Grandpa's story

 It was a tough life for Grandfather. His father was bitten to death by bumble bees when he was only twelve. Grandfather had three siblings, all younger to him, two brothers and a sister. Those were the days of family feuds over land. The extended family had lots of domineering males and fearing for her life Grandfather’s widowed mother left the scene. At such a young age Grandfather became the family head. A mother abandoning her children left a deep scar on his heart for which he perhaps carried a heavy grudge against the entire women race. They were so young and had been left to fend for themselves, so maybe he was slightly justified in his discomfort about trusting women in general.

Well, they had to literally survive at the mercy of the clan members who tilled Grandfather’s land. The children toiled in the fields and got survival crumbs. Grandfather was very fond of studies but his life situation never allowed him to go beyond class eight.

When the boys came of age, taking possession of their land was a big milestone to be crossed. A kindly but burly farmer stood by them as they, armed with hayforks and sticks, tilled their first furrows as independent tillers of their share of land.

From the standards of the rustic society, Grandfather was almost a mathematics wizard. The village patwari had to depend on him to calculate and measure land. Grandfather loved playing with numbers. It seemed to be his Ikigai.

He once enrolled himself in the army. A very athletic and agile man he was making a good mark in running and kabbadi as a trainee recruit. His younger brother was also in the army and in the absence of senior menfolk the wives and children faced a lot of problems back home. Seeing their plight, one of his nephews, a zamadar in the British army, got his name struck off from the roll, on the plea that his uncle had run away from home, leaving behind his wife and children at the mercy of fate. In this way, Grandfather’s army career was nipped in the bud.

He was the only educated person in the surrounding area so he was then appointed as a primary school teacher. He held his tiny school in chaupals, where he taught all the primary students gathered in one group at a single place. These never exceeded a dozen or two constituting a single class for all the students at various rungs of academics from class one to five.

My granduncle was serving as a jailor of Multan prison and my father in fact did his schooling from the first to third standard from Multan. Later, Father would boast of his Multan schooling and fondly reminisced that the prisoners treated him like a prince.  

In 1947 the partition-time tragedy broke millions of dreams including Grandfather’s teaching career. There was an influx of refugees. Grandfather was relieved of his teaching duties and his position was given to some poor refugee trying to begin a new chapter here in India after the carnage.

A tragedy then struck the family. Granduncle died of tuberculosis followed by his wife shortly later. My own grandmother also died. So here was Grandfather all alone with his own son (my father) aged around ten and two little sons of the deceased granduncle, one aged five and the other just two. My second granduncle set up his separate family. So Grandfather had the task of rearing three sons singlehandedly. He stood up in his role as a crude version of father and mother both embaled in one unit. He didn’t remarry, fearing the stepmother would turn the life of the three boys very difficult. As I have said he had his own reasons to look at women with apprehension.

He then worked as a farmer and made several entrepreneurial attempts apart from his farming tasks. One of these was brick-making. Those were rudimentary brick-kilns where the bricks were baked in a heap under fuel wood, coal and dung cakes. Being a mathematician he was more into numbers and calculations, taking it as a big mathematical puzzle. His clever partners, who ran field operations, easily duped him while Grandfather was busy with his calculation books.

Grandfather appeared to be farsighted for those times. He found that Bengal had hardly any milk because their cattle were so small and famished. He mustered a band of like-minded farmers. They chose buxom-most buffaloes and these were boarded on a cargo train. The entourage chugged ahead on a long journey to Calcutta. Little did they realize that the Bengali babus hardly had a stomach for Punjabi lactose. They were, and still are, happy with their fish and scores of cuisines coming out of their cultural box. As can be expected the venture failed miserably.

Once, a farmer owed some money to Grandfather. The said farmer and his clan migrated to Pilibheet in Nepal terai and started farming there on leased lands. Grandfather knew how to keep his debtor still in sight. He followed them there with some calves. He thought that grazing on their land would fatten the calves and this would at least cover the interest on the money. The calves grew really well among the lush Himalayan foothill greenery. But there were leopards and tigers ready to pounce and take away their share from Grandfather’s debt recovery scheme. They smartly chucked away Grandfather’s interest earnings that manifested in the form of oodles of muscles on the growing cattle. Grandfather was left with one sturdy bull to show some proof of his venture to the villagers back home. He thought if he could transport that impressive bull to the village, it would help him save his name as an entrepreneur. The journey was stretched over many parts including walking and motor transport. During one leg of the journey the bull jumped from the wagon and broke its leg. Grandfather arrived at the village with a famished, limping bull.

Irrespective of all his setbacks he maintained his passion for mathematics. Its ripples would touch us till matriculation when he tried to solve algebra through his arithmetic techniques because algebra was outside his domain.

