The unimportance of being us

 Why do people cling on to the belief in the force they call God, even when it is so apparent at times that the inevitable has happened and if there is, or not such a force , it is helpless and status quo cannot be retrieved, or changed to our desire? Why do people pray for well being and fervently plead to their God for salvation in the after life but blatantly cross the rubicon of the commandments?

Some pray longingly to God for wealth, some for physical well being, some to stave of death, some for nemesis to others and so on and so forth. The other day I got a routed email from an acquaintance – it was titled “The fairy of wealth”.

The message was attached to a picture with a large room stacked with currency and a fairy standing by with a wand. The message exhorted and implicitly warned me that if the pictorial message was not circulated to seven people in the next twenty four hours dire consequences will befall me. I would not decline money if it comes as lottery but was in no mood to acquiesce the fairy.

During a discourse by a reasonably well known and financially galloping mystic, a gentleman I knew, who is worth assets of at least a few hundred million and more ask him in all seriousness if he could teach him alchemy. I for once was fortunate to see the today’s version of ‘Midas’ in flesh and blood.

A few months ago I happened to go to a famous and commercially rich temple. In fact I had to tag on with a friend and his accomplices. We were ushered in through a narrow path way (through VIP enclosure) past the serpentine queue of devotees and into the sanctum of sanctorum. I respectfully but with lot of amusement watched them pay obeisance and pray to the deity. At times their expressions were nothing but comical (no pun meant). In fact it was so. The prayer and rituals consumed around thirty minutes. Which also meant that since we were ‘Very Valued’ devotees of the deity we could hang around their much longer while the commoner was whisked away after a glimpse of the deity inside! Once out of the temple the topic of discussion my friend initiated was quite on the matters of promiscuous indulgence. And that he being a media person and consequently a familiar face cannot with comfort indulge in exploits outside marital relationship. So much so for the fervent prayers, respect and fear of God a short while before!

This is the state and statements of a mother, from whom fate had wrenched away her son. The boy in his mid twenties was drowned and body not recovered from a lake in Atlanta US. The parents are practicing Syrian Catholic Christians. The intensity of agony and trauma can be well imagined. The mother has now become a freak and recluse of sorts. She carries the Bible and a photograph of her son all the while. Christian help groups and friends gather in her house often for consoling prayer meetings. She is quiet at times, and then she weeps for long inconsolably. It is two months now since the tragedy. Now she and her husband go to the church every day without fail, perhaps a kind of deluding! They were Sunday church goers and practicing Christians in that sense. She makes statements that “I will not leave that fellow Christ until he brings back my son. He must tell me why he did this to me”. Reminds me of the story ‘Monkeys Paw’, wherein the grieving mother seeks the  powers of the talisman and wishes that their son who was maimed and killed crushed in an industrial accident be brought back to life. And behold he came back to life but it was the crushed and contorted creature that came to them alive. And the father had to usurp the grieving mother and wish the last wish to the talisman to take away the creature –‘their dead son’.

A few months ago on business tour outside India I lost almost a hundred thousand Rupees in an apparent ATM fraud. Coming back to India I have been in constant complaining mode with my Bank. When I realized that I was cheated the feeling was of despondency. Felt like a fool and stupid at that. It could be my careless operation of the dispensing machine. I felt terribly guilty. And goodness forgive me that sum was what was required for the college annual fees for Ara.

However the other day I was informed by the Bank that the matter was sorted out and they have received instructions to credit my account with the sum. Their anti- fraud team had gone through the CCTV footage at the ATM and found what and how the fraud actually happened. It will be insufficient to say how relived I was. When this issue was elatedly told to a family friend she said, “That was the hand of God”. I wondered loudly where this hand of graciousness was when the fraudsters took the money from the ATM.  She said, “well the devil had his way then”.

That tells after all, the matters of life are just another T-20 cricket. You cannot tell which way and how it heads until it is over. A game of chess as the old timers said. And most of the while we play we stay intoxicated by the belief and wish that we are something special to be taken care of and handled with kid gloves. But the God we put up there may think otherwise more than often. He may not need us for the sun to rise and set and the planets to move around the stars. We are not important enough.

…

The Plague

He avoids them like plague”. The statement was from a person who was refering to me the attitude of her friend towards some of his kin. She continued, “While in Coiambatore he prefers to call up on his few friends rather than go to the abhorred lot”.

Made me think a bit, but at the same time also struck a cord with the statement. Yes most of us have encountered people in flesh and blood  whom we later chose to avoid like plague. The civilized thing we could do most is not to burn them at the stake, like they did to plague afflicted lot in medieval times, but keep away.

But what this person referred to was not biological plague but plague of the soul, mind and the heart. Sounds quirk? “And there are many amidst us who are incurably afflicted by the disease of the persona. They walk and live in our midst as carriers of the abhorred bacteria .The melancholia of the matter is they can be more often the people who have been nearest to you”...

