Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 6

 

Life is just a choice to be alive.

A little frog is croaking and jumping in a little rain puddle. ‘Why is it dancing?’ I wonder. ‘Probably it’s very happy,’ I get an answer as per our own equation of happiness. ‘But why is it happy?’ the sceptic inside again tries to get an explanation. ‘It’s happy because it’s dancing,’ this isn’t my idea. It has landed from a higher plane.

Things just exist in an unqualified, unconditional state. The ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’ are mere cognitive consequences of the neuro-transmitters cascading in the brainy matter. Within its exclusive zone of happening, everything is cause and effect at the same time. Imagine two points on a circle. Each point leads as well as follows the other at the same time. And their journey can be endless on the circular path.

Cause breeds effect; effect sires new causes. Creation sows the seeds of destruction; and destruction conceives creation. Everything is round about. ‘Sab gol gol!’ as a mendicant friar exclaimed by the Ganges. A big sunya. Here nothingness breeds everything; and everything sums up to be nothing.

It’s just a mammoth humming, buzzing, vibratory drama. Play your tunes well and dance like the little frog. To be happy and joyful is a matter of choice. Food, clothing, career, hobbies are what make one feel better and happy. So isn’t happiness a choice? Choose what makes you feel better. Now, who says happiness isn’t a choice? Beyond philosophies, simply choose what makes you happy. It will gradually turn you joyful.

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Why do I like my corrupt politician?

The urge to rule and dominate used brutal force to stay in power in the ancient times. Then we started getting civilized and the concept of outright blood and gore to dominate and rule was challenged by the civilized norms of peace, harmony, rights, responsibility, equality, ethics, etc. Of course, there is still blood and war in different parts of the world but the voices opposing it are very significant also.

Politicians are far better than the outright savage killers. They, at the most, draw invisible white blood instead of the real red one. Politicians cut the vision of the masses, to keep it suitable to their purpose, instead of gauzing out eyes altogether. They try to cut down your thinking to reshape it on their scheming anvil instead of outright beheading. On the other hand, apolitical power aspirants have hardly any inhibition in pulling out eyes and cutting throats. As a chicken-hearted writer, I always prefer non-physical cutting over the physical one. I am always in gratitude to our politicians for they have spared my limbs and allowed me to retain my croaking. With their clever as well as cunning acumen, they may push me into the corridors ignominy and pathetic survival. However, at least I still get a chance to keep croaking.

Politics is the craft of creating mammoth mountains of symbolism out of tiny molehills of facts or even fiction. It's extremely cunning but very creative work. The massive loafs of cloud then roam in our minds, covering the real from the unreal. The sun of truth stays above. And in the shadows, the fractions of truth, beliefs, conventions and set-up narratives mischievously condition the mind to think in a definite pattern for big gains for the politicians. All this allows them to claim power and its pelf in majorly bloodless ways, save some minor aberrations here and there.

What I fear the most is the apolitical power aspirants like religious fundamentalists. Do you think Taliban will allow any unbecoming croaking to their ears? Never! They are perfectly apolitical. And believe in drawing direct, real, red blood. In comparison, our khadi-clad politician rulers seem angels. Learn to love your political rulers, fella. Ask those who haven’t political rulers sitting over their head and instead have apolitical direct power claimants. Ask any educated Afghani person, running away from the land of misery, what it means to be ruled by ‘active fists’ instead of ‘scheming minds’. You will have all your answers.

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Croakings of a Clumsy Frog --- 5

 

Even the words of sympathy and the emotions of piety serve as a decent fraction of the practical fight for justice in terms of utility. So feel proud for your contribution to a greater cause. If you still feel helpless and guilty for not doing even that then recall the memories of any selfless soul that you remember on account of his/her deeds and you nurture a strain of greatness in your DNA.

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The Governments waste more energy in defending their wrong rather than justifying their right.

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If a few thousand votes cast in secrecy can make you the so called law-maker, then the millions of open and non-secretive shouts in someone’s support earn him the status of law-defender. Governments you just cannot ignore the civil society’s cause. It comes with far better democratic legitimacy than you guys.

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Conversation with a Stranger:

One day he asked someone hiding inside

the bodily façade like a fugitive,

‘Who are thou?

And why despite all the architectural negativities

people define thou positively?’

