Sublimity of Simple Ambitions

 

The three words in the name of oriental magpie robin do full justice to the beautiful, handsome, dashing black and white bird. It’s a flirtatious dandy and imitates many birdie voices when it’s just looking for fun. However, when it wants to convey its strength and masculine charm, it gives a chhrr-chhrr-chhrr type of sawing sound. But its real beauty comes when it falls in love and gives sonorous, high-pitched notes of cheeu-cheeu-cheeu for a considerable time to woo some lady. His love call scores over the rest of the birds among the trees around the house.

Flings are very easy these days but love is something one has to strive for very diligently. Since the birds cannot just have casual flings like we humans, the dandy bird has just one option of deep love and this means singing out continuous love notes as the tired monsoonal clouds retreat in the blue skies. If we leave the humans apart, the rest of the species are into the game of life full hearted, there being no half-hearted effort, be it love, war, fun and playing or committing to parental duties.

The white wagtail is a small passerine bird that sways its longish tail with attentive rhythm as it picks up ants and little insects from the ground. It’s a beautiful sight to watch the birds walking. There is a captivating grace in their little steps. The white wagtail looks an elegant well-bred lady as she walks on the ground picking up her breakfast.

The Indian rockchat also loves snapping out insects from the ground. Its looks are very modest with its pale coffee unichrome. Its fur misses the distinctive patterns or designs that make the birds look beautiful. It’s a plain-looking bird but it makes up for all this by being very talkative. Listen to their pre-dawn gossip session. They have plenty of things to gossip about before setting out to pick up breakfast.

The oriental magpie robin is busy with his love notes. The Indian robin and the white wagtail are walking with ease to pick up ants. The wire-tailed swallows are darting in the air, picking up airy food in the form of fleas, dragonflies and mosquitoes. A solitary pair of parrots goes flying. There aren’t many seen these days. A few bee-eaters are diving and turning expertly to complete their breakfast before the late morning turns to full noon. The sun is bright and the noon turns very hot, so they prefer rest during the hotter part of the day.

Huge cloudy wagons float lazily in the sky. They don’t seem to have any purpose anymore and loiter around, almost directionless, here and there.

A room with a window with some natural view is special by default. The upper room window opens to more trees than housetops. I just have to look out and the banana leaves greet happily. Inspired by this greeting and the busy birdie world with a song on its lips, I try to give my best to what attracts me the most. Not too much guess for this, it’s reading and writing.

Try to give your best even in the worst of a job. Even with very little success so far, I take my writing very seriously. There is a scope for perfection in every nook corner for all ranging from the fortune 500 CEOs to the bathroom cleaners. I have seen beaming bricklayers, stonemasons and sweepers and cribbing, frowning CEOs in the costliest cars. What is the use of hitting too big and lose your smile. Hit only that much high as would not rob you of your smile.

My smile is encouraged by the languorous hand-waving by the banana leaves as I look over the tree-tops from the upper room’s window. One sip of the view outside and another of the book in my hand. My smile tells me that life is really good. Then I read something and I turn serious. This is no smiling matter. I read that scientists are trying to revive the Siberian woolly mammoth that became extinct around 10,000 years ago. From the skeletal remains sufficient genetic material has been retrieved to clone an embryo.

This is disturbing. Why dig up the past to this extent. I think the best thing is to use genetic engineering to extricate the genes responsible for anger, hate and greed from the Homo sapiens. That would make our earth liveable, not reviving the woolly mammoth. In any case, the Siberian snows will vanish in a few decades, so where will the big animal stay. Probably they will have to repeatedly shave its wool to help it feel a bit cool.

All these musings backgrounded by the birdie songs scamper back into a corner. If you have a huge tractor bellowing its powerful engine at the best of its capacity and still louder music blaring out of the big speakers, there is no need to go near a fighter jet to test the capacity of your eardrums. The young farmer is bursting with his ebullient hormones. The bellicose tractor and rowdy music are the tools of his adolescent revolt. And the revolts have their victims. The monkeys run away. They don’t stand any match here. The birds fly to safer trees.

I cannot hop over the roofs like the monkeys, nor can I fly away like the birds. I use the faculty of discretion to fall in love with this portable discotheque now pounding the air in the neighbourhood. So I assume that I like this music and engine noise and sway my head to the tunes.

The Haryanvi desi songs are a war cry even at their gentlest best. But the raunchy ones would suitably provide fitting background music to the real third world war if it happens. Combine it with the massive heaving guffaws of a big tractor and it turns something unbelievable or unbearable. Even at your loving best you cannot afford to like it the least. As I shake my head to the war-music, the initial symptoms of headache surface. I give up. It’s better to hate it straightaway.

Never commit the mistake of complaining because in that case the proprietor of this music will teach you a lesson for your intolerance to his youthful spirit and continue with the music and tractor noise with even more volume till the time he feels convinced that you have been punished sufficiently.

The bird of peace has been shot down and I have to think of doing something else to keep my smile. I am mellowed down completely and surrender the spirit of protest for my legal right also in its wake. Which legal right? Ok, telling this now.

An hour ago, I received a call from the courier operator at the nearby town. I have been waiting for an important communication.

‘Bhai sahab your letter is lying with us. Come and pick it up from our office!’ he straightaway commands.

‘But we have paid for its delivery to my door. Won’t it be nice if I get service for my money,’ I sheepishly protest.

‘We never deliver to the villages. You have to pick it up from us otherwise I will return it by four in the evening!’ he is even louder and iron-willed. 

‘Kindly tell me, if you don’t deliver to the villages, why was the booking allowed in the first place?’

‘That I don’t know. That guy who booked your parcel made his money. Now as per company policy, I can only deliver it within the town. So I will return it. You don’t worry.’

‘Your company name is DtDC. Door to Door courier. And please listen, my door is at least 15 kilometres away from your office. What kind of service is this? I am recording your conversation and will forward the issue to the courier company headquarters.’

He is very pleased to hear this as if I will do him honours. ‘Please do it. As a franchise I am only following the company policy. If you complain, the booking guy in the other city will be questioned, not me. So please complain.’

I had decided to escalate the issue and force them to deliver the item at my doorstep. But the tractor-cum-discotheque stabs my enthusiasm and I decide to leave the scene and make the most of the time by travelling to the town and pick my document. So there I go riding my two-wheeler.

