Ikigai on a Dusty Table

 

An absolutely dazzling morning gives me a wholesome smile. The sunrays are golden. How kind he is! The sky is pristine blue. How happy it looks! The wispy, scattered fluffs of clouds a dazzling white. How playful they are! There is cool gentle breeze that carries swarms of dragonflies hovering around like insect drones. How confident and coquettish is the breeze!

There is a grumpy, rumbling and scratchily drawn series of notes sent out by a bird. The Himalayan barbet, it strikes me. The barbet is the one that has played symphony with my solitude in the valleys when I move around the lone trails among the hills. Now here in the plains, the rains have broken all previous records for the month of September. I suppose all the dispirited, famished countryside from the Himalayan foothills to the dusty plains in the Delhi NCR has turned pretty luxuriant to keep the spirits of some lone Himalayan barbet to keep flying, carried by the wanderlust spirits and here it reaches the village to remind of those beautiful days in the valleys, where its call droned over the lazy slopes in misty vales. Well, I run out to the courtyard to find that dreams are dreams only, at least in this instance. The reality is a separate entity. But it’s only our dreams that provide a kind of lease to our reality. So keep your dreams alive. The reality here is a spotted dove that has slightly modified its notes to sound like a barbet. Hope he isn’t trying to woo a barbet girl in case there is one around.

Too much of rains definitely carry lots of inconvenience. It isn’t good for the crop. Not good for old houses either. They get more cracks. More plaster and paint gets peeled off to turn walls and yards mossy. The leeches crawl in abundance. Tiny frogs scamper around like little dumplings on your path as you walk around. You have to be careful not to trample too many and add to your quota of sins here on earth. But then baby frogs are visible at least. We can hardly take enough caution not to trample the ants. They are too small. In that case, I realize we are standing on our own mounds of sins. That’s why it’s so important to lead a meaningful life because it comes at the cost of so many little sins. Coming to the issue of excess rains, the bricks in the yard also cave in. Too much of rain isn’t good for the snakes either. Their holes get filled up and they crawl out to claim residency in houses, especially the unkempt gardens of lazy bachelors.

The old country house might get more cracks, giving me a little frown of discomfort. But that is very easily overpowered by a smile caused by the vastly improved shape of the chapattis. They look more presentable, and more importantly are nicely digestible. Greying men in their forties need to be bothered more about stomach and less about tongue. Taste is a secondary take off.  

Around twenty or so black kites glide down in circles over the village. The black kite is a carnivorous scavenger. They basically fly over the Ghazipur area in New Delhi. There they are a common sight, scavenging muddy trash from the mountainous garbage dump site and the banks of the stinking rivers of sewage. They kind of symbolize the urban slums and sleaze. They are wrongly named, I suppose. The black kite is dark brown in colour. But it does a yeomen service to the municipal cleaners as the scavenging raptor, with its white-speckled feathers, deep-set eyes and a sharply curved beak, does a nice cleaning job of the leftovers on the urban table of carousel and craze. They are opportunistic hunters who just love to scavenge. Most of their time is spent in gliding and soaring among the thermals looking for food.

So here they float with their buoyant flight, gliding effortlessly, diving, uplifting and changing directions with perfect ease, just a few seconds of flapping of wings and minutes-long glide. You have to be very stable to spot the hunt below on the ground. Once the radar catches the prey, the raptors swoop down with legs lowered, snatching the garbage, fish, household refuse or carrion. In the British military slang they are known as the shite-hawk.

They are known to be very opportunist hunters. The lazy fliers with big motives are attracted to fires and smoke because they know that lots of prey would be running to escape the fire. According to a native Australian belief, the kites are witty enough to spread forest fires. They pick up burning twigs and drop them among the bushes to start a fire so that there is a stampede of little rodents running away from the burning house. That’s a pretty criminal act even as per the laws of raw nature. It smells of human conspiracy.

