Kiss the storms

 Storms are storms. Just storms! Nothing else. They do not have much to offer both to nature and humans. They swirl, shriek, shake and prance occupied by an illogical spirit. It is just like nature throwing tantrums. But tantrums are never substantial man; they are just a fragile symbol of something going out of loop for some moments. Look at nature, storms are just temporary, tiny speed-breakers on its peacefully laid out benevolent road of survival, sustenance and evolution. It applies to our lives as well. So when the ship of our being gets jolted by the angry winds just remember this is not the substance of your life. It lies in miles of peaceful, dreamy and majestic waters waiting to kiss the hull of your ship. Coming back to the poor storm. It is just a puny piece of funny quirkiness possessed with suicidal and self-consuming dispirited and rampant self. It dances in pain. While it fizzes and fumes, it burns in its own fire. It dies. While its cremation takes place just be a good pyre-keeper and fulfill all the rights diligently. But keep a safe distance from the fire. It is sure to die. And, more importantly, you are sure to survive to see the flowers blossoming in that very dead ash. So please believe in peace, in tranquility, in harmony, in noiseless distances waiting for you while you feel the heat of the burning aberration. Be a spectator. Be a valiant survivor. Do it for the sake of normal, undisturbed nautical miles lined up to allow the passage of your ship to a lush green island of your destination, where you can drop anchor and enjoy the stillness of life for sometime. It has to be done. Because the course of normalcy is self-sustaining, kind, beneficent, forgiving and parental. The storm just burns in its fury. Allow it to do it. Harmony, orderliness and tranquility draw life-giving sips from their own substance, from the core of their own essence. So be a good businessman. Join the latter's bandwagon. For you own gain.

Being in the womb of non-being

 And everything, dear readers of life, turns out to be just moon-lit fog! Just a sea of shadows, non-being, rippling against its shiny beads of being!

A fleeting grey cast on a still fleetier darker cast, the latter itself a cast on further casting. Endless spools of impressions jumping from being to non-being and vice versa.

Dancing particles in murky haze on the dark stage. The eternal darkness, meanwhile, now and then flashing a smile to show the matter, her teeth, to bite a fleeting morsel of being from the primordial bread of non-being.

When she craves in self-love to embrace herself, she entwines her milky white, lightful, slender fingers around her dark breasts and grip her own dark curves with her white arms. And the shapes zoom in and zoom out in teasing, self-orgasmic delight.

Like waves, shapes merge in the shapeless fluidity. Being and non-being merge in matrimonial delight on the conjugal bed of holy union in the bedchamber of creation. Being mating with non-being to sire shapes and appearances. Shapes merely the stamp of 'being' by the 'non-being'. A canvas both within and without.

Shapes, sounds, appearances and disappearances, all that we perceive certainly exist, but with equal claim by my non-existence. It's just a microcosm between Is and Isn't. A little pulse. A beat.

Romancing with small-time moments

 A wire-tailed swallow couple is seriously on a lookout for their mud nest. They make chipping sounds as if discussing the suitability of a little terrace porch facing this countryside writer's hideout-cum-writing den. Yesterday it rained a bit and they were quick to lay the foundations by ferrying mud from the street and sticking it to the wall. The swallows usually leave a heap of drops under the nest. So in order to avoid a stack of bird-drops in front of my writing table I just stand under the new muddy foundations, giving them a message that there are humans around, expecting them to abandon their ideas about the safety of this place. But they don’t seem to mind it too much. They sit quietly nearby on the cable network wire. They have learnt, I suppose, that to survive in this world they can’t afford to be too shy of we humans.

It’s a busy birdie world looking to set up families in anticipation of the upcoming monsoons. But opportunities have been diminishing for the birds. The walls are plastered making it harder for the little brown house sparrow to seek nesting holes. As the fissures open inwards leaving us trying to cover up the exteriors through swanky posh interiors and cozy homes, the holes vanish from the walls. There is a half-inch plastic pipe across the wall fitted as a passage for electricity wires. There are no wires leaving it as a miniscule tunnel of possibility. A sparrow is struggling at the opening, flapping wings to stay afloat as its probes its beak for any house-making possibilities there. But the opening is too small for a sparrow, or for any bird for that matter.

The village is full of peacocks. We have poisoned the farmlands beyond their sustenance, so here they swarm into the village, pee-hooing day and night. They are respected birds. Indirectly we may take away their habitat but directly we need to show them respect so that Lord Krishna would become happy and shower more and more material blessings on our head. In any case, beyond what, why, if and but theirs is a pleasant sight in the village.

Oh, the doves, the lousiest nest-makers! They did make a change at long last. Instead of laying eggs at the same famished nest on the tree that has seen so many tragedies, they put the twigs on a not-in-use ceiling fan in the barn porch. The wire is disconnected to ward off even accidental start of the fan. From this angle it seems a suitable choice. They put some sinews on the fan-wing. But there was a storm and the fan took a few circles and the eggs fell. Sadly, again a very poor nesting choice and an example of very dumb parenting.

