The spring's last day

It’s the last day of March and the month of spring leaves a soft, languorous nostalgia. There is a deceptive, denotative simplicity in the manner the trees, apprehending the boiling and beguiling summer, are shedding leaves to get a light-clothed summer look. Although there are still some honeybees, gloating with sensuousness, singing librettos to raise the spirits in the source of their food, yet the flowers are losing colors. The spring still holds its oblique ambience as is proven by many butterflies that flutter among the engaging crosscurrents of this brief interval between cold winters and hot summers.

The mornings have big dewdrops on the grass and the pathside shrubs and weeds. Under the rays of the rising sun these shine as culturally illuminating and beautifully layered pieces of marvel.

Hit by the unyielding whip of love and passion—inevitable for someone as young and handsome as he—the oriental magpie robin seems forlorn after diving in the unfathomable depths of love. Given its young age it’s yet to come to terms with loneliness. Its multivalenced sensitivities will gestate, germinate and grow as it matures to learn the value of solitude in old age. Its love affair seems to have been very short-lived. After wooing him with her oeuvre of feminal charms—catching him in the pools of lean, taut, bustling desires—she flew away. After parting from the honored custodian of its heart, the forlorn lover is now left to sing sad love songs. Going along the shading and layering of painful emotions, it’s sitting on the dry branch of a completely dead neem tree. The sadness inside maybe makes it feel comfortable in sitting among a matching surrounding.

This bird is a very bubbly imitator of notes. Its dynamic dialogues surely cross many birdie social interfaces across various species. That makes it seem a very confident little bird. However, as of now among the sadly dead canopy of the neem tree it’s singing the songs of loneliness. A male house sparrow is sitting silently just a foot away from the sad bird trying to overcome the post-breakup melancholy. Possibly the sparrow is trying to learn the amazingly varying notes so that he too can use the skills in wooing the best-looking girls of his species. Who knows, there might be another reason also. As of now the dashing magpie robin is letting out trilling notes. Maybe the sparrow thinks that a few girls of his species will get duped into taking this great song to be his composition and turn his fans. Well, irrespective of the reason they maintain their positions for almost half hour, while the sun turned hotter as it moved up the horizon. By the way, the magpie robin still comes to the little clump of trees in our yard to rest for the night.

The hosting parijat tree has gone crazy and is shedding its leaves quite madly. Possibly the magpie likes its nighttime resting house bearing a sad look of loss and paleness befitting its lonely state.

It’s the start of the harvesting season and the sparrows have gone. They have plenty of grains in the open fields to feast upon. The parijat has plenty of button-sized pods, the seeds of its fertility. It will stay almost withered till the monsoons arrive. It will then throw away its seeds with orgasmic delight. And then it’ll wear bright new shiny green clothes, a kind of celebration for an annual cycle completed, a kind of fulfillment of its natural duties.

A rufous treepie has delayed its going back to its home in the Himalayan foothills. Let’s hope it realizes that it’s getting late and flies for its little dale in the hills because the silence there awaits it motherly. 

The warrior baby

 I would say Maira is already a hero, just at the age of one-and-half years. A premature baby during the challenging Covid times, she was pushed onto the stage of survival, a mere 1,250 grams little baby after just six-and-half months of pregnancy. She braved the toughest tests in the NICU for the next two months. After a week of her birth she got intestinal infection in her barely formed intestines. A very critical and extremely risky surgery followed. A part of the ruptured intestine was removed and there she was with the end of her small intestine serving as rectal outlet by the side of her stomach; such a tiny life facing a very challenging medical process called stoma. It was traumatic to see such a little baby struggling for life and that too right from the beginning.

Further complications followed. Her lungs would collapse. For the lungs bronchoscopy she had to be shifted to Delhi. The shifting was almost fatal for a newborn that had spent all her time on earth at the ventilator in the NICU. The farmers had blocked the road. ‘I cannot give you a guarantee that she will be able to survive this journey. But there is no other way. This is her sole chance at life!’ the doctor appeared to have almost given up. Literally chained amidst the tubes of the ventilator in the ambulance, she not only survived but would breathe of her own after a few days. But it was all pain in its raw, naked form; her tiny body ravaged by the scalpels and syringes to save her.

