Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 11

 

Life is like a rubber string. It’s dead and limp without any stretching, taut tension in it. So guys if you feel stretched just enjoy the pleasant pull because that simply proves your lifefully throbbing status. We can enjoy this string-walk as long as there is tensioned tautness under our toe-hold. The pull and tension gone, we just crash-land and turn maggot feed. But tension under our toes is one thing, tension on face is quite another. We just have to be careful during the rope-walk. Later on, we can even learn to smile while walking carefully on the rope.

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If you relegate luxury of life to the paradise after death, believe me you will not be lacking in spirits to turn your as well other's lives into hell here on earth. Joy postponed is embracing pain in the present. If you live just for the outdated principles, customs and dogmas in the hope of hitting the jackpot of joy in paradise later, you are missing the point of life. Make love, compassion, joy, care and happiness the tenets of your living and create your paradise here only. Why wait to die for all this. The only religion of life is to live a meaningful and happy life. The Gods and their paradise are better left alone in peace. The paradise must be crammed to the ceilings because there have been billions who chose to suffer on earth to get a ticket to paradise. Why be in such a hurry to join an overcrowded place. Our little earth still has lots of space left for love and laughter to bloom fully. All we need is just to realign and reshape this life.

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A gloomy and grey dawn. All silence except the lonely katydid who still kept its hopes alive for a mate through its unhurried breep breep notes. The sky hung spent. It overexerted itself in breaking September rain record. The earth below soaked full and lay sleepy like an overfed kid. No rockchats for their pre-dawn birdie chatter. Then the faint traces of a new day filtered across the clouds. A handsome oriental magpie robin took over the chorus from the tired katydid and the dandy black and white bird's teasing, naughty chitter and chatter broke the ice. Instantly a couple of peacocks gave gruffy hoots. A crow cawed. A dove sent its docile notes. A white wagtail chipped in. A few sparrows gossiped across the branches. The morning chorus singers increased in number and variety. It's the birds who announce a new day most beautifully. Listen to them. They always seem wishing you the best of a morning.

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I can never recall a more rainy September day as today on the eleventh. Continuous rains since 5 in the morning and still going well into the afternoon. There have been just few pauses in between. Everything is soaked to the hilt. The trees stand with bowed heads. And a butterfly, taking a chance during a few minutes of rain break, flits around. Hail life! Such wispy wings not only survived the watery onslaught, it now comes out to claim its life and living as well, and imagine when it's still drizzling. Now who says there isn't inspiration in life? I find this butterfly full of life and unmindful of the odds against it. Lesson learnt, we can always do better in any situation. It's windy, still drizzling, but the butterfly has to have its long delayed breakfast. So here it goes to take a few hasty sips from the soggy flowers.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 10

 

By chance or choice, a baby-pink bloom stands out among its spotless white siblings on the hibiscus. It looks dandy with a stardom of its own. Some things and people get an advantage right from the beginning.

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All of us were angrier once. Ageing is a coolant. It's supposed to be so. If we don't, there is risk of getting burnt out. So cool down my greyish middle aged peers!

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What a day carrying such climatic contradictions! Harmonious blend of opposites! The sky laden with the darkest of clouds sailing in an azure blue sky. Darkness and brightness embracing each other to have a feel of the opposite! Sudden drizzles as a dark cloud lingers over, only to be swept past by a naughty gust of wind. Suddenly the just-wet foliage of trees shines under the brightest of sunlight as the September sun peeks curiously and in wonderment how beautiful the just-bathed nature looks like! So this shifting canvas defines this September morning: intermittent interplay of clouded dark and azure blue and the winds carrying clouds in gay abundance. Drizzles and immediate drying act by the sun. Cool opposites!

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There may be plenty of nasty people around. But I'm pleased to tell you that there are far more beautiful people, so many that they will instantly turn the nasty ones into a pathetic minority if all of them are visible at a time. They are the hidden gems. The nasty ones are more visible because it's a kind of shit put at a public square. To make it more pleasant, this society is run by the beautiful people, I mean the people who can feel the beauty of their souls. The nasty ones are mere speed bumps on the road. In fact, they serve a purpose in limiting the speed.

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Today I just got curious to know whether Bond Sahab has undergone Covid vaccination. I think he is the best one to tell about his experience in the easiest spirits, with so much ease, simplicity and beauty that even Corona would lose its spikes and appear a cute tramp.

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I vividly remember a lone pine on a Shivalik hill. It’s wonderful to just think about it. It seems to convey the traces of its whistling silence and serenity even from hundreds of kilometres away.

‘Embraced by the pining silence

and stillness of these mute hours,

my detached self grows more independent,

free and aloof like these misty distances

virginally spread out under the moonlight,

The silvery mists kiss my prickly needles

with love free of pride or prejudice.’

Thus mused the lone pine

and felt absolutely fine!

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You always need new angels in your life, or rather we turn ordinary people into angels to fill the vacuum in our life, to rub off the slate and make it clean of the image of the former angel-turned-dark angel-cum-demon. Our mind is a very suitable instrument to create new realities. We are very innovative with our justification for this dusting, cleaning job. Well, human mind is a wonder indeed. No wonder, we have so many parallel realities, a kind of complex web. Like the spiders weaving web to catch prey. But spiders are better weavers than us because they don't get caught in their own weaving generally, while we get tangled in our own yarn usually. So fellers, keep your karmic web simple. It's difficult to walk out of it.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 9

 

A geranium needs just a few beams of the early morning sun to spread its smile inside a dispirited room.

A sunflower, on the other hand, has to dare for a full stare into the sun’s fiery orbs to grin, smile, laugh or whatever these flowers have the nomenclature for this expression.