In the crowded Indian cities, they soar in thermals in large numbers and sometimes even swoop down and snatch pizzas from human hands. They have become taste conscious in human company, I think.

The black kites hovering in the village skies is not a usual sight. I haven’t seen many. Well, it proves the quick rate of changing times. Even the villages have lots of garbage dumped at many sites these days. So maybe these are the colonizer kites that have left the congested Delhi skies and are migrating to seek fresher, sorry filthier, pastures. In any case, birds always look better, even if they are hawkish, scavenging raptors. The sky looks healthy with their winged ruffles and tickles in its ribs. And more birds, of any sort, give a feeling that not everything is lost yet.

One of the kittens has turned very lazy, the one who loves sleeping on the doormat in the veranda. The extrovert spends time in the barn. They are turning into handsome lads. The extrovert one takes the pain to hunt beyond the walls and enjoys the freedom. The lazy one is going to realize its mistake once the time for wooing ladies comes. Girl cats won’t give him too much of attention. When he isn’t sleeping, he is staring at me, his eyes pleading to fill the bowl once more. It’s very irritating. If the stomach is full by default, thanks to the bowl, why would one take the trouble of learning to hunt? A boy cat that doesn’t hunt rats in its adolescence hardly stands a chance to hunt the love of a cat girl after coming of age. It’s committing a fatal mistake, I tell you.  

The dining table in the veranda is piled high with the things that I need now and then. That’s pretty convenient. I usually take out my plate into the unkempt garden and eat among the flowers, and in the company of the snakes hidden somewhere nearby. With the things piled high on it, the dining table won’t complain of idleness. I keep a corner free to set my old laptop there and write.

The switchboard just above my head has an abandoned fan regulator whose speed knob has come off, leaving a circular opening into the rectangular plastic case. It’s the favourite house of fun for the lizards and stinging yellow wasps. The lizards have fun but then they get burns also. I have found their skeletons inside. Was it electrocution or they love this site to go dying during their last days, I am not sure.

As of now the lizards have abandoned their tenancy on the property. It’s now leased to the yellow stinging wasps. No problem with that. Just that my head is direct in the line of their aerial route as they land home. A crash-landing would mean a painful fire on my face. We humans carry a lot of caution in our genes. Most of this is unnecessary fear that we pride ourselves with being cautious. I am no different. I plug the opening with a piece of clothing. The house is shut. They then peep across the narrow air slits, craning out their twitching antennas, probably staring at me, taking a vow to take revenge.

I am not yet ready to allow a house of dead wasps right over my head. Their insect souls may interfere with my chain of thoughts while writing, so I look for alternatives. I sprinkle a very mild dose of mosquito repellent; just enough to give them cough and sneeze perhaps, wear my helmet, drape my chador around like an Afghan woman and take out the cloth piece. They troop out hurriedly, buzz around angrily like anyone who has been forcibly evicted from his house. They are justified in their anger. They don’t carry its remnants like we humans. They will soon forget and make a nice nest somewhere else. It’s always easy to start anew with unbruised feelings.

Most of us are working harder than ever, even earning more than ever, with far less joy and happiness in life. Well, working for survival is necessary. We have to accept that. We aren’t unhappy because we are forced to do many things against our will. We are unhappy because we haven’t explored our Ikigai, the spring source of doing small things that makes us happy. Do big things for a living but never miss small things for your own inner smile.

All of us have that little corner of aesthetics in us. Plant roses in that. It will give you unconditional smiles. It can be anything that makes you feel at ease, releases the tension, and calms your nerves. Explore your Ikigai.  Even now it’s lying just near you, not visible because it’s very small.

We have been conditioned to prioritize the big things in life. Nothing wrong with that. But don’t miss the little flowers around your feet as you move on your path. Bend down and pick out your little wild, untamed flower. Nurture a hobby that has nothing to do your professional life. Think big time with your mind and love little things in your heart. Like I earn ‘joy’ primarily from my writings. Had I been writing for money, I would have stopped long time ago. It’s my Ikigai, what is yours?

