Croakings of a clumsy frog

 

Well, well, well it has been worth it. The storm of course had steely nerves. But then it inspires the very same in you. Unstretched you are just a lethargic, spiritless loop of rope, waiting for the time and its agents to nibble at your sinews. Stretched you become a taut bowstring ready to unleash your potential into the existence around you. Unstretched you are a mere creation, a product. Stretched you are a creator, hurtling your potential on the ever-expanding canvas of creation.

Accepted that it was a blizzard worth its salt. A whirlpool of energy whipping up an expansionist storm. But then it also had every right for expansion like all things, phenomena and living beings. Importantly, it hardly left any visibility on the real creative stage of my life. Adversities are simply new avenues for the expansion of our potential.

Trying to see the way out, I strengthened the muscles of my will power and the eyesight of my inner self. I feel better with the iron in my spirit. Nothing goes waste fella. This is the law. Even the most unfavourable lot cast by the fate can’t overrule this. The most it can do is to take away the most common and expected result of one’s endeavour. And is that loss worth crying for and devalue the precious gain in the real substance of your existence?

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Laughing at one’s own follies in life surely prepares one for gentle, solacing smiles at others.

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He was a saint for he sat stoically among the garbage dirtier than shit. The dog saint, the holy friar of an unholy shrine. And me the follower, the dirty puppy playing in the filth. Now if I drive my soul mad to get enlightenment, do you think there can be a bigger fool?

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A star shines in my eyes. It shoots off on an exciting, perilous journey, leaves a dusty whiz across my horizon and its remnants, instead of crashing into the sea, land on my head. I get a nice crater on my heart.

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What is success after all? Is it beating others in their achievements? Or meeting others' expectations from you? Or surpassing your own dreams? Or a wispy, pleasant feeling at the day end, ‘Fella you have not been a mere weight on earth!’

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The sun shines bright this morning. I raise my tired eyes and look across the desultory forlornness. A dream beckons from a distance. I just smile and turn my face away, ‘No more runs after the mirage, Fella.’

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A spider's best chance of landing with prey lies in casting web and wait patiently instead of hopping around to catch one. Use your best faculty Fella, however mundane it appears to you. A mosquito has to be as proud of its tiny sting as a mighty lion is of its massive, cleaving bite.

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All pigs are good. Unfortunately, we can't say the same about the humans. And all donkeys are elegant gentlemen. Again we can't say the same about we humans.

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The sea has but no option other than to feel its existence through each and every drop cradled in its immensity. Each drop has the very same code of creation as the entire sea. Similarly, the entire cosmos has the only option to feel its lively, enthralling expansion, its pulsating consciousness, through you, me and all of us around. Each sand grain, each particle in the air and the void itself bespeaks of the very same code of creation, the very same primal consciousness. When you know more of yourself and others and the life in general, the cosmos is in fact engaged in a sweet self-reflection.

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Don't look down upon people just because they are poor and look dirty. Every type of soil has its own characteristics worth gold. We try to see in others what we ourselves lack. Before condemning and degrading someone else over looks, wealth, power and position, we have already condemned our own selves for lacking the same. How will you judge anyone without having been a thorough, bitter judge of your own self? The prejudice that we cast on others is first practiced within the workshop of one's own self. How will you hate anyone if you haven't been hating yourself secretly about your supposed failures, shortcomings and expectations?

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We cannot avoid doing wrong. But we can at least try to learn to do wrong things for the right reasons.

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A widow fleeing from a Taliban ravaged town in Afghanistan says: ‘When there are two girls in a family they take one to marry her to a fighter; when there are two boys they take one to make him fight.’

The bloody saga opens full throttle again in Afghanistan. And the outsiders go there to have their share of the pie and then leave. Superpower blocks cannot heal the Afghan soul. They have bled it too much for many decades. Any healing, even cosmetic in effect, has to come through the UN. Afghanistan needs a UN peacekeeping force. With strong Indian boots on the ground, of course.

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Dogs, slums, shit, squalor, stray cows, filthy pigs, poisoned air, plundering rulers, dying truth, abandoned and obsolete god. And in all this, we the commoners lost like plagued rats. The rain lays bare the reality on our so called swank 21st century metropolitan cities. Flooded potholed roads convey the scars that we carry in our imagination. Dirtier than shit garbage lays the foundation of the karmabhoomi of wormish survivals. Salutes my cities!

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The farmers are shedding blood of their will power for their mother earth. The very same earth whose maternity they have maintained through countless sweat and blood drops falling on her golden crystals. Land grabbers beware! They will stay. Want to test their stamina? Well, do it at your own risk!

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The real skill of we Indians lies in mindless, reckless, profuse and enthralling procreation. It seems to be a full time job. We just love conceiving, even more than the ecstatic moments preceding the conception. No wonder, we are a big, buzzing ant-swarm now. Jostling and lost in its own directionless, blindfolding majesty.

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Yamuna is up to a complete facelift this time. More rains, more torrents packed with hilly sediments. But the runnels of Yamuna rushing past the flood plains in Delhi still bear the marks of defecations on her holy brow. There was a time, as close as three years back, when two elephants played on the semi-stinking sand, raised their trunks to pay homage to the inherent holiness. The laws have their claws. They were dispatched to some sanctuary. The mother seems to miss its muddy roly-poly babies.

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The lush green rippling pastures of yore are gone. It’s now a barren, stony waste stretched for miles after miles in my heart. The fiery sun bakes the sand and the sandstorms screech and howl. Joy only so little as would amount to some lone dewdrop on a singular blade of grass if that can survive. And the sufferings lay piled up like daunting sand dunes. They don’t change, they just creep invidiously. The rose that once blossomed and smiled when all this was a lively, joyful garden is now a dry thorny memoir. It stands there like a crooked garland of thorns draped around the heart. It pricks and lets loose a torrent of memories that nibble at whatever moisture lies there among the barren waste.

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A lot many words have lost their essence in spirit. They survive half-alive in ‘letter’ only. They are no longer those perfumed living entities that their ‘spirit’ bestowed them. If ‘letter’ is the body, the ‘spirit’ carries the soul of a word. We have squashed the ‘spirit’ like a worm. To take our mechanical assault one step ahead, we are pummelling the ‘letter’ part now. The literal meanings of all the nice words have entered the obsolete book of poetic justice. Guys for the real practical meanings rub these shiny words till the blindfolding glitter vanishes to show you the more realistic stuff.

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Institutionalised plundering has been the first priority of the political class in democracy. We aren’t saying anything about the outright autocracies because there plunder, looting and exploitation isn’t a mere ‘priority’, it’s an outright and sole ‘right’ of those who wield power. In a democracy, sadly our ruler has to come out of this breed only. Is there a way out? Yes, it’s the civil society. Guys cast your alternative vote. Join the ranks of the civil society movement. The civil society guys are basically a thorn in the flesh of the democratic autocrats. The world is yet to witness its first perfectly democratic government, by the way. Peep over the wall and see the massive bundles of lies, conceit, forgery, falsehood, loot and plunder that go through the legal machines of autocratic democracies. A slightly heightened sense of awareness is the eligibility to be a foot-soldier of the civil society movement. In future, the civil society would become the flag bearer of democracy in autocratic democracies. 

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Life isn’t all about pursuing your dreams; it’s also about fighting for the leftovers lying in your plate after the hungry fate has satisfied its gluttony.

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THE LAWS

HAVE

THEIR CLAWS

THAT FURTHER EXPLOIT

THE HUMAN FLAWS.

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If those in power could take corruption to the extent of CWG, coal mines and 2G spectrum, thus writing it clearly on the wall at every nook corner that it’s how things are done. Everybody knew that corruption came perilously close to be synonymous with Congress. With the incentive of all this knowledge, the masses again voted these people into power in 2009. It proved that we aren’t just a poor helpless bunch of monkeys. We are in fact street smart guys who know how things get facilitated by creeping into the dusty corridors of governance through covert or overt means.

Manmohan Singh became the third longest serving PM of India after Nehru and Indira. It also proves that we Indians have a lot of digestion for the hereditary rule. If we are to believe in the system of royalty, Nehru the King and his royal family have long-standing prospects in our ruling affairs and rightly so. It’s as per our customs that we are comfortable with royalty and hereditary hold over knowledge, skills and rulership. Well, if it finds favour with the majority of my countrymen then a cribbing commoner like me should shut his mouth very tight. In fact, I’m keenly waiting for the Yuvraj to become the PM of India, which he will surely at least once.