It’s a swashbuckling new road, a national highway that sucks speed out of even the most lethargic vehicles. Cars, buses and heavy trucks zoom past with hair-raising speed. There are many accidents and many people die but the supreme cause of progress and development swiftly jumps over such minor road-bumps.

This road was a small, peaceful district road during our childhood. There were massive century-old trees on both sides and we recognized distances through huge banyans, peepals, sheesham, mulberries, acacia and eucalypts. Then it was converted into a state highway to be finally changed into a brutally asphalted national highway. The trees vanished. The entire countryside looks changed without those trees.

I ride sullenly trying to spot any tree that I may recognize. Not a single old tree is left. Construction is still going own. The air is foul and plumes of dust hit the helmet screen like tracer bullets. Throughout my life I have seen roads getting built, one after another and still we are short of roads. I think finally roads are all that will be left and we will stay on the roads, always on the move.

I am further beaten in spirits by the time I reach the courier office. It’s a tiny establishment, a single room. An old tauji is cooling his paunch under a water cooler. I introduce myself. He remembers the phone conversation and seems offended at my poor self raising a voice for my right.

‘People are very lazy these days. They cannot move even on vehicles. During our days, we used to walk this kind of distance on foot without cribbing,’ he chastises me.

‘To me, not delivering a service for which you have been paid is cheating,’ I retort.

‘If you want to fight for your right then allow me to send it back,’ he seems very confident of his case.

I mull over it and think it wise to take the parcel. I sign and pick up my article as he looks hostilely.

‘And for your information, the courier name is Desk to Desk not Door to Door,’ he chides me.

‘But uncle my desk is in my house, not here,’ I try a counter punch.

‘Ok, no problem. If you still think that way then let me return it,’ he lunges for the thing in my hand.

I literally run out to save it from his old crooked fingers and forget my helmet at his counter. As I plod back like a defeated old soldier, I can sense that my loss is more than what appears on the surface. Then I realize that the helmet is missing. I sheepishly return to his chamber and ask for my helmet.

‘See, your fight for your rights would have cost you even your helmet,’ he reprimands again.

I rest my case and ride back sullenly, more for the loss of huge majestic trees than the half-baked service.

There is a little crowd by the side of the road. A drunkard has died. His body is put half on the asphalt and half on the roadside.

‘Actually he died there at the end of that field. That field is mine. But we have brought him here to pass it as a death on the road so that his poor family gets some road death compensation,’ a simple farmer informs me.

I move on and recall two drunkard pals in my village. They died in contrasting temperatures. One was left by the drinking group under the open skies in the fields after he passed out. It was a frosty January night and he was found frozen to death next day. The other was left in similar circumstances in a field on a boiling hot June noon and was found baked to death late in the evening.

‘They should have used some sense like these farmers and put them on the road to get something for their poor families,’ I think and move even more sullenly.

As I reach the farmlands outside my village, I see Ranbir trying to maintain his steps by the road. He is drunk most of the time. People call him gunman. Well, he never had a gun in his hand. Actually, his right hand got crushed so severely in an accident—he was a good driver who drank less and drove more to earn a decent living—as to leave a crooked twisted mass that curves to the side of his stomach like a policeman holding his sten gun. People gave him the honorary title of a gunman. Now he drinks more and drives not at all.

One has a special corner in one’s heart for the former classmates. He was my classmate from class first to matriculation at the village school. The soft corner for your classmates with whom you grew up is almost permanent. You smile when you meet them. He laughs and I smile and then turn sad as we move on with him pillion riding on my little two-wheeler.

‘An elephant jumps on its heels to raise unnecessary dust; a lion jumps on its paws to hunt majestically,’ he is saying this loudly. I don’t have any clue to the origins of his exclamations. He repeats it many times till we reach the village. I help him get down at the place of his choice. He waves his hand with a smile as I look back. The vanishing trees, the undelivered parcel and the portable discotheques lose their meaning as I think about his wasted life.

Tuneful Glides of Small Moments

 

Tired, fatigued, pale sunrays kiss the treetops like a very old person blessing a young life with a kiss on the forehead. And the evening twilight arrives with its peaceful delight. It brings a sense of completion, of reaching home, of ripening, of getting into the sunset of joyful old age and happy retirement.

The evening twilight is usually very calm unless we rock the time’s boat with our misadventures or the atmospherics get bored and unleash storms and rains. A tired day retires, leaving the post vacant for some time. And the vacancy brings a kind of delicate naturalism, a sort of assurance that all is well, that the journeys get completed and the destination is likeable after all the trials and tribulations on the path. The trees seem to take a pause as the branches hang silently. This brief zone seems free from the day’s busy humdrum and the night’s eerie depths in the dark.

The twilight is at its best. Then there is a storm. Peace is forever under the risk if you have rhesus monkeys in your locality. They don’t throw just pebbles into the pond of serenity, they catapult big boulders. The pebbles are no match for their raucous spirits. The banana tree in the garden has its first flower, a beautiful big dull maroon cone hanging like a chandelier, the little banana fingers holding a tight fist like a newborn baby, promising a fruitful future. The first flower and the fruit, like first love in the life of humans, is a momentous event in the life of a tree.

When a monkey jumps onto a tree, a criminalized sense of fun is the basic motive. Eating something to survive is far down the list of priority. The beautiful flowers and the tiny fruity fingers are slain. The marauders screech in triumph. I have a suspicion that they have started to think and calculate their nuisance. It’s no longer an instinctual outburst of crazy fun and frolics. I run to the terrace to scare them away. They jump into the yard below and tease me. I come down and they get onto the roof again and shake the trees with extra devilry, staring at me viciously and bombard my ears with their hideous kho kho.

This isn’t mere instinctual behaviour. They have a significant mind but it’s severely unestablished as of now. An unestablished mind is very troublesome. Anyway, the banana tree has lost its first offering to the world. It has been wasted. The only outcome is some fun for the monkeys who seem to draw one more feather from the book of illegalities before it is completely dark. The twilight scampers away in a hurry. One has to learn to live with the monkeys, there is no other way. Of all the species that have been beaten into subjugation by the mankind, the monkeys still have the capacity to impose their will on us.