I did not bother to continue the discussion. And let the matter rest there. More because it was indisputably so!

The Tenderness of Darkness

The first streak of light that sneaks in through the thick fabric curtain on the French window hits him with the mammoth force of reality. His body clock strikes every morning at the precise and conformed time of early dawn. And he never would be able to slide back into sleep any long. Now the early light of the new day throws ominous amber on the future ahead. He becomes forlorn and listless. He wishes if he could sleep longer. And longer! He recalls that it was total serenity in sleep!

It throbs in his head. He could feel the discomfort the brain is wretched with. The chemical reaction that ensues within his brain traverse all over the nerves- head to toe.

Then suddenly putting him into awe his brain settles into a plateau that runs through with the exuberance and free will of the mountain rapids. There cannot be a hiccup and it can never be forlorn in the days ahead.. He feels the blood pound within him with the air of hope and confidence.

The momentum is lost soon somewhere. It is a free fall into despondency  and despair yet again. He tries to claw back slowly from the abyss that he stares down. But he feels the quick sand is pulling him in.

And it is soon night and dark. He slides into deep sleep and darkness falls upon with the blanket of comfort and reprieve until the early streak of light the next dawn.

Rainbow country

Over past years I have been traveling (purely for sustenance) I have been fortunate to see quite a few countries and places. And have been often asked if I have visited LA and Las Vegas. If I was blessed with wealth to throw around and if it was a few decades ago well then the idea would be tempting. But not any more, more because there are more Spartan places that gives you goose bumps.

I remember the few moments I spent at the Rjghat in Delhi. That was like visiting a haloed piece of land .It was awe filled indeed.

But then the visit to the SOWETO in Johannesburg South Africa was one unique  experience to the heart and mind.

A tour operator of Indian origin from Meerut UP was my guide. He took me around in his tour taxi. He was a third generation  migrant in South Africa.

SOWETO gives one a cultural shock of sort. Perhaps it would have been a traumatic one if I went there in the seventies. But now the roads into what is called the largest slum in the world have a four lane traffic running all way through the town. The slum as it is blithely called is a far cry from the sweltering dusty sewage dump that the slums of  Bombay  are. The houses are decent looking and all sported satellite dishes. Only in some interior corners did I notice shacks,open drains and muck. Though traffic and traffic rules are impudently ignored! Prominently even now, not a single white is seen in SOWETO. The tour guide told me of an instance in the seventies when two Afrikaner policemen who unwittingly wandered into SOWETO were lynched by a black mob. Their body was never recovered.

I was eager to visit Nelson Mandela’s house. We went past a steep gradient- a hillock and past what is even now the official residence of Winnie Mandela.. The former residence of Nelson Mandela is now  museum. It was from here Mandela oragnised the ANC resistance against apartheid. It was here he had those undercover rendezvous with his colleagues in the resistance Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo etc.

The house was made of red bricks and could not be not more than 500 sqft. It was on slightly larger piece of land perhaps 1000 sqft. Spartan I thought, was an understatement and blasphemous if one can compare it with the official residences of the Pontiffs who head the religious flock in different corners of the world

. One is engulfed with unbridled excitement when one enters through the small gate and steps into the drawing room. It was like going back into the moments of history. A rocking chair, a pair of leather boots, a single wooden cot a sofa, a table and a couple of chairs were all I can remember in the house. It had one living room a bed room and a kitchen. There were now photographs of the past, displayed. I was told that Mandela came straight from Robben Island off Cape Town after his long incarceration there to this house and lived here for a few days. 

                                                              

The guide, a young black who did his History major told me with impassioned face how he as a little boy along with his little friends peeped through the air vents on the compound wall and saw Mr Mandela sitting in a chair on the verandah. The guy was quivering with excitement. He showed me bullet marks on the wall of the house. They were gun shots that were randomly and indiscriminately sniped at the house by the Afrikaner police force when ever they got the information of Mandela’s presence in the house. The three quarter of an hour I spent in that small little place of history  will be etched in me for ever.

The Regina Mundy is a catholic church in SOWETO and is a symbol now of the resistance. It now sports a new look. But there are bullet scars that tells the agony of the past. It was into this church police fired live ammunition at students who were taking cover from the police firing during the SOWETO uprising in 1976.

                                                     "Where Hector Peterson Fell"

The Hector Peterson Museum tells the story of white mans savagery and reminds you of the days when more than half of the white race over the world turned a Nelson’s eye to the brutality of the white Afrikaners. This museum stands where Heector a little boy of 8 fell to police bullets while unsuspectingly walking with his sister during the students March against the white rule in 1976. The photograph of his sister running wailing by the side of a black man (who was never seen since) carrying the lifeless body of Hector Peeterson is haunting in memory. The photographs and the  video feeds in the museum  sometimes can bring out the gut from your stomach. It tells us the appalling and gory level human beings can go down when in relation to a fellow being.. And the revelation came to me was that it was not the English perhaps who inflicted the most horrifying savagery on the natives all over but the Dutch in South Africa and the Spanish in the Americas.

