A rat that struck gold

 The rat family, in its little hole, had hit gold. With a little bit of more luck they would have become the wealthiest rat family. It was a quirky chain of events that drew the lot in their favor. A woman, in Mumbai, was on her way to mortgage her 100 grams of gold with a bank. She had some food packet also with her. Out of a feeling of charity she thought of feeding some beggars. But by mistake she ended up making a far bigger charity than she ever intended. She gave the jewellery parcel to the beggars instead of the food packet. The beggars would hardly believe their luck and taking it to be cheap fake jewellery and trinkets they threw the packet into the dustbin. That is where the enterprising rat, on its exploring mousy renditions, realizing the throw-away item’s real worth, dragged it into their portion of the gutter. The police but tracked the sequence of events through CCTV footage and the gold packet was retrieved. The rats must have been very sad over losing their windfall so soon. And the beggar who threw away the gold must have felt that his heart is like the hardest of granite to throw away something after which the entire planet is running madly. Well, the ironies of fate, nothing else. The fate has soaring configurations with the throw of its dice. Countless probabilities unfold ranging from colossal ruins to most extravagant gains.

The pregnant sparrow and her friends

 After the fiery spell that baked everything to a hard crust some raindrops fell overnight. All seem very happy with the brief shower in the dark. The birds have a spring in their wings and chirp lovelier songs. A few sparrows after darting around with scurrying spirits now decide to relax on the one-square feet surface provided by the railing column on the terrace. They are not sitting on their paws; rather they are sitting flat on their tummies in complete relaxation. One of them looks majestically serene. I believe it might be a pregnant sparrow because this kind of regal mien is bestowed by motherhood only. She looks as if she is their queen. One of them is perched as a sentry on the railing and is looking around in case some cat—pouncing upon a mere, mute moment to turn it into an opportunity—turns the relaxation platform into her breakfast table.

But it never was a world where all can be happy. The very same rumbling of joy for someone is tragic thunderclap for someone else. It was a very bad night for the babbler and the tailorbird couples who have nests in the parijat tree. A cat seems to have crawled up almost fourteen feet where the babbler couple had built its nest. The glossy blue shells of the eggs are now littered in the flowerbed below. It must have been a very diligent cat in its hunting because it chucked out even the little nest of the tailorbirds. The babblers have been surprisingly stoic about their loss. They haven’t raised too much ruckus. The little tailorbirds on the other hand have gone crazy over losing their little ones. They have been heartfully abusing any cat they see since morning.

Lonely in an angry world

 It’s an angrier world than ever. A sleepy, peaceful town in Himalayan foothills loses its peace. A Muslim man and a Hindu man are caught fleecing a 14-year-old girl. There are people who are eager to get into the circle of power and authority. There are so many self-styled keepers of morality and religion these days. They are always looking for reasons to stroke fire and hate. So, one half of the crime is selectively picked up by the Hindu rightists, and it becomes a case of love jihad. The other half, the Hindu part of the crime, is ignored. There are forty Muslim families in a population of 8,000 in the once peaceful town. With the honor of Hindu women and girls at stake, the mobs go on rampage and the helpless minority families who had honestly worked for decades to setup home and hearth run away fearing dangerous consequences. I’m not passing any comments on this; just presenting the facts as it happened, leaving you guys to think over it. Is breeding a hate culture acceptable in santana dharma? But the keepers of religion of all types have nothing else than hate to ignite the hearts of their followers.

Then there is this powerful politician. He can molest, harass, intimidate and stalk the female wrestlers. And still go unarrested! The investigating agencies did their best to dilute the charges against him. But the evidence was so glaring that even despite using all machinations they couldn’t give him a clean chit. All stand exposed. Now, a very mild, almost harmless, chargesheet has been filed. That would save him from jail for sure. But everyone can see it. All stand exposed. Truth is naked. And people understand and they will make their choice.

Standing among all these negative shades, I sometimes feel so helpless. It seems ‘might is right’ show going around with full force. But then the age-old poet in me puts his frail, assuring hand on my shoulder to convince me that art is the way out of darkness’ sway. ‘The soft butter knife of love will one day cut across the stony boundaries of nationality, religion, caste, class and creed. Hail all the artists and yourself!’ he tries to assuage my wounds and injuries.