The waste around her stoma was acidic and would almost burn her soft skin. Then the stitching around the stoma started to give away. Just one stitch, miraculously holding itself on her skin, kept her away from the further bearing the trauma of getting it redone and the resultant extra surgery, more cutting and tearing of her barely formed skin. As she labored for her rapid, hard-fought breaths to keep swimming in the perilous sea, the stitching looked horribly close to come undone. So each labored heave of her tiny bloated stomach was as close to death as it was to life. But she held on.

A premature baby is at the risk of developing eye issues as well. Due to all these early infancy issues and trauma, some blood vessels in her little eyes ruptured, leaving little stains on her retina. It required multiple lager treatments to keep the retina from coming off causing total blindness. Well, she passed the test again. ‘Her eyes are totally safe now!’ the doctor gave a good piece of news after long, tortuous weeks. In the hospital she earned the status of a tiny hero for her ability to swim across the storms. The entire staff took a liking for her and she passed the test with flying colors; the discharge day coming like an emotional valedictory function.

At home, for the next eight months it was almost a tapasya by her well-caring parents to keep the body clean, to save her skin from infection around the stoma. The next surgery to correct the digestive system by connecting the small and large intestines to make her excretory system normal was done by a God’s child, Dr. Roberts of Bangalore. He did a miracle and within a month Maira became a normal child like anyone around. But she had seen so much in life which most of us don’t go through even in our entire lives.

Throughout the year, as her tiny body fought against death, we kept banging at the gates of God’s castle to have mercy on our little princess. Our prayers, fasting and pilgrimages seem to have helped the little hero and the medical staff in wading through perilous wasters.

Maira is my niece, my younger brother’s daughter. Now at one-and-half years, Maira is an enquiring girl, ready to start the journey on her doddering little legs and have her say with her learning tongue. Passing the critical tests is a good way of beginning one’s life. She is already a winner, having gone through so much which most of us hardly have to bear in our entire lives. Coming out of the fire, she is perfectly entitled to her favorite phrase ‘yekyahai’ (meaning what is this) mumbled with a slippery flow, a slurry drawl, pointing out anything from a grain of soil to planets in the sky. She has to know each and everything about the planet that made her literally walk through the river of fire to entitle her a journey here.

I think she is the biggest enquirer on the earth as of now. She is perfectly aware of the fact that she ought to know each and everything. It’s a big, testing world and you have to say a firm ‘NO’ to rule out misinformation and other’s manipulation of your life beyond a point. She is a big-time nay-sayer and shakes her tiny head sideways in robust denial of everything you propose. I think that the tiny lady is very sure of her version of things. I well remember the only time she meant to agree to my proposition. It was about the beauty of moon. It was a really shiny and beautiful full moon on a clear winter night and even she had to agree as she forced herself to affirm and put up an effort to slightly mover her head up and down in appreciation of the celestial beauty.

The cows are outside the house, so the entire world out there is ‘cow’. She points at the yard gate and sweetly mumbles ‘cow’. It means ‘please take me out of the house to see the wider world over there’. The buffalos, donkeys, in fact all quadrupeds are ‘cows’ to her, with one exception—hathi. There is a stuffed toy elephant whose trunk she has bashed and chewed to twist it sideways, even nibbled out a portion of it. So she knows that at least hathi isn’t cow. I hope she won’t expect a real hathi to have a twisted, nibbled trunk like her toy. Thanks to the mauling she has given to the stuffed hathi’s trunk, she recognizes the elephants very well, so much so that even a weirdly contorted ginger piece makes the sense of hathi to her. She doddered, fell, crawled and walked few cautious steps to me and showed me the best hathi in the world. Upon my soul, it looked like an elephant.

