Ice-candied days

 Those were the little lights of childhood dawning upon the summer-time dusty bleakness with plenty of slurping charms. Without them the baking noons would appear full of famine, agony and melancholy. There would be a sudden surge in our spirits. It was an item of instant gratification. Almost a savior to save us from the broadened, sprawling tyranny of heat and dust. And their carrier was nothing short of romanticized hero. It became so important that the rest of the items over the globe seemed inconsequential specks. The ice-candies with their lure and legacy!

The ice-candies would stand out as life-supporting oasis during the hot, dusty, sweltering days of summer. With colorful ice-candies around even the treacherous hot season would turn into a vintage climate. The sound of his rubber balloon horn would give him the aura of a regal chauffeur of our dreams. He carried the little vase of joy in his wooden chest box insulated with thermocol padding inside and iron sheet on the outside. And we would throng the bicycle with chaste passion.

The schools would be off for almost two months and the children waited for the ice-candy sellers to shout in the streets. The greed for these cheap colored beauties knew no limits. The children would plead for paisas from the elders, get some, take the candy, slurp it down and come back to the house to fish out some old book, copy, notebook, diary, glass bottle, iron wares, plastic discards or anything acceptable to the seller, get their candy, lick it away with even more greed and then more greed would turn them scrap collectors to roam the street, scamper over dry dung and waste heaps to salvage anything that would add to get an extra ice-candy.

It was a fascinating conquest of our fancies, unleashing unbridled gallantry in the heart of even the dourest ones to contrive some rancorous caprice to devise some extra means to get one more ice-candy. The children ran helter-skelter with overstrained nerves to lay their hands upon anything acceptable to the seller. Those who were successful on a particular day tittered affectionately while those who were yet to color their tongues with the bright colors carried a wearisome, damnable look in their lost eyes. They walked crushed and crestfallen, their spirits mutilated and they looked with dusty sighs at the ones carrying the lascivious item in their hands which slowly melted on their tongues with inundating delirium.

With the rise in temperatures and the rapidly thinning morals, the greed would further shoot up to burgeon into banditry. The mysterious charms of the little colorful pieces of ice would metamorphose into a pathway robbery. The more formidable ones among the ice-candy lovers would plot to plunder some cheeky seller. They would hide on the margins of the path just outside the village and pounce upon the wooden candy box loaded on the carrier. A bit more disciplined ones like me would watch from a distance and clap for the fortunes of the destiny-makers.

On one occasion, the wooden chest of ice-candies was on the ground and the owner thoroughly overpowered. A sturdy peasant woman ran with sickle in hand to defend the poor seller and save his provisions. The pointed thrusts of her kicks, slaps, whiplashing tongue and warrior queen kind swipe of her sickle saw the looters routed and running away from the scene of crime. She was able to save almost three quarters of his provisions. The ice-candy seller thanked her like he was her long-estranged real brother. ‘You ought to have some muscles on your arms to hold the bicycle and keep it from falling even if these little ones pull from all directions!’ she reprimanded him. He seemed to have fallen into utter submission and agreed to her thesis. In any case, she was rewarded with the best class of dark orange ice-candy by the humbled and dusted seller who offered his product out of gratitude. She had been harvesting wheat in a nearby field in the sweltering midday June heat. Profusely sweating and slurping on her reward she went back to her work. Well, that was a well-deserved ice-candy if there was any that day.

We had ice-candy looters right within the village also. They were civilized and respected looters using a smart tactic. They were the grandpas, like even I witnessed my own grandfather performing the feat from across the corner. They would begin with severally reprimanding the seller for spoiling the children, even turning them into thieves in their own houses, stealthily taking out wheat, jaggery, books and notebooks, thus trashing them as junk for an ice-candy. Thus reprimanded the seller would be instantly on the backfoot. But they had a solution. They paid a little tithe, a kind of goonda tax. The seller would produce a nicely melting glossy ice-candy as his answer to the village elder’s complaint. And the issue would melt like ice in the heat. Then the elder would slurp the cold, sweet ice-candy with hollow cheeks, completely forgetting that just a minute ago there was an issue named as ‘the ice-candy seller spoiling the morals of the village children’. 

The need for polyandry

There is a lovely concept of yin and yang energies in Taoism. Yin is the female component, the all-embracing emptiness, the womb, the Shakti of creation. Yang is the male component, the all-pervading tendency for expansion, manifestation, materialization and fullness. No wonder they are cause-effect and effect-cause simultaneously. Emptiness is self-sustaining, but fullness can be an instinct at the most. No wonder men have such hunger to fill the emptiness pervading around, symbolized by women.

A relationship between a man and a woman is driven by the basic characteristics of these respective polarities. A man is basically looking for the same physical gratification in all the women he goes into a relationship with. But a woman is looking for an ideal form to fill up the cosmic emptiness of which she is a carrier entity, or a symbol. If a man has one reason to get bored with his woman (at the level of body), she has multiple times more reasons to feel bored with her man at the level of body, thoughts, emotions, soul-to-soul connect and still more deeper things. The search of a man for his ideal woman is relatively very easy because he is only seeking variants across hair, color, lips, breasts, hips and other body parts. A woman, on the other hand, has a very deep challenge, a deep peek into her own self, where she tries to modulate her expectations as per the silent depths inside her.  