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When lacs of your own sons and daughters are taking pot-shots at you, think o mighty Hindustan think! Either you have turned out to be a very bad father or they are the worst of children.

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I've an arrowed heart; its insensitive steel a check dam across the smooth flow of the river of my sensitivities. But more painful is the fact that the hands that pulled the string of the merciless bow are the hands of my own people. My Bhisma’s arrowed body with countless holes in it offers the outlets for the outflow of immeasurable sins committed by me and my near and dear ones.

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It rains in the hills. Muck, shit, garbage, cow and people stink even more. But Ma Ganga gets a nutritious face pack. Its sediment-laden torrents gain victory over the errant child perennially shitting and pissing in its motherly lap.

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While many an Indian PM delivered the costmary Red Fort speech, it has rained during the last leg of the monsoon season. It always appears to me that God pours water to wash some of our collective sins. Thank God, our cute to cumbersome PMs’ khadi appears spotless and clean.

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We shouldn’t evaluate our status by analyzing shadows. Just because we have long shadows in the morning and evening doesn’t mean we are giants. If you think so then we are dwarfs at noon. So go for the substance fella. That will confirm the real status. It will puncture the ego, leak out extra air from the balloon of your existence and allow you to fly at a height where you deserve to be.

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Even the words of sympathy and the emotions of piety serve as a decent fraction of the practical fight for justice in terms of utility. So feel proud for your contribution to a greater cause. If you still feel helpless and guilty for not doing even that then recall the memories of any selfless soul that you remember on account of his/her deeds and you nurture a strain of greatness in your DNA.

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The Governments waste more energy in defending their wrong rather than justifying their right.

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If a few thousand votes cast in secrecy can make you the so called law-maker, then the millions of open and non-secretive shouts in someone’s support earn him the status of law-defender. Governments you just cannot ignore the civil society’s cause. It comes with far better democratic legitimacy than you guys.

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Conversation with a Stranger:

One day he asked someone hiding inside

the bodily façade like a fugitive,

‘Who are thou?

And why despite all the architectural negativities

people define thou positively?’

From it unreachable deep cellar

that someone raised it germ-free, disinfected voice,

‘I am the exiled one without choice,

While the bones and the flesh around me

in worldly spotlight rejoice,

I just take the ordained backseat

and watch the game of

birth, survival, struggle and death

played inside the castle on the shaking stage.’

‘Don’t you feel perplexed by the passing days?’

Again the query was voiced,

‘Don’t you feel bad or ever you rejoiced?’

It answered in a heavy, impassive tone,

‘Thy gimmick cannot shake my throne,

In the timeless shades I spend my time here

and when the castle will be broken

the death squad will find the door open,

Away I’ll fly with the figures of

deeds and misdeeds to the final court,

and if it is found short,

again I’ll be exiled.

It has been like this for thousands of years,

but I never rejoice at new birth

nor weep at death and shed tears,

My book lies in mighty primordial hands

and the player to settle scores changes with worldly trends,

I am the same forlorn, exiled child

of the majestic, mighty father,

It’s a never-ending game perhaps,

A tiny cog on the chessboard of creation,

Let’s see how high and mighty you make the castle,

Void will then gobble the stone and stars!’

☻

Life is just a choice to be alive.

A little frog is croaking and jumping in a little rain puddle. ‘Why is it dancing?’ I wonder. ‘Probably it’s very happy,’ I get an answer as per our own equation of happiness. ‘But why is it happy?’ the sceptic inside again tries to get an explanation. ‘It’s happy because it’s dancing,’ this isn’t my idea. It has landed from a higher plane.

Things just exist in an unqualified, unconditional state. The ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’ are mere cognitive consequences of the neuro-transmitters cascading in the brainy matter. Within its exclusive zone of happening, everything is cause and effect at the same time. Imagine two points on a circle. Each point leads as well as follows the other at the same time. And their journey can be endless on the circular path.

Cause breeds effect; effect sires new causes. Creation sows the seeds of destruction; and destruction conceives creation. Everything is round about. ‘Sab gol gol!’ as a mendicant friar exclaimed by the Ganges. A big sunya. Here nothingness breeds everything; and everything sums up to be nothing.

It’s just a mammoth humming, buzzing, vibratory drama. Play your tunes well and dance like the little frog. To be happy and joyful is a matter of choice. Food, clothing, career, hobbies are what make one feel better and happy. So isn’t happiness a choice? Choose what makes you feel better. Now, who says happiness isn’t a choice? Beyond philosophies, simply choose what makes you happy. It will gradually turn you joyful.

☻

Why do I like my corrupt politician?

The urge to rule and dominate used brutal force to stay in power in the ancient times. Then we started getting civilized and the concept of outright blood and gore to dominate and rule was challenged by the civilized norms of peace, harmony, rights, responsibility, equality, ethics, etc. Of course, there is still blood and war in different parts of the world but the voices opposing it are very significant also.

Politicians are far better than the outright savage killers. They, at the most, draw invisible white blood instead of the real red one. Politicians cut the vision of the masses, to keep it suitable to their purpose, instead of gauzing out eyes altogether. They try to cut down your thinking to reshape it on their scheming anvil instead of outright beheading. On the other hand, apolitical power aspirants have hardly any inhibition in pulling out eyes and cutting throats. As a chicken-hearted writer, I always prefer non-physical cutting over the physical one. I am always in gratitude to our politicians for they have spared my limbs and allowed me to retain my croaking. With their clever as well as cunning acumen, they may push me into the corridors ignominy and pathetic survival. However, at least I still get a chance to keep croaking.

Politics is the craft of creating mammoth mountains of symbolism out of tiny molehills of facts or even fiction. It's extremely cunning but very creative work. The massive loafs of cloud then roam in our minds, covering the real from the unreal. The sun of truth stays above. And in the shadows, the fractions of truth, beliefs, conventions and set-up narratives mischievously condition the mind to think in a definite pattern for big gains for the politicians. All this allows them to claim power and its pelf in majorly bloodless ways, save some minor aberrations here and there.

What I fear the most is the apolitical power aspirants like religious fundamentalists. Do you think Taliban will allow any unbecoming croaking to their ears? Never! They are perfectly apolitical. And believe in drawing direct, real, red blood. In comparison, our khadi-clad politician rulers seem angels. Learn to love your political rulers, fella. Ask those who haven’t political rulers sitting over their head and instead have apolitical direct power claimants. Ask any educated Afghani person, running away from the land of misery, what it means to be ruled by ‘active fists’ instead of ‘scheming minds’. You will have all your answers.

☻

Greedy, lustful gust of wind

clasped the fragrant petals

of the full-blossomed flower.

Covetous currents of its dark passion

tore the tiny vase of beauty and perfume.

Petals fly with dust in all directions.

The storm doesn't win

and the beauty doesn't lose!

The former loses battle over time and distance

and dies with thorny imprints

left by the stem on its viciously throbbing heart,

The latter spreads its cosily surrendered self

in the limitless folds of peace.

☻

If you lag behind, they will trample you.

If you run with the pack, they will try to push you to the sidelines.

If you outpace them, they will pull your leg.

Well, that's human society for you!

☻

Lynched by loneliness,

I surrendered to the

sweet tyranny of solitude,

The wounds healed,

The suffering receded,

They moved away

like shifting shadows,

Painful memories lagged behind

and turned milestones on the foggy path,

Of course sweet breeze blows sometimes

and carries syrupy memories from behind,

They leave a smile on my lips

and are again left behind, as I move on,

like sweet path-side flowers,

I look back,

They wave a sweet good bye

with a still sweeter sigh,

And thus we have to move on,

All alone

to our destination next,

And pitch our tent at one fine dusk

and go for a long, long sleep.

☻

I know this is in contradiction to aesthetics. But then we have to acknowledge the dark as well. So couldn't help sharing this tantalizing piece of grey shades. By who else? GD Roberts in Shantaram:

‘The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open.’

☻

With softly pining majesty,

silence sings a song,

Shadows grow long,

Her soft fingers brace my face

and go along a tear's trace.

Delicate tip of her finger bears the jewel,

A tear,

The tear that would have been

lost as a salty line on my face.