The cat is miau-miau. Imagine the plight of the babbar sher, the king of the forest, when he too is dubbed as miau-miau by the little angel. So the ruler of the forest with its regal mane is condemned the fate of a measly pussy cat. All the big cats in the picture books are poor miau-miau. The simplicity of a child’s version of things. I think the lions, tigers, leopards and cheetahs ought to realize that they are mere cats of varying sizes after all. The dogs are bho-bho or bhau-bhau. All my attempts at correcting her through mollycoddling words like doggy or puppy have been spiritedly denied with a firm nay-saying movement of head from left to right and right to left. ‘Bho-bho,’ she says and stares at me pretty hard and I meekly accept it.

We have introduced yours humble truly as tau to her, meaning her father’s elder brother. From that referral and perspective, she calls everyone bearing an elderly visage, even the people in their eighties who are entitled to be called great grandfather, as tau. It’s a cute belittling of high ranks.

Out of all the canine fates, condemned as a single entity named bho-bho, one dog stands out, a brown and white robust female street dog that sits in front of the gate for warm, ghee-smeared chapattis. She has a firm objection against stale, dry breads. Maira has come to know that this particular dog is Bhui (something denoting brown color) not a mere bhau-bhau like the rest. So Bhui is something more than a measly street dog.

As her little tongue is slowly trying to chisel the linguistic monolith to shape the phonetic figurines to finally carve distinct words, phrases and sentences, she has very simplistic tools to cut the phonetic complexities. So the portly hippopotamus in her picture book is a puny ‘hee’ only. Ask her to pronounce any troublesome word, she picks up the first letter and smartly completes her assignment. So as per the simplifying rule of a little child ‘Pani’ is just ‘Pa’. So any oxymoron-adcdefz is simply ‘O’. And we still wonder why children are so happy. It’s simply because they know how to simplify things.

For many weeks she was confused between Cow and Tau because of rhyming similarity. So when I would carry out her request for an outing, i.e., Cow, which is a buffalo in reality in most of the cases, she would stare into my face, as if in confusion regarding which one is the real Cow or Tau. Or both are same? Why then this one has no horns and tail and moves with two legs missing? Well, these are the queries she has to find out for herself as she grows up.  

The other day we shot a family video wherein all of us can be seen gesticulating like kids in brightest spirits. She is all attention and stares hard into our screen avatars and then seems confused. She first looks hard at the person on the screen and then scans its real version in 3D on the real stage of life, trying to make out how come the same person is inside the mobile and outside at the same time.

There is a trash site in the yard where we collect broomed leaves, little rappers and other dry discards for the day. This heap of dry waste is her treasure hunt site. Here is a big world to explore with her slow, cautious, unsteady steps, each fall training you to get up again and move on. She sneaks away to her treasure site and salvages some broken cup handle, a button, or some plastic fragment and turn very possessive about her discovery. After that no amount of cajoling or sweet persuasion or irritating instructions would be sufficient to help the discard regain its former position. She has her own sense of what is entitled to go to join her treasure site. So I have to regularly fetch my toothbrush, hair oil bottle and comb from the esteemed collection in the yard corner.

Here is a little unit of life learning the art of living on her shaky steps and lovely blurry shortcutting phonetics. She wants to impress me with the fact that she is responsible now and does household tasks. She sees the elders running around with things in hand and seriousness on their faces. So now it makes some sense to her that to be grown up means basically to move around with things. So all the grocery jars, bottles, cosmetics, kitchen utensils, buckets, brooms, mugs are having the pleasure of interchanging places thanks to her busy schedule of shuffling things born of a keen sense of duty and the art of learning to be busy.

The other day the dustpan was in the little temple shrine in a corner in a room and the Shivlinga was found at her favorite treasure-hunting site. I’m scuttling away to do something but she spots me the idler. She is very busy in rearranging the house as usual. ‘Baithja’ she invites me, orders rather, to sit on a peedha, a popular low stool quite popular among the peasantry. There I’m obediently sitting, corrected and made to do the things that really matter. She then walks to a tomato basket and brings one, hands it to me and goes back for another errand. So my hands, then the end of my chador are full of tomatoes. Then she observes more important things that have been misplaced by the elders, peas. There they land at the most suitable place, that’s me, one piece at a time born of each of her visits. Then the potatoes arrive. The urgent task slowly builds up. She already knows that we are a disorderly lot and is trying her level best to salvage some order among the chaos.

