Thirsty honeybees in flowerless land

Scorching heat... spring died...flowers withered. But life has to continue till flowers bloom once again. With temperature around 40 and flowers gone, these honeybees look like desert travellers busy around an oasis. Water level in the tiny vessel was low, so many of them slipped down the edges while attempting to take tiny swigs of water. One can use love, care and help in any corner of the world. It polishes the aesthetics of humanity. A little practice to be more human. Goodness is qualitative in nature. It doesn't need quantity to get certified as a good deed. Main thing is one's emotion. So here I take my quantum jump in evolution by filling the bucket to the brim so that these little thirsty visitors safely perch on the upper edge and drink water without risking their lives. They get water, I become more aware of the godliness in me. Profit both ways. Vaah, what a fruitful day!

The death of a moth

The Moth's last sigh. It moves today like it fluttered yesterday. The only difference is that yesterday its littlest ounce of consciousness was put inside this tiny miligram of a shape. Today but that ounce of consciousness has spread to become part of everything. The matter now moves to the force of everything around. Transition from life to matter. Here flutters the moth corpse to free wind. Yesterday exactly at this time I saw it crawling on the floor. Little did I realise that it was on its death bed. Now it becomes part of everything to take its consciousness at this frequency on the further march of evolution of consciousness just like species have evolved at the level of biology, at the level of matter. Matter and consciousness both evolve. There are parallels. We just need to be aware of it. And it becomes a very much realisable process.

Last nail in the coffin of scrub forest in Haryana

SC directive to Haryana Govt

Well Haryana is a small state. But the fact that it has the lowest forest cover in the country at 3.59% makes it really sound miserable. But as a silverlining to the hopes of development enthusiasts, it surrounds Delhi NCR and that is where the planners find scope of development. Politicians in India basically keep their financial spines sound primarily by managing real estate, mining and quarrying through their cronies. Haryana is no exception. With Delhi NCR getting over-bloated, Haryana politicians have always eyed construction scope in Guruguram and Faridabad. Nothing wrong with that. But the simple fact that this area covers Aravali scrub land, which is the last bulwark against total desertification of Delhi NCR, makes it really worrisome, especially given the fact that Delhi already is an intolerable torture chamber for residents due to pollution. 
Haryana govts, despite the SC directive of 1996, have not notified forest land in its territory falling in the NCR. They eye the mullah by keeping a scope for construction by clearing the semi-wilderness of the scrub forest in the area. Already a lot of it has been destroyed through illegal mining. The recent Haryana govt legislation allows the illegality to be carried out in open which till now has been carried out through dubious means. It also leaves the heavenly slice of little patch of Shivalik hills in Panchkula, having exotic species of trees and birds, for quarrying and hotel industry. Greed for money has no softer consideration for mother nature. I wonder will the reprimand by the Supreme Court be sufficient to stop Haryana politicians from raping the last remnants of scrub forest in the state?     

Joseph K. and Me

"if you have the right eye for these things, you can see that the accused men are often attractive. It's a remarkable phenomenon, almost a natural law.... accused men are always the most attractive." __Trial by Franz Kafka.

Well, at long last I find reason for my peculiar attractiveness. Ha ha. I also stand accused by state vigilance commission under Hooda govt. My crime. Actually I had cracked Haryana PCS to get selected as a subdivision magistrate. Hooda got gastric ulcer over my tiny feat. So there he orders an inquiry. They scanned my answer sheets. Lo, there they found the proof of my crime. It was an expert catch. In one of the answers, the evaluator had changed marking from 2 to 4 with his initials authenticating the change of mind. Now 15 years down the line, having lost the fruit of my 10 years of study, I still wonder how come I stand accused for evaluator's change of mind, and especially when this adding of 2 marks doesn't effect my selection in any way because even with 2 marks less I still get into the selection list. So guys, there starts the Trial protagonist Joseph K. type futile struggle. Judges won't understand the rocket science. But then my take away is Kafka's accused protagonist type attractiveness..and I like it. And equipped with my accused attractiveness, I sometimes ponder over to find out reasons how come I got only 37% marks in IAS interview even after scoring 54% in mains written because with this type of score one can easily be among the toppers. And I also remember how come one PCS BOARD gave me only 36% in interview after I had scored 55% in written mains which again is a top-worthy score. So guys here I stand like Joseph K when he was executed with final words on his lips, "like a dog!"...heee heee. Am I that bad, I sometimes think. Or to rephrase, am I too good for the system? This second option gives more solace, because it provides a sort of self-driven poetic justice. Well, to survive in this world one has to have grey shades. Not that I don't have mine. Possibly they couldn't spot it. In any case, system's loss, not mine. Hee heee. Again I derive sadistic pleasure with this thought.

Life, Love, Living and Happiness

Don’t be in haste, don’t run too fast, for in running too fast, always looking at the destination ahead in future, you lose the real charm of your journey. You forget yourself and identify yourself with what you are not. You snap your ties with your real self, and with broken ties with your true self, you hardly stand a chance to grow firm roots in the personal and professional domain around you.

