Licensed for Joy

 

Even though heavily burdened with faith and prayers for redemption, the pilgrimage town of Rishikesh still maintains a fresh, vibrant spirit. It’s a little world containing sinewy stories of individual pain, suffering, ecstasy, death and births.

It’s the main little boulevard along the holy river flanked by the bathing ghats on one side and shops, ashrams and lodges on the other. Completing this little picture in his still smaller way, he is a poor invalid carrying the huge burden of congenital catastrophe on his frail figure. His limbs withered by polio, he is like a wingless bird. Each step is a struggle.

With his thin crooked arms swaying to maintain balance on his twisted legs, without any external aid—not even that of a stick—he gives you a lesson that even with a deformed body it’s possible to move on the path of life with stoutness of spirit. And he has a part to play in the happening street by the Ganges. His step towards goodness is more laboured than most of us.

It’s early morning. ‘I’ll just open my stall and give you a glass,’ the juice vendor offers and seems in a hurry to accomplish what he has just said.

The tea-seller also shouts his charity offer. It’s beyond charity, however. There is a human connection. They really love and like him. He, but, isn’t concerned. Keeping his balance against a fall, with a fresh samosa in his hand, he moves, or rather totters, to a cow. The holy stray animal gladly gobbles down the spicy delicacy. The people around laugh and clap. It’s good to see such acts of offering with a humorous touch.

He struggles to his bag and bundle placed by a wall. These are his coordinates in the world which define his sense of belonging and identity. He approaches his part of earth, as of now since his provisions are placed there, and sits against the wall. The street is getting busier by degrees, just like the sun is getting hotter with the passage of minutes. A sadhu puts a steel glass full of piping hot tea in front of him.

The positivity and smile on that narrow, weather-beaten, soiled, dark face arrests my attention. My legs refuse to leave the scene. He is truly magnetic in his own way. Well, all of us are repelling also in our own ways.

The boyish man is around twenty. He is very frail but in his eyes there is a light which defies the congenital darkness.

Even the deserts have their oasis. He has his voice. The nature is rarely completely heartless. He preens in a melodious happy tone. It’s like the sweet, mellow and calculated words of a parrot trained to speak the human language.

His face is inclined to smile at every instance. There is no bitterness. There is a sweetness that strikes you somehow and makes you feel better. No wonder, he is a darling of the mendicant friars who stay in the open street in front of the ashrams.

‘He is very sweet,’ I say to the sadhu who has fetched him tea. He agrees vociferously.

The star of the street dwellers’ eyes is eager to show all he has with him. He takes out a worn-out cheap purse and opens it to show a photo. It’s him in sunglasses with some attitude.

‘Got it clicked at Haridwar,’ he sweetly preens.

‘You look like Shah Rukh Khan,’ I tell him.

He laughs. Others also laugh with merriment.

‘I have been to Delhi. No one bothers me in trains and buses,’ he informs proudly.

‘Yes off and on, he vanishes for months and travels to different places,’ a sadhu agrees.

Vaishno Devi is his dream destination.

‘He says the people will give him so many coins there that he will buy a house for all of us,’ an old woman says with affection.

There is more laughter. He adds to it with his innocent chuckles.

He is innocent. His simple mind isn’t infected with malice and selfishness.

‘God stays in him,’ I point out.

Everybody seems to be in a very strong agreement.

He wants me to take his picture on my mobile. He just loves getting clicked. I ask a passing tourist to take a picture on my mobile. I go to him, sit by his side, put my hand on his shoulder, he puts his on mine. The moment gets captured in a photo. I can feel the magnetic humanistic touch in his soiled frail fingers. I am sure my cleaner hands soiled with bland worldly pursuits and callused with ambition must have hardly left any mark upon him.  

Some Sayings by Great Masters

 ... it's so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.