☻

If the situations and circumstances around you are muddy, count yourself lucky because you have been picked up to blossom the lotus of life in that mud. Ever saw a lotus smiling in clear waters? So guys just splash playfully in the mud. I promise it is worth it. Did you see a pig rolling in the mud? Well, that is bliss if ever there was any. It owns it mud fully. It doesn't try to hold onto the partial purity of future. It clings to its present mud with full passion. The pig just loves wallowing in its mud. Let the purity seekers waste their lives in reaching the holy pools to cleanse their souls. Let them ruin their present for a promised future. A pool of mud at hand is better than mere promises of holy bathing in uncertain future. Love your circumstances, feller. Try your decent bit and see whether you can change them a bit to your liking. If you manage it, well and good. If you can't change them, simply roll in them like a pig. It is blissful. Believe me!

☻

The sun playing hide and seek among floating clouds,

The humid air wispily whispering a smart secret,

The land lying languidly with overdose of love;

its pining thirst quenched

by the sky's countless kisses and love-drops,

A dove pair mating,

lost in the silent majesty of lusty innocence,

And he holding her hand

with a soft touch to cover stony realities,

A gentle kiss follows

to hide the mutual lies told

to make each other happy and joyful

for the time being.

☻

Whoever pleases and pacifies the Demons in us becomes our Angel.

☻

There are some ever-hungry questions. The questions, whose answers we have to seek, remain mere answerless questions for the entire life span. They turn into fistfuls of ashes that float in the holy waters of a revered river and keep moving in their quest to find the answers. The holy torrents take them to the ultimate sea where they rest finally with the river itself meeting its resting place. On the other hand, the questions whose answers fructify naturally of their own, like a rose blossoms in a garden, they take one's consciousness to the brink of the ultimate truth.

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A geranium needs just a few beams of the early morning sun to spread its smile inside a dispirited room.

A sunflower, on the other hand, has to dare for a full stare into the sun’s fiery orbs to grin, smile, laugh or whatever these flowers have the nomenclature for this expression.

The night jasmine loves spooky midnight dark to chuckle mischievously perhaps. The sadabahar is unpretentious altogether, no nakhras at all. It is happy to smile all across the year at all places ranging from flower pots to weedy, uncemented brick-paved yards to even dung heaps. No wonder, the one smiles the best, who does it with the least conditions. This smiling spirit gives it the name that translates to ‘ever in bloom’.

A garden rose surely is coquettish and has lots of nakhras. It has to be pampered with cuddlish care. One has to get many a prickly pinches in managing a smile on the garden rose. But then it compensates very well with its beauty and fragrance.

The hibiscus stands as a pretty good smiling lady if you manage her well through her slippery adolescence, given her susceptibility to get in the company of pests and aphids who love her soft shoots. Be with her through this naughty time, she then becomes a big-hearted beauty having broad dimpled smiles. The butterflies have a whole lot of petalous boulevard to give rest to their wings on her big petals.

The bougainvillea hardly throws any tantrums. It has strong genes for many clusters of smiles. Even the traffic exhausts don’t intimidate it once it gets it smiley momentum.

The marigold is the sweet and nice eater of nutrients for it eats well to become a dark green fatty boy before it shows its cherubic grin.

Mind you, flowers aren’t all about only the velvety soft colourful landing sites for the butterflies, colours for our eyes and scent for our nostrils. Aconitum, the devil’s helmet, kills and viciously chuckles. Nerium oleander is the scented killer. Castor oil blooms can definitely castrate anyone’s pride.

Sum and summary is that all of us are good and bad in our funny, quirky ways. We the eccentric pop-ups have an idiosyncratic blend of strengths, weaknesses, negatives and positives, smiles and tears. Blend well with your surroundings. Being joyful is a habit. We can regularly remind ourselves to feel happy on principle. Make joy a hobby, a kind of propensity honed through practice. Start with flowers. See, how happy they seem all the time.

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Life can be a bit good, provided we know how to save our goodness from being eaten up to fatten someone's badness. It's always a fight between good and bad, the two beautiful mind-constructs to keep the engine of creation going.

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The dam of my patience breaks. I get an ecstatic ease after the release. But someone's life gets flooded.

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Some people are so practical and smart that their brain seems to be scattered all over their body. From that standard, I find myself pretty dim-witted.

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By chance or choice, a baby-pink bloom stands out among its spotless white siblings on the hibiscus. It looks dandy with a stardom of its own. Some things and people get an advantage right from the beginning.

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All of us were angrier once. Ageing is a coolant. It's supposed to be so. If we don't, there is risk of getting burnt out. So cool down my greyish middle aged peers!

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What a day carrying such climatic contradictions! Harmonious blend of opposites! The sky laden with the darkest of clouds sailing in an azure blue sky. Darkness and brightness embracing each other to have a feel of the opposite! Sudden drizzles as a dark cloud lingers over, only to be swept past by a naughty gust of wind. Suddenly the just-wet foliage of trees shines under the brightest of sunlight as the September sun peeks curiously and in wonderment how beautiful the just-bathed nature looks like! So this shifting canvas defines this September morning: intermittent interplay of clouded dark and azure blue and the winds carrying clouds in gay abundance. Drizzles and immediate drying act by the sun. Cool opposites!

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There may be plenty of nasty people around. But I'm pleased to tell you that there are far more beautiful people, so many that they will instantly turn the nasty ones into a pathetic minority if all of them are visible at a time. They are the hidden gems. The nasty ones are more visible because it's a kind of shit put at a public square. To make it more pleasant, this society is run by the beautiful people, I mean the people who can feel the beauty of their souls. The nasty ones are mere speed bumps on the road. In fact, they serve a purpose in limiting the speed.

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Today I just got curious to know whether Bond Sahab has undergone Covid vaccination. I think he is the best one to tell about his experience in the easiest spirits, with so much ease, simplicity and beauty that even Corona would lose its spikes and appear a cute tramp.

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I vividly remember a lone pine on a Shivalik hill. It’s wonderful to just think about it. It seems to convey the traces of its whistling silence and serenity even from hundreds of kilometres away.

‘Embraced by the pining silence

and stillness of these mute hours,

my detached self grows more independent,

free and aloof like these misty distances

virginally spread out under the moonlight,

The silvery mists kiss my prickly needles

with love free of pride or prejudice.’

Thus mused the lone pine

and felt absolutely fine!

☻

You always need new angels in your life, or rather we turn ordinary people into angels to fill the vacuum in our life, to rub off the slate and make it clean of the image of the former angel-turned-dark angel-cum-demon. Our mind is a very suitable instrument to create new realities. We are very innovative with our justification for this dusting, cleaning job. Well, human mind is a wonder indeed. No wonder, we have so many parallel realities, a kind of complex web. Like the spiders weaving web to catch prey. But spiders are better weavers than us because they don't get caught in their own weaving generally, while we get tangled in our own yarn usually. So fellers, keep your karmic web simple. It's difficult to walk out of it.

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Life is like a rubber string. It’s dead and limp without any stretching, taut tension in it. So guys if you feel stretched just enjoy the pleasant pull because that simply proves your lifefully throbbing status. We can enjoy this string-walk as long as there is tensioned tautness under our toe-hold. The pull and tension gone, we just crash-land and turn maggot feed. But tension under our toes is one thing, tension on face is quite another. We just have to be careful during the rope-walk. Later on, we can even learn to smile while walking carefully on the rope.

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If you relegate luxury of life to the paradise after death, believe me you will not be lacking in spirits to turn your as well other's lives into hell here on earth. Joy postponed is embracing pain in the present. If you live just for the outdated principles, customs and dogmas in the hope of hitting the jackpot of joy in paradise later, you are missing the point of life. Make love, compassion, joy, care and happiness the tenets of your living and create your paradise here only. Why wait to die for all this. The only religion of life is to live a meaningful and happy life. The Gods and their paradise are better left alone in peace. The paradise must be crammed to the ceilings because there have been billions who chose to suffer on earth to get a ticket to paradise. Why be in such a hurry to join an overcrowded place. Our little earth still has lots of space left for love and laughter to bloom fully. All we need is just to realign and reshape this life.

