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Hi, this is somebody who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street was too intimidating. Passing through the quieter by-lane I intend to reach a solitary path, laid out just for me, to reach my destiny, to be happy primarily, and enjoy the fruits of being happy. (www.sandeepdahiya.com)

Monday, December 5, 2022

Learning a Worldly Grip

 

In two months time Sky, my nephew, will be two years old. What do we make of the world around us? It’s not the same world for everyone. To me the movie on the TV may have a certain meaning defined by relationships, love, jealousy, hate, anger and greed. To him the moving picture on the TV means the things he knows: water, car, ball and a few more things he has come to recognize. The entire drama being otherwise meaningless to him, his eyes light up the moment he sees any of these few items he is familiar with.

None of us can comprehend this existence in its entirety. There is always more to know, experience and feel. Just a part of the picture we see and draw out meanings on the basis of what we know, what we recognise and what we have experienced. The purpose of life then is to know and understand more of the picture. Know more, understand more, feel more. It’s no guarantee of happiness though. Some even say that the lesser you know, the happier you are. However, it cannot be helped. The quest stays. The pursuit remains.  

He has taken the first tentative steps to assert his claim to independence and free will. As usual, in an effort to explore the otherwise meaningless world to him, I find him wreaking havoc in the flower bed. And he does it expertly by doing the thing in totality by pulling out the entire branch.

‘Sky bad boy,’ I try to make him say, thinking it will somehow make him learn that flowers aren’t to be torn apart.

He looks at me, a finger pointing to his chest, ‘Sky good boy,’ making it plain that my ‘right’ is not essentially the same to him.

This happens to be the first instance of asserting his right to think of his own, instead of being guided by elders in each and everything from shitting to eating. A landmark indeed!

Another landmark follows. He gets congestion in chest so the doctor has prescribed nebulizer. Now he gets irritated like anything when these vapours engulf his face. He gets scared and howls. Now he learns to bargain.

‘Ma Ma bhaanp de do...and chu-chu de do!’ he says.

It means, ‘I will take steam without any fuss if you let me watch chu-chu TV.’ Needless to mention, he is fond of this animation program to the craziest limit.

There is a little set of picture books. Whenever he sees me reading a book, he grabs the set of picture books, dumps it on my lap and stomps his feet to be immediately taught.

Even when you reprimand him, he repeats your rant word by word as if practicing his tongue for the bigger verbal battles in future.

Then he ignores your presence completely because he is absorbed in watching cartoons on chu-chu TV. Things are now beginning to make a sense to him in the ways and manners of we grown-up humans.

He is scared of aeroplanes. When he is playing in the front yard, the moment an aeroplane’s droning sound reaches his ears, he runs inside saying, ‘Aeroplane, aeroplane!’ Sometimes it’s a false alarm, as he mistakes a vehicle’s sound as an aeroplane.

On a flight from Bhopal to Delhi, he continuously kept a few old passengers nearby on tenterhooks by repeatedly saying, ‘Papa this plane is going to fall!’

This afternoon an aeroplane’s silhouette flashed silvery bright against the blue azure of the sky. I held him in my arms, made him look at it with his little finger pointing towards the metallic bird.

‘Aeroplane good boy,’ I made him repeat many times as he stared at it on the border of curiosity and fear. Hope he finds the metallic bird a bit friendlier now.

He is scrawling every nook corner with whatever object he can accomplish the deed. The walls are his big canvas to draw his sketches and stamp his authority.

His first attempt at telling a lie to fetch the situation to his advantage:

Whenever he sees me reading a book, he runs to grab his picture books. So here he is trying to slip out of my hands. ‘ABC...ABC,’ he is saying. I’m not in a mood to teach him at this point of time. He makes full effort to slip out. He feels my unwillingness to let him go and grab his picture books.

Nani pas, nani pas,’ he is trying to convince me that he wants to go to his granny. So here I let him go, taking him on his word. He has duped me. He runs to fetch his glossy picture books and dumps these in my lap. Here are his efforts to get attuned to the larger clatter of life with more impressive notes of the bigger world.

Saturday, December 3, 2022

The Curse of a Monitor Lizard

 

The IT engineer’s encounter with the monitor lizard in Singapore, it seemed, changed things quite dramatically. From a bright, flowery, fragrant spring, he seemed to have entered an arid zone of thorny bushes and dry, sighing sandstorms.