The potter’s wasp had completed its task on the dining table. It was a very cosy little mud house. It really was. The dry mud is scattered and the tiny infant wasps inside are missing. A monkey did his share of business on the table while I was away for some time. Possibly this is the peanut version of the teatime snacks for the monkeys. He peeled away the mud covering and enjoyed his waspy nuts. One has to accept one’s fate at the hand of the monkeys otherwise the burden of life increases manifold. The wasp, the banana tree and my own self, all three of us stand in acceptance of this fact.

Well, I think the wasp was at fault here, not the monkey. You cannot include the monkeys in the discussion about right and wrong. They will commit a wrong infallibly. So the right or wrong concerns the wasp only. Firstly, he shouldn’t have felt too bold to start grabbing property under the nose of an unknown countryside writer. Arrogance skids away basic precautions. Arrogance, pride and vanity are nothing but ill-fate’s charity. Just because there are many options on a broad plain, we cannot ignore the little corner that is most suitable for us. A potter wasp should have its business below the table, not above it. But if it takes liberty with a struggling writer then let it do at its own risk. Moral of the story is, one should learn to rule out unsuitable things even if they come free. A price not paid now is usually some bigger price paid later.

The day has been good. A potter wasp’s house and the first banana flower and fruit getting undone by the monkeys isn’t too big a loss. I would still consider it as underperformance on their scale of villainy.

It’s basically the male monkeys who plunder the peace in the neighbourhood. The females are too heavily burdened under the duties of raising countless babies. The male monkeys consider senseless mating and endless mischief as their primary duties. And they take it very seriously.

Next day, a stroll in the countryside in the afternoon fetches a few peacock feathers. When you come across a peacock feather during your walks in the solitude, it feels like coming across treasure in the dust. It’s such a beautiful piece of creation. You just bow down to the ultimate colour-master and the designer of things.

The peacock must have danced very happily, a case of requited love I suppose, for there are many feathers. It’s better to have happy and joyful people around because even you may be the recipient of the leftovers of their joy, like I now receive the remnants of the peacock’s joyfulness. There is something marvellous about peacock feathers. We need not go into a discussion about it. All I can say is that if you come across a peacock feather, consider yourself lucky and keep it in your house. You add something substantial to your interior design.

Usually the pause fetched by the forties of age sees me spending my days very meaningfully in my own ways. If I find something missing, a kind of heaviness of life, I pick up some Ruskin Bond book. His writing is so uncomplicated and lucid that life seems a beautiful all goody-goody dream. It heals. You learn how to take things very lightly in easy spirits. Bond Sahab has the divine faculty of spotting only the peaceful and joyful among the apparent chaos of our surroundings. He just filters the nice little things, ignoring the more sophisticated and heavier stuff. And when he presents his filtered version of reality, it takes you into its peaceful folds. You feel relaxed and assured of the still remaining chances of peace. I read a couple of pages of his books at a time, at various stages of the day to keep the light-hearted momentum going on. In between I write, read other authors and manage my chores that are unavoidable on the path of survival. 

The mother cat of the kittens arrived after a month. She had cleverly left them under my step-fatherly care. The cats are far more intelligent than we think. She could very well sense that this lone struggling writer will be a tolerable stepfather, stepmother to be precise, to her kittens even at his worst. She had literally starved herself to death raising these kittens. I am sure she hardly ate anything during those initial days. She would just dump the prey in front of them as they ate almost endlessly. She turned a mere skeleton as a consequence. She kept fasting, eating the bare minimum, till they were grown enough to survive on the milk bowl, grasshoppers, tiny frogs, leeches and crickets in the front courtyard. Then she stopped coming and probably lived for herself.

Today the kittens went out, even the lazy one, can you believe it, for some greener pastures. Their mother sneaked into the empty house as if to check. What a transformation! She has put on healthy weight after eating all for herself for a month. A very dashing Mama cat she looks now. But then this prettiness itself will get her into troubles again as some aspiring cat Pa will seek some brief moments of pleasure, to be followed by months of onerous duties by the Mama cat. It reminds me how weary most of the Mamas are, heavily laden under the duties of raising kids. Hand over some of the kid-rearing duties to the Papas and they will have lesser time for wars, aggression, attacks and noise. The males busy in parenting is a direct boon for mother earth. 

More than normal rains may not be good for a lot many things, especially not the old houses because they get more cracks. More cracks leave the doors hinges a bit out of symmetry. The door latches don’t fit into their sockets as a result. Presently only the bathroom’s latch is working properly—and that’s the most important thing—leaving the rest of the house free for movement. In any case, the locks are only for dogs, cats and birds. And for them even a closed unlocked door is as good as a locked one.

The human beings take locks as simple irritants only, in case they have some unfriendly designs to sneak in. My biggest treasure is my collection of thousands of books. And they are a strict no takeout item for most of the thieves, so that is not a big problem. A person who steals books to read is the sweetest thief in the world and such a person is always welcome, lock or no lock at the doors. Just like the best worm is the bookworm, the best thief is a book thief (the one who steals to read, not to sell them as trash, the latter I would say is the worst thief).

But more rains are definitely good for the tiny sadabahar sapling that has been trying to blossom in the crack of the wall. Here the parameters are totally different. Most of the water slips down. It has a mere crack to survive. For many weeks it did its best to stay alive. It merely stayed alive although new shoots won’t come. It couldn’t laugh but it kept its feeble smile. Then the rains poured more regularly and in the watery abundance, despite all the water slipping down, it still had plenty of water to fulfil its dream of becoming a bigger plant. It now has added a few inches to its height and looks a very happy plant. It can afford a laugh now because it never lost its smile. Hope it will grow tall enough to bear flowers. Well, there is a lesson here. When the things seem the worst, it’s advisable to give one’s best even if it means surviving at the basic minimum level. Then the rains come more regularly and we get rewards for our persistence and patience. 

The frogs have run out of the yard to enjoy bigger, louder show of life. The lads and lasses have to jump higher and croak louder. That’s life. One little frog seems to be inspired by this solitary writer. He still stays indoors. The pitcher has a tripod stand and a few drops fall on the floor. It’s a highly minute leakage somewhere because the rate of the fall of drops isn’t more than two or three in an hour. It leaves a small damp patch on the floor. And there stays the little frog cooling in its small sea.

Everything is about drawing lines to our perception. The tiny baby frog seems contended with its few inches of damp floor and that’s its sea. A couple of drops every hour is its thunder-storming rain. What’s wrong in this if it feels happy this way? Those who are running to swim in the sea of bigger ambitions are within their right to do so. But they can at least stop judging people who are less ambitious and are happy with the less.

