Irritated musings on a baking hot, humid noon

 The lush green ripply pastures of yore are gone. It's now a barren, stony waste stretched for miles after miles in my heart. The fiery sun bakes the sand and the sandstorms screech and howl. Joy only so little as would amount to some lone dewdrop on a singular blade of grass if that can survive. And the sufferings lay piled up like daunting sand dunes. They don’t change, they just creep invidiously. The rose that once blossomed and smiled when all this was a lively, joyful garden is now a dry thorny memoir. It stands there like a crooked garland of thorns draped around the heart. It pricks and lets loose a torrent of memories that nibble at whatever moisture lies there among the barren waste.

**

A lot many words have lost their essence in spirit. They survive half-alive in ‘letter’ only. They are no longer those perfumed living entities that their ‘spirit’ bestowed them. If ‘letter’ is the body, the ‘spirit’ carries the soul of a word. We have squashed the ‘spirit’ like a worm. To take our mechanical assault one step ahead, we are pummeling the ‘letter’ part now. The literal meanings of all the nice words have entered the obsolete book of poetic justice. Guys for the real practical meanings rub these shiny words till the blindfolding glitter vanishes to show you the more realistic stuff.

**

Plundering has been the first priority of our political class in democracy. We aren’t saying anything about the outright autocracies because there plunder, looting and exploitation isn’t a mere ‘priority’, it’s an outright and sole ‘right’ of those who wield power. In a democracy, sadly our ruler has to come out of this breed only. Is there a way out? Yes, it’s the civil society! Guys cast your alternative vote. Join the ranks of the civil society movement. The civil society guys are basically a thorn in the flesh of democratic autocrats. The world is yet to witness its first perfectly democratic government by the way. Peep over the wall and see the massive bundles of lies, conceit, forgery, falsehood, loot and plunder that goes through the legal machines of autocratic democracies. A slightly heightened sense of awareness is the eligibility to be a foot-soldier of civil society movement. In future, civil society would become the flag bearer of democracy in autocratic democracies.  

**

Life isn’t all about pursing your dreams, it’s also about fighting for the leftovers lying in your plate after the hungry fate has had satisfied its gluttony.

**

THE LAWS

HAVE

THEIR CLAWS

THAT FURTHER EXPLOIT

THE HUMAN FLAWS.

Stale, yawning, sleepy musings on a hot, humid and sultry noon

 A widow fleeing from a Taliban ravaged town in Afghanistan says: "When there are two girls in a family they take one to marry her to a fighter; when there are two boys they take one to make him fight."

The bloody saga opens full throttle again in Afghanistan. And the outsiders go there to have their share of the pie and then leave. Superpower blocks cannot heal the Afghan soul. They have bled it too much for many decades. Any healing, even cosmetic in effect, has to come through the UN. Afghanistan needs a UN peacekeeping force. With strong Indian boots on the ground, of course.

**

Dogs, slums, shit, squalor, stray cows, filthy pigs, poisoned air, plundering rulers, dying truth, abandoned and obsolete god. And in all this, we the commoners lost like plagued rats. Rain lays bare the reality in our so called swank 21^st century metropolitan cities. Flooded potholed roads convey the scars that we carry in our imagination. Dirtier than shit garbage lays the foundation of the karmabhoomi of wormish survivals. Salutes my cities!

**

The farmers are shedding blood of their will power for their mother earth. The very same earth whose maternity they have maintained through countless sweat and blood drops falling on her golden crystals. Land grabbers beware! They will stay. Want to test their stamina? Well, do it at your own risk!

**

The real skill of we Indians lies in mindless, reckless, profuse and enthralling procreation. It seems to be a full time job. We just love conceiving even more than the ecstatic moments preceding the conception. No wonder, we are a big, buzzing ant-swarm now. Jostling and lost in its own directionless, blindfolding majesty.

**

Yamuna is up to a complete facelift this time. More rains, more torrents packed with hilly sediments. The runnels of Yamuna rushing past the flood plains in Delhi but still bear the marks of defecations on her holy brow. There was a time, as close as three years back, when two elephants played on the semi-stinking sand, raised their trunks to pay homage to the inherent holiness. The laws have their claws. They were dispatched to some sanctuary. The mother seems to miss its muddy roly-poly babies. 

