A ray of hope across the frigid fogs

 

The potted rose has surely given it all it had for Mother Nature. Its branches droop with the flowery bunch-loads of roses. Fullest expansion is painless dissolution. Fullest being is non-being itself. A life harnessed to the full is griefless death. Isn't a tree just mother earth expanding and this air merely further expansion of the tree? Live and blossom so fully that you explode with ecstasy instead of burning to painful oblivion. And what are the fuels of this painful burning? These are the things that hold us back, preventing our fullest expansion. Fear is the primary roadblock. It breeds many other offshoots like anger, hate, jealousy, greed, judgements. Smile, laugh and explode with ecstasy like she does!

**

It's a beautiful symmetry of spider web among the guava leaves. In the foggy morning it looks a beatific beady design with the dew-strings drawn to perfection. Homosapiens please don't be too proud of what you create. The littlest of players in the existential game create far more complex designs in their individual capacity. Most of our creations are an offshoot of mankind's joint imagination and effort. What a spider does is equivalent to one man making Eiffel tower. An ant carrying a huge dead carpenter ant is equal to a man carrying an elephant on his head. So please let out the extra air of pride in the stomach. All this drama around is primarily self-manifesting.  It's a series of self emerging designs and patterns. We just hop around for some time as a tiny part of some design in some corner.

**

It's a little story of 6 inches and 7 months in a corner of the existential game. It’s a little Sadabahar flower that set out to etch its destiny in a little crack in a plastered wall about 6 feet from the ground. She was born in the killing heat of June in a little crack in the wall. Well, one can't choose where one lands at birth, so no point in complaining. In the killer heat she kept her little self alive, waiting for the rains. There is no point in comparing. There are plants of her species who have entire earth to themselves and grow in feet. She but managed the best with her little crack. The rains came. She blossomed to get her sole flower as the trophy of her passion for life. Now the hard winters are buffeting the surroundings. There she stands tall in her smallness, waiting patiently for one fine spring morning when the sunrays will have enough warmth for another smile. Her few inches carrying worth of many feet in normal circumstances. Her sole flower carrying the gist of fragrance and smile worth hundreds of flowers. Well, that's the hallmark of a meaningful life: Do the best with whatever you have received to begin with.

**

You feel lonely on your path and a stranger comes your way. You both walk and smile and become familiar. And at some turn both of you drift apart. Who won't like to go smiling all the way till the end? But still people drift apart because destination is rarely the same. Pain is natural. Memories also cast long shadows from behind. All one can do is to commit oneself to come as a better, more evolved person if at some turn on the path, faraway in future, you come to walk by the side of that same person. This is what I would say doing justice to one's past without wasting present and losing a sight of the future.

**

As Dickens says in at some place in Oliver Twist, ‘It's a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.’

But then the maestro gives us our hope back also by saying, ‘This world may be a sad and sorry place, but it's not a hopeless place for it's a place where truth must be learned and souls must be made.’

**

If you want to help yourself against blatant lies, stop asking questions to our politicians. Political answers would come out as lies and falsehoods. Almost naturally. So to avoid the mountains of lies adding to its height, avoid asking questions to the politicians.

**

Nobody leaves anyone. We are all simply running away from our own deep personal pains. Never forget, usually when two people meet they are coming together to beat their loneliness and forget their pain. But the intrinsic restlessness stays and people again try to move away from it. The ego construct will always blame the other. These are but our own scars. We can't be a giver in any relationship until we are at peace within. Till then it's a psychological drama of hurt, pain and blame game among unhappy people bumping into each other as tankers. Sorry takers. Hardly any difference between a tankers and takers by the way. I remember myself as a tanker, firing out the vollies of my frustrations, believing others to be the cause of the outpouring, while all along this, the ammunition lay within. And once you realise this, the live-fire ammunition turns damp. It loses its fiery heat. Only our ego keeps it live. Then the minor irritants, which serve as tiny triggering sparks at the most, fall on a dead heap that's not inflammable. No burning within and you get sips of succour, self driven solace and restfulness.

**

Most of us terribly under-do most of the things in life that should actually be done and over-do the things that should have avoided. Plain cowardice. Full of imaginary fears. Fear is the soul of a cowardly, curtailed life. As Dickens says, 'I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.'

**

How would you expect it to be a peaceful world when there are billions with limited means and unlimited infirmities of mind?

