A Spicy Slice of Cucumber

 

From Ramjhoola, a street moves up north, along the eastern bank, bordered with numbered kutis for the resting babas on the right. There are iron benches and cast iron open pavilions overlooking the Ganges on the left. The holy river, in this stretch, has a few little beaches dotted with massive, beaten, smothered, rounded boulders. The beaches are in fact the sand banks formed by the sediment deposits during the flooded monsoon season. The people love to have an oceanic experience on these tiny sand bars.

It’s the second week of April at about half past three in the afternoon. The sun is mercilessly beating very hard right over the valley. The sunrays sting and bite. The waters of the holy river appear mossy green. Steady streams of rafts glide down from Shivpuri. The sadhus are sitting lazily, consumed by a strange, pleasant ennui which full time devotion brings in its wake. Even in this strong heat, some foreigners are sunbathing on the beach.

There are many Yoga and Ayurvedic massage centres along the boulevard. Here one can enter the portals of spirituality and well being either by enrolling in a Yoga course or getting an aromatic massage with scented herbal oils and pastes. 

You can expect as many sadhus as the trees around. The rains of the last three or four days seem to have vanished completely, leaving hardly any trace behind. It’s as hot as you can expect at this point of the season. The mornings have strong gusts of cool wind blowing down the valley, carrying the message of divinity from the Himalayas. The noons but proclaim the hot, sweaty, worldly authority of the plains down south.

‘Kheera khao Bhole, Kheera khao’ she preens. The intonation then shifts to ‘Cucumber, cucumber!’

The linguistic shift stands out as a little milestone on some iron bench. She is a tiny, petite woman selling cucumber slices for rupees 10 and 5. She must be about 70 years in age. Most importantly, her features give a clue to the fact that she has learnt to smile over minor irritants. Life turns very easy with this kind of temperament.

Her family stays in Delhi. They even own a little shop at a slum in Adarsh Nagar. Once her sons got married, she took sanyas. However, it was with a condition—she won’t beg to survive. She gets something or the other to sell over the changing seasons—peanuts and gazak during winters, fruit chats during summers. All this helps her to manage a lodging for which she pays 1,500 rupees per month.

She has a gentle smile and an effective laughter. ‘When I came here, I requested Ganga Maiya to give me that much luck to earn my own bread as long as my hands and legs allow it.’

She seems very peaceful with her non-begging sanyas. Her little enterprise allows her to stay on the banks of Ma Ganga. This is the biggest blessing to her.  

‘It’s a blessing itself to stay near Ganga Maiya!’ she is saturated with gratitude.

‘I do think about my family sometimes. I know they are doing what makes them happy, like staying here makes me happy. There is no need to walk forever. Just walk only that much as it takes you to the place that makes you feel really happy,’ her philosophy looks very lucid on her peaceful face.

She has her reservations about begging by those who have renounced the world. ‘In my opinion, one should keep working for one’s bread till the hands allow. Begging should be the last recourse,’ she looks at a rotund sadhu who seems well fed at countless community langars. 

The sadhu clears his throat, even scoffs a bit at her, takes a turn to look the other way. He seems to have been affected by the remark.

She picks up a slice of cucumber and puts her special masala on it and goes to the sadhu. ‘I’m sorry beta if my saying so hurts you. I said about my life. Only Ganga Ma knows the truth. How can an illiterate, ignorant old woman like me know the truth? All of us are the children of Ganga Ma. She is the one who feeds us whether we work for it or not. All are same to her,’ she caresses the young sadhu’s unkempt locks of hair.

The heat of her care melts the tiny traces of frown on the bearded face. He smiles and takes her offering. ‘Who will you give your love to if there are no receivers of love like us?’ he laughs and starts munching on the spicy slice of cucumber.    

