Lessons from the book of monkey baba

 Monkey magic for the day...a monkey is busy in eating a guava, sitting on a branch, tail hanging down, his pink bum safely tucked in a fork in the branch overlooking the street. He eats so cutely with both hands. So unhurriedly as if this cosmos is soecially in a pause to allow him finish eating. Eat restfully as if this entire existence has the sole task of seeing you eating like a mother. He eats half of it--the stomach knows (better than the mind) how much to take in--and throws (why carry the residuals while there are so many promising things lined up the way) the remaining guava into the street. It nearly misses the most quarrelsome woman in the locality. If you are quarrelsome, same circumstances will develop as per the vibrational frequency of your mind. I don’t think it was intentional but you can never be sure about a monkey. She hurls a curse at him. He grins and bares his teeth in shameless fun and shakes the branch with vigorous fun. Why be affected by wrong accusations? Shake your bum at cranky, snappy people. His woman has moved onto a neighboring roof by this time. She gives a loud recall. 'Ouunn'. Always keep a watch at your man. Men are men. You can expect anything. So she is justified in reprimanding him even though he is teasing a female of other species. And he instantly pays heed to her call. Your woman will always overlook your diversions if you instantly pay heed to her snappy call. There he goes hopping over to her. The best funda of maintaining relationships: if you can't avoid doing certain things that create sparks between you, at least listen to each other. There they go as a nice pair and then sit on the roof parapet to tease a pet dog that is barking out his lungs at them from the yard below. They feign very robust attacks. Vent out your mischief and anger against a common enemy. Then you will have less of ammunition to hurl against each other. Moreover, spending one's armory against a common threat instantly creates a subtle bond. See, it develops so elegantly even among strangers who happen to be gripped by some untoward situation. So the couples should pick out some nuisant neighbor and plan and scheme skirmishes with him to spend their ammunition. There will be lesser blasts within your own walls then.

The artistry

 In this apparently meaningless chaos of energy circulating around, there is an urge for seeking symmetry, design, a meaningfullness, a tangible manifestation. It blooms in flowers, beautiful wings of the birds, in leaves, in animals, reptiles, everywhere. This instinct finds the codes of genetics for evolution of species. It then seeks still subtler manifestation in emotions, in beautiful sweet-sour urge for relationships, in companionship, in interactions, in thoughts. Spiritual quest is the subtlest manifestation of this meaning-seeking artistry. This is the quest for seeking the  bestest design pervading all the fractional designs floating around. So design well all ye artists, design with awareness, design your career, skill, relationships, art, culture in a way that it holds you safely in its bubble. The bubble will burst one day, but till then design your destiny and dreams as per your own choices within that little space. Happy artistry of life and the best of floats in your respective bubbles!

Walking through the natural remnants

Cornered by stressful notes and peppered with pungent perspectives, I decide to beat my sense of victimhood by opening myself to the friendly humor of the farmlands surrounding the village. There is intense agriculture. Under the haunting patriarchy of the supreme species on the earth, the mother soil carrying a long haul of miseries, burdens and unmet dreams. Where will you dump your feeling of victimhood when the earth itself seems carrying the same burden?

Gone are the days of dark and deep woods. The wastelands and fallow lands, which were the last refuge of the wilderness until a decade ago, have shrunk to invisibility. The anarchist has shrewdly turned mother nature into a shadowy realm where everything is a mere utopia, a poetic fancy, judged from the mainstream perspectives. Still there are some scanty patches, almost imagistic, which pay a feeble lip service to the not so distant past when we had smatterings of scrub forest in the area. There are solitary trees and beaten down bushes by the pathsides and field embankments. It is enough to leave me bemused.

In future, the things will take a shape when even these trees that can be counted on fingers will be viewed as forests of the past. Gladly there are still many birds left and their calls somehow sound reassuring. As the battering ram goes estranging itself from the roots that have supported its evolution and growth, tottering and honking menacingly, spewing out darker and darker parables, the songs of the birds still hold feeble musical threads linking our imperiled existence to the divine melody emanating from a distant corner in the universe.

I spot an Indian roller, a striking Cambridge-and-Oxford-blue bird. It was obdurately peeking into a bush from an electricity wire, its biggish head tilted at an angle, just about to pounce upon some frog or lizard. It batters the prey on some nearby branch to have a nice supper. The colorful bird gives an assortment of extolling, raucous chuckles and croaks. It’s very volatile in proposing to its remote and cold love interest. It’s a very indulgent courtship—a spectacular display involving nose-diving and somersaulting while letting out grating harsh screams. It seems to possess a pretty informed attitude. Well, you see a beautiful bird and it seems all isn’t lost yet.

Till a decade back there was a sort of wasteland stretching for about hundred acres in this area. It presented a beautiful landscape picture entirely modeled by the untamed forces of nature. I remember wandering around in that pleasant desolation. It was a wonderfully sublime feeling there. That small world of little insects, rodents and reptiles had its very own gleaming myths and anecdotes for this small-time writer. During the monsoons it would turn into a little marshland. It further accentuated the isolation treasured in its little bushy coffers. The water wouldn’t dry before the spring or sometimes even till early summer. Thousands of birdie guests displayed their adventurous quirks. What a high-pitched quacking thoroughfare it used to be!

