Men have failed this world

 

It’s an angrier world than ever. There are wars, violence, blood and gore. A very insecure world it is. Trust is falling apart. Faith lies sidelined and charlatans misuse trust and belief for parochial motives. The states are arming themselves with more and more deadly weaponry. There is a stampede for supremacy and one-upmanship.

Violence has been deeply institutionalized in the society. The states, intelligence agencies, shadowy players, business mafias, cartels, religious fanatics and many other actors have been covertly and overtly using institutionalized violence to further their interests.

Its effects can be seen in the society. Relationships are falling apart. The people are lonely and depressed. It’s a very unhappy world. And a very dangerous spin-off surfaces: the individualization of violence. The stand-alone shooter mired in his lonely, unrelated world. Someone marooned on the island of pain. He too launches a war, goes out with a sophisticated weapon and shoots innocent people out there for mundane activities of life.

There is so much collective mistrust, hate and insecurity around. The lonely individual absorbs his share of fear, phobias and suffering from the air around. Then he goes for a blast. It’s a culture of arms. Imagine sophisticated weapons in the hands of lonely, anguished, depressed individuals. An unarmed depressed man might go for verbal assaults or fist-work at the most. If you are equipping him with sophisticated armory, you are providing predatory talons to his lonely suffering and anger. Isn’t it an aid in crime? Give back his faith and love in humanity that he has lost, not arms.

The arms industry is running the world. They are the ones who finally decide which country gets bombarded or whose innocent blood is shed in which part of the world. They are very dangerous people. The lethal-most traders they are. To them an ant squashed or a human murdered hardly makes any difference. They are sadistically addicted to blood and gore. It’s simply business. Commerce. To sell more grains you need more hungry bellies. To sell more weapons you need more wars and murders. And a violent society serves their purpose well. A violent society will have more violent leadership. There will be more wars, more blood, more butchering. So they are happy with the scenario of lonely, depressed human hunters.

Ironically, we started as hunters of other species. Now hardly anything is left to hunt in the jungles. So we are hunting our fellow humans—just for the sheer mad fun of it. Nobody is safe anywhere on the earth. Anyone can be killed by anybody over anything in any part of the world.

Is there any chance of redemption? The scenario is very bleak but there is a slim chance. Almost hundred out of hundred mass shooters, bloodthirsty dictators, warmongering leaders, fanatical religious heads, mafias and other evil incarnate are men. The statistical truth is we ‘men’ have failed in managing our mother earth. So let’s try with ‘women’ for a change. Let’s have more and more women in leadership positions. Yes, it will be a far more chatty and gossipy world but that is still better than blood and carnage that we see around.

A January Jaunt

 

White-breasted water-hen is a blackish grey, long-legged, stub-tailed marsh bird with white on breast and face. This one loiters singly. There is moist ground along the path-side bushes. I see it regularly and it seems a solitary wanderer like me. It carries its stubby tail erect as it skulks around, jerking it time to time displaying the chestnut color underneath. These birds are very noisy during the monsoon, but for the rest of the time they are usually shy and silent.

During the monsoons, it hides unseen in a bush and unleashes pretty noisy chuckles, croaks and grunts—krr-kwak-kwak, kook-kook-kook. It loves croaking through cloudy nights. Its diet menu includes worms, insects, grains, shoots and mollusks. It steps around slowly like a long-legged beauty. Its long, yellow legs with long, spread out toes (three branched out forward and one backward) enable the silent wader to leave a fine trail of its toe-marks on the plain, soft sand. The pattern looks like a flowery motif, a fine free-wheeling filigree, looping artistically, taking open, liberated turns. An amazing regular pattern, open to uncertainty and vicissitudes of life. To any solitary lounger it’s a treat to observe and muse over these marks on the countryside path. They attract you like floral patterns in relief on Persian monuments. You can feel the silent wader’s ease while walking on the soft, smooth sand. The symmetry of its gait and toes is such that they fall in a double marked line, so proportionally going along that only a beetle with its tiny legs leaves a better patterned trail. This particular water-hen must be a singular bird, cozily staying in the area, passing time in the moist fields and bushes along the path. I see the delectable proofs of its walk preserved on the clear canvas of sand in the evenings.

The temperature has plummeted down very sharply, almost touching the freezing point in the first week of January. As you grow old, the cold starts eating into your bones during the winters. You pine for sunshine more than anything else. Like a frozen snake coming back to life, I’m walking on the countryside cart track under pale sunrays this afternoon. It’s dark green carpet of wheat on both sides with patches of bright yellow mustard in between. This is mankind’s well-manicured lawn, striking in its modernist monotony. The nature tamed to an extent that the will of man seems the will of God. A few trees survive in the corners of the cropped fields and on the embankments. They seem to hold their little root-hold as if on a lease from the farmer. Then there are mushroom huts among the green and yellow of the wheat and mustard.

