Slow-paced pleasure of some silent moments

 The world around you changes once a babbler makes a nest in your garden. They are very assertive in defending their territory. I’m spraying water on jungle geranium as a kind of bonus gift to it because it has blossomed really well even in this heat. An almost permanent shade of the parijat above has worked in its favor. I water it twice a day and it has made the most of it. It’s a pleasant sight to look at its bulbs of soft pink. These are tiny clusters of flowers forming big laddoo-sized bouquets. It’s a beautiful pattern, almost exotic and challengingly intricate. It’s a decorously contoured, captivating flower, a visual delight. Each bulb comprises a cluster of small, tubular blossoms which densely populate the inflorescence. The individual flowers are very small in size, just measuring about one to two inches in diameter. But their beauty lies in unity, holding together in illumined integrity. They grow closely together and form a rounded shape, presenting the stunning visual impact of a single big bulb of flower. You feel proud to have helped in creating such blossoms. These are visually very interesting flowers having intricate streaks and patterns, carrying unique swathes of aesthetics. They look inviting with their exotic appeal.

As I sprinkle water over the flowers and the glossy green oblong leaves, inhaling the tropical aroma, a babbler has some serious issue. In my flowery reverie I have stepped near a little puddle of water formed on the uneven cemented bricks in the yard. It must have been drinking water there and I inadvertently disturbed it. There it starts with a long chain of tart, stinging words. If you have the lung power to out-babble them you can assert your rights. But I have to give in to this perennial dissenter. My mailbox is full of recent rejections so I am in no mood to fight. I try though, in slight irritation. I turn the water pipe in its direction and give it a mild shower to cool it down. But that makes it outright abusive. I simply move away, why get into arguments with foul-mouthed guys. It proudly hops and reclaims its puddle and takes sips of victory by turning its neck sideways so that its beak gets a slant enabling it to scoop some water with each effort. It looks even angrier with its side-long white-rimmed look. I move further away.

The wire-tailed swallow couple is sitting at exactly the same spot on the wire. It’s a love-spot for them. They take a view of the courtyard with a sort of miscellaneous muse.

I have minimized honeybee casualties by putting dry leaves and light dry twigs on the water surface in the bucket. After taking a tumble in the water most of them swim to safety to the nearest point.

The flower in the wall crack is facing the toughest test. It has shed its leaves as homage to the fiery summers, sparing just a few leaves at the top as a mark of life and its ongoing fight. I sprinkle a bit of water over the crack twice a day and that keeps it going. It has to hang on till the monsoons return. Just a matter of one moth I suppose.

The ants have made their hole bigger and there is a little heap of sand, the dredge of their mining effort, on the clean cemented brick where they have drilled a hole. All and sundry need a pucca house these days. It’s a busy world with cascading ambitions.

Curry leaf tree, the beloved culinary plant with aromatic leaves. It is laden with small, delicate flowers growing in clusters called panicles. Each panicle comprises numerous individual flowers densely populating the inflorescence. Each gust of wind results in a drizzle of almost countless tiny petals measuring a few millimeters in size. The florescence is so dense that despite a continuous drizzle of tiny petals still there is enough for the bees, stinging wasps and creamy white little butterflies to go feasting through the day. Tiny star-shaped individual blooms harken the sappers. They emit a sweet, gently floral scent that wafts with the winds and carries its sweet invitation.

Far away from the tumultuous trajectories of the bigger world, it’s my little corner crowned with an unadulterated halo; of little sounds and long silences; of rosy radiance and reverberating bliss. A little world taking me into the pools of seductive withdrawal. There was a time when I tried to fit into the piercingly gibberish mainstream. Very soon I realized that I am one of the fringe folks. And frayed, frazzled and fatigued, no longer able to bear the shadowy overtures of the thoroughfare, carrying sore stabs of the feeling of victimization, sobbing tempests buzzing in my ears, I walked into the embracing folds of my little private world. It healed the scars on my soul. Far away from fictitious championing, I just try to be my real self, a tiny self going in sync with small-small happenings in my tiny corner. 

