I STILL PRAY

There is an old Kali Mandir a few kilometres down my residence, on the outer Ring Road, opposite a bus stop which has now been named after it. A Mall has come up right behind it. The Mandir overlooks a busy service-lane. The untidy, unmarked abode of the Divine Supreme stands resolutely in the midst of honking traffic and hustle and bustle of day to day modern life as though superimposing itself with conscious determination on a world which has almost forgotten its existence in its callous, go-getter frenzy.

Even after several attempts at architectural grandeur, the temple remains dirty and beggar ridden. Nevertheless, devotees throng the premise with deeply guarded secrets in their heart of hearts just for the ears of the deity. The legend is that all prayers get heard at the deity’s durbar; however unassuming the precincts be the Goddess is ever awake and aware of the plaintive calls of her devotees. Many a time pilgrims are seen crawling on the ground fronting the temple in a bid to express their heart felt gratitude upon fulfilment of a mannat.

Interestingly, I was introduced to the sanctum by an auto driver. At that time I used to stay around fifteen to sixteen kilometres away from my present residence and was frantically looking for a flat on rent in the locality wherein I presently reside. My weekends would be spent house hunting, of course, without any positive results which meant that I passed by the temple every week without being aware of its whereabouts. Months went by in hopeless efforts till one fine afternoon speeding by the temple in an auto, the driver suddenly pressed the brakes to slow down the vehicle to offer his thankful prayers to the deity. The temple shutters are always open and one can have a darshan from the main road itself.

Touched to witness such pure devotion even amidst busy work schedule, I exclaimed with astonishment to find the pious spot so close to where I intended to make my home. It was then that the auto wallah told me how he had been lucky to have received Maata’s blessings during the adverse phases of his life – how all his prayers were heard and wishes got fulfilled in no time. Spellbound I listened to the incredible experiences. After a while, as he steered the auto past the temple, I suddenly bowed low and murmured a prayer. The weekly house hunting was bearing down on my nerves. Mentally and physically exhausted I pleaded to Maa for mercy.

Strangely, within a day or two I got the much coveted flat and by the end of the month settled down peacefully therein. Thereafter, on several occasions, I have felt the urge to visit Maata’s durbar and after every such visit I have returned happy and contented.

However, more recently I had another instance of visiting the temple when my pet Mr. Snow Boot suddenly took ill. No amount of medication and veterinary care seemed to have any impact on his declining health. Nothing seemed to be working for Snow. Day and night we would be coaxing Snow to have a few morsels of food but he plainly refused as though he had just given up on living. As a last resort I ran to the temple to pray for Snow’s recovery. With choked throat and tears streaming down my cheeks I whispered my prayers to Maa. In some corner of my heart I was fully confident that Maa would listen to me and extend a helping hand in my times of despair and distress. I returned lighter of heart and mind after my anguish filled communion with the Goddess.

A week later Snow left this mortal world forever.

I was dumbfounded. I did not know what went wrong. Where did I falter? Did I expect too much from The Almighty? Why did Maa not listen to my prayers? All my questions remained unanswered on that bleak morning when heart broken and grief stricken we buried Snow in the lap of Mother Earth.

It was a few weeks later that an e-mail message from my esteemed friend Omji cleared my doubts. It said that the Lord knew best which one of our prayers to hear and which ones to disregard. Plans of a mortal being fail as the Lord takes over to decide in which direction our lives should move. He is the best judge. Even if we try we cannot fathom his greater and wiser moves and plans which get revealed only on hindsight.

The message opened my eyes. Though I still pine for my friend Mr. Snow Boot and still do not know why he was so suddenly taken away from us, I want to tell all my friends and readers that I have not stopped praying, oh yes, knowing fully well that at times the answer can be a very big no. Surrendering to the All Powerful with the strongest, staunchest belief that He would never fail to be by my side in times of need and necessity; even though he may not give a vote of agreement to all my desires and pleas, nevertheless, He would always guide me well and clear my path of all thorns and thistles as I stagger along.