Short in Body, Tall in Minds

 

Most of us keep our ambitions very lofty like the fruits very high up there among the branches of a tall tree. Then we get onto our toes, stretch our body, protrude our arms upwards to get a handhold at the object of our pursuit. That’s how life takes its course with our ever-stretched self. We have a culture of high fruits among the branches of tall trees. The more we elongate ourselves along the length of the target, the better it is taken as. No wonder, being tall is perceived as a big qualification for the game of life and shortness is simply taken as a kind of ‘disability.’

The so called ‘disability’ landed in the little yard of a poor tailor. He measured people’s hands, torso, legs, waists, wrists and chest to make fitting dresses. For the chest measurement everybody inflated for a couple of extra inches and thus rise in the tailor’s esteem. For the stomach everyone did the reverse to reach as near to the size zero mark as possible. All we want is a bit more here and a bit less there. Very rarely we are comfortable with being as we are.

The tailor was crestfallen as his measuring tape stopped at the same point while measuring their dress-making stats. They advanced in years, without adding hardly anything to their height. It was a dwarf pair of twin girls. The poor couple usually shed tears of agony for themselves and pity for the little ones.

‘I will never have the luck of making a beautiful full-grown young woman’s dress for them. It will be a kids dress forever,’ the dress maker lamented.

Those who had their aesthetics in place pitied the girls. The ones who lacked the spectrum of sensitivities in their heart would laugh at them and enjoy the sight. The parents had a permanent aching, sad corner in their hearts. Their siblings had a walkover in typical childhood rivalries and competition.

The girls grew up in age, if not in height, with a dream of rising in stature by becoming doctors. Nobody took it too seriously, taking it just a dream as they are. Most of the dreams retain their virtual status in our lives. Their little limbs carried them to the long path of passing the senior secondary certification and be eligible to appear for the NEET exam conducted for the entry to medical colleges. The so called normal girls of their age were running faster, scoring more, smiling better. They had average marks and the dream of doing MBBS was almost on the verge of becoming another broken dream. They had tried sample tests and found their marks far less than the qualifying benchmark.       

Now they smiled even lesser and walked with still smaller steps. Their ladder to the rise in the people’s esteem was almost broken. The neighbours pitied them even more. The parents had a still larger aching, sad hole in their heart. It was rapidly turning into the bylane of a sad story. They had a dream of walking with upheld stature on the main thoroughfare of life but now their situation was pushing them into the side alley of grey anonymity. They felt the bigger world would just roll over them like in a stampede. They are there just like ants to be crushed by the taller humans, they felt. 

Moosa Bhai of a charitable trust could feel their plight as they arrived to pick up their medicines at an NGO run dispensary. They looked even more diminutive having abandoned their dream of becoming doctors.

The good samaritan beamed like the silver edge of a dark mass of cloud, ‘If a person of six foot needs 600 marks in NEET to qualify for the MBBS course, you need just half of that.’

That day they almost ran to get back home. The information given by the kind gentleman was enough for them to do a bit of a search and to their immense joy they found that their physical condition was in the reserved category for the differently-abled children. It meant they will have a certain grace in qualifying marks. 

Emboldened with the new input, the tailor dived a bit deeper into his modest pockets and decided to get coaching classes for his daughters. A prestigious coaching institution turned them away citing their issue of height. The gentleman from the charitable trust approached the institute’s Kota headquarters. A bit of kindness is what separates the ‘make’ from the ‘break’. The institute HQ at Kota admitted them with a 60% fee concession. Thus was laid the foundation of realising the dream and save it from nose-diving among its unrealised brethren.

The girls knew the importance of this opportunity. It was their ropeway to lengthen their stature and thus beat the limits that biology had put on them. They didn’t want to get crushed under the bigger feet and legs in the stampede of life, living and survival. The ladder to go high and see more of life was set against the wall and they put their short legs into action to move up the rungs. They dived into the studies with so much of vigour and spirit that they would forget having even the food.

The beauty of such fights is that one starts at the subterranean level and by the time one reaches the point from where people generally start it has written a long chapter of invisible glory under the surface. Well, that’s what we mean by creating life. Blossoming a full flower from the faulty seeds is what we mean a real life. Not allowing the shortcomings to eat into your vitality like termites and get either wiped out or survive with stunted growth of character is what I take as a champion. 

