The Sage and the Sand (सांड)

 

Sage and Sand (सांड) combo..Kaka Maharaj is eager to graft an almost 10 feet tall banyan tree at a place of his liking. For this a huge pit has to be dug, almost 6 feet deep. And then an entire prickly keekar tree has to be dragged to put it around the newly grafted 🌳 to save it from buffalo and goats. We both struggled for an hour and then both of us crashed on the sand, sweating like pigs. 'Age and sadhna has wore me down. And books have eaten your strength prematurely,' he laughed. So we deemed it fit to take the help of Rashe Ram in carrying out the assignment. Rashe is really happy to sweat out like a pig. He is back to his favourite task. His brother recently tried to get him a job at a needle making factory. Rashe tried his hand at the task and found it funny and not worth his talent. 'They call that work! You just stare at the wire. Just look, look, where is the work!' he informs. Now he is happy with the spades and shovels. Kaka Maharaj has a strict protocol of grafting trees. The pit has to be very deep and an entire prickly keekar has to be cut and put around for protection. It took all three of us to give our best at the physical level to get a nod of appreciation from the saintly man. When we left him standing staring at the banyan, he called from behind, 'Tagore -- he calls me Tagore due to my bookish ways -- you are a good man. But try to avoid too many books. See, today they didn't help!' Beautiful takeaway from the episode: Kaka Maharj gets his mission fulfilled and can look at the banyan growing majestically from across the river; I get the great practical advise to use more of spade and shovels and less of books; and Rashe Ram is the happiest of the lot for getting two beedies of opium from Kaka Maharaj as a gift and a full bottle of liquor and snacks to go with from my side because he won't settle from anything more or anything less than this.

Half-baked National Security

How many times you have seen the houses being attacked and burnt—except during organized riots and bulldozing state actions—by the causes outside the houses? Very few I’m sure. Most of the houses fall apart from inner dissensions, strife, frustrations of those within.

How many countries you have seen falling apart under foreign attack? There are many such cases during the world wars. But if we compare the instances of countries falling apart and failing due to inner conflicts with those due to foreign direct attack, the former will outweigh the latter by such a margin as to turn it almost negligible. Just look at the countries that are burning like hell on earth. They are the places where the fodder of internal conflicts is raging like inferno to make it veritable hell on earth.

India fell apart in 1947. Was it due to the direct attack of Russia or any other foreign power? It fell apart because the house within was on fire. The society was battered, bruised and fractured. Countries and houses fall apart primarily because there are inner conflicts. The outside factors might sometimes take advantage of that but the primary reasons remain the inner ones.

On this ground we need to reevaluate the concept of national security. It’s always heavily tilted towards tackling the external threat. Meanwhile the internal bugs that eat the foundations of our social harmony and cohesiveness eat the foundations. Much as we are trying to secure our borders and launch geostrategic games to safeguard our international interests, we need to give equal priority to the bugs that fracture our society thus imperiling the internal security.

The politics of divisiveness and polarization is one such termite that is bound to eat into the foundations of any society. It’s merely like showering love and affection on the branches of a tree while allowing dangerous chemicals into the roots. Temporary rhetoric to make India a major power outside may look catchy and might win elections but it’s building up chemicals of divisiveness and when the negative consequences will come home to roost their bloody hatchlings, the tragic history of 1947 might be repeated.

So the planning of national security must have a freshly evaluated domestic component which attempts to integrate the Indian society in a systematic, strategic way. All that the politicians do in the name of winning elections simply add to the social strife. After this, the talk of national security becomes a half-baked concept and exercise to keep busy in foreign visits and bilateral, trilateral, multilateral talks. Just like the house is on fire while the head of the family is busy in holding parleys for setting boundary fences, parking space, residential committee affairs. That is important but why not douse the fire within. Why care only for shiny clothes? Let there be exercise to make the body strong also by increasing its immunity against divisive forces.

Nurturing fears, phobias and insecurities among different communities are nothing but virus for the body. You can have QUAD and all that stuff but that seems fruitless in the face of parts of India burning due to hate mongering by the politicians. When will we have a political party that fights elections over developmental issues? All the parties seem the same old rotten lot. Meanwhile they are just making the national security issue merely an international security exercise.   