___ Thoreau

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Truth is the mind and beauty is the heart of the ultimate reality, if at all we can have some terminology to comprehend it with our limited senses. And art straddles the tenuous bridge holding truth and beauty together, binding each to the other with almost a synonymous bond. Economics will hardly have any valuation for truth, beauty and art. The beholders of truth, lovers of beauty and practitioners of art may try to monetize their domains, but they mostly fail. Truth, beauty and art stand, somehow, in the bylanes, in almost secluded corners, away from the mainstream commerce and monetization. (It's my own but I am just a particle of dust around the feet of these masters and have just pasted my own poor stuff on the great wall out of some idiosyncrasy).

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...why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?

___ Thoreau

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Great masters like Charles Dickens tell ageless truths. Not only that, they voice little individual truths as well which find perfect echo in many hearts even after almost 200 years, like the following passage does with me. Coolly bachelor Mr. George goes musing over his status in Bleak House:

"A family home," he ruminates, as he marches along, "however small it is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made that evolution of matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn't hold to the gallery a month together, if it was a regular pursuit, or if I didn't camp there gypsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber nobody; that's something. I have not done that for many a long year!"

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For, howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes, than in any other form he wears.

___ Charles Dickens

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All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.

___ Thoreau

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Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established.

___ Thoreau

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We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. 

__ Thoreau

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

__ Thoreau

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If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies.

__ Thoreau

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I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven.

__ Thoreau

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... he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

__ Thoreau

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I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.

__ Thoreau

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Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.

___ Thoreau

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...days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon I have stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I didn't waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.

__ Thoreau

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How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?

__ Thoreau

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A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.

___ Thoreau

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A Story of Two Roses

 

It’s a little story of two roses in my small garden, one deep yellow and the other profoundly pink. Both of them are Mother Nature’s expression of love, joy and smiles. But there is a fundamental difference.

The yellow flower is a result of mankind’s grafting his own desires, likes, dislikes and parameters of beauty on the basic stem found in nature. As we all know grafted flowers look beautiful, are sturdy, nicely patterned but they lack the soul of a flower, fragrance. The human touch somehow quells the free spirit. They are lively plastic flowers at the most. Yes, it looks good from a distance. It has been there for a few weeks in the winter. But go near it, and you realise it doesn’t offer you much beyond the first dimension of appearance.

The nectar suckers hardly have anything for them here. It’s a strong and sturdy, finely patterned fat rose. It withstands weather elements with a haughty head-on temperament. Mortality, but, is the law, so now it starts withering, its sturdy leaves still stricken to the stem turn blackish. They now turn discoloured and crinkled. One can see the agents of death spreading their tentacles gradually through it. It’s a sad sight to see it getting old, debilitated, diseased and disfigured. It seems it wants to stay here forever, a kind of human-centric tendency to occupy the planet forever, a mad race to leave permanent marks on the shifting sands.  

The desi rose, the pink darling, basking under the winter sun without any human intervention through the grafting technique, is spared of our meddling with the free-wheeling smiles and fragrance of Mother Nature. Its petals are velvety soft and fragrant. Go near it and it welcomes you with its mollycoddling smile and soul-tingling smell.

Its soft petals respond to the kisses of wintery breeze that makes it smile even more beautifully. The bees and beetles have a whole perfumery and brewery at their disposal. It’s a thriving little world in itself. Being untouched by the human tendency to own, occupy and control, it sprouts fully and blossoms to its peak. The design is simple. It stays for a week at the most but lives its life to the full. The design is so simple that it opens perfectly and almost explodes with ecstasy to scatter its being into a larger existence. The petals don’t wither. They fly away while still at their best in fragrance and splendour.   

The yellow rose clings and stinks. It doesn't want to give. It dies a painful elongated death. It doesn't surrender to change and holds its youth's bloom in a fist, a constriction, a knot, a stagnation. It will be there till it turns ugly. The glory of its past will be overshadowed by the piteous whine of its present. A painful event stuck up in the loop of time.

