Congratulations China for Change'e 6 mission

China's robotic Chang'e 6 mission landed inside Apollo Crater at the giant South Pole-Aitken basin. With eternal optimism I would take it as the next step in mankind's quest for more scientific truths. So congratulations China in the name of collective human endeavour for scientific spirit, exploration, research, analysis and data. Irrespective of how many punches we give each other--as different nationalities--in the ring, this little planet will face common problems. Climatic ravages will heat, beat, treat us the same irrespective of geographical variations and national interests. Scorching heat will bake us the same. The floods will drown us the same. Pollution will ravage our lungs the same. Wars will spill the blood all the same. Some hostile alien life form will, this I consider very likely, treat us the same--the weird dwellers of a far off planet. They will twist our ears the same irrespective of our racial and national differences. So while we give each other bloody mouths with solid punches, it will serve humanity to chalk out a collective framework to deal with global level threats, dangers and risks that will challenge our very existence as a race.

A tragic comma in a fastly scrawled sentence

 

The other day, on the way to the town, a sad spectacle unfolded on the road. A hit and run case. A crime, unaccountable though because the life lost didn't belong to the Homo sapiens. It was a dog and since the law-books give enough space to the mankind in this matter, people drive rashly, trample over the so-called lesser lives, and move on nonchalantly. It doesn't even count as a happening. Happenings, or mishappenings, are classified according to their human-centric valuation and assessment.

The poor thing was lying on the edge of the road, a pool of blood by its open mouth, making its loud statement of a murder. But unfortunately such statements are majorly heard by poetic people or the ones carrying soft hearts. They at least ought to pay a silent homage.

Another dog was tentatively, after all death is such a big event, sniffing at the blood. It was a very sad sight. ‘What must this living dog be thinking? Has the event somehow changed its normal perception of taking blood as food?’ I moved on with my sad, brooding reflections.

Mother existence has her own ways of providing us the answers that we need. On my way back after an hour or so, I saw my answer written on the scene. The other dog was sadly sitting by the dead one; its front paws stretched out, head supported on them, sadly looking at the canine dead body. So this one was the friend of the dead dog, sitting there in condolence and companionship! Look at the bond. They must have played together so fondly and then some uncaring human trod over their bond, cleaving it apart.

Well, the law-books don’t have any space for such smaller murders. But at least the book of values in our heart and conscience ought to have some lines of empathy for the so-called lesser lives. Those unwritten laws should hold us responsible for our legalized transgressions. They should hold us accountable for the injuries and harm done by us to the so-called smaller forms of life. They should remind us to drive carefully in order to spare not just humans but cats, dogs and reptiles also.       

A page in the book of an old school guy

 

I know I'm from the old school. But here is a message for the new-age people grappling with the issues of relationships. Don't tear away the bond suddenly, turning the other one as a redundant item. Talk it over and transform it into a milder bond, put your case gently. If the person isn't suitable in the new phase of life, don't make him/her a dark angel at least. Transform it into friendliness (it's possible by the way—with open heart-to-heart talks) and drift away gently. There aren't bloody cleavages in this, leaving one party broken and the other one guilty. Why run away? If you run away in haste, you will carry lots of pain with you and this will draw you into similar circumstances with a different person in future because of its sheer momentum in your system.

I know ex-lovers can still become possessive and take your friendliness and nicety as willingness to come together again. But that's just an impulse at the initial time. If you maintain your courtesy, friendliness, dignified respect, impersonal aloofness and sufficient detachment (that separates friendliness from a love relationship), the other person will get the message very soon. Then you won't have a big block list in your phone. And blocks in our phones are merely forced attempts at negating a still nagging reality, an artificial attempt to bury a pain. It stands for either a feeling of victimhood or guilt.

If you drift away gently, allowing him/her to see you walking away, sometimes looking back with a friendly smile, sometimes waving a bye, then he/she won't feel cheated or broken or dumped. Why leave someone broken? You have every right to proceed with your choices for the future. But why run away? Because if you run away, those same circumstances follow you in a similar relationship with another person. So walk away, if that’s necessary, into the sunset with a friendly smile.

Crawling fluidity

 

Have you seen a snake beautifully crawling across little spaces, tiny crevices, stony earth, prickly branches and thorny boughs? It slithers away so majestically; with a fluidity matching the water’s. I think a snake is almost a more tangible manifestation of water in fluidity; a crawling mellowness. So the next time you come across a snake, don’t jumpstart and put your body in panic gear to saunter away. Just gently stay there. Believe me it won’t turn back to kiss your skin. It has far better things to kiss including his woman for love and frogs and mice for hunger. So as long as you are an appreciating spectator it would mind its business and allow you to mind yours.

