The energetic gentlefolk of old times

 

Old Taus and Tais would pour out their hearts to me. I have been lucky to listen to their very personal tales, the exciting chronicles of their youth. Dozens of old people from the village shared very personal stuff with me. For the sanctity of their trust, I would keep their names secret and call them Tau A, Tau B, Tai C, etc. I don’t think that even if I mention them by names there would be any big scandal. These are routine things in the countryside in the lives of the farming community. But still from my own code of conduct I should keep the identities secret. Most of them are gone and a few survive almost like sages with that marvelous surrender and cool detachment. But it’s exciting to imagine that they were once warm-blooded with hormonal excitement. Further, you never know some semi-criminalized grandson of one of them might break the hand that writes about the histories of their forefathers.

I remember Tau A fondly retelling those glorious old days when society was simpler and the sense of brotherhood among clan members and extended families ruled supreme. ‘Those were real good days! Brothers shared a great bond. We tolerated very easily most of the things for which there would be bloodshed these days. See son, I would be out during winter nights irrigating the wheat crop and would return after midnight. And most of the time I saw my younger brother hurrying out of the quilt of my wife. I knew it. But I always pretended not to see it. Most of us pretended it and allowed the younger brothers to have good fun with our wives. Where would they go?’ he told it so easily in full flow without slightest inhibition.

I was pretty small then but I recall the episode pretty clearly. Tai B was telling the episode when intimacy was forced upon her by Tau C—good lord, was it the same Tau C who appeared so disciplined after joining an ashram during the old age. It was clearly a case of enforced intimacy but her hollow-cheeked laughter makes me feel that she had long forgiven Tau C if she carried any anger. ‘I was cutting fodder one noon. There wasn’t anyone around in the fields. He came very politely and asked me to help him tie his fodder bale. I followed him to the place where he indicated his fodder was lying. He kept saying a bit further into the furrows of tall Jowar. Then I found there was nothing to tie down. It was a ploy to untie…my cord. Once it started I thought there was no point in resisting. If it is so, then let it be! There were bigger issues for us to sort out than this. At least he wasn’t bad at it!’ she laughed nudging at the old ribs of another woman. All of them heartily laughed. ‘If it can be passed so casually, where would ‘rape’ fit in then?’ I wonder now. Well, it depends upon people’s own choice. It started without her consent but ended with her approval so much so that she compliments Tau C who is no more and must be feeling proud of his virility in the other world.

Tau D was too proud of his wee-wee. He would pretend to urinate when the young women passed. Getting tongue-lashed was very normal for him. But then he ran out of luck and got more than a tongue-lashing. A banjara woman—an audacious gypsy woman—hit the item of his pride with a mulberry switch. He nearly fainted. His flashing escapades withdrew. Maybe the concerned anatomical item withdrew into its shell after the strike.

Tai E was very liberal in the matters of intimacy and explored the groins of many farmers during her prime. Now all of them were drooping with age and fragile bones. I remember her as a petite woman. She wasn’t hesitant about publicly discussing how much milking she had performed on a particular bull. We remember her doing her duties till the far end of her life as she would unabashedly visit an apish Tau F who seemed to be still active in his old age.

Tai G was more comfortable without her skirt than with it on. So we need not repeat the obvious. She was known for her rivalry with Tai E for the much-in-demand Tau F. He must have been a good bull for milking because everyone agreed that he was still active in his eighties.

Tau H had lost his wife many years back and thus carried a big load of lust in his bulky body. In his late seventies he lunged at a chance to vent out all his pent-up lust. A middle aged banjara woman was roaming in the streets asking fodder for their cattle. It was a hot noon. Tau H got her into the barn on the pretext of giving her fodder. He was successful in his mission. But he turned a miser at the time of payment. He had promised her a big bale of fodder and thought of duping her by giving just a little amount of wheat husk. I think he underestimated the audacity of these gypsy women. There she was shouting expletives at the top of her voice. The little amount of fodder was put in the street and her top-voiced denouement of Tau H went sashaying across hot air. The people came out of their houses. ‘See-see, this is what this shameless oldie has given me! Just a fistful of fodder for all that devilish **** he gave me!’ she was shouting. She was putting up her stick to notify the measurement of Tau H’s endowment. So everyone came to know how much Tau H measured and what he had done to that woman. ‘He is a cheater!’ she declared.  

