My cricketing days

 India won the cricket world cup in 1983. The entire country got so inspired that millions of childhoods and boyhoods in the 80s and 90s of the last century were almost hijacked by the cricketing spirit. People walked, talked and ate cricket. We did the same in our village. It was more or less hit-and-run cricket on the uneven stubbed ground. It was all about wild swings and weird heaves. It hatched shocking and dramatic events sometimes. Farthest from any cricketing technique, the chance factor was the real master of the game.

Anand decided to be the fastest bowler in this part of India. I was maybe in eighth class then. He ran in from the bunchgrass shrubbery, beyond the boundary line, and would throw terribly unpredictable deliveries. He was concerned about speed only, so any direction, height, width, line or length hardly mattered to him. In any case these were very fast deliveries. Add to it the fact that it was a cork ball, almost double the weight of the usual leather ball, uneven pitch and the completely unguarded batsman (almost naked from the cricketing gear point of view). No wonder the equation turned almost disastrous for the poor batsman. In such conditions the bowlers were demons and they ruled the game. We played six or eight over matches. It was all that was needed to chuck out the entire batting lineup. The entire team’s score would be usually in measly twenties. Someone going into double digits was equal to hitting a ton.

I was facing the crazy speedster that day. He ran in like a rampaging bull from the edge of the pond and threw it with so much force that it came almost parallel and hit me on my left cheek. I instantly collapsed. I envisioned surreal crystallizations of night-sky constellations in broad daylight. Helmet, pads, guards were the things which most of us hadn’t seen even once in life. Still most of us dreamt of playing for India one day. Vow, the innocence of childhood! They lifted me and put me on a greener part of the ground. Very caring on their part I have to accept. It was terribly painful. But full credit to the bowler that he had hit it so perfectly, nicely we can say, at the luckiest point on my cheek that my jaw, teeth, tongue and bones cannot complain at the memory. There was no damage. A slight deviation in angle or positioning would have shattered my jaw. Yes, the cheek muscles can complain a bit because I carried a big laddoo on my cheek for many days. Our science teacher Master Surest chuckled with glee whenever he saw me. He hated any kind of game or physical exercise. Science and mathematics was all that meant to be the focus of cosmos to him. Looking at the laddoo he seemed to have drawn satisfaction that at long last the art of game was defeated by the art of science.

Bhindo also used to try fast bowling. Imitating Anand, he would also run from the boundary line. But he was so fragile and weak in limbs that his delivery arrived as a perfect spin ball and I would usually hit it to the fence. He possessed a very big calculating mind in a small body. Maybe chess was good for him but he stuck to cricket. I was the one who symbolized an all-encompassing rival to him, almost equal to an enemy in the childhood world. Only God knows why there was such proliferation of antagonism in him at my merest sight. Whenever I hit him for a four or six, he would cringingly walk down the pitch and would gnash his very cute buckteeth like a stinging rabbit, ‘Ma kasam, I would hit you for a six on your first ball to me!’ So trying with an incisive longing to keep his kasam, he got bowled by me on the first ball itself. Actually seething with anger and hate he blindly ran down the pitch and it was easy to scatter his wickets when he lowered his guard so madly. His kasam lay tattered with the wickets. The world slipped away from under his feet. His heightened sensitivity hitting a tornado, we found him crying profusely behind a heap of bricks. His eyes were red with tears and the unkempt kasam. I had to say sorry to save his life. Clean-bowleding such guys is almost like stirring a proverbial hornet’s nest. Who knows such crazy boys might run into a speeding truck to save themselves from the unbearable pain of defeat. I loaned him a few comics which he never returned; maybe as a revenge to settle the scores with me.

Bhindo was junior by a year to me in the school. A very hardworking student, he would mug up the content like a parrot and reproduce it on the answer sheet to lay claim among the first three in the class. Once during the exam, Bhindo was heard sobbing very painfully. It was already ten minutes since the paper started. Many students had started with a writing sprint like the athletes shoot off like a rocket in 100 m race. But Bhindo was caught in a logjam. He had forgotten the first line of the answer. He got nervous and more so as he saw his nearest rival, a serious and self-contained guy, scribbling away his answer at a smart pace. Every passing second was acute and upsetting. Sobbing and tears running down freely from his big male goat’s eyes, he was heard pleading to the rampaging rival, ‘Randhir, Randhir, don’t be so bad. Kindly tell me the first line!’ He could garner some sympathy for all his tears. A kind teacher had to stop his piteous sobbing by telling him the tormenting first line. Bhindo stood second that year. ‘If not for that pagal first line I would have beaten you fair and square!’ he congratulated the boy who had scored over him.