I continue to humbly bow to His command…

LOVE & LET GO

I am still not convinced what love is all about. I have still not been able to define the noblest of feelings which can be experienced only by humans in all its glorious splendour. Or is it a myth that we cling to just to make life a bit easier? Is it merely an illusion which blinds, bluffs and buffets us with an additional ounce of buoyancy where exists none. I am not sure and I do not know whether I’ll ever be. Understandably so because I have kept it away from me for so long that it has eluded me forever. I was afraid my vulnerabilities will be stripped out of the closet if I let myself loose. What an ignorant cowardly fool I have been. I have in the very beginning jumped and caught hold of the worst scenario even before the nascent bud sprouted and spread its wings. I have embraced a nightmare that is why the dreams have evaporated leaving behind a piercing, pricking, paralyzing nothingness. I have crushed a blossom before bloom. As a result the fragrance has died down before the petals could unfold in a rush of gay hues.

When I look back and around I find myself clinging to too many relationships in life! Why? I feel they are important to me and I will not be able to bear to be without them. Again a childish premise to start with! No amount of temptation can withhold what is destined to wither away. The ball of fire rising early in the morning from the East warms us with its delightful rays. But we cannot expect its glory to be imperishable. Its not!! Every evening it bids an adieu on its own giving way to the inconsiderable night striding in with its pall of gloomy darkness. But we still hope for light perhaps knowing at the back of our minds that day is not afar. But we have to let go so that it comes back to us in thousand folds. No amount of volition works here.

Mr. Snow Boot, my canine pet, came in my life nine years back. For nine years I nurtured him like a dream – feeding him, seeing to his day to day comforts, bathing him, playing with him, talking to him and most of all being with him. He was a constant companion to me. And one day without any prior intimation he was gone. I had two pairs of leash for him, a horde of medicines, dog food, choostix, toys and what not. But when the time came for him to go no amount of leashes and chains could stop him or hold him back. That is the day when I was taught the lesson to let go. I did not have any options left. I let him go. And he just walked away without looking back.

The evening previous he bade a tearful good bye to all of us. We thought it was the physical pain that made him cry. We did not know that it was his way of telling us that he was leaving us forever. It is our human weakness that we cannot anticipate the end. Or is it that we don’t want to? We keep on hoping for the best and persevering to maintain the status quo. But in this world of relativity is there any status quo?

Death makes one philosophize. That is the only thing that we can do accosted with the Unknown. We weave tales around theories and axioms and try to content ourselves with our little logics which we consider inviolable. But the undeniable fact is that we are left askance in the face of God’s will and plan. What is His plan behind Snow Boot’s departure I am still at a loss to fathom? Perhaps it will unfurl gradually. It will be a wisdom gained on hindsight. Till then I figure I will be groping about for an answer. Till then I shall await in mourning. Till then the poverty of my soul will lay bare at every bend that I take walking on the rugged terrain of life’s landscape. Till then I shall have no peace.

We buried him in a jungle. I hope in a few days to come the earth under which he sleeps is covered by plants, shrubs, weeds and flower beds, so that wild and untended as they may be, yet life’s continuity will get reiterated and the endless beginning refill Nature with limitless joy.

In loving memory of Mr. Snow Boot…

AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION

I could hardly see through the aromatic haze which filled the room and my vision. It was an ordinary room with an extra ordinary atmosphere. There were twenty odd people seated on the floor staring with deep concentration on the wall opposite regardless of the heat or the smoke. The five gentlemen seated in front chanted incomprehensible mantras in rhythmic sing song octaves. Their chants hitting the ceiling and the walls returned to reverberate in the room with such echoing potent that the repetitive rhyme of their shlokas assumed a persona of their own and hung like a heavy rain-filled cloud with occasional bolts of lightening thundering across.

The booming voices of the priests electrified the environment no less than the deity captured in a huge floor to ceiling painting. Somebody said it was the portrait of Tibetan Kali. A few were of the opinion that it was the artiste’s own imagination. Some others said no, it was his other worldly experience which inspired him to draw the awesome and imposing figure. They elaborated that the artist had a vision of the deity in a hospital far away where he was lying in semi-consciousness recovering from an almost fatal ailment. Nevertheless these hearsay the portrait had an odd magnetism about it.

