Other people

Trust

To trust is to make yourself vulnerable.
And nobody likes that.
But all our social transactions are based on trust,
and so we seek that people trust us.
To trust is therefore to live in a perpetual dilemma of being shattered.

Some of us have surplus of trust.
We make our trust to translate into our faith.
And we trust on the dead more than the living.
And we enter the jungle of solipsism
when we find the dead ones more trustworthy than the living ones.

What makes us not trust the others?
It is easy to say, because they are not trustworthy.
Actually, trust comes from courage.
It takes courage to make oneself vulnerable.
Only the strong ones have the courage.
Trust then is a matter of courage.
For, one who trusts can be betrayed one time
but the one who does not is being betrayed within himself everyday;
he is letting his psychosis take over his being.+++(5)+++

And also, only the trustworthy can trust.
But why do some people become unreliable?
Again, it comes from the lack of strength.
Only those who can walk the path of truth
can share their trust on the others.
Trust is therefore a mirroring of one’s own heart.
You are unable to trust someone because you know you cannot be trusted.

But there are broken ones.
There are those who have been deceived, been betrayed, have their faith shattered.
There again are a few observations.
To have faith is not to simply take faith on a transactional level.
To have faith is to be willing to sacrifice oneself again and again.+++(4)+++
Even though the consequence of trusting may be being trustworthy,
trust should be unconditional, so also faith.
Trust and faith are paradoxical, actually.
They make us strong by making us vulnerable.
And the weak ones cannot have either of them.

The king

This funny looking old man in his suit was introduced to me as the king when I was twelve. He waived and approached me with a joke that made me laugh hysterically and my father scolded me for being immodest in front of the king. I was grown up enough to know that he was an imposter, as there were photos of the real king in every school book and the real king had recently visited the district shielded with his army. I could recognize the fancy coat of the real king and the discolored coat of this fake. But my father insisted that he is the real king. I knew very little that real kings do not exist, that king is just a concept, that when the public bestows its power upon someone and submits itself, the person becomes the king then and there. And like the modern day England, the king does not need to know the hollowness of its empire and he can keep believing that he is the king. It is like nations submitting to America today.

He most likely had a name but I only remember him as the king. My father later said, he was somehow related to the dynasty. What actually inspired me was that he once had a huge mansion and all the richness and when his wife died he declared himself as the king and gave everything he owned to the villagers, saving nothing for him. Villagers called him the king and he dined in whosever house he liked for a day. He was nice to everybody and addressed everybody as his subject. I slowly accepted the humor embedded with his being; and his presence alone was enough to cherish me. And he always had stories to tell. Once he caught me faking respect and demanded that I respect him properly.

He came to my apartment and the hostel several times when I lived in Kathmandu. He always said his subjects had some business in town and he was there to help. I remember managing some food for the king. I introduced the king to my brothers but I do not know if they formed any enduring memory. He would come around lunch or dinner time and would say, subject, I am making sure you are not starving or something. It was a routine that I would offer him food, he would reject, I would insist, and he would reluctantly accept the food. Although the idea of him being fake never vanished from the screen of my mind, he was more a king to me than anyone I knew. He was a man with heart and he was not demanding respect for absolutely nothing like the modern-day emperors who steal money from the charities and hospitals.

He found me very troubled once. I had to get my brother to school and it was a bitter competition. As a village boy, I did not know any officer in town, and in Nepal, you cannot get anything done without connections. Even after a series of revolutions, Nepal has only found herself under new and more barbaric kings. In the old days kings were hollow and they knew their vanity which made them less barbaric. Old kings even strived for respect. Modern kings only allocate for themselves. Not that old kings were great, except for our own village king.

The king stopped by that day. He would always ask me, subject! what troubles you? I knew his powerlessness and it would be silly to expect anything from this half-insane guy, but in my destitute, I shared with him that I needed a school for my brother. I felt like crying then as I knew my helplessness. The king patted my shoulder and asked me to compose myself, as it was not modest to cry in front of the emperor.

After lunch, he asked me to follow him. Partly humored, I followed him all the way to the commissioner’s office. When he was stopped by the guard, he yelled, I will take your job for stopping me; tell the commissioner that his uncle has come from the village. Scared, the guard let us go inside. When the commissioner asked what he can do, I was allowed to present my case. And my brother was enrolled to the school then and there.

I left the country soon after and learnt upon my return that the king was dead. I still recollect a funny shadow that always made me laugh, and for one time, he was my king.

