Skirmish with a ghost

 

I’m just a passing phenomenon. At the quantum level I have no boundaries. At the level of microscopic particles, the smallest that we have spotted till now with our instruments, I’m merely an assemblage of sparks; I’m just a boundary-less conglomeration of tiniest sparks amidst the same going around me. Now the question arises, ‘Who am I?’ I consider myself as a part of this overall conglomeration of the tiniest energy sparks that has identified with certain characteristics to automatically spin out a certain pattern in the energetic conglomeration to manifest at the level of body, my thoughts, emotions, circumstances.

Human body is a far-far short-lived phenomenon than we consider. Each cell in our body vibrates with millions of transitional movements each second. A massive force of change operates at the core of our assemblage whose effects we feel in the form of changing thoughts, passing emotions, shifting perspectives, fluctuating views and more. That means I’m just an energy field with certain predominant proclivities that is being—always—cut through other energy fields that are floating around, or I am passing through them.

From here arises the concept of getting affected by entities, disembodied souls and all the scary world of ghosts and ghouls. All these are mere symbolic representations of the energy fields that leave effect on us, somehow interfere with our cellular and molecular structure, the energy assemblage that we consider ourselves to be us. Their manifestations in our system are in proportion to our own pain, suffering and fears. It’s just a synchronicity with that particular frequency. Of course a field of pain and suffering would look for an anchor point in a similar pool of energy. Then there are stories about their weird, fearsome shapes and appearances. Their nasty appearance is an assemblage of our own pain, suffering and fears. We generate a reality according to our imaginative fears. I have no doubts that some people see such fearsome, weird shapes but these are merely the impressions of their own fears, augmented by the foreign energy field of pain that is passing through them at the moment, created on the screen of sense-perception.  

Some say that most of the thoughts and emotions passing in us aren’t our own. They are triggered by entities. That’s plain and simple crap. They are simply responses and reactions born of what my energy and cellular arrangement—which I consider to be me—creates in its overlapping with other arrangements (bodily visible or not) as I walk on the stage of life. This is inevitable. That’s how it is, because at the quantum level I have no boundary as such and one part will mix and come into contact with the other with as much naturality as one portion of air is always passing through other portions all the time.

So my thoughts and emotions are my own, be that due to the passing of any type of energetic pattern (aligning with me or not) through the quantum space that looks like my body at the level of normal sense perception. How will your bubble stay aloof and untouched by all that is floating around you as you move on the journey? Put your body under the most capable microscope and it will show you as an assemblage of subatomic sparks surrounded by similar twinklings. So my thoughts and my emotions are my own; just a response and reaction to the stimuli of the vastness surrounding me. It simply cannot be otherwise. So take ownership for what goes inside you. As a conscious maker of your circumstances, as a creator of some meaning out of this utmost meaninglessness around, the onus is on us to manage our thoughts and emotions. The talks of tantra and ghosts seem fascinating; very interesting like a movie. Enjoy them but don’t give it undue importance. It is a merely a symbolic representation of the interaction of varying patterns of energy that happens by default because there are no boundaries among various parts at the quantum level.

My own experience in this domain happened about fifteen years back. I worked in corporate at that time and stayed on the outskirts of Delhi. It was a small two-storeyed house with some open wooded lot on one side and an abandoned house on the other. I was a regular worshipper of Mahakali at that time. My mother had prepared very sweet beshan laddoos for me. I was on cloud nine with soft emotions for someone and was on a late night call with the symbol of that affection. I was leaning against the parapet wall facing that abandoned house and eating the sugary laddoo. It was all smiles, laughter and goodie feelings, unbothered of the time and place. It was midnight, exact zero hour as my neighboring bunch of boys would tell me later. Well, eating sugary laddoo at midnight while leaning against the low wall looking over an abandoned house where someone had committed suicide. This statement didn’t mean anything to me prior to the experience. I wasn’t aware of the time, about sugary sweetmeat, about the suicide in the abandoned house. I didn’t know anything about it. Who would be bothered about normal worldly crap when he is on a late night call with someone special?