Life

 Why should winning be just defined by finishing the line ahead of others? Finishing the line with your best, even if it means coming last in the list, is also a win. And beyond finishing, the will to touch the line, even if you fall on the way, is a win. Further, even the will to participate is a win. And if you don’t participate at all and do something else that also is winning. Why talk of defeats? It’s winning-winning all the way, in one form or the other; because to be alive itself is a win. The breath that you take now is your triumph, your trophy, a result of your body’s collective heave to help you keep carrying your journey, the crowned crest of the will to continue on its journey. This step you take now is a journey. Life is a winsome game in totality. Count all your missteps, follies, cloud-piercing cries, disasters, tragedies and pains. Add them. However high is the sum, it will still fall short of nullifying the big positive number—life, a soft smile. Life divine drawn and painted in its celestial contours. Life bound together with mystic strands and syncretic synergy. You all are winners I tell you.

Fusillade of the furtive flautist

As the furtive flautist goes raising dust on the path of time with his rag-tag show, many a petite songstress loses their songs and melodies. The forests turn quiet and a silence reigns with its unabashedly parochial throbbing. Mother nature looks a travel-worn sailor not able to recall or even imagine pure mythological horizons of the past, a wonderfully wild past with its generic sacredness. Then one species rose supreme with its sadistic leer. With clockwork precision it lugged it out and lugged it in by scattering the deviants of its overworking brain. The forests vanished and devolved into potted plants. Spring sunshine and lovely desert nights encradling sand and stars became one and the same.

There is an incessant face-off between mankind and nature. We are the new gods with our particular perceptions and selective denunciations. The new god sordidly swarming over everything in its path. And its deeds almost a devilish enclosure for mother nature. The disciple that started with a rudderless reverence to the original god and then passing through dark doorways declared himself to be the new godly sovereign. We are too big a source of change on this little planet. The force of our hand is visible through rampant global warming, furious tornados, forest fires, poisoned air and polluted seas. The forces of evolution have gone into a tizzy. The wheel of evolution is spinning too fast. Many species are in a desperate spell of adaption and evolution to extend their survival for some more time. But that seems futile in the face of massively changed environment.

In a matter of around 150 years, the beak size of Australian parrots has grown by 4-10 percent. All this is to cope up with the increased heat. In a matter of just half a century, the wings of round-leaf bats have increased by one percent. In a short span we have now larger billed finches adapting to survive in hotter climate. Larger beaks help them to dissipate excess heat. Brightly colorful butterfly fish are usually aggressive in the seas. They stoutly defend their territory with a squirming valor. Now they are becoming less aggressive. This is due to the menace of coral bleaching going at a big scale. They are less on calories and that turns them docile. You need a lot of energy to fuel your aggression and territorial ambitions.

In warmer Alaskan regions now more berries ripen and the bears eat more of berries than salmons. As a result they turn lethargic and plump. It needs less effort in feasting upon berries than chasing salmons. Who is interested in unavailing ransackings and flunging forth for slippery agile preys when you have unmoving berries harking your attention? There was a time when in the subarctic region one’s next door neighbor was many miles up or down the line. Now there are harassing hundreds every square mile and our footprints write title deeds of ownerships in every nook corner of the icy wilderness.

The conditions have turned windier and stormier, so a lizard named Anoleshas now has bigger toepads and more muscular front legs to cling onto survival chances among the terribly shaken vegetation. To beat hurricanes you need stronger toepads.

Ever lost in our maneuvering mists, we have unleashed evolve-or-perish situation for scores of species. Of course, most of the species won’t be able to keep pace with such highly accelerated evolution rates and would become extinct in the coming decades.

In response to the changing sea water temperatures, squids are now coming of age faster and changing their food pattern.

Galgapos finches are adding to their beak size. Small beaks mean less chances of survival in a boiling world.

Turtle hatching in warmer seas results in more females. With warming seas we will have almost many hundreds of females for a male. So rising temperatures are now determining sex in the species.

It seems a gloomy tale. However, let’s make the most of what is still left—aesthetically.

The regalia of old age

So he, the regal old man, embracing his age with fragile but tight grip, lives happily as the tail-end of a great life lived. He has weathered the tempests of youth: the force of beginning, starting and acceleration! And now the path of letting it go; losing the pace slowly, gracefully, receptively. The deceleration.  Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop finally. It gives him as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the final rest. Now, during the slowing down phase, his time has become slow, the world is a small puddle around his feet. He lives like in a dream. A slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months, months like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, he lives equal to a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode.

He enjoyed the choices which fate sieved for him. Just grabbed his share. Now he picks up and plays among those things and coarse, discarded chaff which remain unwanted above as the fine particles, much in demand, trickle below. But it’s great fun, he tells with mischievous gusto: 

“In youth, we just think that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. But life can be equally enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and chaff. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone.” 