The tailor’s so called ‘dwarf’ daughters, thus, rose above all odds to crack the NEET exam and look at life from the level most of us usually do without much struggle. Now they were not the kids who would look upwards helplessly to survive as becharis. For years their diminutive structures at 3.5 feet and 3.6 feet hijacked all their life, literally killing every normal dream. The qualification for the MBBS course turned them mini celebrities in the town. Their three other siblings, tailor father and homemaker mother grew in stature and were recognised as the family of the girls who had cracked the MBBS exam.

‘A doctor’s white coat of 1.5 feet is as good as that of 3.5 feet. It gets the same respect. With their little hands they will do big deeds. They will cover long distances with their tiny legs,’ the tailor said to his wife at night.

That night he had a very long and peaceful sleep as the proud father of achiever girls.

The Scented Mist on the Ganges

 

The Western society seems to have gone too deep into the recesses of impersonalized caverns. There loneliness strikes despite all the material prosperity around. We are human beings after all. We need to connect, build relationships, be happy and joyful with our friends and relatives. The chessboard of ultra-modernity shakes too vigorously and scatters away the pleasant pawns of our emotional connect and we find ourselves terribly alone in the congested bazaar. Spirituality workshops in the Himalayas hold the beacon of hope for many a footsore traveller who dump the materialistic bag and sit down for the food of the soul.

She is a very pretty European lady. German Bakery near Lakshman Jhoola looks on invitingly with its glass-fronted look of breakfasting spirit. The woman is sitting on a stone bench. A stray dog is lying in her lap. She is absorbed in caressing its ears. There are ticks and mites on the stray animal’s ears. She is removing this irritating burden very carefully. The dog is lying with closed eyes, its miseries melting under the warmth of her friendly touch. Her heart has a lot to offer. The dog himself is a big empty pool that is ever open to receive the streamlets of such affection.

The Indian men look at her more hungrily than any other skinny dog. They have their feast with their eyes even though they try to dispel the sinful thoughts at the holy town by the Ganges. Everyone on the path has hunger that drives him or her. Lust drives those who are yet to get over the physical and material cravings; love drives those who are acquainted with the illusions of physical desires and are looking for deeper relations of soulmates; care and compassion drives those who have absorbed enough at the lower rungs to feel the higher purpose of life; and ultimate liberation drives those who have come to feel the futility of all the aforesaid needs. 

She has disarming smile. She has come across whom she loves and who in turn loves her back without any conditions, without any pursuits and feelings of ownership and possessiveness. A lot many thirsty eyes cast fleeting, pining glances. The holy river moves quietly on its mission to purify, of absolving the guilty consciences of both real and imagined sins. It bears the imprint of the universe.

The noontime sun beats down at the peak of its energetic catapults. Fire and water mix for a cocktail of ascetic fluidity. The rippling surface has countless stars flowing down the stream. The mother river has the flowing expansion of stars and light in its veins. It has been flowing for thousands of years. It was there even before the Himalayas were born.

Two foreigner ladies are feeding banana to a monkey sitting on the railings. They want to click pictures with the naughty simian. An old sadhu, coughing under the force of a long draught of ganja, is ordering Sundri, a female dog, to attack the monkey. The obedient canine gives it a try. The monkey jumps up to catch the overhanging branches of a tree. The old sadhu cackles with laughter. The tourists are irritated. It spoils their chance of clicking a picture with an Indian monkey at the pilgrimage town.

The monkeys have chucked out a few bananas. They turn funnier now and assert their right to rascality. The male rides the haunches of the female and mocks vigorous thrusts. It’s an act of defiance and chronic freedom. The branches shake. Dry leaves and pods come tumbling down. The old sadhu cackles with fun again.

It’s but not sufficient to erase the almost permanent lines of sorrow and suffering etched on the piteous face of another sadhu sharing the iron bench.