Well, I know and feel that even the nudity of a classic sculpture is far better than the most decent of modern attire. That’s aesthetics: a stale and presumably happening heritage, a glorified irrelevance, an antiquated charm to create foggy, forgetful moments; the bridal finery of heart and swan-like gait of emotions. But does that change the things on the surface, at the practical level, where grotesque reality is forged by the powerful and the strong as per their whims and fancies?

Out of the depressive folds of big questions of whats and whys, finally the only relevant little question, the question about my own self seems manageable. What am I? My restless mind asks. And something beyond what I consider myself to be, but still an inalienable part of me, replies, ‘A tiny bubble of air, a breath, a cycle of inhalation and exhalation.’

I die every time I exhale. I merge with the unbounded, free air. I take birth every time I inhale. Little bit of air then fuels this illusion of body and its organisms. I keep dying and getting born in a sequence. The duality stands as long as the illusion of this sequence of birth and death follows and guides our sense perception. But the moment they coexist, dying and taking birth, side by side, dying and getting born simultaneously, in and out, out and in turn the same. Then you feel that you just are a ‘being’ beyond all illusionary ‘becoming’. A pulse, a rhythm, a reverberation, a drop in water, a molecule in air, a speck in dirt, a fragment in ether...something and everything at the same time. And most probably ‘nothing’ at all as the perception in higher dimension seems to indicate.

Habits

 Making love, a mere repetition; falling in love, a mere reputation; falling out of love, a mere repetition; doing this, a mere repetition; doing that, a mere repetition. I think we are creatures of repetition. And repetition is primarily born of habits. So most of the things we do are the results of habits. Why do we form habits? Possibly because we feel safe. And why do we crave to be safe? Maybe because we have fears. Well, then even fear might be a habit of the mind. 

The moment we allow ourselves to be driven by habits, we limit ourselves to a customised social unit, for our own safety. The society too feels safe when it sees fine creatures of habit. Habits define a safe zone around us. They breed convenience and that's why we hanker after them. They define and limit us and give us a false promise that we will be happy in that little zone. But very soon we find that conveniences born of happiness hardly bring juice and joy to life. It's dry. We still feel something is missing even though we adopt more and more habits to erect sounder structures of safety around us. 

The human spirit wants to fly. And habits are the chain. It wants to be free. But habits hold it back. When we set out to chart out our own path, we have to break the mould of habits. Habits clip our wings. They condition us, limit our potential. We have to do everything in a way that it doesn't turn a habit. Then whatever we do is an ode to the present. It's open ended and creative. We create and move on. The past doesn't drag us. The future doesn't make false promises. We flow. We fly. We live.

A little forest

 Sometime back I had thrown some tulsi seeds in a cleared-up part of a flowerbed. Little saplings grew and now it looks like a tiny tulsi forest. The beauty about lovable volition, the bhaav of love, is that it takes you above physical limitations. With pure volition of love and compassion this little group of tiny plants is as big as Amazon forest. It becomes as pure as any holy site on earth. If you can relate and feel like an ant crawling through this tiny patch of holy leaves, then you of course turn a little child wandering in a big forest. It’s only about the bhaav beyond acts, deeds, words, scriptures, holy pilgrimages. If you are in that bhaav, this little group of plants instantly turns your Gaumukh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Jerusalem or any other holy site. Right here, this very instant. A pure unconditional bhaav takes you above the limitations of space and time. Karma gets unattached from your consciousness during those moments of pure volition and you have the moments of liberation. Call it samadhi, enlightenment or any other word. Words are mere pointers.

As I stare into this little patch of green and with pure volition muse over a little insect going through it, I’m a pilgrim going through a deep forest. As I take bucket bath and chant Ganga Ma’s name with pure heart, I’m bathing in her holy stream. I don’t have any doubt about it. As I walk by a little ancestral shrine in the countryside and bow my head I know I’m having a darshan of Badri, Kedar, Tirupati. If you establish yourself in that unadulterated bhaav, Mother Existence gets everything for you right at that very spot. But we have to walk around a lot ultimately to realize and come back into stillness and divine pause at one point, that pure volition. Then you aren’t anywhere but still everywhere. Then it hardly matters where you are, what you are, what others think of you, whether you are moving or not. The small acquires mammoth proportions to inspire holy awe. The big becomes small allowing you to marvel and analyze at the level of mind. Well, that’s the beauty of pure, unlimited volition.