out at the earliest. The nomadic hawkers hardly bother about barking dogs. But even he is forced to abandon his detachment from such mundane settlers’ ways and look behind carefully, his ears picking the piteous howling cries among the proudly ringing din. May be some aloof and unattached gypsy will also start crying after hearing these sympathetic notes. Wonder of wonder, the poor fellow actually believes that it’s barking as can be seen from its taut coil in the tail and proud bearing during the citadel defense. It can’t help if it comes out as a whimpering, irritating howl. May be some unique vocal filter fixed by nature to do some experiment!

The rest of them have wide range of vocals to vent out a range of emotions from the best to the worst. But this one’s joy, sadness, curiosity and of course frustration are all expressed in the same crying tone. His groans give a clue to his discontentment with life. Suppose a dog fellow approaches him with the intention to play, this one reciprocates with his own innocent intention to play. But how will he stop his sad howling. Those playful sighs again come out as piteous scary whines and whimpers and the fellow leaves him, accusing him of being a habitual crier.

Amidst all his teary whimpers, he is a loser in love game also as can be expected. During the mating season, the dandies break many a moon to woo their sweethearts. This one also, driven by his biological instincts, tries the same. But the lady runs away during the foreplay itself as his pining moans start with piteous howls as if she has just pierced his heart with her paw. You have to believe me on this. I have actually seen it happening. Otherwise, why would I be interested in maligning his character on social media?  I call him Rotdu, habitual crier, by the way!

A Petalous Reprimand

Hi, I’m Jasmine, a little flower in a tiny garden in a modest house. I have a message to pass. Or do you think I smile for nothing? I have a sweetly whispering tales to tell! Or do you think I have such nice scent in my petals for nothing? But sweet tales are of no use these days; even children are being taught to be rugged puppeteers to create their own unique miracles. So I would, for the time being, prefer to invidiously yawning message. These are not my own reflections, these are inspired by a dew drowsed rose last night, an old one, who ruffled his old petals to unfurl the tale of mankind’s doomed destiny. 
The summer has fire in its heart-kiln. Hottest dusty winds swerve and swirl with an all-consuming passion. Temperature creeps like a restless climber to boil all and everything. The sun shoots off billowing streams of sorrowful rays to soak the last ounce of moisture to appease his current mistress, the unsparing summer. The weather’s torturing squeals tame even a bull that pants with thirsty foam on the muzzle.
I know Corona has had full-fledged orgy leaving you guys caught in devilish bewilderment. I but have the indefatigable and irrepressible grain of the Holy Spirit. It still lies at my petalous core because I have retained some room for it to keep it thriving, unlike you guys who have stuffed yours to the gills. The grain of Holy Spirit stands firmly forthright. Otherwise why would I smile with a spirit so deeply exuberant? I am not bothered much about the nightmarish twists and angry shoves of the noon-time hot wind that builds up with a barraging crescendo.
Amidst all this groaning commotion, I stay unmindful of the garish and grotesque, and always stay mindful of the opulent aura and nostalgic contours of the fresh sips of early morning cool breeze. It caresses me with luxurious swags. I have a single-pointed—unlike the multi-pronged memory of yours—sharp memory that helps me recall all treasure of my good fate, while the testing noontime passes over my petals with a gibberish squelch. Unfavorable time with its tendency of criminal confiscation can’t erase the songs in my heart which the cool early morning etches on me with its hurryless, sweetly crawling pen.
You may have an eternally rampaging brain, but where is that eternal equanimity of the soul which even a tiny flower like me is blessed with? You are firmly in the grip of the riotous renaissance of your passions, but do you have the time even to get a genuine spiritually suffused and nectar-imbibed smile like I possess? Your rapier sharp reflexes, born of your insecurities, have turned you the ruling supernovas of the earth. But restless journeyman, mind thy faltering strides and the fanatic noose hanging down the line as a kind of primordial penalty for rising too high and sinking too low at the same time to be the ugly emissary of some evil, spurious speedster. Take care, thy condemnatory encroachment is continually coiling around your own self.
You guys are superbly theatrical with your eloquent arguments. You are energetically resourceful and proclaim your resounding resourcefulness. But can you even smile with this feeling that you are light-headed and unburdened of some insurmountable restlessness? Can you ever be free of the guilt about the longly repressed real self? Isn’t all your so called growth and development a mere flailing of arms at the unbreakable bars of the perpetual prison?
You are everything and I am nothing. I am a tiny speck of formless and relationless love. I have the golden reminiscences of the slow-moving remotest wilds. I smile fulsomely beyond the teasing tussles of the cringing anarchist who is foredoomed to end in the failure’s meat grinder because he churns his own ill-fate by pulling strings this way and that way to break everything in two, in pleasure pain, light dark, love hate, etc., etc.
I am deep in the docile domesticity of just being as I am; pulsating dynamics of the eternal light flood through my petals. With your copious consumption and arrogant aloofness, you loop around your desires’ dragnet and kill the spirit of the forests. ‘Animism!’ I coo even at my modest most enthusiasm. ‘Humanism!’ is all you can manage even at your best. My worst is still better than your best. Engaged in your piercingly protracted struggle, you may proclaim self-righteousness in your own courts, but in the eyes of the supreme colorist, you are nothing more than a perilous pimp of criminality. Your self-created Gods and Goddesses are nothing more than goblins and elves of fairy tales.
With my silent spiritual reflections, beyond the drag of expectations egging one to write permanent lines on the shifting sands of time, I enjoy the flourishing inspiration of my soul. And sorry, I turned condemnatory like you guys for some time! Now forgive me and inhale the olfactory nectar that I offer in full humility!