From it unreachable deep cellar

that someone raised it germ-free, disinfected voice,

‘I am the exiled one without choice,

While the bones and the flesh around me

in worldly spotlight rejoice,

I just take the ordained backseat

and watch the game of

birth, survival, struggle and death

played inside the castle on the shaking stage.’

‘Don’t you feel perplexed by the passing days?’

Again the query was voiced,

‘Don’t you feel bad or ever you rejoiced?’

It answered in a heavy, impassive tone,

‘Thy gimmick cannot shake my throne,

In the timeless shades I spend my time here

and when the castle will be broken

the death squad will find the door open,

Away I’ll fly with the figures of

deeds and misdeeds to the final court,

and if it is found short,

again I’ll be exiled.

It has been like this for thousands of years,

but I never rejoice at new birth

nor weep at death and shed tears,

My book lies in mighty primordial hands

and the player to settle scores changes with worldly trends,

I am the same forlorn, exiled child

of the majestic, mighty father,

It’s a never-ending game perhaps,

A tiny cog on the chessboard of creation,

Let’s see how high and mighty you make the castle,

Void will then gobble the stone and stars!’

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croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 4

 

THE LAWS

HAVE

THEIR CLAWS

THAT FURTHER EXPLOIT

THE HUMAN FLAWS.

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If those in power could take corruption to the extent of CWG, coal mines and 2G spectrum, thus writing it clearly on the wall at every nook corner that it’s how things are done. Everybody knew that corruption came perilously close to be synonymous with Congress. With the incentive of all this knowledge, the masses again voted these people into power in 2009. It proved that we aren’t just a poor helpless bunch of monkeys. We are in fact street smart guys who know how things get facilitated by creeping into the dusty corridors of governance through covert or overt means.

Manmohan Singh became the third longest serving PM of India after Nehru and Indira. It also proves that we Indians have a lot of digestion for the hereditary rule. If we are to believe in the system of royalty, Nehru the King and his royal family have long-standing prospects in our ruling affairs and rightly so. It’s as per our customs that we are comfortable with royalty and hereditary hold over knowledge, skills and rulership. Well, if it finds favour with the majority of my countrymen then a cribbing commoner like me should shut his mouth very tight. In fact, I’m keenly waiting for the Yuvraj to become the PM of India, which he will surely at least once.

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When lacs of your own sons and daughters are taking pot-shots at you, think o mighty Hindustan think! Either you have turned out to be a very bad father or they are the worst of children.

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I've an arrowed heart; its insensitive steel a check dam across the smooth flow of the river of my sensitivities. But more painful is the fact that the hands that pulled the string of the merciless bow are the hands of my own people. My Bhisma’s arrowed body with countless holes in it offers the outlets for the outflow of immeasurable sins committed by me and my near and dear ones.

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It rains in the hills. Muck, shit, garbage, cow and people stink even more. But Ma Ganga gets a nutritious face pack. Its sediment-laden torrents gain victory over the errant child perennially shitting and pissing in its motherly lap.

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While many an Indian PM delivered the costmary Red Fort speech, it has rained during the last leg of the monsoon season. It always appears to me that God pours water to wash some of our collective sins. Thank God, our cute to cumbersome PMs’ khadi appears spotless and clean.

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We shouldn’t evaluate our status by analyzing shadows. Just because we have long shadows in the morning and evening doesn’t mean we are giants. If you think so then we are dwarfs at noon. So go for the substance fella. That will confirm the real status. It will puncture the ego, leak out extra air from the balloon of your existence and allow you to fly at a height where you deserve to be.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 3

 

Yamuna is up to a complete facelift this time. More rains, more torrents packed with hilly sediments. But the runnels of Yamuna rushing past the flood plains in Delhi still bear the marks of defecations on her holy brow. There was a time, as close as three years back, when two elephants played on the semi-stinking sand, raised their trunks to pay homage to the inherent holiness. The laws have their claws. They were dispatched to some sanctuary. The mother seems to miss its muddy roly-poly babies.

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The lush green rippling pastures of yore are gone. It’s now a barren, stony waste stretched for miles after miles in my heart. The fiery sun bakes the sand and the sandstorms screech and howl. Joy only so little as would amount to some lone dewdrop on a singular blade of grass if that can survive. And the sufferings lay piled up like daunting sand dunes. They don’t change, they just creep invidiously. The rose that once blossomed and smiled when all this was a lively, joyful garden is now a dry thorny memoir. It stands there like a crooked garland of thorns draped around the heart. It pricks and lets loose a torrent of memories that nibble at whatever moisture lies there among the barren waste.