I was a slightly build boy but others held the view that I possessed stamina and strength normally expected in a hefty boy of that age. Acknowledging the energetic verve in me, the kabbadi boys would sometimes include me in the game. So I sometimes participated in kabbadi games as an extra. Bhindo felt crestfallen. Egged on by the simmering flame of competition, he also had to be a kabbadi champion, if I was taken as an extra by the muscular boys of that game. To be honest it was incredible audacity on his part given his fragile body. He didn’t know the risks of this game of raw strength. He nearly died under a heap of burly ruffian kabbadi boys. There he came out stumbling and floundering, the stems and stalks of his pride almost uprooted by the rotund boys of kabbadi. He cried piteously and blamed me for hatching a plot to break his bones.

If he saw me running, he would declare that he would break the national record in running one day. And he carried his vendetta with his growing years. When I cleared the UPSC mains and got interviewed for the coveted Indian civil services, a visibly shaken Bhindo paid me a visit. ‘Subhash Chander Bose had cleared this exam! How can you do it? I cannot believe!’ he threw it in my face. He declared in full honesty that I was spreading lies. I showed him the interview letter. He read it with shaking hands. The paper literally got burnt under his malevolent stare. He crashed into a chair with a heavy gasp, completely muddled and passive. I had to offer him a glass of water to help him overcome the shock.

To me it was light and entertaining. In the jolly backdrop of such mild skirmishes our roller coaster adolescence brought us to the threshold of youth and its serious matters about career and job. Thank God he got appointed as a government primary school teacher and I’m just a non-descript village-based writer. This at least gives him a semblance of solace that life is worth living at long last. 

Defeating death with a joke

The legendary Indian soldier, Field Marshal Sam Makekshaw, fought as a junior officer in the British Indian Army during the Second World War. In a daring endeavor to catch a strategic hill in Burma, bravely leading from the front, he was hit by a light machine gun burst. He had nine bullets lodged in his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. His orderly Mehar Singh lifted his injured boss on shoulders and walked fourteen miles to reach a military field hospital. His torso ripped apart and bleeding like flooded rivers, the young officer seemed sure to die.

From the look of it, only death seemed a reprieve for the injured officer. The British senior officer, fully aware of the Indian junior officer’s brave fight, tore his own Military Cross (one of the most prestigious military awards) and put it on the chest of the apparently dying soldier saying, ‘Military Cross is given to only living soldiers. So hereby I confer it to you while you are still alive.’

The Australian surgeon, heavily burdened under the big tasks with limited resources, thought it wastage of time and medical supplies to attend a definitely dying soldier. Sam had a few traces of consciousness at that time. ‘What happened to you?’ the doctor asked ironically. And the legendary soldier’s answer would later change history, not just for India but for Bangladesh as well. ‘A mule hit me,’ Manekshaw joked, a weak smile emerging from his messed up body. The Australian surgeon was shocked. ‘If someone can crack a joke even in this situation then his life is worth saving!’ he said. He operated upon the soldier and extracted the bullets from his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. It was a bloody operation; a major part of Manekshaw’s intestines had to be cut out. But bravest are the ones who can smile and joke even in the face of death. By cracking the joke with death staring at his face, Sam had already defeated death.

The rest is history. Sam Maneskshaw not only survived but went onto play important roles in all the wars including Pakistan (1947-48), China (1962), ending with Bangladesh war (1971) when he was the army chief.

He was as much famous for his bravery and military strategy as he was for his sense of humor. If not for this sense of humor, the Australian surgeon won’t have even considered treating him. If not for this sense of humor, Sam would have died with a borrowed, consolatory Military Cross on his chest. With this sense of humor, he retired as a Field Marshal, living to the ripe old age of late nineties, holding the proud baton of a perpetual soldier who is entitled to a salute from the highest of the high in the country as long as he is alive. I think this unbuckling sense of humor won him the toughest battle of his life by defeating death.

So keep your sense of humor dear readers! Keep it alive! It’s precious because it defeats even death sometimes.

LOVE

There is abundance of love around, of family, of nature, of birds, of animals, flowers, everything in fact. When hate vanishes, love blooms and you soar high with such love instead of falling. You love all simply because you don't hate anyone. Love for a man or woman is the first step on the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, but don't just stop at the point. It's just a beginning. From particular to the universal. The limited love is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, universal love. So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

Love you all!