Rasleela

In the untouched, unmoving majesty of this virgin forest, an old, pale banyan leaf snaps the last sinew of its twigged bondage and flows down to enter the slumberous folds of the dusty bed prepared by mother earth. An end? Or a new beginning? Maybe both. Maybe none. It just is. But it’s a leap into a broader dimension to be a part of another game.

Isn’t there playfulness around? Beginning, ending, birth, death, life, living, all connote a play. Be playful. Like Krishna! A series of playfulness from rasleela with gopis to killings for dharma in the battlefield and lastly his own death by a chance arrow in a forest. A beautiful play! Embrace playfulness. Why be serious yar? Let’s leave seriousness for our weird, funny, scary, stony, sulky corpses once we exit this avatar.

Human Touch

Being a bookish guy, I’m not much into physical activities. But walking on pilgrimages seems to add a different dimension of physicality and I’m able to surpass my individual capacity and surprise my own humble self sometimes.

I share a special bond with my brother and we are here at Rishikesh at the yearend to say a bye of gratitude to the year going out and greet the new year with hope in the lap of mother Ganga. We bathe in Maa Gnaga’s holy waters early in the morning and start on the foot track to the holy shrine of Baba Neekanth. The track passes through verdant Shivalik hills of Rajaji National Park. It’s fresh and rejuvenating. At the grossest level it’s a nice exercise for one’s legs and lungs. For those who are looking for the nutrition of their souls, the names of Maa Ganga and Baba Neelkanth do the task naturally.

We go on day one and return pretty joyfully in the evening. The next day we again take early morning bath in the holy water of Ganga Maa and suddenly feel so reinvigorated to start walking again to the holy shrine. The same happens on the third day. And before we realize we have walked to the holy place on three consecutive days. Our schedule didn’t allow us to continue the walk on the fourth day, otherwise I believe I would have continued for maybe a week at least. Bathing in Maa Ganga’s sacred waters cleanses one of age-old sins. So getting one free of tiredness and fatigue is a mere cakewalk for the divine waters.

Each day, an old woman would greet us from a distance during the last stretch of the track to Baba Neelkanth. This is the offseason for the pilgrimage and very few people hit the track. She peers into the distances to spot some odd pilgrim. She is an old woman beaten by poverty, age, circumstances. Almost beaten by life and its leela, she has a pleading voice. It strikes you. Her helplessness and disadvantaged situation acting like a speed-bump, pulling at your conscience, forcing you to slow down, look at her. And that sometimes forces a few pilgrims to take out a coin or a ten-rupee note and offer it to her.

On the way up, the first day, we have given her ten rupees. She would continue showering blessings at your back as you walked away. I heard her till the next bend and waved and looked back a few times. On the way back, she again accosts us as fresh pilgrims. ‘Tai, you can see I know. We already met on the way up!’ I laugh. ‘Yes son, I know. But beta I have to ask from you even on the way down because I have collected too little money,’ she tells us very honestly. We give her a little money again.

It gets repeated on the second day as well. Somehow I felt very easy with her and talked and joked and she laughed. On the third day, December 31, we decide to give her hundred rupees as a new year gift. And what does a tiny currency note mean as a gift if you don’t sit by that person and have a word of empathy and kindness? So today we sit by her and offer her the gift money.

Then the spontaneity of those somber, kind, holy moments created a simple reality of human-to-human connect. Its real significance would strike me later and it does even now with a powerful effect. As we held her hands and offered her new year gift with kind words of happiness in the new year, the check-dam of her age-old emotions burst out. She started crying. These were tears of pain, happiness, suffering, hope. All mixed in one. She seemed a little baby crying for affection, for sympathetic human touch. My brother is a spiritualist in practice. I have a very high regard for his genuine values that he keeps on the practical platform of life. But what he does now even stumps me. I see him putting his both hands on her head, his both hands affectionately covering her head. He touches her like a father, like a son, almost like a god.

Her lifelong pains melt. She flows. She cries profusely. I have no doubt ours happens to be the first human touch of love, respect and dignity in her entire life. Her soul felt it. As a poor begging woman, the best she can expect from people is some charity money even from the kindest of souls. I felt she wasn’t prepared for this warm, genuine human touch. The way she gave into it seemed as if it was her first experience that made her realize she was also a human being. She is also something above and beyond a beggar. I know there are people who would throw a thick wad of money even without taking care to look how she looked. But will that enrich her soul that way this touch did?

We move onto the holy shrine of Lord Neelkanth. She is still crying with love and gratitude for that human touch and we can hear her blessings till the next turn. On the way back, I can see that she is peering into the distance to see us. As we reach her she greets us with a cheerful demeanor and smiles. As we sit by her to have some more chat, the sweetest fruits of human touch and kind words drop like a blessing on us. She opens her soiled, torn cloth bag and opens a treasure of human love. We get the best new year gifts by a devi. In our absence, she had hastened to a nearby pathside tiny tea seller and bought gifts for us. She gives us our gifts like a kindest mother. It’s a packet of Kurkure crunchies and a small packet of biscuits. We are the richest people in the world. I’m not a fan of crunchies but this one I would relish like a little kid. After all it’s a gift by a mother.

