The Smile of the Forsaken

 

He is sitting on the bench by the tea stall. The white woman, her face tanned by the tropical sun, sits near him and nudges his ribs with her elbow. She smiles and he cackles with childlike laughter. 

‘Ganja?’ he mumbles very naughtily leaning over her. She laughs and offers him a cup of tea. He looks like an elderly father who has something in his kitty that would make his little daughter happy. She is excited like a girl turns all smiles at the prospect of receiving her favourite candy.

‘It’s all gone, not even an ant’s worth to be found anywhere on my body,’ he chuckles.

‘Babaji you promised to give it today. My friends are here. They will jump into Ma Ganga and get mukti if it’s not arranged today,’ she keeps her smile.

A smile is the anchor of all hopes in difficult situations. A cicada unleashes its jarring jaw-harping notes that go buzzing through the air.

‘See, this cicada is so happy without ganja! Why do you need ganja to keep smiling?’ it seems the sadhu isn’t in favour of free-wheeling consumption of the substance.

‘It’s not for our smile Babaji. It’s to tame our shame, our pain, our loneliness,’ she is serious now and looks at the swift torrents of Ma Ganga.

‘Ma Ganga is here to absorb our sins, shame, pain, everything. Bathe in her like a baby rolls in her cradle. You will forget all pains,’ the kindly old sadhu puts a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. 

The touch of care seems to revive her spirits a bit. She smiles a bit and bends down to caresses his dog sitting under the rickety wooden bench. He keeps it chained.

‘Why do you keep him chained?’ she asks after a gentle reflection on the subject.

‘We are both chained, not just he. I am chained by having a liking for him and he is chained by his loyalty to me. I know this is bondage, even if a fragile one. But he is as happy with the real chain as I am with my emotional one for him. We have agreed to be chained to each other and walk slowly on our journey till almighty allows us to travel together. After that he goes his way, I will go mine. But till then it has to be a beautiful journey,’ the old mendicant is fondly looking at his dog.

‘Take it gudiya rani,’ her offers her a tiny paper pudiya wrapped around the tiny grains much in demand at the pilgrimage town, especially among a section of foreign travellers. ‘Feed your smile instead of drowning your pain in this,’ he tells her.  

He jumped into mendicancy 50 years back. The old sadhu has shifting, empathically rolling eyes. There is a glint of empathy as well.

He prepares a beedi with the substance of forgetfulness, takes a long, long draught of smoke.

‘Sab sunya hai. Sab gol-gol!’ he cackles with a mischievous laughter.

He offers the next draught to her. She happily takes her turn at the beedi and impresses him with her lung power as she inhales copiously for many seconds.

‘You can be a famous Babaji if you decide to organize your sermons,’ she sees a grand spiritual set-up for him and she as the head disciple.

He thinks he is not educated enough to speak out all that he has realized. He has this propensity of rhyming his speech. Sometimes he succeeds also.

‘The other shore has everything, roads, connectivity to the outside world, hospitals, offices, schools, everything. But here we have swarga. Nothing is left in those ashrams,’ he points to the busy business-like built up on the other side of the holy river.

‘This dog is my last worldly possession. I won’t have any more. It’s blissful to be dispossessed altogether!’ he inhales at his turn.

The beedi is spent. She pays for their tea. She wants to pay for the pudiya also but he says no.

‘Learn to live by adding to your smile instead of subduing your pain,’ he tells her as he takes off the chain from the wooden bench’s leg and starts moving to the solitary alley leading to the forest away from the ashrams and shops by the side of the holy river.

A beautiful, buxom night is building up over the rapid torrents of the holy river. The time is moving towards its mid-night mark. There is silence, serenity, cool breeze, yellowish mercury lights in the street. His dog walks behind him, looking happier than it would be even without the chain. If we are destined to have chains at all, let these be the chains of love. It adds to one’s smiles. Then there is no need to clamp down one’s pain by force. All turns well by itself.