The Indian software engineer stayed in a basement room on the outskirts of the bustling cosmopolitan hub. He was sitting on the bed and watching Indian news with dreams of again joining his family back in his homeland. It was an exciting moment after five long, lonely years of earning money for the sake of family. With enough money in the account, the softer side of life beckons, the longing to stay with one’s dear and near ones, for example.

He had been trying for an internal shift to some branch in India. His immediate boss here in Singapore, another Indian, was a tough nut to crack. So the subordinate had to pull out all strength from his skills to be in his good books. He served him to the limits of chronic professionalism in office. Then there was another side, the personal one. He brought himself to the level of a domestic help to pamper the ego of his boss. They sat down for a drink or two now and then and during those times the junior would ensure that his senior felt nothing short of a king. It bore fruits. The process had been completed and he was to shift to their Mumbai branch. Home, sweet home!

Then it got derailed or rather a monitor lizard got on to the track and being a more than one meter behemoth it derailed the engineer’s wagon from the track. He was sitting with snacks and a light drink, watching Indian news and the dreams of homeland beautifully suffusing the room’s air. The nightmare started. There was a rustling sound under the simple plank folding bed. He bent down to find out what it was and two fluidy eyes stared at him and a tongue literally came close to lick his nose. A big monitor lizard it was. It was seeking a safe home like he was seeking a better part of the world.

Out of sheer panic he started jumping on the bed, letting out weirdest mutterings to sound like a cruel predator to scare away the big lizard. The reptile seemed to lose its wits and scampered out only to sneak into the farther recess of the room where his suitcases and travel bags were stacked in a corner. The things got toppled. Then it was running around the room. With shaking hands and trembling legs, he picked up the baseball bat and beat more of the ground in his avalanche of an attack. It was a critical melee. The reptile got a few side-slipping thwacks on its back. But its skin being thick, the fumbling strikes hardly left any mark on it. The attacker himself slipped and fell many times. By the time the intruder was driven out he was sweating profusely.

It was a strange ennui after the war. Suddenly he felt chronically bored with life. And to beat the boredom he took a heavy serving of whiskey, as much as he would consume in an entire fortnight. It had its lulling effect. He felt victorious. But the driven out and beaten monitor lizard seemed to have cast a dark spell on his little plans.

His boss arrived after some time. Some drinks followed. The boss felt relaxed. The subordinate felt he had wings to make him fly after having more than quadruple of what he usually took. Then his tongue also flew. With fumbling words he mentioned that he was a great resource and another company in Singapore was offering him a far better package but he wants to go home and join the home office.

‘So you have been applying for other jobs while I made myself a fool to cross all norms to get you a home shift!’ the boss gave a cold-murdering mutter.

A professionally incisive mail was forwarded by the seething boss to his own boss in London. The curse of the monitor lizard showed its effects. The shifting was stalled and a severe notice was served in his name.

Not having enough clue regarding how to wriggle out of the situation, he shared his woes with a content writer friend who worked in India. The writer, true to his species, gave a pretty literary touch to the scenario and built upon the simple facts provided by his engineer friend.

The explanation, mercy petition rather, was drafted by the content writer and the imperilled software engineer sent it in a mail to the English gentleman. The mail went like this:           

‘Sir, I’m sorry I have to write under these circumstances. It may not mean much professionally but I hope I am justified in giving myself this option to write to you. I have had such a nice experience in the organization for eight years. This time covers the best of moments in my personal and professional life. For an employee, the world stands between the company and the family. I am no exception. My job and my family are both equally important to me. Even if I have to go, I want to go with honours because the organization is really nice and I on my part have always tried my best to prove my worth as its employee.

Is it a sin to have a job offer in hand even when the employee is totally satisfied with the current company and doesn’t intend to shift? I take it simply as a proof of my professional skills. Why do we read ‘a job offer in hand’ just as a design to ditch the current company? Why can’t we take it as the proof of an employee’s worth? Moreover, is it a sin to share the very same casually with one’s manager? There is a huge difference between ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’. That I had a job offer was in ‘letter’ only. A simple fact. I just shared it matter of factly. In ‘spirit’ I had no intention to shift. Had I some design in my mind to shift, I know it better than to share it with my manager. All of us are smart enough for that. I planned for an internal shift to Mumbai with our dear company only. If there is any breach of protocol, it’s only this that I talked to my manager beyond the boundary and casually told him that I have an offer here in Singapore by some other company. If I was serious about shifting to a company in Singapore why would I request shift to the Mumbai office of our own organization? I would have easily resigned here in Singapore and joined the other company. The mere fact that I simply told him about this option in Singapore before leaving for Mumbai proves that I hardly harboured any thoughts to change company.