Did our few ten-rupee notes and one one-hundred note opened this lottery of human affection? No. Money is too small to buy human empathy and love. It was the human touch and kind words. Touch at the closed stony gates of a poor human and see what treasures topple out, the treasures that would have withered and died unseen if not for your touch.

We feel so indebted for the priceless gift that we offer her some more money and she takes it with confidence and faith like a mother receives her well-deserved share from her sons. She is very happy and points to her tattered sari and says she will buy a new one with this money.

As we get up to go and express our hope to see her again sometime in the new year, she starts crying again and says who knows she may not be alive by that time. Through tears she says that her life might be over before we come again on this path. I can feel that she would very much like to meet us—for that human touch. Thankfully there are enough kind souls who would at least give a bit of money which is also necessary for survival in this world. But how I wish there were more people who provide human touch as well, a touch that reminds a poor person that she also is a human being.

We moved slowly on our path, her blessings showering like rose petals from behind. It was a sad feeling, somehow; leaving someone behind with sad tears—even if these are of gratitude and love—is too much for a poetic man like me. I looked back a few times and waved and she waved in reply. At the bend I turned again, had a glimpse of her waving hand, heard a feeble reverberation of her blessings and moved on with the hope that she will be there when I return sometime in future.        

             

In celebration of life and living

 

Why would there be sense pleasure in nature? Can you imagine any type of life possible without it on the planet? Is manifestation possible at all without sense-driven gratification? Isn’t sensual pacification the gateway from the unmanifest to the manifest? When a flower blooms isn’t it a result of the black-bee’s sense gratification? When a rishi goes into the caves to launch his war against the senses, isn’t he himself a result of the sense gratification of his parents? When I aim for the ultimate gratification, the much cherished perpetual bliss, isn’t that a super gratification?

Poor sense pacifications, they are such a maligned entity. Their theoretical negation forms the base all the endless stream of words in holy books and scriptures. While the reality is that at the level of life’s manifestation, as it’s on earth, how will you even survive without this faculty? These are merely the faculties that have evolved with us in the game of survival. The key lies in their balanced usage for a wholesome life.

Those on the path of so-called spirituality start with an acute sense of some imbalance, some pain, loss, bitterness. The latter are just results of mismanaged, skewed usage of our natural faculties. I have seen very well-poised and balanced people serving as hawkers and rickshaw pullers in crowded bazaars; almost saintly in demeanor; at so much ease with whatever nature has given them at the level of senses and their use. And I have seen high priests, the careerist spiritualists, unfortunately most of them in fact, who are well decked up in the armor of dharma and holy look, but peace is farthest from their eyes. Many of them take a cute tumble with their lady followers.

It’s only about being at ease with yourself; nothing less, nothing more. One can use any kind of words to describe it. There is no end to words. They are the products of the faculty of our mind only. Sometimes back an old sadhu was ruminating that he got a nightfall which he considered a sin. Well, had you been healthy in your ideas about sex and women, had been balanced in your ideas and usage of this natural sense-born faculty, you won’t have been crying over night falls in old age, I thought. It’s not about negating sense-born desires. It’s not even about getting saturated with them. It’s all about balance. Like when you eat. Not much to give you ache, not too less to starve you. Like Buddha realized when he almost died after starving himself for months.

Learn to be at ease dear brothers and sisters. If you are sitting in a brothel and are at ease with yourself, you are your own saint. If you are occupying the highest seat of a pontiff and itching with restlessness then you are a novice still. So learn the art of being at ease with yourself wherever you are situated. Balance. Balance. Balance. In everything that life offers. Accept. Accept the windfalls of the pleasure of flesh with humility and gratitude and pay back with sincere hard work. It’s a beautiful world because of the teasing interplay of sensory desire seeking, not because of those who preach against it and keep smoldering with desire within.

You dear seeker, you ought to feel obliged to the teasing ways of desires. You have been given this beautiful life by an exciting play of desires between your parents. I am sure they were not meditating while you got launched into the womb. Desire is the force that’s catapulting the forces of creation and generation: at the level of species in mating urge, and huge galaxies expanding at the cosmic level. That’s the force that pulls this cosmos. Those who are running away from life, relationships, needful responsibilities, mundane pleasures need to remember that most of our gods, rishis and munis had beautiful partners, families and children. They are called bhagwan because they used their energies in an optimum way and managed their sensual faculties in the way they wanted. They used them in a balanced way instead of falling imbalanced to one particular impulse.

