Pegs and Ropes of the Mind

 The night was falling. A camel caravan was passing through a desert. The caravan-head decided to spend the night at a serai. There were hundred camels and the store wagon had pegs and ropes for each one of them to keep them safely tied though the night. Ninety-nine camels had been safely tethered in front of the inn. But they had lost one pair of rope and peg.

The caravan-head was much worried. If the remaining camel was left untied, it will surely run away and claim its freedom. He asked the inn-keeper for a rope and a peg. The old man had none. But he had a solution in his experienced mind. He asked the traveller to playact the whole process of setting the peg and tying the rope in the dark to the camel. The middle aged weather-beaten, tough traveller laughed at the joke. Still he decided to take it as a comedy even at the cost of losing a camel.

They made a false show of the process, made sounds of hammering a peg into the ground, then one of them fiddled around the camel’s neck, making it feel that it is being tied with a rope. They went to sleep and the night passed the baton to a pleasant dawn.

Much to everyone’s relief, and surprise, the camel was found sitting comfortably next morning. It was almost a miracle. The camel had allowed himself to be tied to a non-existing peg with the invisible rope.

The caravan prepared to leave. They untied the ninety-nine camels. These camels got up to move onto the journey. Thinking that the hundredth camel will also get up of its own to join the rest, since it was already free, they didn’t approach it. The camels moved. The hundredth camel didn’t. They kicked it to get up, but it won’t move. Much worried, the caravan leader went to the old man and told him about the camel.

“What have you done to it? I know you performed a magic but please now set it free. We have to move. We are getting late. It will be a very hot day,” he was almost folding his hands before the old serai-keeper.

The old man smiled. “You had tied him in the dark. Now you have to untie him in the light. Do you think pegs and ropes exist only in reality? They exist in minds as well. And the latter are even stronger,” the old man chuckled.

The caravan-head understood. Thanking the old man, he asked his men to playact the whole process of taking out the peg and untying the rope. They did it and the camel, taking it to be free to move, got up and joined the others waiting to march ahead.

Pegs and ropes exist in minds also. What else are our false assumptions, fears, anxieties and worries? They tame and condition the mind to a basic level, a very small level given the unlimited potential of the human brain. They literally make one human almost a carbon copy of others in settling for smallness, in being labelled like any other, like they do in factories, just labelling for small, convenient sameness.

It is very convenient for the religio-political ruling class to tame the minds with pegs and ropes of fear, ignorance, assumptions and apprehensions. Brahamanical Hinduism does the same. It is an elaborate system of putting the peg and tying the rope in the form of rituals, taboos, do’s and don’ts. The priestly class was ever apprehensive of the capacity of free minds.

A huge effort was put over the centuries to instil fear in minds, to cut them to smallness, to be less daring, more obedient, and less creative. It was a systematic effort to create meek followers and stifle any trait of confidence and leadership. The Brahamanical orthodoxy hammered down pegs and tied ropes around meekly accepting necks. 

Religiosity was kept limited to the skin of mankind. A check-dam created to tame the free flow of the rivers of human spirit. No inward looking and self-realisation to reach the light of an enlightened, aware soul. Elaborate system of pegs and ropes. So you just get conditioned to your inherited miseries, your caste status, your untouchability, your bad karma and the mirage of getting better luck in future births through meek following of the skin-deep religiosity. So that you just keep sitting, accepting your fate, like the camel with a false peg and rope. So that you don’t look deep within and beyond the narrow confines of your outer world. So that your spirit doesn’t roam free, breaking the barriers of false fears and exploiting rituals.

We had a chance of practicing mindfulness, of breaking the shackles, of melting the fears, of realising the potential, of being the leaders. It was Buddhism. Buddha taught nothing but mindfulness so that you become aware of your potential irrespective of your low caste. When you go beyond mere rituals and meditate, most of the false ropes and pegs burn away. You roam free as per the vast horizons of your free-roaming, liberated mind.           

Unfortunately, Buddhism was bundled out from the land of its origin. The shrewd Brahamanical connivance packed it off to faraway lands. It thrives in East Asian countries. You can very well compare the chained and liberated minds. Buddhism cuts the chains through training the mind. Brahamanical Hinduism chains the mind through fatal conditioning with the help of fear and meek acceptance.

Look at Japan. Such a small country. But look at their technological excellence. It is nothing but the fruits of centuries of setting the mind free through training the brain.

Meditation helps you reach the top of awareness, to know more, to dissipate ignorance, to be more of a human being, to become different and daring.

Blind rituals are just the first step leading to the endless flight of stairs to evolution and freedom. Unfortunately, Brahamanical Hinduism just kept the people grounded at the first level, to keep them the prisoners of their minds, their selves chained to false pegs and ropes of fears and taboos. 

