A success story

 

Gopu’s mother has always believed that he has all that it takes to be a fighter pilot. The reason being that he always stood above his twin brother Lopu in studies. Lopu would come last in the class but Gopu beat his brother and emerge victorious as second last. He always scored two or three more marks than his brother who scored in the vicinity of thirty somethings. More importantly, Gopu would break toy planes in childhood and try to assemble the broken parts. ‘He has a fancy for planes!’ his mother would gush with pride. I think he had better fancy for breaking and crashing them.

And why was Gopu’s mother so sure that he would become a fighter pilot? Apart from getting two marks more than his brother, he made amazing paper planes and would not settle for any other toy than a plane, which he would try to crash in the most innovative ways. Well, that’s how mothers are. Their love is always there, irrespective of what we become.

They grew to be big-bottomed, chubby guys with lots of fat around them after completing their senior secondary schooling. Money was somehow arranged to send them to Canada on student visa. ‘We aren’t going there to study. That’s just for visa. We are going to work there!’ they declared. And true to their words, they are now making the most of their limited work hours allowed under the student visa. They work as courier delivery guys and have saved a few thousand dollars. The stories of their success have started to do rounds in the housing society where their parents live. The amount is calculated in Indian rupees and that makes them celebrities in the gated society.

On being reminded about the fighter pilot project, their mother says, ‘Oh, they are already earning a pilot’s salary. It carries risks also in plying fighter planes.’

They won’t have inspired so many coming-of-age youngsters in their housing society by becoming fighter pilots as they have done by earning dollars as courier delivery guys in Canada. The parents cite them as examples on the topic of making money and setting a career. A few parents are now taking tips from the successful twins about the ways and means of following their footsteps.

Be a saint with your innocent pleasures

 Why would there be sense pleasure in nature? Can you imagine any type of life possible without it on the planet? Is manifestation possible at all without sense driven gratification? Isn't sensual pacification the gateway from unmanifest to the manifest? When a flower blooms isn't it a result of the black-bee's sense gratification? When a rishi goes into the caves to launch his war against senses, isn’t he himself a result of sense gratification of his parents? When I aim for the ultimate gratification, the much cherished perpetual bliss, isn’t that a super gratification? Poor sense pacifications, they are such a maligned entity. Their theoretical negation forms the base all the endless stream of words in holy books and scriptures. While the reality is that at the level of life manifestation, as it's on earth, how will you even survive without this faculty? These are only faculties that have evolved with us in the game of survival. The key lies in their balanced usage for a wholesome life. Those on the path of so called spirituality start with an acute sense of some imbalance, some pain, loss, bitterness. The latter are just results of mismanaged, skewed usage of our natural faculties. I have seen very well poised and balanced people serving as hawkers and rickshaw pullers in crowded bazaars. Almost saintly in demeanor. At so much ease with whatever nature has given them at the level of senses and their use. And I have seen high priests, the careerist spiritualists, unfortunately most of them in fact, who are well decked up in the armour of dharma and holy look, but peace is farthest from their eyes. And so many of them take a cute tumble with their lady followers. It's only about at being at ease with yourself. Nothing less, nothing more. One can use any kind of words to describe it. There is no end to words. They are the products of the faculty of our mind only. Sometimes back an old sadhu was ruminating that he got a nightfall which he considered a sin. Well, had you been healthy in your ideas about sex and women, had been balanced in your ideas and usage of this natural sense born faculty, you won't have been crying over nightfalls in old age, I thought. It's not about negating sense born desires. It's not even about getting saturated with them. It's all about balance. Like when you eat. Not much to give you ache, not too less to starve you. Like Buddha realized when he almost died after not eating anything for months. Learn to be at ease dear brothers and sisters. If you are sitting at a brothel and are at ease with yourself, you are your own saint. If you are occupying the highest seat of a pontiff and itching with restlessness then you are a novice still. So dear brothers and sisters, learn the art of being at ease with yourself wherever you are situated. Balance. Balance. Balance. In everything that life offers. Accept. Accept the windfalls of the pleasure of flesh with humility and gratitude and pay back with sincere hard work. It's a beautiful world because of the teasing interplay of sensory desire seeking, not because of those who preach against it and keep smoldering with desire within. Those who are running away from life, relationships, needful responsibilities, mundane pleasures need to remember that most of our gods, rishi and muni had beautiful partners, families, children. They are called bhagwan because they used their energies in an optimum way and used their sensual faculties in the way they wanted. They used them in a balanced way instead of falling imbalanced to one particular impulse. In balanced amount even poison serves like amrit. In imbalanced amount even amrit turns poison. A judicious mix of what nature has given is nothing short of enlightenment. Why put your fate solely in the pages of so called holy books? They are mere indicators, just creation of minds who could write better than you and me. So ease up. Just be. Accept what you are. Why negate. As the component of being at ease builds up, the tendency to go into impulsive, imbalanced use of sense pleasure faculties will get transformed itself. New neurological circuits develop that drive more hormones of wellness through our system. It's a very simple physiological fact. Why interpret it in terms of mythological proportions? I know it disturbs a lot many minds who have accepted the superiority of particular paths in taking them to the exclusive class of refined and holy beings on earth. That also is another form of ego. To desire to be in a state from where the rest of humanity seems meek ignorants who need reformation and enlightenment. So take this slightly bitter pill of information with a glass of water and be at ease. If your mind still feels disturb then rethink about the utility of gurus and scriptures who haven't given you equanimity of mind to even digest this. Then reboot. And smile. Then laugh. At yourself. It helps.