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A lot many words have lost their essence in spirit. They survive half-alive in ‘letter’ only. They are no longer those perfumed living entities that their ‘spirit’ bestowed them. If ‘letter’ is the body, the ‘spirit’ carries the soul of a word. We have squashed the ‘spirit’ like a worm. To take our mechanical assault one step ahead, we are pummelling the ‘letter’ part now. The literal meanings of all the nice words have entered the obsolete book of poetic justice. Guys for the real practical meanings rub these shiny words till the blindfolding glitter vanishes to show you the more realistic stuff.

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Institutionalised plundering has been the first priority of the political class in democracy. We aren’t saying anything about the outright autocracies because there plunder, looting and exploitation isn’t a mere ‘priority’, it’s an outright and sole ‘right’ of those who wield power. In a democracy, sadly our ruler has to come out of this breed only. Is there a way out? Yes, it’s the civil society. Guys cast your alternative vote. Join the ranks of the civil society movement. The civil society guys are basically a thorn in the flesh of the democratic autocrats. The world is yet to witness its first perfectly democratic government, by the way. Peep over the wall and see the massive bundles of lies, conceit, forgery, falsehood, loot and plunder that go through the legal machines of autocratic democracies. A slightly heightened sense of awareness is the eligibility to be a foot-soldier of the civil society movement. In future, the civil society would become the flag bearer of democracy in autocratic democracies. 

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Life isn’t all about pursuing your dreams; it’s also about fighting for the leftovers lying in your plate after the hungry fate has satisfied its gluttony.

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Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 2

 

The sea has but no option other than to feel its existence through each and every drop cradled in its immensity. Each drop has the very same code of creation as the entire sea. Similarly, the entire cosmos has the only option to feel its lively, enthralling expansion, its pulsating consciousness, through you, me and all of us around. Each sand grain, each particle in the air and the void itself bespeaks of the very same code of creation, the very same primal consciousness. When you know more of yourself and others and the life in general, the cosmos is in fact engaged in a sweet self-reflection.

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Don't look down upon people just because they are poor and look dirty. Every type of soil has its own characteristics worth gold. We try to see in others what we ourselves lack. Before condemning and degrading someone else over looks, wealth, power and position, we have already condemned our own selves for lacking the same. How will you judge anyone without having been a thorough, bitter judge of your own self? The prejudice that we cast on others is first practiced within the workshop of one's own self. How will you hate anyone if you haven't been hating yourself secretly about your supposed failures, shortcomings and expectations?

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We cannot avoid doing wrong. But we can at least try to learn to do wrong things for the right reasons.

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A widow fleeing from a Taliban ravaged town in Afghanistan says: ‘When there are two girls in a family they take one to marry her to a fighter; when there are two boys they take one to make him fight.’

The bloody saga opens full throttle again in Afghanistan. And the outsiders go there to have their share of the pie and then leave. Superpower blocks cannot heal the Afghan soul. They have bled it too much for many decades. Any healing, even cosmetic in effect, has to come through the UN. Afghanistan needs a UN peacekeeping force. With strong Indian boots on the ground, of course.

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Dogs, slums, shit, squalor, stray cows, filthy pigs, poisoned air, plundering rulers, dying truth, abandoned and obsolete god. And in all this, we the commoners lost like plagued rats. The rain lays bare the reality on our so called swank 21st century metropolitan cities. Flooded potholed roads convey the scars that we carry in our imagination. Dirtier than shit garbage lays the foundation of the karmabhoomi of wormish survivals. Salutes my cities!

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The farmers are shedding blood of their will power for their mother earth. The very same earth whose maternity they have maintained through countless sweat and blood drops falling on her golden crystals. Land grabbers beware! They will stay. Want to test their stamina? Well, do it at your own risk!

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The real skill of we Indians lies in mindless, reckless, profuse and enthralling procreation. It seems to be a full time job. We just love conceiving, even more than the ecstatic moments preceding the conception. No wonder, we are a big, buzzing ant-swarm now. Jostling and lost in its own directionless, blindfolding majesty.