Tiny teeth are emerging on her little gums. It gives her the grin of the most mischievous imp. Beyond all feelings of shame and inhibitions born of self-consciousness, she shows her funny little irregular upcoming teeth and puts to shame all we elders’ sense of consciousness about looks and efforts to be what we are not.

Little Maira loves sweets, buffi being her favorite expression to give heed to the sweet tooth. The moment she mumbles buffi, she sees our taunting reaction. So she now thinks better of it. She has a way out now to have her sweets and receive some respect as well in its wake. She is well aware of the fact that ‘pasad’—standing for prasad—is something that is held in high esteem. So when she wants to have her piece of laddoo, burfi or jaggery she says ‘pasad’ asking for the holy thing.

She has very sweet ways of using her slow-motion time in her little world. As I eat, she picks up the boiled peas from my plate—one of her favorites in eating and playing—squeezes the little boiled balls in her fingers, drops them onto the ground, stomps over them to add to the culinary delight on the open pan of mother earth, picks her preparation very delicately, cautiously, gently, sweetly, with greatest considerations for my nutritious requirements, and offers them to me. Of course, I have to eat them which makes her smile with a motherly satisfaction.

She has a confusion about the sun and the moon. The moon was first introduced to her, she being allowed to ogle at it with her wonderstruck eyes. On a fine full moon night she mumbled her favorite phrase ‘yekyahai’ and on being told that it was moon she has moon as one of her favorites in the sky. So the sun is day’s muun. They are both the same just giving different shades. During the day, with her eyes narrowed and the face drawn with discomfort against the light, she faces the sun and points out ‘Muun’. Beyond the tormenting dualities, there is a mix-up of hot and cold—she calls both tata, that’s hot.

It’s an ever increasing stage of life to take a bigger hold in her tiny fists and cover a larger distance with slowly steadying steps. As a post-modern child, she has to assert her rights on the TV as well. I’m watching sports, she arrives and demands ‘mote’ which I helplessly hand over.  She points it towards the screen, pressing key x, y, z and all and informs me what is worth watching from among all the idiotic things the elders waste their times upon. It’s ‘motu’. So cartoon binge watching isn’t far away.

She is innocently unaware of the haggling dualities of life that keep the elders’ minds in constant firmament. Bored with life on the ground, she authoritatively points to the terrace saying ‘upal-upal—upal meaning upstairs. And after enjoying the little things of life that presently make a meaning to her—all birds are chia, all cats and monkeys are mere pushu and a flag that inspires her to mumble Om-Om because there is flag on the temple top, so all the flags including the national tricolor are mere Om-Om to her—she points downstairs again giving the instruction of ‘upal’ asking me to take her downstairs. Isn’t it a glorious equanimity? As they grow, we train them for puzzling differentials through education and customs, spinning a web of opinions and judgments and when the spider gets caught in the complexity of its own design, it hankers to achieve that very same non-dual state of mind through meditation and unlearning all that has been deeply drilled into the mind.

A shiny red chili grabs her attention. She picks it up and with her sweetly unsteady steps walks up to me. I’m having my lunch. She cutely puts the fiery red eatable in my plate and eagerly looks at me, expecting me to eat her gift and explode with taste and clap and say thanks to the kind giver. Well, maybe she wants to see smoke gushing out of my ears and eyes. She has enough experience of cartoon programs to know the relationship between red chilies and smoky ears. These cartoon networks turn the children wise a bit too early.

Red, ripe tomatoes are very much playable. She knows where they would serve best apart from the frying pan. It’s the chairs, and more so under some seat cover or cloth, maybe to protect them from harsh winters and help them sleep better. I have dangerously come close to sit upon safely sleepy tomatoes and make fresh tomato sauce under my bum on a few chairs in the house.

