Far away from wars and violence

 Mid-June is burning so excitedly and with such clinching ruthlessness that I sometimes fear the hair on my head may catch fire when I go out in the sun. Fierce loo is the triumphantly shrieking queen now. It singes your body and tries to parch your soul. It sizzles with its boiling sighs as if a red-hot iron rod is put in water letting out tempestuous sprouts of water and fire. And heart also burns with pain at the news of burning Manipur. Violence, hate and anger constitute a fire that burns all. It doesn’t compartmentalize its victims across religion, caste, class, ethnicities or any other differential that we humans have created in the society to form groupings. It was tragically verified in the ongoing ethnic violence between Meiteis and Kukis in Manipur. An ambulance was torched by a rampaging mob. A Meitei woman and her little daughter died in the attack. Meitei casualties from this perspective. But a Kuki man lost his daughter and wife as well. The dead Meitei woman was married to a Kuki man. So a Kuki casualty from this perspective. And above all, it’s always common humanity’s casualty. Politicians, leaders and other power aspirants will always trigger fire along the dividing fault lines. It serves their purpose. But in the fire the common fate of all groups burns with equal tragedy.

Beyond ethnic violence and imperialist wars, here in my little garden there is something that defies fire and is holding a little flag of hope, faith, humanity, colors, waters, flowers and spring. It’s a lemon swallow-tail, a butterfly. Gliding over the hot eddies, it arrives in the sun-thrashed garden to cheer-up the brooding, beaten, pale, stunted, withered plants. There are a few sun-burnt flowers, almost lust-ravaged by the fiery kisses, giving a sad smile as if they are the insignia of a proud but lost civilization. It lands among some almost melting, faded purple Mexican Petunia flowers still somehow managing their smiles under the parijat’s shade. The butterfly takes a few sips, and reinvigorated goes gliding almost through the fire. The air is so hot that it seems it will catch fire any moment. A little phenomenon, a transient slogger making the most of the few days bestowed by mother nature. Why stop flying as long as you have the wings even if it means flying through the fire? The butterfly flutters away in the hot, sighing wind, challenging its own colorful, soft pusillanimity, cutting across the snarling loops and deadly snarls of mortality. It’s a songfully fulfilling sight, a wholesale sortie of freedom, a quintessential assertion of free will. A grandiose gale proclaiming, ‘Burn my wings but fly I will at any cost!’ 

Sobriety--an exception

 Their fate went into petulant plunge, landing them into the pits of misery. The same old story of two generations of chronic drunkards. Peace goes out in an illustrious exodus from a house whose males spend most of the time in drunken oblivion.

The liquor-lover who quarrels and drinks non-stop is on a ceasefire today. The house was crumbling, the bricks losing their grip in the walls. It never was a home in any case. But even the namesake house, an assemblage of bricks and a roof overhead, was wearing away due to the negligence and constant strife and tension inside. The walls and the roof seemed to say enough is enough and started giving in.

A little piece of farmland was still in the family’s ownership. It was acquired by the government to build a road. The compensation money miraculously survived because the four daughters and their mother sat on it night and day. The entire female force rallied and banded together to ensure that the money was used in house-making only. The old crumbling house was dismantled. A new modest house emerged out of the ruins as the females of the family beat even the masons, bricklayers and laborers in contributing to the construction work. They worked full time with the construction staff to save the labor costs.

The liquor-lover seems sober today. The proud girls are watching with the immaculate dignity of caring daughters despite all the ill treatments by the menfolk under a patriarchal system. He is sprinkling water over the recently plastered walls. Holding the water hose he lets loose squirts of water like a child. He playfully wets his old father as well. It’s a big change because usually they squirt, sprinkle, pour and hurl the choicest abuses, cuss words and expletives at each other. The father also clumsily gambols a mild abuse. He teases his wife also and sprays water in her direction. How happy looks a house without drunken fights! Well, let’s hope the newly built house now becomes a happy home! However, there is not much chance of it being so given the liquor-loving father-son duo’s unswerving allegiance to the weird code of drunken conduct. But what’s wrong in hoping it to be a happy home at long last.

Urbanization

 The ones who stay in a village may have a notion about relatively cleaner air than the cities. But things are changing very fast even in the villages. In the villages also the disposable plastic per household is on the increase. The farmers keep dung heaps, not too far from their houses, which they use as farm manure at the beginning of a new crop season. In order to avoid the plastic from going into the fields they keep burning the little heaps over the weeks—a very simplistic solution to turn the plastic rubbish invisible in the air instead of seeing it in physical form in the fields. So I can smell poisonous plastic burning multiple times a day. Little do they realize that the very same plastic now goes into their lungs in another form. The day is not far when the hypothetical solace of breathing better air in a village will lose its relevance. The villages will turn as polluted as the cities unless we find a better way to dispose our plastic. It could be as simple as collecting your plastic garbage in a sack and dump it at the dumpsite outside the village near the town. But who will take that much trouble. We need quick solutions for everything these days.

New shoots on the old tree of patriarchy

 We still have pretty solid patriarchal roots in our social soil depriving women of their well justified position in various spheres of life. Take the case of football for example. Despite the best of facilities, fat pay cheques, world-class infrastructure, promotional tours, global level support staffs, the Indian men’s football team is ranked 107 in global ranking. Now consider the Indian women’s football team. Nobody talks about them because they hardly get any priority in the gaming scheme. In comparison to the men’s football team they get maybe just five percent attention, resources and focus. Still they are ranked far higher than the men’s team. The Indian women’s team is ranked 60 in the world. They have been twice runners up in Asian championship. The men’s ISL league matches are played under glaring floodlights, while the women footballers struggle in their league under merciless hot sun as their matches would start at 8:30 AM and 4 in the afternoon. Who would spend extra money by lighting floodlights for women’s football game? Let them play under the sun. It hardly matters to the organizers.

Recently Kerala Blasters men’s football team walked off the field during a match. The club was heavily fined for this breach of sports’ ethics. Who suffered the consequences? Will you be able to believe it? To offset their financial loss the club suspended their women’s team. The women pay for the men’s folly and unwarranted conduct! Isn’t it hilarious? Patriarchy is so deeply entrenched in our system that directly or indirectly women and girls have to pay when their interests clash with the males.

Take the ongoing wrestling saga where the champion daughters are fighting for justice. They are pitted against a powerful man. There are allegations of sexual harassment and severe breach of professional conduct on his part. But the system seems to be protecting him. In fact, there are thousands who are questioning the girl wrestlers themselves, asking for the proofs of molestation. As if a girl is always walking with a spy camera to present in the court as evidence. Very sad and disappointing.

The workshop within

 How will you even touch someone softly if you haven’t felt the gentility of your own fingers on your skin? How will you even offer a smile to someone if you haven’t showered your own smiles at the representative of divinity, you true self, within you? How will you embrace someone if you haven’t given a warming bear hug to your soul like a beloved? How will you even touch someone’s life in a healing way unless you haven’t healed your own invisible scars? How will you make someone joyful if you haven’t enjoyed its treasures first? How will you understand someone’s pain unless you have understood the value of your own tears? Charity begins at home. All this has to start from one’s own dear self. Till then whatever we do in the name of all the gifts mentioned above is nothing but a lip service, a theory without experiential reality, a mere pretense to fulfill a duty, or even facelift measures to beat our own weakness, fear, insecurities. Others are just an extension of this very own self. So it’s better to start with the self, the nearest source to experiment all these truths and then build upon the larger scale.