‘Sab jindagi kharaab ho gaya!’ he mutters and repeats it a few times.

He is a Bengali and suffers from chronic digestive disorder. ‘Bhajan nahi hota, kyonki bhojan nahi ho pata!’ he ruminates, rolling his fingers over his stomach.

There are so many community langars that are running round the clock to give enough scope to mendicant paunches to spread their girth and look stately well-fed babas. There are many rotund sadhus around. He feels the pangs of complex as he sees them gobbling down copious amounts of charity food and digest it like bulls and then sleep and snore like healthy buffalos after smoking ganja. 

Pointing out that he cannot do full justice to the people’s spirit of charity, with a suffering look, he shares his story. He believes he was poisoned by his wife. Snake poison it was, he is sure. Vish! It massacred his innards, he believes.

‘She was a devil. My sister-in-law had advised me against marrying her. But I fell into the trap! It left my mind also cut down in size.’

Again he mutters, ‘Sab barbad ho gaya!’

I can feel that he is scared of death. I fake myself to be an expert palmist from Delhi. I hold his palm and stare at it like the last authority in the world on palmistry, even though I don’t know even the basics of the art. With damn shot seriousness, I tell him that he will survive till the ripe age of 100.

‘Now it’s guaranteed that you will live up to be 100. So choose to be happy instead of staying sad all the time.’

He is thoroughly relieved with the ghosts of death dispelled under the barrage of my oracle. Dent at the idea of death, its probability getting pushed away into the future, acts as a massive sedative. I see the pal of gloom shifting from his eyes.   

Allaying his fears I move on. Sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by luscious green, huge, majestic mango trees, absorbing the feeling of awe for mother nature and its bounties, and feeling a bit guilty that everything, apart from we human beings, in nature gives back to it in some form for taking its sustenance. We just not only plunder our share but the collective share of all other species of flora and fauna, giving back environmental degradation, pollution and chaos. In our effort to add to our share of comfort and convenience, we have, inevitably, let loose irreversible damage to the beautiful, self-evolving, counter-balancing forces of Mother Nature.

A small cow arrives and starts rubbing its muzzle with full and unconditional love. One just cannot say no to such unqualified dose of affection. I take out my sole banana from the bag and offer my share of love. The little cattle eats it. It but wants more, turns pushy, won’t go away, rubs its muzzle on my pants, licks my hands and pulls at my bag. I am forced to take to my heels. The overdose of unconditional love may hamper one’s capability to digest even the under-dose of conditional love. I am no saint, neither I am on the path of enlightenment. I am merely a traveller on the path with my motley mix of good and bad in varying proportions. So without too much guilt of conscience I run away from the holy animal. 

Life has to be lived with water-like fluidity. It’s not advisable to hit one’s head against the stony walls of virtues, just like it’s highly objectionable to jump full time into the pool of vices. Moderation avoids many a fall, just as it avoids many an airy impractical flights in the air. One is well grounded with moderation. Walk with balance brothers and sisters.

It’s wholesome and nourishing to be a footloose journeyman on the path that doesn’t pull you towards a particular destination. I walk for many kilometres along the banks of the holy river and as I am returning in the evening, the valley has fragrant mists over the holy waters. As prayers start in hundreds of temples, the incense fragrance mixes with the mists to give scented mists on the Ganges.       

An Azaan for Ramayana

 

And the follower of the frontier Gandhi, Mr Khan, landed himself in a big trouble. Radicalization was peeking from every nook corner in the world. The openness and friendliness of cultures was shutting its door to allow designed narratives to suit the power games. Taking negative inspiration from the numero uno Islamic radicalization, even peaceful and accommodative societies were using the tools of narrow-mindedness and rigidity to enjoy more power and pelf. India is no different now.

Mr Khan, the national convenor of the Khudai Khidmatgars, the Pashtun non-violent movement having its roots in the struggle against the British government, was denied bail and was languishing in jail for the last one month. The trial did not appear to take off any time soon, as the courts held only urgent matters due to Corona lockdown. His case was minor one, so all he could do was to wait for the normal hearings to start at the courts. Still worse he tested positive for Covid-19.

