Graduate from Valentine Day to Earth Day

 

Lewis Black: “What I find most disturbing about Valentine's Day is, look, I get that you have to have a holiday of love, but in the height of flu season, it makes no sense.”

Doesn’t seem to make much sense to me either, especially when I get sadly comparative about the enthusiasm between Earth Day and Valentine day.

I sadly brood over the massive collective losses. It’s Earth Day, passing off like any other inconsequential day. On the other hand, Valentine Day makes a far bigger noise and catches attention. Media is full of it. People themselves are so eager to celebrate it. Well, nothing wrong with that. Symbolism of love and affection in relationships has its utility and importance. But it also shows how confined and limited, almost self-seeking, is our interpretation of love and care. Mind you, it might even be merely skin deep, shallow and funny. Most of us realize it very soon, by the way, in any case.

The best part of being human—our beautiful emotions and the awareness of good and bad—has been imprisoned so tightly that we just trample ahead with our tiny, boxed up, suffocating emotions, totally unconcerned about what is getting trampled under our feet.

We carry tremendous insecurity. Every fellow human is a competitor and rival to beat. No wonder the things that really matter, the issues that are make or break for all of us, the great common ground, hardly get attention. So the plight of mother earth is not that big an issue. It’s the nightmare that we simply delegate to the future generations to face and suffer about. If as parents we sacrifice our present to make our children’s future, cannot we just take a few more steps to be bothered about the future a few generations down the line?

There is a rat race of domination among all countries. There are elaborate geo-strategic plans to capture future for themselves. Plunder of natural resources, development of weapons of mass destruction, genocides, communal killings, and scores of the evils of modernity, where does it take us all. Mankind is certainly the most aware species on earth, but the most foolish as well. Of course foolish because what else it is to keep moving in a direction where, in complete knowledge of it happening, there will be fire and destruction. It’s as foolish as setting the house on fire, and getting full throttle creative about setting a luxurious bed for a night-long rest.

So the biggest stage—mother earth—is shaking and creaking under the hooves of the prudent-most animal on earth. What value the victory carries if the place you have fought for is bound to be crumbled to pieces in future? What does a luxurious bed stand for if the house itself will burn? Hope the earthlings realize that the biggest reason for them to feel insecure is for mother earth itself. Other levels of insecurities, and the consequent strife, confrontations and wars, come later. Even the fights of ego need a solid stage. What does victory mean on a dying planet?

Suppose the aliens approach us. And they will definitely some day or other. It’s just a matter of time. It’s creditable to believe that there are intelligent forms of life in the universe around. So once they arrive, won’t we be simply earthlings in the face of a common threat? Then these caste, class, communal and national divides will melt. It’s high time we realize that the great commonality that supports and sustains us, Mother Nature, is under threat.

There is a common enemy, environmental degradation, the result of our rampant plunder and greed, the evil spin off of our self-seeking bad habit. Let it be recognized as such and a fight launched against it. Let it be done before it is too late. Because the cycle of destruction, once it crosses the critical limit, becomes irreversible.

Save earth! Celebrate Earth Day with as much fervor as you celebrate Valentine day! Take your love a degree further by graduating your embrace for your lover to include some tree nearby. At least try to plant a tree, with due follow up during its growth phase of course, on Earth Day. Throw a bash for your partner. That will bring laughter around. Give mother earth one more soldier, a tree, to fight the poisonous fruits of our misdeeds. It will bring a smile to you.

These are simple exercises to help you evolve from the narrowly defined, relationship-squeezed definition of love, to reach the higher trajectory where unfathomable bliss awaits you.

Lamp of Love under the Nazi Shadows

 

There is crime and there is punishment. The crime, full stop. A lethal abstract. It cannot be reversed. It's a criminal act spinning out of hate, lust and greed, and all the wrong colors of the soul. Punishment cannot right the wrong. There is hardly any redemption. Punishment is a poor instrument of deterrence, and most often it fails even in that.

Going above the man-made instruments of punishments, we have the divine system of justice. For crimes, where the man-made system of justice fails to deliver redemption, we expect the divinity to set it right. But what of mass crimes? What of Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, and religious, ethnic and racial genocides? The equation of right and wrong loses its meaning. These are the black holes. They suck any semblance of justice. It spins in its own gory world of hate and blood. No light of justice escapes. It's just a dark monolith, a crime. A massive wrong.