Love More, Hate Less

 I come out of the tunnel and see the light. I smile, have a restful inhale of the fresh air, open my arms and embrace this world, my world. It welcomes me back with a brotherly bear hug. I smile again and close my eyes to look inward and take a sip of peace from the sea of tranquillity inside. Again I open my eyes. Miracle! The world has changed. It’s far better now. I have changed my eyes to look at it differently.

Earlier, it was dark and daunting. It was as much frightening and intimidating as it was painful. The tunnel was as much dug by the external circumstances as the negative tools of my own mind. I had entered a cave, a little recess in the mountainside of life, a routine trouble in the scheme of things. Then I became my own enemy and started digging earth in the direction I shouldn’t have.

I was digging a tunnel, an aimless futile struggle; my depressed, bruised mind digging earth faster and faster. It was taking me deeper into the womb of darkness. Directions became meaningless. No light, no sun, only dense layers of darkness, piled layers upon layers.

It was like digging my own grave. A bruised brain and injured mind are the potent tools of a self-gravedigger.

Sweating, soiled clothes, aching limbs, now I come to the other side of the mountain of life. Out of the self-dug cave that almost became a grave. Life has changed its meaning. The poles have reversed. I take credit for the small act of having kept on the digging job. It’s a new beginning. I know myself better. I even wonder did I even know myself earlier. I stand as a stranger to my old self.

It’s a new sun. The air is so fresh. The earlier life seems futile, all this self-gravedigging job.

However, as I close my eyes, a feeble smile on my lips, and inhale the essence of a new, redefined life, the journey seems worth it. As some wise man said, the moment you reach the treasure trove of your destiny, everything which happened in the past becomes relevant. Nothing goes waste. Even the garbage of the past has played a big part in the shiny present and still shinier prospects of the future.

Life is almost on a pause now; so slow in motion that I see the marvels of nature around. They are for me as much as they are for anybody around: the spring sun kissing the winter-beaten leaves; the songs of birds; gentle breeze ruffling bits of peace lying around; and the swirls of a footloose bird in the sea of cool air.

I inhale the fathomless fragrance of peace, harmony and integrity from the farthest part of the cosmos. Cosmic harmony. Endless orderliness in orbits. Ever-going periodicity. Supportive synchronisation. The fury of explosions and astronomical speeds tamed to harmless, slow acts of space-time continuum. Me and my environment feel like an iota of this cosmic concord.

I allow myself a gentle smile. Ripples of peace cascade through my soul. I close my eyes again and look inwards, deeper than the superficial world of my body and my worldly circumstances. I can travel far deeper than I ever thought. There are undisturbed paths leading to my true self. It’s a replica of the cosmic orderliness. I am on the path to meet my true self, the self that is destined to be happy and at peace with itself.

It awaits there, the self, with unlimited dose of happiness, comfort, compassion and peace. We only deny ourselves the dose of this cosmic healing pill by looking out onto this world, the superficial world of frustration, jealousy, hate, futile rat race, mundane cravings, illusions, assumptions, fears, apprehensions and cravings. It doesn’t allow us to smile, to close our eyes and start the journey inward. No wonder we have hardly travelled in the real sense even if we are lucky to spend hundred years of chronological age in a lifetime.

The journey to the real inner self, on the other hand, is not bound by the puny limits of time and funny horizons of space. It’s open and there are unlimited dimensions. In minutes, one covers cosmic distances. And when you smile and look at this world outside, you see a replica, a reflection of the inherent beauty. You are better now and happier. You look at this world with a healthier mind and sturdier brain. More importantly, you have a better heart. You are capable of loving more and hating less, the hallmark and definition of a human being.

Gone with Colours and a Smile

 On Holi the colours go riotous. It comes with spring, rejuvenation, resurrection and blossoming. The rigidities melt and stiffened souls flow to embrace a bit of fun, a bit of sunshine. Everybody takes a sip from the weather’s cool cocktail. And the effects go cutting across ages. Childhood dawns.

Colours fly, water is raining around, although there is no rain. Even mud finds a way, especially when playfulness mixes with the speedy horses of angry mischief. The drunkards dance as women beat them. The drinkers have a heyday. Bhang flows unchecked. There are cries: playful, challenging, querulous, sneering, sniping, chiding, mocking, and above all flirting. As the floodgates of festivity get opened, inhibitions and taboos take a backseat and people enter the zone of a rare freedom, a chance let-looseness: flirting, teasing bonhomie.

We celebrate the festivals for life, love, hope, light and keeping the dreams alive. And when there is a death in the near neighbourhood, within a fortnight or so of the festival of colours, the spirit gets damp. The colours get a black cast in the mould, some extra mixing, a discoloration.

