Writing Feedback / 'Heer - Ranja' - immortal love story [5]

Heer - Ranja .. it's a story I heard very long ago. Nothing about it comes to mind, except this picture of young lovers, in a desert maybe, their faces drawn with intensity and pain, and their clothes - him, in white kurta, colored jootis, a sash around the waist; her - slim, a light colored lehnga, thick strands of deep black hair.

Ah, love ! The above description aside, for it's most likely a memory of some poster .. the couple were very likely real. Heer - Ranja .. is a symbol now, from the past; like the Kada - steel bracelet, which Sikhs wear to show their dedication to valor. A symbol though of something real. For those of us who might wonder, or seek in our own lives, this very real thing, called love.

Much as I might like, I will not dwell on this often found coupling of love .. and Beauty. We've seen beauty abundantly in nature, in birds, in sunrises and sunsets, or by an expanse of water stretching into the horizon, in the night sky even looking at a distant moon, sprinkled with stars.

We've admired the forms of women on posters, their graceful dresses. As often, just the sinewing forms. We've felt an attraction, which might have been of lust.

But love, they say is a gentle thing .. and, love as they also say is immortal. It does not perish. Many of us are only willing to take this metaphorically. Yet, this idea is there along with the others, that some things transcend our lives. Even become the reason for the next one.

I haven't heard of women in India asking their husbands .. why don't you bring me flowers ? It does not mean the same as it does in other countries. Nor that kiss as one of them goes out in the morning, or does missing it mean what it might elsewhere. Love in India is somewhere in the same realm where other things, other worldly, are to be found. Expressed in this lifetime with no less an open heart, bare, vulnerable, which we would like to offer to our Maker.

Enough of questioning, does He exist, or does He not ! Silence those doubtings in your mind. You are in a way, like two simple birds, sparrows; flitting from tree to tree, parapets to parapets. Nesting, feeding the young, watching them learn to fly, maybe even witness to some tragedy. Love, life, Devotion, God .. it is all the same.

Writing Feedback / Daydreamer -- poetry-like [5]

I like the word 'day dreamer' .. it makes me think of meadows and grass. Of a boy in teens, longish hair, soft expression and gentle eyes. A smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

You find him sitting on some grassy patch, a stem in his mouth, lost in thought with an inward look. What is it about him people wonder - should we like him, or pull him up ?

Like some beast in the wild, a grazing horse, he lifts his head to survey the rolling grounds. His thoughts are like a river, natural, not overly turbulent. There's a harmony in them, with the skies and the universe.

Approach him like you would a river running gently beneath leafy branches. You might want to sit on its grassy bank and watch the gurgling waves at play. Sloshing on stones, white and centuries old; mesmerizing, washing away the tiredness of your mind.

He is a happy one, you feel. Yet you want to tell him, tarry not my friend, lest life leaves you behind. Don't you have chores to do ? People waiting for you ? But, what business is that of yours? Why do you pull him out of his reverie?

He laughs, sensing your envy. Ah day-dreamer, you must have been a bird in a previous life-time.

Writing Feedback / Two hundred years.. the British ruled our people [5]

Two hundred years the British ruled our people, and now it is their culture spread throughout the world.. in the language which is acceptable the world over, and their ways of doing things. Others were just dropped along the way, dismantled and destroyed under their aegis.

Then to ensure longevity of their own ways, they sowed misconceptions about the older ways in those very native lands from where they had tried to uproot them. One wonders naturally, can this really have been so? Do you? Have you ever stopped and thought about your real culture? Have you thought how life may have been very different had our ancestors had the strength to ward away the external. Maybe you have. And if you reflected at all on this, you must also realize it was a weakness not of physical strength, but in our minds. Ours and in all the other so called eastern cultures, which ... hey, what a surprise! .. are all the ones lagging now.

One such insidious idea sowed by the westerners, and one which I have seen still perplexes many Indians, to the point of making them doubtful about the entire culture of our past, is of the inherent unfairness in the fourfold caste system --- an inherent and a cornerstone of our Indian culture. Yes, it truly perplexes us, because in these times it is equated to the discrimination practiced between people say, on the basis of color.