A Time for Little Things

 

An absolutely bright sunny September morning, all fresh and breezy! The main advantage of having more than enough rains is that the sky is extra blue, being washed of our sins, i.e., pollutants. There is a silvery spray of scattered fluffy clouds floating merrily across the blue playground. The lush green leaves shine with a happy gloss under the sun. The insects and butterflies seem gone berserk with joy as they claim the best of the short time they have on earth. The birds are pretty vocal too about their agreement about the good weather elements for the day.

Potatoes in the kitchen of a bachelor staying alone have a particular advantage. They get enough time and space to enhance their status and sprout shoot and sapling in order to hurriedly change their status from the meek eatables to live plants. A potato is all inclusive in growth. It sprouts from all angles. It seems like it has the procreative urge all across its body. Isn’t it an expression of the instinct of expansion in the universe? There is enough moisture in the rain-lashed air, so the potatoes have decided to be plants and avoid the status of getting piteously frying in the boiling pan.

A potter’s wasp also carries certain advantages of occupying a bachelor, middle-aged writer’s house. It has more options to choose a location for its clay house. The scooty hasn’t been used for more than a fortnight. So the nice rubber on the handle grip grabs the wasp’s fancy. The grip has a clayey addition now. A house is in making at a furtive pace. The wasp is really busy, doesn’t get tired. It won’t lose focus and energy till the final brick is laid. I feel inspired by its diligence for the cause. Well, I decide not to be a spoilsport at the moment. But if I need the vehicle very urgently, the wasp will have to ungrip its hold on the scooty’s handle grip. If I find myself in too lenient a mood, I may decide to put the old bike rusting in the barn into order and let the wasp fulfil its tenancy. There is always choice and scope for kindness.

The peeping crow is still at its favourite pole. But then it’s a bright sunny day. It will have to pay with a lot of sweat for its fun. I hope it doesn’t starve itself to death in lieu of its inter-species addiction.

Saw an 8-10 inches long krait baby snake sneaking into the wildly unkempt yard. It sneaked in through the space under the lower grills of the iron gate. Despite my stomping of feet, it managed to occupy the property. I think we get more scared in dreams than in real life. I woke up with palpitations. It was a dream guys. But given the condition of my unkempt courtyard and the little garden, the reality of a snake crawling in is far bigger than the dream. Well, if it has really managed to come in, I don’t worry too much. The kittens are there. It’s an equal match in size and age, a kind of fair play. If they win, they learn successful hunting. If the snake wins, it learns the basics of stout defence. All this is same to Mother Nature. By the way, a krait couple seems to have managed a very successful hatching season. Two little ones have been found in a neighbour’s house. Including the one in my dream makes it three. The bigger one that we killed in the yard was probably either of the Ma or Pa snake. That’s better to avoid further proliferation of the species. Well, unless the remaining one doesn’t turn out too romantic and woos a partner soon. 

A farmer accosts me from the gate as I am suspiciously looking around the place where the dream-snake sneaked in.

‘I need to take your advice and opinion on a very important issue,’ he says.

I know he is the mini-celebrity of the village. Even if he has to buy a needle, he has to ask at least fifteen people on the issue. No problem in that, one should consult others. The only trouble is that he has never abided by anyone’s inputs, without exception. He will do his own stuff later. It rubs a lot of salt on the people’s wounded ego. Probably, he asks others only with as much intent as to rule out those points at least. The rule of rejection, I suppose. He basically asks people what not to do, but people won’t understand. I am also not much interested in his new problem, so I have to dodge him.

‘Just now a big black snake has sneaked into the flower bed. First of all, please come inside and help in removing this problem. Yours we can discuss later,’ I reply.

Of course, he leaves the scene without his one more ‘what-not-to-do’ thing.

