A butterfly by the fireside

 I am all for animal rights and against people using them in street circuses. Still I cannot help but feel the pining nostalgia of the monkey charmers during our grand old days in childhood. Those were the only well-behaved monkeys. Nicknamed Ramlal, Dharmender, Basanti, etc., clad in baby frocks and shirts, they were almost the devatas of the simian world. Holding a stick on his shoulders, Dharmender walked on two legs to bring his wife Basanti from her mayaka. And Basanti would say no to come back. He would then dance and put on goggles to woo her back. The little street show would proceed without even a single piece of the simian mischief! Why are people looking for the eighth wonder of the world? It already has been witnessed by so many of us.

Well that was past. The times have changed. Do you remember the terrace pole overlooking the open bathroom below in the house having four adolescent farmer girls? The crow’s favorite perch point. A monkey thinks why should the crow have all the fun. So it has grabbed the pointed hot seat and is hanging at the top end. If the motive is the same as that of the crow then it almost falls within the criminal jurisprudence of the humans because the offender is very near to us in inclinations and gene pool. The stalker has to be brought to justice. On my part, I am praying that the pole’s top end itself does justice where the peeping tom is trying to settle its red bottom at the moment.

A monkey has to drink water but then it has to topple the vessel holding the water as well. You wonder, was drinking just a side effect and the main motive being to topple it to raise a blasting noise. A clay pitcher makes a muffled thud. Unfortunately it gives this sound only once. My stock of clay pitchers is over. The monkeys have had a lot of fun with them. They seem to be furthering the interest of the pot-makers. This is a kind of use and throw fun game for the monkeys. Now the metallic ones are doing their service. Here the monkeys face a slight bit of inconvenience. The metal utensils make a sharp clattering sound and the funster has to run away with its impact after the lewd dose of rufianism. It’s better to turn an applauding spectator to their follies. What is the use of boiling blood with no effect?  

Just now another monkey is doing its best to derive some fun in the most unorthodox manner. There is a house under construction. On the terrace is a half-finished pillar having naked iron bars at the upper end. It’s trying its level best to turn it into the thorniest crown in the world. It must be very confident about its red bum bearing up with the risk. It’s within its rights to do so but I find it pretty foolish even by their standards. Some immature girl monkey may applaud his feat but the slightest mishap will turn him the laughing stock of both the human and simian worlds. Organizing its fickle mind in an unlikely way, it manages to sit right on top of the iron bars and looks with a kingly attitude and royal majesty. Maybe sitting on the iron bars testing the strength of the bum from below gives a totally different view of the world.      

The season is changing at long last. There are faded traces of autumn. In late morning, when the sunrays have gentle warmth, the kittens sprawl for the laziest sleep on the windswept terrace among the neem windfalls. The house crickets, the brown denizens of the nocturnal chorus, also sleep under the items they deem immobile and safe for the day. I just love disturbing them. Shake the covering off and they hop around sleepily and take a vow to drill more holes in the clothing where they can sneak in for better sleep. The winters will come after all.

On vintage autumn nights, tremulous dew-stars kiss the seasonless silence spread over the lips of darkness. Someone’s exhausted sobs and ceaseless moans now dive forever into the measureless serenity of the slumbering eternity. A peasant woman has been crying late into the night. There has been a loss somewhere. The high tide of darkness swallows the star. And the gloom adds to its invisible shades to the far.

A cow has been lowing throughout the night to get a mate. She is in heat and the farmer will surely get up with a smile in the morning because it means the prospects of fresh milk for his children. It’s definitely good news even for the village bull who hulks around looking for such chances of the fresh milk arriving at the house of the farmers.

A drunkard farmer had to be slapped first and then thrashed nicely by his tired wife late at night after he won’t stop his acrobatics at the village square. He cannot do much as of now and bears up with the punishment. But a hard kick prods out a slurred threat that he will see her in the morning. ‘In the morning my brothers will arrive to beat you even harder,’ she tells him. Then he allows himself to be dragged into the house. I have information from very credible sources that even after all this violence outside, they have pretty busy lovemaking session right after.

Reading all through the night is fun sometimes. Try it sometime. You share the night’s little mysteries and welcome a new day like a kind host. The day smiles in gratitude. Across the misty, cool, dewy horizon, I feel a new sun, a new fireball with blessing warm rays.

It’s a beautiful morning. The humid restlessness of the rainy season is gone and the autumnal ease now assuages the spirits. A dragonfly is resting on a sadabahar flower. Its wings stretched to perfect horizontal. It has slept late. Did it go for a type of night revelry? I tease it for its night fun and tickle at the pointed back end of its slim body. It isn’t eager to get awake and just pulls it into a kind of yawning morning-time curve. Her wings are but too precious to her. Try touching them and it is wide alert and flies away for a busy day. A butterfly, a common mormon, is also sleeping late on a cluster of night blooming jasmine. The Parijat tree is a veritable shower of beautiful, fragrant white flowers. They drizzle down with the rise of the sun. All around her there is a scented drizzle of little flowers. May be it’s a boozed up butterfly who had extra fun among the night blooming jasmine flowers and is now sleeping late in the morning. A chatty tailorbird but doesn’t like the late risers and awakens the butterfly with its exuberant vocals. The butterfly flies away to make the most of the few days that mother existence has given in its kitty to fulfill the purpose of its life.

The song of the birds picks up its tempo. Three pigeons fly with a friendly banter; five ducks fly in a slanted line (there aren’t as many as would allow them to form a V pattern because the water bodies have vanished and so have the visiting ducks); a lone heron flies slowly with the unhurried pace of an old gentleman; a few house sparrows dart swiftly; the dainty and handsome Indian magpie robin hops on the parapet wall (seems happy, maybe got a lover and is now joyfully silent after singing love songs in plenty for almost a week). The morning has picked up nicely.

The sky is relieved of its duty of bearing the clouds on its back. Having shed all that it had to give, it now looks fresh and light. Two peacocks are also feeling very light after shedding their plumes. The weight of love is gone. Of course, love is a very weighty issue these days. They are now pecking and preening themselves pretty freely. They are quite friendly to each other because now there is no competition for winning love in their favor. I think the life of singlehood is quite light and one can be at ease like they are now. They can fly for more distances as well.

The village has seen a lot of development around it. It has now canals and roads all around it. It is good. We need canals for water and roads for speedier movement. They did a fantastic job and at a great speed as if they are in a hurry. They have been very busy in making roads and missed quite simple things such as water drainage system and culverts to allow the rain water go down south and fall into the seasonal distributaries of Yamuna. So the ancient natural waterways are choked. Since we have had excess rains this season, the surrounding farmlands and the village got filled up like a water bowl. They now use big water bumps to take out the excess water. We humans know how to be busy almost all the time. We are very serious about creating problems and then we get onto finding solutions for the same very diligently. And that keeps us very busy. It’s good to plan development but we shouldn’t run to develop. I think a leisurely walk to development will do better because we retain our common sense while doing so and don’t goof up to commit silly mistakes. Rampant development leaves many loopholes and then we have to spend a lot of energies in finding solutions for our self-created problems.

When I hold my three-month-old niece in my hands, I somehow feel fulfilled with love and care. It’s a privilege to stand by her as she fights her way out of multiple complications. Her one smile is enough to make one forget thousand miseries of life. That’s what I try: Make her smile. And when it comes, that pure smile, I feel like hitting a treasure instantly. She scans the cloud patterns as I hold her in my arms, curious to know the strange ways of this world. May be till they are infants, they see angels in the skies above.

