Flying with Broken Wings

 

It’s the last week of September succulent with ripe Dushera-time festivity. Normally it should have been bright and sunny, but then nature flummoxes, as much as we humans also do the same to it. Due to a climatic depression over the North West of India, it has rained almost continuously for the last two days. It cannot be worse for the richly grained paddy, which is sure to fall flat among the slushy fields, bringing the customary losses to the farmers, and in its wake hardly ruffling any feathers because the farmers are more attuned to losses than profits.

After two days of breaking many a farmer’s hearts, it stops drizzling on the third afternoon, and life immediately jumps to chug along the rain-soaked terrain.

Mehar Singh hopefully looks at the streaks of sunlight smiling like a child across the edges of a black cloudy dome. He feels happy about this sunny victory over the cloud. It’s a victory with which he easily identifies many correlates from his mundane life as a common man.

He has already cleaned his green TVS moped that just smells fuel to run smartly, as he proudly puts it, instead of guzzling loads of fuel like bigger vehicles with more speed, noise and the resultant accidents.

‘I don’t need fast speed. I am satisfied with its slow-paced run. And it just purrs softly,’ he never misses an opportunity to proudly sum up the benefits of his little moped.

There is a customized carrier attached at the back on the pillion seat to load the rolls of cot-making ropes and strings. He tightens the hold over the load, and then checks his tool bag having hammer, pincers and knife slung around the moped’s handle. He is full of enthusiasm for a professional outing. Whatever the shortcomings, these may linger on in some other departments but not at least in the domain of his spirits.

His 15-year-old daughter is worried that the weather may turn bad again. He laughs away her concern. Matarani will get me something for you. His daughter is fasting during the navratras. He assumes and wishes, almost blesses her in this regard, that if not for himself but at least for her fasting self the pious goddess will be kind enough to help him get some customers this afternoon, even though it’s too late for a touring cot-maker to set out at this time of the day.

As they say, a day is never enough for all those who don’t have a regular source of income and have to beat hunger, employing all that the sun can offer to light their steps most judiciously, fighting with frenzied ingenuity of effort every time they go out. There are no carry-overs to act advantageously in your favour. It’s a new war every time you set out. 

He is 50-year-old, but just like any other man struggling to survive using more of hands and less of brain, looks aged and beaten beyond his years. He is dark, gray-haired, gaunt, smelling of that typical smell of poverty: soot, grime and sweat topped with a drop of alcohol. He doesn’t drink though, but the hard distillation of life leaves enough alcoholic, painful remnants over people’s lives. It makes them forgetful of better luck and better times, makes it bearable at least, a sort of developing thick skin.

The street is muddy. His daughter looks with concern as he moves to the moped to kick-start it. For what it may, it’s the start of a short trip across the neighbouring villages in the hope of fixing a cot somewhere. For a poor man every chance to earn an extra farthing is as bright as a wealthy man making millions.

Although he is on the older side of age, consequent to his years plus poverty, yet he possesses baby steps. He walks with as much delicacy of caution and genteel spirit shown by a baby while balancing itself during the first tottering steps. He drags his feet, taking one more, then another, then another, each step a milestone, on the shaky stage that life is. It seems like he is walking on stilts, almost on wooden legs that don’t obey the calculations of his brain as the limbs in upper part of his body do. His torso appears relatively bigger on his thin legs.

His daughter seems to run to help him, but then stops herself because that is the point where his fine temperament loses balance to turn to anger. To turn it a matter of more concern, he doesn’t take his support-stick on his outings as a professional, possibly in order to avoid the bigger handicap of managing it in travel as well as while on the work.

Of his weak legs, the left leg is still weaker. Reaching the tiny, heavily laden moped, appears a milestone, and kick-starting another; followed by a string of unending challenges. For a person of disability, life is never in auto mode, like the luckier ones who can afford to be on off-guard assured by a safe, confirmed routine. It’s never-ending manoeuvring. But then that’s the best meaning of life: making every second count; making every step matter. At each step it means avoiding a fall, so at each stride there is a victory to cherish. And he manages it most of the time.

With extra effort he lifts his almost lifeless leg to put it on the kick-starter. The machine responds to his push, it purrs to life in one stroke. This success, this surety of the single kick-start, and a liability also because he cannot afford to pound strike after strike in a barrage of strokes on the kick-starter on a lazy machine, comes at an extra cost to his resources.

The engine of his moped has to be extra alert to cover the space left vacant by his disability. The machine thus needs more-than-regular service. He may fail to take medicines while sick, but he doesn’t show any trace of carelessness in getting his moped serviced well before the due date. The moped’s health is more important for this man who has a full disability card issued by the state health department.

The tiny engine purrs with life and away they go. His hard-fought caution and the vehicle’s small wheels working in combo for a little chapter of common success on a mundane day in the life of a poor man.

Now the cot-maker would go into the streets of one of the neighbouring villages shouting charpai banwa lo—get your broken cot renetted and fixed. A cot is still a prominent item of utility in the countryside. While at work, he folds his legs in somewhat half vajrasna posture, the knees supporting the ground, the toes turned to support his bent back because he cannot go down beyond a certain angle.

His hands have gained where his legs lost. These are strong hands. They have to put some extra effort to support him. So his tough hands and still stronger willpower take on the job as he expertly weaves ropes to construe a taught, nicely patterned cot-netting. At other times, he is pummelling down the wooden frame bars with his hammer to crush any asymmetry in the constitution. At still more times, he is expertly repairing the charpoy legs. The enforced habit of moving slowly, and not running after too many things in life, seems to have given an expertise in the art to him.