Kalla is raven black with equally white teeth and eyes. His smile is infectious. He is thin and looks like an undernourished long-distance athlete. He smiles and greets as I brush my teeth standing in front of the yard gate. He moves with ease, not much concerned with life. He started as a truck helper to get promoted to be a full driver later. There is prohibition in Bihar and he found simple cargo provisions for his truck too boring. His truck would then carry cartons of wine into the forbidden state. A few sorties are very successful in such matters. So he had extra money to spend.

In great spirits, he joined a group of trampish happy-go-lucky group of youngsters going to Manali for drinking and carousel spree. During the bus ride, he got the moment of his life for which he can afford a contended smile till his last breath. His co-passenger on the seat was a backpacker from the far away fairy lands. She was as white was he was glossy black. She found Kalla too cute and innocent with his big white eyes and innocent, shy grin. The bumpy ride dozed her off into a sleep. The best travellers are those who make the most of what they get on the path. They don’t crib about the lack of facilities. She too was resourceful and to extend the comfort of her sleep, she slid down onto his lap and slept peacefully for hours.

Kalla felt so much obliged and honoured that he absorbed all the shocks of the bumpy ride but didn’t move an inch lest she got awake. Ogling at the angel, he just sat through the hours-long journey. As they say, all things come to an end. The journey got completed. He had even missed his tea snack as the bus stopped by a roadside eating point, his friends winking and urging him to eat something. He but flatly denied through vigorous roll of eyes—he couldn’t afford to shake even his head in denial, risking waking up the sleeping angel—and looked the other way.

At the destination, the tourist smiled at him, hugged in fact, shook his hand and moved away with perfect ease without even looking back once. What a detachment from worldly matters!

‘How can you move away like this, as if you don’t even know me, while every cell in my body is yours now!?’ Kalla was left wondering.

Well, that was the moment of his life, all of this possible because he had extra bucks from ferrying illicit liquor to Bihar. Then the moment of paying back for fun arrived, as it inevitably does. He was caught in Bihar and put into jail. Now, Bihar being too far, his farmer father said the crops are in urgent need of his presence here.

‘How can I go there and spend weeks to get him bailed out. Someone has told me that the food is nice in the jail there, so it shouldn’t be a big problem,’ he wasn’t too bothered about the situation.

So Kalla enjoyed the Bihar trip for a good six months. That was when his father had enough time; his duties in the fields allowed him some spare weeks to go visiting Bihar and bail out his son.

As I spit out the toothbrush foam, a farmer neighbour is spitting out the choicest expletives on his buffalo, o sorry on his wife. Most probably, she has had extra(marital) fun instead of breakfast this morning. The farmer is around 40 and she is in her early thirties.

Years back when he was freshly married, he almost came running to me as I glumly wandered about the village pond looking at the ducks.

‘What fun do you derive out of this boring duck watching? The real fun is in getting married. A wife is real fun!’ he gesticulated.

‘Good that your wife is very happy with you,’ I smiled.

‘She has every reason to be happy. I give her pleasure almost all the time!’ he turned reddish, probably recalling some memories.

‘Well, too much of everything isn’t recommended. Pleasure arrives with pain also,’ I cautioned.

He was disappointed a bit. ‘You are almost a Babaji, what do you even know about a Wife?’ he laughed. Both of us laughed in fact.

Years passed. He had two kids and his ability, urge or intent, or all of them together, greyed like the pace of his bull slackened while pulling the cart. But his wife had the same old expectations from her carter. This gap was easily fulfilled by the young and upcoming carters, who are on a look out for such gaps in matrimonies in the neighbourhood. The husband was of course wounded to begin with, so he thrashed his wife. But even an ox won’t increase its pace beyond a point after getting whiplashed. Acceptance is the biggest tool to lead a tolerable life. He spared his hands extra effort in whiplashing his wife after beating the bull and started giving extra effort to his tongue through abuses. Well, that was pretty ok with the wife as well. So here he was doing the same after her latest round of extra(marital) fun.