She stands and looks at the retreating figures into the darker folds away from the river bank. She looks at the pudiya. A smile comes on her face. The easy merriment in his eyes still flashes in her vision. The little orphan girl who works as a helper at the tea shop is asleep behind the counter. Her smile further brightens up. She knows the story of this girl as she is a frequent visitor to the tea stall. She recalls the bright smile of this girl when she hands over the tea glass to her. Ironically, it’s the smile of the forsaken that comes as the brightest.

She walks down the steps to Ma Ganga, stands in knee deep waters and respectfully bows down to flow the pudiya among the all-receiving currents of the holy river.

She comes back and sits by the tired sleeping girl on the rickety bench, her feet on a chair and her hand clutching a wooden post nearby to prevent a fall. She caresses her head. The girl is too tired to be awakened by such a soft touch. She then holds her hand, replacing her wooden support by a real flesh and blood motherly hand. The woman smiles. She has added to her smiles. She would no longer need to drown her sorrows to survive. She has decided to get tied to a chain of love. She is going to adopt this little homeless girl and give her the best of life and living.   

An All-loving Dog

 

The dogs are supposed to be unfriendly to some people, if not all, to prove their loyalty and intelligence. An all friendly dog can be more mischievous than an angrily growling one.

This spotless black Labrador, the cute and kind devil type, was equally friendly to two claimants. The angry rivals went to the police to tilt its favours in their direction. They tried their level best to use all the hallmarked attitudinal signs in a dog’s behaviour that qualify the owner-pet relationship such as wagging the tail, child-like look in the eyes, cutely protruding tongue like a child and many others.

It was inconclusive as the impish black gem showered equal affection on both parties. The police station incharge was forced to go and conduct the dog’s DNA to settle the ownership issue.

It was necessitated to go for the test in order to decide the animal’s parentage that was expected to help in deciding the issue of ownership also. The police were put in a testing situation because they found it impossible to just shoo away the case as per their whims. One party was an influential journalist; the other was an impressive political activist. The police was thus, on this rare occasion, stretched beyond its comfort zone. The issue was already well fed by the local media by now. It could no longer be whisked away like any other petty issue that plagues each nook corner in the country.

The journalist was a Muslim. Three months back he lodged an FIR that his 3-year-old Labrador pet named Choko went missing. With the police having failed to provide any lead, and the media man being pretty enthusiastic in his own investigation, the journalist reported the police a week back that he has spotted his dog at the house of the ABVP leader, the right wing students union of a powerful political party. A dispute between a Muslim journalist and an ABVP Hindu leader over a dog surely is bound to raise hackles. The left wingers also chimed in to tilt the scale away from the right wingers. Left of centre and right of centre forces also threw their stakes as per their political suitability.

There were more voices to the left and the journalist, helped by an irritated police, took possession of his dog. The story but won’t come to a happy conclusion here only. The very next day, the Hindu outfit leader reached the police station and claimed that it was his dog named Foko and he had bought it from a place named X. The rival claimant appeared full of confidence, driven by a sense of grief and anger born of losing a lovely pet.

The police station incharge faced the dilemma again. Choko or Foko was again summoned to the police station. The two rival owners again fetched all fleecing, cajoling tricks from their repertoire of pet-parentage to get the canine’s affection. The dog but appeared intent upon having two masters simultaneously and shared his affection with both of them with such canine, clinical precision that again both of them had an exact 50% share each. The dog was indisputably equally comfortable with both the owners and names.

May be it was a very smart dog. The police should have roped in a third fake claimant to see if the loyalty dribbled down to one third for all. However, police being police, they cannot be expected to act so wise. They have to act with force and intimidation. Wisdom is for the village headmen of the last century. 

The journalist said that the dog’s parent lived at a place named Y and that is where he had bought it. Since the celebrity dog was already on the front pages of the local supplements of the vernacular press, the police was in no position to hush up the case either for this party or that on the basis of their clout. An impartial enquiry brings a lot of headache to the police.

The police sent cribbing teams to both the mentioned places to collect blood samples from the supposed parents. The district veterinary doctor collected the samples. He too got a shot at duty after a long and boring hiatus. Meanwhile, since the right wingers carried a bigger administrative clout at that time, the police allowed the ABVP activist to keep the dog till the reports arrived. When questions were raised about this for-the-time-being ownership, he said he has submitted all the relevant documents such as vaccination cards to substantiate his ownership. 