Engaged in his business, you just cannot make out that it’s a disabled man at work. He is taking life fully head-on like anyone around.

A bad situation disabled a part of his body, but his spirit seems unscathed. It happened 15 years back. He used to sell rolls of woollen thread to earn a living for his family comprising a wife and three children, one girl and two boys. His wife was pregnant with their fourth child at that time.

He had travelled by a state roadways bus. The moment he got down, a bike hit him, plunging him down with full force. His upper back hit a brick. Snap. He heard the sound. Don’t think anyone around heard it, but he heard it louder than any noise in life. It was inside him. Sharp, shrill and sinister. A part of him broke down. The creepy sound which left its everlasting imprint on his each step, every moment, veritably each thought. It still flashes, sending tremors of fear, agitation and hopelessness across his frail body.

The PGI Rohtak, crammed to the gill with overflowing miseries, nonchalantly took this another unfortunate patient. So much was needed to be done at the government medical institution but the resources always fell short and the number of poor patients kept piling up. At state hospitals your agony and disease needs to be lesser than the others to give you any chance of recovery. The relentless tale of the patients’ miseries subdues all efforts to bring sanity and order.

He kept lying there for a couple of months, was shifted from one dirty, overflowing ward to another, and helplessly shared bed and miseries with other patients.

All that an overworked, helpless government doctor can tell a critically injured poor man is: ‘It’s God’s will, pray to God!’

Faith is the best pill they can offer, their efforts and resources always falling short in the face of unending beelines of patients.

He was paralysed neck down. The doctors told his wards to seek miracle from Gods. Medicines they said can be continued till their economy allowed them, which won’t be too long given the fact that they hardly possessed any resources.

After almost rotting in dirty sheets, in pitiful wards, bedsores made hospital a place of greater misery than a station of hope and relief. They brought him back, not exactly looking for a miracle, but expecting to see him through the final leg in his journey, peeing and shitting in bed.

It’s the phase in life when the caretakers, fed up with the stench of death, want actually to be relieved of the onerous task and to clear their conscience they have to say, ‘Only death can relieve him of the pain and suffering.’

Lying he was there, a burden, a shitty stinking creature, closer to death than life. He ranted a lot at his wife, who in the final stages of her pregnancy bore through the soon-to-end, as she helplessly assumed, barrages of foul words brimming over her husband’s lifeless lips. Using his only working faculty, his tongue, he threw abuses at her while she helped a beedi to his mouth. He simply took long draughts to convince himself that he was still alive.

He cursed the cot, the famed Indian charpoy. If you hit the cot, permanently or semi-permanently, it will eat you up, they maintained. To be alive meant you spent the minimum time of your waking hours on the cot. The more of your waking hours spent on the cot, the germs of death crept closer to you. With him lying on it all the time, death was guaranteed, slowly like termites eating the roots.   

He felt creepy, crawly creatures swarming his brain, emerging from the cot-netting, crawling over the bar and coming onto his face. He hated his cot more than anything else in the world. In fact, he hated all and everything in the world. After all, you cannot die as a loving person, liking everyone and everything around. All was well with the world while he was dying. He hated everything even more for this.

While he was withering, as they surely expected him to, his wife gave birth to a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, slightly bigger than the rats in the house, each weighing less than a kilo. The doctor declared them to be critical like their cot-ridden crippled father.

While they were taking them to another doctor, Mehar Singh, a bit in control of his mind and emotions, put up an effort to say, ‘Ask the doctor to save at least the girl’s life. Otherwise the people will say that to breastfeed the boy we allowed the poor girl to die.’

They looked at him in surprise. After a long time he seemed in tune with his usual upright self.

All of us have our own share of miracles, so even this poor family had theirs. The twins survived. The doctors told this fact very clearly to them.

Now the girl, the lakshmi of the house, is considered lucky by her father for more than one reason. She keeps navratras and counting on whose luck he sets out on a rain-stormed afternoon, hoping her prayers will get him something during what little remained of the day.

Well, going back to his post-injury times. Even the most optimistic souls hardly expected a miracle in this case. All accepted the countdown to his demise. But then fate stumps us. It plays its offbeat cards sometimes, so that we continue holding onto the myth of miracles. For the concept of miracles to survive we need to have them now and then.

A poor, paralysed man needs miracles more than anyone in the world. And luck sometimes favours the poor as well. 

Mehar Singh’s sister was married in some village in a neighbouring district. A man in his thirties was shouting in her street, ‘Khatmal maarne ki dawa lo!’

It was a cot-bug killing potion seller.

Now definitely there was a link: the cot, bugs, death and the poison. Miracles have their own magical potion.

The bug-killing medicine vendor had a bagful of unknowable potions made of his secret formula as he boasted. A group of women was haggling around him in gossip. The topic of paralysis somehow cropped up given the womenfolk’s flippancies hurtling in all directions on a range of issues when they gather at a place. Paralysis, the ill-famed lakwa. Some word, in some phrase, caught it and brought the topic to the centre-stage. The word crept up in the discussion like it was a bedbug to be annihilated under his thumbnail.

She told him about her brother’s plight.

‘Everyone says now he will only shit in the bed till he dies,’ sisters always have sobbing emotions for their brothers.

He made five pudiyas of a henna-like greenish powder.

