Stream Meets Ocean

Oh lord, kill me today,
but kill her too,
so that both our souls
are liberated
to spend the eternity
together...

This cage of a body
doesn't promise me
her hand
her love
her everything everytime everywhere.

I can't die
before her.
And she can't
leave me alone here
even for a moment.

Kill her today, but,
kill me too,
so that out of the bounds
of these bodies,
we spend eternity
together...

A Mature Civilisation

What makes us humans different from other living creatures? Is it community? No, ants live in communities too. Is it agriculture? I dont think so. Some species of ants also do some sort of harvesting of their own. Is it tools and technology? Well, for all their real usefulness, I think, there are orangutangs and chimpanzees who are equally adept with tools used for their own survival. Is it our ability to subjugate other species? Think about it, there's always been someone at the top of the food chain. So if it hadn't been us, it would've been some other carnivore. We are just slight improvements over them. Ok, then it is love? Yes, I can say love, in its unique human form, makes us different. But then all animals have their own way of showing love towards their mates and children. Moreover, love is quite chemical, instinctive and inexplicable. Our highly evolved brain is indeed remarkable, but it is not different. What is really different is what we have thought out of it.

Human communities are indeed unique but they can still be called improvements over animal communities of chimps, gorillas, lions, elephants, ants etc. But somehow, as a community, we have grown faster and larger than any other animal. Is that because we are clever? No.

Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is a law that is strictly adhered to by every living species on this planet, except humans. Here lies our uniqueness.

Every species is eventually preyed upon by some other species, or is robbed off its food by its own. Animals kill each other and kill plants. Its their instinct. Pre-historic humans were perhaps similarly instinctive - hunting in packs - and if required, killing one of their own to snatch food or a mate. Groups of humans must have fought each other over limited resources. Serenditipity gave us a superior brain and we used it to advance our tools and technology. But we were still quite tribal and nomadic. Perhaps what prevented these tribes from becoming villages, towns and civilisations was conflict of interests. Limited resources, compulsions of survival and barbaric laws were reasons for these conflicts.

I feel it was a brilliant spark of an idea in some tribal chief's mind that propelled us into the era of civilisations. And that brilliant idea is called 'Compromise'. He must have thought, "Why cant we live together? Why cant we share everything? Lets compromise!" Thence came the words 'negotiate' and 'dialogue'. These words seem common today, but they must have seemed truly 'out of the box' and revolutionary in those days. But believe me, compromise, as a tool for conflict resolution, is today as uncommon as common sense. Thanks to that ancient tribal chief, human beings started to share resources, common land, started to put their heads together to solve their problems, developed a sense of security and leap frogged into the era of civilisations.

Everyone knows thats the greatest developments in science, arts and society ocurred during the times of peace and calm. Wars were fought for consolidation of resources and staving off competition. But the actual development happened only during the peace that follows great and devastating wars. It was, and still is, a great price to pay for good art. Human beings want peace more than art. They want security more than freedom. But we still fight - someone somewhere always finds an excuse. Civilisations taking centuries to build up are wiped off within a few decades. Simply because the new chiefs of human civilisation have forgotten the magic words - 'compromise', 'negotiate' and 'dialogue'.

What makes humans different is not technology; or even civilisation. It is our ability to resolve conflicts in a consensual manner. Consensus, as a feature of human decision making, cannot be over-emphasised. It is the consensus of the majority that brings about stability, peace and calm. The measure of maturity of a civilisation is its ability to resolve its greatest conflicts through dialogue and non-violence. Conflict resolution is the best use we have made of our brains. Violence is a short cut, but violence is also exactly what we're running away from. Violence begets more violence. Violence is also infectious. People witnessing it get conditioned in it. It pushes them into further violence; or it lies dormant in their blood to explode out at some other time. Violence really spreads around like a sneaky virus. Violence is instinctive, brainless, base, animalistic ad totally illogical. If force has to be used, the best case would be to stop violence, not to crush it. But anyway, there is always a more intelligent and non violent means to end violence. How much and where you can compromise will tell you how much you can control violence. Non violence as a tool of resistance is almost forgotten today. To most people it seems more illogical than violence! What does that say about our civilisation? It tells us that either we're regressing, or we are nearing the end of our civilisation cycle, and a great catastrophe is waiting to happen that will wipe off most of us. We are no longer a mature civilisation.