The test was then supposed to possess the key to the truth.     

The animal activist group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment to Animals) also jumped into the fray. The state PETA co-ordinator blamed the police for being insensitive to the animal’s welfare for they couldn’t take proper care of him, resulting in a high fever to the dog, under which it turned angry to both parties and growled at both, thus again leaving the situation indecisive like before.

The dog now showed all cordiality with the PETA co-ordinator, who got personal with the issue and went to the extent of demanding FIR against the police for tormenting the animal. He also demanded FIR against the wrong claimant under the provisions of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The dog thus joined inter-species bonhomie at the PETA facility. 

Presently the right of the dog centred around having its rightful owner. The reports that arrived were a shocker. Both Place X and Place Y theories were nullified. The journalist and the political activist both were equally near or far from the pet’s legal ownership now. Given their humanitarian—animalitarian rather—cause, the animal welfare body was allowed to keep the dog and put up a pet adoption advertisement whenever they felt the dog was ready to take a master.

Possibly it was an over-friendly dog with a mission of brotherhood and love for all. But then, an all loving dog creates problems also. And these are not the times for secular, unqualified, all-loving affections.  

A Spicy Slice of Cucumber

 

From Ramjhoola, a street moves up north, along the eastern bank, bordered with numbered kutis for the resting babas on the right. There are iron benches and cast iron open pavilions overlooking the Ganges on the left. The holy river, in this stretch, has a few little beaches dotted with massive, beaten, smothered, rounded boulders. The beaches are in fact the sand banks formed by the sediment deposits during the flooded monsoon season. The people love to have an oceanic experience on these tiny sand bars.

It’s the second week of April at about half past three in the afternoon. The sun is mercilessly beating very hard right over the valley. The sunrays sting and bite. The waters of the holy river appear mossy green. Steady streams of rafts glide down from Shivpuri. The sadhus are sitting lazily, consumed by a strange, pleasant ennui which full time devotion brings in its wake. Even in this strong heat, some foreigners are sunbathing on the beach.

There are many Yoga and Ayurvedic massage centres along the boulevard. Here one can enter the portals of spirituality and well being either by enrolling in a Yoga course or getting an aromatic massage with scented herbal oils and pastes. 

You can expect as many sadhus as the trees around. The rains of the last three or four days seem to have vanished completely, leaving hardly any trace behind. It’s as hot as you can expect at this point of the season. The mornings have strong gusts of cool wind blowing down the valley, carrying the message of divinity from the Himalayas. The noons but proclaim the hot, sweaty, worldly authority of the plains down south.

‘Kheera khao Bhole, Kheera khao’ she preens. The intonation then shifts to ‘Cucumber, cucumber!’

The linguistic shift stands out as a little milestone on some iron bench. She is a tiny, petite woman selling cucumber slices for rupees 10 and 5. She must be about 70 years in age. Most importantly, her features give a clue to the fact that she has learnt to smile over minor irritants. Life turns very easy with this kind of temperament.

Her family stays in Delhi. They even own a little shop at a slum in Adarsh Nagar. Once her sons got married, she took sanyas. However, it was with a condition—she won’t beg to survive. She gets something or the other to sell over the changing seasons—peanuts and gazak during winters, fruit chats during summers. All this helps her to manage a lodging for which she pays 1,500 rupees per month.

She has a gentle smile and an effective laughter. ‘When I came here, I requested Ganga Maiya to give me that much luck to earn my own bread as long as my hands and legs allow it.’

She seems very peaceful with her non-begging sanyas. Her little enterprise allows her to stay on the banks of Ma Ganga. This is the biggest blessing to her.  

‘It’s a blessing itself to stay near Ganga Maiya!’ she is saturated with gratitude.

‘I do think about my family sometimes. I know they are doing what makes them happy, like staying here makes me happy. There is no need to walk forever. Just walk only that much as it takes you to the place that makes you feel really happy,’ her philosophy looks very lucid on her peaceful face.

