A Lollipop of Happiness for the Kid in you

 

All mundane moments lying around have their potential of happiness and joy. They are meaningless until you spot them. The moment you dispel their anonymity with your caring look, they turn into a huge treasure instantly, at least for the aesthetics-starved heart in the present times.

To me happiness is when everything is soaked in rain in the morning and the diligent newspaper boy hands you a copy of dry newspaper. You feel like proclaiming him a champion and yourself a lottery winner. You just grab your slightly damp copy—newsprint is so soft that it soaks some moisture from the air itself, so the delivery boy cannot help in this—like a prized possession.

Life is not about mountains of mighty triumphs. It's about tiny molehills of such small pleasures. Learn to be happy with scores of little, little strokes of luck that come your way on a daily basis. Simple mathematics is: At the end of the day, the sum total of our little fractions of luck is more than the big shitty stroke of bad luck. Appreciate your tiny sinews of luck, for they constitute the rope of your survival and sustenance. If not for them, things can go wrong in as many ways as the vastness of this universe.

The Sweet Feminine Push

 

Some sweet moments stand out from the dust of time on the well-trodden path even years down the line. They haven’t actually changed your life with a huge jolt, nor let loose a tsunami cascading down the corridors of your memory. Rather they are very small happenings whose smiling smell defies dying in the ever-crowding chambers of your brain. They are simply like some small wayside flower you came across and whose smile you retain with you as you waft through the turbulent sea of life.

One such moment stands out, its imprint as solid like any other substantial event of my life. The memory leaves me with a nostalgic smile. It happened more than a decade back when I used to lumber along the sea of humanity struggling to complete one more day in the behemoth that Delhi is. Delhi was changing and females were seen jostling in the struggle shoulder to shoulder with the men-folk.

A petrol pump and its female keepers womanning the oil machines! After guzzling fuel from the efficient hands of the sweet girl attendant, my cart, a very old battered car, won’t start, its battery gone weaker than the body. Embarrassed, sheepishly I looked around for help. Gracious heavens, two petrol attendant girls came manly—if we may say so, although given the men’s ways in Delhi, it’s no matter of pride to be manly—forward and pushed the old hag and its owner with such dignified force and refined purpose that my buffalo cart surrendered its obstinacy to the feminine purity of their purpose.

‘Salutes! We are a gender-neutral, vibrant nation-in-making now,’ my heart exulted with the starting jolts of the old engine. I looked back and there they were with a smile on their faces. The moment seems etched in stone in my memory chambers. Millions of chit-chatty things come and go and fall off like inconsequential flakes, some things but stay with you.

Take out such moments of life on some early winter day and relive those moments. As you smile with the recollection of those moments, and preferably sip ginger tea, you find life slightly better than before. And meaningful also. Happy winters guys! Or whatever the season when you happen to read this.

Flower and Snake caught in a Single Loop of Memory

 

Some moments just get etched in your memory. Their empowering aesthetics or intimidating impulses can still tickle the senses even a decade later. Such moments define life, make it momentous. These moments stand as the real milestones notifying the flow of invisible, unstoppable stream of time. Such moments stand out in two ways: a) raising your hair, jolting your senses and giving scary goosebumps; b) massaging your aesthetic senses in a way that you retain the touch almost throughout life. I can recall two such moments.

The first one occurred a decade back at the start of winters in Delhi. As the metro's first ladies-only coach eased its beautiful burden, I found myself walking down the stairs among a fragrant swarm of few dozen beautiful young ladies. Colorful woolens…Deo and perfume...grace and beauty. Smiling, chirpy flowers in the garden of life swaying to the teasing pulls of youth and exuberance. I felt like in a perfumery and walked sheepishly like a guilty black-bee in a garden.

It was really overpowering in a mysterious swathe of truth, beauty and love. I can still smell and see those moments as vividly as it happened a decade ago. Some moments just refuse to fade from your heart’s horizon. It somehow stands out as a memento of love, beauty, grace and freedom. The girls walking so confidently, carried by the morning verve taking them to their colleges and offices, the air redolent with empowerment, and those self-standing women on the path of carving their own destiny.