The big rascal alpha male monkey carries the best pink colour in the world on its bum. It comes walking over the yard fence followed by three females, all of them carrying little ones on their backs. The rascal has been very busy in adding to his progenies like Chengez Khan did centuries ago. It goes with uncaring majesty. It has seen the toothbrush in my hand and knows that it’s no match for its fangs, which it bares as a warning not to mess up with his harem as it trains over the wall. Arrogantly it shakes a few branches of the tree as a further warning. Bare-handed, or even with a toothbrush, it’s too much for a human.

It remembers our last encounter. I had disturbed the train of his harem on the terrace. The ladies screeched away in horror. He was very much offended as the king of panicked queens. I had a very thin six-foot long bamboo stick. A flimsy weapon, I tell you. Its ends were split and I doubt whether even the kitten will mind it too much if I strike it with full force. Thank God, the monkey can’t see through the chink in the armour. To him, it is a lethal weapon and he gauzes its lethality by the striking distance, not the quality of its strike.

It bared its fangs and mocked attacks from a distance of eight feet, pacifying its vanity that I am not fully afraid of you. I had to add to my weaponry by picking a full brick and threaten a strike with full force. Now that too was a mock attempt, just like a monkey feigns fierceness. Who will throw a big brick with full force on one’s terrace? It will surely miss the monkey and will do more harm to the roof without even ruffling a single hair on the rascal. Again, good that they can’t see through these things and take things just literally on the face value. We have some extra things that we take in spirit. Well, we just have bigger brains, nothing else.

It remained at the front till it saw that the mamas of his children are safely on a neighbour’s roof and are gleefully looking at the interesting fight from a safe distance. He then showed me his shameless pink bum, looking back once more as if to say ‘I will see you some other day’ and ran away.

The next day, I found the terrace messier than before. I have a doubt that he indeed remembered the fight and performed certain extra criminalities on the way back in the evening. They keep the same route by the way; come whatever I may do to divert the trail route.

Forgot to tell you, the sturdiest of the street dog was heard howling in pain one afternoon. People ran to find out the big rascal holding the panicked dog by ears and slapping it profusely. Since the dog is a favourite of many drunkard farmers, the monkey king has many more enemies now. During their customary brawls in the evenings, when they routinely get sloshed up and need an object to vent out their fury, they have now taken up the fat monkey as the common enemy. The maddest words still do the rounds in the streets but they are less offensive because they are targeted at the monkey.

‘We will keep it chained and make him drink only liquor till he turns well-behaved like us,’ one of them gave the expert opinion, which was agreed only to the extent that of course the monkey would be sloshed first but later on would be thrashed for all the sins till it learns to hold human feet and plead for mercy.

It’s impossible to find a well-behaved monkey. They form the foundation of all the misbehaviours that we are engaged in as humans, destroying planet, disturbing the laws of nature. What they do on a small scale in a yard, we do at the bigger scale all over the planet. There is no qualitative difference but for some quantitative disparity. That’s why the rhesus monkey loves staying among humans. Out in forests, it gets bored to death.

They pry open the lids of rooftop water tanks and dive in and come out sleek and all brushed up to perfection. They get disgusted with any type of orderliness around. They have to put it into disorder as per the laws of entropy that says the cosmic disorderliness is ever on the increase. So they are the cosmic agents of entropy in fact. The trees have suffered. They just jump from rooftops into the canopies and commit as much damage as possible by flailing their limbs in all directions. Poor trees!

A few of them just love rope-walking, sorry wire-walking. Many a house go powerless at nights thanks to the extra wire-walking fun by the monkeys. Further, they cannot bear the ignominy of seeing a tree branch bearing the burden of a nest. They have to come to the trees’ aid at any cost and free the rent holding.

A few of them have too much of sex in their mind like humans do. They would just walk in all bonhomie on the parapet walls, all solemnly, for a break, and suddenly one idiot rides the haunches of the one in the front, irrespective of the gender of the carrier, and mocks licentious movements that can embarrass even the most shameless ones among the farmers.