She has her reservations about begging by those who have renounced the world. ‘In my opinion, one should keep working for one’s bread till the hands allow. Begging should be the last recourse,’ she looks at a rotund sadhu who seems well fed at countless community langars. 

The sadhu clears his throat, even scoffs a bit at her, takes a turn to look the other way. He seems to have been affected by the remark.

She picks up a slice of cucumber and puts her special masala on it and goes to the sadhu. ‘I’m sorry beta if my saying so hurts you. I said about my life. Only Ganga Ma knows the truth. How can an illiterate, ignorant old woman like me know the truth? All of us are the children of Ganga Ma. She is the one who feeds us whether we work for it or not. All are same to her,’ she caresses the young sadhu’s unkempt locks of hair.

The heat of her care melts the tiny traces of frown on the bearded face. He smiles and takes her offering. ‘Who will you give your love to if there are no receivers of love like us?’ he laughs and starts munching on the spicy slice of cucumber.    

Short in Body, Tall in Minds

 

Most of us keep our ambitions very lofty like the fruits very high up there among the branches of a tall tree. Then we get onto our toes, stretch our body, protrude our arms upwards to get a handhold at the object of our pursuit. That’s how life takes its course with our ever-stretched self. We have a culture of high fruits among the branches of tall trees. The more we elongate ourselves along the length of the target, the better it is taken as. No wonder, being tall is perceived as a big qualification for the game of life and shortness is simply taken as a kind of ‘disability.’

The so called ‘disability’ landed in the little yard of a poor tailor. He measured people’s hands, torso, legs, waists, wrists and chest to make fitting dresses. For the chest measurement everybody inflated for a couple of extra inches and thus rise in the tailor’s esteem. For the stomach everyone did the reverse to reach as near to the size zero mark as possible. All we want is a bit more here and a bit less there. Very rarely we are comfortable with being as we are.

The tailor was crestfallen as his measuring tape stopped at the same point while measuring their dress-making stats. They advanced in years, without adding hardly anything to their height. It was a dwarf pair of twin girls. The poor couple usually shed tears of agony for themselves and pity for the little ones.

‘I will never have the luck of making a beautiful full-grown young woman’s dress for them. It will be a kids dress forever,’ the dress maker lamented.

Those who had their aesthetics in place pitied the girls. The ones who lacked the spectrum of sensitivities in their heart would laugh at them and enjoy the sight. The parents had a permanent aching, sad corner in their hearts. Their siblings had a walkover in typical childhood rivalries and competition.

The girls grew up in age, if not in height, with a dream of rising in stature by becoming doctors. Nobody took it too seriously, taking it just a dream as they are. Most of the dreams retain their virtual status in our lives. Their little limbs carried them to the long path of passing the senior secondary certification and be eligible to appear for the NEET exam conducted for the entry to medical colleges. The so called normal girls of their age were running faster, scoring more, smiling better. They had average marks and the dream of doing MBBS was almost on the verge of becoming another broken dream. They had tried sample tests and found their marks far less than the qualifying benchmark.       

Now they smiled even lesser and walked with still smaller steps. Their ladder to the rise in the people’s esteem was almost broken. The neighbours pitied them even more. The parents had a still larger aching, sad hole in their heart. It was rapidly turning into the bylane of a sad story. They had a dream of walking with upheld stature on the main thoroughfare of life but now their situation was pushing them into the side alley of grey anonymity. They felt the bigger world would just roll over them like in a stampede. They are there just like ants to be crushed by the taller humans, they felt. 

Moosa Bhai of a charitable trust could feel their plight as they arrived to pick up their medicines at an NGO run dispensary. They looked even more diminutive having abandoned their dream of becoming doctors.

The good samaritan beamed like the silver edge of a dark mass of cloud, ‘If a person of six foot needs 600 marks in NEET to qualify for the MBBS course, you need just half of that.’

That day they almost ran to get back home. The information given by the kind gentleman was enough for them to do a bit of a search and to their immense joy they found that their physical condition was in the reserved category for the differently-abled children. It meant they will have a certain grace in qualifying marks. 