The old lady was on her deathbed for the last three months. An averagely good woman, but more importantly very unfortunate, was the summary of her life when people discussed her plight and even prayed to God for a hasty, smooth and painless end. For that would be a relief to the good old lady, a painless death.

Such suffering puts up a speed-bump even on the life-road of those around. All of us fear the same fate; so like a horrible nightmare, wish a prompt end to the tale of agony that reminds us of the inevitable chapter in everyone’s life. But then Holi was approaching. If she had died within weeks before Holi, the colours would have been lost. But as it happens, such last sufferings get prolonged—extended to break the last sinews of attachment still clinging to the body, to free the soul. Surviving on water just by tea spoons, the old woman kept hanging there between life and death.

******

She was deaf due to old age and missed most of the words shouted almost into her ears. But then sometimes unwanted comments and jibes sneaked into her ears like a distant golf-shot incidentally falling straight into the hole. And then it would create a ruckus. 

It was on Holi that her life went colourless. Not once but twice, one exceeding the other in the measurement of pain and loss. A few decades back, it appears like ages now, she then a young wife disposing household chorus like a nimble-footed sprinter, one-year-old boy suckling her full breasts, singing lullaby and mollycoddling, was preparing to participate in the festival of colours.

In the black and white of a tough peasant life, Holi stood out as a colourful intervention, when all their life’s rough and gruff melted in the coloured waters, gulaal, street mud, beatings, drunken sprees, and quarrels that arose like water bubbles and went down unnoticed.

Her husband was known among the rural hamlets as the master crafter of wheat-chaff domes. Massive, almost three storey high domes of wheat-chaff bore a testimony to his craft. These were storage structures, storing hundreds of quintals of the dry fodder meant for the off season usage. The circular base, made of the hard stalks of dried arhar, was dug into the ground. Over that bajra stalks and paddy hay was built into circular layers in conjunction with the wheat chaff filling inside inch by inch, hard pressed by stomping feet. The ropes made of reed and hemp took it upwards to end into a well proportioned and perfectly symmetrical dome, ready to save the storage mound against the worst of weathers. Of course it required special expertise, matching that of a weaverbird’s effort in notching out the marvel of a nest in terms of safety and symmetry.

Two days before the festival of colours, a rainstorm had lashed the farming hamlet. Lightning struck and blew away the crown of the chaff mound. If further rain fell, water would seep from the top to spoil the entire dry fodder. So on this day of Holi, before surrendering to the fun and funstery of it, her husband, after being repeatedly requested by the neighbour to repair the open-skied chaff store, got onto the top and started with his expert hands. It was a sight to watch him working so diligently almost three storey high in the sky. All was going well. But then accident takes the fraction of a second’s goof-up, just like normal routine needs miles of straight moments. He slipped, fell headlong , broke his neck and died.

The death and tragedy overwrote the festival with its swiping black colour. The festivity was gone. Colours were banished from her life and she got a permanent white as her identity. And life moved on.

In the black and whites of a widow’s life, she still had some colours hidden deep in her dreams for her son whom she brought up single-handedly, sweating out on the plot of arable land. Irrigated with the moisture of her sweat and blood, manured by the maternity of her motherly self, the flower blossomed. He turned out to be a handsome young man and was readily taken by the army.

Post training, his first posting was in Kashmir, the state that was on boil in 1989. Post a horrid winter, while the ice was thawing, and spring was beckoning all humans to calm down and listen to its open-armed charms, the turmoil touched a new peak as casualties touched a new high on both sides in the spring of 1990. There was another young soldier from the same village in the company.  Their patrol was ambushed by the militants. Amidst fierce gun battle, the widow’s son fell to bullets. It was found that he had died while attempting to save the life of his fellow villager.

Blood spread with a sprawling sanguineness on the melting snow. It was a Holi of agony and pain. Elsewhere in the plains, including their village, people were busy in obviating the miseries of a hard life in the coloured frenzy. Barely recognisable, panting with riotous play, surrendered to the spirit of the festival to deface their mundane existence, they stood stunned, as the news reached them in the evening. Again the black shades had been splashed suddenly by destiny.

This time Holi had robbed her of the colours of her dreams. Her plaintive wails killed the last trace of festivity hiding in some part of the village. Holi had restamped its authority to drive away all colours from her life.

There was another common thread which separated the tragedies by two decades. The soldier, whose life the widow’s son had saved, was the grandson of the chaff mound owner, repairing which the dead soldier’s father had fallen down. This fact rose over the merciless paradox of Holi repeatedly robbing someone’s colours, first from the real life and then from the dreams also.

She cursed Holi as much as she cursed the family which unfortunately, accidently, came to be linked to the tale of her irreparable loss. After that they couldn’t so much as raise their eyes if they happened to face her. It was a meek acceptance of their incidental link to the tragedies in her life. Not that the rest of her year was better, but come Holi and her soul would burn in the boiling cauldron of limitless agony.