Sir, it’s not about this or that company. What pains me is that I have to go under such negative circumstances, all born of a terrible misunderstanding. On my part, I still maintain that I want to continue working with our company at Mumbai office. The majority of my eight years with the company have been outside my home country. I am thankful to the company for giving me this great opportunity to be a part of its world class set-up here in Singapore. I would be the last person to let go of such a nice office. But sir, all of us have our own circumstances that sometimes force us to somehow leave the best option and settle for something less. In my case, it’s my family for whom I had to take this hard decision to request an internal shift to Mumbai.

I have ageing parents at my hometown. My old father manages the affairs despite his health challenges. Now it is getting difficult for him to keep the things going. My wife has been very outstanding in raising our two daughters. There are challenges for her also, especially because she is from Philippines and adjusting to a different culture and raising daughters in a traditional Indian family is a totally different story. She and my ageing parents have done their best to manage things and take care of my daughters. All along these great years here in Singapore, one thing is plain that my family is scarifying a lot for me. I managed till it could be managed and requested for a shift only when the situation became unavoidable.

Sir, I know this is not a platform for expressing emotions and sentiments. But I think we devote ourselves to our professions only because we have the roots, we have our loved ones for whose sake we work abroad. Jobs are mere means to a happy self as part of one’s family unit. Jobs are utmost important and one has to prove one’s worth to the source of one’s salt, but still jobs are not the end in themselves. We know every dollar we make comes at the cost of lots of joyful moments that we could have spent with our near and dear ones. But then that’s life. Salary, perks, professional excellence and job satisfaction are very significant factors, but equally important are my old parents, my courageous wife and charming daughters. They have a vacuum in their life. The hole left by my absence. I just tried to fill that by requesting a Mumbai shift so that I could be with them. I want to fulfil the role of a father, husband and son apart from my duties as an employee of a world class organization. In pursuance of the same I planned this Mumbai shift. 

Can you imagine the joy my old parents must have felt after hearing the news of my arrival? Can you imagine the feelings of my wife that her life partner is now on the way to help her cope with the challenges put forward by a different culture? Can you imagine the joy of my little daughters that their Papa is going to be with them? It was a festive occasion for my family. They have been looking forward to it for many years. My father had a new spring in his steps as he planned a little feast for our near and dear ones. And then suddenly this unfortunate thing happens. I don’t know what to say. I am shattered. All I can say is that this world will be better without a broken employee or ex-employee.

I want to continue working with the company but I want to stand by my family also. I know they need me. But they need me as a gainfully employed worker of a nice company. Please ignore if you find it sentimental pleading. On my part, I have shared truth, in fact more than I should have shared perhaps. But truth comes with lots of emotions also. Facts are mechanical. I have spoken out my truth, and spoken with emotions because my truth is derived from my emotions only. I leave it in your hands. If you give me this opportunity it really helps me, my parents, wife and daughters. If you aren’t somehow in a position to help me, then no grudges sir. I will keep pursuing my path balancing my personal and professional life.   

Looking forward to positive outcomes after this negative interruption!’

And the positive outcomes followed. The gentleman from London sent back the following mail:

‘How marvellously you write! I love the way you express your emotions. I really like the way you share your feelings. Now it dawns upon me that most of the time we miss the real talent in people. You seem to be a writer basically trapped in the ill-fitting shoes of a software developer. That’s a sin on our part to keep you deprived of your real talent. With the feelings you write, I firmly believe that content writing would give you far more job satisfaction. Your restlessness will go away. You will have better job satisfaction. So we hereby offer you the position of content writer in the company. You will be helping us on our blogs, news posts and other website content. Hope it brings a smile to you!’

Well, it brought tears. Usually, well-seasoned and experienced content writers get just a fourth of the annual package that a below average software developer gets in the initial phase of his career.

