The gardener king

 

Two millennia before Christ, the people of the Mesopotamian city of Babylon had an interesting manner of celebrating the new year. Commendably they had their fixed twelve-month calendar that allowed them a sense of managing time. So they would have their new year, allowing them celebrations for a new start. A common person would be crowned ‘king for a day’ in the morning. The one-day king would be exposed to all the luxurious delicacies of royalty. But before the day end the one-day king would be sacrificed to appease the Gods. Maybe they believed that the Gods would feel pampered over having a king sacrificed at their feet. Then one year, Enlil-bani, the king’s gardener, got his term to be appointed as one-day king on the first day of the new year. Possibly the Gods got fed up with one-day kings’ sacrifices and decided to have the real taste of royalty. Before the sacrifice, the real king fell ill suddenly and died. As luck would have it, the one-day king turned into almost a quarter century long king. The gardener turned king ruled for two and half decades with wisdom and practical acumen. At least he must have focused on flowers and gardens because there are some poems eulogizing him for his good work.

Sam Manekshaw

 

The legendary Indian soldier, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, fought as a junior officer in the British Indian Army during the Second World War. In a daring endeavor to catch a strategic hill in Burma, bravely leading from the front, he was hit by a light machine gun burst. He had nine bullets lodged in his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. His orderly Mehar Singh lifted his injured boss on the shoulders and walked fourteen miles to reach a military field hospital. His torso ripped apart and bleeding like flooded rivers, the young officer seemed sure to die.

From the look of it, only death seemed a reprieve for the injured officer. The British senior officer, fully aware of the Indian junior officer’s brave fight, tore his own Military Cross (one of the most prestigious military awards) and put it on the chest of the apparently dying soldier saying, ‘Military Cross is given to only living soldiers. So hereby I confer it to you while you are still alive.’

The Australian surgeon, heavily burdened under the big tasks with limited resources, thought it wastage of time and medical supplies to attend a definitely dying soldier. Sam had a few traces of consciousness at that time. ‘What happened to you?’ the doctor asked ironically. And the legendary soldier’s answer would later change history, not just for India but for Bangladesh as well. ‘A mule hit me,’ Manekshaw joked, a weak smile emerging from his messed up body. The Australian surgeon was shocked. ‘If someone can crack a joke even in this situation then his life is worth saving!’ he said. He operated upon the soldier and extracted the bullets from his lungs, liver, kidneys and intestines. It was a bloody operation; a major part of Manekshaw’s intestines had to be cut out. But the bravest are the ones who can smile and joke even in the face of death. By cracking the joke with death staring at his face, Sam had already defeated death.

The rest is history. Sam Manekshaw not only survived but went onto play important roles in all the wars including Pakistan (1947-48), China (1962), ending with Bangladesh war (1971) when he was the army chief.

He was as much famous for his bravery and military strategy as he was for his sense of humor. If not for this sense of humor, the Australian surgeon won’t have even considered treating him. If not for this sense of humor, Sam would have died with a borrowed, consolatory Military Cross on his chest. With this sense of humor, he retired as a Field Marshal, living to the ripe old age of late nineties, holding the proud baton of a perpetual soldier who is entitled to a salute from the highest of the high in the country as long as he is alive. I think this unbuckling sense of humor won him the toughest battle of his life by defeating death.

So keep your sense of humor dear readers! Keep it alive! It’s precious because it defeats even death sometimes.

The self-sustaining orbit of life

 

In the infinite womb of the cosmos, the interplay of matter and energy churns out newer and newer formations, births and deaths of supermassive bodies. The cosmic churn goes on and on. Stars burst, black holes swallow supermassive bodies, and galaxies heave massive pulses across the space. It’s basically a super-storm going around. Cosmic bodies pulling, repelling, orbiting, colliding, sucking and maybe many more phenomenon beyond our perception range. But there are little points of peace, balance and poise where there is equanimity and balance in this cosmic storm. These are Lagrange points or Libration points, the points of ‘equilibrium for small-mass objects under the gravitational influence of two massive orbiting bodies’.

Usually, two gigantic bodies put an unbalanced gravitational force at a specific point, thus changing the orbit of any small-bodied object present at that point. However, at the Lagrange points, the gravitational forces of the two massive bodies balance the centrifugal force exerted by each other. It results in little Lagrange points that can be used for space docking for satellites, because here they can float almost unchallenged by any force in one particular direction and hence decreasing the fuel requirements. The manmade space objects can be placed at these Lagrange points for observing the marvelous chaos unfolding around. The satellite is very stable at this point and like a meditative saint can marvel, observe and make a meaning of all this meaningless unfoldment going around.