I just hope that the kittens are spared from the monkey slaps. That would be too much for them. The other day, it was partially cloudy. They are becoming lazy and over-dependent on milk. Everybody gets spoilt by the free facilities. Who wants to stretch one’s limbs if there isn’t too much urgency for the same? They are no exception. They just wait and wait and wait for the bowl to get its contents. They have stopped going out into the bushes outside the yard to learn hunting. All through the day they just lie down comfortably and sleep. Well, to me a cat that doesn’t hunt is no cat. So I decide to teach them a lesson in attention and patience, the necessary requisites for hunting.

They keep on observing my every movement, waiting for that particular one that may fill the bowl in the corner. It’s very irritating, I tell you. This is plain greed and puts me off. Grumbling I fill the bowl but I put it in the open as a fine drizzle has just started. Driven by their greed, they run to lop up as much as possible. A cat abhors getting wet. She hates rains even more than the dogs. The misty drizzle turned to a rain and they had to run into the veranda, leaving the bowl still three quarter full. Definitely a torture to them. So the fear of getting wet is more than the love for milk. New observation. The skies are with me. The rain turns into a storm. It rains cats and dogs to make the cats learn the lesson in patience. So huddled in a corner they stared at the bowl without batting an eyelid. Concentration and patience are good for hunting. I am happy.

It keeps on raining for an hour. The bowl is full as a fruit of their patience. They have braved the storm, thunder and lightning and didn’t go hiding like earlier. They run out happily as the clouds take leave off the scene. Well, sometimes even patience doesn’t carry a sweet fruit as we expect. Their patience has earned a lot of water in the bowl. They lop up a few sips and move away making weird faces. I get my revenge for their insolence and laziness.   

A Mundane Morning in the Life of a Common Man

 

A common mormon, a black butterfly for the uninformed, lands on my bushy grey shack of hair. How do I know that it’s there? I see it in the landing pose coming straight from the front. It must have grossly overestimated my saintliness and sat a few ant-paces from the hairline. That is the most beautiful burden ever to carry! I hold myself perfectly still to prolong its stay. My neighbour proves that he still has nice eyesight.

‘Hey there is a butterfly on your head!’ he points out from the terrace.

I just smile in response. It must have been a tired butterfly stopping to take some rest. Soon it realizes that it’s no saint and takes to its colourful dives. I see it fluttering away and wish it the best of a morning.

There is a monkey on the parapet, very relaxed with its legs hanging down the wall. One hand is taken back and the palm spread on the wall top to support the relaxing posture. What about the other hand? Do you think a monkey has enough patience to keep its both hands relaxing? Never possible, I tell you! He is fondling his endowment. Scandalous! Now I know from where our ever-boiling lust comes from. It comes from the monkeys because we share 96% of our gene pool with them. Monkeys have sex in their mind as well, apart from their bodies, like we humans who have more of it in our mind and far less in the body. That’s disturbing a bit.

The kittens give a nice lopping exercise to their tongues as they get busy to lick out even the steel metal along with the milk. They find it shameful if some drops remain in the bowl. Then one of them moves away with majestic contentment. It arches up and then downs its back, stretching its paws, opening its jaws to the full. I think it’s a kind of digestive cat-yoga that helps them in bearing up with the ill-effects of overeating. The other one moves away sluggishly. Probably, in order to give a stiff competition to its sibling, it has overfed itself to the extent of finding cat-yoga impossible for the time being.

On the terrace of a house in the neighbourhood, there is a long bamboo pole fixed at a corner to serve as a pole for the cloth-line. A cloth-line doesn’t require this kind of length to sustain itself. The farmer must have used the whole of it, deciding against cutting it to lesser size, so that it can be used for some other purpose also, like thatch rafter or even breaking the rival’s head from a distance in drunken street brawls, which are in plenty by the way.

For the time being, a crow is using this extra length to its benefit. It spends most of its time on the top of the bamboo pole. I was wondering about the reasons for its taking this point as its favourite. I think I have found one. Right under the pole, there is an open-air bathroom in the corner.

