Reparation and redemption

 

Greying, thinning hair and pepper and salt beard. These are the changes in me that I reflect over. It’s just natural to spot the change within and without. But aren’t the little saplings of banyan and peepul that I had planted are handsome young trees now? Yes, they are! They are the expression of my youth. They are me. If you ever get bothered about age, do something fresh and young in nature, where you will always see the traces of your youth expressed in those creations. Plant trees, for example. Keep doing it periodically so that you always have some young tree lad youthfully swaying to the breeze as an expression of the youth of your spirit.

An ounce of snail-shell solitude

 

The new sarpanch has rewarded a man for casting vote in his favor. The man has been appointed as the shouting announcer of public news in the village. He is around fifty and has spent most of his time as a goatherd. He walked with his little flock of goats and sheep looking for ever-thinning strands of grass and bushes. The world sped by. The people who rode bikes, now travelled in cars. The people who had mud houses, now stayed in big cemented ones. The world was up for grabs and those with strategic intent and higher occupations made their realm more impressive. All through these decades, he was passing his time in the silence of still remaining patches of wilderness, just whistling or making clucking sounds with his tongue to guide his herd. Then the last tufts of wild grass vanished and he found it difficult to keep his herd alive. He sold it and there he stood on the shiny stage of life, feeling lost and wondering how much the world had gone ahead on the wheels of progress while he was slowly moving with his herd.

So now he is there on the main thoroughfare of village life. He takes his shouting job very seriously. The problem is that all his front teeth are gone and decades of shouting one-word instructions and clucking of tongue in various ways to guide his flock have put him in a position where he sounds clucking his tongue to hark attention of the entire village folks whom I seriously doubt he finds like a big drove of sheep. He is loud enough to be heard across a few streets but his words slip out in a strange shape. It’s a big challenge for the people to make a head or tail of the public announcement. You have to give full focus with your entire attention to latch onto some odd word and then build-up your version of the information. At least he trains people in the art of focus and a kind of brain exercise to build up a meaningful narrative out of the strange smatterings of words. Well, he seems happy with a feeling that he is herding a bigger flock of sheep now, while we try to nibble at his smatterings of words.

Congratulations Global Elder

 As a non American global citizen I respect the Americans' choice in electing Trump. I can't analyse on bigger issues but I think the major gain from being mere Trump to become President Trump is that he will be able to terminate the federal legal cases against him and suspend the state cases till he occupies office. As a layman I view it as the major take away: the ability to become above law. That I think is the real Power. Wish you a powerful, bombastic, fantastic time in the seat of Power. Our leader is also a big fan of yours. So we see benefits for India unless you get irritated about us. But yea now I believe you were supposed to become the American President. Fate saved you from death just by a millimetre. It had plans. To reward you with power over millions of square kilometres on earth. Sometimes being one millimetre short of death means trillions of square yards of powerful life. The world will be at the mercy of your temperament. Please rule with mercy, benevolence and wisdom of an elder. Because you are the Globe Elder now.

Mutterings of a poor voter in thawing democracy

 Jinping wins (Tibet atrocities and Xinxiang concentration camps), Putin wins (Ukraine massacres), Modi wins (Godhra riots), Trump wins (Convinced felon)😰😨😓😥😢😨😧😩😫😷🤕🤒🤧😪 Now is the time for us to be like three deaf, mute and blind monkeys 🙊🙉🙈 or shift to some other planet, for which unfortunately there is no choice except Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos... But Musk won't take that option. He is the bright eyed super genius of mighty Trump. The rest two beware. Take your rockets out. In any case the mighty four have the power to dispatch anyone to some extraterrestrial planet - I mean if not in body but soul at least.😀 The super-strong guys are actually eligible to share the same table and have relaxed talk over wine. Modi of course will have milk. Then who will be their common enemy? Maybe small people like you and me who think they have their own mind and feel like speaking the truth. Democracy will get diluted like never before. It has already thawed quite significantly in the world's biggest and the strongest democracies. I think Putin and Xi Jinping are the trend-setting big, bad guys, inspiring the rest to follow in their steps. Who will they hunt if not each other then? Because the most powerful can't help hunting. They have to. Almost natural. I think they will hunt the little voices of liberalism, freedom of speech, truth, human rights, equality, gender parity etc. Putin will be allowed to retain whatever he has captured in Ukraine. China will be allowed to take over Taiwan somehow (with the shamshow of American opposition to that). If India plays its cards well, it might have some more chunk from PoK. And America? It will be allowed to have the symbolic chairmanship on the table of the four. The mighty tigers then will be free to play cat and mouse with little liberal intelligentsia mice😂 But who knows the aliens, who have been taking reconnaissance of our small planet for decades, will finally step in and present a common challenge to the four. 😜 Then it will be quite interesting.