                                                         IN SOWETO

When one leaves these symbols in salutation to the human spirit and sufferings it is difficult to understand the heart and the vision of Nelson Mandela that would plead for a ‘rainbow nation’ after all that took place on its soil.

I felt that not even many trips decades ago to LA and Las Vegas with my pockets filled with green backs would let me experience the experience that these places in SOWETO rendered.

Lust for Gold 'Akshaya Tritiya'

Mans craving and insatiable lust for gold has now been stealthy channeled by the Bullion merchants through the sudden elevation of the unheard and  obscure “Akshaya Tritiya “into a cunning marketing gimmick. The success of "Akshaya Tritiya" as a marketing tool for gold merchants tells palpably how gibberish people can be. Even the BSE was operating on Sunday the 16 th of May as the day was ‘akshaya tritiya’.

Until a few years ago I cannot recollect ever having heard of the day ‘akshaya tritiya’. 

When I poured through the Wikkepedia it gave some fascinating mythical stories. The day is considered auspicious by the Jains. But strange a religion which postulates renunciation of worldly wants, possessions and pleasures must attribute or endorse this day  for materialistic indulgence. Now the Hindus consider this day as the birthday of Parsurama. Truly I may not be a great fan of his as he was responsible as the legend and myth goes for the creation of “Gods own Country”.Certainly a thoughtless act of which we see the results piquant now.

But why gold of all metals must hold this vantage status on this day. Why not some platinum, plutonium or any higher metals? Ha this is very strange! If one must go by the value then the yellow metal is down below, even lower than a piece of shimmering carbon.

Reminds me of the old fable of the King whose insatiable lust and love for gold saw everything in his land including his daughter turn to life less gold sculptures. If spending money on this yellow metal were to bring happiness and  success what about the millions who cannot even find enough for one square meal a day? Do they not have representation in the scheme of things Gods enact? And do buying gold trinkets on this day absolve one of the sins of the past? If one’s karma were the yardstick determining one’s well being in this world and the nether, how does this strange enactment on this ‘akshaya tritiya’ day have bearing upon one reaping well being and success?

Why not some community service instead? Why not use at least part of the money that is thrown after gold  to feed some hungry?

I can understand investing in gold as an instrument of prudence. But to attribute the possession of gold on this special day to a promised and assured deluge of manna from the heavens is vulgar.

This is yet again another instance of the silliness and mindless tradition or aphorism from the religions. Most of all this lust for Gold is vulgar, obscene vanity that only human beings proudly wear on their sleeves.

Poems of hope

When I began scribbling in the Blog the first thoughts I aired was on "hope" . And the prehensile hold on hope still somehow eclipses moments of despair.
Two poems that may enliven ones mind........................in moments of despair.

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

When’re I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof!

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!

When’re the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel men, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country's honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed
beneath thy pinions canopy my head!

Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great Liberty! How great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppressed,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glittering!

And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head! 
John Keats ( Hope)

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

IN the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

IT matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

....William Ernest Henley ( Invictus))

Life

Will you know the next moment?

The incongruity of life is the uncertainty of the next moment. Because nature may or may not have a design for us and we know not what it is and what it is not .We do not leave in queue and in the order of entry into this world. The other day the TV channels reported that the Mumbai attacker Kasab may not be hanged for a long time as there are about one hundred plus convicts on the death row and the queue system has to be kept. Strange men do not enforce orderliness of the queue in train stations and public places but is zealous to have it on the death row for people awaiting the hang man.

Coming back to the fickleness of life – two bereavements took place in two different families I’m acquainted with. This happened over the past three weeks.

And both incidences were with ample irony.

The first was a middle aged woman in her early fifties. A boisterous person that she was, there was no pittance of clatter and chatter where ever she was around. She had enviable means of living and perhaps was oblivious of the inevitable that can befall from nowhere like deluge from the heavens and wash her away before she could blink. While on a vacation in the Far East with her family she died while she was gulping water off a jug. She went out even before she could blink. Strange indeed the capriciousness of life! The autopsy report noted “asphyxiation”.

The second tragic irony  happened in Atlanta US and I guess officially the boy (he was only 26) is not declared dead but missing. However all probability leads to the presumption that he is gone for ever. His parents might, as long as the corpse is not found, presume and hope that he will return one day. This boy had finished his masters in Engineering and I understand was employed in Atlanta. Last Saturday he went on a picnic and a boat ride on the lake with his companions. On the return leg when they were almost nearing the shore some of them threw themselves into the freezing waters .They all had life vests on. But this guy in exuberance ignored the life vest and plunged into the lake. He surfaced twice and then he was gone.