Taking a grip of the trade

Coming from a deprived and underprivileged social strata, that requires one to hone a wide repertoire of survival techniques on a daily basis, Kala is now getting a foothold in the new trade. Befogged by tiny pinpricks in the back alleys, when one emerges on the main thoroughfare, it seems nothing short of a fresh dilemma. But braving against all odds, he has firmly established himself as a dependable vegetable hawker.

Earlier he struggled to remember even the name list of the vegetables loaded in his cart. He sounded plucky and lacking confidence in his shouts. But practice makes a man perfect. ‘I have been shouting all these names in the privacy of the fields. But the problem is that I have crammed the entire series. I have to speak all of it. Problem arises when the item that I have shouted isn’t found in my cart and then they complain that if I don’t have that particular vegetable why did I shout its name. I try to cut out the names of the missing vegetables on a day but then I forget the entire series,’ he confided in me.

But he seems to have crammed a long series, longer than anything that he memorized during his few years of schooling. The villagers may keep grumbling but he keeps shouting the names of his vegetables like children shout while playing.

In his mid-forties now, he honorably spent three decades in the testing job of a daily wage laborer. He worked with consummate zeal and carried out tasks with amazing physical felicity. He lifted weights with throwaway ease. His vision’s breadth was limited to the tasks required by a mason’s helper. He mastered it eloquently. But then he started to feel a bizarre pull at his knees. His knees wobbled and gave arthritic pain. His life was thrown out of gear because he couldn’t perform the heavy duty of a mason’s helper anymore.

He had to dig deep into the repertory of his faculties to seek an alternative. He turned the spotlight on another source of living. He saw so many Biharis wandering the streets as vegetable hawkers and decided to join their league. But his rendition of vegetable names was far below par. They sent down shrill, fluid, distinctive notes of their products, while he gave muffled, dithering notes. In any case, here he is at his best after lots of cramming attempts in the solitude of the agricultural farms.

Pulling a rickshaw laden with vegetables seems a cakewalk to him. ‘It’s almost no work. I just have to walk around and shout!’ he tells gleefully. Little does he realize that salesmanship is a totalized endeavor requiring many traits to fleece, cajole and bind the customers. His sales are lowest among the vegetable hawkers. The people complain that his vegetables aren’t fresh. ‘Start buying from me first, so that I save some money and buy costlier fresh ones,’ he tells them.

Above all, he is happy at least in matching his rivals in yelling out the names of vegetables. Most importantly, he finds the job very easy. Well, everything is relative. His new job is almost no work to him. There are but broken-spirited vegetable sellers who move around as if the entire world’s responsibility is on their shoulders. The reason is that they haven’t gone through the furnace of plain physical drudgery like Kala has. In order to digest your current standing, take some time off and try some harder job. You will then realize the significance of your undertaking.