JFK said, "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." Which of the current world leaders follows this guiding principle? We are rabidly scared of negotiating, not because we might fail, but because we might be seen as being weak. Since when have dialogue and negotiation become signs of weakness? Since we've had intellectual dwarfs and cowards for our leaders. We, the people, are to blame because we let them be. Its our laziness and lack of responsibility. I believe that fear to negotiate is the biggest sign of weakness of a leader. Considering negotiation a sign of weakness is nothing but false pride, pseudo egotism.

How evolved or mature a civilisation is, is denoted by how much of its biggest problems it can solve through peaceful conflict resolution. By that standard, I think we are far from being a mature civilisation. If only our current tribal chiefs would sit down and talk it out...

Lonely Flame

Its been raining outside - smooth and silky rains that want to paint the leaves of trees with large brush strokes. Hesitatingly and naughtily, the cool breeze is playing hide and seek with streams of raindrops that seem to be hanging from the dark heavens. There's nobody on the streets and it is very peaceful. Born out of nature, it is permeating the mind, body and souls of every living creature. The calm and the clarity are immense. And being alone at home in the midst of this shower of love is not very heartening for a die hard romantic like me. I crave company. I crave love. I crave a touch - of anybody - my mother, my pet, or my beloved; even my unborn daughter. A touch of tender loving care that gives appropriate context to today's blessings. Oh how I wish someone I love would love me too! Could there be anything more beautiful than that at this moment?

Loneliness is such a disease! It almost turned me into a chain-smoker and an alcoholic. Conversation, with anyone, is quite cathartic. My unshowered love, inside my heart, finds a momentary distraction. Today, there is no company and no conversation. Thank god I found the company of books in my childhood. They speak to me and I listen. They love me most in my loneliness. They provide balm and succor. They nourish, massage and cuddle my lonely soul. Perhaps, if things don't work out in the human world, I will formally marry one of them, coz they're the best friends and everlasting company that I've found.

I have never been in denial of anything. I am a realist. But only I know with how much pain and suffering I have consciously denied myself the expression of love. I am a realist and I know it would be futile. My love is very precious to me. I will not let it go waste. When the time comes, the stream will find its way to the ocean. But for now, I have dammed it inside my heart, constantly living under the fear that the dam will burst and kill me along with it. No, let it be like an inferno that has been preserved as a silent flame of a wax candle, waiting..waiting..waiting...

No, I cant let that candle go out. Just to escape the pain of waiting and bleeding little by little everyday, I cannot let that flame go out. I know of lonely people who come to terms with their loneliness by slowly suffocating that flame. But tell me, can anyone still remain a human after he has puffed out love from his heart? I know I wouldn't be. And I know loveless people aren't. Even a celibate sage has divine love in his heart. Its not our ability to think intelligently that makes us human. But its our capacity to love someone selflessly that gives us certain superiority.

The Sun Never Sets

Even when we see the sun setting, all it is doing is trying to rise. The earth revolving around the sun and rotating on its axis is unstoppable, much like our own life. How much so ever we may define things as setting, all that is happening is preparation for another rise. Our life, our future, our beauty, never set, they just go into preparation for another rise.

When I was a kid

When I was a kid, I used to be a nice kid. You know, I used to carve figurines out of chalk(brought from school) using pins. I had a collection of those till recently. I don't know what I did with them.. :( I spent many long hours as a kid carving out faces, animals, guns etc out of those chalk pieces. Oh yeah, sometimes I used a blade.

Man was I crazy!?

I used to take a string of say a metre in length. Then I would take a coloured candle and light it. Then I'd lay the whole string on the ground and coat it with the melting wax. After that is done, I'd make the room dark, then I'd burn the string from the bottom while holding it up from the top. The burning wax would fall onto the floor like drops of coloured fire! It looks so beautiful in a dark room! Of course, after that I'd clean the wax off the whole floor.

Once I spent five hours of a perfectly useful day trying to pick up an object using a crane made up of nothing but strings. I thought(and still think) that it was possible. The engineer in me told me it was possible! But after five hours I gave up. I was actually quite hungry and my back hurt like hell! Then there was the time when I burnt whole of my right palm with 'barood'. I went crazy with pain!

Oh yeah, I was a nice kid.. I miss that kid.

These days I do not do anything as useless or as interesting as that.. :P

Generosity Impersonified

Another red light. I guess I must have been in a good mood, coz, I reached into my pocket, took out a coin and dropped it into the cupped palm of the beggar woman.

The baby on her hip was playing with a deflated balloon---pulling it and releasing it to whip in the air, or now, on my car. He had a toothless grin. Quite cute actually.