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A gloomy and grey dawn. All silence except the lonely katydid who still kept its hopes alive for a mate through its unhurried breep breep notes. The sky hung spent. It overexerted itself in breaking September rain record. The earth below soaked full and lay sleepy like an overfed kid. No rockchats for their pre-dawn birdie chatter. Then the faint traces of a new day filtered across the clouds. A handsome oriental magpie robin took over the chorus from the tired katydid and the dandy black and white bird's teasing, naughty chitter and chatter broke the ice. Instantly a couple of peacocks gave gruffy hoots. A crow cawed. A dove sent its docile notes. A white wagtail chipped in. A few sparrows gossiped across the branches. The morning chorus singers increased in number and variety. It's the birds who announce a new day most beautifully. Listen to them. They always seem wishing you the best of a morning.

☻

I can never recall a more rainy September day as today on the eleventh. Continuous rains since 5 in the morning and still going well into the afternoon. There have been just few pauses in between. Everything is soaked to the hilt. The trees stand with bowed heads. And a butterfly, taking a chance during a few minutes of rain break, flits around. Hail life! Such wispy wings not only survived the watery onslaught, it now comes out to claim its life and living as well, and imagine when it's still drizzling. Now who says there isn't inspiration in life? I find this butterfly full of life and unmindful of the odds against it. Lesson learnt, we can always do better in any situation. It's windy, still drizzling, but the butterfly has to have its long delayed breakfast. So here it goes to take a few hasty sips from the soggy flowers.

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If Taliban is all for the medieval shapes in all forms of life, no problem with that. They aren't comfortable with modernity and Western values. Again no problem with that. It's their choice. But then they have to follow the same principle in fighting also. Why don't they fight with swords and spears, the medieval weapons of war? Why use the latest weapons? These are modern tools and mostly manufactured by the Western countries. I respect your medieval choice. But then you have to fight the enemy with your own weapons. Take up swords and spears guys. We will applaud your endeavours.

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I'm a common man with modest means and common people have to be conscious of their deeds that may justify their philanthropic conscience. They have their limitations and need to look for small avenues to satisfy the good spirit. I am no exception. I collect my tiny grains of good deeds. A potted rose feeling extremely thirsty, its buds and leaves drooping dispiritedly. Pour water with care and consideration. Within fifteen minutes you have the results. The branches straighten, the sullen leaves turn happy and taut, and the buds raise their heads again. They will smile fully tomorrow. Now who says good deeds don't fetch beautiful results?

☻

Birds sing beautifully most of the time, except when they fight or are scared, which isn't too often. I can't sing. But I can at least say something about their songs. And I can write a few lines about music. Well, that makes me happy.

☻

The day

holding its last ray,

The dusk

at its mellifluous cusp,

The breeze stops

to welcome dew drops,

To the nest

birds return for rest,

The leech

also has to reach

a place safe,

To crawl

cling and brawl

on a new day.

☻

A richly yellow, thick, grand old guava leaf lets go of its grip on the branch and tumbles down to create a soft plonking sound on the car roof. The completion of a journey! Well, I believe some stately wise old man also died peacefully in sleep, after completing a joyful, meaningful life, in some corner of the world at exactly the same time.

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My dear human-centrist theorists, please recognize that this earth and the drama of life on it is a bit larger atomic arrangement. There is hardly any qualitative difference between a simple atomic arrangement and the earth as such. They are just numerically different. If you feel too large for your skin, stand on the terrace on a clear dark night and stare into the starry distances. To the cosmic immensity, an ant and an elephant on earth are the same. Well, but the ant and the elephant are entitled to their grandiose plans here on this little mud ball. You, me and all of us are entitled to the same.

Play your drama joyfully. Don’t miss the little things that bring a smile. Appreciate the smile of a flower, applaud the airy dives of a butterfly, hail the rains and go stomping in the monsoonal mud, feel the touch of the gentle kiss of breeze on your skin, salute and acknowledge the ferocity of storms, roll in the green hilly pastures, bathe in mountain streams, enjoy your tea at a roadside tea  stall, bless a child, give a coin to an old helpless beggar, throw grains to the chirpy birds, chase away the bully feral dog and come to the aid of a meeker one, share your food with others at the office canteen, congratulate the office peon for looking smart and energetic, the list is endless my dears.

Little thinks that can give us a smile are countless, so why wait in vain for the bigger reasons which are so few. These little causes of smiles are the sinews that will one day make the nest of your happiness, which in turn gets us joy, appreciation of life and gratitude for being alive. Keep smiling my dears!

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If we believe we have the capacity to do what we are supposed to do, then there is no reason to believe in the higher powers supposedly guiding our way. But the question is, do we really know what we are supposed to do. All choices and decisions stand on the verge of either falling this way or that. Faith, at some point, is bound to have its final say. Faith is pretty free flying. Tether it to reason and logic, it hides immediately behind the dark clouds. It’s not there to be tamed by the chains of reason. It is good to put reason at the forefront of your skills like the steely jaws of a mighty earthmover. That’s a convenience, a skill to lead life on a day-to-day basis. Reason is a very good servant. Faith but is the master that guides the overall operation of life. By faith I don’t just mean faith in the Gods over there in the sky’s vaults. It primarily comprises our faith in ourselves, in our soul’s intimacy with the possibilities of joy, an urge to lead a meaningful life. Extraterrestrial faith is a mere supplement to our inherent faith in ourselves. Isn’t it faith in ourselves that we use all the reasons and logic to not only survive but also strive to be happy and joyful? In fact, we hatch ‘reasons’ to nurture our ‘faith’. Never lose your faith. It’s like losing what and who you are. 

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Rains and more rains. Mold in the pickle jar. White coral mushroom on the rotting plank. Potatoes with spiky sprouts. Baby frogs everywhere. Lots of nests in the trees and plants. The sky laden with flying insects. Well-fed serpents and croaky long-limbed toads. Thickly overgrown trees and promiscuous creepers. The air with a musty smell. The railings more rusty. The sky just a cloudy canvas. Hot teas and spicy pakoras. Smiles. Gossips. Love and loss in the season of moss. Well-bathed caravan looking to sneak in and take a shelter in the autumnal camp. Well, it has been too damp. Welcome now the sunny lamp.

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Many situations in life turn meaningful, and hence bearable, the moment we accept our share, our part in shaping the things as they stand.

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Avoid the things that cost you your smile and laughter. It will never be a loss in the long term, I can assure you. Avoid also the things that fetch you an instant grimace. That's an instant gain. So start now with a smile!

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For the angels to stay relevant, there have to be demons. Well, that's too big a price for goodness. Let there be no demons, even if that means all angels losing their status and turn ordinary entities. Just a pleasant commonness! Why go for the extraordinary? Especially when the cost is too high, like having to do with demons just to have angels around.

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If you can't avoid pride altogether, have principled pride. It's a bit better than the unreined one. The latter is a sort of unsheathed sword. There is an equal risk of injury to both the beholder and the people around. Principled pride is at least a sheathed sword. It carries lesser risk. And what is this principled pride? It's the pride inside a fencing of certain principles that we won't compromise come what may.

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The first provisional Indian government in exile was formed by Mahendra Pratap Singh in Afghanistan in 1915. He stayed in exile for 35 years, having taken a vow never to step on the British-occupied Indian soil. He returned a happy man post 1947. Surprisingly, he was an educated Jat. Seems there is more to Jats beyond the JAT (just animal type) syndrome!

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Love and loss in misty valleys.

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Anger should mellow down a bit, and melt later to turn sorrow, then change into forgiveness, followed by acceptance. And maybe then dear readers we can afford a gentle smile. And welcome a new day. And remember the past with a painless nostalgia. And move on. That's how we must proceed on our journey.

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Loss, longing and love brewing a mist in the morning forest. I walk on a lone path. Then the sunrays streak in. Everything turns into love. Loss and longing glide away with misty vapours. Love is nothing but all the lesser emotions sublimated fully.

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There might be many sins listed in the dictionary of judgments but being unhappy is one of the few serious ones. Not only we suffocate the bud of life and prevent it from blossoming fully, we hurt others also. Hurting others comes very easy to an unhappy person. Like the broken finger aches wherever you put it, unhappiness gives equal pain to ourselves and others. Let's avoid this sin at least. Let's do something to undo our unhappiness first. The externals are simply the effects.

