सबका नंबर आएगा

 इतना सन्नाटा क्यों है भाई?! डरो मत नंबर सबका आएगा। Electrolal autocracy के साइड इफेक्ट्स हैं साहब। शुरुआत बड़े ऑपोजिशन के लोगों से हुई है, लेकिन अंत में आम आदमी का भी नंबर जरूर आएगा। विश्व गुरु बनने में सबका योगदान होगा। एक साधारण आदमी का भारत को विश्व गुरु बनाने में योगदान इस तरह है: आंख मूंद कर राजा साहब की आज्ञा का पालन करना, जो कुछ हो रहा है उसको सैद्धांतिक तौर पर ठीक मान कर अपने दुख को हजम करने की आदत डालना, चाहे आपको बिना बात जेल में डाल दिया जाए तो फिर भी स्वीकार करना की गलती खुद से ही हुई होगी, राजा को देवता मानकर पूजना, ED, CBI, IT धर्म रक्षक संस्था मानकर उनका अपने द्वार पर स्वागत करना, EVM और EC को निष्पक्षता के देवी देवता मानकर घर के मंदिर में उनकी फोटो लगाना, गंगा स्नान की जगह राजनैतिक वाशिंग मशीन में सफाई करवाना और भागवत्ता प्राप्त करना, कान भाड़ मीडिया के शेरों की दहाड़ को खरगोश की तरह नम्रता, सच्ची श्रद्धा से सुनना और उनके बताए जुमलों को पवित्र ग्रन्थ मानकर उनका अनुसरण करना। इस तरह की अनेकों छोटी छोटी चीज़ें हैं जो आपको आने वाले पांच सालों में जीने के लिए तैयार कर देंगी। ऐसा करने से एक नए भारत में आपको जीने में काफी मदद मिलेगी।

The tiny remnants from the birdie world

 

Nothing is too far and isolated from the reach of all-pervading pollution. It’s the first week of November and the Delhi NCR has turned a gas chamber. Even though I’m located almost 50 km from Delhi, yet it smells as bad as in Delhi. The little serpentine trail of wilderness running between the canals is shrouded in metallic haze. The trees, birds, bushes, plants and the canals sulkily lay under the clawy grip of the thick smog. There is no wind to swipe away the swabs of suffocation. Not a leaf moves. Proud smog is heavily loaded upon mother earth’s bosom. If you take a picture, it would definitely qualify as a beautiful foggy countryside picture. But it would be lifeless. Over a period of time even this poisoned picture will vanish to be replaced by an even bleaker vision.

Gone are the days of big groups of birds. A couple of herons, two-three egrets and some meek cormorants play the role of moving characters in this smog-smeared, frozen picture. A tiny warbler preens from the clump of elephant grass. A parrot tweets dispiritedly. An ibis gives a pathetic, suffering call. A few black kites go scouting the ground. A coucal is busy in the tall clumps of sharp-leaved reeds. A migrant Bihari laborer has cast a fish-line in the canal. A happy news at last bringing a smile on his face. He catches a rohu, a good half kg of freshwater meat. He is still fresh after the chhath celebrations.

Some Nepalese are employed at a poultry farm. They have caught a swarm of little eels from the shallow waters of a distributary field channel branching off from one of the canals. Life has all the reasons to be busy against all odds. Wondering at the capacity of life to adopt newer and newer ways of staying optimistic even in the face of all these gloomy clouds, I move on my customary stroll along the thin ribbon of wilderness along the space between the canals.

The criticality of everything from religion to rags

 

There are critical issues. Everything, from religion to rags, seems in a tight political grip. However, unbothered of all the bigger things a beautiful scene unfolds. It’s a lovely lush green carpet of tiny wheat saplings in a field. A relaxed evening is building up. Bright, warm, yellowish sunrays streaming down on the little wheat crop painted with farming precision in the fields. A farmer is watering his wheat crop. Watering the crops means a feast for the egrets. A party of snow-white egrets is feasting on the worms and insects scurrying out to save themselves from the flood.

Elsewhere, the mankind has been at war with nature. And in its angry, stressful wake has lost 50 percent sperm count during the last fifty years. We may go for blatant propagation of our species, but mother nature knows exactly well how to level up the things.

We love cows and revere them. They seem to feel somehow that they are empowered politically at the moment. So they sit right in the middle of busy roads and majestically chew cuddle. I think they are safer on the roads than the humans are. The vigilante groups are very diligent in their responsibilities.

