The honeybees in January

 

There are little clues lying revealingly to help us in demystification of the biggest puzzles in the scheme of nature. There is a natural art of survival without a feeling of suffering and victimization. Its protagonists are apparently subservient and soft-spoken in stark contrast to the hyperbolic obituarists who loudly shout the vainglory of struggles and mighty efforts. Like the bees in this comb.

It’s harsh cold in the middle of January. It rained overnight. Everything seems beaten and surrendered to the freezing touch of the winter that is pervading around with unsettling bravery. The honeycomb has shrunk into a tight ball. There isn’t a single movement to be seen. There is a wellspring of holism in being tightly around each other during testing times. The magisterial aura of holding each other tightly saves many against the onslaught of time. They weave a tapestry of courage and conviction to survive till warmer days are there.

The bees don’t seem interested in shifting their positions. Those on the upper side, the front guards showing arresting quality of self-sacrifice, don’t complain. It seems strictly classical. They protect those below them. They have icy dewdrops over them. The leaves are dripping with dew and mist. A few freeze to death in the line of duty. It’s almost unthinkable for we humans with our fickle emotions, stupid covetousness and base pretentions to sacrifice ourselves for a larger good. There is grace, diligence and a sense of inviolable duty among the honeybees. They stand for each other. The March sun is just a month and half away. A juicy spring awaits them. Then it will be a happily buzzing place.

After being sunless for a few frozen days in January, you actually come to feel the orgasmic pleasure of the butter melting in the pan as the sun suddenly comes up and the frozen cells of your existence melt and come back to life again with the warm touch of life.

In the little clump of trees in the courtyard, a dainty oriental magpie robin retires for chilly nights. At dusk it lets out a sawing shrrrr call, the notes confidently full of inoffensive mischief, as if warning other birds about not barging into his home tree.

I have put a clay pitcher’s neck-ring on the fence wall. It serves as a nice clay basin for putting millets for the hundreds of sparrows that roost in the nearby trees at night. They flock around with enduring versatility. Some are brooding, others are peppy. Their songs carrying myriad melodies. But they make a lot of noise while picking grains. A few bully ones chase away the docile ones, scattering the little grains on the ground. A squirrel is attracted by the din. She takes possession of the property. It sits right in the middle of the grains in the clay ring. The sparrows now show patience and sit at a distance—a picture of somberness and solemnity. Maybe they are curious to know how the squirrel uses her front paws to expertly chew the grains. A few of them hop onto the ground and pick up what they had scattered playfully. The squirrel is taking too much time. The bullying ones then start pecking at its bushy tail from behind to remind it that it has to move away.

Little Nevaan's world

 

Nevaan is reading a poem to his father from a WhatsApp message on the latter’s phone. His father is correcting every word the little son pronounces. Nevaan’s patience is pilfered away and he shuts him up, ‘How will I finish the poem Papa? You keep quiet and only say, “vaah, vaah!” when I read the poem!’

‘Oh, it’s Thursday tomorrow!’ little Nevaan is suddenly startled. Well, it’s the ‘thought of the day’ day during their online classes. And he thinks not so appropriately sometimes. His thoughts sometimes border on big insults for the teachers and the school. His free-spirited thoughts give him ruffled hair and angry shakings by his much-worried mother. ‘How I wish there was no Thursday and just Sunday in its place! There should be two Sundays!’ he sighs very sadly.

One day he is feeling very happy. He has had two successive nights of dreams. This elderly teacher is very strict with him during the online class, so much so that we use her as the scarecrow to deter him from his mischief. He says that in his dream he went to the teacher’s house and she allowed him to watch cartoons throughout the day. Not only that, she gave him big buckets of chocolates, cookies, noodles and pizzas also. So he ate throughout the night. Inspired by his dream, he isn’t taking her as scarecrow in real life anymore. ‘Ma’am is very sweet!’ he gushes.

In the second dream, a dolphin with a huge face becomes his friend. ‘We play and swim together. Her mouth so big!’ he says. ‘She opened it and I went in for playing. We played ludo, me and she in her mouth. We played football also. Then we ate hot-dogs, burgers and chips. Then I came out and we played outdoors. Then we both went to what is below Leh?’ he wants me to guess. ‘Srinagar?’ I propose. ‘Yes, we went to Srinagar to enjoy.’

The tale of a sow thistle

 

It’s a tale of an industrious spiny-leaved sow thistle. It may not be a scenic introduction to a garden but it piques the senses with its meticulous as well as untidy presentation. Though a herb in the scheme of nature, it’s condemned as a weed by we humans caught in a morass of radicalism fuelled by our utilitarian spirit. While the little plant stands silently engrossed, swathed in incredulous silence, its tiny flowers carry amazing lightness in smile.

