Truth and Permanence

The truth and permanence of this transient world and this ephemeral life have been questioned by many – saints, religions, enlightened men and the frustrated ones.

I have read about it. Understood it. Agreed with it. And cared very little for it.
Today, for the first time, the question is welling up from within me, accompanied by a real sense of wonder.

Before me is a picture on the wall.
There are four people in it. They are all equal.

But it wasn’t always so.

In a not so distant past, one of them was special.
So much that the other three were part of a hazy background. The wall, the room which the picture adorned were hazy too.
I, my body, my face and limbs were a haze. Only a throbbing heart was real.
In fact, the whole world was a haze. I passed through it not noticing anything; only searching for him everywhere and finding him in everything.

Someone whose absence was unreal and whose imagined presence, a reality.
Someone who was my first waking thought. And my last.
Someone who effaced all that was past and pervaded all present and future.
A cinder in the eye. A mango hair between molars. Felt and lived every moment.
The only one felt and lived every moment.

All space and all time, stretching up to eternity was just him.
It was an absolute certainty that no matter what, I would love him forever. Till the end.
And I prayed, in my next life too.
In fact, I prayed I would come again just for him, even if God meant this to be my last life.

One day, it was over.

That didn’t surprise me.

But to my utter disbelief, I got over him.
When I did, all the haze melted, a concrete world claimed me and life went on, as if nothing had happened.

What surprises me is that, as I look at the picture on the wall, I feel no pain, no longing, not even a trace of that fever that had raged for years.
I search for the ache and I don’t find it.
He is effaced from my heart so completely, that it is difficult even to recollect the sensation of the love that had once been my life blood.
A block of granite has turned to vapour.

And that’s when I ask: if THAT love was not forever, what else in this world could be?
If such an intense feeling was mere illusion, what else in this world was true?
If a devotion that eternal did not endure, what else in this world could?
If a love all consuming could come to naught, if a well so deep could dry, if an emotion so strong could die, what else in the world was true, what else in life permanent?

Everest Calling - A Melodious Finale

Last Day.

Seated in my aisle seat and not too keen to gape out of the window (anymore), I put on the ear phones and closed my eyes. It was late in the evening. It was dark outside.
As if to mark the finale, the old Mukesh melody began as the plane started taxiing.

Taron mein Sajke
Apne Suraj Se
Dekho Dharti Chali Milne…

I smiled at the experience that was about to come.
I changed my mind and turned my head to look out of the window.
Those who have heard the song and it’s prelude are smiling too, for they know what a dreamlike experience a take-off can be if this song is playing in the background. A late evening take off, not any other.

All the earth below was studded with a thousand yellow, white and orange lights. As we took off, the lights got closer and smaller. To someone who had been conduced to a dream like state by an unearthly song, it was difficult to tell whether we were flying away from earth or the earth was flying away from us.

The song meant,
Bedecked in stars, look, here she leaves, the Earth, to meet her Sun …

The city lights of Delhi became a fabric of stars, descended down to drape the earth that moment, as she set out to meet the sky.

And the song played on…

Jhanki Payal,
Mach Gayi Hulchul,
Ambar saara, Laga Khilne…

But that was in my heart.
The tinkling of anklets wreak a havoc, and all the sky unravels before me… Bedecked in stars, look, here she leaves, the Earth, to meet her Sun …

------------------------------------

The last pictures… of the hotel in Kathmandu in which we had stayed, the manager who was so humble and kind, the Delhi airport, and two good friends who had a made a big difference to our trip.

In their midst is a signboard that is symbolic of our ultimate conundrum - our eagerness to attain Sattva and our reluctance to give up Tamas.

Bruised Goddess

This post is late in coming, but here it does, inspired by a facebook update, that (ironically) evoked in me, ideas radically opposed to those it intended to.

The goddess was bruised, of course by the brutalization of the girl in Delhi in December last year and another in Bombay recently.

But she was bruised more severely and much earlier by

- The objectification of women in the cinema and other forms of art in the name of creative freedom

- The brazen production of one item song after another in the movies in the name of entertainment

- The consent given by millions of men and women of this country to such abject degeneracy through their thronging the theatres to watch one ‘dirty picture’ after another

- Women ready to act in porn movies, worse than prostitutes; because they don’t just devour one man but weaken, cripple and enslave thousands of men

- An entire wretched generation of boys and girls that fuels the billion dollar porn industry through their ever raging search for more and more porn

- The quiet of a nation when Sunny Leone is given a red carpet welcome to our midst, paid to act in some useless TV show, given an image makeover and glorified as a successful icon

- More and more women taking to tobacco, alcohol and drugs for the sake of fashion and de rigueur

- Scores of women tossing their newborns into the hands of nannies to follow their ambition and career, in the name of liberation and equality

- An entire generation of women living neck-deep in cosmetics, chemicals, high heals, plastic surgery, silicon implants, abusing the sanctum of their body and directing most of their focus, time and energy to appearance instead of character building

- The willingness of women to objectify themselves through their dressing and attitude in the name of ‘to each his own’

- The simplification of a woman’s essence to a pair of tits and ass – by the effort and industry of various people under various pretexts – artists, movie makers, actors, singers, dancers, businessmen, researchers, governments, marketers and most of all by women themselves

It’s not that I am not outraged at the recent incidents in Delhi and Bombay; it’s just that I don’t know whom to direct my anger towards.