I guess my unbound generosity made him happy. With a chuckle, he released the stretched balloon. It struck me right on the nose! Ouch! Boy, did that hurt?! I laughed off my anger, even though my eyes welled up a bit. I was supposed to be all kind and nice and goody, remember? "Nice baby cute baby".

I took the opportunity to press the cheek of the baby with all the feelings of a Mahatma. The light turned green. I guess vengeance got better of me and the press turned into a pinch. The baby's face transformed from a grin to stark astonishment.

Before the baby could start bawling I vroomed off leaving the angry mama hurling abuses at me. He! He! He!

Eyes and Feet

He was looking at her feet.
    She was looking at his eyes.
She tried to hide her feet.
    He looked at her eyes looking at him.
She quickly looked away.
    He quickly looked away.
Both of them looked as if 
    neither had seen anything.

And all the while he was there, she didn't know what to do with her feet.
She was squirming as if the bed was extremely uncomfortable --
    trying to shift her feet as many times as possible so as not to let his gaze rest upon them.
He knew what she was doing and felt bad about making her feel like that.
But he couldn't resist those lotus feet --
    as if they were the most beautiful things that he has seen in a long long time.
It took him a lot of effort to tear his eyes from them --
    it felt like a huge sacrifice.
But that made her feel better.
He moved away for a while.
But once in a while he stole a few glances of her feet.
Coz it were her feet that revealed to him the real she --
    the girl he knew, the one she's inside, the woman he loved once -- and not her face or body or voice.
Those divine feet were not only a part of her being,
    but also a part of his story.

The Rise of Communism

In history, the rise of Communism must be seen in the wider context of global economic culture prevalent during early 19th century. Capitalism had reached a stage where it is today where there is a gap, not just between haves and have nots as individuals, but also between entire nations. There are 'have nations' and 'have not nations'. The nuclear element compounds the problem by introducing another element that further exposes the lawlessness and arbitrariness of human beings. We have not really come far as a race. This kind of situation is ripe for revolutions. That is what led to the Russian Revolution. Luckily, democracy takes the steam out of masses' frustration by changing unpopular political regimes. In a monarchy this is not possible, hence, overthrowing is necessary. If you look at it more deeply you will find that Democracy is just veiled Communism and Capitalism is disguised Plutocracy. Democracy is Communism's balancing power against Capitalism.

Canine Xenophobia

I go to this lovely half jungle half landscaped park at the edge of Kalkaji for my morning jogs. That day, as I joined the dogs in their stretching routines before beginning my walk, suddenly my co-stretchers started growling. I tried to figure out their object of attention among the healthy patrons of the park, but couldn’t see anyone particular they might be displeased with. Humans are, after all, their co-habitants and overlords. There was a motley group of quasi-religious beggars who joined at this joint for a joint every morning. But they were even more rooted in that place than the right wing loyalists (i.e., the doggies).

Presently, the growling morphed into low intensity barking and a pack began to form. Looking in the general direction of their pointed noses, I found that the culprit was none other than a weakling of their own species. I say a weakling because she appeared as such – cowering with fear. Or maybe she was pretending to be afraid (body language we were told). All of a sudden, the pack of indigenous mongrels descended upon her. Mongrels of all hues – black, white, brown, grey, shades of those colours and colours that I don’t know names of – but all mosaics. Some barking, some yelping and some others just too excited to make a sound. Some stout, some emaciated, some lactating and some mere pups; but all pretending to own the planet. It was obvious from the scene that the cowering fellow was an outsider and this was a territorial dispute. As if Saddam Hussain had walked into New York Central Park and Bush & Co was re-enacting Abu Ghraib around him. Anyway, after due admonitions, threatful posturing and some passionate (and occasionally angry) appeals by the foreigner, the trespasser was unceremoniously driven out of the canine country via the no-dog’s land at the edge of park.

I was disappointed with the dogs. I really was! I have great regard for dogs (more for bitches), and place them higher in character than humans. But man’s xenophobic tendencies have somehow infected them. Where there are so many of them, why can’t they take in another who needs shelter? What would it take for her to become a member of the pack – mate with an existing member?

They say dogs are territorial. So are we. The difference is, that tendency resides in the genes of dogs, but in us it resides in our egos and balls. At least dogs have character! Oh how I wish the world were going to the dogs!

As I was walking back home, I saw two dogs sprawled attentively alongside the watchman inside the gates of a primary school. Another three were guarding a hundred metre stretch of road near my house. I thought, “Damn, these guys know their purpose in life!” I was jealous! I went back to securing my place as a cog on the wheel.