Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 26

 

You feel lonely on your path and a stranger comes your way. You both walk and smile and become familiar. And at some turn both of you drift apart. Who won't like to go smiling all the way till the end? But still people drift apart because destination is rarely the same. Pain is natural. Memories also cast long shadows from behind. All one can do is to commit oneself to come as a better, more evolved person if at some turn on the path, faraway in future, you come to walk by the side of that same person. This is what I would say doing justice to one's past without wasting present and losing a sight of the future.

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As Dickens says at some place in Oliver Twist, ‘It's a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.’

But then the maestro gives us our hope back also by saying, ‘This world may be a sad and sorry place, but it's not a hopeless place for it's a place where truth must be learned and souls must be made.’

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If you want to help yourself against blatant lies, stop asking questions to our politicians. Political answers would come out as lies and falsehoods. Almost naturally. So to avoid the mountains of lies adding to its height, avoid asking questions to the politicians.

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Nobody leaves anyone. We are all simply running away from our own deep personal pains. Never forget, usually when two people meet, they are coming together to beat their loneliness and forget their pain. But the intrinsic restlessness stays and people again try to move away from it. The ego construct will always blame the other. These are but our own scars. We can't be a giver in any relationship until we are at peace within. Till then it's a psychological drama of hurt, pain and blame game among unhappy people bumping into each other as tankers. Sorry takers. Hardly any difference between ‘tankers’ and ‘takers’ by the way. I remember myself as a tanker, firing out the vollies of my frustrations, believing others to be the cause of the outpouring, while all along this, the ammunition lay within. And once you realise this, the live-fire ammunition turns damp. It loses its fiery heat. Only our ego keeps it alive. Then the minor irritants, which serve as tiny triggering sparks at the most, fall on a dead heap that's not inflammable. No burning within and you get sips of succour, self-driven solace and restfulness.

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Most of us terribly under-do most of the things in life that should actually be done and over-do the things that should have been avoided. Plain cowardice. Full of imaginary fears. Fear is the soul of a cowardly, curtailed life. As Dickens says, 'I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.'

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 25

 

Pre-script: Female readers kindly replace ‘She’ by ‘He’.

Gibran: She was fashioned with the gentleness of the dove, the evasiveness of serpents, the vanity of the peacock and the cruelty of the wolf.

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Life can be tricky,

if even about the simplest issues

you are too frisky,

Prudence is to be at ease with situations and time,

Complications then wouldn't chime,

And days would pass like a free rhyme!

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Poetry died a long time ago, the real poetry. Now it's pseudo-poetry just like we abound in so many pseudos. Things stand in letter only now, as we have slaughtered the spirit. We are lesser humane now, so our muscled, hardened, tainted emotions fall short of conveying that unstigmatized purity that found outlet through this great art. Sad but that's true. Change for more complexity is inevitable. May be there were still purer times than the pristine days of classical poetry. Maybe development is inversely proportional to goodness.

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The potted rose has surely given it all it had for Mother Nature. Its branches droop with the sweet flowery bunch-loads of roses. Fullest expansion is painless dissolution. Fullest being is non-being itself. A life harnessed to the full is griefless death. Isn't a tree just mother earth expanding and this air merely further expansion of the tree? Live and blossom so fully that you explode with ecstasy instead of burning to painful oblivion. And what are the fuels of this painful burning? These are the things that hold us back, preventing our fullest expansion. Fear is the primary roadblock. It breeds many other offshoots like anger, hate, jealousy, greed, judgements. Smile, laugh and explode with ecstasy like this rose does!

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It's a wonderful symmetry of spider web among the guava leaves. In the foggy morning, it looks a beatific beady design with the dew-strings drawn to perfection. Homosapiens please don't be too proud of what you create. The littlest of players in the existential game create far more complex designs in their individual capacity. Most of our creations are an offshoot of the mankind's joint imagination and effort. What a spider does is equivalent to one man making Eiffel tower. An ant carrying a huge dead carpenter ant is equal to a man carrying an elephant on his head. So please let out the extra air of pride in the stomach. All this drama around is primarily self-manifesting.  It's a series of self emerging designs and patterns. We just hop around for some time as a tiny part of some design in some corner.