A dove pair, freshly in love, tried lovemaking on the sloping, slippery solar panels. They slipped down and almost fell before they took to their wings. Falling in love seems very slippery because the slope is very steep. The emotions are wet and the hormonal storms leave it more precipitous. No wonder many of us slip like the dove pair. It’s better to become loving instead of falling in love. As a loving person you walk better. Good relationships are the normal outcomes in the life of the people who walk on good terrain. Stability has many avenues for smiles. And smiles sow the seeds of love. 

The weird attempt at cooking a mix-veg in an offbeat way has borne good results. I relish the simple supper. There is always a simpler way of doing things. It becomes very easy to do many things if we spare the doing from becoming a tool to appease our ego only. Then we do only the needful. And doing the needful is very simple and uncomplicated. I am enjoying my supper now. A fully drunk farmer is trying his best to break open his own door. The loudest bangs and the foulest abuses hurled at his own family hit the night air like a strident firecracker. His family is hiding inside, fearing a physical assault tonight.

As an addict you turn your own worst enemy, otherwise why would you kick at your own door and try to beat your own wife and children. The monkeys appear far too civilized in comparison to the alcoholic farmers because the simians rarely beat their own kids. They love them so much and wage a continuous war of survival among the human society.

A lone loaf of cloud is flashing light. The rest of the sky is clear and the stars twinkle gently. The lone light-flashing cloud makes it appear as if the victorious rainy army is ceremonially retreating with its last parting shots. The starlit bluish dark distances ogle eagerly. A half moon looks sidelong and pale. A very tired moon it looks. It’s an old moon and shouldn’t mind this age-related fatigue. Didn’t it dazzle brilliantly with its milky light during its youth? It did. The shiny Venus is unperturbed by the cloud’s battery charge. The lightening excitement of the cloud soon gets spent out. It pours out its extra energy and then slowly melts away into the darkness.

The Aromatic Wafts of Some Fluid Moments

 

Some people have exceptional philosophy of life driven by their unique—sometimes seemingly eccentric—beliefs, assumptions and thoughts. Tau Sukhlal was one such farmer. He was a lone mule driving his creaky cart on his very own terrain for a century of lifetime. He was a little bundle of inexhaustible energy. Ploughing the fields forever was his Ikigai, the pair of well-groomed oxen his nearest heart interest in the family, and going to the nearest town on his bicycle even while in his nineties was his passion.

He was once spotted doing push-ups in the privacy of the millet fields. Well, nothing exceptional about the exercise. The feat is mentionable because he was nearing hundred at that time.

He troubled the pitcher of water only once in a day. There was no need to take the trouble again as he drank the entire pitcher in a short interval. Then he worked, worked and worked more. The human system is unique in many ways and we cannot generalize. He had his own diet plan that included a pitcher of water just once in a day.

Further, he rarely spent his nights under the roof even when the weather elements were very testing. He preferred himself over the roof instead of under the roof. In summers the open skies are blissful to sleep on the terrace. For the monsoons and chilly dewy winters he had another roof over his quilt. He covered his charpoy under a polythene sheet and slept to the bombardment of dew, rain, hail and fearsome thunderclaps. In this manner he walked on the path of life for a good hundred years and is primarily known as the one who would eat a big mound of shakkar, powdered jaggery. He was so busy in his little world that whenever I recall him, the image of a human version of the busiest ant on the planet crops up.

Well, coming out of the nostalgia for the local celebs in the past. It’s a damp late evening as I ride a scooty. It’s a countryside unpaved track among the farmlands. The paddy fields are pleading for no more waters. More and more isn’t good. The paddy is over-drunk and has fallen.

On both sides of the rutted path, the grass has grown wild. Travelling across the cropped fields brings to one’s memory such work brutes as tau Sukhlal. His image brings a smile. But the bull frogs are always plotting to effectuate your fall. The twilight has triggered a chorus of crickets and other insects.

The headlamp of the two-wheeler puts the bullfrogs in a jittery mood. One can see a bullfrog sitting by the path from a distance. The sound and light of the approaching vehicle doesn’t break its song or meditation. It but will jump right in front the moment you are about to cross the meditating sage. It seems as if it wants to commit suicide. So here I go with a series of bullfrogs jumping right in front of the little vehicle one after the other.

One in fact mistimes its suicidal dive and lands on my foot. Then the suicide attempts have to wait for a few minutes. A bullfrog is quite big. It appears even bigger if you see it on your foot. I fall down. Luckily not hurt. The culprit triumphantly jumps again and lands into the path-side paddy field. In retaliation I turn suicidal and ride pretty fast. If they don’t jump too close, they are a beautiful sight to watch, however.

The fall has left me cranky and fidgety. I respond, react rather, by skipping dinner—or was it laziness under the garb of spoilt mood—and promise not to read or write during the night. I decide to sulk and do no more of any activity before retiring for the day.

The children in the street have extended their riotous play in the tractor trolley parked at the little square by the house. They have the bulky iron carrier to beat to the limits of their fancies. Shouts, laughter and tonking at the sides and floor of the trolley make bearing up with the noise itself a big task. So I cannot say that I am lying idle.

There is a serious matter among the players now. The clattering din has given way to a chatter which graduates to a serious conversation. They are discussing about their weight. A couple of them point out to be in forties on the scale of weight. So they are the big boys in the group.

‘I am 42 kilo,’ one says.

‘I am 46,’ the other counters.

‘But you are 14 years, I am only 13. Even with your extra year and more weight I gave you more slaps that day.’

‘When?’

‘When you felled me from my cycle.’

‘Where?’

‘Near Jiten’s house whose windowpane was broken by Nittu.’

‘Yea, I remember, you hit first after getting up but after that I gave you at least 15 on your face.’

‘I remember that I gave you a slap everywhere on your face. If I add the ones on the sides of your head and at the back of neck I must have given at least 16.’

Then they pushed each other and began on the second league of the slapping game. No malice involved. The smaller kids danced around and the slappers returned to their houses with much flushed red faces. I believe their slapping game will further continue on the next day.