I was grinning, like a horse, with the solace of the sweetest emotions and lots of sugar in me, one big laddoo already in me and the other half-eaten held in my hand. Little did I know that it was otherworldly combination at the midnight. My horse-grin stopped suddenly. There was a buzzing humming vibration in the air around and I distinctly felt something colliding and barging into me. As if something entered from the back. It was so impactful at the normal perception level that I instinctively straightened up as if someone had pushed with force against my back. The outside agent was so palpable as to trigger a panic reaction immediately. All love was kicked away. By instinct Mother Mahakali’s name surfaced on my lips and hurriedly I came down the stairs. There I was lying on my bed, my neighbors, all nice gentle boys from Bihar, standing around me and looking with concern.

‘Bhaiyaa are you mad! Eating laddoo at midnight! The abandoned house by our side has a history of suicide,’ Radhe, the gentlest of them, was much worried. Faith is always stronger than any fear. I was a pretty serious worshipper of Mahakali at that time. So I was perfectly normal after that initial trigger of fear. I was joking, laughing, giving them a live commentary about how does it feel to have a ghost inside one’s body.  

It was quite an experience. That particular build-up of energy (which still spun around the cosmos with its pain and suffering after unnaturally shedding the body) cascaded around my system for around half an hour. It was quite a force, moving like tidal waves from head to toe, and then moving up again, as if scanning each part of me for some solace, some synchronicity with its own structure of pain. I could feel my body getting heated up from inside but there wasn’t any sweating. I gave a live commentary of all this with my share of jokes injected in between. Then the poor energetic structure of pain moved on. Maybe it found my jokes offensive. The moment it left me I could distinctly declare that I’m ghost-free. There was jubilation among the group of boys.

They really respected me as an elder brother. They worked in call centers and more than the salary considered girlfriends as the main incentive for staying in stinking Delhi for the pittance of a salary. I would pay for the kitchen purchases and in return I would have home-cooked food with lots of respect. So they danced and we raised a toast to our victory over the ghost. Sorry to disappoint my well-wishers who consider me to be a teetotaler because I have tasted liquor on special occasions and beating a ghost was one such occasion. So we all had couple of moderate pegs each during our post-midnight celebrations.

I have experienced all that is good and bad in life. Maybe mother existence wants to keep me level headed and not get egoistic about my purity which is the lighter version of addiction, addiction to one’s good image. Luckily, most of the people consider me a good man. 

But what about the ghost? And the midnight? And the sugary laddoo? Well, of course when someone unnaturally exits the portals of life with so much pain as in a suicide, the bundle of energy spins around looking for succor, and some of us come across this part of air that obviously passes through our system, simply because we don’t have boundaries at the quantum level. It’s a houseless traveller looking for the alleviation of its pains and gropes around for some anchor support. It feeds on our fear and frustrations. But I believe more in being receptive to saintly energy fields passing through me. To make the negative energy fields ineffective against my house, my cellular structure, is the main domain of life—creation with volition and effort. That is what making one’s destiny is all about. To be a good manager of one’s own—again I emphasize these are our own, so no point in taking them to be the impositions from the entities—thoughts and emotions. What about sugar and ghosts? There is a very simple scientific explanation for this. Maybe the sudden bombardment of sugar in the system leaves the cells—and the quantum field around them—flummoxed, lazy, or overburdened, or some other tizzying thing, making them more prone to the entering energy field, where it can penetrate a bit deeper into the system to impose its pain and suffering into our system, triggering a manifestation of fear, agonies and suffering analogous to those witnessed by the carrier entity. What about midnight and ghosts? Well, most of us have our most optimum time and circumstances to be most effective. Light is healing and a sign of divinity. Darkness is chaos and pain. Maybe the energy system of pain operates at its optimum level in the absence of light.

Jai Mahavatar Babaji! As I write this, his big kindly eyes look at me from the picture that I have affixed on the wall. He is guiding me at the moment. It’s my truth at the moment. And who knows Babaji pushed a portion of his divine persona in my direction triggering a chain of thoughts early in the morning. Let’s smile, laugh and make the most of this phenomenon that we understand to be our individual life. And consciously take ownership of our own thoughts and emotions, manage them in a way that we are more open to love and grace of the saintly energies and get free of fear from the bundles of pain spinning around. 

