A Little Lantern of Truth

 

Ordinary beings possess extraordinary potential to win against odds, to jump over hurdles, to smile over tears, and, most importantly, to be happy when there aren’t enough reasons to be. They are the faceless constituents of a massive commonality. They are surrounded by a swiping generality. They are colored in the monochromes of mundane reality. Still they are special. We have to acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary people. I see heroes and heroines in the small protagonists on the stage of life. They fight, and oftentimes fail, but write a little passage in the infinite book of life: an ordinary life that was lived substantially. On the small stage of life, they live very intensely. Somehow, the world would not be the world that is still beautiful without their contribution. They heave humanity onwards in its march to some better destination.

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Of all types of death, including by disease, accidents and ageing, the death born of someone's hate is the worst. Hate-born death slaughters the core principle of being human. It strangulates the basic constituent of our collective consciousness to survive individually as a part of bigger collectivity at the social level, a literally must-have for our identity as much as oxygen is must for our biological survival. Hate has potent carriers. It breeds death with the weapons of religion, caste, creed, race and ethnicity. From Nazi Holocausts and communist purging to modern day ISIS slayings, hate wreaks the worst form of death. Death born of hate is the very negation of the meaning of life.

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The death of a moth! Don’t feel guilty if you find it inconsequential like the shifting of a speck of dust. Does nature evaluate things on the scale of huge and small, like the death of a moth and the collapsing of a mammoth star? Maybe, maybe not! I definitely find it a momentous occasion when the moth takes its last sigh! Kindly don’t laugh at me and condemn me as someone prone to making mountains out of molehills. Even physics is now going into super-small entities in the tiniest wombs of sub-atomic particles to unravel the ultimate mystery. Coming back to the moth, its corpse shakes involuntarily today like it fluttered consciously yesterday. The only difference is that yesterday its littlest ounce of consciousness was still inside this tiny milligram of a body. Today but that ounce of consciousness has spread to become part of everything. The matter now moves to the force of everything around: Transition from life to matter. What about the consciousness that moved it? Here I stand and there flutters the moth corpse to free winds. Yesterday, exactly at this time, I saw it crawling on the floor. Little did I realize that it was on its death bed! Now it becomes part of everything to take its consciousness at this frequency on the further march of evolution of consciousness, just like species have evolved at the level of biology, at the level of matter. Matter and consciousness both evolve. There are parallels. We just need to be aware of it and it becomes a very much realizable process.

The Real 'Wrong'

 

Well, most of us commit our wrongs with a sense of duty, a sort of commitment, with a kind of frenzied sense of occupation. If not for this, so many of us will not be found ready, almost instinctively, to go the wrong way rather than volunteering to do something good. So, the ‘wrong’ seems to have its justification born of those perceived duties by the doer.

A hierarchy of sieving then decides not so common from the common-most crop. At the first level of filtration, the finest wire-mesh allows majority of the mob of wrongdoers trickle down into the dustbin of petty wrongs on the smallest stage closest to earth in crowded slums, stinking nullahs, mucking markets and laboring beehives, where the fight for survival saps most of the energy, leaving very little escapades, now and then, in the frustrated minds. The bigger, fat, rascally particles stay above on the screened, perforated platform and engage in higher wrongs on a more substantive stage.

Now, the second level of sieving takes place among the thicker rascal-heads, the bigger baddies, or the plumpier daddies of the trade. The holes in the wire-mesh are bigger than the previous one. A lot many foolish gallants topple down, so many die, get beaten, imprisoned and clobbered down to survive at the second tier of wrongdoing. They slide down the screening holes at the second tier and settle for bigger wrongs than the lowest mass. As expected, the still thicker ones get a chance to play the wrongdoing game at the next level. Here, the stakes are higher. The risks involved are bloody, but so are the returns, which hit the proportions of Himalayan jackpots.

To qualify to stay above the screening mesh at the third level, the thickheaded pebbles, veritable stones, quibble, use brain as well as brawn, and mostly utilize the muscle of the toppled down smaller particles at the level immediately below, and the ignorance of the ant-swarms at the bottom.

In this final sieving, the biggest mafias, cartels and powerful politicians stay afloat to rule at the apex. Now they decide what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. All other versions of right and wrong at the lower rungs lose their meaning. On the lower platforms, murders, rapes, felonies and thefts come to be mere stats in the law and order book. These are mere social problems and hardly matter as long as these don’t shake the foundations of the state, i.e., interests of the ones qualifying to be filtered at the highest sieve.

