Braving the hot winds

 The red-vented bulbul is a brave, noisy bird with lots of heads-on attitude. When the heat is at its peak in the afternoon, it sits grandiloquently on the dead boughs of the dry neem tree and bravely faces the sun. Maybe it challenges the sun to burn its wings. I have seen it in this position quite a few times. Or maybe it wants to get tanned to look handsomer. He looks a mystical comprehensor of strange realities, sitting under the hot afternoon sun, staring into the distances.

A swallowtail couple tried the feat on a nearby electricity wire. They looked a nice pair and much in love as they sat side by side, his tail wire prominent and hers barely visible. They gave competition to the sun-daring bulbul for some minutes but then the lady gave in to the heat. She flew away with a lovelorn song-girl’s quintessence. He too swooped and entailed her balmy beauty. I’m sure they flew away to chatter in the shade of some leafy tree. Lovebirds have better things to do than challenging a crazy bulbul on a hot afternoon. But the bulbul noticed their flight and taking it as his victory and their defeat gave a shriek of laughter.

As the loo sighs with its chauvinistic attributes and cruel determination, carrying pools of scorching heat to bake the village, the honeybees have to fetch water to save their larvae in the heat. It’s a busy bee-world around the water bucket in the yard. A lot many tumble into the water, many swim back to safety and many die. But they have to carry on. They live a collective life and that is the main reason of the survival of their colony. I try to keep the water level to the brims so that those who get a tumble into the water can swim back to the rim edge. It’s a happy sight to see them coming ashore, all panting, sloshed with water, their wings cutting the water like oars. They shake and flick their snouts and wings to dry themselves and get on with the mission.

I put some dry stalks and parijat leaves to make a floating life-saving platform for those who might not make it to the shore by themselves. The world will be sweeter with a few more honeybees around. Isn’t it? In the natural scheme of things, life and death may look a blind roll of dice on the board containing deft expressions of destiny, but it serves the purpose of mother nature if we create chances for life’s thriving, however minute it is. If you actually act to save an ant, bee or some insect, it’s highly probable that you will at least have empathy and kindness for bigger species including your fellow human beings. 

The sacred non-events of an ordinary life

 The spring was at its peak when I got these five saplings of different colored petunias. These are delicate flowers, vibrant but soft and vulnerable. They make the most of the spring here, spread big lollops of un-fragmented love, and fill many a gloomy yard, balcony and little garden with hopes and smiles.

The woman at the nursery won’t give false hopes. ‘They will flower for one month at the most,’ she said. ‘And sometimes for a few months,’ she added after some reflection. She is proven right. They are still there, not at their smiley best though. We have to understand. They cannot smile at their best in all this heat. They are under the merciless bombardment of sunrays till noon. They almost melt under the impact of the fiery sunrays and droop down like wax, the petals almost ready to turn fluid and go running as a colorful stream. But when the wall shadow comes over to give shade and a sip of life, they slowly come out of their fluidy slumber, regain life and smile through the pining evening and thirsty nights.

There is hot sighing loo whirling around with a statutory, dry, ill-humored brusqueness. It sucks moisture from everything around. These are summer flowers, long doing their duty since their prime during the short-lived spring. Septuagenarian flowers full of wisdom and deep meaning of life in their petalous eyes. They are faded, beaten, stunted and shrunk with age; old soldiers with their sagging, drooping bodies but with wisdom in their frail bones. And to me they are flamboyantly heroic. They seem proud to have long beaten their stipulated time. It’s a big assurance to have them just in front of my verandah, welcoming like a dot of fresh spring; spreading their smiles around holy tulsi mata they look like an offering to the holy plant. They complete the stage of my faith at dusk when I light a little sesame oil lamp under the tulsi.

The resident gecko that stays in the flowery world creeps out and waits patiently for some crazy parvana, the fabled moth, to come near his beloved shama, the flame. Then it sticks out its tongue and licks the lore of infatuated love.

Well, these are the sacred non-events of my ordinary life. They enable me to vaguely surmise the eternity’s magnitude. Have flowers in your life for they will make you genuinely, perennially prosperous. In a stiflingly smart world, ever trying to reach materialism’s apex, forever fanning a chaos around, buzzing and howling with excitement, the flowers stand as little symbols of pause, tiny smiling commas pointing to love, beauty and truth.

In pursuance of faith

 Why do we seek God’s guidance? Well, maybe because God is the titular summation of all the profound mysteries, glorious ambiguities, inexplicable vagaries, celestial certainties as well as uncertainties. So where else we the poor mortals ought to go for guidance? Unmanageable monstrosities somehow slacken their grip from our fears and insecurities due to the multidimensional inspiration of the symbol of the unknown, i.e., God. Even profoundly ideological presiding deities in sects and shrines pump real-time flesh and blood into our systems for action, reaction and enterprise. The idols thus become more real than the people around. The belief and willingness to accept the reality of God beyond the vague shadows allows the soul to enjoy delectable dance. Many times it fuels a burst of rapid creativity as well.