Catching a few snaky, rippling moments from the past

 

Tau Tarif Singh, drawing lineage from my great granduncle, was a small man with a huge well-composed demeanor. Very gentle in behavior, soft with words and peaceful in movements, he hardly created any ripples on the stage of life with his presence. There was an exception though. There would be a complete reversal of his persona at the sight of a snake. He would be filled with lightening agility and within the flash of a second he would run after the helpless reptile, hold it by the tail, swing it around in a highly technical way and bang it on the ground with such force that it would make a second strike almost redundant.

Let him see a snake at his house, in the locality, in the village, in the fields or open grounds or even a forests, he won’t miss an opportunity to culminate its journey on earth. His biggest feat was holding two snakes by their tails simultaneously and swinging in his special way and banging them on the ground to finish their journey. Surprisingly he was never bitten in the task. To this day I wonder why would such a peaceful and calm person turn into a snake-annihilator at the mere sight of the poor reptile. Maybe some karmic entanglement with snakes; possibly uncle was a mongoose, a peacock or a garuda in his previous birth and his evolution into a different species still retained the predominant animosity against the snakes.

From the village standards, Grandfather was a reasonably educated man. He was in love with mathematics and that helped him in calculating things with logic without getting clouded by unnecessary emotions. Grandmother was very tart with her tongue and he matched her in the matrimonial equation with the agility of his hardworking hand. Their domestic life, like any other farmer couple, was defined by these skirmishes between the female tongue and the male hand. But she died quite young leaving Grandfather’s hands free to engage in more suitable occupations. Grandfather was neutral to snakes. ‘One has to kill them if they sneak into the house, but one shouldn’t bother about them in the open,’ he maintained. His closest encounter with a snake happened when he was around eighty. He was still active in farming till then. It was evening and he was lying in the field, his headgear bunched under his head and one leg raised in the middle and the other supported on the raised knee. He was smoking a little hookah, his head tilted to one side to draw smoke. Another farmer was sitting nearby. A black snake chose to keep its way straight, instead of taking a detour. Grandfather’s head was tilted in the other direction. The other farmer saw it when it had already crept up to Grandfather’s stomach. Then Grandfather’s mathematical logic worked to save him from a snakebite. He turned a stone, didn’t move at all and allowed the entire length of the fearsome snake to creep over him. After that Grandfather took the longest draught at hookah in his life. ‘I have never seen so much of smoke coming out of me in my entire life,’ he told me later. ‘She was your wife who came to scare you for all your agility with your hands,’ the other farmer joked.

Father was a philosophical man. He could talk better than anyone I have ever heard in my life. His was a world of books. He wasn’t bothered much about worldly affairs. He was an athletic man and could have been at least a national level player if things had gone well. He was brainy enough to be a senior bureaucrat if things had taken a sympathetic turn for him. His oratory would have made him a famous politician if things had happened as they usually happen in the life of a successful man. But none of these happened and he was contended to be a government servant with hundreds of books and a philosophical mind. As the family patriarch he had to take the responsibility of killing a big-hooded cobra that had crept into the cattle barn. Mother raised a hue and cry and before Father could realize anything she had handed him a stick to make him realize his worldly duties. Father killed that big snake. I was very small at that time. And the very next day as I scampered around to play in the street, I feel headlong and my forehead hit the sharp edge of a brick leaving me all bloody. I still carry the mark. ‘I hit the cobra’s hood and see the karma comes back in the form of this injury on my son’s forehead,’ Father drew his philosophical reasoning.

The biggest cobra that I have ever seen being killed also needs an account here. It was a moonlit night and a majestic cobra sneaked into the locality. The village was pretty open till then. A horse panicked and neighed a warning. The dogs barked. By chance, there were all children and female onlookers at that time. The stick was handed over to the only grown up male available. Dheere cowered with the stick. He was—sadly—nicknamed langda because his one leg was incapacitated because of polio. Dheere struck quite forcefully, missed the mark and his crippled leg lost footing and he fell down with the strike. But after that he regained composure and somehow managed to beat the entire ground with almost a hundred strikes in rapid-fire and by chance one of the strikes hit the cobra in the middle injuring it, cutting its movements and then the striker had it easy.