The game of maya

 

Long before a painter mixes colors on his palette, the colors are already there in beautiful flowers, verdant vales, in the sky, on the cheeks of a blushing lass, in the eyes of a newlywed bride, on the wings of butterflies, everywhere. And so are the designs, shapes and patterns in the form of ripples on water surface, in leaves, petals, sand dunes, clouds, on a beautifully scaled slithery body of a snake, everywhere.

Long before a musician makes a composition, the notes, the music, the rhythm, the harmony is already there in sighing winds, merry breeze, swaying trees, chirping birds, roaring sea, rippling brooks, in the soft whispers of dusk, in the smiling cooing of dawn, in singing nightingales, everywhere.

Long before a writer writes a story, it’s already there in the journey of a river from a glacier to the sea, in the love and bonding of species for their little ones, in the roaring silence in the forests, in the cluttering chaos in cities, in the solitude of an isolated vale in hills, in the crying corners of hearts full of grief, everywhere.

It’s already there. We don’t add or subtract to it. We are just means to an expression of all that is waiting to be expressed in a brand new form. That’s the only way for the finite truth to adopt infinite engagement. But all this is the same old wine in brand new bottles. Just shaping and reshaping around the same elemental fodder, the primal energy. No wonder we call it maya.    

Childhood Skirmishes

 

We are just the carriers of whatever already exists in the super-conscious folds of mother existence. We are the tangible expressions of the so-called best and the worst and the scores of lukewarm concoctions of goodness and badness falling in between. Observe the game of survival among various species and you will see what we humans term as greed, fear, villainy, thuggery, stealing, almost everything is available in its impulsive, instinctive form in nature. So as humans I don’t think we invent all these. We are mere more tangible expressions of the same traits. That’s why they say hate the evil, not its carrier. But that’s for the Gods to be so evolved in their consciousness as to root out the evil, in a detached manner, by killing the carriers, without having any personal feelings against the carrier in carrying out the duty of dharma. Rama and Krishna did the same. They bashed up the bullies, thugs and villains of their times without bringing the element of hate and anger in their supremely stable mind.

All of us have our very own set of people who create in us the age-old elemental emotions of love, hate, anger, jealousy, greed, lust and many more. Yours truly is no exception to this. There was this big class bully who triggered fear, anger and feeling of revenge in me. He drew sadistic pleasure in intimidating the so-called brightest boy in the small village school. When you are up against a bully the first impulse is to counter him at his level, that’s force. He was a big boy. So I would go into fields after the school and do push-ups to add bulk of muscles to my not so impressive body. After a couple of months, my thin arms tightened a bit but the appearance remained the same. Moreover, it was affecting my studies so I dropped the idea. I accepted the status quo. If you cannot manage the bully, avoid him. So I put my tail under my legs and would change my direction. Nothing shameful about it. He was three times my size. Even Krishna ran away from the battlefield once and came to be called ranchhod.

Now that leaves us with the irritants whom we can manage. There was this foxy guy who would start seething with malice at my merest sight. I well remember that I hadn’t done anything at all to deserve that type of antipathy. Maybe it had to do something with the past life. Maybe he found me in bed with his wife in the last birth and still carried that well-deserved hate for me without any apparent cause in this birth. He was the kind whom I could easily carry like a piteous puppy and dump in the village pond at the filthiest spot. So naturally he was a back stabber. He would talk ill of me, all the time. Said that I never return people’s comics, cheated in the exams, stole money from my father’s pocket, had no understanding of topics so just crammed the books, and (the heights of infamy) had molested a girl.