The illustrious milestones of the past are redundant now, except getting a single mark in objective question paper in some competitive exam for clerical level governmental jobs. The India for which the Frontier Gandhi had fought now stands almost unrecognizable, leaving even the memories of such movements historically obsolete. It’s sad but very true. This is what we know as change. However, things are changing too rapidly. The organization Mr Khan had revived ten years back now practically appeared an orphan with the patron behind the bars.

Despite all the hate and anger around, it’s only the smiles on faces like him that hold the ray of hope for our joint survival. He literally worshipped the Frontier Gandhi. Reviving the organization in Delhi, he plunged headlong into the noble cornerstones of helping the needy and nurturing communal harmony.

Azaans never stopped him from becoming a wonderful singer of Tulsi Ramayan. Let me put a little question here. How many of the so called staunch defenders of Hindutva can recite even a few verses from the holy scripture? Mr Khan’s recitation of the great Hindu epic was enchanting. Hindus of all hues got devotionally charmed by his pious rendering of the great epic’s verses. He rarely missed a chance to identify with the religious traditions of his Hindu friends.

‘Festivals, celebrations, goodness, hymns, gods belong to all,’ he maintained.

A group of his Hindu friends was going for Brijbhoomi pilgrimage, the karmabhoomi of Lord Krishna. With his interfaith group, he performed Brij Parikrima, the 84 kaus pilgrimage. All along the days of walking on naked feet, his religious sloganeering in praise of Lord Krishna and Ma Radha was as good and effective as any of his Hindu friends. On the last day, they reached the Nand Baba Mandir at Vrindavan and were ceremoniously received by the priest.

Carrying the inertia of devotional fervour, Mr Khan expressed his willingness to offer namaaz at the temple. The priest looked convinced and even agreed that since it was a sacred place he could perform namaaz there. He and one of his Muslim friends performed namaaz at the temple premises. In his enthusiasm for communal harmony, he made a short video clip and shared it on the Facebook. His friendliness and respect for all religions appeared to be the hallmark of the video.

There were many who applauded this interfaith endeavour. But then, we have so many small-time, career-aspirant politicians who find it the easiest to use communalism to climb the rungs of the political ladder. It’s a very lucrative short-cut to get noticed by the wielders of power. The majoritarian communal rhetoric guarantees a safe passage to the corridors of power these days. No wonder, the organizer of a local Hindu organization found it an insult on the face of sanatana dharma. He lodged an FIR against Mr Khan.

‘He is trying to convert temples into mosques! It’s the start of temple jihad by performing namaaz at our temples!’ they yelled.

The majority of people across all faiths won’t have any issue with such friendly gestures. But when did the majority have a say in running its affairs? The few who find such things objectionable have the means to turn the unobjectionable into chronically objectionable. Well, that’s the skill that really pays well for the power aspirants through the art and craft of politics. 

An FIR was emphatically lodged at the local police station. A tiny storm in the tea cup brewed as they even held a protest march across the narrow streets at the pilgrimage town. The police went into action. The offender was arrested. As they took him to the police station, he kept chanting the melodious hymns of Tusi Ramayan. The policemen looked sheepishly. Hardly anyone of those who got him arrested over the infringement on the Hindu territory knew even a single hymn.

Well, that’s the irony of the times. But can you stop a nightingale from singing its songs? Mr Khan was then heard regaling his fellow prisoners with his Hindu devotional songs.

‘He is a Muslim by mistake, must have been a Hindu in many, many previous births!’ the jail superintendent mused.

Till he got the bail, Mr. Khan regaled his prison audience with his melodic rendition of Hindu prayers, hymns and songs. Most of the prisoners respected him and addressed him very cordially as ‘Khan Sahib’. The so called hard core, officially declared criminals may be open to the idea of secularism in spirit, but the hard hammered opposition to it in letter by the practicing politicians is what runs the show.