My own quota in the sins against the snakes involves killing two harmless little common wolf snakes that had entered our house and my panicked mother handed over the responsibility to me as the new family patriarch. I performed the job with shaking legs. The other partnership in crime occurred when I held the torch and my uncle pounded a harmless rat snake. Other battles against snakes involved throwing pebbles at the harmless water sakes in the village pond. They would dive playfully and would emerge at a distance. That was quite a fun for both the parties. I remember once I was walking on my little legs in the playground outside the village. It was a faint foot trail in the little grass. A cobra was also enjoying its walk on the same trail from the opposite direction. It stood its ground, maybe finding me small enough to turn a bully. It stood its ground, raised it hood to full spread and warned me to get off the way from a distance. I took to my heels and watched from a distance. Male cobra is arrogant I have heard. There it passed following the foot trail.

Now I’m more balanced and logical in my approach to snakes. I can at least marvel at the crawling majesty of snakes that I come across in my solitary walks in the countryside. They are just creatures like any other creature. In the Delhi NCR there are just two poisonous snakes—out of the forty species found in the area—named Indian cobra and krait. The rest are harmless long earthworms and get unnecessarily killed because of our natural instinctive fears. Knowledge is empowering. It dispels darkness. So now I am more adjusting to their presence.

Kaka Maharaj, who stays in a hut by the canal outside the village, has so many snakes around but this isn’t an issue at all with him. There is a clump of banana trees just by his hut. Once as I approached to pay him a visit I saw a cobra basking in the sun. It scampered into the clump of trees when I arrived. I told about the naga to Kaka Maharaj. ‘This land is for all and everything,’ is all he said. After our talks on the matters of spirituality I saw him stepping into the clump of banana trees to take out a basket he had hung on a frond. He went in quite naturally. He had even forgotten that I had told him about a snake there.

There is mother nature’s little air purifier just in front of our place. It’s a dense clump of trees and vines with lots of undergrowth. Aren’t these green leaves an extension of our lungs? But people take nature for granted and hardly anyone speaks in favor of these green tissues of our lungs. People usually complain of a couple of cobras that stay here. A few sightings and people go paranoid. Almost every other day someone is raising a hue and cry about their sighting by our yard walls. The gate is open with grilled portion on the underside. They can easily creep in. The night is theirs to creep. They are all welcome. But the day is mine. They have no business to be in during the day. They haven’t bothered me so far, so why should I bother about them. Why stretch your fears beyond a point. Just be careful a bit more, that’s all. Use torch while moving in the dark. Walk gently to allow them to creep away as you approach. And they eat rats and mice with relish. The area is almost mouse-free. And mother nature knows more than us. There were mice that’s why there are snakes. And to ensure that the snakes don't crawl at each human step, there are plenty of peacocks doing the rounds. They must be eating many little snake hatchlings to keep the number finely balanced. But who is there to keep a check on us? In our case only we can do it, individually and collectively.

A small speciality

 

Two spectacular events make October 25 a special day. First, I see a pair of coppersmith barbets. It’s a beautiful grass green bird with a trademark crimson breast and forehead, yellow throat, heavy bill and short truncated tail. They targeted the dead gulmohar and neem trunks—having forest mushrooms sprouting from their decaying bark, giving a little autumnal semblance of pristine forests. They struck the dead wood with a loud tuk-tuk like the strike of a wall clock, one strike per second. It sounds like a kind of birdie coppersmith tonking at his wooden piece in the distance. Maybe they tried to excavate a nesting hole but found the locality too noisy and flew away.

The second was the solar eclipse at the sundown. It proved to be a majestic sight. The big orange ball got a slice cut off and seemed like a bloated red moon crescent. Later, as the eclipse progressed, it looked like a big red boat sailing in a misty sea as the eclipsed sun downed into the mists lurking over the horizon.

There are always many special happenings and you have the choice to pick out yours to make you feel better.