The reality was that a horde of devotees sat still in that square room with its spotless mosaic floor and stared intently at Maa’s supremely serene visage with all their hidden wishes, pains, aspirations and perhaps secrets churning inside their hearts appealing silently for mother’s indulgence or forgiveness. The beautiful countenance of the deity dazzled more and more with an ethereal brightness as the chants resonated into a crescendo. And so did the wicks of the candles and diyas placed before the deity for aarati. The dim lights of the room and the night outside could not cast gloom or despair on the devout seated therein as the darkness was dissipated by the steady glow of the candles and earthen lights becoming more and more intense by the hour.

Slowly and steadily the chants meandering through space proceeded towards its grand finale. As the Pooja ended everyone bent over and touched the floor with unfaltering devotion. The main priest, a short, unassuming, bespectacled man in a long shirt and dhoti, rose up on his feet, neared the portrait and raised his hands up above in the air and called out to Maa pleading plaintively, “Maa! Maa! Give thy blessings Maa!” Soon he stepped back and there in his mouth was a Gulab Jamun (sometimes it would be a sandesh or a rashogollah), Prashaad or blessing of the deity, in its physical form for everyone to see. One after the other the devotees in the room filed in front of the deity holding their packets of sweets trying to reach out to the unadorned hands of the deity raised up from the elbow to shower unhindered love and blessing to all her disciples. One by one they would file out carrying the visible signs that Maa had heard their prayers. Every box of sweet, opened or closed, had her thumb impression on one of the sweets, a tinge of vermilion and petals of marigold strewn inside. From where these came nobody knew but nobody present in that room questioned the veracity of the process.

Every Tuesdays and Saturdays our family religiously attended the ceremonies. We have had many such boxes of sweets with Maa’s thumb marks, sindoor and flower petals. I heard my father often saying that Sushil Babu was a Siddha Purush (a man who had attained spiritual heights). It was said that Maa came to “meet” Sushil Babu every evening. Her arrival was preceded by the chime of her anklets. Sushil Babu vehemently vouchsafed that Maa was a paragon of tranquil beauty – (she came to him as a typical Bengali Bahu in a red bordered white saree) – and was not the demon-devouring, aggressive persona as we were accustomed to seeing in pictures and sculptures. Sushil Babu had a checkered life of grief and personal tragedies. But not once did he ask anything for himself, so said my father always. Devotees who left their problems with him were discussed with Maa during their holy meetings. Some claimed to have had enormous relief as an outcome of these intimate conversations between Maa and her son.

I do not know how my father benefited by his association with Sushil Babu. But till now, even as I nostalgically reminisce over the magical realities of worship witnessed long ago, my heart or mind does not allow me to be skeptical or suspicious of the intimate communion between the Divine Mother and her Earthling Son.

WANDERLUST

I have roving feet
On wings of lust
Kissing the waves
I taste dust

I wake up to Thee lost and bereaved...!

She traveled winter as the harsh fingers of the freezing wind stroked her contours with loving lust. Miles stretched the deserted ruins whenever she dreamed of a warm, cozy, inviting hearth. She survived bodily every whip lash of agony and estrangement that life inflicted on her. But her soul repulsed and recoiled from the thorny thistles of greed and hurt. She kissed shores to be pounded by tempestuous waves. The dark lines on her palms harnessed a tsunami. But she waded through cyclones, tramped through blizzards, undaunted; narrowly escaping the treacherous falls off hair pin bends. Her life was writ in ink of shame and shun. When I met her she was just a barren land mooning over past harvests.

The saree tied low, the hair tightened into a non-descriptive bun, her pale countenance was slightly coloured by the crimson lips a little smudged at the ends. Chewing a heavily dozed zarda paan she wedded silence in thirst for words languishing in her heart. Somebody whispered that she was a divorcee. Reason..?Adultery!! Her husband had caught her red handed with another man. Atrocious I thought. The whispers continued. She had the custody of the girl child but she pined for her son they said with malicious pleasure. And then followed the earth shattering revelation…The son resembled some body else.