Something comes crashing out of the wayside bushes. It’s a black dog, quite well built for its breed. It is running away for its life, its tail safely under legs as if the tail stands for life and losing it or getting it harmed would mean losing the life itself. I have never seen such a fast canine sprint. It simply vanished from my view before I could even realize it. Then a huge Saint Bernard lumbered out onto the path with its long-limbed bulk. The escaper had transgressed into its territory, most probably a mushroom farm farther into the countryside. Well, it helps to be a coward, as long as you have muscles in your legs to support the chicken heart. The big dog stood almost clueless as to where the foe had gone. The runner had safely escaped. Clueless about what to do, the pursuer sniffed at the path-side grass forming the outer boundary of the ruts in the path. Then something snarled at it. It’s a small, shriveled, itchy canine chit lying coiled up in the grass. Well, you have to defend your territory even if it means a square yard of frost-beaten grass by a dusty cart track. The big dog, its face bigger than the little itchy imp, looked surprised and respecting the little thing’s territorial rights moved away. It means really strong people will allow you the satisfaction of punching above your weight.

Kala Tobhla is easefully waiting for his drinking pals to assemble at the little farmhouse by the side. Last year he was very busy in the mushroom farms. ‘No mushroom farming this year?’ I ask as I come across the path. ‘No, no! It was total loss! I hate mushrooms so much so that I even shouted at my wife when she asked me if she could cook mushrooms for dinner. I warned her never to cook it. She is just not to even touch them,’ he poured out his woes.

There is fine sand on the path. It’s not dusty at this point of the season as dew and fog leave enough moisture to keep the dust tamed. The soil bears the marks of farming life. It bears the prints of agricultural endeavors. There are tyre marks. The tractors leave quite authoritative ones. And smaller vehicles a bit lesser ones. Different tyres leave their own patterns, a crazy monotony of designs. In between are the marks of shoes and slippers. But very few people walk on foot these days. Then comes the area of the white-breasted water-hen. Her toe marks stand out quite exclusive among all the man-made markings. It looks like a signature of sanity among all the rubbered and soled stampede.

As a gauzy veil of mist builds up over the green and yellow in the farms, I leave the main cart track and move on the little path going zigzag among the farms. It bears the marks of the so-called lesser species. The peacocks, dogs, insects, birds and the casual human foot among them. These are the little spaces at the margins of the board of human activity where the so-called lesser species walk and leave their footmarks to remind us of their existence.      

Love-struck, dancing birds

Have you seen beautiful, colorful birds courting their lady love? They dance, spread their amazing wings, flick tails in fabulous patterns and let out the best of vocals to attract and woo their lady love. With a negligible exception, it’s the males who go into a great eye-catching show in courting the females. There is a thrower of charms and there is a receiver of those charms. So much for the scheme of this polarity!

That amazing range of play-acted maneuvers (under the impulse of hormonal throw of energy) is not what the male persona is under ordinary circumstances. The show of romantic heroism is an exception; just an ecstatic throw of mood and attitude to catch the female’s attention. These are momentary sprouts. They don’t define the normal traits of a common bird in its day-to-day life. For the rest of the time they are simple birds, doing normal things just like any other bird of the species. And I don’t think the female birds mind that. They are lucky that they don’t have memory like women to remember all this dancing.

The restless male energy is always looking for rest in the silent pools of receptive female energy. She too is looking for the wearied runner to walk home and rest in her receptive folds. It gives a meaning to her life. It fulfills her. It saves her from the restless void, the procreative emptiness brimming with the potential to manifest and create new life forms.

There is hardly any difference between a colorful bird pirouetting in dandy mode using the tail and wings and singing best songs and a man wooing a woman. At the peak of hormonal storm, he jumps to fulfill all the columns of female expectations. That’s natural. But that’s not what he is in the normal state. He is a normal guy otherwise.

Under the patriarchal system, the man has convinced himself to be far superior to the woman. It’s factually very-very incorrect. There is a deep-seated acceptance of his inferiority and to cover that the system of patriarchy was built up. And to justify his patriarchy construct, he is trying his best to fit in the chauvinistic slot from as many angles as possible. When he covets a woman and goes into the process of wooing her, he adopts an emergency ploy to appear the best in all slots. He is helpless and it’s all about bright colors, bright dance, bright song, best attitude, best look, best behavior, best hobbies and much-much more. Truth and genuineness take a backseat. Falsehoods creep in long before we even realize. And where falsehoods creep in, miseries entail in good measure.

