BEYOND

None dared to walk past
the past guarded by trust：
beliefs might crumble fast,
emotions lost in petty wars.
Who shall rise beyond ego
to clear the old white dust?

The horizon seemed near.
I hurried but the sunrise was far!
Illusive, like a mirage it stayed.
The closer I moved, the farther it went!
I lost handful of my life's faith
beyond stupidity of chasing old fame!

How do you measure passion?
No, not love...I mean... passion!
Quantify your compromises,
your lust for all worth... worthless?
Or spend your sleep
in the arms of your dreams... dreams
waiting to get stripped
by the society that gifted you these?

Your destination isn't your destiny.
You are bonded by the evil weak.
Walk beyond your confusions
into the strengths of your soul
as you had run into the horizon
to catch the elusive sunrise old.
You are not to be enslaved
by what must command you not.
You must rise beyond your grave
into goodness the world has not got!

TINY, ABSURD THINGS

[You got to read the entire post to conclude.]

I am a contented man. All my life, I have learnt to stay satisfied with everything I have. I am like the Master Shifu of KungFu Panda. I do not envy others, and that's why I consider the act of judging others' achievements too demeaning. In fact, people who are quite nosy in others' stuffs are the ones who do not attain peace in their entire lives!

Having said that, can anyone tell me why the Sharmas are spending excessively on painting their roof? I did ask Gamblu, their watchman, while the Sharmas were out for groceries, but he did not utter a word, despite my promise of offering a pack of Shillong tobacco. How stubborn people are! How ignorant, perhaps! Well, never mind! I will ask Compounder Brajen about it. He is a man of genuine knowledge of everything (except his work: last time, he injected distilled water into Mrs. Shambhu for curing her fear of tetanus). However, that does not matter, of course. I am going to discuss nothing technical with him! See, you need to treat everyone equally and must not be judgmental in any sense. One thing which I must mention is that Compounder Brajen is probably a miser, because he spends little on his scooter. I am, however, not much sure of it, and it is only an intuition.

Being a contented human being, I have never bargained with the shopkeepers at the cloth-shops. I usually have my wife doing that, and I am contented with the art she possesses. Now, not being judgmental and praising your wife at the same time is a difficult task, and I believe, not all men can pull off such an extraordinary feat. Only contented men like me (every husband shall agree) have the ability to survive such difficult times with a peace of mind...just like forever meditating ninjas! Wait...not forever...now-and-then meditating ninjas!

The art of maintaining social relationships without fuss requires high emotional quotient. Looking into the reputation I hold in my society of being a gentle individual (ignore the 3 fights with the Sharmas, 2 violent conflicts with the Kalitas and 5 rants with the grocery guy, Harish), I must be declared a personality of social peace. That is what contentment is!

It is truly disgusting to watch parents not teaching their kids their mother tongues. I have never stopped my kids from learning their mother tongue. It is a different thing that I have not told them anything about learning it. But, if you cannot cause a good thing happening, you must not stop it. That is the lesson of life I have acquired. I gave them opportunities to learn the language from the television channels and the compulsory school textbooks. Unfortunately, they are not in favor of watching those channels and have scored in 40s (/100) in those subjects. See, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. I did drag the horses to the lakeside, but I cannot contribute to their drinking from the lake of mother-tongue knowledge unless they wish to. Anyway, I am paying for the channels and their tuition!
See, I have high regards for writers. I often scribble creative things in my leisure. For example, you will be surprised to know that I am credited for inventing the way of writing shorthand for monthly grocery list. This way, the people around me do not get any clue of what I am buying for the month. (Sometimes, I also cannot figure out. I have to call my wife then. But that is the level of intelligent non-AI encryption, you see.) Another advantage is that you can use minimum space of paper. I am a follower of the Save Trees Campaign. But, recently, my son showed me that I can save more by typing on my mobile phone. However, I am a follower of No Foreign Technology Campaign and I cannot violate that. A twig of a tree is better than funding foreign agencies.
Anyway, if I go on, you will not be able to accommodate the goodness I have in me. What if you start envying me? And I love short pieces of writing, as I have already told. Although I love writers, I hate those who put up large posts on social media, dragging on old folk tales and clubbing them with historical stuffs/ bluffs. I am a follower of Superb Fans of Dan Brown social media page, though!