Forget about mankind's justice, even the wildest stretch of faith in divine redemption fails to get even an iota of justice. Does it mean that the mass crime stands unredeemed? Forever. Does it just keep casting its shadows over the present, creeping into the future, almost forever? Just hopelessly waiting to be redeemed. And forgotten finally. Or forgiven more suitably.

There seems to be no answer. But there is a possibility of a full stop. Love and forgiveness. It leaves the whole equation redundant. It nullifies the vectors of hate that were otherwise casting their shadows till eternity. Well, only till there arrives the ultimate checkmate: Forgiveness. And forgiveness comes only from a loving heart.

Take some time to read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. To me it sounds like a song of humanity amidst mass crime. A ray of hope for the lost. Redemption for the innocent millions who were wiped out because they attracted the greatest affliction of the human mind, someone's unchecked hate. A tale of a small lamp of love under the furious winds of hate and lust for power in Nazi occupied France during the Second World War.

France is virtually menless. Almost all the men are in prison. The women hold the baton of life. They have to keep love alive in their wombs. It's loss and loss everywhere. And monstrous brutalities. They have to hide fistful of love, humanity and forgiveness deep inside their tortured selves. It will be required to rebuild life after the devastation. All major destruction is caused by the criminal acts of men. It's for the women to pick up the scattered pieces and again make a home for the men, for a husband, for parents, for children, for brother, for sister, for everybody in fact. These deeds stand out as a eulogy for womanhood. Beyond blood and death, you see the sun of love rising.

It's a dark cloud hanging over, taking their smiles away. They are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers. But only in memory. The males who define them as such are missing. They have to survive alone. When they can no longer fight to save their bodies, they fight to save their souls. For future. For the victory of humanity over monstrosity. For their men. To give them fresh lease of life, food, shelter and the strong love of a woman, if at all they return after the war.

Forget about redemption. The survival of love in a woman's heart for her man, despite all the wrongs to her body in his absence, is far better a right than millions of wrongs committed by criminal souls. It is here that the question of redemption becomes irrelevant. Like a small lamp drives away millions of particles of darkness with its tiny flicker, the women of France keep the torch alive. They hold the beacon of hope, of love, of a possibility to restart life in the times to come. They keep their treasure of love bound by an urge to relive the moments that sound farther than the wildest dreams. In the backdrop of Nazi holocausts, they move silently, unheroically, carrying love in their eyes, hopes in their laps and seeds of humanity in their womb. Such stories help us in being a still better human being, a more loving person.

Such stories reaffirm the power of love. They teach the lesson of love and rejuvenation. Read more of such stories for they help us in recalling the true nature of our essentially loving self. They reinvigorate the feeling of love. 

William Shakespeare: “Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”

Well, the great bard has no doubts about love. Lesser mortals like you, me and anyone around are safe in following Shakespearean belief.

Let the Festivities Seep in

 

Don't shy away from festivals. Music festivals, color festivals, light festivals, and various other religious and cultural festivals are the highway inns along the great path that life is. These are the pools for everyone to dive in: a big collective exercise to share the same emotion. Festivals provide an opportunity when your oppressed self can go for a revolution against the stress and frustrations of life. Real celebration of a festival may be the stepping stone to enjoy life itself as a festival.

Take Holi, for example. Basically a celebration of colors. Nothing symbolizes colors more than love. So if you want to move beyond the celebrations literally, take one more step towards celebrating it in spirit. Sprinkle the colors on your spirit. Waddle in the colors of love, care, kindness, sympathy, empathy, compassion, forgiveness and understanding. A human soul needs these colors as much as our skins pine for gulal on Holi. Involve your soul in celebrations also. Drive out the black color of hate and douse yourself with the vibrant colors of humanity and tolerance.

It may take some effort to better your worldly conditions, your profession, your job and your business. But it is really simple and easy to turn for the better as a human being. It doesn’t carry any extra cost. It comes free. It doesn’t even need time and drill of humungous effort. Just aim the pichkari at your soul. Let out a spurt of colors. Only this much. Job is done. It will drive out the shades of dark and gray.