******

Since the last week before Holi, anybody could have said she may die any moment. However, the feeble flicker kept on burning, as if it didn’t want to become the reason for postponing the colourful fair by one year. And then there was the Holi dawn. She was taking last laboured breaths. The festival started with its customary worship at the shrine of the village God. Then gulal-smeared children ran amuck through the streets, men-folk got to drinking in order to benumb the senses against beatings, ladies prepared hunters of twisted cords of headgears, which otherwise keep them chained into docility and obedience in the patriarchal society. But today the roles were reversed. For 364 days of submissions and even thrashings, they donned the role of beaters on this special day.

It was then the same thing: children shouting and clapping, men mimicking bravery, while the women pounded then like they were letting out all the pent-up fury born of their subservient position in the male-dominated society.

The festivity was on its downslope—with ladies all drenched and smeared in every possibly way, and the men with dead tired bodies still holding ground to keep their sense of victory even today.

Around four in the afternoon the news spread. It might be the end. People gathered around her cot. She was dragging her breath with a guttural sound. Her mouth was open and dull grey eyes, sunk deep in her skull, had a look of overawe and fear like you are face-to-face with the fearsome unknown. She already looked like a corpse.

A little boy from that family, which destiny had put up as a sorrowful factor in her tragic life, all smeared in colours, was also standing near the cot. From nowhere her eyes rested on him. With one last effort in her life, she raised her hand in his direction. They pushed him forward. The scared little boy bent over her. God knows from where did she manage even that much of life. She moved her finger to take off a bit of gulal from his cheeks and put in on her forehead. Her eyes closed, as if she was wishing herself happy Holi, a smile surfaced on her shrunk lips. The smile remained, and the eyes closed forever.

She was gone with a bit of colour and a faint smile. She had crossed a milestone to start again. 

A night with a corpse is too long and unbearable in a Hindu house. Funeral was to be arranged before the sundown. If they missed the deadline then the ordeal of nightlong sitting around the dead body, placed on the ground, awaited them. Of course anybody alive, and wanting some rest after heavy drinking and Holi lynching, would prefer rest in bed instead of guarding a corpse.

With sobered senses, beaten bodies and unrecognisably smeared in colours, the erstwhile revellers, like sleepwalkers, got busy with the funeral procession, most of them drunk dead, trying their best to force sobriety and sense, to hold ground, to walk straight, and talk without a slip of tongue. The dead have their right to respect. They knew this. The setting sun seemed to make up for mourning through its pale rays. It was a queer funeral procession. Their glide down from the high plane of festivity had been suddenly checked, and the happening like a strict and unsparing teachress put them in a line to behave themselves.

In intoxication, a man isn’t completely in control of the reins over his emotions, so tears which would never have seen the tired sunrays flew freely in many eyes, the eyes that hardly had seen the old woman on the deathbed of late. Many were freely philosophical about the questions of life and death. The procession walked silently. The drunk mass minding its steps pretty well. The biggest onus was on those shouldering the arthi. They had to walk without the slightest falter in steps. It was such a task at hand. Some steps still staggered.

When the pyre burnt much to their collective relief, many a battered limb felt the soothing warmth. Their conscience then repulsed all such feelings of ease and comfort at the pyre-side. 

Ice Cubes on Desert Sands

 Summers. North India has started to burn. Heat has broken the record of many past decades. Temperatures above 40 in the last week of March! Something seems to have gone wrong with nature. Heat emerges with bumper buoyancy. Hot dynamics grip everything with such force that all will yell prayers for the Monsoons.

In the desert state of Rajasthan things must be even worse. The sand as the birth soil isn’t too attractive. It may have its nostalgia, but on a day-to-day basis it appears a curse. Ask the ones who are born there. So many people come out of Rajasthan to avoid the burning cauldron during the summers.

Two lanky boys are moving across the streets of this Haryanvi village. Haryana is a semi-arid state. But for somebody belonging to the desert state, semi means almost full: full with life; full with bread; full with water; full with green trees.

They are tall and thin. They have migrated from the desert state. Necessity has pulled them out of the sand like water flows from higher level to the lower one. They have to beg. But begging has its own share of pitfalls including reprimands and harsh words.

“Why don’t you study? Why don’t you work?”

So they have put the saffron sail-cloth on their poor boat to navigate safely, holding onto the winds of faith. Their clothes are soiled. But the saffron sashes around their necks indeed cover a lot of holes in their personas. They expect to be taken as wandering ascetics. They have even mastered the artful words of bringing blessings to the house they stand in front of.

The woman chides them the moment they knock against the rusty iron gate. They but decide not to be deterred by the initial rebuke. Stealthily they steal glances at the two small cars parked in the front yard. These are old cars. But to them a car is a car. Hummer or Maruti 800 doesn’t make any difference.