‘Don’t blame me if his death comes speedier. In any case, he will die as you say. But with this, he may have a shot at life,’ he absolved himself of any unseemly consequences.

They deliberated a lot over the powder before finally taking a chance. A chance at life, in the face of sure rotting death, came out to be a better bargain.

Fifteen years later, Mehar Singh can claim that nothing can taste more bitter and horrible than the paste he was force-fed, either to die swiftly, or to live at least a non-shitty life.

He still remembers, over all the tastes of life, the taste of that green powder, like he does, and will do so throughout life, the crack-snap sound which overhauled his life in a moment.

After administering the paste, thus taking doctoring in their own hands, once the real doctors had failed, or call it this way that his poverty took him only to a point in the healthcare system where the doctors just declared it a will of God the moment you needed critical care, they waited in anticipation.

He felt like throwing up. His innards retched. But nothing would come out except saliva and white froth bubbling over the lips. His pupils dilated. Death’s churning they suspected and looked at each other, blaming and pardoning each other at the same time. ‘It was the will of God,’ they had accepted it long ago.

He felt like throwing out all of his innards but nothing except white foam came out. A strange revulsion was cascading through his wooded body. Late in the night they kept a watch over him, holding a glass of Ganga jal, the holy water, to give him a sip at the final breath that would absolve him of all worldly sins.

However, instead of fading away, deep down somewhere in the mysterious corridors of life and death, where the agents of living and fatality are busy in an endless combat, he was clawing his way back. This again he will remember throughout life. The touch of his fingers on the rope-netting of the cot. The touch of life.

By the sunrise next day, his hands miraculously stretched out. He could move them back over the head like you raise hands when asked to surrender with the only difference being that here it wasn’t surrender. It was subtle triumph. It was like a creaking, wooden scarecrow holding out hands to scare away the birds. Instead of the birds, his wards got scared. They took it to be the death rattle, as if his soul was escaping through the raised hands.

There was hardly any hope. The people from neighbourhood gathered to arrange the cremation. The relatives were summoned. Mehar Singh but flummoxed them all with a smile and a desire to have the worst-tasting paste again, not that he liked it, but because it seemed a ladder out of the well of death.

For the next four days, they served him the paste made of one pudiya each day. And miracles do happen, because they simply do. He could hold a beedi in his half-alive fingers. He felt like a King holding the baton of supreme authority.

For the time being, the mysterious concoction seemed to kill the bugs of mortality and tilt the scale in favour of dear life. They ran to sought out the bug-killing medicine seller. He of course, as can be expected, increased the price manifold and gave them 15 more pudiyas.

Each time it tasted worse than before, but he wanted more of it. One per day, at any cost because he was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, even though it found him sweating like a pig with the effort to swallow the impossible-to-eat thing.

They ran to get more of the pudiyas. His upper body got some faint traces of creepy sensations, a pre-sign of some jerky mobility. Waste up he could feel the faint trace of being alive. Another month down the line, his semi-wooden legs saw him taking much-laboured short, shaky movements with the help of a stick.

Now he wanted those pudiyas more than he needed the air.

‘Just one more month and even my legs would have cured fully,’ he says with a shadowy grudge which casts a cloud of gloom over his fighting spirit.

Well, the chance winds of luck rarely see us perfectly through to the shore. There is always something more that could have been done.

Mehar Singh ran out of his sip of luck after a couple of months of miraculous unspooling of the knot of fortune. It got stuck again. The bug-killing medicine vendor vanished from his rented room. Many said he was under debt and ran into anonymity to avoid debt trap and start a fresh innings somewhere else. Mehar Singh felt like a batsman getting out in nineties. So near, yet so far.

For a poor man the stroke of luck is never sufficient.

He was back in the stream of life, though with stiff legs that moved slowly with careful deliberation, one little cautious step at a time. Still it means a lot to be in the rut of life, if not speedily, even slow movement will do. Speed is the choice when we can easily move. And any movement should be taken with gratitude when faced with the stony immobility of death. The tiny distance covered at a low rate means a wealth because it connotes life. He didn’t want to run. He could do a bit more than mere crawling. He could stand and take baby steps. But then here, in this busy street of life, you just cannot afford to be around without paying the costs. You have to pay to be there in the thoroughfare.

The moment you grab a fraction of life, you are forced to work to keep holding it. As a slowly walking person now, he was, inevitably, unavoidably, faced with the question of bread and butter. He wanted to live, not like a beggar, using his disability as a candle light to melt hearts to fetch little charities. He wanted to live like someone who did something to earn some crumbs of dignity apart from some bare minimum money to feed his troupe.

Luck has hardly any place in a poor man’s house. No sooner the euphoria of getting a non-shitty life was over than the bigger question of survival took the centre stage. Hunger is beyond life and death. It’s unsparing. It creeps more eagerly into poor huts to come ruling the air inside; and stands at a respectable distance in the corners of the palaces, meekly obeying the masters. His youngest children wailing, he looked at the wretched cot which nearly became his death bed.

He won’t forget the sight of this cot either. Giving it a challenging look he moved out. Waste-up he felt confident of taking life head on. But the legs play no less part in running the show of life. How he wished he could have that goddamned thing for one more month.

Starting the show of life on weak infirm legs again appeared a daunting task. Everyone out there looked so healthy and almost running to a glorious destination. It was so difficult to come to terms to the creepy crawling speed which required utmost focus of body and energy of mind. He felt like collapsing on the very same cot.