When things around appear too complex, I pick up Bond Sahab’s book. Immediately the layers of complexity peel off and you see simplicity and purity of a world that all of us have the option to view. His books train your mind to view life in simpler terms. Iranian movies are Bond Sahab’s cinematic equivalent in taking you to a little world of simpler facts of life. The Willow Tree but seems too serious for an Iranian movie. There is a kind of drama that is typical of our movies. A professor gets his eyesight after 40 years. There is a chasm between his feelings and what he wants to see. He wants to make up for the lost decades and wants to see more and more of life. The face of his wife, the angel who held his hand during the dark days, now appears too ordinary in comparison to the beautiful women around.

Ranna’s Silence again is a beautiful little story. Little 5-year-old Ranna stops speaking after someone steals her hen, Kakoli. So loved her hen so much that hearing fox or wolf alarm beats in the fields, on the way to her school, she would run back to ensure the safety of her hen. As she lost her hen, she disowned her smile and beautiful words also. Well, she was instantly the same girl as of before as the thief realized his mistake and returned the hen. Watch it if you want to feel how small things can help us build a peaceful, simple world around us.

Hardeep comes to visit and shares the life lesson given by his father. ‘Never go to Delhi if you can manage it at Sonipat, the nearest city. And never go to the city if you can manage it at the village itself,’ he says. Well, I think it’s basically an injunction about unnecessary loitering around. As an adolescent boy he became very curious about Delhi and bunked school to wander around in the Delhi crowd for the day. His father came to know. He asked his mother to prepare a very tasty sweet halwa. Hardeep ate to his full thinking he has been rewarded for possibly becoming the family record holder who reached Delhi at the youngest age. So he ate to his full and took happy burps. Then his father very affectionately put his hand on his shoulder as they walked to their field by the canal. It was a grove of fruit trees and handsome flowers that was enough to uplift anyone’s spirits. There was just one oddity in all this. There was a terribly prickly plant in between. His father made him stand by the prickly plant and tied a rope bringing the boy and the plant in good bonhomie. Then he whipped him with a rope and made him shout ‘I will never go to Delhi’ 1001 times. ‘He saved me from doom, my kind father,’ he says. He is a trucker and a farmer now who tries to avoid bookings to Delhi even if they pay him extra.

We had a little hawan for our angel. Panditji’s son missed on most of the Sanskrit slokas. He seems very good at eating choicest delicacies served by the host though. He is very cute and one can see the effect of the hosts’ offerings on his chubby self. He made the mahamritunjya mantra sound like some Latin hymn. He looked very apt for eating copious food after the rituals but mastering the slokas is, frankly speaking, not his domain. The old Pandit looked helplessly and then took it upon himself to somehow salvage his honor. The goodwill for him will at least see his son getting good charity for his mispronounced half-slokas. It’s basically about respect. Out of the custom of respect, we would accept wrong slokas as well. What is wrong in that? Even the wrong slokas chanted with good intentions will serve its purpose.                     

Treat of the day! The tiny sadabahar in the crack of the wall bears a flower. There are hundreds of bigger flowering plants on the ground having dozens of petalous smiles. What makes this little flower exceptional? An entire season’s rains slipped down the wall. It’s not in mother earth’s lap where she stores water for her kids. It just has a hairline crack in the plastered wall to cling to its moisture of survival. Thousands of water drops slip away and then just an ounce of water may be clings to the narrowest root space. Fed like pampered children, the garden has hundreds of flowers. But this solitary flower high on the plastered wall is special. Blossoming is no slave to the conventional parameters of height, weight, the soil around roots, nutrition, the amount of rain or any other circumstantial fact. It’s only about giving the best with what you have. Given its tough conditions, this tiny flower grew in millimeters, while the rest of the more privileged flowers on the ground grew in inches. Their life might be measured in feet and hundreds of flowers. But what is exceptional about the fact of their existence? They are the happy-go-lucky types. Their smiles stand on mother earth’s piety. This but is a brave flower. It clung to survival, just staying a couple of inches of a fragile sapling high in the wall in the hot sweltering summer heat. It waited and waited with patience for more rains and when they came it added a couple of more inches to its height and there comes the flower. It’s basically about reaching home and fulfilling your destiny irrespective of the circumstances. What we get isn’t in our hands, but what we do with what we have is surely our calling. The smile of this flower is worth hundreds of lesser mortals in the garden below. It’s a proud flower, no wonder it’s there high in the air above the rest.

So dear friends, please avoid the mistake of cribbing about your circumstances of life. A lot many things definitely lie beyond our control. It’s better to accept certain facts. Take it as destiny. But that’s just half of the story. With what has been given to you by the quirks of fate, you are in the driving seat and juggle your pieces to make your own destiny. Like this little plant does. It blossoms a flower in the toughest of a situation and completes its journey, fulfils its meaning of being a flower. You too can blossom your flower with what you have been given. So forget about what you don’t have, just make use of what you have. You too are up for a flowery reward. Best wishes!           

The twilight lands after a hectic day. I am preparing cow-dung fire for my evening pooja ritual. A butterfly staggers nearby and swerves around on the ground. I think it is perhaps a butterfly that has forgotten it is a butterfly and takes itself to be a moth and now would love to burn itself to death. Thankfully that’s not the case. It sits quietly on the ground a few feet from the ambers. Its wings shut together in vertical, it looks a tiny sailboat in stormy waters. Possibly it feels cold and has come to enjoy a bit of warmth by the fire.

Half-baked services and lost smiles

 The three words in the name of oriental magpie robin do full justice to the beautiful, handsome, dashing black and white bird. It’s a flirtatious dandy and imitates many birdie voices when it’s just looking for fun. When it wants to convey its strength, it gives a chhrr-chhrr-chhrr heavy sawing sound. But its real beauty comes when it falls in love and gives sonorous, high-pitched notes of chew-chew-chew for a considerable time to woo some lady. His love call scores over rest of the birds among the trees around the house. Flings are very easy these days but love is something one has to strive for very diligently. Since the birds cannot just have casual flings like we humans, he has just one option of deep love and this means continuous love notes as the tired monsoonal clouds retreat in blue skies. If we leave humans apart, the rest of the species are into it full hearted, there being no half-hearted effort be it love, war, fun and playing or committing to parental duties.

The white wagtail is a small passerine bird that sways its longish tail with attentive rhythm as it picks up ants and little insects on the ground. It’s a beautiful sight to watch the birds walking. There is a captivating grace behind their little steps. The white wagtail looks an elegant well-bred lady as she walks on the ground picking up her breakfast.

The Indian rockchat also loves snapping out insects from the ground. Its looks are very modest with its pale coffee unichrome. Its fur misses some distinctive patterns or designs. It’s a plain looking bird but it makes up for all this by being very talkative. Listen to its pre-dawn gossip session. They have plenty of things to gossip about before setting out to pick up breakfast.

The oriental magpie robin is busy with his love notes. The Indian robin and the white wagtail are walking with ease to pick up ants. The wire tailed swallows are darting in the air picking up airy food in the form of fleas, dragonflies and mosquitoes. A solitary pair of parrots goes flying. There aren’t many seen these days. A few bee-eaters are diving and turning expertly to complete their breakfast before the late morning turns to full noon. The sun is bright and the noon hot so they prefer rest during the hotter part of the day.

Huge cloudy wagons float lazily in the sky. They don’t seem to have any purpose anymore and loiter around, almost directionless, here and there. A room with a window with some natural view is special by default. The upper room window opens to more trees than housetops. I just have to look out and the banana leaves greet happily. Inspired by this greeting and the busy birdie world with a song on its lips, I try to give my best to what attracts me the most. Not too much guess for this, it’s reading and writing.

Try to give your best even in the worst of a job. Even with very little success so far I take my writing very seriously. There is a scope for perfection in every nook corner for all ranging from the fortune 500 CEOs to the bathroom cleaners. I have seen beaming bricklayers, stonemasons and sweepers and cribbing, frowning CEOs in the costliest cars. What is the use of hitting too big and lose your smile. Hit only that much high as would not rob you of your smile.