Rishis

The biggest desire or the dream the seer from the old times had was to keep his lineage alive. “There shall be nobody in his family who would not know the truth,” he claimed. Wrapped under glory, his children adopted lady poverty and wore kusha grass, calling it gold. They were instructed to live outside the flux of time and so they did. And their songs became old and new bards ruled over the town.

I chanced to tumble on some Rishis in this trip to Nepal. One had remained very loyal to his old father. He had kept the old farm alive and the little wealth he had made it easy for his life to remain independent. He did not join any hunting party and he did not ask for his share from the hunt. He remained in his village as a teacher and lived an eventless life.

I met another Rishi in a party. It was just lunch time and he was already drunk. He tried everything in his life to be famous. His main mantra was, be famous even if for a day, and if it takes, running naked. His friend asked him to sing a song for me. The song was appropriate, “there is no rebirth by drinking again after one collapses to the floor by drinking again and again.” In sarcasm I told him, he should also sing the verse that tells one to kick in the forehead of his teacher. And he diligently completed, “mātryonau kṣipel liṅgam."+++(5)+++

The last Rishi I met was nobody. He did everything to be somebody but he did not have the virtue of the first Rishi to live a simple life and did not have the courage to live the life of the second Rishi. In reality he copied the first, mostly out of fear, and in fantasy, he lived the second. It is not that he did not try drinking or smoking, but he could never be known as a drinker or a smoker. Pulled between time and the teachings of his father, he could not gather courage to breach the laws to make his life his own, neither could he live the life of his fathers. He made some money by investing in winery but again, he had to pull out due to fear. He composed some songs that nobody liked and sang some songs that nobody listened. He had so many dreams of his own but the only dream that he followed was that of his wife.

Nobody could actually follow the first of the Rishis though. The path was long dead, as it was founded on the absoluteness of virtue that valued truth over power and wisdom over glory.

Conference of Ghosts

I was thrilled to learn about the conference. But alas, everything was pre-scheduled. And they said, they would invite me. And they said, they could not. And eventually they did. It was really funny. For a while they were confused whether I was actually dead. I had to submit my certificate of the dead and even then there were some scornful eyes skeptically glaring at me for I could have been very much alive.

And I stood there to sing the songs that only the dead ones could hear. And they cheered. I have lived between two lands for too long and I can easily pass as dead or alive and I myself have forgotten whether I am alive or dead. At times it feels like whatever is alive in me is not the past but a shadow, a shell of what once used to be vibrant. At times I hear some eco of life, a reflection that once used to shine like a brilliant sun, and makes me want to feel alive.

So many ghosts and so many causes for death. In the dais was my friend, a soulmate if I may, who had died of arrogance. Next to me was a friend who had succumbed to envy. Many had died of the epidemic of racism.+++(5)+++ I could recognize the face in the corner who had died of simple hatred. Many had betrayed their friends and their values. In order to stay alive among the dead, one has to die from the land of the living.

In order to silence those who ever doubted, I produced the certificate of multiple syndrome.

They sang the songs of the dead. In the language of the dead. And shared the ideas that are long dead. And relished the past. As ghosts, all that can be claimed is the past. Among the living, they look for the future but among the dead, what matters is the past. What lives there is the past. What breathes there is the past. It was late till we kept singing and dancing the ghost dance, only that nobody alive joined the dance.

And we competed there to impress one another. To be the best among the dead. So that we can inspire the dead. There were some who had died of no reason. They died simply because they were caught up in between; they died of the influenza that only affects the dead. So young and so dead. And they sang the most archaic of the dead songs. So much of youth and such a putrified flesh. Real ghosts have a single mode of time; they dwell just in the past.

Vedanta

It seems like I have known Vedanta for all my life. He was one of the elites when I was young. He left his village for education but did everything except for getting a degree. When he came back to village, he was kind of charisma as he must have been the only one with a transistor or a wrist watch to flash and so many other gadgets. He even had a camera to take pictures and he wore foreign shoes that no villager had seen before. On top, he brought stories from afar.

He did not have what it takes to work in the farm but he knew how to make us kids work for him. We would work for hours for a single riddle or spend three hours working for one story. We first discovered candies through him. Nobody had the skill that Vedanta had though, as no matter what, he knew how to make the villagers like him. I think he was the first politician in the village who would exploit people and people would love him in return.

Once I was in college, Vedanta came to my apartment. He was now a real state giant and an industrialist. For three days, I served him with hospitality, as I did not want to embarrass myself sharing scarcity. And all he did was to talk about his success. One evening he saw me wrapped up in blanket washing my shirt and I had to tell him that I had only one shirt that I wear during the day and wash and dry during the night. I had the best dreams that night, as Vedanta promised me to buy a bunch of shirts. He left next morning without farewell and I did not see him for many years.