He finished the remaining liqueur in his stock, picked up the baseball bat and went out to find out the monitor lizard in the public park nearby. To beat the curse, to be precise.   

Thursday, December 1, 2022

The Big History of a Little Garbage Piece

 

There is an invisible world lost in the glitz and glamour of a city. One just sees through it. Eyes are instinctively prone to pass through it like a piece of see-through glass. It exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.

Garbage, cows, dogs, pigs and beggars man this world. These have been abandoned by the fast-paced cartwheels of the mainstream society. There are homeless beggars, filthier than a garbage dump, and lunatics lying cheaper than the worthless specks of dust around a shiny shoe.

My eyes stop at him. A small, frail man, his skin vying with his torn clothes in the degree of being dirty, sitting on his haunches against a wall. You would easily count him as one more lunatic, a poor mentally challenged invalid caught in a rapidly wasting body, biding time before the bugs of decay chuck out the remnants.

I take a few steps towards him. I have a smile on my face and try to walk as harmlessly as possible to avoid scaring him. He hasn’t possibly taken a bath since the last enforced rain bath during the rainy season. His blackened skin and unwashed black tattered clothes compete in claiming the mainstay of his non-existence.

I’m the least intimidating type; many people have assured me on this. In fact, I myself appear intimidated by the rampaging bullies running around to conquer the world all the time. But he may have his own reasons to get scared of all and sundry in the world.

He stands against the wall as I approach him. His instinctive gesture is folding hands as if asking forgiveness for being so dirty to the limits of appearing a pollutant even among the rubbish scattered around. He just cannot expect someone from the other world to approach him with harmless intentions. He is scared as if I’m coming to hit him. As I come near, he takes steps to escape from the scene, looking behind to ensure that I don’t hit him from behind.

‘Please, please don’t run. I just want to talk to you,’ I add extra sugar in the softest tone I can manage.

He stops at a safe distance. He is holding his hands in that posture of submission. His beard has grown wild like a pristine forest with some human intervention like they do in clearing woods in patches here and there. A few locks have been cut from the side leaving others hanging like the aerial roots of a banyan tree. It looks a terribly bad amateur effort at trimming beard.

‘I just want to know your name,’ I almost entreat.

‘Manish,’ he speaks with a clarity that I hardly expect him to possess.

‘Full name please,’ I probe a bit further.

‘Kalra, Manish Kalra,’ he says.

So it proves that he isn’t totally lost to the world. He knows his identity. His brain has the pathways leading to his awareness of his worldly self.

‘Where are you from,’ I am emboldened now and take recourse to my normal tone after a huge effort at sugar-coating each word.

‘Old DC road. Our house there. We three brothers. They pushed me out. Took my share,’ he divulges the story.

A lot many whom we assume to possess no history at all have in fact a big one.

The mentioned place is just nearby across the congested shopping quarters. He points to his legs.

‘Truck accident,’ he says.

I now realise the poor destitute’s fate is far more bitter than it appears on the surface.

‘I am not a beggar,’ he says. ‘Sometimes when my brother sees me in the crowd he gives me 50 rupees and I eat.’

‘Parents died, brothers not like me,’ he tells.

So he remembers his story. I offer him 20 rupees as if to pay him for this interview. He politely waves his hand to say a firm no.

‘It’s for food,’ I try to make him feel not like a beggar.

Again he says a firmer no. From what I can make out, he may be eating leftovers from the dumps outside the eating points instead of outright begging.

There are stories lost within the bigger stories.

I’m not left with anything to say. His little story is both a question and an answer in itself. With a defeated look I retrace my steps. As I move away and look back, I find him reclaiming his place.

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

A Pair of Mismatching Slippers

 

It’s the second week of April and the heat is building up. A brief spell of rain in the morning allows a bit of reprieve from the oppressive heat during the travel. I reach Haridwar in the afternoon. The two-kilometre stretch of road from the railway and the bus stand, facing each other across the road, to Har ki Pauri is a busy thoroughfare. It’s a religiously busy world heavily laden with towering facades of dharamshalas, hotels, lodges, restaurants, pavement food stalls and shops full of religious souvenirs.