O thou poor dancing bird and the still poorer man! But a lady bird can be duped. The dandy can afford to be normal after the deed is done. But not so with a woman. She has a brain and a nice memory. She remembers the entire range of colorful somersaults that you have been doing to get her hand. And that becomes her benchmark to assess you. Now how long you will maintain the crest of your best version? Of course you will come down to a normal self as the fever comes down. Then you appear such a poor guy, almost a cheater who pretended to be what he isn’t usually. I think a woman can be more forgiving if she accepts that the poor guy was simply doing a wooing dance like a bird in the Amazon forest. He is simply throwing his message to have a partner. The content of the message isn’t what he is in reality. It’s just a catchy title to draw attention, like an eye-catching book title and its cover. The title might appear attractive but the story is usually mundane, very-very common.

The bird cannot be dancing forever at the best of its colors and the best of songs. Naturally it will become a common bird after the energetic storm is over. The beautiful parrot turns a boring crow. But brother, why did you try to be what you are not. You gave your best in wooing her and that raised the bar of her expectations. And expectations breed disappointments. She expects you to be the very same beautifully cooing and majestically dancing parrot. She is right in sulking over the dull crow cawing boringly by her side. 

The irony is that we get habituated to take the wooing dance as the primary characteristics in an individual, i.e., we take the catchy title as the story itself. Isn’t that a mistake? The excitement and thrill that one gets out of the bird dance is addictive in nature. We need to learn to be comfortable with normal people around us. We need to give respect and love to the ordinary humanity. Sadly we hold high expectations from people. To fulfill those heavy expectations he is all valor, grace, dignity, bravery, stability, unqualified giving and masculine handsomeness; and she is all receptivity, feminine grace, support, acceptance, care and share—both sides trying their best. Effort beyond a limit breeds artificiality. This artificiality then ends up in stumping each other. After all, how long will one keep jumping at his/her best? Ultimately we have to get grounded. The boring normalcy sets in. The dreams vanish. The colors fade. The songs turn to ugly croakings. Angels turn to dark angels. Then both sides part ways; look for new partners, expecting the thrill of wooing exception to be the everlasting normal. No wonder most of us are a series of broken relationships.

That’s why it’s advisable to be just normal, the real self, even during the phase of courting a partner. Stay as you normally are. Honesty is a highly undervalued trait in the modern society. But primarily it’s the sole trait that decides whether we are carried as a miserable junk into the cemetery or a peaceful corpse looking at whom not many people get scared. I remember the face my mother after she had left her body. She looked angelic and so beautiful in her eternal sleep.

If someone accepts you with your dull colors, weird dancing and funny songs that relationship has a better chance of survival for a longer time. Truth always serves well in the long term. It may appear to let us down in the short term, giving us little-little disappointments and let downs. But it saves us from major collapses in the long term.

One may wonder why this guy is preaching about relationships. Yours truly tries to speak from his own experiences. Experiential knowledge is very near to truth. I did my own set of fabulous dancing for seven years—just once in life and with one person only. I can feel myself almost boasting about the fact. It simply means I have to clear more webs from around my eyes to see more clearly. It’s wise to learn from one’s experience.

Using my creativity I built up a grandiose avatar, almost like a shining angel, and became the crowning prince in her big eyes. In flying too high I burnt my wings. So couldn’t afford to fly anymore after seven years. When I landed on the plane of normalcy, she felt cheated on witnessing my normal colors and mundane songs; her dreams broken, her shining angel merely a common person like anyone around, no longer able to maintain her beautiful dream. There was a normal crow cawing around her. But I’m happy that these are the days of women empowerment. She was confident, self-standing and glamorous, with a smile to kill and eyes that could intoxicate a dozen men with a single glance. No wonder, I saw her flying away with a beautiful swan that was flying in the seventh heaven to fill up the slots of her expectations. ‘You idiot, you too will fall one day!’ I cawed from the ground. Even as a self-believed spiritualist I am happy that he too fell within a couple of years. I take it as a mark of victory for having flown more than him. I’m not bothered about other men but at least I viewed him as a rival.

