Love the bad road of your life

Thank God life is not just a smooth road, taking us uninterestingly to a plain destination! Guys be thankful that it is pot-holed and bumpy. The vehicle of our life gets jolts and jerks which are in fact the lifelines for our material and physical being. It tests the vehicle of our being. The latter responds and this see-saw battle releases energy for the engine of our survival. Seen rotting, rusting vehicle chases in dump-yards? They re at rest. The don’t move and aren’t thus part of the expansion of the cosmic energy. One is alive as long as one is connected to the threads of cosmic expansion, be it a leave on a twig, or a tree, an elephant or a mosquito. It’s only the movement. You are relevant as long as you are moving in the scheme of things. So guys if your road appears bumpier than others, just feel the sea-storm of energy your system is creating not just for your own survival but for the common cause of creation and survival at the universal level as well. As a struggler you contribute far more to a great unseen cause than it appears on the common plain of our material existence.

Walk ahead to be a social phenomenon and not just stay a natural phenomenon you are born as

Contradiction is inherent in nature. Positive–negative, acidity–alkalinity, dark–light, etc., etc., these are all manifestations of a homeostatic balance. You know stars are held by this same dual, contradictory force of nature. Gravitational force pulls the molecules to the core; at the same time super-temperatures force the molecules to stay away from the core at a feasible length. The stars smile and shine just because of the contradictory chemistry of these two opposing forces. Remove either of them and the star meets its end. Remove gravitational pull, the star will explode as a supernova. Remove the escaping force born of high temperature, the star will suck into its own core as a black hole. So survival means a fine zone in the twilight of creation and destruction. Natural laws apply to humans as well; they hold the same validity if we treat an individual as a system. A human life is a wonderful phenomena sizzling like a shiny star in the twilight of humility and pride, altruism and selfishness, good and bad, faith and atheism, etc. So greatness lies not in casting off one side of this undercurrent. It lies in just tilting your balance just a bit on the side of so-called good aspects in the pair. Why? Because we are social phenomena as well, apart from being the natural ones. Our consciousness equips us to shine and survive like a star–but with a definite purpose. The purpose of general well-being; of helping others in maintaining the same balance of survival; of contributing proactively to the overall balance hung between two contradictory frames. We can contribute more than what our natural states have defined for us. Believe me! It works. Just help someone in need. It can be a tiny bit. As tiny as an unconditional smile! You will feel yourself elongating your natural self a bit to the positive side. This is what it takes to be being human in the social sense, which is a degree higher than existing humans just as a natural phenomenon.

How can China avoid a sudden demise like the former USSR?

The more I read the facts and fiction of communist dictatorial regimes, the times when humanity faced a roadblock, the more I forget my own collective as well as personal pain. I feel blessed to be born beyond the communist shadow. If God has been merciful enough not to cast you into a communist land in either this or previous births, then you have no right to as for more. It’s already the best blessings from the Lord. It's a divine gift not to be born under a communist regime. Biggest pains you feel in a non-communist regime appear like luxurious sprouts in comparison to the horrendous systemic tortures perpetrated on the masses under the communist regimes. So to me, as part of democracy, the smallest of gains look like the biggest boon. Not that democracy is perfect. It has its own sweet set of nuisance. But these are lesser symptoms of non-fatal diseases like cough, cold, running nose, sneezing etc., etc. Communist dictatorship on the other hand is simply a terminator like incurable cancer.   

Communist ideology is an all-pervading fire which doesn't spare either good or bad. Intended to burn the evil, it stretches the definition of evil too far and turns fiery evil itself. It's a huge stone hurtling down-slope, squashing soots, saplings, petals, thorns and all. A fire needs fodder to burn. The communist ideology needs hordes of victims to survive. There is an endless chain of imagined enemies. Waves of purges. It's human industrialization. Humans just machines and cogs in the production line. And the looking at the ways and means of the emerging international bully, I’m afraid, at the end of it, the human civilization, despite its efforts at capitalist systems, will perish as a machine age managed by the communist system. But still that cataclysmic end should not make me skip my enjoyment of life in a democratic system.

Very often I wonder how communist dictators built cult status with millions of blind followers? It's a simple technique. First they rob people of their faith, turning them atheist. But we are genetically inclined to have faith. In the vacuum they plant their personality. Thus starts the cult of a dictator. Propaganda is used for the dictator's deification. And we have crazy, blinded masses, happy over having their God nearby.

However, the communist edifice which gets soaring high in the sky, also outgrows its sustainability like cancerous propagation of cells. Too much of laws, rules, regulations, legalized forced discipline creates a facade that goes too perfectly to soar too high to sustain its elevation. It then crumbles, perfection rarely sustains. That's why communist societies crumble. Like a castle of cards. It crashes. Like it did suddenly in Russia. To survive, a society has to have its pitfalls, imperfections. The facade doesn't go too high. It sustains. There are plus and minus which cancel out each other like in a democratic system. Oh, the glorious imperfections of democracy. That's why it thrives. In the same way, the well managed, rigid facade in China will crumble. It will collapse. Well, unless they voluntarily introduce some imperfections themselves, some traits of democracy, to make it pliable, some allowance of mischief, some humour, some criticism to bring down the upper stories of the facade which has gone too high. It won't fall then.

The sweet feminine push

Some sweet moments stand out from the dust of time on the well trodden path even years down the line. They haven’t actually changed your life with a huge jolt, nor let loose a tsunami cascading down the corridors of your memory. Rather they are very small happenings whose smiling smell defies to die in the ever-crowding chambers of your brain. They are simply like some small wayside flower you came across and whose smile you retain with you as you waft through the turbulent sea of life. One such moment stands out. Its imprint as solid like any other substantial event of my life. The memory leaves me with a nostalgic smile. It happened more than a decade back when I used to lumber along the sea of humanity struggling to complete one another day in the behemoth that Delhi is. Delhi was changing and females were seen jostling in the struggle shoulder to shoulder with the men-folk. A petrol pump and its female keepers womanning the oil machines! After guzzling fuel from the strong hands of the sweet girl attendant my cart, very old battered car, won’t start. Its battery gone weaker than the body. Embarrassed, sheepishly I looked around for help. Gracious heavens, two petrol attendant girls came manly--if we may say so, although given the men’s ways in Delhi it’s no matter of pride to be manly--forward and pushed the old hag and its owner with such dignified force and refined purpose that my buffalo cart surrendered its obstinacy to the feminine purity of their purpose. ‘Salutes! We are a gender-neutral vibrant nation now,’ my heart exulted with the starting jolts of the old engine. I looked back and there they were with a smile on their faces. The moment seems etched in stone in my memory chambers. Millions of chit-chatty things come and go and fall off like inconsequential flakes. Some things but stay with you. Take out such moments of life on some early winter day and relive those moments. As you smile with the recollection of those moments, and preferably sip ginger tea, you find life slightly better than before. And meaningful also. Happy winters guys!

Commonality gone and extraordinary emerges

I wonder how can a tiny act like simply cutting hair and adding moustache makes me look like Gandhi when he arrived in India to start his innings as a freedom fighter? Well, the job is worth it if it gives such an esteemed feeling! The journey: From outer shadows--which are ever shifting and fleeting--to inner substance which is ever unperturbed and waiting for the journeyman to come home at long last.