I’m going to weave the best of these goddamned cots. The thought came of its own. He could not have claimed any ownership on it.

With lurching, tottering steps, holding his walking stick dearer than life, he reached the little town nearby, and used all of their money, to the last paisa, in buying cot-making hemp ropes and strings. In fact, he surprised himself by his guts to dive headlong into an enterprise in which he held little experience, excepting long time back when he helped his father in weaving cots and mending the broken cot-nets. However, a task when attempted at the professional scale acquires completely new dimensions.

His purchase of string rolls hanging from his shoulders, he entered the streets of the first village he came across on the way back. He surprised himself in shouting the offer of his services. It was encouraging indeed. He had taken the leap of faith. But then sometimes the leap of faith, its first step, proves more important than the entire journey. Sometimes what matters is the will to do. If you have it in you, irrespective of your skills and abilities, the inertia pushes you into the ring of existence, bringing you unexpected chance shots at life. Well, that’s what makes the game of life so interesting.  

An old farmer beckoned him from his barn. He had three cot-frames to be re-netted. Having fixed the price for all three, Mehar Singh sat down on his weak knees to start the innings. Having the will power is one thing, but to carry out the task skills are also needed. He seemed to have forgotten where to start from. The robust old farmer, wizened and tempered by the time’s rasp, laughed, had a pun at him, called him a little plume-less peacock, and shouted tea for both of them.

Mehar Singh’s hands were shaking out of nervousness. He appeared clueless as to what to do. He forgot even the little things he knew about cot-making. His mind went blank. If not a straightway beating, as a cripple he expected at least a discounted reprimand by the old farmer.

‘You have hardly any legs left. But instead of begging you decide to earn a living. That is enough job for the day, son. Now relax and have tea first,’ the old farmer patted the novice cot-maker on his shoulder.

‘At least you hands are strong enough to pull the strings and hammer down the sides and legs of the cot-frame. One doesn’t need legs to run while mending cots. On top of that you can see like an owl. Even blind people weave chairs,’ as the old patron’s words got soaked into his sullen spirits, the pall of glumness was lifted from Mehar Singh’s soul.

The old farmer then initiated him into cot-making at the professional level. His instructions were so simple and methodical that the process appeared a fun game. He helped him hand-to-hand in the first two cots, and watched him netting the third one as a lenient judge.

‘Not bad. You will not die of hunger with this skill, son,’ the happy mentor declared.

Furthermore, his guru paid him the full amount for all three charpoys.

Sometime just mustering up courage to start against all odds is sufficient to be victorious.

Mehar Singh felt like flying on his weak legs. Sometimes a drop of water is sufficient for the desert, just by being there, because it keeps the hope of the rains alive.

With his rickety steps, he found himself hoisted onto the rails to move swiftly in spirit if not in letter.

He always felt proud as the father of five children, and prouder still to feed them through work.

Whenever life became tough, he felt that bitter taste in his mouth and that crack-snap sound buzzing though his brain. But he had got back this portion of life through the chronic bitterness of that mysterious concoction, so he had no reason to hate the sourness of life and circumstances. At least he was living and walking limpingly on a pair of legs which appeared still thinner below his gaunt torso.

The children in poor households grow physically slower, but mentally they pre-pone their arrival on the bread-earning stage. His eldest daughter and son are married. At their marriage, even the caterers would accept just a nominal charge, thus helping a man who tried to help himself. Long before the others take up your load, you have to be seen to be lugging ahead at the best of your capacity. Even charity seeks some reasoning in going into somebody’s kitty.

He is a proud grandfather now. His married son is a hawker of cheap clothing and roams the countryside to sell his wares to poor households primarily. Another son is a motorbike repairman. He was once stabbed 25 times. Mehar Singh has reasons to forget and forgive:

‘It was all in the legs and arms. At least they were merciful enough to spare the stomach, chest and heart.’

His youngest twin children are in tenth grade now in the government high school in the village.

And there he goes on his moped, repairing, mending and re-weaving charpoy-nets. His slow steps forcing people to slow down their pace, listen to his stories, and pay him some extra bucks for being a diligent survivor. However bad the times might be, the people still appreciate genuine efforts.

The life stops the moment we feel to be out of options. It starts the moment we take onto a choice. It may not run fast, but it moves, and that’s what is more important.

The Lost Beads of Sweat

 

Most of the people missed his real name. His lower caste defined a major part of what he was as a human being. To make it more specific, they called him ‘Kala’ suitably drawn from his dark complexion. For a proper, formal introduction, his caste stood as the surname whenever a misunderstanding arose about which ‘Kala’ was referred in that particular instance as every village had many people named as such. Hence, he became ‘Kala Chamar’ under this situation and got instantly identified; and immediately pushed into the corridors of unworthy, unimportant symbols in a caste-based society. 

Poverty straightaway gives you a mission in life, the mission to survive. You don’t have to give it too much of thought. From the earliest age you know it that you have to work to survive. That’s how most of the daily wage labourers arrive on the scene. He was no exception. He would happily take any job that came along.

Kala was a very diligent worker. His dedication to the work was usually praised to a fair extent. In a farmers’ society one has to sweat a lot while working to prove that you have given your all to the cause. He had plenty of this certification because he sweated like a well-meaning, fat pig. Well, even the saying had to be reversed here and people said even the pigs sweated like Kala.