The first and the last lady don of the entire area from our village, Tai I, can fill up entire chronicles full of her sex trafficking, robberies, charity, bride abduction, armed squads and much-much more. She ruled the prime land of Jat patriarchy during the thirties to the sixties of the last century. Those who were born after her demise still know her name. So that gives the idea of her popularity. I tried to gather material on her from the old men in the village. But they were all dismissive about her. It’s understandable because she had hit very hard on their wee-wee at a time when a woman was considered even lower than a buffalo in a farmer’s house. If I get enough material I plan to write a book on her sometime. Regarding intimacies, it’s understandable that she was far-far advanced than her times.

Tai J turned out to be a pioneer in the art of intimacy. She was reputed to be very beautiful in her youth and carried faded traces of that charm even in her seventies. One of my classmates from the village school was eying her granddaughter. He was around fifteen at that time. He started visiting Tai J’s house quite regularly. Tai J, experienced with age and full of wisdom, smelt the hormonal storm going inside the teenager for her granddaughter. As a wise matriarch she channelized the direction of the storm towards herself. The boy was expertly seduced and looked very happy during those days. Tai J looked even happier on having a lover of her grandson’s age. I came to know about the reason of their happiness when only the old neighborhood dog and me were left out of its knowledge. He shared the information a few years back only. ‘You didn’t know? I thought only the cattle, dogs and cats were out of the loop of this open-source knowledge!’ he wondered when I shared that I never had any clue to this. Tai J carried the most contended smile among all the elderly women of her generation. In fact, I interpreted it as the smile of a sage. Now I know the worldly cause of her saintly smile. God must have been very creative in fabricating such an interesting world. 

The chutney of unhappiness

 

Harender isn’t too happy with life. There isn’t anything special about it. Most of us aren’t. But we need to consider a few facts. He is reasonably fit for his late forties. He has children, wife, a steady source of income. About income you may very well generate an idea that he drives a car worth 1.5 crore rupees. It’s a black Volvo behemoth. Then what makes his life almost depressive quite frequently?

He has two sons. The elder son’s height is the missing link in a scheme that would have made him a happy father. The young man is five feet in height. He is in good health but seeing him looking up to people gives the father a lot of pain. Harender thinks that this world is for tall people. I think he has forgotten about his achievement. Standing at 5’4” he has built a real estate business that gives him good money. He has forgotten that height was hardly the matter when he built up his business from scratch.

I think we humans are habituated to pain. We just devise some reason to feel discontentment with life. He knows that nothing can be done about his son’s height at this stage. But the worried father in him has taller plans for his short son. ‘The bride has to be minimum 5’5”!’ he says emphatically. So carrying his pain in his big car he is looking for a tall bride for his short son to ensure that his grandchildren would be very tall. I hope destiny gives him joy and they have a very tall bride in the family to undo the gloom.

The candy floss of joy

 

All of us are gifted. All of us are blessed. All of us are extraordinary. All of us are adorable to mother existence. With one condition attached—all of us are unique in all these blessings. But our senses are outer bound. We are looking at reality through what we see outside of us. That makes us forget all our unique gifts and blessings as individuals.

Most of our pain and suffering is born of the comparison of the self with others. We find ourselves in a hostile environment, surrounded by the superior or inferior competitors. Long before we realize, we are part of the rat race that is forever taking us away from the incomparable self. The comparisons widen as we move further on. Judgments—both for the self and others—creep in. We are then in a perceptibly hostile environment. And how will one feel at ease by staying in an apparently hostile environment? There is always threat, fear or anxiety. We are always on our toes.

I know that we have to be part of the rat race to meet the basic necessities of life. We can do it if we always remember that all these are the means to an end. The end is one’s own self. So stay in the rat race but irrespective of the results always remember that you are unique. You are gifted, blessed and extraordinary. The moment we compare ourselves with others this blessed feeling vanishes. We have to practice to feel blessed, loved, gifted and extraordinary. Just telling the self all this on a regular basis will be sufficient.

The abandoned hut

 

Kaka Maharaj, the old sadhak who stays outside the village fell out with worldly elements and left his hut in anger, the hut that he had groomed with so much love in solitude. He stayed here for decades. It's a high energy place, its energy one can feel the moment one enters it. I have been trying to convince him to come back because I feel that he ought not to abandon his spiritual seat; it’s a cocoon of love for his guru Kude Bhagat.

The other day I went to check the hut and sat for meditation near his fireplace. It was a sad sight to see the place abandoned in one stroke after decades of careful nurturing. The ramshackle gate closed. His old, worn out mismatched pair of footwear placed in front. The little grove of trees he has planted, which is a tiny forest now, sighed with sadness; the tiny rows of vegetables lying like an orphan without any protection. The open fireplace and the heap of dry fuel wood lying like the ruins of a historic site just within a few days of the master gone. I gathered few cheap, dented, blackened aluminum utensils that I found outside and placed them inside the hut, hoping for better days for them.

