Old is gold

 Why be bothered about losing youth. It's just a phase, an unripe one as a character says in Oscar Wilde's novel: "What was youth at best? A green, unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and slickly thoughts." There is no fun in wearing the shiny livery for too long. It then becomes a burden. That's why nature sees it off. But we carry it in mind for a bit longer time. At least I did. But now the wonderful, gray, slow-paced times open their real charms. The aging gray lighter vestments of wisdom and age carry their own charm. They are very light, and ripe, and cosy to wear, and easy to carry.

A slightly better being

 Why be unduly bothered about the typical bugs of the mind like anger, hate, jealousy and others? Follow the trail of any of these, in an effort to track its cause or root, and it will take you to the same primary root. All the negative reactions of our mind, which make us feel guilty after their manifestation in the mind-body combo, originate from the same root. The restlessness at the core, prompting us to seek a higher self. If you have already started looking at your triggers of anger, hate, jealousy, fears etc, it means you already view them as alien entities, strangers to your real self. You want them out. You aren't ready to own them. It means you are already on the path of liberation. Just watch them, watch them, watch them. And they will slowly lose their intensity on your system. They will have a far less force on your system. They won't be impulsive enough to make you react. It's not about their total absence. It's about their being ineffective and not able to dictate our lives. They pop up and are gone. They surface, like a thief comes at a market place, and are gone the moment he sees a policeman. Really knowing a negative emotion or thought as it is, feeling its negative shades itself is the solution. Suppose there is some guy whose reality we don't know. He can easily dupe us. But when we know the truth about him, he won't have a big chance of duping us because we know the nature of reality about him. The same with these typical bugs of mind. The goal isn't about their absence. It's only about being aware of their true nature. Then they become mere bubbles. They pop up and are gone without leaving a big impact on our behaviour. Even saints have these bubbles in their minds. They will arise. It's their nature. But a sage's mind-body system is evolved to a level where these negative shades pass out without much impact. It's not about not having them. It's about making them ineffective. In the beginning with  action and stern look at them. And later, with practice, to ignore them almost on impulse. If we arrive on earth with an impulse to be driven by them, we can certainly develop an impulse to ignore them with practice. Then they may keep popping up. There won't be much turbulence in life.

Yoga, kundalini, Bhakti, gyan, everything is meant to bring a kind of positive symmetry in body and mind's functioning so that there are more of positive neuro chemicals and hormones such as endorphins in the body. That makes us further less prone to infection by the bugs of negative thoughts and emotions. These are spiritual immunity boosters which make us strong against the attack by the things whom we consciously view as against our peace and wellbeing. Haven't you observed that when we are happy and joyful--it means we are overloaded with positive neurochemicals at that time-- we are less prone to irritation by the same stimulants that would leave us blasting in other state? 

So all this is holistic art. This keen observance, yoga, Bhakti, gyan, everything. Just like different types of nutrients for the body to keep ailments away. Use these various types of spiritual pills to strengthen against the bugs of suspicion, fear, discontentment, anger, jealousy. They will always stay in your system and surroundings as long as you are here on earth. Just like human body cannot do away with the harmful bacteria and virus around. They are going to be there. So what do we do? We increase the immunity to leave them ineffective on our system. The same is with negative bugs of mind. They will be there, wether inside you or in the people around you. The task is to strengthen your system to an extent that they don't shake your emotional health too much. Who are the siddhas? They are the robust most energetic systems upon whom the usual bugs that we humans find so troublesome have no effect. But rest assured, they have their own challenges to fight against, the challenges of different categories of which we aren't aware. So the challenge stays. Don't ever dream of reaching a spiritual stage where challenges will vanish. They will aways stay in one form or the other, just like harmful virus and bacteria around. 

Lastly, a smile itself kills a million bugs of the mind. So smile now!

Settling the account forever

 In its dealings with a person, destiny keeps its account book always open. The account is never closed from her end. It's always open. It needs a penance to close the account by the person himself, wind up the calculations forever, come out of karma's loop and take an indefinable shape on the canvas of eternity.

The caning masters

 Headmaster Pirthi Singh was a famous caning hero during our schooling days in the late eighties in our village school. Caning was the best as well as the worst of education. There wasn’t much thought behind education techniques. The students took schools as the symbol of hell on earth and the teachers—all of them pretty energetic caners—used brute force to quell the rebellion. Headmaster Pirthi Singh was the squadron leader from the teachers’ side. He had an impressive assortment of canes in his office, of different woods for various purposes ranging from casual rebukes to hardcore bloody punishments. There were mulberry switches to give an acidic, pungent taste on the skin. These were used for slightly built students. However, for the thick-set errant rascals bamboo canes came into use to rattle the bones with strikes.