As a poet, painter, artist of any kind, crusader, leader or anyone else you set up a fine cornerstone around the mammoth palace of Godhood. With the light of faith in one’s eyes one can overlook the thorns of life lurking around and see and smile at a dew-jewelled rose. Faith has some deep foundations. It allows even the façade of our terminal afflictions and fakery to stand tall and allow us a sense of becoming something, the process that we call ‘life’. You don’t dread the dry rasping sandy blizzards even when the spring’s colors have been drained out. You see an oasis beyond the ribbed sand dunes. You come to feel the deep throbbing of life in your guts, above and beyond mere gastronomic sensitivities. You see, smell, touch, taste and hear something in a higher dimension, beyond the dimension of mere sense perception. Faith maybe is the soul itself, or maybe God itself. 

A trucker

 We started calling him Fauji just because his father was in the army. We were classmates at the village school from class one to ten. With the coming of age he became a trucker and was more than happy to go trucking across the vast swathes of this country.

Classmates share a special bonhomie. One may become a minister and the other a beggar but when they meet there is a deep touch, still a space in each other’s heart. Maybe spending the best time of one’s life together, that’s childhood, leaves a permanent mark of affection. It rules out class bullies here because we remember them with clenched fists. In any case they are an exception only.

Me and Fauji were hardly in touch but whenever we came across he would be pretty honest and open about life in general. ‘I joined as a truck helper just to have good times with the women who would signal by the road at night. I said “hello” to at least 1,000 of them. So when the time came for marriage I got the HIV test done three times to confirm I didn’t carry AIDS. Why spoil someone’s life for the fun you had solely in your own capacity?’ he sounded so honest. Aww, the very same childhood buddy not ashamed of sharing things!

He was lucky to have escaped the virus and is now happily married. A little bit down the rung from his first love, that’s women, he is in love with drinking. To be followed by smoking beedies. Wine, women and smoking: a pretty heady cocktail. ‘Just three pegs at night when I drive. Not more than that! Never!’ he looks convincing about this control.

A couple of years back he suffered a heart attack. A stent was implanted and the doctor gave a stern warning about smoking and drinking.

One more thing, he can put a horse to shame in giving a full-jawed grin. He has been doing it since as long as I can remember. It’s a yellowed smile. Maybe some toothpaste brand can use him as a model declaring if you don’t use our product even your 24-carat gold smile will fall short of copper or even iron. In any case, it’s another cocktail of smiles and laughter. He looks fitter than when I saw him two years back when he suffered the attack. Life situations have changed but his trademark grin-cum-laughter has remained the same. He greets me with the same welcoming grin. Strangers might take it as sarcastic but those who know him have reasons to take it as a friendly grin only. He is definitely fitter than when I saw him the last time after the surgery.

‘Just couple of beedies less and one peg more is the mantra of good health,’ he declares. ‘And lots of happiness inside,’ I add to his health formula. ‘Yes happiness also, he grins and I am amazed by the sight of his perfectly symmetrical pristine white teeth. Maybe some toothpaste maker can use the wonderful white shade, unaffected by culinary times, of his teeth to claim superiority in marketing. I thought he is using some wonderful paste to wash them so spotlessly clean. ‘And smile also,’ I say as a compliment to his blazing white grin. ‘Yes, smile and with fake set of teeth it’s even better,’ his grin has taken a very high point now, a type of euphoric proliferation. Well, now I knew his 32-carat brand new blazing smile-grin or grin-smile is fuelled by a set of artificial teeth.

But this guy is far more open and honest than scores of so-called better presented men—socially—who put a varnish over the gray shades insides. It’s wonderful to enjoy the exchange of fresh and old nuggets with one’s school days pal. 

African Nostalgia

 Almost fifteen years back I had the opportunity of spending some time in Africa. It’s a beautiful landmass with still more beautiful people, simple, elegant and very much close to nature; a world slightly off the nature-mankind crossroads. There mother nature is yet to be fully tamed by the mankind and that makes it an exotic land. There is a teasing tussle between the forces of nature and the human response to it, a kind of exorbitant ambiguity about life and living. All this makes this planet exotic in multilayered proportions; almost epical.

Platinum people and gold people, with rubies and pearls shining in their eyes, might see perfect heaven in the developed cities of the Western world but for a poetic soul the night’s slow-paced ambience, starry silence, palm-dotted misty verdancy are far more pricy than high-rise apartments, malls and swanky cars. To me the lost mists in pristine forests and scentless flowerbeds are far bigger losses than golden treasures. To me Africa with its hunger, its clear skies, its beautiful dark people with flashy smiles and its wildlife spins out a chequered legacy that will help the future poets weave their nostalgic fancies.

However, the sun at noontime shone so brightly overhead as if it would drill a hole in the scalp with a red-hot iron rod. Now looking at the atmosphere in the northern Indian plains here, when the temperature hovers dangerously close to 50°C, it reminds me of those African noons. And we are thousands of kilometers to the north on the globe. Do we still need to shout about the risks of global warming? It’s largely written all over the wall. It’s high time that we rein in our unchecked profligacy and expeditiously vicious ways in pursuit of our never-ending desires.