Well, little Maira now wants to be in charge of the affairs. Dragging the broom around on her exploring sorties is her favorite task. So this time when she asks for goddi, she prefers to keep her jhau with her. The broom is heavy for her little hand, but punching well above her weight she is determined to hold it dangling by her side as I support her on my arm.

I’m eating and there she stands, holding a bathroom slipper in her hand. There is some space in the plate and she is looking ahead to fill that puzzle with the great item in her hand. I have to be very quick in removing my plate to avoid the footwear from becoming a part of my menu. It offends her and she cries quite angrily.

As the days progress, innocence driven by curiosity takes a planning shape. She points to the potty seat. Her mom is happy that she will now learn toilet skills. But Maira is smarter than her mother thinks. She sits on the seat and demands cartoons on the mobile, which is happily granted under the assumption that it’s a suitable reward for her voluntarily not doing her potty in a diaper and thus avoid all the haggling of washing and cleaning. Maira composedly enjoys her show on the potty seat. There is no sign of potty anywhere near. It turns out to be a trick to lay hands upon the cartoon show on the mobile.

She is a translator now. One morning she wakes up announcing to the world that ‘cow’ is actually ‘gai’. ‘Cow-gai, miau-miau-cat, bhau-bhau-puppy,’ she informs us.

It’s going to be a world of likes and dislikes. She prefers catchy songs koka-koka and paya-paya and raises her finger in bhangra celebration.

I find her mumbling car-car pointing towards the vehicle. We get inside. There is no key. She knows that a car without its key is no car, so keeps pointing towards the missing key, ‘kabi-kabi’ she reminds me, i.e., chabi.

It’s a great sight to watch her doddering steps acquire a bit more surefootedness. She falls lesser now on the way to her mission and gives long monologues in her own language putting in between a few words she knows. She now tries to climb the stairs all by herself, holding the railings, eager to become self-sufficient in going out and upstairs. She has now added to her knowledge about me and calls me tau Chhuppi, the latter linguistic pearl standing for my pet name Sufi. The tongue in its untrained free stage, but acquiring slight edges as she practices her words, imitating us, making cutely weird shortcuts over their complexities. That’s how life starts for a toddler, acquiring more control and the resultant sophistication. But the touch of her tiny fingers—untainted of any deeds, good or bad—is healing. It’s the touch of life, of just being; a soul’s selfless reaching out and touching you on your cheek, lips, nose or brow. Close your eyes and recall a child’s touch on your face. It’s pure, unadulterated energy. It seeps into you. A child will pay you back with its godly blessing, in the form of its touch and a smile, in lieu of all the cares and concerns undertaken by the elders.

Now, it’s a world of combination of choices. ‘Matar,’ she points out. I offer her a little boiled pea seed. She shakes her head in a firm ‘No’. ‘Roti,’ she says. I offer her a little piece, crushing it between my thumb and index finger. It also is met with a firm denial. Now, I realize she needs both. I make a combo of matar and roti and she gladly accepts. She is thus joyfully growing up with her slowly steadying steps, each step distinctly marked by a shrill ‘pee’ by the whistles installed in the soles of her tiny shoes. Each step a landmark, a reward celebrated by the sound.

She knows to survive one has to stand on one’s own feet. One fine morning, all fresh and looking beautiful for a new adventure, she crawls up the open staircase, falls, gets a bloody lip but finally reaches upstairs to greet me as I work on my book.

She knows it’s a big world outside there beyond the compound walls. I find her trying to open the gate standing on her toes, her little fingers bracing the heavy latch. But then she sees me and knows the value of human resource mobilization. She takes my hand and asks me to open it, walks out, looks back once before moving on to see a bigger world.

She knows the value of make-up as well. Me and my brother are brushing our teeth with a nice tooth powder. She asks both of us to sit on our haunches, dabs her little fingers in the powder on our palms and carefully smears our faces with the white powder to give us the fantastic make-up of handsome native chiefs of the red-Indian tribes.