The pink desi rose opens up fully. It gives all it has to open up and scatter its still fragrant petals as a homage to gentle winds, balmy afternoon winters and keenly awaiting mother earth. It showers beauty. It's a drizzle of joy. It's not death. This is ecstatic disintegration for the larger integration. A process! A fluidity beyond the constraints of space and time.

And here we can draw a few little lessons dear readers. We can blossom up fully with life if we adhere to the basic fundamentals of mother existence. Yes, the struggle and challenges of survival in the modern world require certain tools and techniques of modernity. However, these are mere conveniences. These shouldn’t rob us of the spirit and fragrance of being human. The grafting of techniques has a propensity to steal our identity to turn us almost machines. No technological grafting should be strong enough to change the basic human in us. Use the modern conveniences to the best of your knowledge, education and skills. But stay grounded. Be a desi rose that blooms fully with open-charmed beauty, inherent simplicity and loads of fragrance. And once you live fully, death loses its pinch and scare. One explodes with joy and painlessly moves over to the next dimension of existence.   

The Lawless Love

 

After the first wave of the pandemic, the fear of Corona had lifted its anchor from the pools of mass psyche. After being stretched, and consequently being forced to forego most of the things that define our life and living, the world of we humans was reverting to its former position. As the winters approached, again the world got busy in rearranging the tit-bits that the virus had ruffled.

Politics emerged in open light after the forced hibernation. Polarisation, systematic nurturing of fear and phobias, churning out of suitable narratives and other schemes and manoeuvres once again started doing the rounds.

In the last week of November, 2020, an ordinance dropped like a hammer, forcing down a nail in the hearts that are yet to start looking at the world through complex divisions. Young hearts hardly see beyond the adrenaline-pumped soufflés. The UP cabinet approved a mischievous (but politically lucrative as all mischief are) draft ordinance. It sanctioned to outlaw the so called attempts to religious conversions through enticement, coercion, deceit and marriage.

The state Governors are always waiting with a glee for anything landing on their table to ink their stamp. Usually they are an offshoot of the party running the central government. Things turn very funny if some opposition party rules a state. Then it’s a puppet show between the Chief Minister and the Governor. No wonder, to appease the appointing masters at the centre, the Governors stamp any kind of ordinance with such gusto as to even pierce the stamp through the paper. Even the tables bear the permanent marks of this enthusiasm. They probably visualize the opposition face on the paper. Under the force of such an overzealous stamp, any leap in interfaith relationships was now at the risk of 10 years of imprisonment.

India is a very spirited, perky and easy country to live and prosper now provided you have just enough brain to accept the narratives built by the party in power without any questions or suspicions. On the other hand, you have to guard yourself against a lot of brickbats if you have a questioning mind.  

The right wing activists had successfully created a narrative through the token call of ‘love jihad’. It meant, they claimed, a diabolical plan by the Muslim men to seduce Hindu women and girls, forcing them into marriage and relationships resulting in conversion to Islam. So the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance 2020 started scanning the interfaith relationships with its blinding flashlight to find out the strains of a conspiracy that solemnized the marriage primarily to effect religious conversion. It was supposed to maintain law and order and ensure justice and dignity for the women. The constitutional right to choose one’s partner across faiths was now infringed by a new zealous clause.

An over-zealous nationalism is a steel-frame. It’s a sturdy jingoistic wall of defence against the outside enemies. It, but, very soon seeks to define the enemies within to keep the heat on. One feels the hardness of its steel bars, especially if you have that much of independence of mind and liberty of soul as would take you at a plane from where the narrow parochial compartments look silly to you.    