My smile is encouraged by the languorous hand-waving by the banana leaves as I look over the tree tops from the terrace window. One sip of the view outside and one of the book in my hand. My smile tells me that life is really good. Then I read something and I turn serious. This is no smiling matter. I read that scientists are trying to revive the Siberian woolly mammoth that became extinct around 10000 years ago. From the skeletal remains sufficient remains has been retrieved to clone an embryo. This is disturbing. Why dig up the past to this extent. I think the best thing is to use genetic engineering to extricate the genes responsible for anger, hate and greed from the Homo sapiens. That would make our earth livable, not reviving the woolly mammoth. In any case, the Siberian snows will vanish in a few decades so where will the big animal stay. Probably they will have to repeatedly shave its wool to help it feel a bit less hot.

All these musings backgrounded by the birdie songs scamper back into a corner. If you have a huge tractor bellowing its powerful engine at the best of its capacity and still louder music blaring out of the big speakers there is no need to go near a fighter jet to test the capacity of eardrums. The young farmer is bursting with his ebullient hormones. The bellicose tractor and rowdy music are a tool of his adolescent revolt. And the revolts have their victims. The monkeys run away. They don’t stand any match here. The birds fly to safer trees. I cannot hop over the roofs like the monkeys, nor I can fly away like the birds. I use the faculty of discretion to fall in love with this portable discotheque now pounding the air in the neighborhood. So I assume that I like this music and engine noise and sway my head to the tunes. The Haryanvi desi songs are a war cry even at their gentlest best. But the raunchy ones would suitably provide a fitting background music to the real third world war if it happens. Combine it with the massive heaving guffaws of a big tractor and it turns something unbelievable or unheardable. Even at your loving best you cannot afford to like it the least. As I shake my head to the war-music, the initial symptoms of headache surface. I give up. It’s better to hate it outrightly. Never commit the mistake of complaining because in that case he will teach you a lesson for your intolerance to his youthful spirit and continue with the music and tractor noise with even more volume and till the time he feels pacified that you have been punished sufficiently.

The bird of peace has been shot down and I have to think of doing something else to keep my smile. I am mellowed down completely and surrender the spirit of protest for my legal right also in its wake. Which legal right? Ok, telling this now.

An hour ago I received a call from the courier operator from the nearby town. I have been waiting for an important communication.

‘Bhai sahab your letter is lying with us. Come and pick it up from our office!’ he straightaway commands.

‘But we have paid for its delivery to my door. Won’t it be nice if I get service for my money,’ I sheepishly protest.

‘We never deliver to the villages. You have to pick it up from us otherwise I will return it by 4 in the evening!’ he is even louder and iron-willed.  

‘Kindly tell me, if you don’t deliver to the villages why was the booking allowed in the first place?’

‘That I don’t know. That guy who booked your parcel made his money. Now as per company policy I can only deliver it within the town. So I will return it. You don’t worry.’

‘Your company name is DtDC. Door to Door courier. And please listen my door is at least 15 Km away from your office. What kind of service is this? I am recording your conversation and forward the issue to the courier company.’

He is very pleased to hear this as if I will do him honors. ‘Please do it. As a franchise I am only following the company policy. If you complain, the booking guy in the other city will be questioned, not me. So please complain.’

I had decided to escalate the issue and force them to deliver the service to my doorstep. But the tractor-cum-discotheque stabs my enthusiasm and I decide to leave the scene and make the most of the time by travelling to the town and pick my important document. So there I go riding my two-wheeler. It’s a swashbuckling new road, a national highway that sucks speed out of even the most lethargic vehicles. Cars, buses and heavy trucks zoom past with hair-raising speed. There are so many accidents and many people die but progress and development swiftly jumps over such minor road-bumps. This road was a small, peaceful district road during our childhood. There were massive century-old trees on both sides and we recognized distances through huge banyans, peepals, sheesham, mulberries, acacia and eucalypts. Then it was converted into a state highway to be finally changed into a brutally asphalted national highway. The trees vanished. The entire countryside looks changed without those trees. I ride sullenly trying to spot any tree that I can recognize. Not a single old tree is left. Construction is still going own. The air is foul and plumes of dust hit the helmet screen like tracer bullets. Throughout my life I have seen roads getting built, one after another and still we are short of roads. I think finally all that will be left is roads and we will stay on the roads always on the move. I am further beaten in spirits by the time I reach the courier office. It’s a tiny establishment, a single room. An old Tauji is cooling his paunch under a water cooler. I introduce myself. He remembers the phone conversation and seems offended for having raised my voice for my right.

‘People are very lazy these days. They cannot move even on vehicles. During our days we used to walk this kind of distance on foot without cribbing,’ he chastises me.

‘To me, not delivering a service for which you have been paid is cheating,’ I retort.

‘If you want to fight for your right then allow me to send it back,’ he seems very confident of his case.

I mull over it and think it wise to take the parcel. I sign and pick up my article as he looks hostilely.

‘And for your information, the courier name is Desk to Desk not Door to Door,’ he chides me.

‘But uncle my desk is in my house, not here,’ I try a counter punch.

‘Ok, no problem. If you still think that way then let me return it,’ he lunges for the thing in my hand.

I literally run out to save it from his old crooked hands and forget my helmet at his counter. As I plod back like a defeated old soldier, I can sense that my loss is more than what appears on the surface. Then I realize that the helmet is missing. I sheepishly go there and ask for my helmet.

‘See, your fight for your rights would have cost you even your helmet,’ he chides again.

I rest my case and ride back sullenly, more for the loss of huge majestic trees than the half-baked service.

There is crowd by the side of the road. A drunkard has died. His body is put half on the road and half on the side.

‘Actually he died there at the end of that field. That field is mine. But we have brought him here to pass it as a death on the road so that his poor family gets some road death compensation,’ a simple farmer informs me.

I move on and recall two drunkard pals in my village. They died in contrasting temperatures. One was left by the drinking group under the open skies in the fields after he passed out. It was a frosty January night and he was found frozen to death next day. The other was left in similar circumstances in a field on a boiling hot June noon and was found baked to death late in the evening.

‘They should have used some sense like these farmers and put them on the road to get something for their families,’ I think and move even more sullenly.

As I reach the farmlands outside my village, I see Ranbir trying to maintain his steps by the road. He is drunk most of the time. People call him gunman. Well, he never had a gun in his hand. Actually, his right hand got crushed so severely in an accident—he was a good driver who drank less and drove more to earn a decent living—as to leave a crooked twisted mass that curves to the side of his stomach like a policeman holding his sten gun. People gave him the honorary title of a gunman. Now he drinks more and drives not at all. One has a special corner in one’s heart for the former classmates. He was my classmate from class 1 to metric at the village school. The soft corner for your classmates with whom you grew up is almost permanent. You smile when you meet. He laughs and I smile and then turn sad as we move on with him riding the pillion.

‘An elephant jumps on its heels to raise unnecessary dust; a lion jumps on its paws to hunt majestically,’ he is saying this loudly. I don’t have any clue to the origins of his exclamations. He repeats it many times till we reach the village. I help him get down at the place of his choice. He waves back with a smile as I look back. The vanishing trees, the undelivered service and the portable discotheques lose their meaning as I think about his wasted life.

Slipping lovemaking doves and jumping monkeys

 Tired, fatigued, pale sunrays kiss the treetops like a very old person blessing a young life with a kiss on the forehead. And the evening twilight arrives with its peaceful delight. It brings a sense of completion, of reaching home, of ripening, of getting into the sunset of joyful old age and happy retirement.