Not even for a day did Mr Khan get to rue over his arrest because the prisoners felt they needed this nice dose of devotion in their lives.

Mr Khan thanked Lord Krishna and the almighty Allah for taking him to a place where his devotional singing was needed the most. Times surely change and he got bail after two months. When he was released on bail many steely eyes had moisture. The stony gaze of criminality was thawing on the warm hearth of his open-hearted faith.

In these two months, he had furthered the cause of goodness and religious harmony far more than he would have done outside.  

A Book, Bikni and Two Smiles

 

It’s a small beach, obscured by trees, rocks and kutis, somewhere between Ram Jhoola and Lakshman Jhoola at Rishikesh. The gradient falls steeply towards the water. Bathing is prohibited. There is a warning signboard.

‘The water level suddenly goes up to 1-3 meters. People have drowned here!’

Sitting cross-legged with waters up to my chest, I am chanting mantras. I am trying to emulate the advice given to me by a swamiji that if I do this, miracles will manifest. Well, who doesn’t want miracles in life? Everyone seems in dire need of them. I was thus no exception.

A sun-glassed white beauty arrives with a seductive gait and spreads a cloth on the sand. Her skin’s urge to get sun-kissed must have prevailed over the authoritative pull of the clothing that uses our feelings of shame and insecurities to keep us under the garbs. So there she drops all her clothing and lay sunbathing in her bikni.

At a distance, to the south, on the high boulders over the band, some Indians are looking over, mesmerized by the Goa-type spectacle. They but hesitate to come near. How will you come if you have your legs tied by guilt, suppression, lust and scores of spin-offs born of repressed sexuality? So they made the most of it from a distance.

A white-woman crazy Indian approaches her. She politely exchanges greetings. Her courtesy is taken as consent. The Indian stays staring at her. She picks up her book to tell him indirectly to respect her privacy. He moves away with defeated but terribly unwilling steps. The way he walks it looks as if a river is trying to go uphill.

She isn’t too far from me. Her bluish tainted glasses face me as I take a little slice of the spectacle from the corner of my eye, like a child steals a toffee from the counter jar while mama buys grocery. I have to keep my chanting holy, so I try my level best not to steal another toffee from the counter. All of us have our weaknesses. I can easily overlook a woman in bikni if I choose to, but I fail to ignore the spectacle of a woman reading a book at a public place, bikni, no-bikni or fully veiled. The book draws me to steal the toffee again. The title glares even more profoundly than her curves under the sun. Fifty Shades of Grey. I stumble on my chanting and I am caught picking up the entire jar. She smiles. I find myself smiling back. Isn’t this world better with smiles among strangers? She is engrossed in reading the events. Nourished by two spontaneous smiles between two strangers, my chanting feels even better now.   

A haggard looking tall backpacker is sitting near the shore, trying to explore the meaning of life. Two white girls, all aglow with the spirit of youth, run down the beach and jump into the water. They shout playfully. Their male accomplice is reserved in merrymaking though.

Two policemen wearing lifejackets arrive at the scene. They repeat the warning, impose their authority and the little bit of fun and floridity is disturbed on the hidden beach. The lost-looking tall foreigner moves up the boulders to go to the main path. In a small alley, a few steps down the main street his ears grab the calling of his heart.

‘Hello hasheesh!’ a sadhu whispers with mischief. They exchange the contraband. Money changes hands. As more foreigners walk along the path, the sadhu keeps trilling, ‘Hello hasheesh!’ The sadhus are much in demand and get a lot of respect from the tourists because some of them sell ganja.   

The peeping toms on the boulder get bored of just looking at the bikni woman and the book. So they also vanish. She gets plenty of sunny kisses on her skin and still more plenty for the fantasies of heart from the pages in the book, gets up, gets into her clothes, packs her things and moves back, but not without a wave of hand and a gentle friendly smile. I still maintain my chanting but smile back and wave also. Ganga Ma blesses with her cool shoves all around me. I have to chant for some more time for my miracle to happen, so I continue chanting.