I still carry the heat of the bullfrog-inflicted fall and decide to chill out with a cold bucket bath. It’s blissful. Water not only cleans you, it heals the mental scars also. I feel light as I put the nice soft towel to wipe the body. I have regained my poise and smile. I am but again on fire after the cool bath. The fiery red ants in one’s towel can quickly put you on fire. The skin literally burns. Well, some days are there just to test you at many fronts. I scrub myself vigorously to make mincemeat of the tiny culprits. It’s then a very prolonged bath with a sullen, brooding, frowning demeanour.

If you feel sad and lonely, go out and open your heart to the open skies. ‘A lone man is the neighbour of God,’ says an Afghan saying. I go on the terrace and open myself to the darkish blue stillness of the night sky. The stars twinkle gently in the clear sky. There is a solitary little loaf of cloud in the sky surrounded by the starry applauds around it. The starlit bluish darkness pervades around the little speck of existence. This little fluff of cloud seems like a small piece taken off from a huge cotton bale. It stays there in the clam sky for an hour or so and then calmly melts away into the shapeless darkness.

I have my smile back. The night sky heals you if you are receptive to its mysterious treatment. You just have to look and smile. The rest of it is taken care by the starry immensity.

The younger Parijat tree in the corner of the courtyard has started to make nights sweeter with its night blossoms. These nigh flowers have the beacon of hope and light for the hearts that need it.

If during the solitary nights, you want to overcome the little tumbles that you faced during the day, I recommend a good Iranian movie. They are gentle and soft lullabies for the bruised self. You float on a misty breeze. There is sweet sadness in the tiny episodes in the lives of ordinary people. I watch ‘The Taste of Cherry’. A terribly unhappy and lonely man has lost his spirits and gusto for life and is thinking of committing suicide. An old man comes his way and tells the forlorn man that he too faced a similar situation once in life and went to a mulberry tree to hang himself with a rope there. Just that the mulberry wasn’t cooperative to his plan and offered him a sweet mulberry. The suffering man ate the sweet mulberry and it instantly took away all the bitterness of life. The suicide-seeking man also tastes a sweet cherry and its sweetness is sufficient to help him regain his faith in life. The sweetness of a little mulberry or a cherry sustains one through the darkest hour of one’s soul and then hands us over to the prospects of a sunny dawn. The sun smiles fresh and we get up and smile in return. Don’t ignore the little sweet mulberries and cherries in your life. They will sustain you even if the world falls apart around you.

The cherry-sweetened night is beautiful. The bullfrog-inflicted falls and the fiery red ants driven fires lose their meaning. The sweetness hands me over to another Iranian movie ‘The Song of Sparrows’. The soft charms of this little world carry me deep into the folds of night. An ostrich farm manager fails to capture an escaping bird and is fired. He has a smiling daughter who needs a hearing aid. Desperately in need of money, he slogs around Tehran for sustenance. He piles up a huge junkyard in his garden. He has taken it too seriously and turns quarrelsome, snappy and cranky. His children try to help him in adding to his earnings but his pride is wounded. He wants to do it all by himself. Good principles and need pull him both ways as he loiters around among an assortment of temporary jobs. He starts gathering the discarded household items, as if in panic, and consequently finds himself perched upon the heap of his junk. Sadly, the mound of his crazy collection crashes, breaking his bone. Then his children and the villagers come together to cooperate and help him through the rough patch. On his bed he learns to appreciate the song of the sparrows that he never had time to listen in life. His little son works with his friends in a wealthy man’s garden to earn hundreds of herrings which they plan to breed in the water reservoir they have cleaned in their fields. They have done well and are taking the herrings in a big basket of water. The basket breaks and they lose their herrings to the water drainage. The boy saves a couple of herrings in a poly bag full of water. They are crying over their loss. But the sight of the two herrings swimming in their water regains their smiles. They have lost hundreds of fish but the loss of those hundreds has given them at least two herrings.

Beyond one’s individual miseries, it’s the song of life that matters. The loud, piercing din of survival becomes tolerable if you have the ears for the soft sparrow songs. It’s not about how much we store. It’s basically about properly using what we have. Life is not even about how much we lose. Even losses have something to offer. Life is basically about wisely using what is left to us after the falls. It is also about nurturing a habit to smile over all the petty irritants of life.

These are beautiful movies and I smile and look into the night sky. If you need company and guidance while stumbling over life’s irritants seek it and ask openly. A book is there, a movie is there, or some other program or people whom you think capable of helping you regain your smile. Don’t be a loner. There is always company in one form or the other. Open yourself to it. You gain from it, believe me. You sleep peacefully in the dark then and welcome a new day with a smile.

A Nurturer of Small-time Liberality

 

I vividly remember a full moon night in the lower Himalayan hills. Some moments have deeper roots in our memory. A full moon brightly smiles through a gap in the chir pine forest. It looks like a bright lamp with milky light. The crickets and other insects jingle as the foot-soldiers of the night and the mountain wind sweetly sighs among the pine needles to raise a signature tune of Mother Nature’s unbound hilarity. The moonlight filters through the pine needles and showers me with a fine drizzle of light as I stand under the whistling, moaning pines and look into the sky.

My memory is redolent with those solitary walks in the early morning forest. In early October the hills have many wild flowers. They smile in the solitary corners and greet you as you pass unhurriedly. The light purple of delicate Four-o'-clock flowers smiles by a little stream accosting me to stop for a few moments. These small wild flowers lie in unwearied wait for some solitary walker to arrive by the overgrown footpath circuiting around the hills.

The fragrant flowers affectionately named Old Man's Beard deck up the hillside like a shy mountain lass to gift their rare smile to anyone who loves walking all alone on the unbeaten paths. It’s basically a non-predatory creeper-cum-bush that moves up with the support of the host tree. Its hold on the host isn’t too demanding. It needs a kind of support only. The malodorous white spikes of the bulbous flowers dangle as a beautiful tree decoration on the hillside. Here the fragrant, flowering creeper is hosted by a Beleric tree (Baheda). In the dew-crowned morning wilderness, they turn the fresh air scented to the intoxicating limits for many meters around the tree. The rising mist carries the lovely smell to me as I slowly come across the bend and see the white smiles at a distance. 

Keep your eyes on the ground and you receive the smiles of the purple blue of Ivy-leafed morning glory. Their tiny smiles among the dew-laden grass ask you to take a pause and stand for a while or maybe even sit down and absorb the solitude to the limits. These wild flowers are the gifts of wilderness for anyone who has the time and inclination to go down the bylanes that aren’t trampled under the wheels of development.  