The yin energy is too powerful and limitlessly empty. The yang energy is just the flash of twinkling stars of materiality in the infinitely empty corridors of the cosmic spirit. And man has always been afraid of the yin energy’s potential and insecure about his fragmented attempts as a filler of the emptiness. So at the level of flesh, i.e., the ‘matter’ of which he is the carrier element, he has tried to subdue and cut down the role of women in society. Patriarchy is born of a deep sense of inferiority, incapacity and complexes carried by the men.

Taoists believe that it takes seven years for a man to understand the rhythms of a woman’s body, the next seven years to feel her emotions and mind, and the next seven to know her spirit. In strict mathematical terms, I would say a woman is worth three men combined at the level of matter, energy and spirit. And man knows it and that’s why he tries to keep her limited to a third of her potential to keep her in a relationship. It works in conservative societies where menfolk have come together to formulate social laws and norms in terribly one-sided ways to keep the women enchained as a fraction of their real selves. But it fails in liberal, modern societies. With empowerment and choice women easily trample over multiple men at the level of matter, energy and spirit. So in liberal societies the women carry a bigger sense of their men being incomplete because here they aren’t dependent upon them for survival. Here their freedom frees them from the helpless acceptance of their status like in conservative societies.   

I think the empowered, self-standing and well-educated women should be given the legal option of polyandry. She stands for the eternal void that can receive all the drama of materiality trying to fill up her cosmic emptiness. The reason why a really capable woman needs multiple partners at the same time is very simple. Men arrive in fragments. The rampaging bulls in the bed usually carry small brains. The brainy ones have little emotions. The artists and poets would lack dependability in worldly practicalities. The Einstein type genius would have their own eccentricities. The spiritual guys would be good guide but very hollow as partners because they are looking to save their semen through yogic practices. So why not legally allow them to have multiple partners simultaneously. Like, one for naughty bed fun, one for beautiful poetry, one for hardcore logic and reasoning, one for spirituality. It will solve the problem of broken hearts. Because the broken hearts again go seeking solace and get again broken. Let there be an official trial with polyandry in developed societies at least.

There is another topic quite related to the yin and yang energies. Yin energy is essentially Kundalini energy, the nurturer of the seed of creation, the ground for material manifestation to take place. All the literature on Kundalini has been written by male followers on the path of spirituality. The basics of experiences and bodily manifestations have been gathered—even though individual variations happen across the male bodies as well—and we have texts dealing with the energy’s movement across the various pranic channels, the changes in physiology, the results of these changes and more.

But we have missed a very important point in the Kundalini discussion so far. It has been male oriented. And a female spiritualist reading the text might be driven to believe that her body will also experience the same as a male body. I don’t think Kundalini will manifest in her body in a typical male’s way. She is essentially Kundalini body herself. So in her case it’s not a fundamental transformation. It is only in the degrees of refinement of the same basic quality. A man will be transformed into a fundamentally different entity; she on the other hand will be further refined. Like man goes through a forge and a stone will be crystallized into diamond. It’s a fundamental shift. That’s why the process is so drastic and even mysterious in his body. In the case of a woman it is like refinement of the same ore, for example, refining gold from its natural ore. So it’s not that drastic in nature as in a man’s body. These are subtle transformations, delicate and deep in emotions and thoughts. Her body is already a creative mechanism of yin energy, so the flow of extra creative energy in the form of an awakened Kundalini doesn’t test her system like it does a man’s body.

A man is primarily the dropper of the seed in the scheme of propagation. She but is the entire field where the whole scheme of evolution of a new life unfolds. So even if an extra dimension of energy unfolds in her system, it won’t revolutionize her organism like it does to a man’s system because she is already a carrier of the same essential energetic entity. Qualitatively it’s the same, it’s just a matter of quantitative variation in degrees. But a man’s system undergoes fundamental qualitative changes. It requires completely new rewiring of the system. Hence they undergo such hair-raising experiences. In case of a woman, it’s far too subtle, like her loving smile for her man would transform into loving motherly smile for all. So her transformation is more in thoughts, emotions, soul and spirit. At the tangible level it won’t be felt in the body like a man does.     

Equality breeding Equanimity

 The questioner: What do you think are your favourite qualities in a woman?

Me: The same as found in a good man.

The questioner: And your favourite qualities in a man?

Me: The same as in a good woman.

The questioner: Why?

Me: Because both are equal and humans only.