I kept on avoiding the possibility of dumping him in the pond. Then one day I got enlightened about the funda of life. You have to deal with the rascals whom you can manage. So I tracked his movements and got hold of him in absolute isolation. I took him by his collar and kept him held against a tree trunk, his toes barely touching the ground. I will never forget that shriek of wounded pride, and uncontrollable anger. I got spellbound and kept him like this for almost a couple of minutes. Then I opened my fists and he dropped like a ripe fruit. He started running with the most alarming call ever to get me murdered. ‘I will tell uncle!’ he shouted. Father carried a very hard hand for errant kids like me. So I wasn’t left with any option. I outran him, got my arms around him and jumped into the pond with him. Then he got forced bathing. I would keep his head down in the water and when I drew him out, out of breath, shouting at him, ‘If you go and complain to my father, I would drown you here in the pond!’ I drew a forced promise that he wouldn’t complain. Thankfully he got the message. Then it became a tacit understanding that I wouldn’t use physical measures and he won’t use his lolloping tongue against me.

But I could see that he carried that malicious dislike for me. Of course I hadn’t given him any reason to dislike me a bit less. No need to repeat that I wasn’t a saint, nor am I now. We were growing up playing nonsensical cricket in the wasteland outside the village. I considered myself an all rounder cricketer. All his hate for me had taken a cricketing avatar now. I would be bowled out by the oldest crone in the village who hadn’t ever thrown a ball in her life. My delivery might be sent for a six by the oldest grandpa in the village who had never touched a bat in life. But when it came to him I suddenly changed. When I came to bat he would insist to throw the ball. Then suddenly I would turn into Virender Sehwag and would hit sixes of his spin bowling which he threw with a fast bowler’s action after running from the boundary. He would beat his head in desperation. When I bowled he would insist to take batting, indicating to the boundary, meaning he would hit me for a six. Then with him standing at the opposite end, I would turn into a fierce West Indies bowler. Mostly I would scatter his wickets. Maybe he was playing with too much hate and hate of course saps us even of the little talent we have. After one such humiliating tumble in the cricketing duel with me I saw him crying piteously behind a heap of bricks. That was the time I seriously doubted he may commit suicide one day, writing a long accusing letter against me, sending me to jail and grinning triumphantly from above in the skies. I wasn’t loving and kind enough to allow him to scatter my wickets voluntarily or allow him to hit sixes by bowling loose deliveries. I have never been that saintly. But the fear of going to jail because of his looming suicide allowed me to avoid bowling to him or batting against him. Then he would boast that I had started to fear him as a cricketer.      

A Shopper Dog

 

The village has enough space, at least at the fringes where it melts in the farmlands, for the liquor-lovers to sit on the ground after the dark and get done with a quick wining session. The dining part would be later covered by brawls within houses and outside. Usually they take it neat and clean. Sometimes, on special occasions, they get something to eat along. The dog that we have already mentioned always howls is seen coming with a polybag in its mouth. It seems to have taken it very seriously, holds it with a serious purpose as if it will help him in beating the pangs of isolation and alienation among the groups of stray dogs.

There is something inside the bag and a single knot holds the secret. The way it trots with its grocery in its mouth, it appears that the dog is sure the contents are nothing short of gold from the standards of the canine world. It seems a little bundle of longing, joys and pathos. Our pursuits are usually centered around the little bundles that hold the source of our caprices and hallucinations tied in multiple knots in the bags. So the dog has every right to take its possession very seriously.

It looks lonely but somehow magnificent with its object. The booty holder seems to be on lookout for a suitable place to open the parcel. With extraordinary delicacy, it sneaks under a tractor trolley parked in the street. With fertile imagination and concrete capacity, it opens the single knot after a spell of dexterous pawing and mouth pulling. The first item it draws out is an empty disposable glass. The second is a plastic case for food delivery. Its lid is tight shut and inside there is some curry redolent with spicy prospects. But the little disposable tiffin’s lid is beyond the water-mouthed maneuver of a dog. The retriever of this precious item is busy, giving it all in its capacity for this value-driven approach to add to the taste buds on its tongue. Meanwhile, a female dog comes stealthily from behind. Nicely gets into position and pees with meditative effortlessness on the canine shopper’s shopping bag. Some of her friends, looking hard-nosed and thoughtful, curiously stare from a distance.

His shopping vandalized, the offended shopper whines angrily, gives a spurt of howl and runs after her to teach her a lesson. Her friends then escape with the provisions to play with it and scatter the contents in the street to add to their part in the chaos around.