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Life isn't just sailing in composed waters. Mostly, the waters are stormy. Overall, our character is defined by the manner we captain our little boats to enter peaceful waters for a time. Sailing in calm waters is not the reality. Calm waters are just our expectation. A dream. Continuous cosmic turbulence is the law. The so called peace is simply a flimsy series of brief pauses on the ever-changing and evolving cosmic highway. The storm lurking over the horizon is the reality. It's what makes our life meaningful. How we brace up to meet the lurking storm determines the extent and meaning of life. So keep an eye on it as you are cooling your heels after the last battle. Braving the stormy patch and keeping an eye on the next one is the formula to become a successful captain of your life.

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Money does indeed buy happiness! But only when it lands up in the palm of a really needy person after freeing itself of the predatory clutch of an overstuffed wealthy hand. Guys help money in buying happiness. Buy happiness for the people whose littlest joys are stalled by the tiny sums of money. There is always that much surplus with us which we normally squander away in pizzas, movies, cakes and coke. But there are millions to whom this tiny sum might turn out to be a life saviour. Just like the real adventure of life begins once we move out of our house. Similarly, the real meaning of life begins to unfold once we cross the boundary of the self and look over the fence to spot miseries and pains of others.

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This is your day. This sun shines for you. It's eager to fill your heart with warmth. How will it do it if you are unwilling? It needs your attention and a bit of receptivity. The time is your kind brother. Its hours go calculatedly to manage your things in the best possible manner. You just have to show a trace of respect to it. Great are its blessings in return. This breeze is for you to delicately whisper the best wishes for you. Allow it to do so and don't be a naysayer, cribbing miser. This sky is for you to fly majestically. Come out of your self-inflicted confines and chains. Accept the open invitation to fly freely. This cosmos is for you; you are its sovereign and subject both! Command where you need; and follow when suitable without pride's greed.

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Try and feel the puppy-touch of unconditional love.

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If one fish can spoil the entire pond, can a single lotus win the odds from the side of beauty? Well, it serves a big purpose if we believe so. Let’s believe that an ounce of goodness is enough to counterbalance tons of evil. This belief itself serves a big purpose. It keeps the hope alive for love, joy and compassion.

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It is so easy to react on impulse to the instincts driven by hate and revenge, and so difficult to postpone the very same, think coolly, and take calculated measures and respond. Our success and standing in life is decided by the time gap between raw impulse and cool deliberation. As we move towards lessening this gap, we take a firmer grip on the wheel of life. There comes a time when impulsive reaction and cool deliberation merge into one. Then you are in the driving seat and this mind becomes your servant. In that position, you create, you become a creator. You are no longer a piece of mere creation.

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A stray puppy licked my hands, its tiny tail wagging with loads of greetings. It was so friendly, so pure and honest. The puppy’s touch feels far more loving than so many smart humans having super-egos who just love to hiss and bite, hiss and bite, hiss and bite!

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Dark is the poor sidekick of light. It just exists to provide a canvas on which the multihued colours of light get painted in dazzling arrays and patterns.

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What is the difference between love and infatuation? Infatuation is that glittering fake jewel that glitters like most of the modern things in design, pattern and finish. Love is the real gold, smiling unceremoniously with its subdued colours and toned-down purity. And all of us are jumping over the barbed wires of infatuation, our emotions bleeding, to reach the beautiful garden of love.

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Here is a little invitation for laziness to see the truth in slow mode. A continuous run is no fun without rest, repose and pause. Inviting you to slow down and have a bit of rest. The fast mode has no meaning without the slow mode. A run is fruitless without rest. In any case, we have to stop to reap the rewards of our running, huffing and puffing.

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As a creator you give the best shot at life. You no longer fear death once you have given your best to life and blossom the potential Mother Nature has given you. Smile full and sadness vanishes. Light fully and darkness turns on its heels. And what is a flower? It's simply mother earth smiling as you carefully, lovingly caress a bit of soil with loving hands. We create blossoms with our emotions. The potential is already there. What we need is a gentle emotion and a bit of smile to create something that adds to mother earth's smile.

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Every day try to have some thoughts in support of a Smile. It can be done as a habit.

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Victory gives you a trophy; failure gives you a chance to fight for a still bigger one. Keep going. But never miss the beautiful scenes of life on both sides of your path. As long as you enjoy the free bouquets of nature around, life no longer gets defined in victory-defeat terms. It acquires a larger dimension. It turns meaningful by itself. And joy and happiness come as the natural, unconditional fruits of the path. Journey well. Never miss your smile.

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Well there never was a destination. The only destination has been to move from a painful journey to a joyful one. It's a very subtle change in gears: From the outer shadows, which are ever shifting and fleeting, to the inner substance that is ever unperturbed and waiting for the journeyman to come home at long last.

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So much for the conceptualized set of sins and vices! We have too many hypothetical concepts to tame the basic instincts in humans. A vice is not a vice everywhere. A so called 'vice' with larger motivation loses its dark shades. Without a supportive chorus in the background, it again becomes a loathsome act in abstract. But there is hardly anything in total abstractness, except in the pages of books and the brains revising these for one-upmanship to win a point. Reality is too muddled up. There is hardly any vice that goes totally unjustified. And rarely a virtue that stands perfectly justified. Read Dostoevsky's Gambler. It treats gambling as a vice and then not so sinful art driven by the pure psychosis of a helpless heart mad after the chancy windfalls of win and loss and even beyond.

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Now I understand why economically challenged households have bigger treasure in the form of children. As Mr. Micawber says in David Copperfield:

‘In our children we live again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, any accession to their number is doubly welcome.’

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To lead a successful social life, invest in a few relations wisely and with soft emotions. Work and behave with people in a manner as to have two or three persons who will always have a room for you in their house, half a dozen at least who will always have a chair for you at their dining table, a few dozen who will always have softness for you in their hearts and a few hundred who will surely smile at you as you pass them. This, dear readers, is the hallmark of a peaceful, happy, mundane life of a common man. If the ingredients of joy are so earthly, why then aim for cosmic shots to find a meaning in life?

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While we fret, fume and get frustrated for the things that we don't have, feeling wronged both by the system and destiny, there are people we carry on uncomplaining, even though they have just a fraction of what we have, but deserve 100 times more than us. Just give a careful look around. We have many in our locality itself, so there is no need to pack bags and search in distant lands. Doesn't it make you feel the luckiest of the lot? A sense of gratitude needs this much of attention.

Many times we think we don't have enough for our talent. So many times we crib about having less for what we do. But then there are the lives that could have been better than any of us just that they were born in a ditch and circumstances never allowed them to come out. I see scores of such unsung heroes on a daily basis and find myself humbled and cut down to my real size.

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What are tough circumstances? They are just some sick moments needing doctoring from you. Take the pulse of difficulties. Analyse impartially like a doctor. Put up the diagnosis. Prescribe a solution and come out hale and hearty.

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Don't take life as a mystery. It's an open book. Each line has just one message: The time you are allowing to slip away without celebrating my existence (and your own—both are same by the way) will never come back. So celebrate life. Light new lamps of exuberance, fresh dreams, undying enthusiasm, unrelenting creativity and many more.

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A little song book of eternal hope, love and loss. A cup of tea brewed with night blooming jasmine flowers. A perfect date on a partially sunny warm day! Ordinary has the hallmark of perfection. What else one needs in life?!

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The potted rose has turned into a heavy bouquet of flowers. Giving its best shot at life! You no longer fear death once you have given your best to life and blossom the potential Mother Nature has given you. Smile full and sadness vanishes. Light fully and darkness turns on its heels.

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And now dear earthlings, the winter softly coos: 'Dear, I'll cool down the burning hot field of realities that tortures your soft feet!' Open up to the invitation. Give Mother Nature a helping hand. She will put our house in order far too soon than we believe. But we have to do our bit first. Please resolve to plant a few trees and see them grow up strong with mandatory post-plantation care.

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A little invitation for laziness.  The hare may have its huffing and puffing competitiveness. But it lives very anxiously. A tortoise, on the other hand, goes on its journey that isn't defined in terms of mileage and distances. It's both joy and motion at the same time. Welcome to the snaily pace of the tortoise world! Here you acknowledge the smile of a wayside wild flower and greet the lone beetle on its journey.