Funny, it should have been so hard for us, as Indians, to get past this subterfuge of the west against our own heritage. Strange, because now apparently we are free to think, free to explore the truths about our past, and yet we always seem to trip over this obstacle, cleverly planted by our detractors.

So, have you an open mind now? As we reconsider the meaningfulness of this fourfold division which our ancient and original constitution was built upon. To me a clue was provided by coming upon the meaning of the word 'Shudra' in Sanskrit. That word actually means 'gross' or 'vulgar'. That is, unrefined or lacking in civilization.

An intrinsic human state, not an imposed one!

If we imagine ourselves faced with a task, such as Manu, the originator of Indian societal form had. Given the totally chaotic collection of a large mass of people with varying needs, capabilities and other things... it is obvious that left to itself it would never progress. Progress in the way that there is a stepwise and gradual development of the different facets of this mass; that one facet advances, then using the progress the other has made, is able to take itself further. The other facet similarly, left unencumbered of things which it has lesser capabilities to deal with, shares the progress with one which has developed; and so on it is like a braiding of hair, an intertwining where each contributes equally of something it is most capable to provide.

I think this is truly a very visionary idea, of having not two classes but four. Visionary like all other things we find from those times, only if we take that time to look for them.

I think it is similarly inherent in our natures, as humans, that our inclinations are one of these kinds: We are rough and physical, or we are inclined to manufacture and deal with goods, or we wonder about higher learning, or we simply do not have any particular inclinations to learn anything, in which case we are likely to remain, uncivilized, but still gladly accept it preferring that to the effort of learning of skills or ideas or of playing politics as rulers.

But look at you now! You work in a telephone company, or a software house or maybe you buy and sell property. You've put yourself entirely to that single segment, because you believe that is how you progress. In any case, you say, it seems to be working well enough in western countries, so let us get there at least, as we are 'developing countries' .. but we forget, that is their label for us.

The answer, and any chance of resuscitation for us as a people, lies in recovering the source of our knowledge, is it not? Or would you rather believe that meaning to human existence too lies in discovering the secrets within objects, and learning more about their properties. Or maybe, you don't even see that, that is where you are being led to. Why this confusion? Or how come we can so blatantly have been misled all out lives, and our ancestors of recent generations as well?

Two main ideas should be convincing to an open mind, to really want to know more.

Enter a foreign power, into a country of which they have no clue, specially of its culture. You yet can judge in a general way from just how people deal with you and each other, or from their countenances, whether while carrying out their activities or at rest, that this is a society which is quite balanced and at peace with itself. The people are simple, yet not dull. You find refinement in behaviors as well as the objects around, which you can certainly put a value to, because value of material goods in a sense goes beyond cultural boundaries.

Were you as a foreigner to stay long enough you would discover the high regard the people put to a class and category which is totally foreign to you. As you delve deeper into it, you discover that not only its language, but even its ideas are beyond your comprehension. Whatever be your design, even if one simply of curiosity, you befriend some people and eventually understand the ideas of the texts which this civilization has such regard of. Strange indeed are the ideas, the foremost, that our human life is only a part of existence, a temporary existence. Everything around this is equally fantastic to you. You know how ridiculous it will all seem were you to go back and suggest it in your country, as an alternative system of thought, a philosophy which has yet enabled a large country to endure and thrive.

Now, like you, if others too from your land, having explored this culture, go back and talk of the same things they found here; and it all gathers in the aristocratic circles of your country and further percolates up to the ruling class in your land. The reaction is as inevitable. We do not understand, nor will we, so let us weaken it; decimate it of its strength. Is it hard to imagine some people gathered around tables and pondering how to overcome a flourishing land, that we may take its riches without check and use the people and the generations to follow to serve our menial wants.