As per the ordinance, the offense being cognizable and non-bailable, the police officer had the authority to arrest the suspect without a warrant and could start an investigation without seeking the court’s permission. The DM could even award compensation up to rupees 5 lac to the victims of such forced conversion. An interfaith union seeker was required to apply in the prescribed format two months in advance before the planned conversion. The violation of this clause carried imprisonment between 6 months to 3 years and a penalty of 10,000 rupees. In effect, the stern eyes of law found all interfaith marriages as mere false pretext to force the gullible Hindu women into religious conversion through sham marriages. The constitutional right to the freedom of religion had a questioning iron sickle held against its throat. The term ‘love jihad’ was slowly getting a foothold in the form of a legitimate concern over marriages by lure, force, fraud or instigation, all to ensure religious conversion.

Armed with the provision, the right wing activists now waited with glee to swoop upon the infiltrators into the zone of illegitimacy to prove their enthusiasm for the cause of cultural war. And the opportunity came just hours after the promulgation. The police said a Hindu man has accused a Muslim man of putting pressure on his daughter to convert to Islam. They knew each other from their college days and he had been troubling her for a couple of years.

The girl’s father accused the Muslim man that he threatened them with dire consequences if they opposed the conversion. A prompt action was taken. The threat to religion was immediately quelled.

A relationship between two young people of different faiths has multiple layers to draw meaning from: Parental recrimination, social sanction, fear, patriarchy, bigotry and criminality. The matters of the heart were thus put on the anvil to be hammered under the pretext of beating the malware of coercion, inducement, fraud and allurement.

Why should one get disconcerted by religious polarisation only? Our democracy has always thrived on polarisation since the beginning. Caste, class, region and ethnicities have been the driving forces of our democratic process. The Congress used these very lucratively for almost six decades to rule almost unchallenged. Now the present dispensation uses the religious factor that suits it the most. Unfortunately, it may sow the seeds of another division of the country a few decades down the line because an insecure minority is like having termites in the foundation of a nation. 

The government even considered to scrap a scheme that played a nice role in facilitating and promoting inter-faith marriages for the last almost four and half decades. The Intercaste and Interfaith Marriage Incentive Scheme 1976 by the national integration department in UP had operated for almost five decades to facilitate and promote an India belonging to the Indians only, not Hindus, Muslims, Chamars, Brahmins, etc, etc. To avail the incentives, an interfaith couple can apply to the local DM within two years of marriage. The official would then verify and sanction 50,000 rupees after his satisfaction. Last year, there were 11 couples getting the incentive. This year was a frigid blank as no amount had been released.

It shows the immovable iron walls emerging between different communities. The buffer zones are vanishing. The intermixing buffer zones are the ones that sustain the external boundaries of a nation. Hard lines within the body weaken the outer boundaries apart from laying the foundation of separatism within.

The things are getting tougher for selfless love these days. They are not easy for the freedom of thought and expression either. Truth will give you some vague solace in heart but a bluish bump on the head. The art of politicking is getting far too smart and powerful now. Liberalism is almost a synonym of sedition now. And all those who claim to have originality of thought and independence of spirit better watch their step now because they are the black sheep by default for not mindlessly kowtowing the grand march on the attractive thoroughfare of boiling emotions, cascading patriotism and itchy heroism. 

How will you judge and evaluate the amount of lure and brainwash to convert involved in any inter-faith relationship? The law in letter always has the propensity to be twisted around to serve the opposite in spirit.

The right-wing activists jumped with glee to add more patriotic feathers in their hat. A zealous group on the path of nation-building stopped the registration process of a Hindu-Muslim marriage and took the offenders to the local police station. A short video showed the activists questioning the woman in the police station.

‘Have you read the new law? Show us the permission of the DM to convert religion!’

They have a video of fearsome bearded men dragging a helpless Hindu girl out of her house in Pakistan. The girl cries as they drag her in the street in broad daylight.

‘Do you see this? This is what they are. Look, what they do to Hindu girls there. She is kidnapped in broad daylight and will be forcibly converted to Islam to be put into the harem of a toothless old man! Shameful that you bring stigma to our name!’