As a speedster you miss the real fruits that were placed solely for you along the path. You hardly realize the real profits and boons coming across your path. You miss your present, the real you who can exist in the present only, the rest is just a mere jumblement of ideas about incomprehensible future and regretful past. The unreal you has no tangible existence except as a bunch of insubstantial, phantom thoughts. Unfortunately this phantom idea takes precedence over the real you, deriving a chasm between what you think yourself to be and what you are in reality.

So under the fallacy of identification with the unreal, you forget yourself, you overlook the present impregnated with countless things around waiting to be defined just by your look, your insight, your observation. Every phenomenon is incomplete without you as an aware observer. So by forgetting yourself, you ignore your role in the process of creation.

Forgetting yourself, eyes peeping into the hazy distances, leaving all the multi-hues of things and phenomena waiting to be defined by your aware look, you stumble so many times. And the blame game starts. You target destiny, you point out unfair forces against you, you crib about injustices and system failures. All these are but the projections of your unreal self on external circumstances. The things outside are simply the screens where you play the disharmonic drama driven by the wrong protagonist impostoring as you.

So you run very hard with all your might, your eyes mechanically glued to the so called target. But is it, in any way, better than a blind run? And mind you, no destination is defined in isolation, just in itself, something lying at a distance in abstract. Every destination is the sum total of the experiences coming across the way. The so called ‘reach home’ is just one more milestone like any other along the way.

The runner is always more important than the act of running and the so called finish line. So cool down. Take a pause. And move restfully with equipoise and respectful awareness. The things that light up your awareness at each step are as important as the goal to which you are dying to reach. The ever-giving trees, singing birds, cotton soft clouds floating as spectators, gentle breeze applauding your march, motherly soothing sunshine, restful ponds, naughty rivers, gracious people, charming conversations, and what not. The list is endless. Not that there aren’t grey shades to the things around. There are, but they are mere appendages to the basketful of bounties. As they say, change your outlook and the world changes. Grey has just two factors of white and black. Multicolored possibility on the other hand has a big rainbow of possibilities. But it’s never complete without the participation of your prism, your heart.

The little wayside flowers have no meaning if you don’t pause to reciprocate their smile. An atom of reality has an observer and the observed. Nature has played its part; now play yours by being a keen onlooker. These small milestones coming with each watchful step have their rewards and satisfaction, provided you don’t belittle them as mere steps to the so called final trophy. Each step is a destination itself. I hardly see any final destination apart from dying without too many grudges from life. The rest are just mere steps following one another. To avoid the final judgmental hammer-strike at the fag end of the journey, it is simply required to be just a journeyman. The journey itself is a reward. It’s an end in itself. Pain arises when we take it as the means to something. There is just one journey, life. There is just one destination, a regretless ending of the show.

Your each step carries the prospects of the pearls of happiness provided you slow down your time. The time which is yours, defined by you, not by the clock’s clicking hands or other’s expectations and your imitation of the conventionally safe pursuits. The latter give you a fake sense of security but leave your soul thirsty, depriving it of the adventurous nectar that could have been sipped from the flowering of your own self by gracefully picking up the pollen lying for you.

There is no absolute time, just relative fixations of it to serve tiny human purposes. That doesn’t mean it should become the master of your destiny, casting you in its cement mold, making you a caricature of your true self. Your time ought to obey you, not the vice versa. You can slow it down with your increased awareness. Stretch each second on the enlightened curve of awareness. Time then serves you, giving you more in seconds than you ever observed and experienced in whole days.

Do you think a journey is accomplished by the running force you propel into? Think again if you say yes. It’s not possible to run forever. A run has to depend on rest and pause to sustain itself. Do you think the accelerator paddle in your car takes you to the destination? Not at all! It’s the brakes intervening to give restful pauses for safety to give meaning and control to your speed, to make it an organized run instead of a mad rush ever accelerating and crashing into some fatality.

The break, the pause, the rest, these are the basic ingredients to turn any random movement into a meaningful, assured, safe journey taking us to some point further in the journey. Miles and miles of mindless dash without breaking, restful pauses are meaningless crazy pursuits in a desert ending in painful mirages.

As you run without pause, rest and awareness, and with heedless hurry, you stress yourself out. This stress and tension kills the imagery. All tensed up and stressed, looking anxiously at the destination far-far away, you lose that dreamy imagery which makes each step a victory in itself. Do you think life is meaningful without restful reflections and creative imagination? It simply isn’t. If not now, you realize it later when unfortunately it is too late.

So guys watch your step. And look around you. Countless things and phenomena are waiting to enrich you. These are the things which make your journey fruitful and meaningful in the true sense. The destination stands defined only in terms of the process of journeying and the experiences gained alongside. And when you reach your destination as a victorious king, it’s only the experiences before the final goalpost which have turned the scale in your favor.

The nutshell is: Enjoy the journey fella! Don’t just close your eyes to the surroundings thinking about the destination where you assume to become happy some day in future. Forget it. No destination can give you happiness if you haven’t been happy while journeying.

Happy journey! Carry on! All the best!