You can be sure, it must have seemed an idea of sheer brilliance then, and the person suggesting amply rewarded, in wealth and honor, who was able to point out, the importance of the mysterious fourth class -- whose function, seemed so unnecessary yet was in reality quite the opposite. The brilliant and simple solution was simply, " pinch it off!". Pinch this mysterious source of strength of this culture, and the civilization slowly will lose its coherence. Then, once divided and bereft of the value of its principles, which perplex us, they are like simple people, like any other without an inner binding fabric. They will be ours and so will be their progenies for ever.

Now tell me, you people, what part of this narrative, your own history, you find hard to accept? Do you even know whose debt you are most under if it happened this way -- yes, to those who freed us from the yoke! And do you know why they did it -- in the belief that we will find our way back to our roots! For that would make all they did worthwhile, when the tree of this civilization finds its own source of vitality, and begins to grow those parts that have dried up, fed as it has been, guided by foreign hands !!

Writing Feedback / The other family in our house [3]

Another family too lives in the space our house is in. Their's is a much more meager structure at the far end and in the left corner; the main house being to the right. In the space between their house and ours is a good sized lawn and a garden patch. But since there is a washing place attached to and behind the main house and it is across the lawn, the family needs to walk across to get to it.

They are originally from Nepal, and I know little about the political conditions there, or the state of their economy. Its obvious this family is here due to the latter reason - a situation similar to that which Indians find themselves in when they go over to US. They've lived here about eight years - an arrangement struck between them and my parents - as likely to be mutually beneficial, after my father retired and they saw none of us, their children, would be living with them.

My father passed away three years ago, and my own circumstances, willed or otherwise, brought me to move in with my mother only a year ago. We all, her children and our children, were always amazed how well she yet managed to keep the house. The garden with its many flower beds and rows of potted plants drew exclamations of surprise from anyone visiting the first time. Within the house too, the wall hangings, carpet and other objects de art collected over their lifetime, though aged, were always dusted clean and well maintained.

It always appeared this way to me whenever my daughters were over, in the few days we would stay - my wife for some reason or another, was busy with her work and away.

When I arrived here that first time after deciding I would live now with my mother, as it happened, she wasn't home. I remember how warmly the Nepali man, Bahadur is his name, greeted me. My mother really was having difficulty being alone, and they could easily see that.

Bahadur's wife is Vishnu, a little surprising since it is a masculine name. She does all the house work in our house. I remember her earlier, as being stiff, in an emancipated kind of way, and her clothes were always drab.

One day last year we had some visitors over and were sitting down to lunch in the back lawn, as we often did in winter. A call came from their village in Nepal that her dad had died. Wailing, she just left whatever she was doing and walked over into their own house. Ofcourse my mother learnt what had happened and told the rest of us. We left her alone then and all of us together brought out the things we needed to take our meal, keeping our voices down. She went and stayed with her family in Nepal for two weeks and my mother did all the cooking and cleaning, with me helping as I could.

Another time a few years ago, just before my father died, I was staying with them again. Both of them, my parents, were out of town and I too was going on a trip with some people for a few days. When the people I was going with arrived and I walked out, Vishnu too came out to check them, though she had been washing some clothes inside. This has stayed with me, or made me realize a concern and a bond they had for us, which I was unaware of.

One of the profounder ways in which I have been affected by living ten years in US, and similarly by the few years in France, is in how much lesser is the distance between all of us as humans, compared to our relationship with everything else around us. I am sure I could not have otherwise shed something inside me, lying there because I would not have cared to turn it over and examine it, an attitude towards the servant-class here in India.

I remember an incident from my earlier years of school. A young man who cooked for us once dropped something boiling in the kitchen and burned his foot rather severely. This may have happened during the day, but in any case my mother asked him to take the day off and he went away to where he lived, some place in a cluster of houses behind our own house. Later my dad and I visited him, or rather I tagged along, to give him some ointment for his burns. He was all gratitude, but I was immensely moved at how stuffy his little room was. It was the first time for me of actually seeing how 'servants' lived. No we, those who employ them, really have never visited their homes.