Human life is also a tiny replica of the cosmic upheavals, shifts, transformations, collisions going at a bigger scale in the cosmos. There are forces that pull us down and curtail our flights just like the forces of gravity tend to crash the objects back onto the ground. These are the forces of discontentment, fear and insecurities that pull us back to the base level, cutting our wings. There are repelling forces as well that keep our real self away from the essential core of our pure being. These centrifugal forces are anger, hate, jealousy and judgments. And being either pulled or repelled by one or the other, we have to spend a lot of fuel in cutting through the rough atmospherics and vicissitudes of life. We feel the wear and tear of this struggle against the opposing forces. We carry the scars, the discontentment and lots of dis-ease in our being. Life feels a burden as a result.

Luckily, in this rough journey we too have our Lagrange points just like the satellites. Every individual has his/her own Lagrange points, where the soul-ship can be docked in the balanced zone; where it requires minimum dissipation of life-force. Here we don’t feel the struggle of it. We feel the light of just ‘being’. We can feel the ease of just being. In this zone of equanimity and balance, we can set up ourselves with least conflicts and dissipation of energies. The contrasting forces here neutralize each other. A conflict-free existence naturally provides a lot of comfort to the soul.

Now the all-important question arises: How to find one’s very own Lagrange point? All of us have varying situations, circumstances, advantages, disadvantages, insecurities, fears, skills. All of us know the things that pull us down like the force of gravity. We also are aware of the repelling forces that keep our real self from coming face to face with the egoistic one. In my opinion the Lagrange points for a common person are the intersecting zones between materiality and spirituality—the zone between the desires of flesh and the dreams of the soul. One can set up a specific Lagrange point for one’s being and dock the soul-ship there to see, observe, witness all the drama going around, just like observatory satellites placed at Lagrange points do their job. This is the zone where the forces of materiality and immateriality are balanced by each other, allowing us to just be a celebrator of life, a witness of all this seemingly meaningless unfoldment around. Maybe we observe a meaning of life then. Wish you all a happy, cozy and safe Lagrange point in your life!

Evening shades

 Evening shades on the solitary trail..

The will to exist

 

Energy’s manifestation as matter is bound by the laws defining our survival instincts. And survival has the tools of attack and defense as the primary modus operandi. So ‘being’ is like walking on the tightrope, holding the pole with one end as ‘attack’ and the other as ‘defense’, sometimes tilting to this way to defend, the other times to the opposite end to attack.

Each eatable grain on the earth wants to survive. It has the multiple layers of defense and attack mechanisms to help it carry its journey forward. And we break through their defense portals by cooking them and make a pulp of their starch and protein by breaking these down. The grain accumulates lots of starch to lengthen its life, but we are smarter enough to break it down for our consumption. Primarily, a grain collects its starch for its own consumption. Getting eaten by the humans or animals is the least of its priorities. So to reach this rich source of starch and protein, we have to first defeat its first line of defense, the structural line of resistance. Grains have physical obstructions in the form of thorns, bark, husk and other protective armor. We go through it with our superior weapons by peeling and milling.

At the second tier of defense, the grain still tries to survive and here it engages the gluttony humans with its chemical warfare. The grains have certain pathogenic properties that don’t go along the digestive capabilities of the human stomachs. They also possess certain enzyme inhibitors that make the grains harder to be broken by the digestive system. It makes them very tough to be eaten raw. To break this line of defense we use the weapons of boiling, fermenting and germination. We even dupe them by soaking. Soaking actually dupes the grain into believing that it’s the first stage for the birth of a baby plant. As it gets ready for giving birth to a baby sprout, it withdraws the defense portals and immediately certain enzymes are born to support the baby sprout. And something eatable for the baby plant is eatable for us also.

So it’s primarily about attack and defense at all the hierarchies of life. What we see in the world at the tangible level of we humans is simply a representative of all that is going at the tiniest levels. So keep your defense walls strong and the attack portals (skills and efficiency) well oiled. The bubble will anyway burst but to maintain that bubble and enjoy the pleasure and joy of being, we have to give our best just like a tiny grain does. Learn from a grain. If not for this tough fight, how will a tiny seed grow into a majestic tree some day? A tree is the optimum actualization of a seed’s potential. Similarly, we too have the task of maximizing the potential that we carry within. Fight well!