The babblers are busy through the day because a huge rat snake has been spotted among the little cluster of keekars. The giloy creeper has acquired every inch of canopy to give it the feeling of a few square yards of a real pristine forest. In the thickly leafy tent warblers and tailorbirds have ideal nesting site. There must be many nests for a coucal, the brown-winged big jungle crow, is busy at the site for the last couple of days. They are usually heard with their loud coop-coop sounds outside the village along denser shrubbery by the canal bunds. But this one has taken up assignment inside the village. Where there are nests, there lie the possibilities: possibilities of raising successful hatchlings and chances of successful hunt.

Randhir is a smart man. A hardworking farmer he understands the value of each sweat-laden buck. He looks on top of this world. The old age pension is up by 250 rupees. He is freely eating my morning newspaper reading time. ‘I was going for a shave at the barber’s and thought of dropping for some time,’ he says. He has one 500 and two 10 rupee notes in the pocket of his kurta. It’s a great financial scheme to save 10 rupees. The shaving charges are 30 rupees. ‘I usually go in the morning when their box has hardly any change. So after the shave I push forward the 500 note. It gives them a nightmare at the idea of managing so much of change so early in the morning. Then I offer 20 rupees which feels like I have done them a favor even though I pay 10 rupee less,’ he explains his game plan.

Then he shares the latest update on an old distant relative of his. The concerned farmer is a big built fellow of nearly eighty. In the last five years he has fallen twice, once fracturing the hip and fracturing the leg the other time. ‘I asked his grandson to take care of their granddad but the young man appeared full of complain. “He won’t stop eating ghee like he was young,” the burly grandson complained. What has ghee to do with it, I asked. Ghee strengthens the bones. “You didn’t get me uncle. You eat ghee and you get energized beyond your years. You feel like you can jump around like a young colt with fun and frolics and you end up breaking your bones,” the boy explained. So according to him eating lots of ghee is the main reason for the old man’s broken bones,’ he is laughing.

Then the laughter vanishes. An angry babbler above in the parijat tree eases itself and the fluid drops on his pocket as he is spread out relaxed in the chair. It feels like a grenade has fallen. It’s not about the spoilt kurta. It’s always about the money. He looks flustered and in panic. He checks his bucks. A bit of tiny fudge on one of them but still workable. He is relieved. But that breaks his willpower to stay eating my time despite all my covert and overt signs and signals of wanting to be left alone. He gets up and leaves. I thank the entire population of babblers on earth. 

The smart beetle

 Anyone who has worked in the corporate must have heard about ‘smart work’ scoring over ‘hard work’. In the competitive corridors of corporate buildings the so-called smart guys rule supreme. The victory of smart work over hard work spawns many an anecdote. Hard work is symbolically very dramatic. But it’s the smart work that pulls the strings of the mules. It carries a progressive veneer; smartness coming handily convenient. Just like this little rove beetle does. The ants are the hardworking laborers of the insect world. So inevitably there are supposed to be smart corporate guys among insects to take advantage of poor hardworking ants.

The rove beetle is very smart. Using its skill of smell and touch it dupes the ants into taking himself as an ant larvae. The befooled ants protect the impostor and nourish him like their own. The poor ant parents believing they are raising a handsome kid. Meanwhile, apart from all the bounties ferried by the tireless workers, the rove beetle feasts upon the ant eggs and their young ones. Isn’t it a real smart work? Now take a close look at the successful corporate guys around you!

Natural tricksteries in nature

 There is a beautiful set of program hatched by two species of fish. This is a mutual agreement among a species of larger fish and a much smaller fish. Normally the bigger fish eat the smaller ones. But here the predator-prey equation has been postponed for mutual benefits. It’s a ceasefire; burying the hatchet for gains beyond hunger and food. The group of bigger fish becomes stationary, almost sedately retired, and opens their mouth and allows the smaller fish to enter their jaws. Once inside, the little cleaners pick up fungus and other parasites from the mouth. They continue their cleaning services all over the body as well. One party gets its dinner and the other gets cleaned up.

The question is, how has been this fear of the smaller fish for the bigger one stalled in the evolutionary survival chain? To signal that they mean to perform a clean-up service operation, the smaller fish perform a kind of ‘undulating dance’. The bigger fish forgets its hunger and the more pressing issues of cleanliness strike home the message. They stop swimming, open their jaws and turn relaxing like one lies for massage and pedicure.

But then there are always very keen observers of others’ behavior also. A little fish named sabre-toothed blenny has been keeping a keen eye on the housekeeping, cleaning and picking dance of the real cleaner fishes. So here they play smart and perform the same dance. The bigger fish allow them to come near without eating them. They mistake the looters for ministering angels. The cunning blenny then takes a bite of flesh from the unsuspecting host’s belly and scampers away. Well, this would count as paying the costs of cleaning services. But to a different species though.

It seems we can no longer solely count upon human frailties for the darker shades of character. We have co-sharers of the burden. There are species that are anciently ingenious in their machinations to loot, plunder, deceive and run away with their booty. In the game of survival, there is a highly creative incandescence that lights up the cells in all types of manifestations around.