She eats guava like a bulbul, no greed, with ease, leaving innocent needy marks on it with her little emerging teeth. It’s not like a grown-up’s clinical finish that shows greed. I have seen the guavas pecked at by the bulbuls in the little garden and those markings look exactly like what Maira leaves on the fruit she eats. 

It’s an open canvas for her to stamp her choices and preferences now. Here comes her first full sentence of all three words. ‘Chia neeche aao!’ she commands a starling that goes quite close above our heads as we play under warm sunrays on the terrace. Then follows the longest word, a few days later, spoken in the sweetest of a slurred effort. ‘Pigeon, pigeon,’ I’m pointing out. ‘K-boo-ta-ll,’ she corrects me.

She has now taken her first run in the game as well. I’m playing cricket for her with her little plastic bat and a rubber ball. She takes the bat from me, swipes at the ball and is seen running to the wall end. Only then I realize that she has scored her first run in the game of life. Of course, TV has a big role in preparing children for future. She has seen us watching cricket on TV and knows probably it’s about hitting and running. Let almighty bestow her a joyous innings in the game of life!

She is a champion of female rights already. The late winter has flowers in the little garden and a few butterflies hover around. I am lost in poetic muse. I feel a tug at my pants. Maira is struggling with brooms in both her hands. Her little fingers tightly holding the handles, she has dragged them from a far corner. She has a task for me in her mind. Why should ladies have all the fun with the brooms? Even the men should taste it. ‘Udhal, udhal, jhaau!’ she guides me to the part where there are some guava leaves scattered on the ground. She instructs me to clean the place. There I use both the brooms to clean the yard to her satisfaction.

It’s her ground now to run after the butterflies in the garden. It’s her sky now as she tries to catch the floating traces of smoke in the air. And hopefully it will be her world to fulfill her dreams and lead a joyous, healthy life. She has earned it at the cost of lots of sufferings right at the beginning. 

A special tea

 Naresh and Kaptan surpassed other students in rousing the teachers’ ire at the village primary school. The consequences aren’t hard to guess. The teachers thrashed the students on principle, most of whom considered anything related to books literally an embodiment of evil to be hated with the full force of soul. The beatings and thrashings were highly ineffective in the scheme of making the students love or like anything related to studies. At the most, it turned student-teacher relationship in the bracket of intrinsic animosity. The students played mischief without fail and turned brave-hearts and thick-skinned. Just an odd one, like yours truly, terror-stricken with the cane and nurturing his pusillanimous heart, would cram the lessons and he would inevitably emerge as topper in the class. Just don’t fall into the mischief, keep your conduct praiseworthy and very soon you will be walking up the carpeted stairs of achievements and glory in the little, depilated schoolroom; your future waiting to rise to the height of impressive ivory towers.

However, the teachers should have known it better than asking these two rowdiest—and hence the most thrashed—students to bring tea from the little teashop at the small bus stop by the road at a distance from the school. Well, they went all happily, thoroughly thrashed in the previous period. On the way back, with tea kettle and glasses in their hands, the duo felt the urge to drink tea. They had a cup each, in consequence of which the tea fell short. The emptiness born of idiocy in the head is a huge playground for the innovation of mischief. The village pond with its green smelly water offered its help. They washed the glasses and poured an equal amount of green slimy water—having a great spicing of buffalo dung as the big animals wallowed in the pond, cuddling the chew with pride and prejudice—to bring the beverage’s mark in the kettle to its former level. The pond being the favorite place of the buffalos; they just love to defecate in the water after heartful swimming.

It turned out to be a special tea having some exquisite taste, as if the tea-maker had come across some unknown condiments to suddenly uplift the taste of his tea. All the teachers said it was unique. Only one of them said that there was too much ginger in it. The errant duo would continue getting thrashed for their revulsion to studies and continued to fetch the special tea. Thenceforth, mention tea and both of them jumped to their feet with a weird pertinence and would hand over the tea kettle with an acquisitive air as if they had a great role in the tea’s special taste just by being its carrier. Then one day the destiny created a chance to remove the streaks of ignorance over the teachers’ minds in the matter and one of them saw the real reason for the specialty. The enemies were assailed; the entire staff, invigorated with extra-special diet from the pond, jumped upon the culprits in highest earnest and thrashed them to their revengeful heart’s full contentment. 