Self-preserving Creepers

Covid numbers seem to be losing their relevance as we get onto the usual mode. Forgetfulness is the mother potion of survival and sustenance. Memory is merely a convenience. We don’t basically survive because we can remember the good; we survive because we have the capacity to forget the bad. We overcome the deaths of near and dear ones and cross over grieving traumas. Animals forget far too soon and hence they may have the physiological pain, they hardly suffer. Plants and need not even feel that instantaneous pain. That is almost unadulterated consciousness. We have a relatively longer span of carrying our pains in memory and hence suffer. But when it comes to moving on, nature has given us enough capacity to get into the whirlpool of survival once again.

So despite 6.5 million Corona cases, and still rising rapidly, and 400,000 deaths world over, other words, issues and phrases are toppling Corona from its few-month old chartbusting reign. India swiftly crossed 200,000 cases without making much of scary hoopla about it. Earlier, as we touched 100,000 mark, a massive wave of panic got built up casting gloom over the entire country. However, with recovery rate almost 50% people seem to have taken it as any other illness causing discomfort and even death. Soon it will be business as usual. For a while, it appeared all of us have learnt pervasive, lasting lessons to redirect our manners in more sustainable ways. The pause was forced. However, with the whirlwinds of modern life picking up again, leaving everyone hurrying and scurrying again, the lessons are already tossed to the winds. Those lessons actually sound too poetic, artistic, aesthetic and impractical and hence valueless. I am sure, despite terrible losses, it will be the business as usual very soon.

In America, Corona got dislodged by a nasty racist incident. Forget about Corona and the USA—China feud building up, the lethal virus of hate and insensitivity in one policeman has unleashed something similar to the Corona mutant entering the human body and wreak havoc. Malice, hate and anger in minds are as lethal as Corona. The virus of hate, lying in incubation in the human mind for long, was incubated during those tragic 9 minutes as the white empowered policeman sat with his knee forced upon a helplessly face-downed man of color, the latter forcing muffled sounds ‘I can’t breathe!’ The policeman was forcing his duty beyond any kind of legitimacy. The poor disadvantaged man of color was losing whatever little he had, his life basically. The man dies and riots, arson and plunder get unleashed across America. When one wrong triggers a wave, many wrongs emerge at various fronts, muddling up the situation where right and wrong lose their meaning altogether. A cornered China gets a chance to hit a few punches in return. New spots always put the older ones in background. All we can do is to retain lessons, but given our great faculty of forgetting we lose the thread and the new pages of resolutions get lost to the heaving huffs of winds.  

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?    

What is Good and what is Evil? Good means God to most of us. I want to love God. To love my God, I, but, have to hate Evil. I love wanting God, even though I know wanting in excess is always bad even if it is about God. I love God, but to love God, i.e., good, I have to hate Evil, i.e., bad. I want God. I prioritize my want to be good over all other states despite numerous pulls in the opposite directions on the practical stage of life.

Why do I have the need to love God? And to sustain all this, I need the anti-god in me. I love the anti-god in me, other why would I retain in me to nurture the sense of good. I need hate to keep reminding me that there is a thing called love. I need my devil to love my god. We always need the unrighteous polarities to keep our dreams of wanting to love pious polarities. Words simply flummox me, eh. I get caught. And then I throw stones at the devil to keep my urge to throw flowers at my God. Little do I realize that my pious hymns need my hateful hiss at my sins to glorify them as some godly divinity.

Puzzling words, always failing to convey the ‘real’, leaving the expression incomplete! Was there any perfectly complete sentence that carried the sense of expression to the ultimate? We should feel that it's about 'experiencing' life, not just 'knowing' it. We know too much, and knowing is just on the surface, leaving up bobbing restlessly like fishermen’s net-line floaters.

To feel we have to dive into the depths and forget. Let’s hone the art of forgetting to take huge bites at our sense of ego, and become a sort of self-eating shark. It will help us sink to the bottom of experiential embrace, a kind of amazing restfulness. When I get such experiential embrace by mother existence, a mammoth mountain, a huge panorama, a little flower all acquire same beauty and significance irrespective of their size. The moment overpowers the senses and gives a sweeping feeling as if there is nothing more to know, a sort of Samadhi.

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