There was a plant called basa that grew in plenty along water margins during those days. Its stem was juicy and moderately thick. It served a fantastic rubbery beating. The teacher was at liberty to strike with full force as the rubbery stem would rule out bloody scenes. But it would still give a pretty hard thwack on both the bones and the skin. The stem would break after a point. The teacher would emerge triumphant that he broke the basa cane on the path of justice and reformation. The student had his own victorious air if he didn’t cry and bore it with just wincing and contorting limbs. The students who didn’t howl while getting thrashed carried a lofty air around them.

Headmaster Pirthi Singh would hit upon instinct. The rooms would go silent and heads would bury in books as he came down the corridor scanning any opportunity to unleash further caning. There were occasions when the entire class would be thrashed en masse. It was taken for granted that a village boy wouldn’t study. The only way was to force them like the farmers forced the bulls into the yokes. A painful harnessing would follow. The same was the case with village students.

Pirthi Singh was so famous as a striker that many students got christened as Mutdu, Paadu, Haggu—the derivatives of the outcomes of nature: peeing, farting and shitting—as a result of the strikes. One chap was named Haggu as he belonged to the group who couldn’t stop their fear from turning their pants yellow. Haggu went onto become an SDM (Sub-divisional Magistrate) but was still the very same Haggu to his classmates. He was in full gratitude. ‘If not for the raw fear of his caning, I would not have studied at all!’ he maintained in full humility. A bit of slightly funny and mildly offensive name, but that was nothing in comparison to the success and the consequent good name, fame and respect in its wake. 

Lazy bums

 The dove indeed is a silly, lazy bird. They seem to have anchored their perspectives in some utterly laidback chamber of brain. And when the parents have such condemnable lackadaisical attitude, the children definitely suffer. They are averse to any type of cockiness that enables the parents in any species to fight for something more for their kids. They seem to lack that tact, prudence and bitchiness that enables parents, especially the wards like babblers, to turn their children the center of the cosmos. This artlessness makes the dove eggs and babies almost sitting ducks to chance factors and predators.

Given their silently brooding ways, they look perilously nudging the baseline of extinction. The other birds, with their heightened activation and rich and vibrant forays into grabbing more of life and living, appear to be the powerful leaders of the birdie kingdom. The doves, on the other hand, given their characteristic simplicity seem shrouded in obscurity.

I haven’t seen a single successful attempt out of a dozen nestings that I have witnessed in my courtyard over the years. The day I am lucky enough to see a dove hatchling successfully taking its maiden flight would serve as a charming memoir. The hatchlings, if the eggs are lucky enough to survive, look so helpless, tiny fluffy scapegoats to be toed around by the murderous incertitudes of circumstances. The mere fact that there are still doves in the world, despite such dismal success ratio, proves that there is larger intelligence in operation than the human mind. It mysteriously functions and creates exceptional, lucky chances to help some odd chick to survive now and then. The cosmic intelligence spins out what we consider miracles with random lucidity. Otherwise, the doves seem all set to cooperate with the negative forces of the annihilation of a species. Suppose all the predators are taken off the scene, still the eggs and hatchlings are under as much risk as when the sky is crowded with the enemies like flies.

Have you seen a weaverbird’s master art? Their nest is a stirring symbol of safety and coziness. Its dazzling tautness equips it to stand safe and sturdy against inclement weather and hostile predators. The tangled and entwined repertoire bestows it a syncretic sense of safety where their little ones enjoy highly efficient upbringing. The sturdy nests hang with an appellate authority. Their nesting colonies on a safe tree are almost celebrated landmarks of the birdie architecture.

The doves are plain stragglers in comparison to the weaverbirds. Theirs is the weakest of a nest, a see-through, fragile, careless assemblage of few dry twigs; very small, just big enough to accommodate a few eggs; a sullen and grumpy assemblage; a living legacy of being in cahoots with the forces of destruction. If the hatchling is lucky to come out of the egg, every minute spent by it seems bizarrely traumatic. The pathetic chick looks shorn of any prospects in future. It survives only if the goddess of mortality is on some elusive excursion for some time.

You can count the eggs standing under a dove’s nest as it’s at a suitable height for a person of average built to raise hands, stand on toes and take them off. I have to be brutally candid on this. From even average parenting standards, the attempt is gruesome, distasteful and perverse. The eggs would look safer anywhere except the nest.

The doves look innocent but now I feel they are plainly dumb. From aesthetical point of view, one may take them possessed with admirable restraint but from the standpoint of parental duties it looks a repository of foolishness. You need front-end courage to defend and save your brood. The rising and falling beats in the game of survival need a stern attention. They show lovely character and good disposition when they perch on the top of a wall and coo. But all this vanishes when it comes to the practicalities of being parents.

The same flimsy assemblage, on the curry-leaf tree in our courtyard, at a height of eight feet has seen four breakfasts for the cats, crows and even an eagle. And now another one is on the way. They just lay eggs, but hardly bother about making a safe nest. There are two or three dove couples in the area. They are thoroughly lazy. They simply make love when the nature calls and lay eggs that are easily whisked away by the egg-mongers. Then they are free from the tensions of raising their kids. I think it will require some wise owl to gather them and put up a lecture about some safety measures while preparing a nest.