The small world of a little boy

Nevaan is up for a hearty spell of laughter and he is putting a big effort to laugh louder than the cause and capability of his five-and-half years old lungs. I have been telling him some words of wisdom like we elders tell the kids. Now I realize maybe my words are the cause of his hilarity. So in order to justify his much-labored laughing I also start putting extra effort, bringing more buffoonery in my words and manners. Then he stops suddenly. ‘Mamaji, don’t disturb me! I’m laughing at something else,’ he informs me. The comic color instantly vanishes from my face. Like a beaten joker whose jokes have failed I leave the scene and look back after going some paces. He is laughing even louder now. ‘Mamaji, now I’m laughing real laughter. It’s real laughter. You look funnier when you aren’t trying to be funny,’ he throws a bright light on hitherto hidden gem of my personality.

Nevaan is inspired by a chef’s program on television. So he is reading out recipes and alongside making foodie castles in air. It’s a make-believe mouth-watering heaven of aloo-mutter-paneer-karela-lauki-subzi-pizza-burgers-cheese-sandwich. ‘This is my recipe for the best food in the world,’ he says. The name sounds otherworldly, or maybe classy. ‘So it must be super-costly?’ I ask. ‘Yes, not less than ten rupees!’ he brags. ‘But don’t you think ten rupees is too small for such a grand delicacy. It should be at least ten thousand rupees,’ I suggest. He thinks over and says, ‘Ok, ten thousand rupees then. But you have to give ten rupees also.’ Well, he is more familiar with ten rupees. That’s what we call being more practical.

Going with his relaxed ways, he reads very slowly. It seems his little tongue finds the words heavy. But there is a list that turns his tongue into the swiftest horses in recitation. It’s the laminated menu of a restaurant. Out on a dining night he fell in love with the masterpiece and we had to pay the owner so that he could carry it with him. Now this is his Bible, Geeta, Vedas all. The list unleashes waters over the tongue and removes the hesitating rust and there he catapults full force into narration. Samosa-kachori-dhokla-aloobada-bhajibada-breadpakoda-pohajalebi-rabdi-pavbhaji-chholebature-tikki…. It goes like the latest Vande Bharat train. Mothers are mothers. ‘How I wish they include a lesson on menu and recipes in the syllabus. He would beat all in that,’ hi mother sighs.

He has watched too many ghosts on cartoon networks and feels there are phantoms in dark rooms. He has to get his toy from a dark room. So he is all sweet words of request to me. ‘You are afraid to go alone in the dark,’ I tease him. He sits on a chair and implores me to go and get it. ‘No, I’m not scared, I’m just a bit more lazy. That’s it,’ he clarifies. So being lazy hurts one’s ego a bit less than being called a coward.

The washroom is in a corner in the yard. So he has to mend his ways after dusk so that the offended elders would not say ‘no’ to escorting him to the attendance of nature’s calls. But being a reformed boy from dusk to bedtime is too much. So he has to find some solution. In the morning one day I see him walking to the main gate with chalk piece in hand. I observe stealthily from across a corner. He has perhaps found the key to beat his fear of ghosts. ‘Bhoot! NOT IN!’ he has tamed the ghosts with the instruction on the gate.

The vacations are over and Nevaan is going back to his place. We are waiting for their train at the platform. An old man approaches and starts playing with him. ‘Give me money,’ he says. ‘I don’t have any money,’ Nevaan replies. ‘Then give me your shirt,’ the old man chuckles. I give him a coin on behalf of Nevaan. Now the old man is blessing the little boy and offering him the same coin. Well, neither Nevaan nor the old man is interested in a mere coin. Hard times. A coin has lost even its symbolic value. The poor coin is back in my pocket. There it requests a ten rupee note to take leave off my pocket and change its master. The old man is now satisfied as per the latest begging norms. He is a poor man from Rajasthan wandering on pilgrimages with little bits of charity money on the way. ‘He looks like my grandson,’ he compliments Nevaan in lieu of the ten rupees received. 