I suffered a fatal attraction towards her. She symbolized the wrongs which were strangers in my land. The strangers tempted me to no end. Not that I craved to emulate her. But the blueprints of her life were, shadowed with murk, held the pull of the opposites for me. My ears twitched as soon as I heard even a pin drop of rumour about her. Her torrid affair with one of the top guns had all the ingredients of the romantically dangerous. The illegitimacy of the entente heightened its glamour. It was like a broad daylight robbery of chastity and piety. Bizarre figments of idle imagination lent riotous colours to vivid tales defying every fiber of ethics and righteousness.

And then suddenly one day it was all over…

Vacant months went by. Absenting from work quite frequently, she regained her chastity by abstinence. Somebody moaned her ill health. Some body else paid a visit to the “ailing nun”. She epitomized painful solitude. Surrounded by every comfort of life that money could possess, she lay in her bed clinging to the counterpanes, while the door bell resonated with shrill screams. There was nobody to open the door.

Ensued a season of dull quietude…

She was back to work. But now in a new avatar! She was going to be strangled in wed lock once more. The prospective bridegroom was also a divorcee with grown up children. After a while a few glossy snapshots did the rounds. She was shrouded in bereaved white while the groom looked equally mournful. The marriage was presided over by none other than her ex-beau. A shock wave left us numb. Was this the shore that she was hankering for so long? I wondered.

Not for long. Soon we were swept over by another grievous tiding. The marital bond was straining to the extent of frayed ends. Bouts of drunken abuse left her massacred once again. The solace was too obvious. A miasma of booze and brawn fogged her nights. I am sure there must have been more for the wagging tongues but I ceased to follow her tracks.

A much coveted transfer altered the cityscape for me…

Years followed in chasing my own desperate dreams. A few culminated into reality but most crumbled to dust. Then one fine day a long lost acquaintance brought in her tides quite unexpectedly. She was ill, very, very ill. Cancer she said with a woebegone look. I shuddered. There was nobody to take care of her. She was all alone…I asked the most dreaded question which shivered on my lips hesitant to slip out. Would she survive the losing battle? The answer trailed off in muted fear.

Faltering foot prints wore on the sands of time and I again lost touch of her…

Light years after somebody called up as though to infuse the air with wisps of bygone fragrances. Two laughter choked voices spent many an hour over reminiscences of those golden days when hearts were young, thoughts naive and aspirations novice. As I was about to put back the receiver in its cradle she exclaimed have you heard of her? No, I said what now? She has left the city and embraced the hills. Taken to the path of renunciation she said poorly stifling a snort. I sniggered back what happened to her string of beaus? Sold off like the Ferrari came the tongue-in-cheek reply.

A few days back somebody took her name again…

Today as I sit by the lonely brook and ruminate wistfully of those days she comes to my mind often. She chased a mirage as grains of sands tricked down unaware through the gaps between her fingers. The gold dust washed by the blaze of the day and scorch of the night turned from fire to ice and back. She was scalded and frozen alternately and at the same time. Lunging forward she must have tried to gulp down the moon. Her unquenchable thirst must have made her despair through the myriad gullies of life seeking for the ultimate, ideal dregs of wine that could immortalize her being. What she got in return was a quagmire of crunched hopes. The critics may call it a life of irrevocable blunders. But I choose to call it the wanderlust.

THE SHEPHERD BOY – ANOTHER REALITY

While environmentalists may clamour about water, air, noise pollution, many of my esteemed friends, residing by busy Airports and dizzy motorways confide that they cannot do without the drone of the airplanes or the disturbances caused by the cavalcade of vehicles in the neighbourhood. For me, it is the exact opposite. When I visited Kolkata to attend my uncle’s death anniversary, I could not sleep a wink because of the continuous din of the heavy vehicles passing by throughout the night. Though, residing by the longest network of road in the Capital, the direction/location of my flat is such that it prevents the heavy noise of the steady stream of traffic 24Xx7, from percolating into my day to day life. God’s grace because I am a light sleeper.

