Far away from the maddening crowd

 

This peacock has a hand-length of plumage. It looks quite handsome with it, something of rugged little stubble charm of masculinity. Full fantail is cumbersome. It keeps it tethered to the centricity of amorous passion, making it a love-haunted soul. It also means a lot of effort while flying, almost bum-busting effort. And the total absence of plumage also gives too much of a clean-shaven look to a peacock. But with this short plumage, it looks dapper smart and can fly to its satisfaction.

The red-vented bulbul is seen after two-three months. I believe it had gone visiting some relative. Maybe got bored with the uneventfulness of life here. Now it looks fresh with profound and impressionistic attitude.

A cat got onto the neem tree. The cat has no business there. So a crow, a couple of mynas, three-four pied starlings and some babblers raise such a din that it has to jump off the tree. The compendium of birdie platitudes starts a little chain of repercussions. The intimidating squirrel, which has grabbed the millet bowl all for itself after shooing away the sparrows, now runs away trippingly. It thinks the cat has jumped with a decisive attempt at its life. The fresh-from-journey bulbul gives it a nice chase over the wall top. The sparrows shout in merriment.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Little Nevaan's small world

 

Nevaan’s words during the online classes are highly censored. A little soul’s words of innocence can expose mountains of elderly hypocrisies. Childhood innocence is startingly stylized for truth. It comes from a resounding depth of purity sustained by an unconditioned and uncustomized self.

One day he is given freedom to give his uncensored speech on the topic of mother. It falls with the force of classical weight on feathery modernity. ‘Mama is very good. She does all my homework. She gets very angry also and sometimes pulls my hair,’ his rare repertoire of praising words leaves his mother teary eyed. ‘I devote my entire day for his welfare and look what I get in return,’ she is inconsolable. But then she has realized that he is free in his opinions and is swimming with powerful frog-kicks in the pool of childhood independence.

So now he has to do his own homework. His mother has said a firm no to do it for him after his sting operation. He is asked to ‘write five lines on Nevaan’. He is seen very  busy for twenty minutes with the below given essay in the middle of the page:

‘Write five lines on Nevaan. He doesn’t like reading and writing. He wants to play all the time. He wants to watch cartoon TV all the time. He wants a roomful of chips.’

That marks his little summary of paradise. This candid and instamatic write-up brings more tears in the eyes of his mother. With a lyrical fluency, Nevaan is sauntering around to do full justice to his essay.

He is seen standing in front of Labrador Tuffy, the friendly pet from the neighborhood. Labrador Tuffy barks in a friendly tone. ‘How are you Tuffy?’ he asks. The dog wags its tail and replies in soft friendly barkings. Nevaan also starts doing bho-bho in varied tones. The conversation goes for about fifteen minutes. An objection is raised against Nevaan’s barking. ‘But we are talking in his language. I tried and thought he would reply in our language. But seems he cannot do it, so I changed my language to talk to him in his own,’ he replies in a prescriptive tone.

Easy times with a few birds in a little garden

 

An asian pied starling is carrying a few feet long thin strip of light fabric in its beak as it flies to its construction site. It’s a busy world engaged in making, breaking and remaking. She has an equal right to make something as anyone around. The tiny tailorbird plays mischief and takes a snipe at the lower end. The big group of house sparrows raises a laughing chorus. A brahmani mynah shrieks with delight. A peacock looks eagerly with the stately extravagance of its colors. A squirrel scuttles around with a kind of gestural vocabulary. On a neighbor’s wall an alpha male monkey moves with a haughty demeanor. Looking at him, I realize we carry a pretty hoary ancestry.

The honey buzzard hasn’t yet forgotten about its honeyed lunch. It’s circling above in the sky, maybe staring at me accusatively as I sit on a chair in the courtyard near the tree bearing the hive. I intend to write something here, but then he doesn’t know that it’s only a struggling countryside writer. He supposes that the honeybees have summoned my services to scare him. I’m thankful to him that he is scared because if he attacks I’ll run sooner than the honeybees.

There is an eerie stillness after the ripples of birdie noise let loose by the tiny tailorbird’s adventure. The little garden around me seems capable of maintaining a sustainable and dynamic paradigm. I sit with a retrospective aura, a kind of thin-veiled misty cloud around me born of engaging self-reflectivity. All of us possess multilayered individual histories shaped by the sharp edges of irony hitting at our existence with a kind of gentle madness. A gentle breeze blows with its suggestive touches at the leaves of the trees.