The monkeys are also revered by we Hindus because of their connection with Lord Hanuman. We are very busy these days, so have little time to do justice to our faith. So as we are running for office and business or pilgrimages we throw fruits and eatables towards the monkeys waiting by the roadside. The cute simians run to grab the respectful offerings. Many get killed and injured by speeding vehicles. But the thrower of things thinks that he has done a pious task.   

The little world of farmers

Ranbeer is my share-cropper, an arrangement between an idle owner and a hardworking farmer. He has been very hardworking during our decades-long partnership. Earlier he worked very hard but now in his sixties he is retired from active farming, just plies the tractor, directs the farm workers, drinks, plays cards in chaupals, suffers fits of mysterious nature, raises verbal storms against his still strong and robust wife. He is fine with numbers and keeps a little pocket diary where he manages the accounting figures concerning our farming partnership to the last paisa. That is the simple broadsheet of his life. It’s an ideology-free life of a farmer, untangled, aloof from the snarling complexities of the mind.  

The doctors couldn’t give any clue to his swooning fits, so I gave him a spiritual certification that he goes into a Samadhi. He has no clue to what I say so just laughs at it, taking it to be just one of the poor jokes cracked by the bookish guys like yours truly. All of us are our own doctors, the best doctors in fact because we know our own system more than anyone else. I was once asking him about what and whys of his fits, how did he feel, etc. ‘Well, I hardly remember anything. It just strikes suddenly. When I come back to my senses, I always find a few drops of urine on my pajama and after that I feel very weak for a couple of days,’ he gave me the medical summary to diagnose the nature of his medical condition.

I researched on it and failed to come to a conclusion. So while the doctors failed to check his fainting swoons and fits, he devised a solution for himself. ‘The tractor jumps and shakes my body quite vigorously and due to this I don’t suffer fits while plying my tractor,’ he looked assured. After that he started spending as much time as possible on his tractor. His wife, who worked equal to two strong bulls in the domain of hard field labor, could draw consolation that hers wasn’t a case of total exploitation as her husband was at least contributing to farming as a tractor driver.

Then the myth was broken one day. Ranbeer all smug, and looking at the mouth-watering prospects of getting a full liquor bottle to drink in the evening with his pals, was plying his tractor on the road to the town. A couple of farmers were sitting comfortably by his sides on the mud-guards. Maybe it was the fault of the road makers. They had made it too smooth with a fresh layering of tar, so Ranbeer’s body didn’t shake sufficiently to avoid a fit. The tractor was running at a reasonable speed and the farmer lost consciousness suddenly without any prior warning or symptoms. Both his fellow peasants had to jump into action with the agility of a rat snake to avoid a common fit for all three of them in the roadside ditch. After that Ranbeer isn’t contributing to farming even as a tractor driver. His wife is aggrieved. She feels exploited in this one-sided equation. But she is helpless in doing work. A life-long habit of hard labor, her Ikigai, won’t allow her to sit idle. So she just cannot subdue her inclination to start walking to the fields to work and sweat out the miseries of life. But she harasses him a lot, cracks jokes, treats him like a child, and fires puns and much-much more.

There is some wild growth in a corner of one of the fields. A big cobra stays there. People talk about it with awe and wonder. The share-cropping couple has planted laukis. Ranbeer’s wife is helpless in doing hard work. She has to do farming work to keep her life meaningful. So she is busy in weeding out the extra growth among the vegetable vines. The cobra struck at her sickle-bearing hand. It was there under the vines. She fell back due to the shock and the offended reptile in fact crawled over her stomach. She was all alone in the field at that time. Imagine the shock and nightmare of a cobra strike.

I am presenting here her own words as I listened to her a bit guiltily and her eyes almost accusing me of partnership in crime as if saying it was your cobra because it stays in your field. Here goes her post-bite story:

‘I fell down and it jumped on my body and crawled over me. I couldn’t stand up. I started crying. Tried to get up but would fall down. Then I thought why die while running and repeatedly falling down. So I tied my duppatta on my hand, gave a cut around the bite and lay down weeping to die peacefully.’

After fifteen minutes her son arrived and took her to the snakebite healer who uses a secret herbal concoction for detoxification. The patient vomits and goes into diarrheal fits to cleanse the system. It works well. Surprisingly. The success ratio is almost 95 percent. Most of the snake-bitten people get cured.

She was up for terrible vomiting and diarrhea for a couple of days. Ranbeer felt inconvenience about it. ‘Put her cot near the washroom so that there is no unnecessary messing up of the place,’ he managed the situation as a firm family patriarch. Then he went to her cot and consoled, ‘You will get cured, don’t worry. Most probably the snake just gave a hiss on your skin and you panicked.’ Then he lamented about food not getting cooked on time, the usual inconveniences born in the life of a farmer with the wife getting bedridden. She listened to all this, not saying much but resolved to make it very tough for him once she got back to her feet.