Smile more. Smile over someone’s luck even if you are still waiting for your own. It will arrive shortly, changing your little smile to a huge laughter. Forgive your enemies. Look at them with a smile. They will be shamefaced of their dark thoughts about you. Feel happy just to be alive and healthy. The problems of life will seem just routine investments of effort only as much as you invest in climbing a flight of stairs.

Religious hatred has killed more people than the number of souls who have received real peace from religion. Religious divides keep on killing humans like in medieval times. So where is the advancement? The only way left out for humanity is inter-religious harmony. Festivals are the bridges. Abandon your hate and allow the colors to reach the other side as well. Put the festivals out of the barricade. Let the fun and joy be for everybody.

During Mughal period, Muslim emperors and courtiers sprinkled abeer and gulal from ornate balconies. It fell on the people of all faiths. Colored waters of tesu flowers sprinkled the spring-time festivity on the mundane clothes of a common humanity. It was Holi as well as Gulabi Eid. Festivities merged. Looking at the present iron-curtain divides, I wonder, “Have we regressed in our spirits with the passage of time?”

 Wishing everybody a very happy Holi! When you take a bath after the celebrations, please ensure you retain the colors of a better human being on your spirit. 

Same is for Diwali. Let the light starting from the tiny lamps reach into your inner being. Let your soul be a brightly lit grand hall of love, harmony, balance, equipoise, kindness and smiles.

And let it be so for all other festivals of all religions, castes and creeds. These are nothing but celebrations of the biggest truth about human beings, loving self. They just send a gentle reminder.

Aesthetics and Nostalgia: A Step towards Loving Self

 

"But how deeply, painfully, irreparably had he wounded her and upset her life, and how restless and violent she was in her determination to re-shape her destiny and start afresh!" ___Boris Pasternak in Dr Zhivago

 As I reread this quote I smell the beauty of truth and love. An old book having eternal flame of truth. The smell is mildly pungent, of tobacco and paper soaked in the spirits of literature. Classics are classics. As I douse my hunger down the pages, a surprise awaits. A huge bonus that makes my day and turns me richer. A surprise gift. The story ends to live in your memory. But then there is a beginning once more. There are 43 pages of poetry, taking the last page of the book to dreamy depths, to last forever. That's how Boris Pasternak surprises and gives a bonus to his humble reader in Dr Zhivago. 

The most profoundly charming things are not about money, power and authority. They are about sweet memories. Create such moments. These may come in a book, in a movie, or anywhere on the broad stage of life. These are the ripe fruits for you. Pluck them. You won't be disappointed.

Even in the darkest phase of life, these little lamps can show you the path. Keep your store of such cozy moments well stacked. They make a very comfortable lounge chair when you are weak, debilitated and feeling low.

Life's grand events, even if they are very paying otherwise, are still noisy and don't give the comfort that a tiny sip of a pleasant memory can give you. Don't just take huge swigs, take little-little sips of solace on offer. Life's real worth is measured by such small sinews.

Your fabric of happiness is spun with the threads of such pleasing moments. As you run on the stage of life, don't miss to pick up these pleasantries and weave your carpet of happiness. It is possible. Nostalgia draws out such brief, suave moments, not huge episodes and gala events of life. Just reflect, even most extraordinary events will not give that soft balmy touch as will a tiny episode of love, care and gratitude. If you don't have the heart to spot beauty in the ordinary, no decked up specialness will be sufficient to make your heart go ga ga. As Rose Kennedy says, “Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.”

Orson Welles: “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”

Well, the golden aesthetics of love and friendliness are the anchor support for our soul as the external self gets tossed in the treacherous bay. The sepia-toned nostalgia of such tiny episodes prepares you to be pleasantly surprised and innocently overawed by the smallest of a thing. It strengthens the basic unit of your being. You don’t lose your footing when you come face to face against the mammoth structures of life. It may sound surprising, but that’s how it operates. A tiny miracle! Enjoy it!