A snake crawls so beautifully even across the big heaps of prickly boughs and branches of thorny keekars without injuring itself. Its mellow fluidity allows it to circuit around the thorns and obstructions. I think a snake has a message here for we humans as we move on the prickly path of life. To move with gentleness, fluidity, acceptance and liberty across the thorns of judgments, hate, complexes, anger, fear and insecurities. These are the thorns put on our path through which we have to crawl. Run or walk with all the negativities and rigidities of fears and insecurities and they bleed our feet. And move with the streaming gentle fluidity of acceptance and non-judgments, we simply find ourselves beautifully crawling across the pinchy, thorny obstructions. Mother nature has scrawled beautiful life lessons across the vast sprawl of her book of nature. We just need to be a bit more aware to read it. Ahha, the wonders of the book of life!

Tau's knowhow

 

Tau Hoshiyar Singh is confidently inching towards the three figure mark, a century of years on earth. He has been a cricket fan and would like to hit a ton. If he gets out in late nineties then he might consider his innings a failure. So I would pray that he meets his target. A very hardworking farmer till five years back, when his grandchildren and wards forced him into retirement (because he would hackle with them at the farms trying to force his age-old farming techniques), he now spends time at chaupals. He has enough stamina left to compete with young idlers in card games, drawing hookah smoke in a long-long draught, and giving his opinions on political and social matters. From his enthusiasm, I’m sure he is up for a century of years.

He sometimes pays me a visit, special visits I would say. These are primarily to make me realize the real me and act accordingly. An illiterate hardworking farmer, he has been, like others of his ilk in the peasantry of Punjab and Haryana, a follower of Swami Dayanand. To them the Swami’s words on all aspects connote the ultimate truth. The simple farmers just deny any possibilities beyond that.

So he wants to have a modern-day Swami Dayanand. He has cutely misinterpreted my bookish ways as signs of saintliness. ‘You can become like Swami Dayanand, I tell you! Just that you need to simply leave your house forever, abandoning everything and set out on foot like he did! You have it in you!’ he would express his expectations from me. ‘Why don’t you quit this house and everything else?’ he has asked a few times. At those times I feel like pouring salt in his tea and chilies in his hookah tobacco. Don’t know why he is so eager to see me as a beggar roaming around. Anyway, he is an elder and he has his rights to expect.

The other day, he is taking sips at tea served by me, coolly taking out a flea that had fallen in it, saying, ‘You never know even this mix of flea and tea might do some good to the system of elderly people like me’. Well, he usually has a solid point to back his wisdom, so I generally avoid falling in arguments with him.

Now me being me, full of books in the mind, I have a tendency to start giving lectures on various topics. God knows how come this topic of cars arrived during the talk. I am soon lecturing him about the costliest cars whose prices go into crores of rupees. His eyes are literally popping out. To him money came in pennies at the cost of loads of sweat in the agricultural farms. So the talk of so much money leaves him slightly perturbed. ‘What do they call them?’ he asks me, his eyes wide after I have talked about Rolls Royces, Hummers, Jaguars, Volvo, Mercedes and more. ‘Cars, cars with different names,’ I expound. ‘Then what is yours?’ he asks, pointing at my little old car. ‘It also is a car,’ I’m slightly embarrassed. ‘Yours should be called something else,’ he is so wise.

Then he is asking what is different about those big cars. I am trying my level best to expound their specialties, which fall out of the zone of his understanding. ‘What happens if there is a traffic jam? How is this big car different from the ones like yours, which you also call as a car?’ he interrogates. ‘Well, it has to wait on the road like any other car,’ I reply. ‘Then what is the use of throwing away so much of money if it cannot even fly in air for some time and take you out of the jam?’ he asks. I hardly have any answer. My books haven’t equipped me with those facts. If I try to explain that these are the things in the mind, that’s the urge to stand out higher than the others, he won’t take this logic. Because as a hardworking farmer he cannot relate to the bugs of mind like most of us do in a consumerist society. So Tau takes leave but not before reminding again, ‘Why are you wasting your life? Leave home and hearth and become a sanyasi and turn Maharishi Dayanad and change the society,’ he advises the course of action. He basically means that I should turn a hardworking ploughman in the field of religion and spirituality.

Well, I understand from where the grouse originated. Tau was at the forefront of canvassing the rival army in fighting against my little battle of saving myself from the yokes of matrimony. He did his best to get me yoked into the lurching countryside cart of matrimony. He approached with many arranged marriage proposals, out of which I slipped out like a cunning, slippery eel. To him it’s foolish to stay unmarried and still stay in the human society. Such people must go to the forests. That’s why he wants me out and join the league of wandering mendicants of India.