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It's a little story of 6 inches and 7 months in a corner of the existential game. It’s a little sadabahar flower that set out to etch its destiny in a little crack in a plastered wall about 6 feet from the ground. She was born in the killing heat of June in this little crack in the wall. Well, one can't choose where one lands at birth, so no point in complaining. In the killer heat she kept her little self alive, waiting for the rains to come. There is no point in comparing. There are plants of her species who have entire earth to themselves and grow in feet. She but managed the best with her little crack. The rains came. She blossomed to get her sole flower as the trophy of her passion for life. Now the hard winters are buffeting the surroundings. There she stands tall in her smallness, waiting patiently for one fine spring morning when the sunrays will have enough warmth for another smile. Her few inches carrying the worth of many feet in normal circumstances. Her sole flower carrying the gist of fragrance and smile worth hundreds of flowers. Well, that's the hallmark of a meaningful life: Do the best with whatever you have received to begin with.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 24

 

Most of the time, we are self-charged on the grand mission of aggravating our own miseries. We are suitably helped all along by our ability to hold onto the master illusion that others are responsible for all the shit flying around in our lives.

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Thus spoke a little flake of cloud over a cosy valley in small hills:

A dole out from the infinite unmanifest to the finite manifest, I am just a tiny speck of cloudy phenomenon casting its shadow in a little valley. From the unbound infinity to cosmos to solar system to Earth atmosphere to this little fleeting shadow, I am simply a ripple, a pulsating, throbbing little presence through which the whole feels its own being!

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Democracy needs champions, says President Biden. And who is a champion? It's the one who fights for a cause without much calculations about the possible fallouts. Unfortunately, neither the world’s largest nor the world’s most powerful democracy fit the tag of being a champion for democracy. The biggest threat to democracy right now is the CCP (Communist Party of China) authoritarianism. Little Lithuania is indeed a champion of democracy. It’s the only country that has officially recognised Taiwan at the cost of being cornered by the fuming dragon. My conviction has never wavered that democracy is the best among the worst forms of governance. It has its limitations but still has enough space to allow an individual to nurture decent amount of dignity and independence of spirit. I also believe in one China. But I view mainland China as part of Taiwan, not vice versa. Authoritarianism has to fall inevitably. It’s almost a natural law. It comes with its own undoing. So there will be a day when there will be a unified democratic republic of China. And no wonder, it will then be among the best nations on earth in the real sense of it. Don't feel sceptical about it. This probability is surer than any other reality. It's only about time. Till than we can take inspiration from the little champion of democracy, Lithuania.

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Maybe I was feeling a bit bigger than my skin, the very same human tendency to be proud and vain. And instantly mother existence makes me realise my real status. Standing near a clump of ferns, a few mosquitoes hovered around me and one of them nicely settled for a little feast. I am also a food for some other constituent of existence, I realise. Nearby, a rockchat snaps up a carpenter ant from the ground. Well, it's nice to be reminded that apart from whatever notions I have about my being and significance, I am also a mosquito feed.

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Don't be too serious about anything, as Charles Dickens says, ‘The trifles make the sum of life.’

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The marigold leaves are a bit dull among the bright blossoms. They look dusty and need bathing, I realise. I sprinkle some water over them and they immediately say thanks through a soft, gentle fragrance wafting around me, embracing me, strengthening my solitude, adding to the smiles in my life, further calming down my nerves and say, ‘All is well because we are nothing but your very own smile!’

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 23

 

The beautiful bunch of roses showers its petals on the ground after the heartiest of blooming. Joyful dissolution of the self! A flower blooms up fully. Opens its heart to the elements around. Draws every ounce from its potential to smiles and fragrance. Opens up completely. And then painless dissolve! This dissolution is further expansion only. Now the petals fly around in a broader dimension. Beautiful, self-surrendered parts of its previous existence now lie scattered as pious homage to mother earth. That is the purpose of life. We have to give back something better than what we took. That is evolution, expansion. Like this flower offers fragrance and smiles to mother earth in return for the sunshine, soil and moisture. The sole purpose of our existence is to be a better version of ourselves.