The night jasmine loves spooky midnight dark to chuckle mischievously perhaps. The sadabahar is unpretentious altogether, no nakhras at all. It is happy to smile all across the year at all places ranging from flower pots to weedy, uncemented brick-paved yards to even dung heaps. No wonder, the one smiles the best, who does it with the least conditions. This smiling spirit gives it the name that translates to ‘ever in bloom’.

A garden rose surely is coquettish and has lots of nakhras. It has to be pampered with cuddlish care. One has to get many a prickly pinches in managing a smile on the garden rose. But then it compensates very well with its beauty and fragrance.

The hibiscus stands as a pretty good smiling lady if you manage her well through her slippery adolescence, given her susceptibility to get in the company of pests and aphids who love her soft shoots. Be with her through this naughty time, she then becomes a big-hearted beauty having broad dimpled smiles. The butterflies have a whole lot of petalous boulevard to give rest to their wings on her big petals.

The bougainvillea hardly throws any tantrums. It has strong genes for many clusters of smiles. Even the traffic exhausts don’t intimidate it once it gets it smiley momentum.

The marigold is the sweet and nice eater of nutrients for it eats well to become a dark green fatty boy before it shows its cherubic grin.

Mind you, flowers aren’t all about only the velvety soft colourful landing sites for the butterflies, colours for our eyes and scent for our nostrils. Aconitum, the devil’s helmet, kills and viciously chuckles. Nerium oleander is the scented killer. Castor oil blooms can definitely castrate anyone’s pride.

Sum and summary is that all of us are good and bad in our funny, quirky ways. We the eccentric pop-ups have an idiosyncratic blend of strengths, weaknesses, negatives and positives, smiles and tears. Blend well with your surroundings. Being joyful is a habit. We can regularly remind ourselves to feel happy on principle. Make joy a hobby, a kind of propensity honed through practice. Start with flowers. See, how happy they seem all the time.

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Life can be a bit good, provided we know how to save our goodness from being eaten up to fatten someone's badness. It's always a fight between good and bad, the two beautiful mind-constructs to keep the engine of creation going.

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The dam of my patience breaks. I get an ecstatic ease after the release. But someone's life gets flooded.

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Some people are so practical and smart that their brain seems to be scattered all over their body. From that standard, I find myself pretty dim-witted.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 8

 

I know this is in contradiction to aesthetics. But then we have to acknowledge the dark as well. So couldn't help sharing this tantalizing piece of grey shades. By who else? GD Roberts in Shantaram. He says the paramount revenge, like the finest sex, is slowly and gently performed with the eyes wide open.

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With softly pining majesty,

silence sings a song,

Shadows grow long,

Her soft fingers brace my face

and go along a tear's trace.

Delicate tip of her finger bears the jewel,

A tear,

The tear that would have been

lost as a salty line on my face.

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If the situations and circumstances around you are muddy, count yourself lucky because you have been picked up to blossom the lotus of life in that mud. Ever saw a lotus smiling in clear waters? So guys just splash playfully in the mud. I promise it is worth it. Did you see a pig rolling in the mud? Well, that is bliss if ever there was any. It owns it mud fully. It doesn't try to hold onto the partial purity of future. It clings to its present mud with full passion. The pig just loves wallowing in its mud. Let the purity seekers waste their lives in reaching the holy pools to cleanse their souls. Let them ruin their present for a promised future. A pool of mud at hand is better than mere promises of holy bathing in uncertain future. Love your circumstances, feller. Try your decent bit and see whether you can change them a bit to your liking. If you manage it, well and good. If you can't change them, simply roll in them like a pig. It is blissful. Believe me!

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The sun playing hide and seek among floating clouds,

The humid air wispily whispering a smart secret,

The land lying languidly with overdose of love;

its pining thirst quenched

by the sky's countless kisses and love-drops,

A dove pair mating,

lost in the silent majesty of lusty innocence,

And he holding her hand

with a soft touch to cover stony realities,

A gentle kiss follows

to hide the mutual lies told

to make each other happy and joyful

for the time being.

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Whoever pleases and pacifies the Demons in us becomes our Angel.

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There are some ever-hungry questions. The questions, whose answers we have to seek, remain mere answerless questions for the entire life span. They turn into fistfuls of ashes that float in the holy waters of a revered river and keep moving in their quest to find the answers. The holy torrents take them to the ultimate sea where they rest finally with the river itself meeting its resting place. On the other hand, the questions whose answers fructify naturally of their own, like a rose blossoms in a garden, they take one's consciousness to the brink of the ultimate truth.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 7

 

Greedy, lustful gust of wind

clasped the fragrant petals

of the full-blossomed flower.

Covetous currents of its dark passion

tore the tiny vase of beauty and perfume.

Petals fly with dust in all directions.

The storm doesn't win

and the beauty doesn't lose!

The former loses battle over time and distance

and dies with thorny imprints

left by the stem on its viciously throbbing heart,

The latter spreads its cosily surrendered self

in the limitless folds of peace.

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If you lag behind, they will trample you.

If you run with the pack, they will try to push you to the sidelines.

If you outpace them, they will pull your leg.

Well, that's human society for you!

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Lynched by loneliness,

I surrendered to the

sweet tyranny of solitude,

The wounds healed,

The suffering receded,

They moved away

like shifting shadows,

Painful memories lagged behind

and turned milestones on the foggy path,

Of course sweet breeze blows sometimes

and carries syrupy memories from behind,

They leave a smile on my lips

and are again left behind, as I move on,

like sweet path-side flowers,

I look back,

They wave a sweet good bye

with a still sweeter sigh,

And thus we have to move on,

All alone

to our destination next,

And pitch our tent at one fine dusk

and go for a long, long sleep.

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