The evening twilight is usually very calm unless we rock the time’s boat with our misadventures or the atmospherics get bored and unleash storms and rains. A tired day retires leaving the post vacant for some time. And the vacancy brings a kind of naturality, a sort of assurance that all is well, that the journeys get completed and the destination is likeable after all the trials and tribulations on the path. The trees seem to take a pause as the branches hang silently. This brief zone seems free from the day’s busy humdrum and the night’s eerie depths in the dark.

The twilight is at its best. Then there is a storm. Peace is forever under the risk if you have rhesus monkeys in your locality. They don’t throw just pebbles into the pond of serenity, they catapult big boulders. The pebbles are no match for their raucous spirits. The banana tree in the garden has its first flower, a beautiful big dull maroon cone hanging like a chandelier, the little banana fingers holding a tight first like a newborn baby, promising a fruitful future. The first flower and the fruit, like first love, is a momentous event in the life of a tree.

When a monkey jumps onto a tree, criminalized fun is the basic motive. Eating something to survive is far down the list of priority. The beautiful flowers and the tiny fruity fingers are slain. The marauders screech in triumph. I have a suspicion that they have started to think and calculate their nuisance. It’s no longer an instinctual outburst of crazy fun and frolics. I run to the terrace to scare them away. They jump into the yard below and tease me. I come down and they get onto the roof again and shake the trees with extra devilry, staring at me with their hideous kho kho. This isn’t mere instinctual behavior. They have a significant mind but it’s severely unestablished as of now. An unestablished mind is very troublesome. Anyway, the banana tree has lost its first offering to the world. It has been wasted. The only outcome is some fun for the monkey who seem to draw one more feather before it’s completely dark. The twilight scampers away in a hurry. One has to learn to live with the monkeys, there is no other way. Of all the species that have been beaten into subjugation by the mankind, the monkeys still have the capacity to impose their will on us.

The potter’s wasp had completed its task on the dining table. It was a very cozy little mud house. It really was. The mud is scattered and the tiny infant wasps inside are missing. A monkey did his share of business on the table while I was away for some time. Possibly this is the peanut version of the teatime snacks for the monkeys. He peeled away the mud covering and enjoyed his waspy nuts. One has to accept one’s fate at the hand of the monkeys otherwise the burden of life increases manifold. The wasp, the banana tree and I all three of us stand in acceptance of this fact.

Well, I think the wasp was at fault here not the monkey. You cannot include the monkeys in the discussion about right and wrong. They will commit a wrong infallibly. So the right or wrong concerns the wasp only. Firstly, he shouldn’t have felt too bold to start grabbing property under the nose of an unknown countryside author. Arrogance skids away basic precautions. Arrogance, pride and vanity are nothing but ill-fate’s charity. Just because there are many options on a broad plain, we cannot ignore the little corner that is most suitable for us. A potter wasp should have its business below the table, not above the table. But if it takes liberty with a struggling author then let it do at its own risk. One should learn to rule out unsuitable things even if they come free. A price not paid now is usually some bigger price paid later.

The day has been good. A potter wasp’s house and the first banana flower and fruit getting undone by the monkeys isn’t too big a loss. I would still consider it as underperformance on their scale of villainy. It’s basically the male monkeys who plunder the peace in the neighborhood. The females are too heavily burdened under the duties of raising countless babies. The male monkeys consider senseless mating and endless mischief as their primary duties. And they take it very seriously.

A stroll in the countryside in the afternoon fetched a few peacock feathers. When you come across a peacock feather during your walks in the solitude it feels like coming across treasure in the dust. It’s such a beautiful piece of creation. You just bow down to the ultimate color master and the designer of things. The peacock must have danced very happily, a case of requited love I suppose, for there were many feathers. It’s better to have happy and joyful people around because even you may be the recipient of the leftovers of their joy, like I now receive the remnants of their joy. There is something marvelous about peacock feathers. We need not go into a discussion about it. All I can say is that if you come across a peacock feather, consider yourself lucky and keep it in your house. You add something substantial in your journey.

Usually the pause fetched by the forties of age sees me spending my days very meaningfully in my own ways. If I find something missing, a kind of heaviness of life, I pick up some Ruskin Bond book. His writing is so uncomplicated and lucid that life seems a beautiful all goody-goody dream. It heals. You learn how to take things very lightly in easy spirits. Bond Sahab has the divine faculty of spotting only the peaceful and joyful among the apparent chaos of our surroundings. He just filters the nice things, ignoring the more sophisticated stuff. And when he presents his filtered version of reality, it takes you into its peaceful folds. You feel relaxed and assured of the still remaining chances of peace. I read a couple of pages of his books at a time, at various stages of the day to keep the light-hearted momentum going on. In between I write, read other authors and manage my chores that are unavoidable on the path of survival. 

The mother cat of the kittens arrived after a month. She had cleverly left them under my step-motherly care. The cats are far more intelligent than we think. She could very well sense that this lone struggling author will be a tolerable stepmother to her kittens even at his worst. She had literally starved herself to death raising these kittens. I am sure she hardly ate anything during those initial days. She would just dump the prey in front of them as they ate almost endlessly. She was a mere skeleton as a consequence. She kept fasting, eating the bare minimum, till they were grown enough to survive on the milk bowl, grasshoppers, tiny frogs, leeches and crickets in the yard. Then she stopped coming and probably lived for herself. Today the kittens had gone out, even the lazy one can you believe it, for some greener pastures. She sneaked into the empty house as if to check. What a transformation. She has put on healthy weight after eating for herself for a month. A very dashing Mama cat she looks now. But then this prettiness itself will get her into troubles again as some aspiring cat Pa will seek some brief moments of pleasure, to be followed by months of onerous duties by the Mama. It reminds me how weary most of the Mamas are, heavily laden under the duties of raising kids. Hand over some of the kid-rearing duties to the Papas and they will have lesser time for wars, aggression, attacks and noise. The males busy in parenting is a direct boon for mother earth.  

More than normal rains may not be good for a lot many things, especially not the old houses because they get more cracks. More cracks leave the doors hinges a bit out of symmetry. The door latches don’t fit into their sockets as a result. Presently only the bathroom’s latch is working properly—and that’s the most important thing—leaving the rest of the house free for movement. In any case the locks are only for dogs, cats and birds. And for them even a closed unlocked door is as good as a locked one. The human beings take locks as simple irritants only, in case they have some unfriendly designs to sneak in. My biggest treasure is my collection of thousands of books. And they are a strict no takeout item for most of the thieves, so that is not a big problem. A person who steals books to read is the sweetest thief in the world and such a person is always welcome, lock or no lock at the doors. Just like the best worm is the bookworm, the best thief is a book thief (the one who steals to read, not sell it as trash, the latter I would say is the worst thief).

But more rains are definitely good for the tiny sadabahar sapling that has been trying to blossom in the crack of the wall. Here the parameters are totally different. Most of the water slips down. It has a mere crack to survive. For many weeks it did its best to stay alive. It stayed alive although new shoots won’t come. It couldn’t laugh but it kept its feeble smile. Then the rains poured more regularly and in the watery abundance, despite all the water slipping down, it still had plenty of water to fulfill its dream of becoming a bigger plant. It now has added a few inches to its height and looks a very happy plant. It can afford a laugh now because it never lost its smile. Hope it will grow tall enough to bear flowers. Well, there is a lesson here. When the things seem the worst, it’s advisable to give one’s best even if it means surviving at the basis minimum level. Then the rains come more regularly and we get rewards for our persistence and patience.  

The frogs have run out of the yard to make bigger, louder show of life. The lads and lasses have to jump higher and croak louder. That’s life. One little frog seems to be inspired by this solitary writer. He still stays indoors. The pitcher has a tripod stand and a few drops fall on the floor. It’s a highly minute leakage somewhere for the rate of drop fall isn’t more than two in an hour. It leaves a small damp patch on the floor. And there stays the little frog cooling around its sea. Everything is about drawing lines to our perception. It seems contended with its tiny few inches of damp floor and that’s its sea. A couple of drops every hour is its thunder-storming rain. What’s wrong in this if it feels happy this way? Those who are running to swim in the sea of bigger ambitions are within their right to do so. But they can at least stop judging people who are less ambitious and are happy with the less.