He was very strong in built but his hair went thinning. The people had an explanation. His balding pate is meant to facilitate a smooth glide for the sweating beads, they said. After almost three decades of sweating, he had very well achieved the primary targets of a poor man. He had married and had three or four kids despite all the clashes, brawls and arguments with his wife. He had fixed a few bricks to settle his separate family life beyond the domains of his siblings. He also drank in the evenings just like majority of the labourers do at the end of the day, otherwise the night won’t provide rest and the next day will miss the action.

A problem arose in his early forties. He started sweating less. The people got suspicious about his dedication to the job. After some time, the amount of sweating plummeted down drastically. He isn’t putting any effort in work these days, the people gave their verdict. So they would go for younger labourers who sweated more profusely. As a result, his job assignments nosedived.

The reason he had stopped sweating was very simple. It had nothing to do with his willingness to give his all to the task. His high spirits to retain his status as the ‘sweating king’ by giving it all had ruined his knees. Now people also understood and consoled him that all would be well if he took another vocation that would make him sweat a bit less or not at all.

I saw him sitting on the steps of the tiny street shop massaging his unfaithful knees. It was damn hot and all and sundry, even those who merely took the trouble of taking out a needle and putting it back, were sweating profusely. So everybody looked very busy. Kala, but, wasn’t sweating. He had lost the tempo.

It was an exception to see him free at this time of the day, so I asked him about the reason. He tapped his knees and pointed out the culprits who had derailed his sweating life. Try something lighter, I told him and pointed out the counter of the shop behind him.

‘You can open a little provision store in the street. It’s very easy,’ I said.

The shopkeeper glared at me as if insulted over calling his line of job easy. Moreover, he must have panicked that I was planting the seeds of business rivalry in the street. If there was another shop in the neighbourhood his business would be halved.  

In any case, the momentum of three decades of hard work was still too much for the boring, sitting job of keeping a shop. He adopted the line of a wandering vegetable hawker in the streets. He had his rickshaw carrier piled with vegetables and pulled with, to make everyone happy now, with some beads of sweat. The competition was tough. In every street he had a rival bellowing to sell his fresh, leafy greens. The migrant Bihari hawkers were better than him in this regard. They shouted in so many unique cries to draw people’s attention that even the most dull-minded housewife would be forced to crane out her neck and ask what the matter was and ended up buying something.

Kala had been a calm giant. Pitching for sales wasn’t his forte. He mumbled his list of items like an old, retired bull in dull notes that didn’t challenge anyone’s eardrums. So he would pass the streets almost unnoticed with his little bit of beads of sweat. On top of it, his rivals had so many sugar-coated words that it appeared they were fleecing the clients. In comparison, the people found Kala rude and hence refutable.

The sum and summary is that his cart usually returned to his yard with enough load that would surely go stale. So the family had to force feed themselves with cooked vegetables to avoid losses. Overfed with stale vegetables, the couple quarrelled more and the children turned noisier. Kala was literally on his knees but he won’t give up, after all he had been an illustrious sweater. His past still had some rays to inspire him to work more, I mean sweat more.

Hugely overfed with leftover stale vegetables that found a place in the family’s stomach instead of the dustbin—because the latter would have been a catastrophe—he could afford to take a week’s break and think of a strategy that would outfox his rivals. He thought and thought and thought. Now this indeed brought him a lot of sweating because thinking was totally new to him and unknown territory. He found it the toughest job. He even thought of taking ‘thinking’ as an occupation because it left him with big beads of sweating and made him the Kala of yore. But then another gem of a thought convinced him that this ‘thinking’ job will leave his stomach empty. So he had to abandon the idea. And he thought more and got more sweat.

A passing farmer got very happy looking at the shiny beads and said, ‘You seem to have regained the old habit of working really hard, do you need a job now?’ 

His hitherto unharnessed mind gave a rich crop. Kala had the gem of an idea that would bring tears of agony to the eyes of his rivals. Even in the happiest spirits, he was not in a position to share it with his wife and children because that may aggravate the situation a bit. It had to be swiftly carried out, promptly like a coup.

Next morning, he got up early, bathed and went to the town vegetable market to purchase an assortment of items. Coming back home, he crept around like a stealthy tiny mouse to the best product in the house, which competed with the cheap television set in defining their lives. It was the sky blue refrigerator, the purveyor of coolness in the scorching sands of their lives.

He started putting out the meagre items contained in it. His wife stood with her fists on her prominent love handles by the side of copious belly fat and looked ready to use them if the need arose. The fridge was empty and she was just ready to pounce upon him for this mad act. Kala, relieved from the emptying job, walked up to his wife and offered the rarest of sweet endearment he could manage with his gruffy notes. In any case, she retorted with her shrillest notes and punched away his gentle shove and hit hard at his nape.

As the scheme stood open, there was literally mayhem in the house. The children cried and his wife shouted abuses and hollered out her ill destiny for getting married to him. But Kala was not to be dissuaded. After all, he had given it so much of thought, even to the extent of getting profusely sweaty again. She could feel it that he was so determined that if she tried to stop him, he would first break something in her body and then walk over her limp physicality to try loading the refrigerator all by himself. And that would imperil the shape of the dear object. So she called a few neighbours to help her husband.

The refrigerator was loaded onto the rickshaw cart. Kala expertly fixed it with ropes so that it wouldn’t fall but could be opened at will. Then he crammed it to the guts with his vegetables and set out to beat the rivals.

‘People need cool, fresh vegetables. Now they cannot ignore my stuff,’ he proudly declared.