As it is now, I occupy this room in the back of our house and it has a large window overlooking the back lawn. The house Bahadur's family lives in, its front door, is only partially hidden behind a hedge. It is a little awkward, because leading out from my room is a small porch, and sitting there one is looking directly into their house. Or in any case very aware of their talk and what they're doing, as much as those sitting inside or outside there would be of us. I did, as a matter of fact accept that this family is really my neighbor -- with the exception that I have some privileges and some influence over them, which I cannot ignore, like anything else which is a part of my real environment.

I have watched over my own two girls, as they went through school in US, taking them to their after-school and weekend activities, understanding and dealing with the needs of their schools and otherwise .. now I can recognize so much of that in the chatter I hear from this house as their teenage girls and a younger son, return from a neighboring school; or when Bahadur returns from his work-place and the children happily greet him, interspersed with their demands, he speaks back to them in a mockly gruff voice. I sit in my own room, partly annoyed with the distraction; but very much an onlooker as well, and a participant almost.

As it had to be, eventually, this family and I have become connected in some mental way. I am sure they think of me as actually related to them or in their minds, unconsciously perhaps, they put me in place of Bahadur's or Vishnu's older brother. Any sternness I put on in an effort to keep at a comfortable distance, with the actual relationship of the two family's in mind, the children probably see as easily as a moodiness, or a part of the nature, any real relative of their's might have had.

Writing Feedback / ...a still life water color; I too would like to live to be 92 years old [9]

I too would like to live to be 92 years old.

I went to the hospital to see this 'friend' of mine who is turning ninety-two in a few months. He is surprisingly fit: he can read ordinary print, like in the newspaper or text messages; his stride is nothing short of amazing, almost a bounce, as he takes his evening rounds of the park; and best of all is his ability to communicate, without pulling you down as older people are wont to do, in that whining, almost morbid tone which makes them more respect-worthy they must think, for their age, that is. Or their brave suffering, carrying on inspite of all the world's inequities?

He lay there in a private room in the hospital as I walked in. It was a Sunday afternoon. Looking peaceful, reminding me of some literary English character, with his longish hair and beard cut in french-style. The room was a well kept one too, an armchair near the window placed invitingly where I went and sat down.

I call him simply 'uncle!' as I always have these past twenty years. He usually responds as 'my dear' or often more affectionately as " my dear boy! so good to see you!". And always with a gesture of reaching out to me, as if to put his arms around me. He met me again effusively, but this time he seemed to lack the energy to move his body.

I had texted him the day before asking how it was going in the hospital. He texted back " .. they kept needling me through the night and emptying my meager qty of blood. Got little time to sleep. Wait till my recovery and I will do my best .." He was making light of it of course, and referring to mediating in a personal matter I asked him to help me with, when he said .. 'he would do his best.'

We would meet otherwise in a park near his house in the afternoons. This was after a long break of nearly fifteen years. I had lived in a room at that time, built on a large plot a few houses down from them. He would be walking his dog to a nearby rose garden, as we talked about all kinds of things. A fascination with western ways and ideas and the everyday things around us and even in our lives, I think it was mostly with mine.

Now as we tried to fill the gap, we'd pick up on any subject bringing in other things it reminded us of which had happened during this time. My horizons had broadened and I could follow stories of his younger days. Things I don't remember him talking about earlier. What prompted him to talk of those things now, I wonder. His early days in Pakistan, the violence of partition, and later living in Kulu.

As I sat there now next to him I remembered an incident from the past, and started telling him about it. I saw him making an effort to follow -- as I happy with a chance to chat tried to broaden my story. He lost the thread, or realized he could not exert enough. I saw the interest fading in his eyes, and stopped. He did not prompt me to continue.

And like that we sat for many minutes, I wondering what to talk with him. The nurse came in with his tray of food. Welcoming the activity, I too ordered a lunch. We sat then in the quiet, something unlike how it ever was when we met outside. My lunch arrived and we ate from our respective plates. When we were done I told him I'd meet him now only when he was out of the hospital. He agreed with that.