A young man raises a slogan to defend Bharat Mata. There is big round of religious, patriotic sloganeering.

Does someone’s committing a murder justify my own act of killing? The biggest harm the fundamentalist Islam has done is to inspire reactionaries in the otherwise peaceful sects and streams of faith in the modern world. Now the mobsters among the resurgent sections of various faiths justify their hard stand by saying, ‘The Muslims slaughter for their faith and we cannot even throw stones to protect our religion.’

The poor girl was at a loss to say anything. The mother, the inspector said, had complained that Rashid impersonated as Sonu to entice their daughter to force her into religious conversion. The girl maintained that she was of age and married of her free will and had come to register marriage in the court without any pressure.

Her marriage registration process hijacked by the right-wing activists, she was taken to the government shelter home. Muskan, the girl in objectionable love, not only lost her smile, she lost her baby also. Under the onslaught of these traumatic events, she miscarried her three-month pregnancy.

The law added to its credentials through this little episode. The parents of the girl had the satisfaction that they did all that could be done to keep theirs and the society’s fabric intact. The offenders had scars: She in her womb, he on his body. And the complex world kept on its path towards further complexity.

There are, and forever will be, good and bad Hindus and Muslims. However, it’s indisputable that goodness has far bigger chunk in both populations. The main problem with miniscule badness is that it sets up a symbolism far too big that casts a cloud of suspicion over the majority good part. In these grey areas, facts get fabricated and ideologies hatch that leave a cascading effect to shake the entire social fabric. Of course, all this serves the purpose of a few vested interests. Of this, the biggest vested group is the power aspirants, the rulers. 

A Miracle on the Ganges

 

Fed by the heavy spates of rains in the Himalayas, the holy river Ganga flew with full life and vigour. Its waters fervently rushed past, creating torrents of devotional fervour.

The evening Ganga arti at Parmarth Ghat, Rishikesh, is an important milestone on a typical day at the pilgrimage town.

Everything is routinely settled for the evening prayers on the holy river’s bank. The yellow robed young monks are ready to chant delicious mantras to enthral the congregation held on the marble steps overlooking the majestic river. The tourists and pilgrims are set for a delicious dose of religious musicality.

At half past five in the evening, the hills to the north get clouded by dark gray clouds. The air mass moves down the valley. A strong wind blows. The arti has just started. The rain lets loose a pining, pleasant outpour. It’s a torrential rain buffeting the earth with new life. It pours down with open heart. The opposite bank becomes almost invisible. Meanwhile, the arti continues under the waterfront pavilion as the people rush to take shelter under any portion of roof available. The people stand, sit and recline and clap to the rhythmical chime of the mantras. Brass prayer lamps with hooded snakes projecting over the fire bowl burn with unaffected charm and imposing vigour. It warms the cold air gushing into the valley. The hymns are captivating. The Ganges becomes one with the falling dark grey torrents of water. It seems a conduit to the awesome super entity above. Everything is thoroughly washed. 

The people, a teasing mix of natives and foreigners, gather and dive into the devotional enthusiasm with equal measure. Incense smell wafts across, pleasantly plummeted around by the wind blowing down the valley. The spears of rain pierce the heaven-bound fragrance to keep it lingering on earth for a little bit of more time. The simple rhythm of mantras and devotional songs vibrates the chords of faith in many hearts. It’s beyond language, religion, caste and culture. The people are sitting on the bathing steps, lost in devotion, staring at the fervently rushing waters of the holy river. All are part of the devotionally surcharged air.

Even though you try your level best to surrender, your uncontrolled mind is encouraging you to have more expectations through the righteous set of rituals, entitling you to more blessings by the higher entities.

There she is: An innocent, pure, unadulterated being, beyond the maladies of unchecked ambitions and the bug of fight for some more space in the world. An accident at the time when she was conceived puts her on the sidelines. She isn’t a participant in the buzzing game of life; she is a mere presence.