The farmer has four adolescent daughters. They are full of life and giggle mischievously at anyone from the age of 10 to 60, or maybe even beyond because I haven’t seen the older ones getting the benefit so far, provided the objects of their giggle belong to the opposite sex. Well, that’s just being young. What’s wrong in that? I hope even the crow hasn’t been emboldened by their free-spirited grins and sits there, waiting patiently for the roofless bathroom to be occupied. Well, if that’s the case, I find it really objectionable. I have learnt to take their grins at me to be cuddly daughterly ones and from that relationship I feel like shooting the crow down with my sling-shot.

That isn’t possible by the way. The Chinese sling-shot let me down on the first instance of usage like Jinping dumped Modi’s Phafda affection. The sling-shot was hung on the wall like a Knight’s sword, unused since it arrived from China with much promise of performance. It came out of its scabbard for the purpose of turning a rascal monkey’s red bum still redder as it threw around things on the terrace for the sheer rascally fun of it. A full criminal, I tell you. Like Jim Corbet, monkey-hunting this time for a change, I aimed to the last limits of my eyes and hands. The instrument gave its best. The tension was gone both from the weapon and the holder. The pebble was safely in my hand. The rubber snapped. Chinese rubber, why the hell I even expected much of it? The criminal just walked away over the parapet fence, unpunished, and most importantly, with the same shameful redness on its bum. I couldn’t contribute to the colour. So I felt really disappointed.

Well, someone just asked, ‘Why don’t you tweet on Twitter?’ ‘I am not a sparrow, so I can’t tweet much. I am a frog rather, so I croak. Let them have a Croaker first then I will croak,’ I told him my real reason for not tweeting much.

Just now one of the kittens has crash-landed into the yard from the fence. It’s out of its wits and dashes straight into the barn to hide in the safest corner. A pack of babblers is after its life. Now it realizes that birds aren’t that delicate as its mother must have told. They aren’t just soft, juicy meat. They mean plenty of shameless expletives as well, as the pack of babblers proves now. They hang around in the barn for full five minutes, throwing choicest abuses and challenging the cowardly kitten to come out. It but won’t dare to come out. Never mess up with babblers little cat.

A New Day

 

The morning turns best by default when you wake up after eight hours of dreamless sleep. Even a semi-cloudy musty day appears as bright as it is on a full sunny morning. The flowers give you a better smile than you remember. Aren’t they the same flowers? But the eyes looking at their smiles are fresher today.

A butterfly, a common mormon to be precise, is resting on a sadabahar leaf. It’s a beautiful black butterfly with whitish spots running across the hindwings. Its wings are spread, not drawn taut together in an instinctive mode to fly away at the slightest danger. A resting butterfly with spread out wings is a great treat to the eyes. You get a chance to observe its colours and patterns more closely. While flying, it’s a teasing flirtatious speck of colours that titillates the heart but deprives the eyes of the beautiful patterns.

A small grass yellow eurema hecabe, drunk with youth, is all impatience and eagerness as it makes the most of its short life through airy dives and nectar sips. Probably, the resting common mormon is middle-aged like me and knows the importance of rest and repose after flying high.

The Indian silverbill, a cute little pale white bird, has redecorated the globular nest of the scaled munia, the previous occupier of the nest, and is happy with the proceedings so far. The monkeys have rarely allowed a successful hatching of these cute little birds so far. They are too restless for other’s peace. They just snatch away the nest. But all is well at least today and that’s more important. Tomorrow may have bright sunshine or a storm, that’s time’s problem.

A pair of angry tailorbirds darts in and sits on both sides of the refurbished silverbill house. They are angry over something and have a lot of complaints. They are too loud for their tiny size. The silverbill just trills feebly like the jingling anklet on the ankle of a little girl. Maybe it’s a bully pair of tailorbirds who are still angry because their well-hidden leafy nest was spotted by the monkey and torn away, throwing away the chicks. As I ran to turn its bum redder for the crime, I could see one chick in its hands. If it’s a rascal monkey, like they are without an exception, it will have its breakfast. If it’s a kind monkey—which is the most improbable thing on earth—it may raise the chick and create history like the wolves did in rearing Maugli, the jungle boy.