And when the sunrays arrive to kiss the morning mists of a little valley, the wild fragrance of life and living blossoms up suddenly. It’s intoxicating to the thirsty soul. The highest high that no other substance can give!

Some real-life moments are better than even the beautiful-most dreams. Maybe the reality drives our dreams or possibly even the dreams shape our realities. Beautiful people in your life have the capacity to change your reality to the extent of a still more beautiful dream. My friend Rohtash stayed in the hills and smiled a lot. Just staying in the hills gave his life a satisfactory meaning. His kind heart was never short of feelings that would enable him to share his little paradise with his friends. He felt the immensity of nature around and had literally become a free agent who helped people take their share of the natural booty. He knew my solitary loiterer’s ways and felt at his happiest best in hosting my stays in the hills. He sustained a system that allowed me the best moments of solitary stays in the hills. Thank you so much brother! Then he left us suddenly. All of us have our share of Covid-time losses. We lost him. Death seems too cruel in some cases. She was too hasty. Now in the plains, I have such vivid dreams of those beautiful days. If you have teary smile of gratitude and love for someone who has completed his journey, like I have now for him, that is the hallmark of a life well lived. Stay in peace my friend, my brother!

Reality shakes us out of our slumberous, cosy dreams. I am roused now by a loud barrage of firecrackers. It sounds as if the locality is under a fierce assault. They are the children celebrating Diwali during the day, a full month in advance.

Alcoholism has almost chucked out the prospects of two families in the neighbourhood. Unbridled quarrels and intra-family cruelty make it both nightmare and daymare with equal lethality. The women have grown hysteric and shrill and the children have lost their smiles—they snigger profusely—as the menfolk behave at their worst after losing control to the cheap liquor.

However, a road passing the farmlands around the village has brought back at least the children’s smiles. Their land is acquired by the road department and the reimbursement has aggravated the agonies and ecstasies both. The men drink more, shout more and have the extra push to turn the quarrels all-night affairs now. They probably sleep through the day to recuperate for the night duty.

The children have taken up the responsibility during the day. Diwali is more than a month away but now they have money to go fire-cracking throughout the day almost nonstop. They prefer the loudest crackers that would perhaps even break someone’s wall some day. After the bone-shaking bust and boom, they cackle with loud peals of laughter. Their childhood hasn’t blossomed. They hardly had enough pocket money to celebrate the festivals. Now when there is money they are celebrating full throttle, making up for the lost fancies of childhood, perhaps. Their riotous firecrackers test the capacity of eardrums though. But at least the monkeys have run away for the time being. They must be thinking that they are under attack by the human army of children.

Well, it’s advisable to bear up with anything for the sake of scaring away the chronically nagging simians. It’s another matter that more bottles of liquor and more packets of firecrackers will burn out the celebration too fast, sizzling across the lifeline of finance. In any case, the fresh arrival of easy money has turned their lives happening in many ways. 

Alcoholism is one of the biggest revenue churners for the government. The alcoholics pay their taxes really well with each and every bottle they purchase. With this big payment they ensure that the government won’t interfere while the evil effects of the addiction take not only a family but the overall society in its grip. It’s a living death for so many households. The liquor holds so many fates in its bottle. 

In a society blasted by the scourge of alcoholism, there are so many daily episodes that fall on the wrong side of the law. A quail is shouting pakadleo-pakadleo-pakadleo—catch-catch-catch—as if urging the police to grasp the wrongdoers. Sturdy clumps of grass, bushes and weeds have filled up the space among the trees and houses in the village during this rainy season. The quail too left the boring countryside and comes here to witness the drama of human life. It has plenty of underbushes to hide after raising the alarm.

Rashe is knocking at the gate. The sound beats the firecrackers in tenacity. I have to run. The gate is too old for his big fists. He is broad, muscular and grins widely. He may use the same spirit to uproot the rickety iron gate. His is a slurred speech as his lower jaw is almost immobile, being hit hard by a horse’s leg as he crawled to play with it as an infant. But the shortcoming of his spittly words is covered by his huge grin. The God has been very lenient with his teething. His majestic set of yellow teeth would bite a horse to death if the animal hits him now.

He was born on a musty evening twilight as his mother was walking home from the agricultural farms. She calmly sat by the countryside dirt road and delivered Rashe to this world without much qualms. It was already pitch dark when a farmer informed the family about the new arrival. Rashe and his mother were taken home in a tonga and were absolutely fine with no issues at all. The horse snorted as the cart lurched on the dirt road. This was the same horse that would give Rashe a distinct speech after a year or so.

Presently, he has borrowed a carrier rickshaw for a task that has been proposed to him. During my barn-cleaning spree, the huge, rusted set of chaff-cutting machine stood quite menacingly. It has stood idle for the last decade since Ma stopped keeping a buffalo. A friend has a still operating barn with cattle. The chaff-cutter would give a better look there, thinking so I sought Rashe’s services to carry the rusted iron behemoth and deliver my gift at my friend’s place. But Rashe doesn’t work for money. He works for the cheap native liquor. Give him the money that would fetch him ten bottles of imported English liquor and he will frown and give an expression as if he has been exploited to the limits possible. Give him a single bottle of desi daroo and he grins happily to the capacity of his copious mouth.

I find it advisable to make him joyful on the spot. This much practicality I have learnt on the path of survival in this world. He rolls over the cheap bottle with care and consideration befitting a million-dollar item and mindfully puts it in his cloth bag. Being so happy now, the weight of the heavy iron instrument has no meaning. I just have to watch from a safe distance. The dismembered parts of the machine are tamed and convey their goodbye from the lurching rickshaw carrier as he moves away. One more thing, he never walks in a hurry. Even if there is fire in the village, he would be the last one to come out at his natural easy pace.

There is a ceasefire among the fire-cracking armies for the last couple of hours. The monkeys take the opportunity to flit around the dangerous fronts. But their spirits seem to have been sodden with water. Two adolescent rascals, the rowdiest in the group who spend most of their time cable-walking, have got grounded. The perch on a cable isn’t advisable if there are blasts around. They may lose balance and the red bum may turn redder as a consequence. The two partners in many a crime are sitting sullen under the neem tree in front of a house. A sad monkey looks even funnier. They are so dejected and disheartened as not to mind even a lad kind of rapidly growing puppy joining their company. The puppy is careful and avoids barking. Possibly he remembers the slaps the monkeys give to his species at regular intervals. He stands a few feet away and respectfully wags his tail with a look of compliance. The unrelenting firecrackers have stabbed the simian spirits quite deeply. They look the other way. The puppy comes nearer, hesitatingly, wagging its tail in full acknowledgement of their superiority. They allow it to stand near them and don’t hold its ear or pull its tail or slap it. Well-behaved monkeys, what is this world coming to!? I hope the earth won’t crash out of its orbit today.