People surely noticed it. People certainly like fresh vegetables but given a chance they would prefer a fresh spectacle even more. The refrigerator grabbed more attention than the fresh vegetables inside. The spectators shouted, clapped, whistled, hooted, booed and put out many varied exclamations born of a new exhibition. The sale was almost the same as earlier but he surely stole the limelight. 

He was moving with great effort because now the load was manifold. His body was getting the very same sweat beads of old times. It was putting a great strain on his knees. The ice in the freezer was thawing. There were beads of cold inside the container and beads of heat on his body. I saw him pulling his heavy load on the road outside the village. He looked like an old bull lurching to some destination. Since he was sweating so profusely, it meant he was giving his best to the trade. And many were the people who remarked, ‘Kala indeed is very hardworking!’ 

The Pleasure and Pain of being Human

 

The researchers on insects say that an ant has a tiny memory span of mere six seconds. After this brief interval, it reclaims its natural impulse of seeking food. It forgets that you had put a finger across its path and in reaction it had to stop, sensing danger on the track. This memory born of your interference in its errand lasts just for six seconds, after that it has a new start.

In comparison, the Homo sapiens possess a memory span of not just this lifetime but massive pools of memories from our previous births in the form of proclivities and tendencies doing their incessant rounds in the subconscious and unconscious chambers of the brain. It instinctively keeps on taking us into the past, thus depriving us of the present time’s bliss that the so called lesser species seem to enjoy. One may wonder, is such forgetfulness, the kind enjoyed by an ant and other species, the real bliss.

Well, of course they have more fulfilling lives. They have the existential limits; we have the possibilities beyond the world of mind-born miseries. They face physical threats to their survival. We have the great faculty of still feeling insecure despite all the securities around. We but can’t compare life at various hierarchies of evolution. An ant’s karma is bound around six seconds of memories. Ours is a bit more. There is just quantitative difference. But there is hardly any difference qualitatively.

Look at her passion for life, the unswerving focus, her ability to lift weight. Each moment in its short life is full of unwavering karma. Nature expects the same from us. What are we? We are simply bigger ants with a bit more memory. It’s never about bliss as such. In my humble opinion, the most important thing is what we create out of that which has been given to us by the accidents of birth, this body, our family, our circumstances.

Beyond compulsions, if we evolve to a level of living by choice, this according to me serves a big role in deciding whether we live a joyful or miserable life. This consciousness attached to this human body of present has already crawled as ants. I, you and all of us have already enjoyed the ant bliss in previous births, don’t worry dear readers. This cosmos has a tendency for moving to complexity. So our individual consciousness is also moving from the simplest body forms to a complex human body. And the journey continues. Journey well you all!

Please don’t get dismayed at my calling our birth an accident, merely a chance event in the cosmos. Beyond the loopy tales of inflated egos, all of us are mere puny mortals in the scheme of mother existence. We are mere drops for her overall existence, like the drops in the sea effectuate the universality through their individuality.

Nobody has a claim over the tag of ‘more evolved’ or ‘less evolved’ soul. We are mere work in progress. Now, coming to your ‘dismay’ about our birth as mere accident. There is a lot of difference between ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’. Yes, our individual consciousness has had a specific journey, across various body forms in different births, whose momentum has carried us to the present coordinates of mind, body, soul and circumstances. With that kind of cause and effect linearity, we cannot say our birth is a mere accident. But ironically we hardly remember anything of our past births, so given this human frailty, in laymen terms, birth appears accidental because we don’t know the causes of past karmas as such. We just know the effect, this birth and its circumstances. That’s why our birth appears accidental. It appears so, but it’s not. When I say that we have to be a creator beyond the incidental balls hurled at us, I just emphasize the human faculty of conscious decision and choice making to be a better version of ourselves.

One may say that our choices have brought us almost to the brink of destruction. So the question may arise: Is our pursuit of happiness the cause of the massacre of mother  earth itself? I would like to say that happiness is never a part of what we have done so far that qualifies as ‘destructive’ in nature. Have you ever seen a happy and joyful person going out to kill fellow human beings? A happy and joyful soul will be driven by ‘needs’ not ‘greed’.

You may say that most of the people in their blind pursuits, whose ill effects are written large over mother earth, are under the impression that they are doing something that they like and love. So it’s basically their pursuit of happiness that is the primary cause of present-time chaos. No my dear readers, it’s the pursuit of misery that has brought us to the threshold of mass unhappiness. This is the fatal addiction, like an alcoholic creates physical and psychological doom under the impression that what he does is driven by his liking, and hence happiness, for alcohol. But would you term it as a happy choice just because someone likes alcohol. This is not choice. This is compulsion and helplessness. One can make happy choices only with a capable mind and body. It’s the helpless, compulsive pursuit that breeds disaster, not choice-driven attempts.

With choice-driven persona, one becomes a creator, a responsible citizen who knows the ill effects of his/her likes and dislikes. Whatever we like, do or intend to do is never strictly in the bracket of likes and dislikes. Most of the things that we do compulsively are mere escape routes from the agonizing bitter truth driven by guilt, fear, anger, hate and jealousy. There is a difference between what your soul craves you to do and what we end up doing under the primal compulsive instincts of anger, hate, jealousy, etc.

My idea of happiness is only about following the inner voice of one’s soul, not the outer compulsion-driven pursuits most of us end up getting trapped into. The real happiness and joy is proportional to how much we create on the manifest plane following the singsong voice of one’s inner self.