Emboldened with the new input, the tailor dived a bit deeper into his modest pockets and decided to get coaching classes for his daughters. A prestigious coaching institution turned them away citing their issue of height. The gentleman from the charitable trust approached the institute’s Kota headquarters. A bit of kindness is what separates the ‘make’ from the ‘break’. The institute HQ at Kota admitted them with a 60% fee concession. Thus was laid the foundation of realising the dream and save it from nose-diving among its unrealised brethren.

The girls knew the importance of this opportunity. It was their ropeway to lengthen their stature and thus beat the limits that biology had put on them. They didn’t want to get crushed under the bigger feet and legs in the stampede of life, living and survival. The ladder to go high and see more of life was set against the wall and they put their short legs into action to move up the rungs. They dived into the studies with so much of vigour and spirit that they would forget having even the food.

The beauty of such fights is that one starts at the subterranean level and by the time one reaches the point from where people generally start it has written a long chapter of invisible glory under the surface. Well, that’s what we mean by creating life. Blossoming a full flower from the faulty seeds is what we mean a real life. Not allowing the shortcomings to eat into your vitality like termites and get either wiped out or survive with stunted growth of character is what I take as a champion. 

The tailor’s so called ‘dwarf’ daughters, thus, rose above all odds to crack the NEET exam and look at life from the level most of us usually do without much struggle. Now they were not the kids who would look upwards helplessly to survive as becharis. For years their diminutive structures at 3.5 feet and 3.6 feet hijacked all their life, literally killing every normal dream. The qualification for the MBBS course turned them mini celebrities in the town. Their three other siblings, tailor father and homemaker mother grew in stature and were recognised as the family of the girls who had cracked the MBBS exam.

‘A doctor’s white coat of 1.5 feet is as good as that of 3.5 feet. It gets the same respect. With their little hands they will do big deeds. They will cover long distances with their tiny legs,’ the tailor said to his wife at night.

That night he had a very long and peaceful sleep as the proud father of achiever girls.

The Scented Mist on the Ganges

 

The Western society seems to have gone too deep into the recesses of impersonalized caverns. There loneliness strikes despite all the material prosperity around. We are human beings after all. We need to connect, build relationships, be happy and joyful with our friends and relatives. The chessboard of ultra-modernity shakes too vigorously and scatters away the pleasant pawns of our emotional connect and we find ourselves terribly alone in the congested bazaar. Spirituality workshops in the Himalayas hold the beacon of hope for many a footsore traveller who dump the materialistic bag and sit down for the food of the soul.

She is a very pretty European lady. German Bakery near Lakshman Jhoola looks on invitingly with its glass-fronted look of breakfasting spirit. The woman is sitting on a stone bench. A stray dog is lying in her lap. She is absorbed in caressing its ears. There are ticks and mites on the stray animal’s ears. She is removing this irritating burden very carefully. The dog is lying with closed eyes, its miseries melting under the warmth of her friendly touch. Her heart has a lot to offer. The dog himself is a big empty pool that is ever open to receive the streamlets of such affection.

The Indian men look at her more hungrily than any other skinny dog. They have their feast with their eyes even though they try to dispel the sinful thoughts at the holy town by the Ganges. Everyone on the path has hunger that drives him or her. Lust drives those who are yet to get over the physical and material cravings; love drives those who are acquainted with the illusions of physical desires and are looking for deeper relations of soulmates; care and compassion drives those who have absorbed enough at the lower rungs to feel the higher purpose of life; and ultimate liberation drives those who have come to feel the futility of all the aforesaid needs. 

She has disarming smile. She has come across whom she loves and who in turn loves her back without any conditions, without any pursuits and feelings of ownership and possessiveness. A lot many thirsty eyes cast fleeting, pining glances. The holy river moves quietly on its mission to purify, of absolving the guilty consciences of both real and imagined sins. It bears the imprint of the universe.

The noontime sun beats down at the peak of its energetic catapults. Fire and water mix for a cocktail of ascetic fluidity. The rippling surface has countless stars flowing down the stream. The mother river has the flowing expansion of stars and light in its veins. It has been flowing for thousands of years. It was there even before the Himalayas were born.