For the last several years Vedanta has found solace in spirituality. May be he lost some of his assets but the villagers say, he is still the richest there but I only see him in rags. He spent one hour instructing me that the world is maya, that I should not be attached to luxury, that body is not to be worshipped with its desires. I could see malnutrition transparent in his face and also in his wife’s.

In the last leg of his life, he has found Vedanta a match. Whatever money or rice he would get in donation, he would spend that. ‘No property shall be touched’ was the new mantra. Like an average Hindu, he had realized the flimsy nature of the world and the absolute reality of money. I do not know the exact date, but sometime in the twentieth century, the word Brahman became convertible with the cash.

I am still thankful to Vedanda, as this must be his name that dragged me to study this philosophy. I knew little modification was needed, as the old model was not really addressing modern concerns. What I did not know was the way it was being modified by the society. The emergence of Guruism has to be part of it, as it kept the illusory nature of the world intact, as this gave them the license to rob the believers but it replaced the Brahman with money and this was news to me.

I saw Vedanta shivering in his bed with high fever. I asked his children to take him to hospital. They resisted. As long as Vedanta was alive, his children would not have the total control over his wealth. In his broken words, Vedanta said, I should not be attached to body as it will fall one day. And he said, the world is illusion.

Mukti Adhikari

Mukti Adhikari, my colleague during the college days, was murdered by the Maoists 18 years ago today. I only got a head injury and some death threats, but my friend was not that lucky. Our only crime was teaching Sanskrit.

Old man and Peace

It was a bit late when I decided to visit the old man. When I crossed the town, it was pitch-dark. Old man lives in a hut by the banks of Kali and that side is still unpopulated. My flash light was as good as a firefly in this impenetrable darkness. I knew I was very close but still got lost. And I heard some voices. As I approached the voice, I recognized the hut. But I was confused as I did not know this little girl so excited to see me. Old man introduced us.

Her name was Shanti, peace. Her parents live couple miles across the river and since the girl has her vision compromised, she was not able to go to school regularly from her parental home. She was happy to join the team of caretakers for the old man. Her duty was to fetch water in the morning. She called the caretaker lady her “grandma” and called old man, “old father.” She would carefully listen to the commands of the old man and the old man would yell at her if she disobeyed. And she would consult the old man for her homework. Old man would not have a clue in most occasions, but sometimes I heard him solving problems.

Five generations ago, her ancestors were slaves, purchased and sold. Now they have their own house. But where they live is remote and there are no jobs there. For the last four generations, the river Kali provided them what they needed. She gave them plenty of fish, and there were always people wanting to cross the river and they charged for canoeing. Now with modern technology for fishing and due to over-population, there are not enough fish. As they got the bridge, nobody uses canoe any more.

Last time I was there, my heart was shattered seeing the banks of Kali. Gravel and sand contractors had ravaged the river belt and there was no natural scene left for the visitors like me to rejoice. This time I had a different feel, thanks to Shanti. Shanti told me that her parents break rocks all day long in the river and sell it to the contractors. Or they help load the sand from the banks. I realized, the river Kali could not abandon her responsibility to take care of these families. Every child rejoices the body of his mother.

Old man is really old and I do not know what this arrangement even meant. In the morning, old man reads the Vedas and Shanti tries to copy his chants. Old man screams, you are not reading correctly. Old man was never there for his own family but this new arrangement was giving a sense of grand children or great grand children in this last leg of his life.

The day I say farewell, Shanti gives me a gift of one rock. She says, this is a lucky rock.+++(5)+++ I ask her, how do you know this is lucky. She says, she found it the day I went there and I gave her a lot of chocolates. I had no further arguments.

Two Arjunas

Being the best among the warriors, Arjuna keeps asking himself the meaning of his life. On one side are the Kauravas who took away his kingdom, forced him and his family to exile and hide in some refugee camps, be nameless and faceless. On the other side, he has his big brother who cannot stop preaching non-violence. When he looks into the eyes of his wife who has left her braids untied, he sees deep-seated fear and rage and some contempt towards him for not standing up for her when she was abused and when some tried to rape her in the public. Unable to express his frustration and outrage, he even cross-dressed and acted as de-masculinized.+++(5)+++ Any time he brought up his frustration, his buddy Keshava smiled and kept saying, there is time for everything and this is not the time.+++(5)+++ Every cell in his body is sour, is ripe with hatred for his enemy. He only knows the weapons. And he knows he can wipe out the enemy camps alone. But again, as a disciplined general, he also knows his position. He can only act upon the command from his big brother, the king.