Musings on a hot, sultry day

 All pigs are good. Unfortunately we can't say the same about the humans. And all donkeys are elegant gentlemen. Again we can't say the same about we humans.

**

The sea has but no option other than to feel its existence through each and every drop cradled in its immensity. Each drop has the very same code of creation as the entire sea. Similarly, the entire cosmos has the only option to feel its lively, enthralling expansion, its pulsating consciousness, through you, me and all of us around. Each sand grain, each particle in the air and the void itself bespeaks of the very same code of creation, the very same primal consciousness. When you know more of yourself and others and the life in general, the cosmos is in fact engaged in a sweet self-reflection.

**

Don't look down upon people just because they are poor and look dirty. Every soil has its own characteristics worth gold. We try to see in others what we ourselves lack. Before condemning and degrading someone else over looks, wealth, power and position, we have already condemned our own selves for lacking the same. How will you judge anyone without having been a thorough judge of your own self. The prejudice that we cast on others is first practiced within the workshop of one's own self. How will you hate anyone if you haven't been hating yourself secretly about your supposed failures, shortcomings and expectations.

**

We cannot avoid doing wrong. But we can at least try to learn to do wrong things for the right reasons.

Musings on a rainy day

 Well, well, well it has been worth it. The storm of course had steely nerves. But then it inspires the very same in you. Unstretched you are just a lethargic, spiritless coil of rope, waiting for the time and its agents to nibble at your sinews. Stretched you become a taut bowstring ready to unleash your potential into the existence around you. Unstretched you are a mere creation, a product. Stretched you are a creator, hurtling your potential on the ever expanding canvas of creation.

Accepted that it was a blizzard worth its salt. A whirlpool of energy whipping up an expansionist storm. But then it also had every right for expansion like all things, phenomena and living beings. It hardly left any visibility on the stage of my life. But then adversities are simply new avenues for the expansion of our potential. Trying to see the way out, I strengthened the muscles of my will power and the eyesight of my inner self. I feel better with the iron in my spirit. Hee hee, nothing goes waste fella. This is the law. Even the most unfavorable lot cast by the fate can’t overrule this. The most it can do is to take away the most common and expected result of one’s endeavor. And is that loss worth crying for and weaken the precious gain in the real substance of your existence?

**

He was a saint for he sat stoically among the garbage dirtier than shit. The dog saint, the holy friar of unholy shrine. And me the follower, the dirty puppy playing in the filth. Now if I drive my soul mad to get enlightenment, do you think there can be a bigger fool?

**

A star shines in my eyes. It shoots off on an exciting, perilous journey, leaves a dusty whiz across my horizon and its remnants instead of crashing into the sea land on my head. I get a nice bump guys!

**

What is success after all? Is it beating others in their achievements? Or meeting others' expectations from you? Or surpassing your own dreams? Or a wispy, pleasant feeling at the day end, 'Fella you have not been a mere weight on earth!'

**

The sun shines bright this morning. I raise my tired eyes and look across the desultory forlornness. A dream beckons from a distance. I just smile and turn my face away, 'No more runs after the mirage fella.'

**

A spider's best chance of landing with prey lies in casting web and wait patiently instead of hopping around to catch one. Use your best faculty fella, however mundane it appears to you. A mosquito has to be as proud of its tiny sting as a mighty lion is of its massive, cleaving bite. 

Beyond morality and immorality

 Only the terribly guilty conscience will look at things through the moral--immoral dichotomy. Things are neither moral nor immoral. We just jump from this side to that just to help us keep believing in our very own meaning of life shaped by our circumstances. A person caught in the quagmire of moral and immoral is kicking to reach nowhere but self-doom. A clear, transparent conscience will look at things without the tag of either moral or immoral.

Beyond the prism of morality and immorality, all of us have at least the choice to improve upon the worst in us. The littlest step away from the worst in us may turn out to be the biggest step of our life.

And most importantly, don't hold any grudges about anyone or anything because in the end all of us are mere travelers on the highway who just accosted a fellow journeyman or woman, said hi, hello, or exchanged words and moved on the path of our destiny. Coming across fellow travelers on the path is merely incidental. It's not the destination. The destination is always for the lone self.