Have you ever seen fragrant jasmine blooms flowering from a prickly acacia? All these prickly fruits of pollution, wars and diseases are the fruits of what we have sown. Their seed isn’t pursuit of happiness. Their seed is pursuit of misery. The great mirage of our existence that presents misery as pleasure! We are unfortunately following mirages in deserts.

You may wonder that little animals and insects follow a code of conduct in keeping ecological balance, while we rampantly flout all norms. Is that all it means to be a human being? Is it only about winning over nature and destroy it in the effort? Don’t worry sirs and madams, this creation isn’t human centric. Ecological balances at the level of the so-called less evolved species may appear a nice code game. In our cases, if you find Homo sapiens outstretching the natural balance, forces beyond earth will counterbalance our misdemeanours. This termite mole-hill that we call human civilization may pop out far earlier than we think, like it has happened many times earlier. So till then let’s have a life of joy and purpose. Enjoy your journey!

The Funny Game among Errant Kids

 

Let’s talk about Afghanistan from the geostrategic point of view. Please don’t feel bad if the life of an Afghani citizen is seen almost inconsequential in this talk about ‘the great game’. Isn’t it all about the strong gobbling up the weak across all species in the naked, raw game of survival? The cosmic juggernaut is nothing but an expansionist onslaught that uses weak as the fodder for the strong to take the march of expansion towards more elemental sophistication. In the same vein, geostrategic manoeuvring is primarily about the interests of the superior powers. The interests of the hosting yard teeming with its poor masses, where the game is played, are inconsequential just like your feet hardly care for the world of the ants as you march on the higher scale of your ambitions, far higher than the tiny world of ants.

Whoever goes to Afghanistan doesn’t go there as an enemy of Afghanistan. He goes there as someone else’s enemy. The rugged, barren land is a huge arena for the bad guys to play out their muscle-flexing and brain-tweaking games. It’s like in a bullfight the grass gets trampled. And trampled have been the millions of Afghanis since the past many decades. The Britishers went there as the enemies of the Russians. The Americans went there as the enemies of the Russians. Presently, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are there as the enemies of America. Pakistan has more reasons to meddle there. They are there as the enemies of India as well.

The Afghan tragedy is that nobody has gone there as a friend of Afghanistan. It is always some outsider’s enemy. And enemy’s enemy makes a very shaky friendship. China and Russia will realize it during the coming decades. For the Russians it will be a repeat lesson if they cross over the line again. And a superpower-intoxicated China has to learn this Afghan lesson inevitably if it really wants to claim the superpower status.

The Afghanis have more or less accepted poverty as their most prized asset to sustain their fierce pride, clan loyalty, spirit of independence and a culture of killing and dying. Dying and killing isn’t too much a shock in Afghanistan. It’s very easily digested. Craze is craze. Someone fights for superpower status, the Afghanis fight to keep their ideology and medieval principles. It’s their opium like there are other forms of opium world over to drive people, states, institutions and societies crazy. Just true to the main Homo sapiens trait of opium addiction, the Afghanis love taking long draughts at their version of opium.

It’s good that the Americans have packed their bags. Instead of having their army in the enemy’s backyard, it’s more practical to have a lethal naval unit that can move to any part of the world with effective deterrence. On top of it, take a quantum jump in space warfare. Be several years ahead of the nearest rival. Be in a position to harm the enemy’s space assets. It’s just like sitting on the high ridges from where you can easily target those struggling up the slopes. If you have to play your silly game at any cost, at least play it well. The formula is: Be up there in the skies, higher than the others and trample down your enemy if they dare to stare at you in the skies.

Meanwhile, the ‘graveyard of empires’ is surely going to be the graveyard of the next superpower also. Taliban know that the new friends aren’t supporting them as such. The Chinese are merely opposing the Americans. In this, the Chinese are repeating the American mistakes of nurturing a genie that is sure to go against the master at any cost. Well, nothing immoral about it, it’s simply the genie’s opium. Over all, it’s a smoke-clouded, crazy game among opium eaters of different varieties.

In future, fundamentalist Islam is a bigger threat to China than America. America doesn’t operate reformation camps for the Muslims. There an ordinary Muslim goes about his/her routine without too much pressure on their faith. The insurgent groups in Central Asia and Taliban are well aware of what is happening to Uighur Muslims. It’s a temporary accommodation on their part to take China as an ally.

One, but, must not forget that fundamentalist Islam’s first priority is keeping their faith intact, however objectionable the outer world finds it. Therefore, China will surely realize it later. The badlands of bloodthirsty jihadis aren’t that much of a threat to America as they are to China. The superpower status definitely costs you the sleep of many nights. Americans, let the situation keep worsening in China’s backyard and its flares will surely reach the red bastion. In fact, by being there America was doing a bigger favour to the Chinese than to itself.

What about Pakistan? They haven’t learnt any lessons from their fire-mongering against India, which ultimately destroyed them to the extent of making them a vassal state of China. Wait, China is a very tough taskmaster. The Red Father will extract the costs at a nice rate of interest. The Chinese are not like Americans that they will pour billions of dollars in the name of fighting terrorism while you keep sheltering Osama Bin Laden. They know how to take more at the cost of giving less. Very strict businessman, I tell you. A democratic creditor will at the most pull your ears and shout at you for bunking your payments. However, an autocratic creditor will spit on your face and put its index finger in your arse for the littlest error. So take care! Already there are proofs of this in our neighbourhood.