A creepy, crawling encounter

 

There must be cockroaches in the house otherwise why would a big rascally centipede enter the house. Well, rural houses usually have many claimants including snakes, rats, lizards, frogs, spiders and many more. Maybe the centipede got angry for not finding a cockroach. An angry x, y, z is almost suicidal, be it humans, reptiles or animals. And if there is an angry creature nearby, you feel the pinch. I felt it. A sharp pain in the left big toe. I’m watching news, sitting on a chair, right leg crossed over the left, leaving the left toe open for attack by the angry centipede. The body seems to be its own master. We overestimate our conscious, voluntarily done efforts to save and preserve it. It knows far more than we think. My conscious part is absorbed in the political slugfest going on the television. But my toe has independent authority to save itself from a big, bullish centipede. I find myself jumping in the air. The toe knows how to save itself from a centipede that has decided to bite the hell out of it. The automatic vigorous shake by the toe and its ally foot and their bigger sister leg is enough to undo the centipede’s brazen attempt to taste my blood. There is a needle sharp pain. Thankfully it couldn’t pierce the skin.

The calculating and planning human has taken a backseat. It’s only the life force in the body responding to the emergency. The left foot is angry as can be understood. O God, the way it counterattacks! It swings into action. And the slippered foot is pounding the enemy, knowing exactly how rapidly to strike with full force. It’s done so swiftly. The centipede is a juicy mass in an instant. It happened so quickly. I’m staring at it as if someone else has done it. Where was I while all this happened? It wasn’t me who did it. The body did it of its own volition! Imagine the instinct of self-preservation ingrained in each cell of the body. And still we overthink and burden the mind about  preserving it. The way it strikes at a centipede in retaliation over a bite at its toe proves that it’s always on guard against the predators both visible and invisible. I think we can allow it more freedom in its functions and not burden its natural operations with our unnecessary worries.

I’m not sure how a saint would have behaved if attacked by a centipede. I hadn’t even stepped on it. It just attacked. Some karmic balance I suppose. Of course the saint’s body would have jumped in air at the bite. But I’m not sure about his foot going into retaliation of its own in an instant.

I don’t think I could have caught it alive because it would have crawled under the hideouts available in plenty in the room. As a normal person staying in society, you have to put a boundary beyond which the parameters of sin cease to operate. You have to take measures to maintain the safety of your place. Maybe that dharma is bigger than the killing of poisonous reptiles that sneak into your place.

Little Maira, my two-year-old niece, is enthused at watching her Tau’s body jumping like a monkey. She laughs. Thank God centipedes don’t have blood. It’s a watery juice of life oozing from the carcass. And a child would always take you out from the complex world of thoughts about sin, nobility, kindness, etc. As I’m staring at the consequences of my foot’s retaliatory strike, I hear Maira mumbling, ‘Tau isne sussu kar diya.’She meant‘uncle it’s peed’. And that lightened the moment instantly. Holding my leg, she is staring at the dead multiple-legged crawler mired in the watery discharge of its life force. We both laugh then. God would always pardon you if you are sharing laughter with a little kid, even if you are laughing at a dead centipede.