**

There are far more nice people in the world than you ever imagined. Badness is overhyped. All we need is to keep our hearts open and beautiful people walk into your life like warm sunshine after weeks of snowy blizzard. Keep your hope alive for there comes a beautiful soul just round the next corner. Keep smiling and keep going. Accept the past. Crying over it only spoils the present and breeds bitterness. Crying over it only spoils the present and breeds bitterness. Double said, intentionally. If the present isn't sweet it only means u carry too much bitterness from the past. Forgetting isn't easy till we forgive. And forgiveness isn't feasible till one is caught in your fault Vs my fault. Don't dissect the past. That's like taking  nice dreams and horrible nightmares to be more substantial than the reality. It consumes too much energy. This is cadaverous addiction, a nasty post-mortem of things that hardly matter now. Past also is overhyped in terms of giving us lessons. The present is the workshop to learn and unlearn and all else. Here and now. Here and now. Here and now. One's ability to be here and now gives the weapon to cut unnecessary karmic entanglement. Present moment awareness is the knife that cuts the nasty mooring that keeps us stuck up in stinking muds, keeping us away from the bubbly stream of life. Awareness of here and now is your weapon to slay these phantoms of the mind.

**

We come across wrong people only because we have to walk further on to meet the right people who will share a part of their journey with us. Then further on, these right people also appear wrong. So whatever was right was just in its present form. Ultimately, we realise that the final frontier is to be crossed by us all alone. Never expect companionship to see you home in any relationship. These are mere occurrences like trees and flowers falling on your soul's eternal path. Give them respect, give them attention, give them time and energy, for they also do the same. But don't expect them to be the vehicle of your journey. They are just fellow travellers like you and me. Why be so utilitarian to view travellers as the means of taking you to the destination where you feel you will find it joyful. They can be beautiful milestones in your journey at the most.

**

Usually, our vilification and villanisation of someone is merely a desperate attempt to not to see the ugliness in our own persona. I think if we give just one-tenth of the critical attention that we give to others to our own selves, we will have immense opportunity to smile unconditionally as we walk on our path.

A story of two roses

Picture 1: It opens up fully. It gives all it has to open up and scatter its still fragrant petals as a homage to gentle winds, balmy afternoon winters and keenly awaiting mother earth. It showers beauty. It's a drizzle of joy. It's not death. This is ecstatic disintegration for the larger integration. A process! A fluidity beyond the constraints of space and time.

Picture 2: It clings and stinks. It doesn't want to give. It dies a painful elongated death. It doesn't surrender to change and holds its youth's bloom in a fist, a constriction, a knot, a stagnation. It will be there till it turns ugly. The glory of its past will be overshadowed by the piteous whine of its present. A painful event stuck up in the loop of time.

Chimes

 Thus spoke a little flake of cloud over a cosy valley in small hills:

A dole out from the infinite unmanifest to the finite manifest, I am just a tiny speck of cloudy phenomenon casting its shadow in a little valley. From the unbound infinity to cosmos to solar system to Earth atmosphere to this little fleeting shadow, I am simply a ripple, a pulsating throbbing through which the whole feels its own being!

**

Democracy needs champions, says President Biden. And who is a champion? It's one who fights for a cause without much calculations about the possible fallouts. Unfortunately, neither the world's largest nor the world's most powerful democracy fits the tag of being a champion for democracy. The biggest threat to democracy right now is the CCP authoritarianism. Little Lithuania is indeed a champion of democracy. They are the only country who have officially recognised Taiwan at the cost of being cornered by the fuming dragon. My conviction has never wavered that democracy is the best among the worst forms of governance. It has its limitations but still has enough space to allow an individual to nurture decent amount of dignity and independence of spirit. I also believe in one China. But I view mainland China as part of Taiwan, not vice versa. Authoritarianism has to fall inevitably. It's almost a natural law. It comes with its own undoing. So there will be a day when there will be a unified democratic republic of China. And no wonder it will then be among the best nations on earth in the real sense of it. Don't feel sceptical about it. This probability is surer than any other reality. It's only about time. Till than we can take inspiration from the little champion of democracy, Lithuania.

**

Maybe I was feeling a bit bigger than my skin, the very same human tendency to be proud and vain. And instantly mother existence makes me realise my real status. Standing near a clump of ferns, a few mosquitoes hovered around me and one of them nicely settled for a little feast. I am also a food for some other constituent of existence, I realise. Nearby, a rockchat snaps up a carpenter ant from the ground. Well, it's nice to be reminded that apart from whatever notions I have about my being and significance, I am also a mosquito feed.

**

Don't be too serious about anything, as Charles Dickens says 'trifles make the sum of life'.

**

The marigold leaves are a bit dull among the bright blossoms. They look dusty and need bathing, I realise. I sprinkle some water over them and they immediately say thanks through a soft, gentle fragrance wafting around me, embracing me, strengthening my solitude, adding to the smiles in my life, further calming down my nerves and say, "All is well because we are nothing but your very own smile!!"

**

Pre-script: Female readers kindly replace "She" by "He".

Gibran: She was fashioned with the gentleness of the dove, the evasiveness of serpents, the vanity of the peacock and the cruelty of the wolf.

**

Life can be tricky, 

if even about the simplest issues 

you are too frisky,

Prudence is to be at ease with situations and time, 

Complications then wouldn't chime,

And days would pass like a free rhyme!