Sitting by the fireplace inside the hut is like plugging into an electric circuit of high energy. Despite my clear intension to sit still and meditate, I couldn't sit still. Involuntary movements would start the moment I closed my eyes and stilled my body. I just allowed myself to be a witness. It was surprising so I thought of recording them in order to observe as a neutral person later. The moment I shut my eyes, they would start of their own. I think the energy meridians try to get into alignment with the energy frequency around me. I suppose that's how the yogic movements were revealed to the mediators. They try to bring the body in alignment with the larger energy meridians. One feels light like air, almost flying. I think the conscious mind takes a backseat during these moments, opening the portal to the subconscious, which further builds up the possibility for the entrance to the cosmic consciousness. I think pranayam and yoga postures are a means of opening the portal to the subconscious.

In any case, I feel very sad about him. I prayed to his guru to bring him back to the hut. I prayed because I feel the decision was taken in anger, and he should come back to resolve this little chaos of negative energy that got unleashed due to those uncontrolled moments. I clearly feel that he has developed a lot of energy at the place, which will help him in his journey.

The story of a wounded tree

 

This is for the history-minded common people who care to know about small things. We trees are highly underpaid and under-appreciated. What’s something preposterous is that it’s we who have sired the evolution of mankind and now we depend on him for our survival. We are numbered now—from that countless status when mother earth was lush green earlier—and there will be a time when the heritage lobby will be fighting to keep our ruins as a memorial for the past when mother earth was alive. There will be machines all around and human brain itself will be replaced by the artificial intelligence.

I’m a seemal (silk cotton) tree standing by the canal-side pathway. It used to be a beautiful thin ribbon of solitude between the canals overgrown with few trees and lots of grass, bushes and reeds. A poetic man would walk in somber profundity on the path. Then the developers hoeing the dirty grind of parasitic business arrived. The sand mafia would arrive at night and scoop away the sand from the canals and the path between them. The chauvinistic pigs would scrape out as much grains of sand as possible to build their big buildings. The earthmover’s claws were lucid, pertinent and driven by soulless precision. It would work with pure sense of abstraction. Its zealousness would cut the upper lateral roots of we trees to dig out more and more sand to fill the truck to the brim. The solitudional luminosity for the lone poetic man was gone; the grass, reeds and bushes obliterated; the smaller trees fell and bigger ones like me survived the onslaught with cut limbs and big gaping wounds. The cast and crew of development are too big actors now.

When the poetic man came and saw my big roots exposed and cut, he put a healing sad hand on my trunk. The edifying notes of his love touched my innermost rings in the trunk. He made a very little effort, this is all he could manage being a poetic man, and sweated for a couple of hours to gather soil around my wounded roots. For me the spiritual symbolism of this love is beyond its physical limits. It feels good to be cared and one’s pain acknowledged. But a small group of thugs took away even that little heap of earth this man’s poetic hands had built around me. I think they did it specifically to make it seem self-mocking to the poet—that your kind of emotions are meaningless in the modern age; that this artistic outlet is nothing more than a speck of dust in the face of the horses of greed in full trot. Since then I have tried to muster up courage to the extent of granitic endurance just for that poetic man who sometimes comes and puts a friendly hand on my bark. But I missed my flowers this season, the beautiful big red flowers, one of which I had intentionally dropped on his head as he walked under me. That’s when we became friends. So there have been no flowers because I have been using all my energies in keeping myself up with the remaining roots. My foliage also has been the same for the last one year. It’s pale without any new shoots. I’m still in mourning, you know.

They have cut a little square on my bark, a sort of numbered nameplate declaring my number, a kind of my leasehold to stand on this small portion of earth till they decide to terminate it any time. I sanctify their insinuations and grotesqueness by oozing my sap, my tears, through the square marking. This disquieting incision on my skin keeps reminding me that I’m their numbered property under some forest law that easily allows some thugs to lacerate me. I have a message for the bloodhound. I let out a yellowish sap through this little square of licensing cut. It coagulates to a meaty sanguine blob. I have obliterated their despicable number that they had assigned me. It’s my revolt. I don’t agree to their lease contract under whatever forest laws they have. The law that doesn’t provide me any protection and leaves me open to be vandalized by any thug whose spirit itches to play truant.

The poetic man sometimes comes and puts his gentle fingers on the protruding sanguine crust from my guts. I see his mournful countenance. This human touch is astonishing. It snaps off the thread of pain for a few moments. How I wish more humans could touch we trees like this! How I wish that more humans realized we are half of their lungs!