The fragile furor unfolds around. Bouquets and brickbats are flaunted on the basis of what is useful and what is not. The farmers have a particular aversion to its presence in the cropped fields. An entire range of poison has been contrived to kill it. The weedicides are highly effective. You see the revealing, spectacular remains, with our triumph incredibly detailed over the withering nuisance.

The entire farming community baying for its blood, this particular sow thistle looked for a safe corner beyond the farmers’ sickle and fumigation showers. It grows there in the circular skylight at the top end of the barn’s wall. Old houses with cracks are now perhaps the last refuge of the untamed and the wild strains of nature. The winter rains lashed with a delectable flavor as the sow thistle picked out the tiny crack where the mankind isn’t still at war with space, a little crack in the small skylight.

Earlier the monsoon rains lashed. It was well sheltered and a furious rainstorm would give it just a decent amount of water. It thrived with a well-conceived and well-preserved spirit of youth. Then the winter sneaked in with its icy power-trappings. Facing south, it simply soaked tumblers of sunlight in the afternoons as the kind sun streamed from the southern side.

The entire circular skylight is now covered with its luxuriant growth. Its bluish green spiny leaves carry the aura of thinly veiled fiction, a kind of delicate balance between facts and fables. As a mark of its triumph, now it flaunts little yellow flowers that look similar to wild dandelion. There are many flat-topped arrays of flower heads that hold the prospects of a dandelion-type smile on an old, withering wall. There is still hope—a wild plant having a foothold among we humans and smiling breezily. Well, some more flowers are always good for this world.

Rain Romance in January

 

The rains of January are not so gentle reminders by mother nature that She holds far more cords in the puppet show of our existence; that all our strategizing is unreliable and dodgy. Sometimes She flaunts her robust patronage of our fates through the harshest, cruelest and darkest trajectory. The January rains may not exactly qualify to be too much on the scale of the fact mentioned above but it has enough to convey her disapproving glare.

The clouds thunder at their best with a strange creative focus, a kind of stimulating contradiction in the form of water and sizzling lightning fire across its watery bowels. It looks a strange, awesome testing ground of hatching newer possibilities.

The cold rain comes lashing. We realize our limitations and withdraw. And a few days of leave of absence by the sun makes us realize that our life is a mere gift by the sun. A brief spell of sunlight amid the entire gloomy overcast day has the power and potential to revive hopes at many levels. The loud, garish proclamations instantly take a backseat as the tiniest of a ray peeps through the clouds. Delicately flavored is its touch; everything looks energetic and inspired. And despite holding the key to our survival, the celestial torchbearer stays so unassuming and unpretentious.

The good part about January rain is that it gives a nice wash to the trees and plants. It serves a still better role. The arrogant monkeys surrender to their wet, soaked fate. The eccentric display of misdemeanors vanishes and they start behaving well. The sight of a shivering, rain-sodden monkey on a gloomy, cold January day, moving with good manners is nothing short of blissful. Their foolhardiness slowly being asphyxiated, they carry a sullen visage. They don’t loaf around. No wonder, it’s really peaceful when they sit quiet.

Three days of winter rain and their roof leaks. It never was a home, always remained a house. The father-son drunkard pair always kicked the homely foundations. Disgrace, poverty and continuous pain define their existence. And now when the roof leaks in this cold weather, the daughters of the almost ruined house get onto the roof, try to stop the leakages by putting a tarpaulin sheet as an extra protection to their depilated house. The broken house still stands because there are three lovely daughters to support its crumbling columns.

And the winter slowly lumbers on as if following a self-reflecting trail. It’s very cold. The reptiles and rodents gone very deep for hibernation in their holes and burrows. Deprived of hunting opportunities, all the feral cats have smartly ditched their shyness and come begging. They raise their tails, making purring, flattering sounds and try to rub against one’s legs. It’s a problem of plenty. You don’t feel comfortable with all the feral cats gone friendly.

Some ray of hope in the winters. The Taliban have made a slight amendment in their behavior. I take it as a welcome change. They have ordered the shop owners to behead mannequins. Well, that’s better than beheading people in real life. One little step ahead indeed. But then they follow it with a big jump backwards. They are going to have a suicide squad as a regular unit in their army. This is scary. Someone blowing himself or herself seems the worst form of violence.

Kundalini

 Allow the self to be twisted and turned as per the the divine crawling of Her grace and blessings...it will seem overbearing sometimes...sometimes perplexing to the extent of getting you to the threshold of the dark night of the soul...don't crib and complain...have faith...making is a bit challenging but all this is happening for a purpose...to make you a better version of yourself...with volition and conscious effort we can do ourselves some favor..if not, it will twist us a bit more painfully...it can't be stopped because finally we have to get into a better shape as per the laws of evolving consciousness...so smile, take a deep breath and cooperate...and always remember: There is no goodness bigger than that we spot in others. There is no bigger evil than that we generate by our own hands.