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A little tale of Cheesy Papa. A powder blue beauty is seen in the washbasin. It’s a woodlouse, a dweller of old, rotten woods. Maybe it got its adventure too far and landed into the basin. Now it's a fun game, go up and slump down again. Maybe they take their struggles as easily as feasting and fun. So here it goes with its business. I take a picture and since it's a patient model for the shoot, it gets its reward. It gets rescued on a dry leaf and I leave it near a pile of dead wood. It's a very interesting little bug. Look at the range of its names: Granny grey in Wales, boat-builder in Newfoundland, Butcher boy in Australia, Carpenter in Labrador, Charlie pig in Norfolk, Cheesy Lou, Cheesy papa, Cheesy pig, Daddy grampher, Dandy postman, Fat pigs, Grumper pig, Granny grunter and scores of more interesting names. In every English county it has a different name. It can be a good pet for buggy parents. And is, most importantly, harmless to humans as it doesn't spread diseases. So raise a brood and give them as many names as your funny creativity allows you because they take name-calling very easily and in good spirits.

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Hasn't the creation got an instinct for ‘carrying the burden’ ingrained very deeply in its fabric? There is an everlasting pull for expansion and more complexity. How can we avoid complexity of life then? Going against the primal instinct is a sort of reverse engineering. This is the evolutionary challenge. A kind of lavitation instead of gravitation. Fording the river. The ultimate salvation. The cessation of the urge to pull the burden and still be joyful. A state where every burden transforms into bliss.

The ant is pulling a dead carpenter ant. Its load is hundreds of times bigger than the puller. Pull your burden little lady. But don't forget to rest under the shade of the fragrant roses on the way. They are as meaningful as the weight you pull. And the journey turns joyful if you pause and greet the flowers on the way. And don't forget to acknowledge the presence of thorns on the path as well. Just be careful of them as they have their meaning also. They are there to help you watch your step and avoid a fatal fall. A bit of pinch now and then serves its purpose because it maybe avoids a fatal fall in the long run.

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Slow down please! Pick up a dry leaf and take out the carpenter ant that has got into the toilet seat. I sometimes rescue even house flies and mosquitoes. They will be a nuisance, one may say. But the chance to be a saviour is too big a reward for such deterring considerations. I try to keep my foot on a hold as a beetle crosses, or a skink crawls away, or a frog hops away. I know a tread of caution is for my own benefit. It will save me from a fall sometime in future. If you learn to not walk over insects and beetles on the way, you will surely escape the thorns and potholes of life that come your way. If you can rescue an insect or bug of your dislike from a basket, basin or drain, you are prepared to forgive people.

These tiny acts of salvage hone the spirit of sympathy, love and care in you. They blunt the edge of apathy and neglect that sees us turning a blind eye to so many unbecoming things around us, where we can bring a positive change without creating too much turbulence in our lives. It’s better to have a little bit of time to stop and take out a drowning beetle. If not for this, you will hardly try to save a drowning man in future. Goodness is a habit. It can be practiced. The vast workshop of life has so many tiny tables for us to carry out our little experiments. To me rescuing an elephant and saving an ant is more or less the same. That particular saviour emotion is the main thing. So watch your step and avoid crushing insects unnecessarily. You gain a lot from it. You learn to be careful and responsible. Most of the times when we think we are helping others, we are in fact helping our own selves.

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The first half of November is supposed to be the best part of the year here in north India. The winter is opening like a soft bud. The birds sing at their best. It proves it’s the best part of the season. A beautiful, fluid mix of balmy cold and tipsy warmth. But we have turned it the worst. The metallic haze and toxic smog grips the skies like the steely talons of an eagle strung over the soft fur of a rabbit. The eyes burn. Throats ache. The sip of life, the air, turns a slow dose of death. The north Indian plains look like a huge prison in the lung-busting smog. The sun looks pale and sick-faced as it peeks weakly over the polluted planet. But then even on such a sickly gloomy morning there are thousands of swallows flying in the sky. So many of them! With so many birds, it seems as if everything will be all right again. The sky seems to bless the earth through these freely flying birds. These are the bright sparks on a gloomy smoggy day. It’s the time to plant more trees and flowers. It’s the time to walk a bit slower and do something that will leave the planet worth staying for the coming generations.

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Isn’t life all about taking smart, clever as well as wise short-cuts to beat the puzzling array of the problems randomly cropping around us? The cosmic life is an expansion for more sophistication. And our individual entity, as a part of the whole, is an expression of that expansion. As the newest of patterns—which look like problems to us—pop up around us, the sole purpose of a meaningful life is to keep the inherent simplicity that forms the foundation of all the lateral sprouts and shoots in the game of creation. So be the solution provider. It’s the hallmark of a life well lived.

Behind the most complex of a phenomenon, there is an amazing simplicity. Read that. Those cute fundamentals will tell you that every situation is a living being and we are a cute aide-de-camp to the bigger game around. So don’t lose heart as the sandstorms hit. Keep walking. Always there are the easiest of routes to the toughest of destinations. Every hard situation has the softest of a solution. So there is no hard problem in the real sense. Our solutions make them so.

When in the face of a tough situation, blame your solution not the situation. Situations stand neutral like the fundamental laws of science and nature. Play your game well. Let it be a fine innings before being recalled to the pavilion.

Most importantly, the meaning of ‘universe’ is ‘one unified song’. Listen to the symphony. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only. Listen to these delicate murmurs and it will help you in breaking the hardest of superficial, outer cores. And as you dive deeper, the surface turbulence is left behind, leaving you in the pools of peace. Dive well!

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Usually weaknesses and inhibitions end up being taken as goodness. Most of the people never had the opportunity to misuse their endowments and power—which makes us qualify people as mean or bad—thus ending up as nice fellows. Empower the people economically, or through any other means qualifying as empowerment, and then wait and watch. I think, most of the people whom we count as good fellows are simply helpless. I have seen a few really good fellows who are empowered at many levels and still count a human as a human irrespective of caste, class or creed. This is what I call as goodness.

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Taiwan of course will be part of China one day in future. But it will be the mainland going with the island, not vice-versa. The model of monopoly and autocracy is inherently weak. It is bound to collapse. The only matter is about time. Of course we will have a democratic, unified China one day. But a sinking ship sucks in a lot of water. The communists will, no doubt, breed a lot of mischief before that. Its repercussions will reach the far ends of mother earth.

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Hinduism is the primal faith on mother earth. It has the deepest roots as far as faith is concerned. Brahmanism is far smaller as a philosophy. It’s merely a particular approach to the socio-political and economic domain of our society followed by a group of Hindus. Brahmanism, I would say, doesn’t constitute even 10% of Hinduism. It’s a very small cult to assert socio-political and economic hegemony of a small section of Hindus.

No problem with that. It’s always about dominance by one group or the other. The problem arises when these adherents of only 10% of Hinduism hold the rest by neck and try to portray Brahmanism as the entire Sanatan Dharma. Brahmanism is lucrative and swashbuckling to influence shallow minds to gain parochial advantage. I don’t have any problem even with it. The only issue is, please don’t tell me that Brahmanism is Hinduism. It’s attractive, I know, because there is a great show and turbulence on the surface. But Brahmanism is merely little pieces of foam among the waves in the universal sea of Hinduism.

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Feeling the heat? Don't worry, cool winds will pick up soon. Feeling cold? Worry not, the sun is just about to shine from the cloud's corner. Getting hunted? Don't worry, there never is a prey who isn't a hunter itself. As the proverb goes, when it floods, the fish eat the ants. And as the waters recede and leave the ground dry, the ants eat the fish. The circumstantial winds are equally for and against all of us. So just dance to the tunes of life. Like grass does. Like flexible plants do. They dance and enjoy the most, open to the winds from all directions. No point in having a tiff with life. We may not have too much control over the music of life that beats around us. But we can surely take a jig and go for dancing the steps of our choice. Or even hop like a frog if you are dance-challenged like me. Hopping around is no less fun. Telling from my personal experience.

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Guys, individual freedom has always remained a fundamental ideal since the historical times. However, it is not to be achieved by casting off all society and civilization or by going back to a so-called 'natural state'. The perfection of man, his freedom, his liberty, his happiness, and the growing mastery of his own destiny, all are dependent upon a clear understanding of certain laws of nature and society. We have to accept that both nature and society have worked according to these laws to enable us to get the idea of this so called 'freedom'. So the pursuit of the interest of the baby should not turn us blind to the interests of the mother.