What about the modern, educated, cultured voice of sanity in Afghanistan? They have no option. They have to leave and set up their world at some other place. The simple message for them is: ‘Please leave at any cost, however possible!’

Pakistan you be careful of the TTP. They will continue pulling your beard. And China you, don’t count off ETIM like you have done so far. Taliban is a great encouraging example for them. They have an idol now in the form of a triumphant radical Islamic group taking over an entire country. India, keep supplying the Northern Alliance with material help because as a regional power aspirant you too are helpless. So to keep your interests, you supply guns to the Northern Alliance. America, you please keep a low profile for some time and focus on your technologies. There is no need to get into a street brawl with the red bully who wants to dissipate you. You just mind your own business for some time and don’t get instigated by the puns and pranks about your so called ‘defeat’ in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, victory and defeat mean almost the same. Their own defeat is no defeat. And the outsider’s victory is no victory. Why the hell people go there to fight? It looks like a circus ring now. Abandon it. Of course, help those who want to come out, give them visas and facilitate their rehabilitation. But allow the lovers of medieval practices to lead their lives as they deem fit. After all, it’s their opium like you have your own.  

The fight for world supremacy has better avenues. This barren land is very boring. Go and write success stories on the sea and in upper atmosphere. Have countless submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers. There is more mobility. Now please disturb the aquatic world. There has been enough terrestrial mischief. And run to the high ridges, I mean go higher into the skies and throw pebbles from there at your enemy’s pot. Well, in any case, the space wars will acquire legitimacy very soon. So why bother about these poor Afghans. Leave them at peace in their caves, elder councils, medieval beliefs and chuckling smiles at both dying and killing.

The Grubby Game

 How to make yourself appear more presentable, if you cannot absolutely bring out any change to your own self? Well, our cognition and interpretation of reality is relative and comparative in nature. Use it. Make yourself stand by the side of a still messier persona and emerge as smarter guy—apparently though—without any change in substance. You will be at least symbolically better.

Well, Taliban are far smarter than the last time they were bundled out two decades ago. To make it better for them, they are learning politics pretty fast apart from firing guns. So they may be up for a better innings this time. Given their past, they are almost unacceptable to the world outside Pakistan and Afghanistan. They cannot change their skin altogether. So what was the option? They allowed IS-K, a far bloodier version of terrorism, to stand by them and thus appear more acceptable and less savage. A very smart game!

Please don’t commit the mistake of categorizing terrorism in good or bad terms. These are plants from the same nursery. Taliban, IS-K, TTP, LeT, JeM and many others are simply different plants in the nursery managed by Pakistani generals and the ISI. These are mere chess pieces, move up one, take back the other, sacrifice this one, abandon that one as per the varying situations. The more pieces you have, the better it is. That’s why the Pakis keep many outfits under their patronage. You cannot just rely on one.

In the face of the gruesome bomb attacks at the Kabul airport by the IS-K, when there was a stampede to leave the country as the Taliban took over, the West would naturally find Taliban a bit more digestible because maybe they are apparently less bloodthirsty.

The West should not be too bothered about who rules Afghanistan. They should forget about it for some time. If at all you can do something, facilitate the safe exit of those Afghanis who want to leave the land in turmoil. Then leave the field clean for the nursery of fundamentalism to thrive unchecked in the backyard of China. Terrorists have no friends. China may think that its clout in Pakistan will be sufficient to keep its Uyghur plans intact. They will realise the folly of this assumption in the coming times.

The concept of Islamic jihad is above and beyond either alliance or falling out with outside powers like America and China. China is temporarily part of the scheme just because America is out of it. Its temporariness they will surely taste with much bitterness in mouth with the passage of time despite tea sharing with Taliban leaders.

Did you ever see a case where there was a fire in a house and its immediate neighbour did not feel the heat? The Chinese will also feel the heat. About the Pakis we need not say anything because to them feeling the heat is a normal part of life by now. They are used to it.

The Talibs have as much a right to rule as the Americans, Russians or Britishers if they can capture Kabul like they have now. Let it be the way it is. Why force a change? When the land is ready for it, the change will come from within. Give resources to the Panjshir valley group to retain their freedom so that this can be used in future. Don’t allow Ahmad Massud’s land to fall in the hands of Taliban. The West still needs a bit of foothold in the backyard of China. This little space should be sufficient. Use it for geostrategic purposes, focus on ETIM. If you have the guts and resources to nurture it, do it. Recognize Taliban and give them the protocol-driven respect that a ruling group deserves. It will make them more responsible and bring less mayhem in the lives of ordinary Afghans. Why douse fire if the water you throw works as fuel and aggravates even the embers.

At the moment, we can try for a better Taliban. It’s prudent to abandon the ‘no Taliban’ strategy. Their political office in Qatar has given them some training and experience about how to handle things diplomatically instead of talking through guns all the time. Slowly they will loosen the Pakis grip on their wrist because a grip by an outsider is the least they want. Till now they have been focused on ousting America, after some time and cool Afghani deliberation they will prefer to have their hands free of the Pakistani grip also. They just cannot help it. They have to shake off any foreign grip. Pakistan has been handy for the Talibs so far in capturing Kabul. But if they stabilize their power for a considerable time in Kabul, Pakistan will be less handy.

So guys, aim for a better Taliban and the worse of other terror outfits in the new superpower's backyard.