All posts tagged: India

In Life’s darkness. Mother is light.

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In these ongoing paralysing times of helplessness, while doing nothing; close your eyes. Think of water, a river. And if possible become it. Shiva was eyes wide open in all directions. Yet the destructive eye had to open, and took him inwards. Ujjain arrived in the morning. We went to pataloka to touch the equator in dim light and later ate potato spice. Darkness is the birth place of all creations. A child becomes in the dark. The lights glows the most in the dark. It is not that the darkness is wrong. It’s a part of life, a backdrop for the stars at night, the space between what you know. Darkness has a way of reminding you of the light. ExistING side by side. Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other. And Mangla, the beautiful brown cow here in the village is pregnant. One big similarity, between a cow and a human mother is that both take nine months for their child to come out playing in the wild. Also one of many reasons, the oldest living civilisation …

Happy Birthday Incredible India

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Your place is not only on the map but also in the heart Freedom and power brings responsibility. That responsibility rests upon each one of us. Before the birth of freedom we endured all the pain of labour, even divided with heavy hearts; that echoing memory of division. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless the past is over and it is the future that must be directed. The future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we might fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today, one more time. The service of India, of Bharat means the service of the millions who suffer. It means not only ending poverty but ignorance, unawareness, diseases and above all, inequality of opportunities, understanding the importance of this ancient land, this oldest active and growing civilization. And so we have to labour and to work and work hard to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for …

Better than perfect ?

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Draw a perfect circle. Use a compass or a plotter. Now, zoom in. If you zoom in close enough, you’ll discover that it’s not a perfect circle at all. In fact, anything we create, at close enough magnification, isn’t perfect. It’s foolish to wait until you’ve made something that’s perfect, because you never will. The alternative is to continue to move toward your imaginary ideal, shipping as you iterate. Getter better is the path to better.

Homeland

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He woke up four inches below the snow like bed. But the day ahead was going to be as treacherous. He felt excited because travelling to rural India gave a smile to his face. Indian villages to a good extent still practice their civilisational old traditions. The air is different, the land for miles is green. But leaving Delhi behind is a lengthy affair. Their is an infrastructure push. Hundreds and thousands of trees that once gave beauty, breath and shade have now given way to expressway and highways and along with it empty, always being constructed high rise buildings. Slowly we start going past it. And we start seeing cow dung cakes kept for sun drying for kilometres. For centuries cow dung cakes known as “upla” in Hindi are used for cooking, cleaning homes and for homa- the fire worship. It’s smoke is known to purify the environment killing small insects and creatures. Many years ago someone said to Nara about India, when he was roaming in the river valleys of Kedar, that India …

LAST FLIGHT OF AN OWL

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She kept looking towards the sky while floating in the water kept for cows. Her death seemed such that at one time I felt she chose it.   But do birds more so when one is a predator choose their own death?   When Maharaj ji arrived, he first closed his eyes. May be she needed someone to close her eyes before it could be plucked out by hungry ones. May be he earned this burial. To only put a stop to this cycle. May his body rests and the spirit awakens. Aum Shanti In Photos 1  

The Pride of the Capital Parade

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Sometimes guilt pushes for better results. Thus Chatter woke up dot at four in the brahm mahurat. Even though he left home at five. We were able reach Rajpath in the darkness of the dawn. It was no less than grand theatre going on there. Never was Delhi be heard and felt from the pride and the energy with which they marched past. With the bands of each regiment leading the way. The drums, the beats, the smell of the sweating young, the valour in the air. The discipline, the clacking of the iron bar beneath their marching boots to the tar ground woke us all up. The mist, the vapours coming out of mouths while a woman officer commanding against the street lamps of Rajpath takes you close to India’a colonial cold faced armies. The practise and improvisation that has gone in the making of them. Oneness in the motion. The pride. It felt like they were owning the day. It felt like they made it our day. Whole, united. It was a day …

The day of the U-Turn

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Winters had started settling in Leh. I used to get up the earliest, take the coldest shower from the waters of Indus. For at least half a day to come, my peace with that. I was making tea when i heard Cynthia, singing. An old American woman who had been teaching in Leh for last 29 years. From the US, she arrived each winter to teach Laddakhi students. I offered Cynthia Tea. She said “I am sorry, I am still not Indian’ and laughed out loud. And asked me to come up and look at the old lines on her table. The table had a beautiful map. And this map sounded fulfilling. It had a path along the river Indus, that left the road way down and lead one to an ancient looking narrow canyon. She suggested, I must take that. And then without asking walk for an hour or two to the village called TAR. There lives my best friend; in a cave, like kitchen, where Ibex’s and snow leopards come sometimes to say …

One day win and other days Out

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The night was strange. It was a mix of sleeping deep and aware of some thing gone wrong. Two weeks were over in Leh. And as I had planned I got a bike for myself from Angchuk. I wanted to have a classic 350 but after the new UT status, government ordered the bike union to commercialise all the bikes or they’ll be seized. I got a Himalayan with me. While riding down to the narrow path of lama ji lane at upper changspa, something happened; the tendon, the tissue that joins the back part of the knee just went numb. For a moment i could not lend my weight on to my left leg. As I lied in bed in the night the pain was such nonsensical that I couldn’t straighten my leg, and if i even pushed and did, i could not bend it again. Throughout night as I moved from one position to other, I could feel the weight of my knee. Somehow i completed the task of sleeping. In the morning …