The lightness and heaviness of being alive

There is a marvelous lightness in ‘being’ alive. And a heaviness also that is beyond the dimension of the matter. The extra dimension of sentient life in matter (we may call it soul for simple reference) makes the matter very light. The same matter without this energy, or call it soul, feels weightier.

The birds are very light. Hold a living bird in your hand and you would marvel at its weightlessness. How can such a feathery thing accomplish such airy dances and sing-song chirpings?

A babbler entered the fenced yard. It seemed a suitable plan on the bird’s side to seek safety because it couldn’t fly. Maybe it was a sick babbler. It sat there on the ground sad, silent with a drooping beak. It would hop for a few paces and then rest. It sat near a water puddle and took a few beakfuls of water. I tried to feed it with a dropper but it won’t eat anything. When I held it in my hand it felt so light, just a winged representative of the air around.

It came in the morning and died in the afternoon. I found it in its eternal sleep in the flowerbed. As I picked it up for giving it a dignified burial I could feel weight this time. So there is a mystical type of lightness in being alive. Maybe the soul has a floating quality to make the matter feel less weighty while it’s in the body. The soul gone and the same mass feels heavier.

Maybe the soul is always acting in reverse to the forces of gravity, always looking upwards for expansion, always trying to expand and go up, trying to evolve into a higher dimension. Just like the lifebelts keeping the body afloat on water. Maybe that’s why it feels like to be in a cage, I mean that vague sense of being trapped, that niggling sense of something missing. Like air trapped in a balloon, floating the body around. And once the tendency to float, the inclination to expand, the urge to evolve—represented by a particular soul—is gone for a free float (before getting trapped again) the mass that remains behind feels weightier. Like a balloon would weigh more after getting deflated and the air gone out.

It’s marvelous that just one breath keeps us alive and afloat, keeps us in the category of the lightness of being. Maybe the soul is just a breath. But look at its divine component of ‘the lightness of being’! We can easily lift a live being. Lifting a corpse is far weightier proposition. The floater is gone and the stickler is left behind. Just one breath gone and we have a piece of relatively heavier matter. One breath in and we have a far-far lighter being.

So we have this iota of infinite freedom and expansion trapped in this body. It’s always trying to float freely, like the air in a balloon taking it in different directions. But that is the irony with existence. To manifest, the component of absolute freedom has to be trapped in the confines of limited ‘matter’.

But why do the free-floats, the individual souls, again get trapped in the body? A spiritualist once told me that all the surrounding air around us is full of free-floats helplessly, even jealously, looking at we the embodied ones. They look like jealous children at the embodied ones. Probably we love and hate the prison in almost equal measure. A kind of addiction to being something. And to be something you need a body. Body is acquired, then what. The one that acquires the body, the cosmic representative of ultimate freedom (the soul), has the fundamental inclination and urge to be free. It breeds a type of endless love-hate relationship.

What is ultimate liberation or freedom? Maybe it’s the state of a free-float when it no longer feels jealous of the embodied entities. When a sage quits the body in complete freedom, without fear, without any attachment, without any desire or expectations, he goes for a cosmic expansion, so large that it can no longer be trapped in a confined body. Because a fragmented individual disembodied entity cannot beat the greed of getting trapped again unless it becomes a part of everything that’s there. The wholeness cannot be lured to be confined to limited ‘somethingness’.  

Maybe this is what they mean by getting ultimate liberation by feeling all and everything within you. With this unqualified trait acquired all that is trapped and non-trapped feels within you. Like free air feeling the trapped air in a balloon as a part of itself. So it won’t feel inclined to be trapped in a balloon to feel its existence.

So this body itself is the gateway to break the final barrier. It’s the portal to enter that unqualified state of absolute freedom. That is why they say being born as a human is a blessing because we arrive qualified to pass the final test. Best of luck for the examinations of life!