Grandpa's Cycle

 

Grandfather rode his archaic Atlas cycle till his late eighties. Apparently innocuous and toothless, he had a sharp mind and still sharper willpower to hit a century of years like his favorite Sachin did on the cricket field. His classic old cycle and his frail but athletic figure presented an epic profile when you observed them slowly moving on the dusted path of life. Both seemed steeped in antiquity but you would never fail to feel the delectable charm of a pair honed by vintage years. The cycle would give panting, creaking and groaning sounds in response to his slow, easeful paddling. Maybe his joints also creaked but any sound in that genre was shadowed by his metallic companion.

I remember my first lesson in cycling at the age of twelve. With me sitting on the crossbar in front, a fodder bale at the back, Grandfather heaved the cycle at the age of eighty or a bit more. To learn cycling first you should know how to properly occupy the passenger spot anywhere possible on the cycle. That was Grandfather’s advice as I tried my best to behave to the best of my capacity, juddering like an infantile passenger, trying my level best to score good marks in the art of sitting on a cycle. For a long time I was having his warning muffles above my head, ‘Don’t hold the handle too tight. Don’t try to steer it this way or that!’ Then we fell down. He plonked a hand-smash at my nape, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to try to steer the handle. That’s the rider’s job!’ he exposed my grand profanity.

Three years later, we were coming in the similar manner with the slight adjustment that my still older grandpa was sitting in front as I plodded ahead with much sideways shaking of the front tyre. Grandfather forgot his own lessons in the art of being a passenger on a cycle. Not a fault of his, the frustrating cascades of my lurching paddling were sufficient to make him forget his own set of rules. No wonder, Grandfather hardly trusted my ability to see us safely home. So I found him involuntarily trying to control the handle.

It turned into a motley mix of forces in opposite directions. ‘Grandpa you said it’s the rider’s job. Now why do you apply pressure to steer the handle?’ I breathlessly protested over his headgear. ‘Yea, but that’s only when the rider knows to do his job properly,’ he angrily countered. He followed his observation with an expert maneuver to avoid the cake-cutting ceremony of a fresh lump of dung on the way. I pulled in a different direction. The tyre cut through the dung heap as a celebratory cake-cutting of the event to follow. We were a heap of cycle, humans and the fodder bale. ‘Why did you pull it while it was my job?’ I complained, scared of the colossal discharge of his seasoned farmer’s reflexes. ‘Because you were not able to!’ he shouted and feigned to smash the back of my head with his teacherly palm but stopped short, possibly realizing his role in the little accident.

After that we simply walked to our home. As a punishment, I had to pull the fodder-laden cycle, a tough job for a slightly built boy. I was sweating profusely. ‘It gives a nice practice to manage the handle,’ Grandfather tenderly consoled. He was slightly limping after the fall. So I was lucky not to get his favorite palm-smash at the nape. He was but luckier—in not getting a fracture after crash-landing from a cycle in his mid-eighties. So that was a close save.

The illustrious past of a liquor-lover

 

His wife may give an outraged sniff at this, and rightly so, but the simple fact is that Munsi is the number one liquor-lover in the locality as of now. ‘He is of No Use!’ is the public and private opinion about him. He but is not comfortable with standing out as an ungentlemanly emblem and cheekily, vehemently in fact, denies this belittling charge. Cutting through the teeth and tentacles of the not so flattering status, he elaborates through his slurred speech how he was the most layak among his siblings during the childhood.

They kept buffalos and the calves born in poor peasant barns had very high mortality rates because there was hardly any milk left for them. A kind of tortuous starvation it was for the little ones. With the calf gone, the buffalo ma would have problems in lactation. Tau Dayanand, of grand vision and pioneering conscience, had a nice solution to the problem. So even though ninety percent of their calves perished, there hardly was lactation problem among the buffalos. The process of milking ran smooth. Munsi stood, crouched rather, as the proxy calf for all the buffalo mothers grieving the loss of their kids.

A special calf robe was devised for him. Made of dark, coarse blanket, it gave him a nice calf look as he was paraded first in front of the buffalo that walloped him with slimy affection and licked him profusely. He was then made to crawl to the udder side and mock a hungriest calf’s suckling at the teats. Getting to the pulsating vibrancy of motherhood, the buffalo would then get ready to fill the bucket with a magical sweetness of temper.

However, it wasn’t a cakewalk all the time. In bad mood, and smelling something fishy in the business, the buffalo would sniff at him loudly, prod him playfully, even pushing with a mild punishment, which is too much for a human child. He would get kicks also sometimes as the lactation phase entered the late stage when the buffalos deny the supply of milk.

‘I was the backbone of our economy during those famished days. If not for me, they would have starved to death!’ he proudly elucidates his credentials that are presented to nullify the ‘of no use’ status bestowed upon him. He then proceeds to guzzle the remaining liquor bottle with pride. 

Conquer your fears

 I sought the lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. [PSALM 34:4].

Well the key lies in peeling off the layers of fears, layers after layers. Starting from the plain fears of insecurities born of material world around us. Then of emotions and thoughts born of our relationships. Then the raw brutal fear of death. Observe your fear in its various avatars during the day. As and when possible. Keep an eye on your fear. This awareness of it, this realisation that it exists in you is its antidote. Under the light of persistent awareness the darkness of fear vanishes. Keep a stern eye over it. It's natural to get fearful many times during the day. Main thing is one just need to be aware of it. Getting fearful and not knowing, allowing it to get deeply embedded in your soul is fatal on the path of liberation. To know that you get fearful is itself a step on the path of liberation from sufferings born of our fears. Be aware of it. It should never be allowed to go unobserved once it has shaked your system. Keep a watch on it. And finally it will pack its bags and say bye to your psychosomatic system. Best wishes all you brothers and sisters on the path of conquering fears!

