The over-smart spider

 

In an automated and mechanized world it’s not about good and bad; it’s primarily about good, better and best—strictly in terms of numbers. The entire moral façade crumbles and the vast potential of our fabulous brain is as much within the reach of the evil as it’s available for the good. With the equation of good and bad sidelined, the human race enters a hazardous zone. The quest for betterment, for more efficiency bypasses the check-dams of morality and ethics. It’s a blind race for achieving more and more at any cost. When there is no consideration for the costs that we have to pay, we naturally cross the balance sheet. We then beat even nature in hatching disasters and hazards.

In the eternal quest for more and more and better and better we fly too high, burn our wings and fall down. The unreined and unchecked impulse to go for betterment in every sphere of life churns out models of production and social norms that come with open-ended potential. They seem to facilitate a process but carry an equal amount of potential for adverse effects that require solutions. For example, artificial intelligence will of course churn out interesting and more and more media content, but it will put challenges in the form of manipulated synthetic media content and deepfakes. For the latter we need more and more technologies to manage the fallouts. After a time, it becomes very difficult to tell whether we are creating more problems or solutions. The confusion results in a melee. Just mere exhaustion and tiredness born of relentless march makes us believe that we are progressing. While in reality we are simply throwing arms in darkness, caught in the web of our creation, like an over-smart spider spinning a castle of web and then forgetting the way out.

The beauty of black dots on a white sheet

 

There is an age-old proverb in the villages. Making a child laugh and playful might not earn you a good name, but if she cries while under your care, it will surely earn you a bad name. Negative experiences leave a far bigger impact on us than positive ones. One sour word very easily undoes the sweetness of hundreds of beautiful words. This proclivity to lock the ‘negative’ in our mind while filtering out hundreds of ‘positives’ is the cause of strife, tension, anxiety and discomfort within. It also very easily sours relationships.

We simply judge people for the ‘exceptions’ in their behavior, ignoring the common ‘mundanities’ of their demeanor. We simply catch the black dot on the otherwise white board. It even seems that we are operating as watchdogs looking and sniffing for the chinks in the armor. I sometimes wonder whether we are actually companions while walking with someone or are we spies going with a mission to catch the other person on the wrong foot. No wonder we feel so vulnerable and insecure most of the time. A spy on a secretive mission will of course be on his toes and full of tension.

It becomes so easy to blame others for all the problems in our lives. But why would we always go searching for the tiny black dot on a white canvas? Why would we simply forget the rest of the white sheet? We are always looking, peeking, searching for those chinks in the armor. It just shows how insecure we are. What breeds this insecurity? It’s caused by the conflicts squirming inside us. The friction caused by our quest for the eternal ease of ‘being’ and the poor ‘becoming’ that we are molded into by conditioning, roles, stereotypes, expectations.

Most of the time we are self-charged on the grand mission of aggravating our own miseries. We are suitably helped all along by our ability to hold onto the master illusion that others are responsible for all the shit flying around in our lives.

We are always pulled in two directions. Very rarely we just 'are'--just being there without any direction of opinion and judgments. Then we feel the pressure of this pull and get scared. We are a scared species. In order to somehow clear our guilt for not being what we are supposed to be we put the blame on others. 

To have that conflict-free ease of being, we have to learn to retain our vision spread out to still see the surrounding white even though the black dots appear here and there. We have to accept and view situations and people in totality. We have to accept this law that an all-white scenario is impossible to sustain as per the laws of nature. It’s a dynamic canvas. Things and people change and shift in shapes, sizes and color. They aren’t stones that they will retain the same appearance. They aren’t dead. They too are evolving and growing, shifting and changing as much as we are doing the same.

It’s very easy to theoretically discuss, write and understand this fact. But it’s very difficult to bring it into practice. Anything that requires rewiring the habitual network needs a regular exercise. So we can remind ourselves regularly that people aren’t stone idols cast in the mold of our expectations. They are an evolving life. They will grow and change and come out of the mold we have created for them to fit our needs and desires. Accept this fluidity and sanctity of change in a live form and most of the judgments and conflicting thoughts and opinions will drop of their own. We then accept the black dots on a white canvas.

The family of liqor-lovers

 

It’s a family of five first-rate liquor-lovers. The elder brother is married and has two sons. His two younger brothers are unmarried and stay with them. All five men love drinking to the core. That leaves the sole female in the house, the eldest brother’s wife, in a precarious position. There are frequent quarrels; with so many liquor-lovers within a single house, family honor, or dishonor, goes vigorously public. Many relatives try to resolve the issue and fail.