Two foreigner ladies are feeding banana to a monkey sitting on the railings. They want to click pictures with the naughty simian. An old sadhu, coughing under the force of a long draught of ganja, is ordering Sundri, a female dog, to attack the monkey. The obedient canine gives it a try. The monkey jumps up to catch the overhanging branches of a tree. The old sadhu cackles with laughter. The tourists are irritated. It spoils their chance of clicking a picture with an Indian monkey at the pilgrimage town.

The monkeys have chucked out a few bananas. They turn funnier now and assert their right to rascality. The male rides the haunches of the female and mocks vigorous thrusts. It’s an act of defiance and chronic freedom. The branches shake. Dry leaves and pods come tumbling down. The old sadhu cackles with fun again.

It’s but not sufficient to erase the almost permanent lines of sorrow and suffering etched on the piteous face of another sadhu sharing the iron bench.

‘Sab jindagi kharaab ho gaya!’ he mutters and repeats it a few times.

He is a Bengali and suffers from chronic digestive disorder. ‘Bhajan nahi hota, kyonki bhojan nahi ho pata!’ he ruminates, rolling his fingers over his stomach.

There are so many community langars that are running round the clock to give enough scope to mendicant paunches to spread their girth and look stately well-fed babas. There are many rotund sadhus around. He feels the pangs of complex as he sees them gobbling down copious amounts of charity food and digest it like bulls and then sleep and snore like healthy buffalos after smoking ganja. 

Pointing out that he cannot do full justice to the people’s spirit of charity, with a suffering look, he shares his story. He believes he was poisoned by his wife. Snake poison it was, he is sure. Vish! It massacred his innards, he believes.

‘She was a devil. My sister-in-law had advised me against marrying her. But I fell into the trap! It left my mind also cut down in size.’

Again he mutters, ‘Sab barbad ho gaya!’

I can feel that he is scared of death. I fake myself to be an expert palmist from Delhi. I hold his palm and stare at it like the last authority in the world on palmistry, even though I don’t know even the basics of the art. With damn shot seriousness, I tell him that he will survive till the ripe age of 100.

‘Now it’s guaranteed that you will live up to be 100. So choose to be happy instead of staying sad all the time.’

He is thoroughly relieved with the ghosts of death dispelled under the barrage of my oracle. Dent at the idea of death, its probability getting pushed away into the future, acts as a massive sedative. I see the pal of gloom shifting from his eyes.   

Allaying his fears I move on. Sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by luscious green, huge, majestic mango trees, absorbing the feeling of awe for mother nature and its bounties, and feeling a bit guilty that everything, apart from we human beings, in nature gives back to it in some form for taking its sustenance. We just not only plunder our share but the collective share of all other species of flora and fauna, giving back environmental degradation, pollution and chaos. In our effort to add to our share of comfort and convenience, we have, inevitably, let loose irreversible damage to the beautiful, self-evolving, counter-balancing forces of Mother Nature.

A small cow arrives and starts rubbing its muzzle with full and unconditional love. One just cannot say no to such unqualified dose of affection. I take out my sole banana from the bag and offer my share of love. The little cattle eats it. It but wants more, turns pushy, won’t go away, rubs its muzzle on my pants, licks my hands and pulls at my bag. I am forced to take to my heels. The overdose of unconditional love may hamper one’s capability to digest even the under-dose of conditional love. I am no saint, neither I am on the path of enlightenment. I am merely a traveller on the path with my motley mix of good and bad in varying proportions. So without too much guilt of conscience I run away from the holy animal. 

Life has to be lived with water-like fluidity. It’s not advisable to hit one’s head against the stony walls of virtues, just like it’s highly objectionable to jump full time into the pool of vices. Moderation avoids many a fall, just as it avoids many an airy impractical flights in the air. One is well grounded with moderation. Walk with balance brothers and sisters.

It’s wholesome and nourishing to be a footloose journeyman on the path that doesn’t pull you towards a particular destination. I walk for many kilometres along the banks of the holy river and as I am returning in the evening, the valley has fragrant mists over the holy waters. As prayers start in hundreds of temples, the incense fragrance mixes with the mists to give scented mists on the Ganges.