In balanced amount even poison serves like amrit. In imbalanced amount even amrit turns poison. A judicious mix of what nature has given is nothing short of enlightenment. Why put your fate solely in the pages of holy books? They are mere indicators, just creation of the minds who could write better than you and me. So ease up. Just be. Accept what you are. Why negate? As the component of being at ease builds up, the tendency to go into impulsive, imbalanced use of sense pleasure faculties will get transformed itself. New neurological circuits develop that drive more hormones of wellness through our system. It’s a very simple physiological fact. Why interpret it to mythological proportions?

The ultimate untroubled playfulness is a result of carefully nurtured well-balanced use of our energies and sensorial faculties. We come to a ripening. The impulses lose their meaning and desires drop off without pain like a ripe fruit drops by itself. The senses and their potential for pleasure still remain in the body but their use or no use means the same. They no longer drive our thoughts, actions and emotions. You get a choice and use doesn’t drive you crazy and no-use doesn’t make you suffer. In a way one rises above that dimension. Call it realization or enlightenment. It’s but merely more conscious, aware form of living; just transformation of energies for a bit more refined thoughts and emotions; a shift in perspective.

It doesn’t mean I find people in the so-called worldly dimension as lowly placed. Everything is just same in mother existence. It’s only about a choice to be something extra if our present sense of existence makes us restless and we feel something missing. It’s merely a choice to be at more ease with the self.

Just learn to stay in the present. This is the ultimate meditation. No need to roam in the Himalayas. Do it among the sweet-sour scent of humanity around you. It’s almost always about what we had been or what we would be. Very rarely we are what we are now. And thus dear brothers and sisters, we exit from the portals of life as ignorant of its meaning as when we entered it.

The flower bud opens with a pining majesty. Infantile petals ready to be born for one more fragrant, juicy season. The goddess of beauty opens another eye to see this world with more colors. But the de-juicing black-bee is also around! Things of beauty and joy are almost always accompanied by the greedy swirls of utilitarian air—two aspects of duality. But that doesn’t mean the things of beauty and joy shouldn’t smile and bloom.

I know it disturbs many minds who have accepted the superiority of particular paths in taking them to the exclusive class of refined and holy beings on earth. That also is another form of ego: the desire to be in a state from where the rest of humanity seems a group of meek ignorants who need reformation and enlightenment. So take this slightly bitter pill of information with a glass of water and be at ease. If your mind still feels disturbed then rethink about the utility of gurus and scriptures who haven’t given you equanimity of mind to even digest this. Then reboot. And smile. Then laugh. At yourself. It helps.

A skirmish in the village temple

 

The village temple seemed a sad affair. You cannot expect too much from a temple patronized by farmers. From the same equation, you cannot afford to have an ambitious priest in such a temple because the boons of rituals are meager. Some years back an ageing priest arrived with his wife. Two of his elder children, a boy and a girl, were already married and ran their separate houses. The returns from the village temple were meager but the services were in the same league. Pandit ji fumbled over mantras and coughed terribly during havan ceremonies because he was asthmatic. Since most of the farmers around the temple loved liquor, so he went along the popular culture and started drinking as well.

I remember the havan he performed on my mother’s death anniversary. The havan smoke triggered his asthma and as a result it was a rumbustious chanting of coughs. Hardly any mantra was audible. In any case he knew a little set of mantras which he repeated to good effect on all ceremonies ranging across birth, death, marriage, engagements and house inaugurations.

Staying among the farmers toughened his attitude by several notches. Earlier he would have verbal potshots at his wife but now he would even launch a physical assault sometimes. Then he fell ill and died leaving the panditayan in charge of the temple. She did not know anything about puja and rituals. The already neglected idols further slumped in neglect. Their dresses developed a thick coating of dust. There were cobwebs around. Shiva’s idol had a hole in thigh because someone left a lamp burning on it. Hanuman being viewed as a wrestler and fond of food would be forced to eat. The muscular idol’s mouth had eatables smitten on it and bees and wasps ate for his sake.

There were voices of dissent against her conduct. The people had to bring a pundit from outside the village for a havan ceremony. The majority of the villagers wanted her to leave the temple but four or five families wanted her to stay. The offerings to the neglected gods were sufficient to allow her a nice life of retirement. It became an issue and the two groups would engage in brawls. Finally, the majority prevailed and she had to go. During the conclusive brawl her supporter group of ladies advised her, ‘Before you go, leave the village under your curse.’ So on the day of departure, when her supportive group came to receive her farewell blessings, she showered her beneficence over them. ‘All of you become like me,’ she said. It meant all of you bear the same fate as me, roughly interpreted as being a widow and turning homeless. Some women from the opposing group laughed, ‘You asked a curse for the village. Since you are also part of the village, you too get your prashad as well. A curse through a blessing on your head!’