It’s a democratic world where the majority has to have its say. She is always outnumbered in the equation between drinkers and non-drinkers. At last, a wise old distant relative, taking out the golden nuggets from the innermost precincts of his being, gives his sagely advise: ‘See you fellers, since it’s difficult for five people to change for the sake of just one, let’s try changing the one for the benefit of the five. Why don’t you guys include her also in your drinking gang?’

The golden words arrive like a fresh gale with a subliminal hum. Now any other talk is a pointless distraction. The advice carries a unique versatility. They burst out with loud agreement nodding their heads in consensually festive air. The kindly advice has been firmly injected in their mindscape. The poor woman is inconsolable, ‘Any day they will pour daroo in my mouth by force!’ She is genuinely panicked and rightly so. Well, if they succeed I would say that it would hit the golden pinnacle of the art and craft of liquor-love.

A noisy neighbor

 

A tailorbird may weigh hardly ten grams but its indomitable vocals surely weigh a ton at least. They can drill a hole in the armor of your patience. Similarly, a butterfly is almost weightless but doesn’t it carry tones of colors as it amusedly swerves around. Coming to the tailorbirds, maybe one of their chicks has jumped out of the nest and is hiding in the flowerbed to get training before full launch on the stage of life. I’m all for peace and I need just a couple of square yards in the corner to read my morning newspaper. But they are unsparing. The angry Papa almost crashed into my face. Given their situation, anyone’s presence in the yard is an offense to them. Taking me as a threat to its kid getting trained in the cluster of flowers, the angry bird flew into my face with furious yells of sippi-sippi-sippi in hateful plentitude.

Well, that makes it sound very close to my mispronounced nickname. My father, surely the most read person in the area, gave me the pet name Sufi. He understood the mystical liberal chimes emanating from the sect so named in Islam. The liberal philosophy of Sufism was close to his heart. But to the work-broken tongues of the farmers such soft cultural nuances hardly make any sense. Scarcely anyone had any clue to the exact pronunciation and meaning of the word ‘Sufi’. Most of them started calling me Suppi, Soopi, Sopi, or anything for that matter except Sufi. It just didn’t fit with the bucolic tongue. One tauji had firm belief that my name is ‘Sukhi’ meaning someone happy and peaceful. Well, that came nearest to the real word, at least in meaning. And now the tailorbird has devised a rapid-fired version in its own birdie language. 

The citizens of a lesser world

 

In a corner in the garden some dry leaves are self-deposited by mother nature in its very own bank of silence, solitude and stability. Slugs crawl over them in safety without getting trampled. They leave a slimy trail as they slowly move at their snail pace. This silvery slime shines later as the hallmark of a snail’s path well trodden, or a journey successfully completed. This is a zigzag pattern of silvery lines, notifying a slowly busy world of a tiny colony of slugs. Walk slowly but substantially like they do.

Tailorbirds use camouflage to good effect while making their nest. It thus comes almost with a sense of victory to discover a tailorbird nest on the older parijat tree. Parijat’s is a big heart-shaped hardy leaf and the tiny birdie tailors love the fabric for sewing a nest. But the parijat is usually a small tree and the nest is always under risk. But this time they have chosen well. It’s on a branch that protrudes away from the canopy and the bough is thin enough to deter a cat from risking a fall in order to reach the nest. The leafing is dense. Where you situate yourself in life means half the battle won. And they have done so. I hear the softest of jangling chirps in the nest. There are hatchlings.

Squirrels are the main egg-stealers but they stay away due to the roaming feral cats. As if to keep the cats around they have placed it very strategically. To contain a smaller enemy you need to somehow bring a bigger enemy into the picture. On top of that they keep tweeting throughout the day. The cats get confused and spend more time under the tree. Little do they realize that they act as nothing short of guards for the tailorbirds above. It further means that a lot many other predators are also kept at bay. The tailorbird couple successfully runs their show given their tireless vocal chords.

A red-vented bulbul was seen curiously peeking over their little leafy cup and one of the parents crashed its tiny body into the bigger bird, startling it and leaving it almost off-guard. It flew away in disgust. There aren’t many who would mess with parents turning suicidal in their bravery to protect their children.

A bully cat is snoozing in the damp, shadowed part of the flowerbed right under the tree. The tailorbirds are pik-pikking nonstop. They just love doing it. It seems their Ikigai. They seem to be vainly joyful while raising the ruckus even when they are angry over something.

On a neighboring roof a peahen gets fed up with the noise and takes to its cumbersome flight all of a sudden. Peahens can fly more than the males of their species. They hardly possess the burden of the tail fan like their males. Very common looking in comparison to the grand romeo, they but have the advantage of flying greater distances to flirt and seek love. Thus builds up another morning in the little garden yard of a small-time countryside writer. And the time slowly moves with its day-to-day irritants and pleasures laden on its mundane apple cart.