So they continue with their blessing words of good fate, long life, endless prosperity, and more. It’s morning and yesterday it hailed and rained a bit to take temperatures a bit down. To them it seems like a land of perpetual rain and prosperity, although it rains just marginally more than their homeland. They have thorny bushes there; here there are some semi-arid varieties like neem and acacia. And that changes the world for the best. It’s a shift from the worst to the best. 

They feel that the woman cannot cross certain limits to turn outright abusive and threatening. This is the chink. They have to prod their way in.        

“You have hard words but a heart of gold. You can never think ill of others even if you sound a bit impolite,” the elder one nails it.

“What do you want? No money I tell you! I can only give you some wheat flour,” her voice mellows down somewhat.

They let their foot further in. It’s an opening.

“There is no better deed than feeding the hungry. It’s a direct holy feat. God sees it instantly,” they take their chance.

She seems to be awaiting God’s attention on some front, so agrees. They barge in. It’s a spacious house with peeling plaster and mundane furnishing like you see anywhere in a village in Haryana. To them, it’s an abode of prosperity. They sit down on the unplastered brick-laid floor in the courtyard.

It’s too early for the family to have their lunch, brunch or whatever. So she makes chapattis for them. The vegetable curry is already done. They can see the chapattis are coming straight from the tava, not the stale leftovers from the previous night which people usually give them and throw to the stray dogs also. Every time she comes to put another chapatti, they are ready with more words of blessings from the God.

The younger one asks for ice. They must be having refrigerator, he has guessed it right. It is available in every household here. Ice is a big luxury to him. He comes from burning sands. Pitchers burn like hot oven there. They drape sack-clothes around pitchers and pour drops of precious water to prevent it from boiling. He already has many ice cubes in his water utensil. He opens the lid and checks out to see how far these have melted. He is concerned. The ice is melting. He wants replenishment.

“Please give me ice,” he is literally pleading.

She laughs at him. “It’s not that hot this morning. There is cool breeze,” she says.

But he looks at her with eyes which are crying for ice. She has to get it.

As she pours ice cubes from the tray into his cheap, dented aluminium utensil, she can see the twinkle in his eyes.

Ice that is just ice to her, is something more to him. He has seen fire in life, the fire which seeps into everyday life in the desert. Ice has a bigger meaning to him than anyone else around here.

She notices it now. His clothes are also wet. Not dripping exactly, but he must have been completely drenched thirty, forty minutes back.

“What happened? Did you fall in water?” she asks.

The elder one is laughing. “Water turns him crazy. Hardly any water back home. We take bath just once a week there. When he saw the pond outside the village, he straightaway jumped into it like a mad frog,” he is laughing.

Water that is just water to her, is luxury to this boy. She tries to fathom the reason for his ecstasy over ice cubicles and pond waters where buffalos waddle, but fails to understand. Little does she realise that people run out to count drops of rain on the sand at his native place. So water is a treat to him.

Like most of us fail to understand that the things which seem dustbin cheap to us might be the symbols of opulence to so many others. That a broken doll on the garbage heap, a shiny wrapper, and a single-wheeled broken toy are still items of magnificence to many unfortunates. If we do, then we won’t begrudge most of the problems in our life.

The Old Moon and the Imperilled Landscape

 It was very cold and the time was frozen around half an hour before the morning twilight on January 13, the day celebrated as Lohri; a day before Makar Sakranti on the full moon next day. The pallid rays of a pale moon had quickly grown feeble during the last hour before the morning twilight. The night had been chilly, clear-skied, frosty and fogless: an exceptional January night, not in being chilly because cold and January are synonymous, but in being clear-skied certainly. The moon, just a day from its rounded fullness, had been exceptionally bright.

Nightlong, almost near the peak of its circular beauty, it had fulfilled its luminous duty. Its milky beams over-rode the pointed shafts of light from the distant stars. After all it was his world; the stars had their own at mammoth astronomical distances. The moon was thus the brightest, bulbous star, eager to brush out every strain and tainting, shadowy tar. Its beams spread like snows over the sleeping horizons across the sleepy distances and languorous miles.

The beautiful countryside was lying in sleepy abundance under the frosty, milky blanket with slumberous pride. Everything was open to the celestial torch with nothing to hide. Cold-basking fields were huddled under their croppy sheets. Above was grandmotherly gloating the marvellous moonshine. The wheatlings stood bow-headed in reverence with dewy crowns fine. The marigold flowers were frozen in kissed silence by the milky showers. The flowers appeared happy to surrender their colours to the lover’s mysterious smiles and disrobing powers. White pea flowers boasted their augmented whiteness. Aha, such dolefully beneficent had been the moony brightness. Even the trees did not appear merely dark spectres lurking shadowily over the horizon. They appeared boats of foliage floating in a misty sea.  