A dove pair, freshly in love, tried lovemaking on the sloping, slippery solar panels. They slipped down and almost fell before they took to their wings. Falling in love seems very slippery because the slope is very steep. The emotions are wet and the hormonal storms leave it more precipitous. No wonder many of us slip like the dove pair. It’s better to become loving instead of falling in love. As a loving person you walk better. Good relationships are the normal outcomes in the life of people who walk on good terrain. Stability has many avenues for smiles. And smiles sow the seeds of love.  

The weird attempt at cooking a mix-veg in an offbeat way has borne good results. I relish the simple supper. There is always a simpler way of doing things. It becomes very simple to do many things if we spare the doing from becoming a tool to appease our ego only. Then we do only the needful. And doing the needful is very simple and uncomplicated. I am enjoying my supper now. A fully drunk farmer is trying his best to break open his own door. The loudest bangs and the foulest abuses at his own family hit the night air like a loud firecracker. His family is hiding inside, fearing a physical assault tonight. As an addict you turn your own worst enemy, otherwise why would you kick at your own door and try to beat your own wife and children. The monkeys appear far too civilized in comparison to the alcoholic farmers because the simians rarely beat their own kids. They love them so much and wage a continuous war of survival among the human society.

A lone loaf of cloud is flashing light. The rest of the sky is clear and the stars twinkle gently. The lone light-flashing cloud makes it appear as if the victorious rainy army is ceremonially retreating with its last parting shots. The starlit bluish dark distances ogle eagerly. A half moon looks sidelong and pale. A very tired moon it looks. It’s an old moon and shouldn’t mind this age related fatigue. Didn’t it dazzle brilliantly with its milky light during its youth? It did. The shiny Venus is unperturbed by the cloud’s battery charge. The lightening excitement of the cloud soon gets spent out. It pours out its extra energy and then slowly melts away into the darkness.

Love and loss in misty valleys

 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.

**

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.

**

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.

**

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 is 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.

**

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 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 savior! 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.

**

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.

The Smile is Back

 Some people have exceptional philosophy of life driven by their unique—sometimes seemingly eccentric—beliefs, assumptions and thoughts. Tau Sukhlal was one such farmer. He was a lone mule driving his creaky cart on his very own terrain for a century of lifetime. He was a little bundle of inexhaustible energy. Ploughing the fields forever was his Ikigai, the pair of well groomed oxen his nearest heart interest in the family, going to the nearest town on his bicycle even while in his nineties was his passion. He was once spotted doing pushups in the privacy of the millet fields. Well, nothing exceptional about the exercise. The feat is mentionable because he was nearing hundred at that time. He troubled the pitcher of water only once in a day. There was no need to take the trouble again as he drank the entire pitcher in a short interval. Then he worked, worked and worked more. Human system is unique in many ways and we cannot generalize. He had his own diet plan that included a pitcher of water just once in a day. Further, he rarely spent his nights under the roof even when the weather elements were very testy. He preferred over the roof instead of under the roof. In summers the open skies are blissful to sleep on the terrace. For the monsoons and chilly dewy winters he had another roof over his quilt. He covered his charpoy under a polythene sheet and slept to the bombardment of dew, rain, hail and thunderclaps. He walked on the path of life for a good hundred years and is primarily known as the one who would eat a big mound of shakkar. He was so busy in his little world that even when I recall him the image of a human version of the busiest ant on the planet crops up.

It’s a damp late evening as I go on a scooty. It’s a countryside unpaved track among the farmlands. The paddy fields are pleading for no more waters. More and more isn’t good. The paddy is overdrunk and has fallen. On both sides of the rutted path, the grass has grown wild. Travelling across the cropped fields brings to one’s memory such work brutes as Tau Sukhlal. His image brings a smile. But the bull frogs are always plotting to effectuate a fall. The twilight has triggered a chorus of crickets and other insects. The headlamp of the two-wheeler puts the bullfrogs in a jittery mood. One can see a bullfrog sitting by the path from a distance. The sound and light of the approaching vehicle doesn’t break its song or meditation. It but will jump right in front the moment you are about to cross the meditating sage. It seems as if it wants to commit suicide. So here I go with a series of bull frogs jumping right in front of the little vehicle one after the other. One in fact mistimed its suicidal dive and landed on my foot. Then the suicide attempts had to wait for a few minutes. A bull frog is quite big. It appears even bigger if you see it on your foot. I fall down. Luckily not hurt. The culprit triumphantly jumps again and lands into the pathside paddy field. In retaliation I turn suicidal and ride pretty fast. If they don’t jump too close they are a beautiful sight to watch, however.

The fall has left me cranky and fidgety. I respond, react rather, by skipping dinner—or was it laziness under the garb of spoilt mood—and promise not to read or write during the night. I decide to sulk and do no more before retiring for the day. The children in the street have extended their riotous play in the tractor trolley parked at the little square by the house. They have the iron carrier to beat to the limits of their fancies. Shouts, laughter and tonking at the sides and floor of the trolley make bearing up with the noise itself a big task. So I cannot say that I am lying idle.

There is a serious matter among the players now. The clattering din has given way to a chatter which graduates to a serious conversation. They are discussing about their weight. A couple of them point out to be in forties on the scale of weight. So they are the big boys in the group.

‘I am 42 Kg,’ one says.

‘I am 46,’ the other counters.

‘But you are 14 years, I am only 13. Even with your extra year and more weight I gave you more slaps that day.’

‘When?’

‘When you felled me from my cycle.’

‘Where?’

‘Near Jiten’s house whose window pane was broken by Nittu.’

‘Yea, I remember, you hit first after getting up but after that I gave you at least 15 on your face.’

‘I remember that I gave you a slap everywhere on your face. If I add the ones on the sides of your head and at the back of neck I must have given at least 16.’

Then they pushed each other and began on the second league of the slapping game. No malice involved. The smaller kids danced around and the slappers returned to their houses with pretty much flushed red faces. I believe their slapping game will further continue.

I still carry the heat of the bullfrog-inflicted fall and decide to chill out with a cold bucket bath. It’s blissful. Water not only cleans you, it heals the mental scars also. I feel light as I put the nice soft towel to wipe the body. I have regained my poise and smile. I am but again on fire after the cool bath. The fiery red ants in one’s towel can quickly put you on fire. The skin literally burns. Well, some days are there just to test you at many fronts. I scrub myself vigorously to make mincemeat of the tiny culprits. It’s then a very prolonged bath with a sullen, brooding, frowning look.

If you feel sad and lonely go out and open your heart to the open skies. ‘A lone man is the neighbor of God,’ says an Afghan saying. I go on the terrace and open myself to the darkish blue stillness of the night sky. The stars twinkle gently in the clear sky. There is a solitary little loaf of cloud in the sky surrounded by the starry applauds around it. The starlit bluish darkness pervades around the little speck of existence. This little fluff of cloud seems like a small piece taken off from a huge cotton bale. It stays there on the clam sky for an hour or so and then calmly melts away into the shapeless dark. I have my smile back. The night sky heals you if you are receptive to its mysterious treatment. You just have to look and smile. The rest of it’s taken care by the starry immensity. The younger Parijat tree in the corner of the front yard has started to make nights sweeter with its night blossoms. These nigh flowers have the beacon of hope and light for the hearts that need it.