Well, the angry tailorbirds are too much for the meekly trilling silverbill. The bitter anguish and pain of losing one’s home and kids is understandable. Maybe they find the silverbill docile enough to vent out their anger.

This world is but full of bigger bullies. The tailorbirds’ pinching shrills attract a few babblers. There they arrive on the scene to settle the scores. Can anyone match a babbler’s boisterous anger? Not at all! They can give even the most querulous, cantankerous peasant woman in the neighbourhood a well-heeled run for her money.

The tailorbirds are outshouted immediately and they leave the field. The silverbill sneaks into its nest. The babblers sing the song of their victory for a few more moments, challenging any more mai-ka-lal to take panga with them before flying to arbitrate in some other quarrel among the lesser bullies on some other tree.

And thus picks up another fresh day on its slow march to speed up later to go slumberous again at the dusk.

Angels, Dark Angels and Demons

 

Time is the master ultimately. In the long term, lush green forests give way to barren deserts, mountains get broken, and mighty boulders become puny, round, kickable pebbles. Nobody and nothing can have a way against time. All we can do is to make the most of what has been given to us on the scale of time, like one takes a fistful of water from a swift running river. Splash a bit of it on your face, take a tiny sip to drink and sprinkle a bit to play like a child. That’s what we can do at the most.

Even the oceans will dry one day, that’s time playing football, scoring goals after goals. It plays the same trick with our life also, and most significantly does the same to our relationships. The once shining angels turn into dark angels, finally to become demons to be shunned altogether.

But we have some choices here. We can stall the rampant march of time over our lives. That’s what we can do with our consciousness. Finally, it will have its say, no doubt about that. But we can play our own interesting football with the fistful of time that we have in our grasp.

Time will of course play its tricks by putting horns on the heads of the smiling angels in our life. Things will surely change through shift in situations, circumstances, needs, goals, ambitions and many more. But we should try our level best to at least avoid the shining angels from turning into full-throttle demons in our lives. Let time do its tyranny, we can but stop the degradation of someone’s status in our life to become a demon. It can be any relationship. Let’s fight against time’s tyranny and stop a bit short of allowing someone become a full demon in our life.

Of course, the once shining angels cannot stay the same forever. Things change. Circumstantial winds are too fast to allow the wick glow steadily forever. It will shake in response to the weather elements. It is helpless in that regard. Change, as we know, is the only law. But we can avoid the time’s all-out tyranny in our lives. Allow the time only this much autocracy to turn your angels into dark angels, nothing lower. An angel is still an angel, and a dark angel is far better than a demon. The last one will give us stabbing pain with its sadistic glee. The former will give a mild, tolerable heartburn. 

The demons in our life are far more damaging to our own selves. A demon hardly cares about itself because it is a demon in our perception only. Within itself our demon may be somebody’s shining angel for the time being. So whose loss it’s in petting a demon in the mind?

If there is a demon in our life, it’s fed by our own anger, guilt, hate or jealousy. It will harvest more of these to fatten itself and pacify our ego through injured pride and bruised vanity. The equation of anger, hate, guilt and jealousy is beyond the factor of ‘whose fault is this’. All these are the same termites of the same species that eat into our physical and mental fabric.

Life is far better without demons in our lives. Life is a bed of roses with a few angels in our lives. It’s relatively worse with dark angels in our life because they feed on mild doses of anger, hate, guilt and jealousy born of our past with the angel-turned-dark angel. Life cannot be perfect. But it shouldn’t be messed up altogether. So retain your angels as long as you can and later on be kind and considerate enough to keep their status relegated to dark angels only. Don’t allow further degradation to make them demons because it comes at our own cost.