Amarnath in the times of article 370

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Even after thinking about doing something daily, one ends up doing it, achieving it, finishing it only in the head. In the head is good, as it creates enough compound interest in head but it is not good enough. I have had ups and downs, and have been away from home for some time. I was in Kashmir when article 370 was taken off. I was one of the last person to have trekked the majestic Amarnath ji this year. Without any plan or any inclination to have wanted to do it but surrendering to flow of life is such it takes you along on the paths, and you would enjoy. I fell in love with the harmony of the few people who walked along, some saints barefoot, and two without a leg who finished approximately sixty kilometres in as many days as I did. Food, sweets, tea, love and the name of shiva. But the feeling was erratic even then. Tents, people were leaving a month before. And many had already left. The way …

Shoes and the Sage

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After forty four days, I arrived home. Home is wherever mother lives. When I was leaving, the only thing i desired on the 43rd day, was to buy good walking shoes. I had even spent a good second half of that evening trying to find anything likeable. The ones i was wearing now, a pair of black trekking shoes; i had bought them four months ago in early August. Even though there is nothing as such like over-walking in the mountains, but by the time I finished my journey in the Himalayas, they seemed done. Any ways I could not find new shoes and at last left India with the same black ones. I traveled around Thailand and more so for a month long work-fellowship in Cambodia. From there I flew back to Kolkata and while spending my ninth evening in Kashi on Assi Ghat I met an old man whom I felt kept looking at my black shoes. As I followed his gaze and later his worn out feet. I walked up to him …

In the land of Snakes

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Twenty six days ago and three hundred fifty kilometers north I Moon I reached Aldona late in the night. It was Purnima, the full moon of Holi. Vishwan was away, gone to a border village, tsar. A place somewhere in the middle of the jungle at the border of Goa and Maharashtra. But I had no idea of that then, I was waiting. I sat downstairs at the bar. Grandmother was pouring feny to a local. She told me about Vishwan smoking too much. The room was lit with two cyan bulbs. He arrived. We kept my backpack at his place. He lit his cigarette. We sat. His hair had grown and white; beard thickened and black. Soon, we were off, feeling the dense wind of the leaving winter, scooting through the western ghats in the night going towards the moon. We entered the fair. Vishwan parked the vehicle somewhere outside and we started walking away from the lights towards the jungle. It was late. But it wasn’t dark. The night seemed to have dissolved with …

Schools ruining the foundational roots of learning

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We spent almost 15 years being brainwashed on learning things that have nothing to do majorly with our present mind space. And we keep paying the price. It is proven that the most dangerous habits of all come from high school. Because if you are not willing to explore and experience, you are not willing to learn. Traditional schooling rewards multitasking and widespread mediocrity, with a focus on ‘good enough’. means you’ve done enough, quick, get on to the next average thing. Repeat the cycle. I was reading somewhere that almost every public speaker has experienced the back-row syndrome. Where did we learn to seek out the anonymous middle or the other zone of the back row? Who taught us to worry about getting called on? If you’re going to bother showing up, why not show up in the front row? It’s that  tension and focus that will help see you beyond and soon yourself in a different light. Wondering is a lot more effective than wandering. School pushes hard for wide, bot not deep. It …

Where the Children go

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Among themselves they feel free. Independent yet in a boundary, vulnerable and not sure about tomorrow. Kids are those whom, while you watch them in your most baleful of moods they still make you smile. The essential human truth, pitted against modernity – is invincible. There is a child in a man wanting to go back to the womb. The shadows of a festering burden of the next crop of humans, the unclaimed, unborn, and the just born. The Indian state perceives the child parent relationship to be a legacy of tribute to a social order, more than a right of the child. When a child is separated from his/her parent, it is not viewed as the duty of the state to provide that child with a family environment. Adoption is supervised by the state, but India does not have a long term foster care or alternate care system outside of institutionalization. A study estimates that there are about 44 million destitute children and yet only 5000 are adopted each year. A countless number of …

Jaimaal – The Wedding Song

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An image of my parents wedding in 1982 I met J uncle on a rainy very cold january morning this year, near an empty swimming pool. His room – 705, is just beneath my room – 805, where i am writing this. J uncle had his own quiet world till he met my sister. My sister, she is a kathak dancer(banaras gharana). J uncle would not know about it for a month till one day they meet in the elevator, she moved and her ghungroo rolled from her bag. J uncle and his lovely wife had come from Banaras. In a quest to live with their son, they sold their house. They used to sing all morning there, he told me. He disliked it here. Everything. But he never spoke about it. He was just visibly sad. In his walk, thats how mostly i saw of him. A singer coming from a gharana who doesn’t sing anymore. In the meantime J uncle grew fond of my sister and attended one of her performances in Delhi. That …

A Brief History of Time and Walking in the Ancient City of Varanasi

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– All say i have gone on my mother, slanting slope with a dead end like nose, high cheekbones, eyes watching from a socket, paler complexion. Today when i lied beside her listening, i saw a few lines sketched around her lips, tight forehead, intense she looked, and looked old. I leave for Kashmir the day after for a month and wanted to post this write-up which i wrote six months ago on the ghats of Benaras. I am drunk tonight. … Holi city, indeed Crowded by boredom Of new and the old Japanese is written on the walls, Telugu, Gujrati, Hindi, Marwari and deity of the falling doll, Walls are tall as lanes are narrow concluding steps Going towards the flow Ganga looks like one today The sun is shining on the polluted dark A bark flows with the river, with a free body, swelled liked a shapeless balloon Him, crows are murdering more. But the noon is calmer here, they say, river trudges up from there background chantings and prayers from sound systems …