I am flatly denied shelter for the night. As per rule, the dharamshalas give rooms to families only. Even hotels and lodges have a big problem in giving rooms to solo travellers. Try to convince them and they will hide under the order of the local administration in this regard. There have been few suicides, of course. Solo travellers are assumed to be depressed souls looking for moksha here in this part. The final departure from holy places is believed to take one straightaway to heaven or even liberation. So the suspicion about the solo travellers isn’t completely groundless. People fear that these lost souls are tottering on the brink of committing suicide. A lot many people presume that Indians hardly venture out alone and be happy at the same time. It is firmly believed that the depressed souls set out to call it quits, especially at holy places like these where leaving one’s body near the holy river ensures a direct landing in heaven.

One lodge owner asks me to get him to talk to my family members to verify that their ward isn’t depressed and is in fact happy in going out alone. I try calling my brother, an IT professional, but he is caught in the rigmarole of software designing. The call having gone unanswered, the lodge owner looks more suspiciously at me. Most probably he thinks that I am just pretending to make a call. I am denied the accommodation and move on, only to face the same dilemma in the reception lobbies of many lodges in the locality. I try my best to appear the happiest soul on earth in order to allay their fears about harbouring a depressed soul who may culminate his journey in their room, thus unleashing a barrage of police inquiries at their place, resulting in loss of business in addition to getting bad name for the property, or maybe even a ghost stalking their place.

Practice makes a man perfect and after one hour of continuous smile and glint in the eyes, accompanied with energetic movement of limbs, I am able to win the trust of the owner of a less than modest accommodation. It is at the far end of a narrow and not-so-clean street, beyond the footfall of most of the visitors. It’s a depressive set up, the owner himself looking ill at ease with life. So here I’m able to impose my cheerfulness upon him. I beam with enthusiasm and light their gloomy, musty set-up with my exaggerated verve and energy.

I’m safe here because even a suicide seeker will look out for a better point than this suffering, sulking place. There is a risk that even a happy person may get depressed here. It’s evident they don’t get many guests so someone who has been turned out from at least fifteen places is welcome here finally.

After hitting the jackpot, I freshen up in the staid, sulking tiny bathroom and set out with a spring in my gait as the evening builds up.  Hundreds of pilgrims are walking to Har ki Pauri for the famed ritual of evening Ganga Arti.

On any normal day you can expect a big fair kind of festivity there. The steps along the shores are crowded with pilgrims. Bells chime, mantras vibrate, incense smoke take monopoly of the air, people bathe, huge butter lamps with dozens of burning wicks sway like fiery torches, devotees float leaf bowls containing flowers and oil lamps as an offering to the holy river. Armed commandos are looking every inch here and there. Faith is no longer free.

When so many people congregate at a place and surrender, this slaying of ego confirms the presence of some higher meaning to life than what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.

Finishing the famed Arti, people slowly disperse and move along the crowded bazaar. The restaurants are ready for dinner. And people surrender to the spicy aroma with even more fervour than they had shown during the prayers. Bhojan has a big role in sustaining bhajan.

The next morning has dull sunshine. I am relieved to see the morose owner of the place still alive and try to cheer him up. ‘All of us have to die one day,’ is all he can manage in response to all my efforts at being joyful. I leave for the bathing ghats with serious doubts whether I will find him alive or not after returning.

Bathing in the cool torrents at Har Ki Pauri is piously gratifying. The first thing that strikes you is that the people shed their insecurities, inhibitions and suspicions. Nudity is no longer a scandalous flashpoint. All are children in Mother Ganga’s lap. Everyone is seeking purification from their sins, so egos are rapidly melting, at least for the time being. All are feeling adventurous like playful children. Young, old, children, boys, girls, men and women shed their reserved routine, abandon their fears about appearances, body shapes and status and wallow in the holy waters like funny, naughty children. Nobody stands out. Everyone is yelling, speaking and shouting and still you don’t have a particular protagonist. This merging with something bigger gives a sense of ease and comfort, a kind of lightness that stands in glaring contrast to the tensioned heaviness that we carry usually while fighting our lone battles on the path of survival. Around you many loudspeakers blare with chanting of mantras. Many pandits are loitering around those sitting on the steps overlooking the bathing ghat. They offer their prayer services.

By degrees, little, little private spaces for which we fight so rabidly get pushed away from the centre stage of our egos. You are in public. The ownership of bodies and worldly things is gently shoved away. Your private space gets a dose of sunlight. The doors and windows are opened. You feel life and soothing sunshine.