Rise in Love

 

"The trouble with falling in love is that, unlike death, love kills you every moment, robbing you, at first, of reason, and then, slowly, consuming you bit by bit until you lose the sense of time, of the true nature of things, and of all other precious relationships."_Siddhartha Gigoo in Mehr: A love story.

No wonder they say one ‘falls’ in love!

Well, one falls when the offshoots overweigh the supporting roots. You definitely fall when you impose your desires, expectations, fears and insecurities over the object of your love, covering it like a parasitic vine.

Life, dear brothers and sisters, is a well-cooked love recipe. And no conjecture please about me ‘falling’...haa haa... My version of love is ‘rising’. There is abundance of love around, of family, nature, birds, animals, flowers, clouds, honeybees, insects, beetles, crowded bazaars, isolated vales, springs, summers, winters, autumn, everything in fact. If you have the eyes for it, everything is saturated with love like luscious honey oozing from fat honeycombs hanging over wild rose thickets and the nectar dripping. And the honeybees tasting their own fruits as they buzz around collecting pollen from the flowers! Isn’t it dreamy and wonderful?  

When hate vanishes, love blooms and you ‘soar high’ with such love instead of ‘falling’. You love all, simply because you don't hate anyone. You don’t have any enemies because you are friendly to all. If you have only love to offer, you just cannot have hate around you. The hatred that we see in our lives is just the multiplication of the traces of discontent in us. We simply project it over others, coming out clean chit after blaming them for being the cause of it. Mind it, we just make them the screens to project our inner disharmony. The moment we realize it, more than half the battle is already won.

So kill the agents of hate and anger inside you, and as a natural consequence their visible manifestations in your life get killed from around you. You see light around, simply because there is no darkness inside anymore. You smile more, simply because a smiling face still contributes to the struggles of even a stranger coming across the street.

Rumi: “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” 

No wonder, infinite possibilities to rise await you. Come on, take the first step!

Love for a man or woman is the first step in the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, and go all the way in pursuit of your passionate craving. Melt in it like butter in the frying pan. Lose your identity, break the walls and surrender your self-driven cart to the free wheels of airy jaunts. This is the fire that melts the outermost stony ramparts that hinder you from the freest flight. No wonder, to rise you have to fall first. It’s the rebound that shapes your destiny. All natural laws say so. Your rebound is just in proportion to your ‘fall’ for your man or woman.

Only after touching one summit, you feel like going for the other. So give all you can in your love for your man or woman. Touch your peak. There is no chance for half-bakes. Cook it full. Boil it well. Lukewarm things keep you in a vague haze. Bake it full. Boil it. Vaporize with the heat of your passion. Then you feel like soaring high, instead of crawling piteously in the cauldron.

But don't just stop at this point. It's just a beginning. It’s the path to a bigger destination: from particular to the universal. With your categorized love for your partner, or for your family, friends and siblings, you get a glimpse of the bigger possibilities. The limited love, the so called love defined by your relations, is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, the universal love.

Do you know, why do you feel like ‘falling’ in love again and again? It’s simply because you don’t ‘fall’ completely. You go with insecurities and fear. You love your man and woman with lots of apprehensions, fears and insecurities. You are partially into it. No wonder, the delicacy of your affair is always under-cooked. And you always feel dissatisfied, craving for more and more. Then you proceed to cook another half-cooked affair. We rarely complete the recipe. It’s my promise, if you cook one relationship well, you will not be left with any appetite to run for more along the avenue.

So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you as a human being. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all, when you use your full potential to be a loving being. And the path to hitting the full potential starts with your full love for your partner without any roadblocks of fear, insecurity and apprehensions. The destination of love is to be all inclusive. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

As you enjoy the ecstatic grip of the love chains of your partner, slowly learn to wipe away the names of the people you hate from your little black book. Take a sip of love from the petals of your partner and forget and forgive one name at a time. The honey of love should be sweet enough to make you forget all the bitter tastes driven in your memory at the mention of certain irritating names in your life.  If your life’s bitterness isn’t swiped away by the sweet cherry of your love bites, then you have to objectively assess your level of dive in the love pool. If you are sufficiently deep in the pool of love for your man and woman, you won’t have any reason to be hateful towards even the worst people who have hurt you.

So here I rise high and see all people good in their unique ways.

Love you all!