These are very tough people. I wasn’t expecting her to go to the fields at least during this season. But she was right there at the farm doing the usual chores the very next week itself. Salutes to these courageous Jat peasant women!  

PS: She was earlier bitten by a snake while taking out dung-cakes from a bitoda, a conical dung-cake store covered with hay and straw. Ranbeer himself was bitten by a snake in the fields few years back. So they are veterans in the scary experience. The farmers world over lead such a tough life. But when it comes to setting narratives and building agendas by the power aspirants, the farmers and their cause lie at the base of their scheme.

A Notebook of Dancing Shadows (My Latest Book)

 

<Blurb (A Notebook of Dancing Shadows)>

Step into the world of the introspective and poetic writer, where the mundane transforms into the profound, and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. In ‘A Notebook of Dancing Shadows,’ we are invited into the gentle embrace of a soulful observer, who effortlessly weaves together the threads of everyday life with the tapestry of the spiritual realm.

With each turn of the page, readers are drawn deeper into the writer’s inner sanctum, where thoughts flutter like leaves in the wind and emotions ebb and flow like the tide. From the whispering secrets of nature to the intricate dance of social processes, every observation is tinged with a sense of wonder and reverence for the world around us.

But beyond mere observation, this collection transcends the boundaries of the ordinary, delving into the writer’s spiritual quest for meaning and truth. Through moments of contemplation and introspection, he grapples with the mysteries of existence, seeking solace in the beauty of the unknown.

‘A Notebook of Dancing Shadows’ is not just a book, but a journey—a journey of the heart, the mind and the soul. It is a lyrical exploration of life’s complexities, rendered with a delicate touch and an unwavering sense of grace. So, step into the writer’s world and let his words illuminate the path to a deeper understanding of the human experience.

<Preface>

Welcome, dear reader, to a journey through the meandering paths of observation, reflection and contemplation. In the pages that follow, you’ll find an eclectic mix of thoughts, musings and opinions penned by a humble wanderer of the countryside, where the whispers of nature intertwine with the echoes of profound existential questions.

I am but a simple soul, dwelling in the embrace of a not so tranquil village, where luckily time still moves at its own semi-leisurely pace, and somehow one can still feel that the rhythm of life is dictated by the seasons. From the vantage point of my rustic abode, I embark on solitary walks, allowing the gentle embrace of nature to envelop me in its serene folds.

In the quiet solitude of these wanderings, I find myself attuned to the subtle symphony of the natural world – the delicate flutter of a butterfly’s wings, the ephemeral beauty of a wildflower by the wayside, or the poignant dance of a leaf as it takes its final flight from the branches above. Each of these seemingly mundane occurrences carries within it a profound message, a glimpse into the interconnectedness of all things, and a reminder of the transient nature of existence.

But my observations extend beyond the realm of the natural world, encompassing the grand tapestry of human affairs and the tumultuous currents of society. From the smallest acts of kindness to the grandest geopolitical upheavals, I offer my reflections with a poet’s heart and a seeker’s spirit.

As you delve into the pages of this book, you may find yourself traversing unexpected terrain – from the tranquil beauty of a sun-dappled glade to the chaotic hustle and bustle of the human experience. Yet, amidst the cacophony of voices clamoring for attention, I invite you to pause, to linger awhile, and to contemplate the deeper truths that lie beneath the surface of our existence.

For I am not merely an observer of life; I am a participant in its unfolding drama, a fellow traveler on the winding road of human experience. And in sharing my thoughts and insights with you, I hope to spark a dialogue, to ignite the flame of curiosity, and to inspire a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation for the world around us.

My beliefs are firmly rooted in humanism and secularism. I am also not immune to the allure of the spiritual realm. Indeed, many of the pieces contained within these pages are imbued with a sense of awe and reverence for the mysteries that lie beyond the confines of our understanding.

So, dear reader, as you embark on this journey with me, I encourage you to approach it with an open mind and a willing heart. For in the pages of this book, you may find not only a reflection of my own thoughts and experiences but also a mirror in which to contemplate your own journey through life.

May you find solace in the beauty of nature, wisdom in the complexity of human affairs, and inspiration in the eternal quest for truth and meaning! And may the words contained herein serve as a gentle guide on your own path of discovery.

With warmest regards,

Sandeep Dahiya (Sufi), April 2024