A little boy's festival

 

Nevaan is six-year-old now. On this Diwali he has proved that he is entitled to be called a gentleman kid. On the neighboring roof some children are bursting firecrackers. Massive plumes of smoke engulf the surroundings. He coughs and says, ‘Diwali is a festival of pollution.’ Well, he is entitled to draw his innocent conclusions. ‘Diwali is a festival of lights, laugher and joy. But we turn it into pollution,’ I try to retain his faith in our traditional festivals.

Some moments later, the adolescent boys in the locality set off an exclusive cracker. It’s a serial bombardment into the skies, almost an artillery fire—explosions, sparklings, smoke, boom, bust. It surely sounds and seems like a wartime artillery charge. ‘Atankwadi aa gaye, atankwadi aa gaye!’ he shouts. ‘It’s a festival of terrorists!’ he yells. It sounds blasphemous and I correct him that the word ‘terrorist’ isn’t suitable for the festival-time merrymakers. But he doesn’t sound convinced. Well, given the already polluted air, any addition to the smoke undoubtedly seems like an act of terrorism.

Romancing with pause in a little world

 

There is so much to learn at each step I take in the countryside. Wild grasses, flowers, bushes and shrubs hold their secret for stiffed arrogant hasty walkers who go determinedly in pursuance of a monetary goal. But they smile, greet and lay bare their secret to anyone taking a pause, look carefully and caress some wild flower. There is so much to learn about small things in life.

Common water hyacinth might be called ‘terror of Bengal’ due to its invasive tendency, but here it’s no terror. The aquatic plant freely floats on water edges. Its buoyant bulbous stalks hold green glossy leaves. Some of them have lavender flowers.

This is late October and this little patch of wilderness between the canals is adorned with its blooms. Urena lobata (Caesarweed or Congo jute) are tender shrubs. They have small pink-violet flowers where a little group of white butterflies is having a peaceful nectar feast on this noon.

There are eucalyptus, neem, sheesham, mulberry, peepal, banyan trees along the canal bunds safely holding the undergrowth around them. The local forestry department has planted some blackboard trees (scholar tree or milkwood). The latter have prospered well here. Their glossy leathery leaves are found in whorls of six or seven.

Carrot grass (Congress ghas or Santa Maria feverfew) has grown very well without feeling guilty about its invasive worthlessness. It’s not maligned as an invading weed here in this little free ribbon of wilderness between the canals and on the outer bunds on both sides. But its tiny white flowers can cause pollen allergies for those sensitive to it. On the optimistic side, some researches are proceeding to look into its heavy metal removing properties. Mother nature still holds lots of secrets in her coffers for we the kids to explore.

Common cockle bur has hooked projections. The burs stick to the clothes of solitary loungers like me, probably recalling our attention to their medicinal properties.

Prickly chaff flowers (devil’s horsewhip) have spikes with reflexed flowers arranged on a long peduncle. Not too suitable to caress and go near, but they have uses in dropsy, piles and boils.

Common mugwort (riverside wormwood) forms a lush green carpet of little frilled leaves.

Senna hirsute is a smiling yellow-flowered beauty crowned with joyful butterflies hovering around.

Pampas grass flaunts its rustling silvery inflorescences. It’s the stalwart of the grassy world reaching up to four meters, almost forming a second-tier tree-line below the bigger trees. Their blade-like leaves make rustling music as their cut the breeze to contrive natural percussions.

Saccharum spontaneum (kansh grass) is a perennial grass growing to three meters. It’s useful for making thatched roofs.

Then there are reeds having their resident colonies of weaverbirds and warblers.

I caress yellow common wireweed flowers as I walk gently in this little slice of solitude on this noon. There are some fish ponds at some distance from the canals. Black kites and cormorants fly to steal fish. This is a little strip of solace for me. It holds a few units of wilderness in its ribbon-like sojourn across the cropped fields on both sides of the canals. You cannot see much on both sides as kansh grass and elephant grass provide a suitable fencing. When I take gentle footsteps across the shrubs, bushes and grass, I get the feel of a forest. Especially at noontime the quotient of solitariness goes up by several notches as the farmers have returned home and even the distant voices cease to exist to cut across the natural fencing.