She is a girl around 14 years in age; her ‘being’ defined by the clinical symptom named autism or may be cerebral palsy, I’m not sure. Whatever it’s, it makes her a special child and sidelines her, puts her beyond rampant desire, the devil bug that infects the modern mankind and despite best of our efforts stays side by side with our imposed goodness.

The swift currents of prayers have captured the mundane souls around. But all this, more or less, is meaningless to her. Or does she have her own share of meaning that we can’t understand and perceive?

She is a beautiful special child. Her identity would have been still more significant in the mundane, worldly sense of the term, had she been in a position to gather the traces of her individuality with the cord of self-interest.

The doctors may call it some debilitating clinical symptom, she but is just the way she is. Unconcerned about the fight for larger stakes through the crutches of faith, she looks the other way. She stares into the tiny side-lane where she has been pushed into by the birth-time biological accident. She has virtually no claim over the life’s bounties that we so brazenly fight for. This look of detachment appears a punishment to the normal world burdened with its mountainous pettiness. Holding her head at an awkward angle she looks away. She has no reason to be too serious about the clouds of surcharged prayers.

The girl has beautiful eyes, a perfect nose and an attractive face-cut. Overwritten is the imprint of her special ability that we take as disability. Her lower lip hangs loose. It’s an opening into her disarrayed persona. It’s a clue to her not being in control of her identity. A bit of saliva drips down. With an effort she moves her hand to wipe it with the back of her hand and muster up some control. She then fiddles with the towel hanky given by her mother sitting next to her.

Her limbs and head move with mechanical pauses, not with that fluidity which pushes us into the stream of commonness. Looking at her helplessness, everyone around appears to own a sea, and she merely a drop. How will you accept such injustice on the part of nature?

Her family appears to have enough sensibility to take care of her needs, but that is no justification. She doesn’t even realize what she has lost right from the beginning of her innings in this life.

Lost in the oblivion of her own special world, she comes gasping on the surface, awkwardly tugs to draw her mother’s attention, who has learnt to ignore such disturbances on her girl’s part.

It’s a particular challenge to raise a special child. You need unending patience and the tank of maternity should never be empty, otherwise the special child has no choice other than suffering.

There are girls of her age, fleeting around, full of life, sweet-sour experiences of life waiting with excitement at the threshold of adolescence. The people are floating leaf bowls containing flowers, incense and a tiny lamp. One tear in her unseeing eyes is more substantial than the Ganges itself.

The sea of her loss drowns me in its endless waters. My own tears add to that sea.  My own bickering and bitterness feel such a meaningless thing. There is everything around, but she cannot so much as take a confident, solid step to claim her share, while everyone in the devotional crowd is busy in a stampede to collect huge piles.

The evening Ganga prayer is over. The rain has stopped. Her family gets up. She also gets up with an effort, her movement standing somewhere between a human and a mechanized robot. It’s not a confident, fluid run. Every moment has a full stop, a kind of an end of the journey. Walking absorbs her in its own world. There she goes with unsteady steps, her hand on her mother’s shoulder to get that support which she will need forever.

She can survive only as long as there is love and care in a fellow human’s heart. It’s more vital than the oxygen, water and the food she eats.

What is the meaning and purpose of her survival? Perhaps, it’s to keep the banner of love and care flying in this worsening world.

The night is falling. Her language includes just a few efforted sounds. She can merely respond to the language of love and more still to hate and anger.

I’m lost in the sad sea of her loss. I try to swim to find some justification and meaning to all this. I find none. It’s blank, pointless. Tears are streaming down my face. Her image haunts me. I sit to meditate by the Ganges. The sea of sadness surges in. A daughterly affection for her engulfs me. My hands convulse to bless her with all the happiness possible in the world. My lips move to kiss her forehead and sip down all her agonies with my fatherly prayers.

This seems to be the meaning of her life. Melting hearts, creating selfless torrents in the hearts caught in the selfish quagmire and make people feel grateful for whatever they have got in life.