In the background of such a brightly lit stage even the sky seemed eager to come onto the earth. Across the milky transparency, its bluish-dusky veil lurked and through it only the brightest stars smiled and showed that there was a world beyond as well. Scattered in the docile swathes of this moon-baked countryside, the villages seemed as mammoth ships silently floating in the white wavy sea of milky light.

At this moment, the moon was well past its prime, as if in shining too bright, to use the full charms of a fog-free night, it had committed a harmless crime. Its setting quarters lay in the north-west, from where it was eager to slip down for some rest. Its strength and vigour had drastically plummeted down, paleness eating into the guts of its plump milky brightness. An old, setting moon, away from the youth’s boon.

Dislodged of its shiny crown, it ogled with a meek, even irritated, anguished, helpless frown. Its sheen was rapidly fading out. Its yellowish pale rays almost eager for a wailing shout. Glumly it was fading over that reddish-brown sandy undulation carrying fields, furrows and crops on its gently unfolding dome. The shiny fruits born of sweat-drenched hours by the farmers in its sandy loam. Accusingly the moon threw pale, protesting shadows towards the south-east. There urbanism, consumerism and crass commercialism blatantly, proudly held their seat commanding metropolitan, capitalist feast.

The area had been earmarked for some development project. It now being defined by a tiny space bound in a map issued under the state government’s gazette notification. A mischief by the developmental hand, ever eager to bulldoze over the nature and turn it into uncomplaining, lifeless sand where lustrous stones will be built over the nature’s burial. Heartless, wanton and depraved! But the nature has no oratory to baulk the words. It but repays in kind.

This pale, mournful moon was preparing to set soon into the misty gloom of the twilight. A new bright sun of consumerism and commerce will be ascending to its dawning height. And the soft natural delicacies will scamper with fright.

Those reed stalks which swayed to the cold shove of a gentle breeze without any greed appeared to say good-bye to the moon. The latter plummeted down further with a bloated face and a sigh. Its pallid face grimacing with a painful nostalgia. Its fading, setting rays tainted with a peculiar dullness, the death, the demise, the oblivion. Its oblong teary face looking down at the landscape: sleepy fields, beneficent swathes of wastes and fallow lands.

Mighty lessons were taught here by the nature to itself and all. The farmer going to the fields with his gear. Those long, painful and oftentimes fruitless days, and at the end the setting sun’s eager rays peering at the sweaty trove on the farmer’s back carrying the shirt’s hoe. Where the long, brooding nights arrived like the deeds accomplished. Where the failures galore, but the hard work was never a bore. The failures defined the success, as the losses stood just as a testimony to the karmic gains. Where the hopes, aspirations and desires varied with the changing hues of the weather. The farmers pawning everything for the feathers in destiny’s crown. Gold forming immaterially—or minimally at the rate of a dust speck for tons of sweat—in the toiled soil reddish brown.

All this will be gone. The moon was also dying with a moan. This charming mystery of the landscape: why the hardest labour fetches minimal returns; why a bit less harder toil results in a soul-satisfying speckful of returns that seems the wealthiest load. All these beautiful, aesthetic, curvy, circuiting strings, the mysteries of the landscape, of destiny, of the see-saw battle between happiness and suffering, between pleasure and pain, between penury and sustainable as well as gluttonous gain, between life and death, between a smile and a tear, all will be lost.

Everything will be gone for a direct, straight, materially penetrating needle of surety: the commercial, unflinching and fixed use of the landscape in a concrete form, where profits will boomerang in proportion to the short-cuts; where compromised humanity, ideology and conscience will not face any ifs and buts; where there won’t be any sweet scent of labour, which will be replaced by mechanical, greasy, muddy panting of merciless competition and mad grab; where concrete blocks and apartments will replace these wondrous solitudes and petalous platitudes basking in unrestrained, free, natural air; where sheaves, stalks, straw and reeds will not sway to the breeze, but blank, rigid, ironed towers will stand mutely, inflexibly to the nature’s cooing calls from increasing distances.

Now the sorrowfully yellowing death rattle of the setting time was arriving with a finishing chime. There on the opposite horizon, the day opened a window to sneak a peek at the imperilled room of the night. Wispily, there was the twilight with its mixed day-night delight. In its mysterious lap, the old moon met a slightly premature death, slumped as it feebly, freely into the silvery sea of mist hung over the tree-line. Slithered it into the sea of death and plunged into invisibility.

The twilight mischievously winked with its unfaithful, teasing look, asking favours both from the night and the day. The old moon was gone with its last ray. And the soon-to-be-doomed panorama, unmindful of the fatality in wait, came out of its dewy slumber. A crane’s clarion call cree…ked over its yawning bosom. The sun prepared to cast its first ray. The fields got up for another hard farming day.