If during the solitary nights, you want to overcome the little tumbles that you faced during the day, I recommend a good Iranian movie. They are gentle and soft lullabies for the bruised self. You float on a misty breeze. There is sweet sadness in the tiny episodes in the lives of ordinary people. I watch ‘The Taste of Cherry’. A terribly unhappy and lonely man has lost his spirits and gusto for life and is thinking of committing suicide. An old man comes his way and tells the forlorn man that he too faced a similar situation once in life and went to a mulberry tree to hang himself with a rope there. Just that the mulberry wasn’t cooperative to his plan and offered him a sweet mulberry. The suffering man ate the sweet mulberry and it instantly took away all the bitterness of life. The suicide-seeking man also tastes a sweet cherry and its sweetness is sufficient to help him regain his faith in life. The sweetness of a little mulberry or a cherry sustains one through the darkest hour of one’s soul and then hands us over to the prospects of a sunny dawn. The sun smiles fresh and we get up and smile in return. Don’t ignore the little sweet mulberries and cherries in your life. They will sustain you even if the world falls apart around you.

The cherry-sweetened night is beautiful. The bullfrog-inflicted falls and fiery red ants driven fires lose their meaning. The sweetness hands me over to another Iranian movie ‘The Song of Sparrows’. The soft charms of this little world carry me deep into the folds of night. An ostrich farm manager fails to capture an escaping bird and is fired. He has a smiling daughter who needs a hearing aid. He thrashes around Tehran for sustenance. He piles up a huge junkyard in his garden. He has taken it too seriously and turns quarrelsome, snappy and cranky. His children try to help him in adding to his earnings but his pride is wounded. He wants to do it all by himself. Good principles and need pull him both ways as he loiters around among an assortment of temporary jobs. And there he is perched on the heap of his junk. The mound of his crazy collection crashes, breaking his bone. Then his children and the villagers come together to cooperate and help them through the rough patch. On his bed he learns to appreciate the song of the sparrows that he never had time to listen in life. His little son works with his friends in a wealthy man’s garden to earn hundreds of herrings which they plan to breed in the water reservoir they have cleaned in their fields. They have done well and are taking the herrings in a big basket of water. The basket breaks and they lose their herrings to a water drainage. The boy saves a couple of herrings in a poly bag full of water. They are crying over their loss. But the sight of the two herrings swimming in their water regains their smiles. They have lost hundreds of fish but the loss of those hundreds has given them at least two herrings. Beyond the miseries of life, it’s the song that matters. The loud, piercing din of survival becomes tolerable if you have the ears for the soft sparrow songs. It’s not about how much we store. It’s basically about properly using what we have. Life is not even about how much we lose. Even losses have something to offer. Life is basically about what is left to us after the falls and a habit to smile over all  the petty irritants of life.

These are beautiful movies and I smile and look into the night sky. If you need company and guidance while stumbling over life’s irritants seek it and ask openly. A book is there, a movie is there, or some other program or people whom you think capable of helping you regain your smile. Don’t be a loner. There is always company in one form or the other. Open yourself to it. You gain from it, believe me. You sleep peacefully in the dark then and welcome a new day with a smile. 

Simple Ways to Common Joys of Life

 I vividly remember a full moon night in the lower Himalayan hills. Some moments have deeper roots in our memory. A full moon brightly smiles through a gap in the Chir Pine forest. It looks like a bright lamp of milky light. The crickets and other insects jingle as the foot-soldiers of the night and the mountain wind drums the pine needles to raise a signature tone of Mother Nature’s unbound hilarity. The moonlight filters through the pine needles and showers me with a fine drizzle of light as I stand under the whistling, moaning pines and look into the sky.

My memory is redolent with those solitary walks in the early morning forest. In early October the hills have many wild flowers. They smile in the solitary corners and greet you as you pass unhurriedly. The light purple of delicate Four-o'-clock flowers smiles by a little stream accosting me to stop for a few moments. These small wild flowers lie in unwearied wait for some solitary walker to arrive by the overgrown footpath circuiting around the hills.

The fragrant flowers of Old Man's Beard deck up the hillside like a shy mountain lass to gift their rare smile at anyone who loves walking all alone on the unbeaten paths. It’s basically a non-predatory creeper-cum-bush that moves up with the support of the host tree. Its hold on the host isn’t too demanding. It needs a kind of support only. The malodorous white spikes of the bulbous flowers dangle as a beautiful tree decoration on the hillside. The flowering creeper is hosted by a Beleric tree (Baheda). In the dew-crowned morning wilderness, they turn the morning air scented to the intoxicating limits for many meters around the tree. The rising mist carries the lovely smell to me as I slowly come across the bend and see the white smiles at a distance. 

Keep your eyes on the ground and you receive the smiles of the purple blue of Ivy-leafed morning glory. Their tiny smiles among the dew-laden grass ask you to take a pause and stand for a while or maybe even sit down and absorb the solitude to the limits. These wild flowers are the gifts of wilderness for anyone who has the time and inclination to go down the bylanes that aren’t trampled under the wheels of development.   

And when the sunrays arrive to kiss the morning mists of a little valley, the wild fragrance of life and living blossoms up suddenly. It’s intoxicating for the thirsty soul. The highest high that no other substance can give!

Some real life moments are better than even the beautiful most dreams. May be the reality drives our dreams or possibly even the dreams shape our realities. Beautiful people in your life have the capacity to change your reality to the extent of a still more beautiful dream. My friend Rohtash stayed in the hills and smiled a lot. Just staying in the hills gave his life a satisfactory meaning. His kind heart was never short of feelings that would enable him to share his little paradise with his friends. He felt the immensity of nature round and had literally become a free agent who helped people take their share of the natural booty. He knew my solitary loiterer ways and felt at his happiest best in hosting my stays in the hills. He sustained a system that allowed me the best moments of solitary stays in the hills. Thank you so much brother! Then he left us suddenly. All of us have our share of Covid-time losses. We lost him. Death seems too cruel in some cases. She was too hasty. Now in the plains I have such vivid dreams of those beautiful days. If you have teary smile of gratitude and love for someone who has completed his journey, like I have now for him, that is the hallmark of a life well lived. Stay in peace my friend, my brother!

Reality shakes us out of our slumberous, cozy dreams. I am roused now by a loud barrage of firecrackers. It sounds as if the locality is under assault. They are the children celebrating Diwali during the day a full month in advance.

Alcoholism had almost chucked out the prospects of two families in the locality. Quarrels and intra-family cruelty made it both nightmare and daymare with equal lethality. The women grew hysteric and shrill and the children lost their smiles—they sniggered—as the menfolk behaved at their worst after losing control to the cheap spirits. But a road passing the farmlands around the village has brought back at least the children’s smiles. Their land is acquired by the road department and the reimbursement has aggravated the agonies and ecstasies both. The men drink more, shout more and have the extra push to turn the quarrels all-night affairs now. They probably sleep through the day to recuperate for the night duty. The children have taken up the responsibility during the day . Diwali is more than a month away but they have now money to go fire-cracking throughout the day almost nonstop. They prefer the loudest crackers that would perhaps even break someone’s wall some day. After the bone-shaking bust and boom, they cackle with loud peals of laughter. Their childhood hasn’t blossomed. They hardly had enough pocket money to celebrate the festivals. Now when there is money they are celebrating full throttle, making up for the lost fancies of childhood, perhaps. Their riotous firecrackers test the capacity of eardrums though but at least the monkeys have run away for the time being. They must be thinking that they are under attack by the human army of children. Well, it’s advisable to bear up with anything for the sake of scaring away the simians. It’s another matter however that more bottles of liquor and more packets of firecrackers will burn out the celebration too fast, sizzling across the lifeline of finance. In any case the fresh arrival of easy money has turned their lives happening in many ways.  