Normal cawing has its own benefits. It taught me poetry. There were emotional storms in the tea-cup, which I amply cashed by forcibly trying to be philosophical in nature. Lost love, or for that matter any type of loss, is invisibly preparing you for many other gains in many forms. There comes a day when you actually feel gratitude for those losses in shaping what you later became. You realize that those losses were meant to make you what you are today. So I respect the past without any grudges, but I’m far happier with my present and give due credit to all the experiences I went through.

I also realized that maybe I had punched far-far above my weight in wooing and actually winning her. But how long you will keep the arena clear of rivals if the girl is such a head turner that there are at least a dozen men dancing to her tunes with their tongues out? To match her big aura I too had acquired larger dimensions like a porcupine spreading its thorns to look more imposing. All said, as a man I take full responsibility for creating those expectations. And as Buddha said expectations breed sufferings—at one end at least, if not both. Most importantly, I’m happy for her. Why should men have all the fun? The women have been subjugated for too long and they have lots to cover up in enjoyment and normal fun which we the men have enjoyed so far.

Thankfully, I seem to have spent all the wooing fuel in one go. Wise people don’t need to repeat the same experience to get the same lesson again and again. As far as beautiful girls are concerned, I am able to impersonally appreciate them like a flower, with a pleasant detachment. I connect more to old women with their motherly aura and saintly faces carrying the majestic wrinkles of age. Maybe losing my mother is a far bigger weight on my soul than losing the woman I loved.

These days, while watching the colorful birds dancing and singing in the documentaries to woo their ladies I become very conscious, even embarrassed. I cannot blame them. All of us are birds in the same way. But I always wag my admonishing finger and mutter, ‘Son, take care! You will have to pay for this!’

And now on a serious note. Retain your simple colors, ordinary steps and normal songs while wooing a partner. If he or she accepts you with your normal stuff that’s well and good. If not, give it a damn and laugh at all the artificially jumping love-birds—ranging from the birds in documentaries to the people around you—and go giggling about this funny game. 

The perennial hunter

 

It’s an angrier world than ever. There are wars, violence, blood and gore. A very insecure world it is. Trust is falling apart. Faith lies sidelined and charlatans misuse trust and belief for parochial motives. The states are arming themselves with more and more deadly weaponry. There is a stampede for supremacy and one-upmanship.

Violence has been deeply institutionalized in the society. The states, intelligence agencies, shadowy players, business mafias, cartels, religious fanatics and many other actors have been covertly and overtly using institutionalized violence to further their interests.

Its effects can be seen in the society. Relationships are falling apart. The people are lonely and depressed. It’s a very unhappy world. And a very dangerous spin-off surfaces: the individualization of violence. The stand-alone shooter mired in his lonely, unrelated world. Someone marooned on the island of pain. He too launches a war, goes out with a sophisticated weapon and shoots innocent people out there for mundane activities of life.

There is so much collective mistrust, hate and insecurity around. The lonely individual absorbs his share of fear, phobias and suffering from the air around. Then he goes for a blast. It’s a culture of arms. Imagine sophisticated weapons in the hands of lonely, anguished, depressed individuals. An unarmed depressed man might go for verbal assaults or fist-work at the most. If you are equipping him with sophisticated armory, you are providing predatory talons to his lonely suffering and anger. Isn’t it an aid in crime? Give back his faith and love in humanity that he has lost, not arms.

The arms industry is running the world. They are the ones who finally decide which country gets bombarded or whose innocent blood is shed in which part of the world. They are very dangerous people. The lethal-most traders they are. To them an ant squashed or a human murdered hardly makes any difference. They are sadistically addicted to blood and gore. It’s simply business. Commerce. To sell more grains you need more hungry bellies. To sell more weapons you need more wars and murders. And a violent society serves their purpose well. A violent society will have more violent leadership. There will be more wars, more blood, more butchering. So they are happy with the scenario of lonely, depressed human hunters.

Ironically, we started as hunters of other species. Now hardly anything is left to hunt in the jungles. So we are hunting our fellow humans—just for the sheer mad fun of it. Nobody is safe anywhere on the earth. Anyone can be killed by anybody over anything in any part of the world.

Is there any chance of redemption? The scenario is very bleak but there is a slim chance. Almost hundred out of hundred mass shooters, bloodthirsty dictators, warmongering leaders, fanatical religious heads, mafias and other evil incarnate are men. The statistical truth is we ‘men’ have failed in managing our mother earth. So let’s try with ‘women’ for a change. Let’s have more and more women in leadership positions. Yes, it will be a far more chatty and gossipy world but that is still better than blood and carnage that we see around.