A Soul’s Pyre

 Hate, fury and violence burn to eat their own self. Only love, peace and harmony survive and sustain. How long you have seen a storm screeching? The stronger it is, the faster it eats its own self.

There was a gang of robbers in a forest. Its leader was a bloodthirsty soul. He took pleasure in robbing people of their wealth and possessions. It gave him strange, paranormal pleasure. He relished that look of fear in the victims’ eyes for losing the valuables. But he needed more pleasure from the victims’ plight. More than the dread of losing valuables, he was addicted to the terror in their eyes as his people wounded and tortured them before the final kill. This horror of injury, blood and death in the victims’ eyes gave him more pleasure than the costliest diamonds. His delight reached its peak when he saw the ultimate fright in their eyes--the fear of death--as he went for the kill.

One day his band came across an old ascetic. The brigands hadn’t robbed and killed anyone for the past one week. They were thus thirsty for money and blood. A mendicant though won’t give them any valuable, but the terror in his eyes while facing death was no less for the gang leader’s evil soul.

They tied the ascetic and a huge bandit raised his sword to behead him. Death was imminent. The outlaws expected an outpour of panic from the bearded old man. Their ears were ready to receive the very same plight of crying words, pleading to be spared.

The head-bandit was looking at the old man’s face. His bloodthirsty soul was waiting water-mouthed at the spectacle of fear and cries in the face of death. But the old man was as serene as before, totally unaffected. To break his calmness, the leader even brought death an inch closer by ordering to count till ten. The beheader was to strike at the count of ten. The head bandit thought now it was impossible to escape fear as death approached in just ten steps. He had made it visible, just ten steps away.

One of the bandits started the count. With each number, a brighter smile surfaced on the old man’s lips. Before the final count, the bandit leader stopped his striker. The old man kept on smiling.

“You are smiling! You have no fear of death!” the head-robber asked.

“I have experienced death and its pain. It’s not as scary as we make it. To stay alive can be more painful,” the ascetic replied.

“But the experience of death makes it even more fearsome,” the bandit frowned.

His ego had been puffed up over the years; swelling on peoples’ fear for their possessions, injuries and finally the life itself. It had been his driving force: a bloody calculation of his progress in life; a measurement of his devilish desire; the scale of his monstrosity, which he took as excellence and superiority over fellow human beings.

Now the foundations of his treasure were breaking down. There was a challenge to his bloody conviction.

“I was a warrior one time. I was renowned for the power of my sword. I had enemies and unable to defeat me and inflict wounds on my body, they killed my family. I cried in pain over their death. Then I slaughtered them to the farthest known links of even their distant most relatives,” smile had gone from his sagely face.

The bandits listened in rapt attention.

“I bathed in their blood, laughed to the capacity of my lungs over their painful cries. I was trying to bury my pain under the pile of their bodies. Though I increased the number of my revenge killings, the pain inside won’t go. I was thinking that I am removing my pain, I was but making it mountainous. Then I came across the wife of someone who had himself beheaded my wife and children. Killing her would have given me the maximum pleasure. I raised my sword to kill her. She was pregnant. Just a week or so from delivery,” he closed his eyes.

The bandits sat down, laying their weapons by their side. It was an audience now.

“She was imploring me to kill her after she delivered the baby. She said she would consider it the kindest act done to her if I spared her life till the baby was born. She was in a way asking me to spare the baby. I told her that it won’t serve any purpose because in any case I will kill the newborn also after killing her. But not in her womb or before her eyes, she asked this much favour. She was holding my legs. I was trying to shake her off but something stopped me. She was a mother. I remembered my own mother, the way she must have been killed. That left me shaking. I was ready to kill an enemy’s wife for revenge. But my hands were trembling to kill a mother,” tears were rolling down his bearded cheeks. 

The bandits were listening as if to a sermonising seer.

“I decided to postpone my revenge for a week, thinking it will add to the pleasure in killing both the mother and the newborn. She gave birth to a girl after a week. The momentum of killings was still on my head. It still possessed me. I killed the mother. When I stabbed her I was shaken by the look in her eyes. She still carried the look of acknowledging my kindness in postponing my revenge. She had it all through the week. I had thought she was trying to save herself with that look, trying to arouse pity in me to spare her and the child’s life. But I was wrong. She had fulfilled her promise that if I spared her life for a week, she will consider it the kindest act done to her by anybody. That look on her face while dying showed it clearly. It robbed me of my hate. It killed the devil in me. And it condemned me to die each moment till I really die,” the old man looked into the sky.

There was pin-drop silence. One of the bandits even felt like offering some water to the old man. But he checked himself.