THE SERIOUSLY AMAZING PUNDIT

Often

No...no...

Many a time, from my negligible list of blog followers, I receive a very interesting question: Why is it that you aggressively blog for a month and then remain dormant for another? Do you search for motivation?

Yes... and no. Yes, because, the inner drive to write down a blog post requires some motivation for logging in and typing. No, because my world is full of stories. I do not have a photographic memory but, I have words...lots of words which are not Tharoor-ish, of course, but they can carry meanings for everyone.

Saying this, I can recall an incident of a pundit whom I had met at my previous place of residence, and developed a non-religious friendship with him. Yes, non-religious, because we talked of everything but religion. He would speak of humorous stories of his village where a person was named 'Patang' at his birth because his parents loved Kaka (Rajesh Khanna). A man named 'Aamram' went to sell mangoes to the daily market, and found a pot of gold coins near his mango trees. There was a beautiful lady who would visit his village during Ram Navami and play the role of 'Sita', and leave. She would not talk much to people. Later, after 3 years or so, people found out that the lady was actually a boy who was doing this to support his family of ailing father and three sisters. Often his stories were unreal, which he would reveal at the end of the tale. But, all of them had a taste of Indian-ness which can make any scriptwriter go gaga over them. All the while, it would seem real to me. I tried to delve into this man's level of intelligence. He could develop a story with such minute and realistic details that anyone would believe it to be true. I would tease him to write these stories and get them published. He would say that there was no higher form of peace than speaking the stories to friends and laugh together. It was like instant audience feedback, free from expectations and bias, he would say. 

My pundit had a habit of clapping his hands when excited. The temple would echo with his claps and our sounds of laughter. Often, he talked of the lands which he had traveled in his life, how frauds through the language of 'gods' cheated the illiterates and the poor. He said that he was once approached by a gang of so-called 'baba's to join them and earn by cheating people. He refused, and left that place because it was turning into a mess.
He cooked the best halwa. On fourth Sunday of every month, he would cook gajar ka halwa, and we would have them together in the evening at around eight o'clock. On asking where he had learnt the recipe, he would say, "Let some things remain secrets. Otherwise, people will say that I am not an interesting person. You focus on eating, and do not try to be an archaeologist now." Saying this, we would laugh heartily. I mean, the way he spoke, there was a flavor of sweet humor, and that is what I have preserved for my life.
Pundit Ji was an amazing person. I remember the way he sat on the third or fourth step of the temple, and spoke stories with a glow on his face. Often I would wait for the day to end so that I could know another story from him. I didn't have frustrating days back then, because anything discouraging was neutralized by the old man's tales.  

The art of Pundit Ji bringing together different stories of life makes me wonder how the interpretation of intelligence is limited to professions. Intelligence is beyond professional excellence and smart tricks. Although these may define a bit of it, yet it is not exhaustive. It may exist in the minutest of a man's behavior and art. For me, the pundit was intelligent because he looked into life in the simplest manner. He built simple rules for himself, and one prime rule: never hurt anyone in any way. That was the biggest lesson for me.

And, just as he would want it, everything I have written in this blog post is not true. There was no Pundit Ji. But there are people who can sum up to become one!

SCRAMBLE-GAMBLE: the WhatsApp Game

I have seen and learnt that desperate times need desperate measures. However, desperate times also bring some good sidekick innovations with them. 

The world is utterly distressed, and a bit afraid of the curses of the CoVID-19 pandemic. Humankind was not prepared for this kind of unseen micro-scale enemy, we must agree. The world is fighting against this disaster together, while lockdown and curfew rules remain to be imposed subjected to various amendments as per the regions or countries.

People have lost physical contact but the virtual world has brought them together. Families are gathering on social media and conference calls. Reunions are happening, and I bet they are as memorable as ever. This post is a short one on one such re-union where 're' stands for 'repeated' because the individuals involved were never far and had met often before the pandemic struck.