The infinite perceiving itself through the finite

 Nothing stands in isolation. Can a drop of water stand alone in the ocean? Can an ocean exist without a drop, i.e., with a hole in its heart and the drop missing? Same is the cosmos. It's one continuity in one or the other form. Sea is nothing but drops drops everywhere in the expansion of its geographical spread. Same is with the super sea of cosmic consciousness. It's merely individual consciousness everywhere. Now the question is: how come there is a perception of individual consciousness? Well, that's how the fabric is! Start dividing a sea into tiniest dots! What happens? All we have littler seas made of tinier drops! The threshold from individual to infinite intelligence exists and doesn't exist at the same time. Possibly the sea itself perceives itself like a drop. Divide it into countless drops, they retain the feeling of individuality. Individual consciousness is thus nothing but a point of perception in the transforming whirlpool where the elements are going cyclically. Is a drop fundamentally and qualitatively different from a big sea? It isn't! Coming to humanoids. The so called conscious is the littlest bit of perception surrounded by the subconscious, which in turn melts into the infinite intelligence and consciousness pervading all around. That's the ladder to spread yourself, to feel more meaningful. One's subconscious part of mind is most active just before sleep and immediately after waking up. That's when the gates open tangibly for taking a quantum jump from conscious to subconscious and further on into super-consciousness. Grab it. Put your affirmation and claim to a larger self. There are infinite possibilities. What you seek at your greediest best may not be more than a drop of water desiring to double its size. You have the pathway etched to be the sea itself. You already are. Just that all that remains to be done is to start seeing through the walls of conscious, watch eagerly through the windows of subconscious in those walls and get connected to the infinite right there in front of you. It's suitable to start with tangibles to break the virtual shackles, just like it's easier to start with body in yoga. The higher battles with more virtual demons are managed further on the path. At the mind front, it's more convenient to start with the conscious part because it's tangible through its operational part through thoughts and emotions. There starts the second tier of management leading to the subconscious part and further on to be out of the prison to come united with everything around. It's not mother existence's concern whether there are storms lashing a drop, pond or sea, or peaceful calm waters pervade. To her indiscriminating eyes all things are just as they are. What happens in the drop of your consciousness is solely your own concern. You create the storms or peace in the tea cup of your existence. And the tools to make and break are conscious thoughts and their shadows in the form of emotions and feelings. They majorly decide the energy pattern pervading across this specific pattern of awareness, this little arrangement of energy within the super sea of energy. Pain, suffering, disease, stress and tensions are mere effects, little obstruction in the flow of river, the life stream. And the repair work primarily begins from the conscious part of the mind , which operates through thoughts, emotions and feelings. So just like u go gymming, go gymming with thoughts. Work like a mason. And etch your reality, your better self on the subconscious, which in turn reflects as your truth on the endless canvas hung around with its infinite dimensions. Good luck!

A condolence gathering

 

In rural Haryana, to take anyone’s name properly is against the protocol. So Randhir becomes Dheere, meaning slow. But he is a quick and very agile dairy farmer. Wiry and fast. He is small but strong. He also washes the dead, puts them in new clothes, prepares arthi with bamboo and straw, and sees the dead on the last leg of their journey.

There is a condolence gathering. An old woman has died. They are talking about drinkers. All of them drink pretty heavily but those who drink throughout the day are considered the drunkard cases in the village society. The case they are discussing happened in a neighboring village. A young man passed out under the scorching rays of July sun after drinking too much. He was wearing just shorts. His once tanned brown strong body was found almost burnt black.

Dheere says that it would have been the same with Beere also. He saw him lying on the dusty field path outside the village, taking what he firmly believed to be the last painful breaths with painful jerks to his body. Dheere lies down on the ground and gives aching jerks to his body to give a demonstration of how he thought Beere was dying. Dheere waited under a nearby keekar so that he could take on his usual duties with the corpse. But then Beere stumped him. He got up, took cleaning swipes with his palms at his soiled pants and tottered ahead on the path of life, leaving all the yamdoots and bier-makers waiting and even annoyed.

Narender becomes Neender. He also is a part of the condolence gathering where they are discussing the matters of death so seriously. He also shares his quite recent close encounter with the guards of mortality. He is a fifty something stocky fellow. He got electrocuted while watering his iron-bodied cooler on the terrace. They found him senseless. The village quack doctor was called. He declared him dead. There was no pulse. That was all he knew about the matter and his set of injections and pills that he had assembled for common diseases wouldn’t serve anymore. He stepped aside with a sullen face expecting a full mourning blast by the family’s females.

Once the doctor said ‘no’ everybody clucked their tongue to nullify any plan to take him to the hospital at the earliest. ‘There is no use, he is gone!’ the unruly conglomerate around the supposedly dead man agreed in a loud chorus. Then a few chance words from a woman saved his life. ‘Put pressure on his chest and blow air into his mouth!’ a woman piped in with her enigma-injecting suggestion. She meant resuscitation. Two hefty ninety-kg fellows, at the peak of their rotund youth, got into the business. One fellow sat on Neender’s stomach and heavily pommelled his chest with his crude palms and fists. The other one blew blizzards of air to give him the hiss and kiss of life. It was a torrential action lasting a few minutes. Neender’s soul was sucked back into the body by the intense storm raised by the two youths. His ribs and muscles are aching now even after two weeks as the poignant symbols of their effort to defeat death from his portals. ‘They seemed bent upon killing me,’ he complains.