“The baby girl was my punishment for the revenge killings. I tried to kill her but my hands gave in. The game of death had possessed me. It had gripped me with such force that I was not living. I was already dead. I was roaming around as a dark agent of death. I was not living, I was already dead. I died long before my body will die. I went mad with repulsion. I hated my bloodied hands. Leaving the girl under the care of a friend and paying him for her upkeep till her marriage, I ran away. I was running after my death. But even death seemed to have discarded me. It laughed sinisterly from a distance. I tried to kill myself. But I was so weak that even self-injury won’t come. So I roamed around, neither accepted by death, nor by life, just a ghost lingering between life and death. Years of roaming around have left me detached both from life and death. As I take a step forward, I don’t know if it is meant for life or death. This melting of difference between life and death has at least removed the scars of blood from my soul. I can sleep for a few hours peacefully. And I can smile. Death thus has lost any meaning to me. So has life. Nobody can restore life in me. That’s impossible with so much blood on my soul. But if you give me death, I will consider it as a favour,” the old man seemed to implore the bandits to come and strike.

What was there for the bandit-head to feast upon? This old man didn’t possess any valuable. More importantly, he did not even have the fear of death. What will he take away from this killing? The food, this game of death, appeared stale, meaningless. He asked his group to throw their weapons. He had tears in eyes. He knew it was easier to continue the life like before and some day die at the hands of some more ferocious robbers or soldiers. That would be the fine end to it. And exciting as well. But to live differently to die another way was almost impossible. In fact that would be the real punishment.

This old man had meted out the punishment to himself by dying every moment, dying while life thrived abundantly in the forest around him, leaving him alone, not touching him in any way. So he decided to change. Not for a better life. Not for lesser punishment either. But for a prolonged death, recalling all his sins. Drawing sips of death instead of life for years before death claimed a body whose soul had escaped long time back.

A Gram in the Heart and a Ton in the Mind

 Two monks, one young and the other old, were crossing a stream. A beautiful woman was also standing on the bank. There were lines of worry on her striking face, her mind calculating the risk. The stream appeared daunting to her elegant, feminine self. In the spring air, the bird songs appeared to carry sensual notes.

The old monk looked at her. He understood that she needed help to cross the stream. His moral training of being kind to others fetched the idea of helping her to his mind. But the mere thought of touching a woman shook him up. It was a bigger no on the scale of immorality. He got goose-bumps. His rules of celibacy forbade him from touching a woman. So chanting mantras to clear his mind of the thoughts about the woman, he moved onto cross the stream.

Reaching the other end, he was horrified to see the spectacle behind him. The young monk was crossing the stream. The woman was sitting on his shoulders. It was scandalous to the elder monk. He was gripped by scores of emotions. He felt jealous of the younger monk, for taking the initiative basically; of becoming someone he always wanting to but denied himself from being. He then forced his jealousy into anger over the violation of the code of monastic conduct. He was seething with helpless rage. The thought of touching a beautiful woman was gnawing at his heart. He was again denying some basic instinct as he had throughout his life.

Reaching the opposite bank, the younger monk helped the woman down. She thanked and smiled. He bowed and followed his religiosity to the extent of keeping a straight face and moved away with respect, peace and dignity. The monks started towards their hermitage.

They had been walking for hours. It was evening when they neared their place of penance. The check-dam of the old man’s thoughts broke. Finally he burst out.

“You touched a woman. You have broken the code of conduct. I will complain against you once we reach,” he was still wondering whether he was jealous of the young monk or was it really anger over the violation of the rules book.

The young monk smiled. He put a comforting hand on the old man’s shoulder.

“I left her on the river bank itself after helping her. You are still carrying her in your mind,” he said politely.

The older monk was ashamed. He tried to put her out of his mind as they walked. The younger monk meanwhile walked with a rested mind, appreciating the marvels of nature in the forest.

The message is clear. The things which ought to be simply done, should just be done. Otherwise, their shadows linger in the mind. They grow heavier with the passage of time. This invisible weight is heavier than the stones we see around. Simple, harmless acts of appreciation, of enjoyment, of helping someone cross a stream are better done and closed with a full stop. It’s better for a healthy mind. Otherwise, they linger like conspiring shadows over our conscience.

A missed chance of being good will definitely cast a shadow on our mind. An effort to help the self in being good, on the other hand, will hardly leave any unbecoming imprint on our conscience for pinching reflections later.

Only goodness has a legacy and a future. Hypocrisy and meanness are just bad examples and leave repentance most of the time. To do good is instinctive for a human being, it’s however another matter that we stifle the urge most of the time. To be bad, on the other hand, is not intrinsic to our nature. It is wrongly reflective, a miscalculation, a tragic bypass of the instinct of goodness.

Nurture the seeds of the instincts of goodness like the younger monk did. It gives peace of mind, clear conscience and makes the journey enjoyable. Avoid it and you carry the burden in your mind like the older monk.