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Many a thing changed over the centuries. In fact, almost everything changed to take a completely different shape and connotation. But the religious differences are the same. They seem beyond the pale of time. Blood-shedding and hate in the name of religion is the same. Isn’t it high time that the world community starts dismantling the hold of exclusivist religious principles on people and states?

It is the time for an all-inclusive world religion, the religion of all humanity, humanism. It can have Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Hindu and other major Gods and deities of other sects in its fold. The main issue is how do we convince the beholders of Puritanism in various religions, particularly the fundamentalist Islamists, to see beyond the rigid confines of their unchanging tradition.

Most of the religions are melting under the warm sun of internationalism. But the medieval icy blocks in the stream of fundamentalist Islam are holding their archaic laws and principles solidly crystallized like the polar snows. The question is, will Islam ever be lenient to the non-Muslims? Modern Islamists will have to dismantle the institutionalized psyche among the Muslim masses against the kafirs and welcome non-discriminatory universal brotherhood as His Holiness Prophet Mohammad envisioned.

World peace and harmony depends on this question. If internationalism succeeds to liberate humanism buried under religious fanaticism, we can expect to have a peaceful world following the religion of humanism. In any case, religion has to be systematically dismantled to lay the foundation of a common world. China will attempt to do it with its atheist state policy. But that will turn this world a big jail. Better that it’s done under democratic principles.

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Most of the time, our hate for someone is merely an instrument to undo and hide our own guilt about the incidents and happenings, which took us to a point of unbridgeable differences with that person. Hate is a very convenient tool. It’s fuelled by anger. With the tools of hate and anger, it’s very easy to put all the blame on someone else for the fallouts. In our own court, the hammer of hate and anger sets our conscience free, while holding the other party culpable for all the wrongs that have befallen.

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All of us want to leave a mark on the running water and blowing air. And all of us fail. Only this unquenchable urge wins. But then maybe a bit of laziness is what we need after all this burnout. Slowing down helps in avoiding the explosion, both individual and collective. We have run too blindly and now stare at the edge of a blind drop. Treading carefully will save us. Walk slow and with poise.

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Dear friends, if life isn't making much of a sense then give an ear to the Voice Inside. Forget about the hoot and holler emanating from the world outside. It simply adds to the confusion. Give an ear to the soft and murmurous cooings emanating from the soul. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only, your most personal message, meant only for you. Listen to these delicate chimes. It’ll help you in finding peace in chaos. In getting a foothold in the stampede. In feeling rest, repose and respite in the face of constant buffeting by the world around. It’ll help you in breaking the hardest of superficial layers, which suffocate and limit your identity. And put you face to face with your true self, your real worth.

Listen to it, close your eyes and pay attention with all your heart. Just for a change, don’t look far, look closest at yourself. It’ll be as uneventful as looking at a dust particle around your feet. But it changes the universe for you. You will have the biggest message in the softest of whispering phrases! It’ll help you in finding yourself. Happy self-seeking! God bless us all!

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Why does truth pinch most of the time? Simple! Because it is no chocolate, sugar candy or mellowable sweetie-pie lump of ice cream. It is a hard, sour, iron ball guys. It has pinching rough stony edges to its surface. Come into contact with them and they will take a few flakes from your skin, leaving a red or purple bruise depending on the intensity of truth contained in it. Now the question arises, 'Why does it almost always leave a grimace on our face instead of a smile?' The simple fact that all of us almost always rub cold shoulders against this ironed ball having thorns for our soft skin, proves one fact: We are not subjectively inclined to accept the objective reality as it stands in abstract. But does not that mean that we have moved poles apart from truth and its manifestations, while going on the path of individual and collective improvisations at the subjective level. May be the reason for our success in emerging at the top of the food chain in the game of 'survival of the fittest' is that we have institutionalized ourselves to negate and defy, and do without, certain basic truths that form the core of creation and nature. Nothing wrong with that. It, however, is paradoxical that most of these scions of truth—against which we have always been taking cudgels—form the core of our moral, humanistic, religious, spiritual and aesthetic vision enshrined in preach books. Strange!

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Look far away into the mists but always watch your next step also. Take a step, take a pause then and look into the distances before the next step. And never forget to go slow. It allows a healthy balance of sight, observation, dreams and imagination. You enjoy the journey and don't bother about destination. Most importantly, moving on from the past is usually a far better journey than you ever imagined!

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The beautiful bunch of roses showers its petals on the ground after the heartiest of blooming. Joyful dissolution of the self! A flower blooms up fully. Opens its heart to the elements around. Draws every ounce from its potential to smiles and fragrance. Opens up completely. And then painless dissolve! This dissolution is further expansion only. Now the petals fly around in a broader dimension. Beautiful, self-surrendered parts of its previous existence now lie scattered as pious homage to mother earth. That is the purpose of life. We have to give back something better than what we took. That is evolution, expansion. Like this flower offers fragrance and smiles to mother earth in return for the sunshine, soil and moisture. The sole purpose of our existence is to be a better version of ourselves.

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A hybrid rose can have nice colour and exquisite design but it lacks the basic essence of a flower, which is ‘fragrance’. The beauty is skin deep, a mere cosmetic effort at the surface. It's haughty and arrogant, a kind of constriction within itself, an insecurity, a fear, an aloofness, a separation. The soul is missing. They seem too self-absorbed. Like the apparently classy, well polished gentry. They stand with touch-me-not attitude. And the bees and butterflies stay away. They find it totally unapproachable.

The marigolds, on the other hand, are little humble, down to earth flowers. They aren't showy. They are common looking. But they have a soul, a depth, a delicate fragrance. Most importantly, they have nectar to offer to the butterflies and bees. With their openness and genteel receptivity, they are buzzing with little winged insects. They have broader connection to life and living. I can feel their soul through their soft fragrance as I sit by them. They exist in a dimension where they touch many chords in my heart.

Sadly, the smell-less hybrid roses are as distant and soulless as a mere picture, beautiful without the splendour of life in it, or a well designed set of plastic flowers.

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It happened 12 years back in Delhi. The moment still stands out somehow. Some brief moments carry far more significance than months and sometimes even years. Hazy darkness outside the railway station. A friar approached me with mystical pride and spiritual pomp. He asked for alms (which can be money only, given the times we are living in). I found myself offering him 10 rupees. A Gentleman verbally poked me for my meekness and abetment of begging. The friar shot back, ‘Do you think it's only about money. If you think so, take this!’ He proffered a 100 rupees note. The gentleman had to beat a retreat. The friar smiled at me and melted into the crowd after blessing me.

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If you have time and softness to plant flowers, take some moments to appreciate their beauty once they blossom up. Needless to say, always spare time for your children once you have taken time to produce them.

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If you are hurrying and a tree's branch braces against your head or face, don't get irritated. It's merely a soft greeting asking you to be restful. Accept it. You can run fast and still be at rest within. What else is meditation? It's the ability to be still within even while you are walking or dispensing what life needs you to do in order to survive.

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Most of the time, we are self-charged on the grand mission of aggravating our own miseries. We are suitably helped all along by our ability to hold onto the master illusion that others are responsible for all the shit flying around in our lives.

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Thus spoke a little flake of cloud over a cosy valley in small hills:

A dole out from the infinite unmanifest to the finite manifest, I am just a tiny speck of cloudy phenomenon casting its shadow in a little valley. From the unbound infinity to cosmos to solar system to Earth atmosphere to this little fleeting shadow, I am simply a ripple, a pulsating, throbbing little presence through which the whole feels its own being!

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Democracy needs champions, says President Biden. And who is a champion? It's the one who fights for a cause without much calculations about the possible fallouts. Unfortunately, neither the world’s largest nor the world’s most powerful democracy fit the tag of being a champion for democracy. The biggest threat to democracy right now is the CCP (Communist Party of China) authoritarianism. Little Lithuania is indeed a champion of democracy. It’s the only country that has officially recognised Taiwan at the cost of being cornered by the fuming dragon. My conviction has never wavered that democracy is the best among the worst forms of governance. It has its limitations but still has enough space to allow an individual to nurture decent amount of dignity and independence of spirit. I also believe in one China. But I view mainland China as part of Taiwan, not vice versa. Authoritarianism has to fall inevitably. It’s almost a natural law. It comes with its own undoing. So there will be a day when there will be a unified democratic republic of China. And no wonder, it will then be among the best nations on earth in the real sense of it. Don't feel sceptical about it. This probability is surer than any other reality. It's only about time. Till than we can take inspiration from the little champion of democracy, Lithuania.