The old reveler, away from the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where the faintest traces of warmth touch his old bones before moving into the cold darkness. 

The majestic slow down, as important and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning, the youth. The source, the beginning, and the slowdown, and the end. A cycle. Enjoy it!

The ease of being with common sense

 There is some manual task to be done. Rashe Ram is my first option for anything requiring physical labor. I try my chance to connect him over his phone number. As expected, the number is temporary out of service. He knows he doesn’t need a phone much. Due to his honesty in work, he is much in demand, so the labor seekers would book his services by launching a physical search and catching hold of him in person. And his secret girlfriends also know where to find him whenever he is needed for his lover’s duties, which is nothing more than a hurried plain mating even without having a word. In any case he is a man of few words.

The work involves some repairs in the street and we are gathered on the spot feeling not so good about not being able to avail the services of the best worker. Then someone informs that Rashe was recently picked up by the police for keeping 15 little pouches of ganja. We have just stopped talking about him and there comes Rashe Ram lumbering with his usual carefree air, unconcerned about the big issues in life. He is much hailed for his timely arrival.  

He shyly denies my question about the police episode. But when he sees that I’m serious about this quest he tells the truth. ‘I had bought 15 little pouches of ganja from Delhi for personal use. The village police informer passed the information to police. They picked me up. Kept me there for couple of hours. They collected all the pouches and took three thousand rupees to set me free.’ These are plain facts of his arrest. Their significance in his life is limited to their literal meaning. His is a mind unburdened of the polished maladies of overthinking, analysis and psychological traumas born of such an inconsequential happening.

‘You don’t keep phone these days? I tried but the number is out of service,’ I ask him. He has his tiny non-smartphone with him. It’s a new number he tells me. The old number? I threw away the chip in a nullah when the police were after me. We the clever people think it proper to take his new number in order to avail his labor services without delay in future. I ask my brother to note down his number because I don’t have my phone with me. He also is enjoying a phone-free time which seems a blessing, almost a vacation these days. Don’t we feel so relaxed when we step out of the house without the one tone psychological weight of the phone? My cousin brother is also having the same vacation. I ask the workers do they have a pen, which was a foolish query because their pockets would have beedies, matchbox, tobacco or ganja—the tools to beat the feeling of being disadvantaged in life by birth, the fate throwing them into poverty right from the beginning. We seem to be at loss of words about the daunting task regarding how to note down his number. With my amazing creative skills, I even think of writing it on the sand and then run home to take my phone before some cattle either pees or defecates on my earthen notebook.

‘Why don’t you just dial your number from my phone?’ Rashe softly drools with his slurred, soft, noble giant’s speech.

My software professional brother, still carrying the classy fragrance of a recent official trip to a developed country; my cousin brother carrying the high notes of confidence and youth becoming of an enthusiastic entrepreneur; and me the man with a library of books in the head—we have been caught on the wrong foot. Common sense seems to be too exclusive for our educated, smart selves. Caught on such a wrong foot of unawareness!

All three of us have an embarrassed laugh. It’s very humbling. A basic dose of common sense is all that we need to lead a happy life, to have a light mind unburdened of overthinking and hard-pressed by weighty issues. Many villagers are straightaway dismissive about Rashe Ram because he isn’t cunning and clever like the rest and this they interpret as being a dumb person. But in his unburdened mind he carries enough common sense to allow him a contended simple life.

The next day he is busy at the assigned task. It involves clearing a big heap of bricks, boughs, plastic and trash all jumbled together to form a nice century for reptiles and rodents. He is working relaxedly but I’m worried for him because many snakes have been seen around that place. I have already cautioned him multiple times about it but he seems to carry on without minding my words too much. Then my over-concern burdens his brain and he has to explain. ‘See, I have this stick with me. Didn’t you see that each time I put my hands to pick up something, I first prod the items with the stick so that the snake will crawl away,’ he slowly drawls. It again is so-so humbling. In my eagerness to spot some snake I had completely overlooked this simple man’s simple solution in dealing with the problem. Such a simple solution for a risky task! In his place my educated mind would have given me solutions like wearing knee-length jungle boots and gloves reaching armpits to deal with the problem. I stand corrected like a little boy standing in front of a stern headmaster.

The so-called common, simple, poor people have huge common sense in their unburdened minds to help them wade through the scores of daily challenges they have to face. I realize however high and mighty be our knowledge, we miss on little nuggets of common sense. But these are the little weapons in the hands of the common man to easily meet the routine challenges of life.