But what intrigues me more is the calm acceptance of violence in today’s lives. We are no more surprised by the blood and gore splashing the headlines of the dailies. When an aged couple gets killed by a rogue of a servant, who had been staying with them for years, we snigger a “yeh to hona hii thaa” response. When blood soaked bodies lie by the road side we quickly change gears and flee to escape from police interrogation (read harassment). After 26/11, the metros remained almost empty just for a day or two. Thereafter, it was routine. It was not that one should have been cooped at home to avoid an imagined disaster. But what was more endangering was the black humour which ensued. If a luggage was found unattended, the commuters joked about sniffing a bomb amidst the layers of clothes and other day to day necessities packed within. It was as if they had accepted their fate that a sudden massacre could end their lives anytime like the wick of a burning candle blown off by a mere phew!

To borrow a few lines from the brilliant essay written by my learned friend Shri J Mathur – as we deaden our minds to the imminent danger of a catastrophe we also de-sensitize ourselves from the burning issue and adopt a no-concern attitude. Optimists may call it adaptability. Pessimists may view it as escapism. The debate continues.

I remember having once written a short story in versified form on the instant topic of discussion which goes something like this –

The shepherd boy lives by a happy stream
Jumping over a pebbled path without a break
As the sage like mountains watch with a scowl
A few huts sleep by the dancing waves
A gay flute fills the afternoon sky
Crooning a tale to the grazing sheep
As the fire dies down behind the peaks
The boy returns home with his gay herd
To have a frugal meal and retire to bed
At night when he tosses and turns on his sides
The guns roar a lullaby on the other end
Listening to the drumming drone every night
The boy peacefully goes off to sleep

The other night was unusually calm
The stars shone cheerfully bright
The moon beamed like a crystal maze
And the guns bellowed not
A single song throughout the night

The boy next day was late
To his work
Not a wink did he sleep
The previous night

I assume that this must be the case in war torn countries and with people living beside man-mad LoCs. But let’s not get morbid; rather, pray that sanity prevails before the species coined as Homo Sapiens in their overbearing vanity born out of intellectual supremacy marches headlong towards the road to extinction. Let’s pray that our planet Earth who has mothered us through epochs sees a violence-free global civilization soon.

Amen!

THE SHEPHERD BOY

AB KE HORI

Ab ke hori, let’s go back in time when the earth and the sky were not polluted by men and machine; when the dusty pathways running through the green pastures, in the season of spring, would be strewn with colours of different shades – red, green, blue, white, yellow, ochre; when the sky would be hazed by the flying fragrant abeer and gulaal; when colours would be made out of homemade vegetable dyes, plants, leaves, crushed petals, pollens etc.; when holi would not be a day’s celebration but be preceded by months ‘ preparations; when the benevolent monarch would open the doors to his royal court to all his subjects, rich or poor; when people would be dressed in their colourful best and dance and sing in unison “phagwaa brij dekhan ko chalo rii” , visiting one household to the other, pulling out the members one by one, smudging powdered colours all over, drenching them with pichkaari full of coloured water, munching meethais, embracing each other and cheering loudly “holi hai” !!!!!!!!!! In short, when life was simpler and holi was celebrated in its true essence sans hooliganism.

I remember last to last year, we had gone to attend a Hori Music Concert held at the back gardens of Hotel Ashoka under an ancient and huge Ashoka Tree. As Pundit Cchainulal Mishra, the Thumri Maestro, strummed his Sur Bahaar and bestowed life to his immortal Hori Thumris, the atmosphere was automatically electrified and charged with joyous and mellifluous vibrations. We sat on the stone steps, surrounding the tree and listened to him mesmerized, as dusk deepened into evening and evening crooned thousand Hori Leelas into the night’s ears. The sky became a network of sparkling stars and a beaming moon regally presided over the nocturnal darbaar. But astonishment abounded when Punditji finished his first rendition and the birds nesting in that stooping tree above, laden with an intricate filigree of branches and leaves, started chirping all at once, as though applauding unanimously the ethereal melodies of Raas Leela vocalized by Punditji.