There is something wrong with the climate now. There have been plenty of rains till September end but the musty heat is so vehement in its intensity as to beat even the hot months of June and July. One feels like being thrown into a cauldron of boiling water. Well, we have to do something and avoid being boiled alive on earth. I think now is the time to take tree plantation very seriously. We can’t just expect the government to do all the work. Individually we have to take our little steps to undo the common crimes we have committed against Mother Nature as a species.

If we plant a few trees and see them to maturity, I think we undo a portion of our individual carbon footprint. During the rainy season, many trees have their baby sprouts around them. I carefully pick out some of them and groom them in nursery bags. Once they grow to be lads and lasses after regular care, I plant them to grow to be gentlemen trees and ladies in the fallow land around the village. Many of them are eaten by the goats and buffalos. That is painful. But a few have grown to give shade on the ground and nesting to birds among their branches. And that takes away all the pain. Please plant trees and ensure that they survive to give shade, fruit and nesting space to the birds.

Life beyond Established Mindsets

 

Clouds float like huge cotton bales in a blue sea. They bear a tired look as they move westwards. They should be as the rainy season has been quite busy for them. The skies now get back their metallic birds after a hiatus of one and half years due to the multiple waves of the pandemic. The frequency of flying aircrafts is increasing. They look like another species of birds flying higher. Below them, the scavenging black kites have started to fly in the village sky quite frequently, a clear sign of the prowling urbanization. Nothing wrong with the change, it’s inevitable. We can but have better waste management and more trees for the kites to look for natural preys instead of hawking over the stinking waste of humanity.

A dragonfly is resting on the pointed end of the spear-shaped grills over the upper border of the garden gate. It’s a beautiful sight. I dare the monkeys to do the same. It’ll give a solid injection on their red bums. They but have better minds than to take their follies to this extent. So they prefer not to get injected in this manner. If I had the power to punish them and they possessed the patience and willingness to take it, I would ask them to sit on these spikes.

This is the month of pitra paksha, ancestor worship month, when people put ceremonial offerings on their wall tops and roof parapets. It’s believed that one’s ancestors receive the offerings through the birds, especially the crows. Now there aren’t many crows left here in the village. Only the monkeys and Homo sapiens are adding to their numbers. A few dozen crows are taking burps of kheer, halwa, malpua and puris. Looking at the quantity of the food on offer, the crows can, at the most, taste it. And just tasting it leaves them full to their neck. Being overfed, the crows look sleepy in fact. The major portion of the food is then taken by the monkeys on behalf of the ancestors. With this rich extra diet I expect more and more monkey mamas carrying even more monkey babies.  

I am fed up with the monkeys. I need diversion, something that can make me forget the simian-driven misery. I watch some Iranian movies. If you are fed up with the typical larger than life, unreal song, drama and romance of the Bollywood try some Iranian movies. They are so simple and small time in their subtle plots that they pierce truth like anything. They sound like the countryside trill of a little bell tied on the neck of a sheep, a little hymn, pious and pure.

Majid Majidi is a master storyteller on the screen. His ‘Children of Heaven’ is Himalayan in emotions, even though it’s a tiny-budget story, primarily concerning a little pair of brother and sister. It’s not a fight for billions or the best looking girl around. The family has extremely limited means and the brother-sister duo has to share the same pair of sneakers to go to their schools. They are always running to help each other reach the school in time. The nine-year-old boy then runs a four-kilometre race to win a pair of shoes for his little sister. To win the shoes he has to lose the race to two runners. The shoes are for the third winner. The first and second positions carry far more lucrative rewards. But these better rewards have no meaning for the boy. Our ‘best’ is what we ‘need’. Beyond that it’s a pathetic tale of greed. He fights for the third position to get shoes for his sister. To him the first and second positions are as worthless as the last position in the race. That’s the beauty of pure hearts. They indeed are children of heaven. Our children have such a rich potential for purity, innocence and unconditional love. It’s a pity that we allow it to dissipate as they grow old. This has been the biggest unharnessed resource on the earth. This I think is our biggest misfortune and collective failure.

The other movie that brought tears of gratitude, joy, smiling sadness and understanding is named ‘Baran’. It’s the story of sublime love, a love that isn’t looking for completion in the form of marriage or getting the person as we usually perceive it. A simple, bucolic construction site labourer falls in love with an Afghan refugee girl. She initially worked as a labourer on the same site. She had to disguise herself as a boy because the female refugees aren’t allowed to work in the foreign country. Well, he gives everything away to see a smile on her face, gives away his entire savings, sells his citizen identity card in the black market and turns a stateless citizen. He can’t buy her costly gifts but he gives a pair of crutches to her father who has broken his leg. He offers all he has to the altar of his emotion. He has to see a smile on her face before she leaves Iran for her home country Afghanistan. As she leaves for her native land, she gives him a faint smile, a smile so precious given her inexplicably horrid pain and pathos. She then hides her face in her burka, loses her identity as the truck moves away, perhaps forever.

He is left behind as the most satiated of a lover. He has just given his all, selflessly. Hence there is no pain. When you give all you have for your emotion, you won’t feel a loser. You hardly carry any guilt. And a guiltless conscience will enable you to smile over tears. He has given his all. He isn’t in pain over his offering to pure love as he smiles while looking at the sandal mark in the mud where the girl’s footwear had stuck as she left for her country.

Love isn’t a derivative of outcomes in relationships. It’s only about how much depth you enjoyed irrespective of what happened later. The boy and the girl never so much as touched each other’s hands but their smiles at the end of the movie say it all. They could feel love even though they couldn’t act on the feelings of love in the form of a formal relationship.

I have moisture in my eyes as I recall those lovingly haunting scenes in the movie. The ceiling fan above is creaking with equal measure in sadness. It is a battered, rusted ceiling fan in the veranda above the dining table whose one corner is reserved for writing. The fan may sound sad but it still is a happy home for somebody. The upward facing plastic cup on the fan’s rod has enough space for an old bat to spend his days. The fan has crooked wings and makes creaky weird noise as it revolves slowly. The bat seems to have fallen in love with this set-up.