After a long, adventurous and cascading journey through the Himalayas, testing its zeal to the limits, the Ganges surrenders to pause at the foothills, creating swirly pools for rejuvenating rest and poise for the humbled humanity at her feet. The holy waters symbolise the mother river’s ‘giving and forgiving nature’. The holy stream endlessly flows for the cause of humanity.

After youthful wilderness, it’s the beginning of taking responsibilities, moving slowly, meandering more purposefully. Flowing down south, flanked by tiny ridges on the east and west, it reaches a milestone, of coming of age, of becoming a mother from a careless, flirtatious girl.

The eastern ridges are more wooded. The western ones are under the pressure of human build-up.

Haridwar is majorly sprawled north to west along the river’s western bank. To the north, before the town begins, a sluice dam has been erected to tame mother Ganges, to help it bless the countless who throng its bathing ghats. That is the point from which the mighty river is saddled with the responsibilities of being an uncomplaining mother, the giver, at the cost of its own existence.

The sluices divert almost half of the waters westwards, leaving the debilitated main stream meandering over the greyish floodplain to the east. From the sluices, half of the water circuits back to join the original stream to the east, while the rest moves along a well-made broad canal along the city to its west. Of this canal, a further distributary runs along the extreme west bank, circuiting along bathing steps and little shrine temples, forming the most auspicious Har Ki Pauri.

The city lies rectangular, north to south along the well maintained canal, flanked on the west by low, sadly denuded ridges, on the highest of which stands Mansa Devi temple. Cable cars go to the temple. More arduous is the flight of stairs all the way to the top of the hill. Halfway to the steps, a tar road loops around to take your tiring steps to the destination in case you can no longer keep climbing the steps.

Cleansed by holy dips, as the sun is building up the arena for a bright noon, I am trekking to the holy temple of Ma Mansa Devi. An uneventful walk and then I see him. The mass of his right leg may come more than the whole of the rest of his body. The deformity seems a miracle of God, rather than a curse. He has a small face and frail torso. But his elephant leg can compete with a medium-sized tree’s trunk in girth. It’s bent at the knee and the further part twisted to protrude out a huge foot having massive toes. It’s beyond the measurement of humanly acceptable pain. God has His own mysterious ways of showing his omnipotence. Nothing seems impossible for Him.

A piece of cloth is spread out in front of the boy. His mountain of helplessness is bigger than the hill above. You cannot look into his eyes. You feel ashamed of all your cribbing born of routine problems. Your pride gets a jolt. While putting a coin on the cloth, you obviously bow down before him. There he stands, sits or crouches down like a God. Only God can punish His own self to take a form like this. He does it to pass on some messages possibly. An old man bows down with folded hands in front of the boy.

I walk to the sacred temple and pray for the better spirits of the lodge owner. Faith can move mountains. I walk into the small, musty, smelly lobby in the afternoon. He sees me coming and smiles. ‘Mother has listened to my prayers,’ I think.

‘You have two different slippers on your feet!’ he points. Both of us laugh. Throughout the day I have been walking around in a pair of green and red slippers. It’s a routine thing to go walking with mismatching slippers, or even no footwear at all, from the bathing ghats where hundreds of pairs are spread out and things get mixed up.

Well, even mother’s blessings need worldly cause to come into effect. Mismatching slippers, for example.   

Monday, November 28, 2022

A Nobody's Notebook

 It’s the notebook of a small-time writer. No big efforts at super-heroism, no ironies of heart-breaks, no bombastic romance, no gooseflesh rippling drama, no thunder-stricken rigmarole of saving the planet from the aliens. It’s not about chafing thoughts, it’s all about the frolicking gaiety of common emotions in the life of common people.Beyond the grinding millstone of bigger caprices, it’s about sublimated emotions. It creeps genteelly like a flowery vine. It’s just a fragile moment capturing the kernel of eternal truth in it like you see in a painting of beautiful hills, smatterings of snow on the slopes, chatty streams, green pastures and a sense of virginal peace to tow all these along. There are no chivalric, lionized doctrinaires delving into deep mysteries of human existence. It’s a gently flowing painting on a self-absorbed canvas. The human characters simply add to the soft shades of the softly evolving painting. In this small world, I believe everyone is taking chiming steps to be a nice human being. Come, let’s all walk together for a greater collective good.