The Mathematics of Communal Bug

If we look into the communal history of the last four decades, we find a disturbing pattern in India. Big communal violence has shaken our social fabric almost once in decade: Delhi riots (1984), Mumbai riots (1992-93), Gujarat (2002), Muzaffarnagar (2013), Manipur (2023). Statistically a big communal flare-up jolts the fabric of our unity once in a decade. And during the lull period, there are little-little fireworks that are kept alive by politicians, vigilantes, hardliner religious leaders or anyone belonging to the power-aspirant group. The slow-smoldering smoke in the social fuel wood that reaches its burning point after a decade. Polarization on religious grounds is a dangerous pill of instant profits. So the communal element is a big trend in our politics these days. But statistics point to a great danger to our unity if this divisive element isn’t weeded out from our socio-political stream. As we can see from the above statistics, minor communal haggling and rhetoric creates enough fire under the social ground that it bursts out in a big flare after a decade. But the law of mathematics doesn’t stop here at the once-in-a-decade big communal flare-up. The big-scale communal fires separated roughly by a decade will churn out something far bigger in nature after their incubation period is reached. The exponential growth of hate! Like it happened in 1947. That was preceded by a communal bug that incubated for almost 90 years when the Britishers systematically introduced the element of communal divide in the Indian society in the wake of the revolution of 1857. And now, with year-long little communal propagandas going full throttle, resulting in a big tragedy almost once in a decade, we may reach the very same partition-time critical limit of social breach in 2040s, that’s almost hundred years after 1947. Even impartial mathematics is pointing to the dangers to our unity by the communal bug if political parties, organizations, religious leaders and other influential groups don’t discard divisive communal rhetoric from their plan of action to gain power and influence.   

Kissu's Chronicles

Kissu’s primary matter of fame in the village school, from class five to ten, was the fact that he had spent five previous years of his schooling in Arunachal Pardesh where his uncle was posted in the army. With a dramatic multitude of stories about that distant land that we saw in the map, he built a formidable reputation by telling spicy anecdotes from the mysterious land. The sluggish and stagnant air in the classroom would instantly vanish as the flurried notes of his hair-raising episodes touched our boyish hearts. Most of these were elephant stories, allegedly based on his own direct experiences with the pachyderms. His well-spun stories had a lot of scope to adjust and get digested in our boyhood imagination. Now but they seem too outlandish.

After matriculation, at the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) at the district town, he accumulated even more reputation. The Bollywood was spinning sylvan and sublime dreams of a hero with his ameliorative touch to undo the hideous deformities plaguing the society, especially the molestation of women, where the hero suddenly jumped among dozens of goondas and saved the honor of the damsel in distress, love would blossom then, followed by lots of dance and songs. He carried a hockey stick doing justice to the Bollywood heroes of the eighties and nineties who saved the society, especially the women in distress.

He walked with a perfectly puffed-up chest; his heroism and macho attitude seeking an opportunity to save some damsel in distress. Those were the times when the roadways buses carried a passenger load at least four times more than their full capacity. It was always an ill-omened adventure. You had to push into the throng with devil’s impunity. And when you emerged out of the stuffed box you felt misshapen to your last bone.

During one such scuffle among the multitudes to get a foothold onboard, a girl lost her footing at the crowded footboard as the bus started to crawl slowly. The driver usually drove it at a snail’s pace for a couple of minutes to allow the throng the last chance on any square centimeter of the bus still available for grabbing. The bus was moving very slowly and this girl softly slumped down. It wasn’t a hard fall, she just lost balance. There wasn’t a single scratch on her. She would have jumped back to regain her vertical. But that brief moment gave Kissu the opportunity to save his heroine like a Bollywood hero. He hoisted the shaken girl in his worked-out arms and started running. She was perfectly alright and had all the reasons to believe that it was an attempt to kidnap her in broad daylight.

Kissu thought himself to be the savior hero but to her he was nothing short of the most gruesome villain who played with the honor of women. She started beating him with her fists. His face got a lot of blows. Many people ran to rescue her. After getting a few thwacks on his body by other heroes, who came running to rescue the girl, a much perturbed Kissu couldn’t make out why he was rewarded that way for his good did.

‘I was taking her to the hospital!’ he shouted in wonderment, still facing the barrage of many fists. ‘Sometimes, even a few seconds delay in reaching the hospital is a matter of life and death!’ he hollered his logic over the din.

‘Take your mother and your sister to the hospital, you fool!’ the girl shrieked with such a look of abhorrence in her eyes that Kissu instantly knew she thought him to be the cruelest goonda ever.