A little brave flower

 

Treat of the day! The tiny sadabahar in the crack of the wall bears a flower. There are hundreds of bigger flowering plants on the ground having dozens of petalous smiles. What makes this little flower exceptional? An entire season’s rains slipped down the wall. It’s not in mother earth’s lap where she stores water for her kids. It just has a hairline crack in the plastered wall to cling to its moisture of survival. Thousands of water drops slip away and then just an ounce of water may be clings to the narrowest root space. Fed like pampered children, the garden has hundreds of flowers. But this solitary flower high on the plastered wall is special. Blossoming is no slave to the conventional parameters of height, weight, the soil around roots, nutrition, the amount of rain or any other circumstantial fact. It’s only about giving the best with what you have. Given its tough conditions, this tiny flower grew in millimeters, while the rest of the more privileged flowers on the ground grew in inches. Their life might be measured in feet and hundreds of flowers. But what is exceptional about the fact of their existence? They are the happy-go-lucky types. Their smiles stand on mother earth’s piety. This but is a brave flower. It clung to survival, just staying a couple of inches of a fragile sapling high in the wall in the hot sweltering summer heat. It waited and waited with patience for more rains and when they came it added a couple of more inches to its height and there comes the flower. It’s basically about reaching home and fulfilling your destiny irrespective of the circumstances. What we get isn’t in our hands, but what we do with what we have is surely our calling. The smile of this flower is worth hundreds of lesser mortals in the garden below. It’s a proud flower, no wonder it’s there high in the air above the rest. 

So dear friends, please avoid the mistake of cribbing about your circumstances of life. A lot many things definitely lie beyond our control. It’s better to accept certain facts. Take it as destiny. But that’s just half of the story. With what has been given to you by the quirks of fate, you are in the driving seat and juggle your pieces to make your own destiny. Like this little plant does. It blossoms a flower in the toughest of a situation and completes its journey, fulfils its meaning of being a flower. You too can blossom your flower with what you have been given. So forget about what you don’t have, just make use of what you have. You too are up for a flowery reward. Best wishes!

What a drama man!

 The tiles are getting so oily and smooth in fashionable houses that I have to walk like a heavily pregnant penguin on the Antarctic ice to avoid slipping. But we are up for leaving a grand impression on the house fashion scene, or for that matter in all types of fashion in all spheres of life. That's being cultured otherwise you are a sentinelese prehistoric tribal in Andamans. The floor tiles have become so slippery these days that I feel like a goat being taken to a slaughter house if some fashionable person invites me at their house. 

But credit goes to we humans. We are a gutsy race. We take risks. We are ready to take the risks of broken bones for being most fashionable in the neighbourhood. And so many slip and break their bones in fact. What floor is any worth if it doesn't carry the slipping potential and break bones and wink a flashy shiny smile as you fall? And we shouldn't forget that breaking bones are a boon for the medical fraternity. 

What car is worth its tyres if it can't go like a rocket and carry the prospect of trampling as many as possible on its glorious journey. But naughty trampling cars are a boon for the insurance industry. Isn’t it?

What music is worth its rhythmic hop if it can't burst a few eardrums? What dress is worth its salt if it doesn't make you look like someone from the farthest galaxy? And the dress that actually covers the body is no dress, it's an old hag. So poor clothing is up for a big challenge. It has to show all and still appear to hide everything. So we are busy fixing it. It's a very serious quesion. How much of cloth goes off from the bumside to cover the soles of feet. Or how much goes from the chest to cover armpits. One half of the mind working overtime to bare all, while the other half trying to devise an airy dress to avoid a complete fall. Imagine how much creativity it requires! What an art man!

And what is this boring, old model plain skin? It's a big canvas for art. Why waste paper for painting when we have our dear skin ready for the sadistic pleasure of the tatooing needle? So human body is the canvas now. Some tatoos go deep in the skin in proportions to the transcient emotions in the heart. But we have shifty hearts. So when the clouds of emotions scatter and take a new shape, the poor tatoo taunts as a sign of infedilty. So it has to be vanquiahed. So tatoo removers have become as important as tatoo makers. The other day when I put out my hand to give some money to a beggar I got a shock. He had a dragon on his hand. He appeared so empowered in comparison to me. My poor non-tatooed hand won't dare to go ahead. So I just walked away. When I see people with their sophisticated tatoos coming on the way, I involuntarily find myself moving away in awe and wonder to give them space to walk. They appear a completely new race to me the old model. Maybe tattooed bums, biceps, breasts and tummies have gone berserk and are now revolting to claim new versions after getting fed up with their boring old self.

And what gun is a gun that can't pierce a hill from a distance? So the human mind is making the best of a gun. But then what bulketproof jacket is that which can't stop a cannon ball on the chest. So one half of our collective brain is making the deadliest gun, while the other half is busy in making the best of bulketproof jacket. 

We are a very busy race. We can't stop. We have to scatter litter in the first place so that we can devise the most efficient ways of waste management. We ought to rechristen ourselves as busysapiens now. We have to first go into war and killings and then make UN and the entire set of peace talks and diplomatic corps for peaceful negotiations. 

I sometimes wonder maybe we are basically looking to create more avenues for problems so that the genius of the human brain can be actualized in managing those problems. I think the autonomous human mind is smartly using the slavish human body for experiments, like we do with toads on dissection tables, putting us in weirdest situations just to find whether there is a solution to this and that. What an experiment going on. It really is a big drama.