The second one still sees me swathed with swirling emotions of scared ecstasy, awe, plain fear and genuine appreciation, all at the same time: a real cocktail of emotions and feelings. Flashing the ultimate message that nature is neutral and has all the possibilities for our version of reality, truth and feelings. In a way, it means that it’s your cosmos, my cosmos, as much as anyone’s cosmos.

The moment stands erect almost a decade back on the highway of time. I saw two snakes mating. Not on TV guys but in real life in the cooing calls of the countryside solitude. Surrendered to slithery, coiled and hissing passion, their venomous stalking turned to submission. The kiss of death morphed into the kiss of love. Their fangs and poison took a backseat. Horrified initially, my shaken self felt the coiled fluidity of those two slithery bodies forming love loops. Shocking majesty! Ecstatic creeping! Those vivid images still crawl in my mind as if it’s happening now itself.

Well, everything is equally good, bad, neutral, passive and impassive to nature in isolation. Then we arrive on the scene and define the picture as per our knowledge, emotions, motivation and convenience.

On a parting note out of this memory, I can say with personal experience that love defines the empty canvas on which we paint our version of truth. The colors of love are the same for everyone. Just that we draw various panoramas with our individual perception.

Nostalgia: Virginal Sensation of Love

 

There are tiny specks of golden memories carrying far more nostalgic weightage than you can imagine. Use their rasping, filing power to smoothen the painful edges of a stressed self. Cumbersome memories have the tendency to dull the screen of your being, clouding your vision, making you feel lost. On the other hand, the incredibly fascinating anecdotes can actually help you in getting a firmer hold on your present.

The enchanting haze of nostalgia can wipe out the trace of many a pinching real-life fact plaguing your present. And then who knows you may even nurture fresh perspectives on life because looking with a detached musing self, you acquire a mystical objectivity of looking at things. The warm glow of lilting memories melts the iron hard blockages in the course of life. It has a tendency to spread the self. And spreading is freedom. Believe me! Try it!

Nostalgia is your seductive lover. It will pull you through the cloud of pain. It's a free lease to your loving self as it finds itself cramped for space due to chaotic present. The ephemeral notes of these disjointed anecdotes weave a sweet harmony. There is a malleable softness that titillates one's heart. It triggers a balmy effect, you smile, you get an installment of self-love. A loving nature is just the bonus you draw.

These moments stand out with an eternal calmness. It has a bouquet of emotions. You feel restful sadness and smiling gratitude for the things that came your way and laid the foundation for what you became later. It nurtures gratefulness.

You somehow find your ground with this thin cord relating you to what you were, showing a small milestone reached by you. It's beyond big bang events. They are your moments that refuge to be swashed down the drain. There is no logic why they stand out so prominently because on the surface they are almost inconsequential to your life's journey. These are simply the milestones on the highway of your march.

You simply cannot miss the exhilaration you feel as they tug at your sleeve with the innocence of a little child. Reciprocate. Smile back. Give them your finger to hold onto for some time. You will never feel losing something while you slow down to give them a hearing.

Slow notes of romance seize you. You become aware of a universal sense of mundane things. A few soft shades beat the vibrant, exaggerated colors of the present.

Such balmy moments never fail to give a smile to my lips. A deep sense of purpose surfaces. I quite interestingly find myself more humane and more loving after entertaining these small time guests.

The Matricidal Tale of the Biggest Sinner

 

The August rains wreak havoc across many parts of Asia, uprooting millions who stay closest to earth. These hapless masses, occupying just a tiny shelter and a few cattle, have hardly any role in robbing the pristine slopes of their natural armor and in corroding ecological immunity, still they suffer the most.