Alcoholism is one of the biggest revenue churners for the government. The alcoholics pay their taxes really well with each and every bottle they purchase. With this big payment they ensure that the government won’t interfere as the evil effects of the addiction take not only the family but the overall society in its grip. It’s a living death for so many households. The liquor holds so many fates in its bottle.  

In a society blasted by the scourge of alcoholism, there are so many daily episodes that fall on the wrong side of the law. A quail is shouting pakadleo-pakadleo-pakadleo—catch-catch-catch—as if urging the government to grasp the wrongdoers. Grass, bushes and weeds have filled up the space among the trees and houses in the village during this rainy season. The quail too left the boring countryside and comes here to witness the drama of human life. It has plenty of underbushes to hide after raising the alarm.

Rashe is knocking at the gate. The sound beats the firecrackers in tenacity. I have to run. The gate is too old for his big fists. He is broad, muscular and grins widely. He may use the same spirit to uproot the rickety iron gate. His is a slurred speech as his lower jaw is almost immobile, being hit hard by a horse leg as he crawled to play with it as an infant. But the shortcoming of his spittly words is covered by his huge grin. The God has been very lenient with his teething. His majestic set of yellow teeth would bite a horse to death if the animal hits him now. He was born on a musty twilight as his mother was walking home from the agricultural farms. She calmly sat by the countryside dirt road and delivered Rashe to this world without much qualms. It was already pitch dark when a farmer informed the family about the new arrival. Rashe and his mother were taken home in a tonga and were absolutely fine with no issues at all. The horse snorted as it lurched on the dirt road. This was the same horse that would give Rashe a distinct speech after a year or so.

He has borrowed a carrier rickshaw for a task that has been proposed to him. During my barn-cleaning spree the huge, rusted set of chaff cutter machine stood quite menacingly. It stood idle for the last decade since Ma stopped keeping a buffalo. A friend has a still operating barn with cattle. The chaff cutter would give a better look there, thinking so I sought Rashe’s services to carry the rusted iron behemoth to deliver my gift. But Rashe doesn’t work for money. He works for the cheap native liquor. Give him the money that would fetch him ten bottles of imported English liquor and he will frown and give an expression as if he has been exploited to the limits possible. Give him a single bottle of desi daroo and he grins happily to the capacity of his copious mouth. I find it advisable to make him joyful on the spot. This much practicality I have learnt on the path of survival in this world. He rolls over the cheap bottle with care and consideration befitting a million dollar item and mindfully puts it in his cloth bag. Being so happy now the weight of the heavy iron instrument has no meaning. I just have to watch from a safe distance. The dismembered parts of the machine are tamed and convey their goodbye from the lurching rickshaw carrier as he moves away. One more thing, he never walks in a hurry. Even if there is fire in the village, he would be the last one to come out at his natural easy pace.

There is a ceasefire among the firecracking armies for the last couple of hours. The monkeys take the opportunity to flit around the dangerous fronts. But their spirits seem to have been sodden with water. Two adolescent rascals, the rowdiest in the group who spend most of their time cable-walking, have got grounded. The perch on a cable isn’t advisable if there are blasts around. They may lose balance and the red bum may turn redder as a consequence. The two partners in many a crime are sitting sullen under the neem tree in front of a house. A sad monkey looks even funnier. They are so dejected and disheartened as not to even mind a lad kind of rapidly growing puppy. The puppy is careful and avoids barking. Possibly he remembers the slaps the monkeys give to his species at regular intervals. He stands a few feet away and respectfully shakes its tail with a look of compliance. The unrelenting firecrackers have stabbed the simian spirits quite deeply. They look the other way. The puppy comes nearer, hesitatingly, wagging its tail in full acknowledgement of their superiority. They allow it to stand near them and don’t hold its ear or pull its tail or slap it. Well behaved monkeys, what is this world coming to!? I hope the earth won’t crash out of its orbit today.

There is something wrong with the climate now. There have been plenty of rains till September end but the musty heat is so vehement in its intensity as to beat even the hot months of June and July. One feels like being thrown into a cauldron of boiling water. Well, we have to do something and avoid being boiled alive on earth. I think now is the time to take tree plantation very seriously. We can’t just expect the government to do all the work. Individually we have to take our little steps to undo the common crimes we have committed against Mother Nature as a species. If we plant a few trees and see them to maturity, I think we undo a portion of our individual carbon footprint. During the rainy season many trees have their baby sprouts around them. I carefully pick out some of them and groom them in nursery bags. Once they grow to be lads and lasses after regular care, I plant them to grow to be tree gents and ladies in the fallow land around the village. Many of them are eaten by the goats and buffalos. That is painful. But a few have grown to give shades on ground and nesting to birds among their branches. And that takes away all the pain. Please plant trees and ensure that they survive to give shade, fruit and nesting space to the birds. 

Rich life of a poor pause

 Clouds float like huge cotton bales in a blue sea. They bear a tired look as they move westwards. They should be as the rainy season has been quite busy one for the clouds. The skies now get back their metallic birds after a hiatus of one and half years due to the multiple waves of the pandemic. The frequency of aircrafts is increasing. They look like another species of birds flying higher. Below them, the scavenging black kites have started to fly in the village sky quite frequently, a clear sign of the prowling urbanization. Nothing wrong with the change, it’s inevitable. We can but have better waste management and more trees for the kites to look for natural preys instead of hawking over the stinking waste of humanity.

A dragonfly is resting on the pointed end of the spear-shaped grills over the upper border of the garden gate. It’s a beautiful sight. I dare the monkeys to do the same. It’ll give a solid injection on their red bums. They but have better minds than to take their follies to this extent. So they prefer to get injected in this manner. If I had the power to punish them and they possessed the patience and willingness to take it, I would ask them to sit on these spikes.

This is the month of pitra paksha, ancestor worship, when people put ceremonial offerings on their wall tops and roof parapets. It’s believed that one’s ancestors receive the offerings through the birds, especially the crows. Now there aren’t many crows left here in the village. Only the monkeys and Homo sapiens are adding to their numbers. A few dozens of the crows are taking burps of kheer, halwa, malpua and puris. Looking at the quantity of the food on offer, the crows can, at the most, taste it. And just tasting it leaves them full to their neck. Being overfed, the crows look sleepy in fact. The major portion of the food is then taken by the monkeys on behalf of the ancestors. With this rich extra diet I expect more and more monkeys mamas carrying even more monkey babies.   

I am fed up with monkeys. I need diversion, something than can If you are fed umake me forget the simian-driven misery. I watch some Iranian movies. If you are fed up with the typical larger than life unreal song and drama romance of the Bollywood try some Iranian movies. They are so simple and small time that they pierce truth like anything. They sound like a countryside trill of bell, a little hymn, pious and pure. Majid Majidi is a master storyteller on the screen. His ‘Children of Heaven’ is Himalayan in emotions, even though it’s a tiny budget story, primarily concerning a little pair of brother and sister. It’s not a fight for billions or the best looking girl around. The family has extremely limited means and the brother sister duo have to share the same pair of sneakers to go to their schools. They are always running to help each other reach the school in time. The nine-year-old boy then runs a 4 Km race to win a pair of shoes for his little sister. To win the shoes he has to lose the race to two runners. The shoes are for the third winner. The first and second positions carry far more lucrative rewards. But these better rewards have no meaning for the boy. Our best is what we need. Beyond that it’s a pathetic tale of greed. He fights for the third position to get shoes for his sister. The first and second positions are as bad as the last position in the race. That’s the beauty of pure hearts. They indeed are children of heaven. Our children have such a rich potential for purity, innocence and unconditional love. It’s a pity that we allow it to dissipate as they grow old. This has been the biggest unharnessed resource on the earth. This I think is our biggest misfortune and collective failure.