On the threshold of a colorful spring

 

The spring is always waiting in the wings; like a spiky creeper looping around her cold lover. Basant Panchami, falling on February 5 this year, amounts to sowing the spring seeds that would blossom smiles in March. It’s the start of sunnier days with a balmy tonality. The seasons have an amazing, tactical flexibility that allows healthy transitions and undisputed takeovers.

The festive occasion is but a kind of setback for the honeybees. They have been brave and tried to undo the limiting definitions of inclement weather to survive for sunnier days. Sadly, their nice round hive is attacked by the honey buzzard. His beak pecks with a notational intent. The hive gets misshapen as he steals away their precious store of honey. I watch from a distance. I can feel that something is missing. Dry leaves tumble down because the big predator’ wings ruffle the branches. We humans suffer the flatness of our sweeping conclusions. To my analytical wit, the eagle is an unsober and hostile bird. My reality is that the bees are buzzing in the air with a sense of loss. But maybe their truth is something very different from my feeling.

The eagle flutters away with a shrieking note. From my linear perspective, the hive seems like an amoeba now. But then my human-born pain withers away and some unconditional truth lands in my senses like a lyrical oasis. There is always a balance in nature. Still there is something left to build the house again, to make a new beginning. There is surely some reserve to last for some more days. They just need their queen to be safe for a riveting fresh start in the spring. The rest they will undoubtedly manage, especially now when we have the February sun smiling kindly. The spring will unfold its subtle coils and will unleash many flowery smiles.

Unlike we humans they don’t complain and waste their energy in the blame game. They have a vaulting clarity in their ‘being’ in contrast to our efforts at ‘becoming’ with our limpid ambitions. Within half an hour, the tattered house is far better in appearance. It’s not smooth and round like earlier. There are irregular edges as the bees work back to their former positions. The eagle is but still circling in the air. I’m sure it has taken enough for one square meal. There are so few eagles left and a small number of beehives. Looking at such little survival games, it appears as if all isn’t lost. It’s a bit assuring.

Ghooming in ecstasy with Ghoomar

 

It's a lovely movie. Went to watch it at the newly launched multiplex at the town. Gadar 2 is making big waves because everyone wants to be a patriot these days. And the easiest way is to clap and shout at the screened versions of dusting your enemy nation in the game of both love and war. 

There was a stampede at the impressive small town mall. Black safari suits came thundering down the slow moving escalators. The world of the VIPs is too fast for slow moving steps. A big file of important looking people breezed past almost rattling my bones. I thought it was some big shot politician. Well, it turned out to be someone from the Gadar support cast. People were pursuing the VIP so it was all welcomingly cleared up as me and my friend ascended in the opposite direction. It's great to walk freely in a mall without getting trampled under busy feet. 

We waited outside the screen where Ghoomar would be played. Nobody came. Possibly they thought everyone will go following the star till Delhi airport. I gently reminded a staff there about our show. He looked at me like a kabab में haddi. We stood as perfect show spoilers. His boss came and before he could even say a word i acquired the posture of a porcupine ready to take on a tiger. I flashed our tickets, my phone rather, at him declaring like a firmed up Bollywood hero, 'It can't be helped bro! You have to start the show!' He could see my Ghoomar determination. So here was a chartered screening for the two of us. After half an hour of the start, a couple stealthily crept into the darkness and they went invisible in the darkness somewhere. They have their own stories to pursue dreams and desires born of curiosity about physical intimacy in a conservative society. So I'm a bit sad to share my personal screening of the movie as a love hotel with them.

All things apart, it's a lovely movie. And the best dialogue spoken by a broken former cricketer is: 'When the destiny slams the door shut in your face, you no longer open it, you just break it!' It's a lovely little story of things going wrong despite all your efforts that you could make. It's about staying alive and try to break the unjustifiably shut door through a blizzard of karma that defies all normal human limitations. And there aren't many who relate to such tapasya because it's a shortcutting consumerist world. You run crazy after support casts but why would you stop and try to imbibe some fundamentals of making your own destiny like a stone mason slowly carving a beautiful statue from a block of stone. Because destiny is now packaged and branded for us. We just shop for it. Pay and get branded as a successful man.

Abhishek Bachchan is fabulous, shows ample traces of the great Bachchan Senior. He carries enough depth to portray an unjustifiably dumped cricketing genius. Saiyami Kher as a cricketing prodigy who loses her hand in an accident, and her world alongside, looks realistic enough in her fight and make the unbelievable believable. It's a movie worth watching. And no need to repeat praise for the legend Shabana Azmi. She lights up the screen just by being there.