The human population grew further and the jabbering human hands arrived to cut these last tufts of hair left on the balding head of mother nature. The pressure on the farmlands grew manifold. The low-lying area was filled with earth. Its level was raised to meet our ever-increasing demands from the cropped land to meet the perennial shortage of produce from the farms. Now the lashing raindrops just fill the furrows in the cropped fields and gone are the little ponds and puddles.

A couple of years back there still were the last remains of that scrub forest. It was a little patch of roughly three acres left out as the remnant of the fledgling wasteland of yore. A few dozen ducks and cormorants swam in its languid waters. A few waders were busy on its grassy banks.

Come now to the present. A netting has been set up above the water. The human heart seems to be possessed by the spirit of a licentious hyena that forces the mankind to put barb over everything on the earth to nail down all fellow claimants to resources on the planet. These are imprisoned waters, denied to the birds. The wires shine under the sun with beguiling perspectives, drawing a kind of superfluous resonance in the air that claws down all softer emotions with its unsentimental tautness. So we have fisheries even here in this tiny bowl of a pond. The deadly strings over it would cut down the wings of the transgressors.

There seems to be an overdose of humanity. There are no more any winged guests from the Himalayas. A lone common teal is wading through the sullen waters. A morose kingfisher vainly ogles into the muddled depth from an electricity line. Is it free to dive? Diving into the barbed waters would mean the beautiful bird itself turning into a prey, suddenly catapulted from its status of predator a moment before. There are no foragers on the banks. There is just a greater coucal sneaking among the bushes looking for eggs in little nests. What a decline in a decade—from thousands to dozens to a common teal. I’m sure the next year even this singular common teal will also be gone. There will be more people, more enterprise.

The silence around me is imbued with a sense of loss. I can vividly see the piteous corrosion of wilderness around me. The human juggernaut is plonking ahead with a sure-footed assertiveness. It hammers home the point of human triumph and majestically ticks off the last lines of natural defense that raise its challenge on the way. The sweeping fury of a brutal landscape startles me and I take hasty steps to further explore some untamed corner in the countryside.

Autumnal Nostalgia

 Just watch out the lilaceous glow on people's faces. It will tell you that winter has just starting spraying its aura around. November is cool. Forget all talks of global warming, pollution, dirty political thuggeries, traffic jams, and disappointments on cricketing field. The weather in November puts the common man, the man in the arena of trials and tribulations of saving some grace to see through the day with life intact, on a strong wicket. The glow on common man is just like that witnessed by numerous faces after witnessing yet another century by Sachin.

Delhi is chaotic. But have a round of Connaught Place (thankfully the colonnaded facades are up for some renovation) and you will feel the historical smartness still pervading in smoky, hazy afternoons slowly passing into the folds of evening. Just go there with an accommodating spirit and you will find why despite so many metropolitan outcrops around, Connaught Place is still the heart of Delhi. In the fantastic maze turned up by the white colonnaded blocks time, history, modernity all stand captured in a mysteriously pervading easiness.

Elsewhere, you will find four causes to mutter for a single cause of musing. Metro, yes...a massive collective reason for a bigger musing. Flyovers....again do us proud as we saunter over without wasting any time. But have the eyes to spot dirt cheap humanity scattered around below the flyovers. Kids, women, men....black, filthy, sick, torn and tattered dreams wander in equal measure. These poor human souls left out of the gift of enjoying even the balmy effects of early winter. Take a deep look in the eyes of some young female beggar, and you will find a big chance for a beautiful life and persona wasted. Whom to blame?? I just look at the faceless vault of sky and ask again and again, "Why?" If you can give so much to so few, then why not just common minimum for all of us!!! Anyway, disparities have teased us from times unknown. And will continue for, God forbid, as long as we are slogging out for more and more. Still early message put out by early winter is cool enough to assuage all such heartburns.

A lonely honeybee

I’m turning soil around the crown-of-thorn cactus. It has shed most of its leaves under the onslaught of cold in January. Its thorns look sturdier and more prominent now without the leaves. The thorns are impassive to weather—spring and autumn are the same, as are the winters and summers. However, even during the coldest overcast days, the hardy plant didn’t completely lose its smile. The thorns may carry the shades of conservatism and some tinkle of metallic weight on their pointed ends but the flowers have innate, vivid bond with the vibrant most spring somewhere in a distant, virginal vale. There are more flowers than the leaves; bright red little round flowers and silvery fangs of thorns—the defenders of beauty, or say the flowery son of god on the crucifix. They prove their status. They mean their job really well. I get a slight scratch at the back of my hand, not deep enough to draw blood, but strong enough to leave a scratch mark. Maybe they intend to prick me very softly.

There is a lone honeybee on a flower on the thorny plant. I hope it’s not a castaway or someone who has lost the way to the new home. Or maybe even too nostalgic one who hasn’t been able to leave the little yard of a lonesome writer, almost redundant and nameless himself, where there are some flowers and a few small trees. I see a few more honeybees. Are these few remaining honeybees the ones who were accidently left behind and now can’t make a way back to the new home?

Partings and relocations aren’t without their sad chimings altogether. But as they say, change is the perennial law. They have enough reasons in the survival book to move on. They are possessed with a free, itinerant spirit. They aren’t merely potted flowers at my mercy. They are alive and independent. I hope their dormant bond with my little garden will be revived. I look forward to their—the parent beehive—arrival during the monsoon season. I hope they will have plenty of cheerful, amusing travelogues to share with me through their buzzing wings once they arrive.