Habits

 Making love, a mere repetition; falling in love, a mere reputation; falling out of love, a mere repetition; doing this, a mere repetition; doing that, a mere repetition. I think we are creatures of repetition. And repetition is primarily born of habits. So most of the things we do are the results of habits. Why do we form habits? Possibly because we feel safe. And why do we crave to be safe? Maybe because we have fears. Well, then even fear might be a habit of the mind. 

The moment we allow ourselves to be driven by habits, we limit ourselves to a customised social unit, for our own safety. The society too feels safe when it sees fine creatures of habit. Habits define a safe zone around us. They breed convenience and that's why we hanker after them. They define and limit us and give us a false promise that we will be happy in that little zone. But very soon we find that conveniences born of happiness hardly bring juice and joy to life. It's dry. We still feel something is missing even though we adopt more and more habits to erect sounder structures of safety around us. 

The human spirit wants to fly. And habits are the chain. It wants to be free. But habits hold it back. When we set out to chart out our own path, we have to break the mould of habits. Habits clip our wings. They condition us, limit our potential. We have to do everything in a way that it doesn't turn a habit. Then whatever we do is an ode to the present. It's open ended and creative. We create and move on. The past doesn't drag us. The future doesn't make false promises. We flow. We fly. We live.

A little forest

 Sometime back I had thrown some tulsi seeds in a cleared-up part of a flowerbed. Little saplings grew and now it looks like a tiny tulsi forest. The beauty about lovable volition, the bhaav of love, is that it takes you above physical limitations. With pure volition of love and compassion this little group of tiny plants is as big as Amazon forest. It becomes as pure as any holy site on earth. If you can relate and feel like an ant crawling through this tiny patch of holy leaves, then you of course turn a little child wandering in a big forest. It’s only about the bhaav beyond acts, deeds, words, scriptures, holy pilgrimages. If you are in that bhaav, this little group of plants instantly turns your Gaumukh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Jerusalem or any other holy site. Right here, this very instant. A pure unconditional bhaav takes you above the limitations of space and time. Karma gets unattached from your consciousness during those moments of pure volition and you have the moments of liberation. Call it samadhi, enlightenment or any other word. Words are mere pointers.

As I stare into this little patch of green and with pure volition muse over a little insect going through it, I’m a pilgrim going through a deep forest. As I take bucket bath and chant Ganga Ma’s name with pure heart, I’m bathing in her holy stream. I don’t have any doubt about it. As I walk by a little ancestral shrine in the countryside and bow my head I know I’m having a darshan of Badri, Kedar, Tirupati. If you establish yourself in that unadulterated bhaav, Mother Existence gets everything for you right at that very spot. But we have to walk around a lot ultimately to realize and come back into stillness and divine pause at one point, that pure volition. Then you aren’t anywhere but still everywhere. Then it hardly matters where you are, what you are, what others think of you, whether you are moving or not. The small acquires mammoth proportions to inspire holy awe. The big becomes small allowing you to marvel and analyze at the level of mind. Well, that’s the beauty of pure, unlimited volition.

Digging the well of destiny

 In Chhatisgarh, an eleven-year-old boy fell into an eighty feet deep borewell. The water table is plunging down and the water-seeking holes are going deeper and deeper. The boy was stuck in the deep cavity for 104 hours. Around 500 rescue personnel worked round the clock; dug a parallel pit and a connecting tube to fetch out the boy. Meantime the boy was handed down six bananas, juice and ORS fluid. He had a snake and a frog as company all along. In the dark womb of oblivion, the primal fear rules supreme. One would love to have some company in such a dark, deep pit. So forgetting all predatory instincts and devouring orgies the snake must have cuddled the frog. The latter must also have, forgetting all fears and intriguing irritations, reciprocated with friendly croaks. It seems a bit sad that the boy couldn’t share his banana with his mates. It’s not clear from the reports whether the snake and the frog could be rescued or not. If they were not, and this is more likely given our valuation of life in human terms, then I would call it an incomplete rescue operation. Maybe with bits of nostalgic condensation they would have turned out to be the best of friends outside—the snake and the frog.

The elephant lost a human right

 So the court has ruled that Happy is not a person, he is an elephant. A court was hearing a petition whether the zoo-confined pachyderm in the US could have human rights superseding his animal rights. Had the verdict gone in his favor, he would have been released in semi-freedom in a big sanctuary. Alas, that wasn’t to be! I think all animals should have human rights and the humans, with their huge sets of ominous rumblings, will do pretty well with animal rights. After all, we are the strongest animal among the booming bedlam on earth. Mother earth is replete with the abundant sagas born of our criminal candor and odious excesses. So who else is the biggest claimant of animal rights?

Excellence and chance

 The golden boy of Indian athletics, Neeraj Chopra, has to carry our perpetually blossoming expectations born of psychotic obsession with gold on his strong shoulders. A bandana tied on his forehead, flowing locks of hair and triumphant fists present a picturesque imagination. He returns to action after almost a year since his Tokyo gold. He hits 89.30 meters at a tournament in Finland, bagging silver but more importantly, it’s his personal best. Sometimes your best gets you a silver only. They say it was a fantastic throw accompanied by his trademark warrior cry while throwing. It looked all set to qualify as an epoch-making endeavor and cross 90 meters and hit his passion mark to enter the elite group of javelin throwers. But a naughty gust of wind made the ascending spear swerve to left.

Well, that shows all we have in our capacity is to give our best throw. But the results are sometimes decided by the circumstantial, chancy winds. Sometimes the dangerous drafts of adversarial winds cold-bloodedly kill our throws. We primarily throw to challenge the adverse winds. Sometimes the winds turn favorable as well and give us bigger returns than we would have achieved otherwise. The moral of the story is that we shouldn’t complain about circumstantial winds. Give your best throw. That’s all that counts. If the petty treacheries of adverse winds rob you of your gold, believe me if you have given your best, you won’t be a mere helpless hayloft, you would be at least a respectable wreck. And that’s all that matters, not silver and gold.