I know that during this lockdown, all of us, you, me and others have become serious members of different social media groups, WhatsApp being one and the most common among them. Right from 'Class of 2012 (or ____)', 'Humans of Neighbourhood', 'The Musical Attorneys', 'Go For Grocery', 'Office Work-From-Home Association', 'CoVID Avengers', 'Lockdown Pros', 'Lockdown Foodies' to 'Cousins', 'Family', 'Family Except Egoistic Maria', 'Only Husbands', 'Only Wives', 'Kitty Party' and others, we are spending some useful/ useless time on these groups. The 'Good Morning' messages which we had hated earlier, are now our alarms. The insults and leg-pulls are now our pastimes. While people are doing wonderful comical videos, some are recording serious narrations with fewer views. Everyone is having a taste of their self-created karma (...not that right, I guess!).

One of my maternal cousins came up with the idea of creating a WhatsApp group to celebrate online birthdays of some of us, which, unfortunately fell during this lockdown. We call it the 'Goswami Service'. Now, we are a healthy group of of five, ranging from 30 down to 15/16. 

Sorry...I mean the ages. Smile!

So, we started with celebrating birthdays of one of us, and after throwing GIFs of cakes and thank you's, and sighing on the misfortune of staying indoors and having China as our neighbour, we realized that we had nothing much to do regularly. So, we started creating topics of discussion like favourite songs, five favourite films, favourite foods and stuffs like these. But, we felt these were non-recurring events: one message was enough to cover the topic. These helped us realize that honesty can be best practised during idleness. Choosing a favourite from a pile of endless favourites is the most difficult task: we realized this.

Then we invented one of the most interesting games, the SCRAMBLE-GAMBLE. The game is not new. You have all seen 10-13 jumbled words forwarded as a message on WhatsApp. What we did was polished the message, and turned it into an interactive game. The rules were pretty simple.

• One person shall post a jumbled word in English, and a valid hint. The others shall try to post the correct answer.
• No scientific names were allowed. Anyway, they would be in Latin.

We were a bit speculative of the implementation of the game. But, we decided to give it a try. We started, and it became a blockbuster exercise for the mind. We are learning new words now. Plus, the younger ones are somehow getting prepared for aptitude tests in a way or the other. We started the game to engage ourselves, but, now the game engages us, and relieves us of the stress.

A few snapshots of the game are shown here.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

The 'Goswami Service' thank you for reading this post, and urge you to try this game with your friends. We know you may feel somewhat offbeat to introduce it at the beginning, but, we tell you, if it can bring together individuals from diverse age groups, it can do wonders for your schoolbatch or office time-pass groups.

I dedicate this post to the members of the 'Goswami Service' for whom I stand (just kidding): Man-I, Man-II, Mun, Sum and Tri.

Thank you, and stay safe!

THE AFTERNOON RAINS

Solace is a kind word
in a gruesome world,
surrounded by wounds
of forgetful truths,
besieged with guilt
of vice and filth!

How deceiving can life be!
All lies were covered in
one single coffin buried deep
in the mind's blurring sea.
All I have done right
are the wrongs, I suppose:
I went in for many a fight,
I lost not, death was close!

I cannot undo my deeds.
In karma I place my beliefs!
The first afternoon rains
clap for my claims:
the beats on the roofs
like horses' matured hoofs
urge me to lull into solace,
a kind word I fear to face.
Death can be kind too,
pay a visit without a clue,
I shall depart then without a fuss
if that's what kind karma wants!

HOPEFUL MOURNINGS

Dawn of hope
from the hilly slope
brought the skies,
blue, bright and white.

Sunrays warm,
warmed her heart:
that filthy germ,
well, could not hurt!

Doctors and pills
ate up her bills,
she borrowed breads
from the newly weds.

Scarce milk,
no fried beans
and she screamed
like, in bad dreams.

Was this fair?
Death in the air,
life smelt rare:
all grief and fear.

Deceptive time
shows its might-
only a month,
all crushed and burnt!

WARCRY

The war isn't mine,
it is as old as the wine,
old as the cuckoo's song:
Spring's back, see the morn.

Swords and shields,
bows and javelins
fill my armory fast.
Warcries and songs,
big drums and horns
adorn my batallion vast.

I chose this fight.
I know what's right.
History may turn old.
I'll stay strong and bold.
I bear no fear,
unto victory I steer.
Death is but an illusion.
This war is my salvation!