Punditji’s thumris were followed by Quwwalis by Warsi Brothers. It was here that for the first time I learnt that in ancient times, the Dargas and Mosques held special Hori Quwwali sessions ushering in the Spring Festival. Hearing this, the blood baths and brouhaha over fundamentalism and religious issues seemed all the more meaningless and futile!

As I write this blog, a few lines of the poet Brahmananda floating in the air creep into my ears involuntarily:

“Kaisi hori machaai Krishana Kanhai Acharaja lakhiyo na jaai
Ek samay Sri Krishna Prabhu ko hori khelana mana aayi
Ek se hori mache nahin kabahu yaate karun bahutaai
Yehi Prabhu ne thaharaai, Kaisi hori machaai”

These lines refer to the infinite rounds of hori played by the Lord with his devotees in unison wherein the man-made narrow divides dwindle to dust!

“Paanch bisaya kii gulaal banaakar beech bramhanda udaayii
Jina jina nayana gulaal padi waha sudha budha saba bisraayii
Nahin sujhata apanaaii, kaisi hori machaayi”

Set in Raag Kaafi, the Hori (sang during Holi), describes the eternal leela of the Lord and his unique way of showing the path of the Ultimate Truth through innocent and impartial love in the form of abeer and gulaal.

Once bathed in the swirls of the divine abeer/gulaal, the devotees are rid of all moha-maaya and filled with such untainted piety and sublime love for their fellow brethren that there is no scope for hatred, violence, distrust and misgivings left in their pious hearts.

Ab ke hori, lets play like the Lord plays hori with his devotees!

Have a safe, cheerful, colourful and all embracing Holi!!!

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT ( প্রথম দেখা )

Upheaval

প্রথম সমুদ্র দখা আর প্রথম প্রেম
কোথাও একটা মিল আছে যেন
সেই ঘন নীল ঢেউএর আমেজ
আবেশ ভরা সকাল, সন্ধ্যা, দুপুর
পারে বসে স্নানের মেলা দেখা
কিছু ছিটে এসেচ্ছিল বটে
কাপড ভেজালো মনো তার সাথে
কিন্তু হাত বাডিযে বুকে তুলে
নিতে পারিনি তাকে
দূর থেকে দেখেছি
আর অনুভব করেছি তার আলিঙ্গন
পায়ে বাঁধা ছিল যে বেড়ি
যেতে পারিনি …..
আফশোস থেকে গেল তাই
আবার ক্ববে হবে দেখা
কে জানে?
হয়তো কোনদিন ও নয়
শুধু স্মৃতি টুকু ভাসা ভাসা
চোখের কোণে আনবে
শিশির বিন্দু দিয়ে আঁকা
একখানি অসমাপ্তো ছবি
দীঘায প্রথম সমুদ্র দেখা
আর তোমাকে ও বোধহয়…..

The poem below is a mere shadow and not a transliteration of the verse above :

THE FINAL ADIEU

The deep blue spell of the waves
The enchanting morns
The euphoric eves
The desultory noons
Spent endlessly idling by the reckless shores
As the sea sprayed a few kisses
On the rugged rocks
Wetting the helm of my dreams
The soul shackled within bounds
Rankled a deep woe
As the heart bemoaned
An unfulfilled yearn
Sang the sea gulls a plaintive lore
Spreading their wings wide
Across the sky
As they soared high
Etched below on the sands
Were remembrances of love
Wrapped in a sigh
Sealed with dew drops
Countless portrays flutter
As I look back at a withered past
Drowned perhaps
Blotched a little by tear drops
Frayed at the fringe
Where with sharpened nails
I dug deep a hole or two

My maiden affair with the turquoise sea
And when I lost my heart to thee
There is an odd kind of similarity
Between the two!