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Maybe I was feeling a bit bigger than my skin, the very same human tendency to be proud and vain. And instantly mother existence makes me realise my real status. Standing near a clump of ferns, a few mosquitoes hovered around me and one of them nicely settled for a little feast. I am also a food for some other constituent of existence, I realise. Nearby, a rockchat snaps up a carpenter ant from the ground. Well, it's nice to be reminded that apart from whatever notions I have about my being and significance, I am also a mosquito feed.

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Don't be too serious about anything, as Charles Dickens says, ‘The trifles make the sum of life.’

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The marigold leaves are a bit dull among the bright blossoms. They look dusty and need bathing, I realise. I sprinkle some water over them and they immediately say thanks through a soft, gentle fragrance wafting around me, embracing me, strengthening my solitude, adding to the smiles in my life, further calming down my nerves and say, ‘All is well because we are nothing but your very own smile!’

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Pre-script: Female readers kindly replace ‘She’ by ‘He’.

Gibran: She was fashioned with the gentleness of the dove, the evasiveness of serpents, the vanity of the peacock and the cruelty of the wolf.

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Life can be tricky,

if even about the simplest issues

you are too frisky,

Prudence is to be at ease with situations and time,

Complications then wouldn't chime,

And days would pass like a free rhyme!

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Poetry died a long time ago, the real poetry. Now it's pseudo-poetry just like we abound in so many pseudos. Things stand in letter only now, as we have slaughtered the spirit. We are lesser humane now, so our muscled, hardened, tainted emotions fall short of conveying that unstigmatized purity that found outlet through this great art. Sad but that's true. Change for more complexity is inevitable. May be there were still purer times than the pristine days of classical poetry. Maybe development is inversely proportional to goodness.

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The potted rose has surely given it all it had for Mother Nature. Its branches droop with the sweet flowery bunch-loads of roses. Fullest expansion is painless dissolution. Fullest being is non-being itself. A life harnessed to the full is griefless death. Isn't a tree just mother earth expanding and this air merely further expansion of the tree? Live and blossom so fully that you explode with ecstasy instead of burning to painful oblivion. And what are the fuels of this painful burning? These are the things that hold us back, preventing our fullest expansion. Fear is the primary roadblock. It breeds many other offshoots like anger, hate, jealousy, greed, judgements. Smile, laugh and explode with ecstasy like this rose does!

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It's a wonderful symmetry of spider web among the guava leaves. In the foggy morning, it looks a beatific beady design with the dew-strings drawn to perfection. Homosapiens please don't be too proud of what you create. The littlest of players in the existential game create far more complex designs in their individual capacity. Most of our creations are an offshoot of the mankind's joint imagination and effort. What a spider does is equivalent to one man making Eiffel tower. An ant carrying a huge dead carpenter ant is equal to a man carrying an elephant on his head. So please let out the extra air of pride in the stomach. All this drama around is primarily self-manifesting.  It's a series of self emerging designs and patterns. We just hop around for some time as a tiny part of some design in some corner.

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It's a little story of 6 inches and 7 months in a corner of the existential game. It’s a little sadabahar flower that set out to etch its destiny in a little crack in a plastered wall about 6 feet from the ground. She was born in the killing heat of June in this little crack in the wall. Well, one can't choose where one lands at birth, so no point in complaining. In the killer heat she kept her little self alive, waiting for the rains to come. There is no point in comparing. There are plants of her species who have entire earth to themselves and grow in feet. She but managed the best with her little crack. The rains came. She blossomed to get her sole flower as the trophy of her passion for life. Now the hard winters are buffeting the surroundings. There she stands tall in her smallness, waiting patiently for one fine spring morning when the sunrays will have enough warmth for another smile. Her few inches carrying the worth of many feet in normal circumstances. Her sole flower carrying the gist of fragrance and smile worth hundreds of flowers. Well, that's the hallmark of a meaningful life: Do the best with whatever you have received to begin with.

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You feel lonely on your path and a stranger comes your way. You both walk and smile and become familiar. And at some turn both of you drift apart. Who won't like to go smiling all the way till the end? But still people drift apart because destination is rarely the same. Pain is natural. Memories also cast long shadows from behind. All one can do is to commit oneself to come as a better, more evolved person if at some turn on the path, faraway in future, you come to walk by the side of that same person. This is what I would say doing justice to one's past without wasting present and losing a sight of the future.

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As Dickens says at some place in Oliver Twist, ‘It's a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.’

But then the maestro gives us our hope back also by saying, ‘This world may be a sad and sorry place, but it's not a hopeless place for it's a place where truth must be learned and souls must be made.’

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If you want to help yourself against blatant lies, stop asking questions to our politicians. Political answers would come out as lies and falsehoods. Almost naturally. So to avoid the mountains of lies adding to its height, avoid asking questions to the politicians.

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Nobody leaves anyone. We are all simply running away from our own deep personal pains. Never forget, usually when two people meet, they are coming together to beat their loneliness and forget their pain. But the intrinsic restlessness stays and people again try to move away from it. The ego construct will always blame the other. These are but our own scars. We can't be a giver in any relationship until we are at peace within. Till then it's a psychological drama of hurt, pain and blame game among unhappy people bumping into each other as tankers. Sorry takers. Hardly any difference between ‘tankers’ and ‘takers’ by the way. I remember myself as a tanker, firing out the vollies of my frustrations, believing others to be the cause of the outpouring, while all along this, the ammunition lay within. And once you realise this, the live-fire ammunition turns damp. It loses its fiery heat. Only our ego keeps it alive. Then the minor irritants, which serve as tiny triggering sparks at the most, fall on a dead heap that's not inflammable. No burning within and you get sips of succour, self-driven solace and restfulness.

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Most of us terribly under-do most of the things in life that should actually be done and over-do the things that should have been avoided. Plain cowardice. Full of imaginary fears. Fear is the soul of a cowardly, curtailed life. As Dickens says, 'I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.'

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How would you expect it to be a peaceful world when there are billions with limited means and unlimited infirmities of mind?

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There are far more nice people in the world than you ever imagined. Badness is overhyped. All we need is to keep our hearts open and beautiful people walk into your life like warm sunshine after weeks of snowy blizzard. Keep your hope alive for there comes a beautiful soul just round the next corner. Keep smiling and keep going. Accept the past. Crying over it only spoils the present and breeds bitterness. Crying over it only spoils the present and breeds bitterness. Double said, intentionally. If the present isn't sweet, it only means you carry too much bitterness from the past. Forgetting isn't easy till we forgive. And forgiveness isn't feasible till one is caught in your fault Vs my fault. Don't dissect the past. That's like taking nice dreams and horrible nightmares to be more substantial than the reality. It consumes too much energy. This is cadaverous addiction, a nasty post-mortem of things that hardly matter now. The past is also overhyped in terms of giving us lessons. The present is the workshop to learn and unlearn and all else. Here and now. Here and now. Here and now. One's ability to be here and now gives the weapon to cut unnecessary karmic entanglement. Present moment awareness is the knife that cuts the nasty mooring that keeps us stuck up in stinking muds, keeping us away from the bubbly stream of life. Awareness of here and now is your weapon to slay these phantoms of the mind.

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We come across wrong people only because we have to walk further on to meet the right people who will share a part of their journey with us. Then further on, these right people also appear wrong. So whatever was right was just in its present form. Ultimately, we realise that the final frontier is to be crossed by us all alone. Never expect companionship to see you home in any relationship. These are mere occurrences like trees and flowers falling on your soul's eternal path. Give them respect, give them attention, give them time and energy, for they also do the same. But don't expect them to be the vehicle of your journey. They are just fellow travellers like you and me. Why be so utilitarian to view travellers as the means of taking you to the destination where you feel you will find it joyful. They can be beautiful milestones in your journey at the most.

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Usually, our vilification and villanisation of someone is merely a desperate attempt to ignore the ugliness in our own persona. I think, if we give just one-tenth of the critical attention that we give to others to our own selves, we will have immense opportunity to smile unconditionally as we walk on our path.