One can commit a murder on the lower rungs and still be considered a foolish nonmalignant element. However, if a sound brain, even in the frailest and most non-violent of a body, raises a verbal assault against the wrongdoers at the apex, he then becomes the most lethal anti-state, malignant criminal. The state is basically not bothered about the marketplace cacophony of petty criminalities like someone cutting somebody’s throat, or someone raping, plundering, beating or shouting abuses. These are local police station worthy petty, minor pardonable wrongdoings. These in fact are the cause of creating the bread and butter for a whole damn law-keeping department. The real ‘wrong’ is the ‘wrong’ that shakes the confidence, or throws light, or exposes, the machinations and stratagems of the biggest rascals at the top.

The Sterile Land where Humans acquire a Super-special Shape

 

Well, you might wonder, what is this piece about internecine geostrategic gamble doing here. Beyond the parameters of right and wrong, for geostrategic religion has its own white-blooded pantheon of Gods, it’s the vacuum where lesser mortals like you and me can only fiddle around like scared infants taken into a theatre playing a horror movie. It’s beyond the pale of emotions, love, compassion or most of the things we find related to life and living: a sterile land where a super-species of humans, very close to being super-powered robots, plays its entertainment game. I also visualize a little game with Ajit Dobhal in Afghanistan.

In order to consolidate the non-military Indian rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, the suffering soil of the lost paradise needs Indian boots now. Modi Sahab listening! Modi Sir, it will help Trump also. He is very cranky and pissed off right now, especially after the Greenland fiasco.

Well, the Indian PM is now well known, in fact famous world over, for doing lot many things, which we see happening for the first time. So, why not Indian boots in Afghanistan to restore the rule of law there? It's not that it will help Afghanistan only. It will directly help India in Kashmir also. Violence in Afghanistan and Kashmir share a subtle anatomy. I don’t think there is any doubt about this poignant chemistry. Just peel off the upper layer, use some common sense, and there you see the bitter juicy reality.

So, why not go into the den itself to contain the scourge. A little icing on the cake, it will cheer up Trump also. He is very moody and unpredictable. You may find him having Iftar with Imran Khan, if you leave him alone to suffer with this irritation. Modi Sahab listening? One more thing: by having Indian boots in Afghanistan, you get a strategic location to twist both the right and the left ears of the naughty all-rounder boy.

History gives a little opportunity now and then. There is a little opening for India to consolidate its position now—after all that rebuilding efforts within our limits, which Trump, unfortunately, finds almost inconsequential to the puny extent of just building a library somewhere in the war torn country—by redefining its association in Afghanistan. Trump is willing presently. He seems to have bitten more than he can chew, so needs munching jaws to support the mouthful. If irritated further, who knows, you may have, God forbid, naughty all-rounder boy's boots there, which will be worse.

I know the skeptics will sound a warning about the irresolvable puzzle that Afghanistan is, suitably giving Russian and American examples. But aren't things managed finally by someone? The Indian PM, being an astute human resources actualizer, can definitely count upon Dobhal Sahab. The modern version of Acharya Chanakya has definitely more to offer than assignments like managing Post-370 Kashmir. Modi Sahab count upon him to manage Afghanistan with Indian boots in the once paradisiacal country.

If the whole idea still seems too preposterous and unworkable, go there at least as goddamned UN peacekeeping boots. Graft the American-led NATO forces with a UN peacekeeping mission. The boots will remain the same, with the addition of Indian boots of course, and it will not create a paper revolution in India by the pissed off opposition. Moreover, beyond all the stratagems, the poor country needs a peacekeeping force only. Even in the worst of a situation, a bit of empathy can keep the hopes alive for millions.

The Real Prison

 

You know what, institutions are the mammoth whirlpools, which suck individuals into their all powerful innards. By institutions, I mean the systematized, soulless machinery to achieve dark, power-hungry, ambitious motives—even though a lot many of them pass off as the needs to run the world. Such institutions come in the form of despots, dictators, mafia, corporate cartels, business magnates, hidden heavyweights pulling the strings, the intelligence and spy agencies, politicians, NGOs, and many more. These are the black holes that absorb their own light, hence keeping them hidden.