As I close my eyes, more tears stream down, washing my soul of much of the bitterness I hold on account of my own losses.

I feel like a helpless father who cannot give a portion of the world to his daughter that she surely deserves. I implore mother Ganges to pour all blessings on this little angel; to fulfil the endless abyss of her helplessness with all the happiness and joy possible for a girl. I pray for the long life of her parents, for only the parents are best suitable to feed the vulnerable lamp with the oil of love, affection and care. I pray for her family’s economic well being and the overall luck and fortune so that satisfied with life, and hence less bitter, they turn more loving and sweet and she gets her share of love and life from that happy pool. I pray for her younger brother to grow up to be a sensitive human being who will take the baton of love from their parents. I pray for him to have an understanding and loving wife who will help in keeping the flame of love going on to enable the flower survive happily.

At the top of all this, I put my faith in Ma Ganga:

‘Ma you have a soul. You are so full of life and carry miraculous powers in your holy waters. Your force can cut mountains, so it can definitely help this little flower take control of its destiny in her small hands. Do a miracle Ma! Let her be cured gradually so that she takes her portion of happiness on her little palm. Do it slowly to make it appear like a digestible fact, a kind of little surprise medically, if you don’t want to make it appear too miraculous!’

The blissful torrents of Ma Ganga ripple past. With the tears streaming down, I pray for that little angel of love and affection. My tears have absolved me much of my bitterness. I open my eyes and look helplessly into the darkness. In the dark, Ma Ganga feels capable of performing miracles. I want her to be miraculous.

Next evening, I visit the arti ghat again to see the angel more than anything else. There she is! I look at the angel with a peculiar mix of sadness and happiness: A strange equanimity, equidistant from pain and happiness. I may have forced myself to believe in a miracle. I am happy with it. I can sense a small instalment of Ma Ganga’s blessing going to her share.

Today she isn’t looking with sad indifference into the side-lanes of her unparticipating existence. She looks closer to the world around. She is looking into the praying mass. She appears a bit closer to have her own share of happiness, all by herself. She laughs, shakes her head, hardly making any noise. She tries to clap, rapidly bringing her clenched hands together without actually hitting them. She pulls at her mother’s sleeve with more authority. She looks belonging to this world and ready to see and understand it at her own pace and conditions.

As they get up after the arti, and as she follows her mother with efforted steps, she pulls at her shoulder and points to her waist. Her mother turns and adjusts her pyjama. There they go at their own pace.

It’s better to believe in miracles because sometimes that is the only option left.

For the remaining part of my stay, I fervently pray for her to the limits of my soul. On the day of my departure, at five in the morning, I walk down the steps to reach Ganga Ma, wash my face and pray again for the angel. The holy river looks very calm in the pre-dawn darkness. It looks as if she is able to hear my prayers in the absence of all the din and noise. 

Even while moving on the road along the opposite bank, I keep lighting the lamp of my prayers.

She is in her own world surrounded by love and care which I believe will only grow with the passage of time, making her happier. More importantly, the miracle of Ganga Ma will work. It may happen slowly but it is inevitable. With the passage of time, she will become capable of having her share of life and living at her own terms to give back the love that has kept her alive.

Any memory of her doesn’t go without praying for her. I feel enriched and evolved by her sight. My bitterness has poured out and it has made me more loving, full of gratitude and more open to the belief in miracles. For, ultimately only miracles count. It may not appear like this, though.

GOD BLESS HER!

MA GANGA PLEASE CURE HER!

LET HER BE THE PART OF THE COMMON STREET!

LET HER COME OUT OF THE TINY SIDE ALLEY!

Miracles are happening all the time. What is quite miraculous is that most of them pass off as ordinary occurrences. Perhaps, that’s how it has been planned.

Never felt so fatherly before. I can feel the likeable pain of being a parent. Blessed is the parental pain!