Initially I tried to rob the bat of its ownership deed on the fan. It was but so damn adamant in retaining its lurching cradle that it flew dangerously close to my face. It gave me enough warning to stop the project midway. A simple, nondescript village writer is no match for an angry bat. The bat is soundly sleeping above as I write this. There is a guava tree in the garden. I am sure he tastes most of the guavas in the night leaving them for me to eat during the day.

I am sharing something which might be disturbing to a few people. I have successfully opened very hardy looking brass locks of famous brands. What is disturbing in that, you may wonder. Well, it definitely raises a few eyebrows if you manage it with a thin screw driver. Before you jump to any conclusions and imagine me going around stealthily in the dark of night, let me clarify I use it when the option of the key is missing.

Once it happened like this. It was a heavy brass lock of a famous brand that had lost its key in the house. With the spectacle of messing it up with an outright breakage, I thought of giving it a try with a thin screw driver. I just put it in the key slit and it dropped open in less time than even a key would take. My sisters looked agape. I myself got a shock how did it happen. The feat gave me so much confidence that I kept an eye on the lucky screw driver in case of similar emergencies. And it did arrive.

A peasant woman in the locality had a star of her eyes, a huge brass and iron lock. It gave her that much of security as no God, family member or the entire police of India would give. We can say it was her first love. She was very finicky about someone getting into her house and steal her things. But as long as the house was under the protection of her lock, she could afford to take relaxed breaths a few yards away from the door.

The lock was very firm in its duty but the key turned frisky and lazy and got lost somewhere as she looked helplessly at her obedient lock. ‘Let me break open the door itself!’ a sturdy farmer was ready with a heavy iron rod. ‘We can use it to break the stones, let me try this one,’ I offered. The peasant woman always accosted me very lovingly so I thought it my duty to help her. The look in her eyes told me that she found it as much impossible as driving the earth off its trajectory with this needle. She really trusted her lock. To her it was the strongest one in the world that would need the entire village’s effort to resolve the issue.

Anyway, in went the screw-driver’s tip to a particular direction—I am not going to tell about the specifics because people with ulterior motives may take clues and wreak havoc in neighbourhoods—and the clock dropped open. It took almost half the time she usually took with her regular key. She was rattled. Shocked and out of her wits, she felt cheated by her dear lock. She stared at me with open mouth as if I was the biggest burglar in the world who broke open locks almost professionally. I had to leave the scene in a hurry. After that she lost her faith in locks. ‘Locks are just to protect our homes form dogs and cats, not from…’ she would stop and spare naming me and look at me suspiciously.

After that I avoided the eventuality of breaking the locks whose keys went missing within my house a few more times. The last time the best lock in the house, a big brass one of a famous brand, tried to test my skill. The lock was defeated fair and square. ‘You seem to have a lot of these experiences in your past birth,’ my sister laughed once. I just got conscious and looked the other way.

There is a lesson here. Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you have to do it at any cost. What you can do is definitely important. But what you shouldn’t do is equally important. You shouldn’t open locks stealthily in the dark just because you can do that with screw drivers. Do it if someone has lost the key and is looking for some help. It applies to most of our skills, capabilities and knowledge. We have to draw a line beyond which we won’t do something even though we are capable of doing. A car without brakes, and all of accelerator, may enjoy a furious ride but it surely crashes over the precipice after a point.

Presently, the best lock guarding the worst provisions in the house in the storeroom surrenders to my screw driver, its key being on uninformed vacations somewhere. The cobwebbed interior is shrieking to be relived of its load a bit. I am in lenient spirits and agree to its plight. There go the empty cartons, bottles, mugs, wires, canisters, dented utensils, stacks of newspapers and many more things. I don’t wait to haggle with a kabadiwala over the things that I find a burden on the old countryside house and draw out blood from his already anaemic finances. I simply pile up things at a corner by the house. I know one man’s trash is somebody’s treasure. The things are usually picked up within a day. But today it takes much less time. They are already here and I am yet to finish disburdening my barn and the storeroom of the extra stuff.

It’s a pleasant surprise. They are two sweat-laden dark handsome adolescent girl kabadiwalas. Why should boys have all the fun? The girls are matching boys in the space so why should this earthly domain be for the boys only. They are sorting out things with a sweet sweaty determination. Their duppatas are purposefully tied around their waists. There is a look of full mission. Their carrier rickshaw is getting loaded with the old treasure. They greet me with a smile. Hardworking girls earning their bread through diligent work is something what puts them into the orbit of divinity in my eyes.

I was once so overjoyed at seeing a girl electrician in the nearby town working wholeheartedly at my voltage stabilizer that I had to give her three time the money I owed her apart from a brotherly blessing on her head, all this to justify the moisture of joy in my eyes. Coming back to these waste collecting girls, I get so overjoyed at their complete dedication to the job—most importantly, their eyes don’t carry shame, guilt, embarrassment or any other negative complex about their job—that I have to run back again into the barn and bring out something that would be of use to them at their house. I drag out my iron folding bed, in good condition even after serving for a decade at my rented accommodation in Delhi when I slogged out in the editorial departments of academic publishers. I am retired now, too early a retirement though. But the bed still has much more to offer to tired bodies. I put it on their carrier rickshaw with full respect and a smile. They also smile back with confidence and pride. They are not begging, they are doing a job. And a job is a job is a job.

Look for bread daily but look for meaning beyond yourself also. All of us, from rag-pickers to space walkers, can view our jobs as ‘meaningful to society’. Aren’t these girls doing an amazing job for the society? They clean the surroundings and clear away things that would leave the locality stinking. So dear readers, give respect to those who are doing their job happily.

I have seen smiling rag-pickers and terribly unhappy ever-frowning corporate guys in swanky buildings. My respects flow to those who do their job joyfully, taking it to mean something bigger than themselves, a kind of contribution to the larger scheme. Every task done with a happy frame of mind is a contribution beyond the limited scheme of the self. Try to fall in love with what you do, just as I like the task of writing even though only a few hundred copies sell and I hardly earn any money from my writing. But it’s my Ikigai. I am at my best in feelings while I am writing. Find your Ikigai!