The behemoths, whose rapacious juggernaut rapes the natural resources, hardly get affected directly. The geography of a plush cocoon in a high-rise may save them, but the stinking, suffocating atmospherics of an asthmatic earth, with lungs hardly functioning without trees, will come to lay its evil, chuckling grip on their plump, neck-tied throats sooner or later. Let them have air-purifiers, as they may brag about it. How many times you will have your funny oxygen toy with you? Will you use it even while shitting and fucking? Well, if you do, then my dear poor plunderer let me remind you that you are nothing more than a caged bird. If you still have the heart to take your golden cage as the palace of freedom and liberty then please carry on. One more thing, terminal diseases hardly think twice before knocking at a thatched hut or an ivory-paneled palace.  

The naked, raped slopes cascade down, crying testimony to their rape and plunder. As they lose their space, they vanish with a silent curse, ‘Humans, even you will lose, cringe, fret and fight for mere inches of space!’ Aren’t we suffering with the curse, as we engage in wars over wastelands and pay mountains of money pooled over generations just to buy a few yards of space in congested urban ghettos?

The spiteful rivers shout the tale of mankind’s scourge. The dying rivers polluted with the illegitimate semen of our industrial plants, breathe their last with a muffled, choked curse, ‘Humans you will have to pay for every single drop of water!’ Aren’t we paying for water now? The grandest trees fall telling another tale of agony and tragedy, ‘Fools, you will have to pay for every breath to survive!’ Don’t worry, very soon clean air will claim a major portion of your savings in the cities. The glaciers fall with the majesty of grand old men killed by their own grandchildren out of criminal neglect. Many species become extinct, taking a final breath with a curse on the man and his kind. It’s mother earth’s big, loud, painful cry, you damn fools!

Mother earth’s lungs are burning. As the fresh, verdant, lively, life-giving woods get charred to lifeless ash, the mankind has taken one more step toward the inevitable doom. The lungs of earth, the Amazon forests, supplying 20% of the total oxygen to the mother planet, are turning to smoldering char and dead ash. Nobody seems to be bothered. It hardly qualifies as serious international news. The golden haired top-boss of the world and a small, plump Romeo, bursting at his skin’s seams, shaking hands to take a break from their respective follies pleasantly startles the planet. The message reaches everywhere from the hungriest bellies in the remotest hamlets in Africa to the well-fed rats in the gutters of the financial mega-hubs housing the dens of lies, conceits, exploits and plunder. But the lungs of mother planet burning and collapsing hardly qualifies to be a news-studio worthy beat.

The modern civilization appears to be too solution-oriented. Ironically, all these are mere solutions to its own self-crafted problems. So, the simple question is: why create so many problems in the first place? Can’t we have a simple model of development that doesn’t create problems primarily, thus saving us later from falling into a vicious circle of running after solutions? However, when you use your creativity and potential to find a solution to self-generated problems, instead of going back and rectifying the flawed model that led to the problems, you enter a futile circle where both solutions and problems compete against each other to create further problems.

Proud of its caliber and technological advancement, the modern civilization believes in grafts and transplants. It’s taken as the hallmark of scientific prowess. Isn’t it funny? I mean just having to pursue solutions for the follies that we are knowingly committing. It’s outrightly fatalistic. It just fights the evil-effects of the well-proposed and efficiently implemented policies and plans. Why doesn’t it just show innovation in being with the natural mechanisms that support human life? Why does it put all human potential in first deliberately destroying its overall home and then use institutions, NGOs, armies, research institutes, medicine, innovation and planning commissions to plan on a bigger scale to undo the self-inflicted harm? It is simply as fatalistic as a snake eating its own tail to survive. The poor thing assumes that it’s moving on the path of survival. Little does it realize, it’s progressing on the trail of its own annihilation.

So, as the news channels and those who matter waste their lungpower in school-boyish scuttles and slips, the pristine flora and fauna in the most luscious natural region of mother earth burns to lifeless ash. To the land-monger modern civilization, a clear patch is more important than a clump of trees. The issues of trees and environment are left for the future generations to handle as they deem it fit. Basically, we are showering the so-called parental love and care on our children just to leave them suffering in the concrete gas chambers a few decades down the line. There cannot be a graver and more shortsighted version of self-seeking love.