The other movie that brought tears of gratitude, joy, smiling sadness and understanding is named ‘Baran’. It’s the story of sublime love, a love that isn’t looking for completion in the form of marriage or getting the person as we usually perceive it. A simple, bucolic construction site laborer falls in love with an Afghan refugee girl. She initially worked as a laborer on the same site. She had to disguise herself as a boy because the female refugees aren’t allowed to work in the foreign country. Well, he gives everything away to see a smile on her face, gives away his entire savings, sells his citizen identity in the black market and turns a stateless citizen. He can’t buy her costly gifts but he gives a pair of crutches to her father who has broken his leg. He offers all he has on the altar of his emotion. He has to see a smile on her face before she leaves Iran for her home country Afghanistan. She gives him a faint smile, a smile so precious given her inexplicably horrid pain and pathos. She drops her burka, loses her identity as the truck moves away, perhaps forever. When you give all you have for your emotion, you won’t feel a loser. You hardly carry any guilt. And a guiltless conscience will enable you to smile over tears. He has given his all. He isn’t in pain over his offering to pure love as he smiles while looking at the sandal mark in the mud where the girl’s footwear had stuck as she left for her country. Love isn’t a derivative of outcomes in relationships. It’s only about how much depth you enjoyed irrespective of what happened later. The boy and the girl never so much as touched each other’s hands but their smiles at the end of the movie say it all. They could feel love even though they couldn’t act on the feelings of love in the form of a formal relationship.

I have moisture in my eyes as I recall those lovingly haunting scenes in the movie. The fan above is creaking with equal measure in sadness. It is a battered, rusted ceiling fan in the verandah above the dining table whose one corner is reserved for writing. The fan may sound sad but it still is a happy home for somebody. The upward facing plastic cup on the fan’s rod has enough space for an old bat to spend his days. The fan has crooked wings and makes creaky weird noise as it revolves slowly. The bat seems to have fallen in love with this set-up. Initially I tried to rob the bat of its ownership deed on the fan. It was but so damn adamant in retaining its lurching cradle that it flew dangerously close to my face. It gave me enough warning to stop the project midway. A simple, nondescript village writer is no match for an angry bat. The bat is soundly sleeping above as I write this. There is a guava tree in the garden. I am sure he tastes most of the guavas in the night leaving them for me to eat during the day.

I am sharing something which might be disturbing to a few people. I have successfully opened very hardy looking brass locks of famous brands. What is disturbing in that, you may wonder. Well, it definitely raises a few eyebrows if you manage it with a thin screw driver. Before you jump to any conclusions and imagine me going around stealthily in the dark of night, let me clarify I use it when the option of the key is missing.

Once it happened like this. It was a heavy brass lock of a famous brand that had lost its key in the house. With the spectacle of messing it up with an outright breakage, I thought of giving it a try with a thin screw driver. I just put it in the key slit and it dropped open in less time than even a key would take. My sisters looked agape. I myself got a shock how did it happen. The feat gave me so much confidence that I kept an eye on the lucky screw driver in case of similar emergencies. And it did arrive. A peasant woman in the locality had a star of her eyes, a huge brass and iron lock. It gave her that much of security as no God, family member or the entire police of India would give. We can say it was her first love. She was very finicky about someone getting into her house and steal away her things. But as long as the house was under the protection of her lock, she could afford to take relaxed breaths a few yards away from the door. The lock was very firm in its duty but the key turned frisky and lazy and got lost somewhere as she looked helplessly at her obedient lock. ‘Let me break open the door itself!’ a sturdy farmer was ready with a heavy iron rod. ‘We can use it to break the stones, let me try this one,’ I offered. The peasant woman always accosted me very lovingly so I thought it my duty to help her. The look in her eyes told me that she found it as much impossible as driving the earth off its trajectory with this needle. She really trusted her lock. To her it was the strongest one in the world that would need the entire village’s effort to resolve the issue. Anyway, in went my screw tip to a particular direction—I am not going to tell about the specifics because people with ulterior motives may take clues and wreak havoc in neighborhoods—and the clock dropped open. It took almost half the time she usually took with her regular key. She was rattled. Shocked and out of her wits she felt cheated by her dear lock. She stared at me with open mouth as if I was the biggest thief in the world who broke open locks almost professionally. I had to leave the scene in a hurry. After that she lost her faith in locks. ‘Locks are just to protect our homes form dogs and cats, not from…’ she would stop and spare naming me and look at me suspiciously. After that I avoided the eventuality of breaking open the locks whose keys went missing within my house a few more times. The last time the best lock in the house, a big brass one of a famous brand, tried to test my skill. The lock was defeated fair and square. ‘You seem to have a lot of these experiences in your past birth,’ my sister laughed once. I just got conscious and looked the other way.

There is a lesson here. Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you have to do it at any cost. What you can do is definitely important. But what you shouldn’t do is equally important. You shouldn’t open locks stealthily in the dark just because you can do that with screw drivers. Do it if someone has lost the key and is looking for some help. It applies to most of our skills, capabilities and knowledge. We have to draw a line beyond which we won’t do something even though we are capable of doing. A car without brakes, and all of accelerator, may enjoy a furious ride but it surely crashes over the precipice after a point.

So the best lock guarding the worst provisions in the house surrenders to my screw driver. The cobwebbed interior is shrieking to be relived of its load a bit. I am in lenient spirits and agree to its plight. There go the empty cartons, bottles, mugs, wires, canisters, dented utensils, stacks of newspapers and many more things. I don’t wait to haggle a kabadiwala over the things that I find a burden on the old countryside house and draw out blood from his already anemic finances. I simply pile up things in a corner in front of the house. I know one man’s trash is somebody’s treasure. The things are usually picked up within a day. But today it takes much less time. They are already here as I yet to finish disburdening my barn of the extra stuff.

It’s a pleasant surprise. They are two sweat-laden dark handsome adolescent girl kabadiwalas. Why should boys have all the fun? The girls are matching boys in the space so why should this earthly domain be for boys only. They are sorting out things with a sweet sweaty determination. Their duppatas are purposefully tied around their waists. There is a look of full mission. Their carrier rickshaw is getting loaded with the old treasure. They greet me with a smile. Hardworking girls earning their bread through diligent work is something what puts them into the orbit of divinity in my eyes. I was once so overjoyed at seeing a girl electrician in the nearby town working wholeheartedly at my voltage stabilizer that I had to give her three time the money I owed her apart from a brotherly blessing on her head, all this to justify the moisture of joy in my eyes. Coming back to these waste collecting girls, I got so overjoyed at their complete dedication to the job—most importantly, their eyes didn’t carry shame, guilt, embarrassment or any other negative complex about their job—that I had to run back again into the barn and bring out something that would of use to them at their house. I dragged out my iron folding bed, in good condition even after serving for a decade at my Delhi rented accommodation when I slogged out in the editorial departments of academic publishers. It was now retired. But it still had much more to offer to tired bodies. I put it on their carrier rickshaw with full respect and a smile. They also smile back with confidence and pride. They are not begging, they are doing a job. And a job is a job is a job. Look for bread daily but look for meaning beyond yourself also. All of us, from rag-pickers to space walkers, can view our jobs as ‘meaningful to society’. Aren’t these girls doing an amazing job for the society? They clean the surroundings and clear away things that would leave the locality stinking. So dear readers, give respect to those who are doing their job happily. I have seen smiling rag-pickers and terribly unhappy ever-frowning corporate guys in swanky buildings. My respects flow to those who do their job joyfully, taking it to mean something bigger than themselves, a kind of contribution to the larger scheme. Every task done with a happy frame of mind is a contribution beyond the limited scheme of the self. Try to fall in love with what you do, just I like the task of writing even though a few hundred copies sell and I hardly earn any money out of my writing. But it’s my Ikigai. I am at my best in feelings while I am writing. Find your Ikigai!