Those who operate there lose their souls, their sense of right and wrong, as a strange sense of ennui grips them, making them sleepwalking jombies. The institutional juggernaut reaps its crop, while the individual clogs, levers, pullies, nuts and bolts just perform their duties mechanically. Institutions have strange hypnotic powers to put vibrant hearts and independent minds on the chopping block to turn these into suitable mincemeat. The constituents operate like lifeless bottles on the conveyer belt in an assembly line in a factory.

Even the stones change, slowly though, to the cooing calls of varying seasons over decades. The institutions do not. They adapt though to the changing circumstances. However, the core philosophy stays the same. And long after the cog is retired, and regains a fraction of his soul, and sees the grease on his hands, only then he realizes what he has been through. Now he can listen to his heart. His mind now can help him see beyond the factory wall. It does not, but, change anything in the world. Nor it can even if the retired cog tries. All it gives is a guilty bruise to an ageing heart and a sad feeling that life could have been spent better beyond the walls of the institution.

Joseph K. and Me

 

"…if you have the right eye for these things, you can see that the accused men are often attractive. It's a remarkable phenomenon, almost a natural law... accused men are always the most attractive." __Trial by Franz Kafka.

Well, at long last, I find a reason for my weird attractiveness. Haa haa. I also stand accused by the state vigilance commission under Hooda government in Haryana. The report puts me in the ‘tainted’ category to deny me appointment for a covetous post.

Want to know my crime? Actually, I had cracked Haryana PCS exams to get selected as a subdivision magistrate. The honorable Chief Minister and his colleagues, newly drunk with power and prestige, got gastric ulcer over we batch-mates’ tiny feat. So there they order an inquiry in an all authoritative tone. They scanned our answer sheets. Lo, there they found the proof of my crime. It was an expert catch. In one of the answers, the evaluator had changed marking from 2 to 4 with his initials authenticating the change of mind. Now 15 years down the line, having lost the fruit of my 10 years of hardwork, I still wonder how come I stand accused for the evaluator's change of mind, and especially when this addition of 2 marks doesn't affect my selection in any way because even with 2 marks less I still get into the selection list.

So guys, there starts the Trial protagonist Joseph K. type futile struggle. Judges won't understand the rocket science. But do they ever in the cases where mighty state is pitted against some inconsequential subject? After all, they are also part of government, directly or indirectly. There are so many common interests, bordering on gives and takes, among politicians, bureaucrats, judges and businessmen that expecting honesty and fair play seems too optimistic by any yard scale. Anyway, it’s a long story of gross misuse of power by all wings including legislature, executive, bureaucracy and judiciary. Its boring repetition can be spared here. The plot is along too familiar lines like we have grown up watching in typical Bollywood movies. 

Nonetheless, my take away is the strange attractiveness carried by Kafka's accused protagonist in his work Trial. And I like it. Equipped with my accused attractiveness, I sometimes ponder over to find out reasons how come I got only 37% marks in IAS interview even after scoring 54% in mains written, because with this type of score one can easily be among the toppers. Moreover, I also try to find out to this day, how come one PCS board gave me only 36% in interview after I had scored 55% in written mains, which again is a top-worthy score. Well, possibly I scored really low on the scale of political correctness! Anyway, no issues!

So guys, here I stand like Joseph K. when he was executed with final words on his lips, "like a dog!" Heee heee, am I that bad, I sometimes think. Or to rephrase, am I too good for the system? This second option gives more solace, because it provides a sort of self-driven poetic justice. Well, to survive in this world, one has to have grey shades. Not that I don't have mine. Possibly they couldn't spot it. In any case, system's loss, not mine. Heee heee. Again I derive sadistic pleasure with this thought. In any case, it’s high time to realize that it’s almost impossible to win against politicians, if by some quirk of fate you happen to stand in opposition to them. God save you then!

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Awe, missed something really important in this lamenting tale! The experience didn’t turn me bitter. I am a sweeter person than what I presume myself to be had I got this so called ‘fruit’ of my efforts. Such experiences launch you too powerfully into the unknown where, if you keep your journey going, some day you reach the self-sustaining orbit of self-realization. Here all previous losses lose their meaning and appear mere milestones helping you to reach the cusp of your destiny. Then you cannot help a smile. With lots of love for all, of course!