The police? No. We don’t even have enough policemen to guard us from thefts, frauds, murders, traffic accidents and terrorist activities. You want a policeman patrolling every street in the city watching over women passing by?
To all those who are angry at the police, will you make one of your sons a policeman to protect ‘the daughter of this country’? No, you won’t, you will make him a software engineer.

Law? How many laws do we already have in the books against every conceivable crime? How many criminals have these laws deterred from offending us? A very few. Lets have more laws for the protection of women, by all means, but they are not going to make any difference.

State? The police and the law are it’s arms. And we have discussed both.

System? We are the system.

Social transformation? Yes. But it’s not going to happen tomorrow. Not next year. Not even in the next five years. It will take 20 years.

So what should one do?
First, acknowledge that you and I are the system.
And before you ask for transformation through education in schools, begin transformation at home.

Will you say No to watching any movie that has item songs in it? Will you say No to watching any movie that has women in it with no meaningful roles but naked dolls with a view to market?
Could you say No to songs, Indian or western, filled with ‘shake your this’ and ‘shake your that’ and such lyrics that view women not as humans but as lumps of flesh?
Will you say no to porn?
Will you say no to smoking, drinking, drugs and everything that abuses your body?
Could you start caring for fashion and de rigueur? Two hoots, no more?
Could you say no to a shallow existence that revolves around beauty parlours?
Could you take a step back from your feministic notions of equality and understand that man and woman were never meant to compete with but complement one another?
Could you women delegate your ‘ambitions’ to your secondary role, but first perform in your primary role?
Could you even ask what your primary role is?

If your answer is No or if you are simply silent, then you have no bloody business to carry banners, march on streets shouting protests against the world. You are apathetic, downright, and your anger is pretence. Your raving on facebook and elsewhere are just to get yourself some attention and make you look good in your social circle that’s as half baked as you are.

I don’t watch porn, I vehemently say no to filthy movies, cheap TV shows that thrive on the voyeurism of the masses and to dirty literature.
But I am guilty of beauty parlour visits and one inch heels, though I don’t take it too far. I mean, they are the least of my preoccupations.
So I cannot say that the Goddess is perfectly happy with me. I am sure I too cause bruises on her, small and big.
But I am grateful for the good sense that makes me see all too clearly that a society gets just what it deserves, just what it asks for, that it’s all our own making and if anything has to change, it has to begin with me.

Yeah, I can see your next question coming.
What about the west? People there do all the above you are asking us not to, and yet, women are not brutalized.
My answer is, they may not be brutalized but overall, their situation is worse than ours.
Tell me what is better? One man killed by an enemy followed by universal outcry for ‘right to live’ or all men drinking poison of their own free will, smile on lips, no one seeing any wrong in it?
The former.(I pray you think so!)
The same way, a woman stripping of her own free will, smile on her face, is much worse a tragedy than a woman stripped against her will, tears, blood and all.

Stripping was just an example. Don’t take it literally, get the drift please.

A society that grows up on ‘sexification’ of everything from tissue paper to laptop (as seen from their advertisements) and gives its hearty approval to teenage sex and pregnancies, ‘prestigious’ porn stars, strip clubs, sex shows, naked women in Times Square inviting men to take pictures with them for money and lastly, to 50 percent divorce rates, is no haven for women. Nor for men. Not for any human being.

Settled Here

It’s amazing how people hold on to their land, their little 60 by 40 site, and pass it on from one generation to another as faithfully and certainly as they pass on their blood, but give up one whole country and all its legacy and all its heritage and not shed a single drop of tear.

This is what amazes me most at present, as I meet one Indian after another in America who has ‘settled down’ or is looking forward to settling down here.

Starting from their children, all of their future generations will be forever removed from India, its language, its idiom, its culture, its history and its customs. It’s a goodbye once for all.
I have goose bumps even as I think about it.

As I look out of the window of my 19th floor room in Sheraton, I see the World Trade Centre. I am thrilled to know I am looking at the tallest building in the United States. To its far right, I locate the tiny shadowy Statue of Liberty and feel thrilled again to know I am the only one who can actually locate it. I go to the 21st floor club lounge to look at the Manhattan skyline and one of the days I am delighted to see Empire State building in blue lighting. I commute in the subway like a New Yorker and feel proud when I help an American family get on the right train through a confusion of maps and signboards in the underground subway station.
I am not really missing India.
Every weekend I tour Manhattan, I discover something new. I am enjoying it here.
But only because I know I am going to be back in India in a few weeks.

If I were told one morning, that I would never go back, never return to India again, I would be standing at my 19th floor window, weeping my heart out, at my great loss and a greater lacuna that was to come.

Everest Calling - A Evening of Nepali Culture

I was not aware of this, but part of our package was dinner in an authentic restaurant with live performances depicting Nepali culture. There was singing, dancing, men in Yak costume, Yeti costume and all...we all were wearing the yellow and blue Mt Everest T-shirts that the tour organizers had distributed that evening.


The later pics are the interiors of the hotel.

Everest Calling - Kathmandu - Pashupatinath temple

In the evening, we visited the Pashupatinath temple.
Cameras were strictly not allowed. I took a few pictures from the outside.

It is not one temple but a temple complex and it is huge. There are many shrines, many ‘gopuras’ or rather, pagodas that make a much prettier picture from a distance than from inside the complex. Also from the distance, one is not aware of the crowds of people inside it nor of the squalidness that characterize all popular pilgrim centres.