**

Poetry died a long time ago, the real poetry. Now it's pseudo-poetry just like we abound in so many pseudos. Things stand in letter only now, as we have slaughtered the spirit. We are lesser humane now, so our muscled, hardened, tainted emotions fall short of conveying that unstigmatized purity that found outlet through this great art. Sad but that's true. Change for more complexity is inevitable. May be there were still purer times than the pristine days of classical poetry. Maybe development is inversely proportional to goodness.

**

A list of my books

 Dear readers, your encouragement always inspires me to continue writing. Thank you all who have always supported and encouraged me on my path of learning to write better with each new book! God bless!

1. Lazy Ways To Truth : https://www.amazon.in/dp/9390767458?ref=myi_title_dp

2. Love the Ultimate Alchemy : https://www.amazon.in/dp/9389600251?ref=myi_title_dp

3. Ice Cubes On Desert Sands : https://www.amazon.in/dp/B07MFBCM7S?ref=myi_title_dp

4. Lost in Red Mist : https://www.amazon.in/dp/9386148269?ref=myi_title_dp

5. Beyond and Beneath : https://www.amazon.in/dp/8193238214?ref=myi_title_dp

6. Chimp, Champ and Chops : https://www.amazon.in/dp/8193238222?ref=myi_title_dp

7. A Half House

https://www.amazon.in/A-half.../dp/8193238206/ref=sr_1_3...

8. Faceless Gods

https://www.amazon.in/Faceles.../dp/9384049352/ref=sr_1_2...

9. The Wicked Googly

https://www.amazon.in/Wicked.../dp/1685093175/ref=sr_1_1...

10, The Night Sun

https://www.24by7publishing.com/buy-books.html

A few moments inside a bus

Ten years is a big time to unleash massive changes in a metropolis like Delhi. But certain features are so deep-rooted that one can feel their shadows even while the things seem to have changed drastically. This sketch about Delhi is exactly a decade old but I’m sure you will still feel these lingering shadows when you visit the national capital.

Here is an early December morning. Salutes Delhi! To make it sound normal you are two-eyed. But they have different visions, different dreams, different destinations. One of your pan-shots swankily zooms on the glitz-and-glamour of the resurgent India. Whether it is right-eye pan-shot or left-eye, I do not know. But yes the other eye's camera shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. It’s a grizzled, murky screen having classic comicities and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis. It’s Muhharram today. Many offices are closed. It just means you can drop your purse on the DTC bus floor and still you are left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. Eight wonder almost! So at least you can see a few feet around you. Great solace indeed. The air too is not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deos from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations. See, when the maker offered these buses (allegedly along with the kickbacks per piece and which is more important to our rampaging politicians) the real cost of the machine is just meant to carry this type of load, the festival load, once-in-a-time load when people do not travel on account of holidays or some other emergency.

On this observable stage, a 14-year-old man-kid jumbles into the finally justified interiors of the poor green line. Boy he is a real man, carries a pole that would tower above the poor bus if their vertical components competed. He slants it, his small hands maneuver it smartly and the camel is safely in the room. The pole is the dancing axis of many types of cheapest kid toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhood mushrooming in slums. All fellow-riders watch him in half amuse and half irritation. Lampoons like yours truly even laugh at the free show.

Anyways, coming back to this character valiantly playing its part in the grizzly black and white ever-spooling movie. He rushes to the conductor seat after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the busvala about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. The boy-entrepreneur gets the DTC day-pass costing 40 rupees. Man-o-man! How much this kid earns to afford the pass? Anyways, that is none of our concern like most of the Delhi things should not be. One fact is inescapable: the well-meant boy is well-prepared for the day. The way he has tied the muffler, the way his cheap jacket is buttoned up to the collar, the way trousers well-fit his thin legs and the way well-cleaned shoes purchased from the road-side hawker, all these portend a good successful business plan.

One problem with the new DTC bus is that its doors open too invitingly with a hiss, as if it is specially inviting you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an Advasi family raids the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulks, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the dark old lady draped in a big raggish blanket shouts. God knows how many of them are in the group! It is a defiant pariah unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabs the hand-rails overhead and tries gymnastics. One of its hands also bust the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and the conductor shriek painfully.

So many raggish kids carry their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dump the gypsy spirit for a while. Their neighbors almost vomit in disgust. They feel their dignity has been severely violated. A slim lady carries a toddler on her shoulder, one infant on her hip and most probably the another one inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shines from the short kurti she is wearing above the gracious folds of a dirty long skirt. It just becomes a thoroughfare. The conductor fights for tickets. They stand their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where were they going? Whole of the NCR is their destination. No particular destination means destination everywhere. It is just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with the conductor acquires serious colors. And the moment it does, they just dump themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanish from the scene. Well, we missed a parting shot. As they get down and try to scrape through the jostling crowd, they block the path of a brand new Mercedes for a long moment. Delhi, salutes! You bear witness to the two paradoxical movie-makings by the camera lenses in your eyes!