A walk in the countryside

 

White-breasted water-hen is a blackish grey, long-legged, stub-tailed marsh bird with white on breast and face. This one loiters singly. There is moist ground along the path-side bushes. I see it regularly and it seems a solitary wanderer like me. It carries its stubby tail erect as it skulks around, jerking it time to time displaying the chestnut color underneath. These birds are very noisy during the monsoon, but for the rest of the time they are usually shy and silent.

During the monsoons, it hides unseen in a bush and unleashes pretty noisy chuckles, croaks and grunts—krr-kwak-kwak, kook-kook-kook. It loves croaking through cloudy nights. Its diet menu includes worms, insects, grains, shoots and mollusks. It steps around slowly like a long-legged beauty. Its long, yellow legs with long, spread out toes (three branched out forward and one backward) enable the silent wader to leave a fine trail of its toe-marks on the plain, soft sand. The pattern looks like a flowery motif, a fine free-wheeling filigree, looping artistically, taking open, liberated turns. An amazing regular pattern, open to uncertainty and vicissitudes of life. To any solitary lounger it’s a treat to observe and muse over these marks on the countryside path. They attract you like floral patterns in relief on Persian monuments. You can feel the silent wader’s ease while walking on the soft, smooth sand. The symmetry of its gait and toes is such that they fall in a double marked line, so proportionally going along that only a beetle with its tiny legs leaves a better patterned trail. This particular water-hen must be a singular bird, cozily staying in the area, passing time in the moist fields and bushes along the path. I see the delectable proofs of its walk preserved on the clear canvas of sand in the evenings.

The temperature has plummeted down very sharply, almost touching the freezing point in the first week of January. As you grow old, the cold starts eating into your bones during the winters. You pine for sunshine more than anything else. Like a frozen snake coming back to life, I’m walking on the countryside cart track under pale sunrays this afternoon. It’s dark green carpet of wheat on both sides with patches of bright yellow mustard in between. This is mankind’s well-manicured lawn, striking in its modernist monotony. The nature tamed to an extent that the will of man seems the will of God. A few trees survive in the corners of the cropped fields and on the embankments. They seem to hold their little root-hold as if on a lease from the farmer. Then there are mushroom huts among the green and yellow of the wheat and mustard.

Something comes crashing out of the wayside bushes. It’s a black dog, quite well built for its breed. It is running away for its life, its tail safely under legs as if the tail stands for life and losing it or getting it harmed would mean losing the life itself. I have never seen such a fast canine sprint. It simply vanished from my view before I could even realize it. Then a huge Saint Bernard lumbered out onto the path with its long-limbed bulk. The escaper had transgressed into its territory, most probably a mushroom farm farther into the countryside. Well, it helps to be a coward, as long as you have muscles in your legs to support the chicken heart. The big dog stood almost clueless as to where the foe had gone. The runner had safely escaped. Clueless about what to do, the pursuer sniffed at the path-side grass forming the outer boundary of the ruts in the path. Then something snarled at it. It’s a small, shriveled, itchy canine chit lying coiled up in the grass. Well, you have to defend your territory even if it means a square yard of frost-beaten grass by a dusty cart track. The big dog, its face bigger than the little itchy imp, looked surprised and respecting the little thing’s territorial rights moved away. It means really strong people will allow you the satisfaction of punching above your weight.

Kala Tobhla is easefully waiting for his drinking pals to assemble at the little farmhouse by the side. Last year he was very busy in the mushroom farms. ‘No mushroom farming this year?’ I ask as I come across the path. ‘No, no! It was total loss! I hate mushrooms so much so that I even shouted at my wife when she asked me if she could cook mushrooms for dinner. I warned her never to cook it. She is just not to even touch them,’ he poured out his woes.

There is fine sand on the path. It’s not dusty at this point of the season as dew and fog leave enough moisture to keep the dust tamed. The soil bears the marks of farming life. It bears the prints of agricultural endeavors. There are tyre marks. The tractors leave quite authoritative ones. And smaller vehicles a bit lesser ones. Different tyres leave their own patterns, a crazy monotony of designs. In between are the marks of shoes and slippers. But very few people walk on foot these days. Then comes the area of the white-breasted water-hen. Her toe marks stand out quite exclusive among all the man-made markings. It looks like a signature of sanity among all the rubbered and soled stampede.

As a gauzy veil of mist builds up over the green and yellow in the farms, I leave the main cart track and move on the little path going zigzag among the farms. It bears the marks of the so-called lesser species. The peacocks, dogs, insects, birds and the casual human foot among them. These are the little spaces at the margins of the board of human activity where the so-called lesser species walk and leave their footmarks to remind us of their existence.