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A hybrid rose can have nice colour and exquisite design but it lacks the basic essence of a flower, which is ‘fragrance’. The beauty is skin deep, a mere cosmetic effort at the surface. It's haughty and arrogant, a kind of constriction within itself, an insecurity, a fear, an aloofness, a separation. The soul is missing. They seem too self-absorbed. Like the apparently classy, well polished gentry. They stand with touch-me-not attitude. And the bees and butterflies stay away. They find it totally unapproachable.

The marigolds, on the other hand, are little humble, down to earth flowers. They aren't showy. They are common looking. But they have a soul, a depth, a delicate fragrance. Most importantly, they have nectar to offer to the butterflies and bees. With their openness and genteel receptivity, they are buzzing with little winged insects. They have broader connection to life and living. I can feel their soul through their soft fragrance as I sit by them. They exist in a dimension where they touch many chords in my heart.

Sadly, the smell-less hybrid roses are as distant and soulless as a mere picture, beautiful without the splendour of life in it, or a well designed set of plastic flowers.

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It happened 12 years back in Delhi. The moment still stands out somehow. Some brief moments carry far more significance than months and sometimes even years. Hazy darkness outside the railway station. A friar approached me with mystical pride and spiritual pomp. He asked for alms (which can be money only, given the times we are living in). I found myself offering him 10 rupees. A Gentleman verbally poked me for my meekness and abetment of begging. The friar shot back, ‘Do you think it's only about money. If you think so, take this!’ He proffered a 100 rupees note. The gentleman had to beat a retreat. The friar smiled at me and melted into the crowd after blessing me.

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If you have time and softness to plant flowers, take some moments to appreciate their beauty once they blossom up. Needless to say, always spare time for your children once you have taken time to produce them.

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If you are hurrying and a tree's branch braces against your head or face, don't get irritated. It's merely a soft greeting asking you to be restful. Accept it. You can run fast and still be at rest within. What else is meditation? It's the ability to be still within even while you are walking or dispensing what life needs you to do in order to survive.

Croakings of a Clumsy Frog -- 22

 

Dear friends, if life isn't making much of a sense then give an ear to the Voice Inside. Forget about the hoot and holler emanating from the world outside. It simply adds to the confusion. Give an ear to the soft and murmurous cooings emanating from the soul. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only, your most personal message, meant only for you. Listen to these delicate chimes. It’ll help you in finding peace in chaos. In getting a foothold in the stampede. In feeling rest, repose and respite in the face of constant buffeting by the world around. It’ll help you in breaking the hardest of superficial layers, which suffocate and limit your identity. And put you face to face with your true self, your real worth.

Listen to it, close your eyes and pay attention with all your heart. Just for a change, don’t look far, look closest at yourself. It’ll be as uneventful as looking at a dust particle around your feet. But it changes the universe for you. You will have the biggest message in the softest of whispering phrases! It’ll help you in finding yourself. Happy self-seeking! God bless us all!

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Why does truth pinch most of the time? Simple! Because it is no chocolate, sugar candy or mellowable sweetie-pie lump of ice cream. It is a hard, sour, iron ball guys. It has pinching rough stony edges to its surface. Come into contact with them and they will take a few flakes from your skin, leaving a red or purple bruise depending on the intensity of truth contained in it. Now the question arises, 'Why does it almost always leave a grimace on our face instead of a smile?' The simple fact that all of us almost always rub cold shoulders against this ironed ball having thorns for our soft skin, proves one fact: We are not subjectively inclined to accept the objective reality as it stands in abstract. But does not that mean that we have moved poles apart from truth and its manifestations, while going on the path of individual and collective improvisations at the subjective level. May be the reason for our success in emerging at the top of the food chain in the game of 'survival of the fittest' is that we have institutionalized ourselves to negate and defy, and do without, certain basic truths that form the core of creation and nature. Nothing wrong with that. It, however, is paradoxical that most of these scions of truth—against which we have always been taking cudgels—form the core of our moral, humanistic, religious, spiritual and aesthetic vision enshrined in preach books. Strange!

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Look far away into the mists but always watch your next step also. Take a step, take a pause then and look into the distances before the next step. And never forget to go slow. It allows a healthy balance of sight, observation, dreams and imagination. You enjoy the journey and don't bother about destination. Most importantly, moving on from the past is usually a far better journey than you ever imagined!