Shiva and His Naga

 Indian mythology is full of beautiful fables and interesting tales. Now they have very mystical meanings if we analyze them, interpret them as per the higher laws of the bigger dimension defined by high vibrational frequencies. I always wondered why do they depict Shiva with a naga, mostly a black cobra, around his neck. My individual interpretation is something on the following lines.

A snake is one of the most perceptible creatures on earth. Their entire body is in a position to perceive things to a level that is almost impossible to even imagine for we human beings. For example, suppose there is a snake in its hole and there is an earthquake thousands of kilometers away. Now there is a high possibility that the snake will perceive the tremors because it is so sensitive to even the softest reverberations coming across its body. We humans have almost a primal fear when it comes to snakes. Just think of a snake and you get goose-bumps. When we come across a snake it can perceive the fear in us. It can perceive and feel the change in our blood chemistry because when we get excited, get fearful our blood chemistry changes and the breathing pattern also turns abnormal. Now a snake is so perceptive and sensitive as to feel the slightest disturbance in the vibrational frequency and chemical change in anyone or anything around. Even if we don’t show any outer sign of being afraid, but are scared inside, it can perceive the biological or chemical changes in our bloodstream. It then reacts to that fear.

It is commonly believed that wherever there are meditating spiritualists the snakes really like their company. Maybe they feel comfortable among those higher energies emanating from the yogis. I have read stories about meditating ascetics in the forests and as their mind goes into that state of equilibrium, that equanimity of temperament, that balance of mind and the consequent lessening of fear, a snake (especially a cobra) really likes those waves of higher frequency.

In the neighboring village there was a realized soul, Narayan Maharaj. He left this body about 25 years ago, but people accepted him as an enlightened human being. He used to meditate a lot when he arrived in this area as a young wandering ascetic. He used to meditate in a little scrub forest in the countryside. In his memoirs he has clearly written that when he would meditate there was a black cobra that would continue moving in a circle around him and that continued for at least five or six years. So it proves that a cobra has a special liking for those who are spiritually evolved or who are on the path of spiritual evolution because there are certain biological changes as a result of the spiritual practices, which create a kind of divine atmosphere where there is no fear, where the snake loses its instinct of fear and biting. In this divine little space around the meditating yogi, in the spools of unqualified love, he tells us that he saw opposites melting and getting unified at certain nights—a snake and a mongoose playing like children; a little fox and a fearsome wolf playing on the grass nearby where he had set up his asana.  

I think the reason they show a naga around Shiva’s neck is that Shiva being a realized soul, a supreme  being who was hundred percent established within himself, so there was no fear and the snake would find him just like a warm rock during cold winter days, where it could relax since there was no fear, no change in that great yogi’s blood chemistry  or emotions or thoughts or energy field. As established as a rock he was. A live rock! So a snake would be near lord Shiva the way it would prefer to crawl on a rock. According to me, the main purpose they show Shiva with a naga is that he was a supreme personality that was hundred percent realized and established like an unmovable rock within his human body; there was no turbulence either in his emotions or in his body or in his energy field and a snake would be so comfortable around his neck as it would be relaxed on a rock during harsh winter days in order to soak the warm sunrays. The adiyogi established his chitta in all forms, to be like a living rock, a supreme fluidity inside a supreme stability. And with someone so blissful why won’t a naga fall in love. It abandoned its fears and biting instincts. And there we have our beautiful Shiva with a naga around his neck.

Some frost-bitten happy times

 

A rainy sunless January forces the plants, animals and humans to crouch down in defense. The cold is both spectacular and spellbinding in its grip on our fates. The fog, smog and mists seem to be sharing an intriguing chemistry with some invisible opponent. We hardly stand any chance without Father Sun. He is the primal cause of the melodious colors of the springs that bring joy and freshness in our lives. But mother nature has profound ways of expressing her belief in life and living even among the most adverse circumstances.

As the frost-bitten leaves get withered, turn pale and tumble down, and the trees stand with bent head, and the humans stay on a low profile, one little plant has added to its fresh and greeny verve that we usually see in the monsoons. Common mallow (also called cheese mallow, cheese weed or dwarf mallow) has come of leafy youth in the depressive weather. There are lush green clumps of them by the side of countryside paths. They make the most of the wet, sunless January days. It seems they hold aloft the signature emblem of spring with their aesthetically designed leaves—palmately veined fingers branching out from the palm, circular in shape and crinkled in appearance. I expect flowers, in whitish lavender, during the spring, with purple veins.

The cold season at its peak is a testing time for the honeybees. It means survival against all odds. There are a few dozen bees that are seen sitting on the ground. They don’t seem to have either energy or the spirit to fly. Why aren’t they in the hive? There can be many reasons. They may be the ones that are no longer useful to the colony and thus have been expelled. It means if you aren’t useful anymore, you crawl, you hardly fly anymore. These may even be the drones who just suck nectar and pollen and don’t collect it. So during the winters, when there is a scarcity of resources, they get expelled from the hive. As the rest of them snug together to keep the queen alive, the idlers get paid for their uselessness. The stored honey is the lifeline through the lean season. All activity is suspended till warm spring days when the bees will set out with an exalting, energetic and enterprising spirit. In the meantime, the redundant drones are left free to devise their own ways to see through the cold. Sometimes kwing virus afflicts some of them. It deforms the wings. A bee afflicted with this malady may not have enough strength to fly back home if it commits the mistake of setting out on a cold day.