When the day comes and Arjuna stands in the frontline of the battlefield, he has a change of heart. Now he sees his teacher and grandfather in front. Now he sees his cousins and uncles in the opposite camp. And now he realizes for the first time the number of warriors that will never return home and feel the warmth of the bosom of their beloved.+++(5)+++ He drops off his arms. Sweating and mumbling, he says, Keshava, I would rather die with their arrows than to kill my enemies. One Arjuna dies in the battlefield at this moment. The Arjuna filled with emotions succumbs to his self-inflicted wounds.

Keshava does not embolden the same Arjuna but gives birth to a new one.+++(5)+++ The one with new set of eyes. The one who only sees his obligation and conscious of his duty. He has no hatred towards his enemies. He has no anger towards them. He has no desire to kill anybody. He only knows his destiny. He only realizes that as a warrior, his fate is sealed long before him picking up his bow. He is not there to kill or to be killed. He is there because he has no other choice.+++(5)+++

War is not a choice. Only the cowards choose war. But for a warrior, he has no choice but to fight.+++(5)+++ Not because he wants to kill any but because those who cannot pick up the arms and cannot fight for themselves also deserve to live. Every time in a battlefield, one Arjuna dies and another is reborn. This is not the Arjuna guided by vengeance but by dharma.

Ambika

Sometimes the purpose we do something becomes subordinate to what we end up achieving. It is like you go for a hike and you find a diamond. My trip to Khajuraho was something like that.

After driving for two hours from Sanchi, I see a signboard for Sagar. I try to remember my connection with this name as I have a vague memory of hearing this name before. A faint image of a student comes to my mind who was at the conference who had mentioned the name of this town in relation to a university. My head hurts as I have nothing else to think about and the name Sagar keeps buzzing like an alarm bell. Between pure fantasy and memory, I gather one name, Ambika, and now this name starts repeating in my head with no sign to suspend. Then a vague memory opens the drapes of the window that has been kept closed for the last 28 years: someone I knew from my school days in Varanasi. Although the image does not come to life, the name becomes more and more familiar.

But still I cannot crack open the black-box of the forgotten past. I decide to call Shastriji for his assistance. He immediately reminds me of Ambika Datta, a philosopher. He even had his phone number handy. Now with the recollection of the full name, my memory traverses through the dark and narrow lane of Varanasi and enters a room with fading smoke. A scholar from BHU, Ambika was already a highly achieved philosopher. I then remembered some conversations I had on Dharmakirti and Abhinavagupta. He could teach us Hegel and Kant and we clueless pandits would devotedly listen to him.+++(5)+++ I hesitated for few minutes but eventually decided to call.

He immediately responds and recognizes the voice. I asked the driver to head to the campus and now the trip takes a new course. Most of the times I recollect meeting Ambika in Varanasi, the memories are filled with funny anecdotes. One after another, memories were unfolding like the pages from a book not opened for a hundred years. After all, this particular memory was buried deep for the last 28 years. The car stops to let the train cross, only to realize that we had a flat tire. Now I call him again, asking him to come our way, as we were going to be stuck there for a while.

To see Ambika again after 28 years was of course surprising, but even more surprising was to see him just the way I saw him so many years back. People change but not Ambika. He had as if suspended natural aging and was there as the last piece of creation to portray endurance. Except for the beards! My heart filled with warmth, sapped with a peculiar feel of meeting someone after a long time. I remember Vijnanabhairava: dṛṣṭe vā bāndhave cirāt | Or, when you see a friend after a long time, you immerse into the absolute field of pure consciousness designated by the state of Bhairava.+++(5)+++

We spent an hour right next to the train cross, by the side of a tea stall, connecting the dots since we departed from Varanasi.

Varanasi is indeed a confluence. This is the place where great philosophers from the North met those from the South and the dualists and the non-dualists engaged in their first intellectual battle; this is where Shiva taught humility to Shamkara and Buddhists and Hindus revised their philosophy drafts.

For whatever reason they named the place Sagar or Ocean, it indeed was the Ocean to fill my desire to have one overpowering experience. When I reminisce the trip, the highest joy I feel is of this meet.

Astrologer

Guidelines to trim your Facebook network:

1. Let the astrologers go. They already knew you would remove them.
2. ??

An astrologer sent a friend request. I rejected. (I think he knew it. He was just giving me this sadistic pleasure. Really nice.)

Stranger

For some time I was hurt, as he abruptly stopped responding to my messages. And then I was pissed, as I never demanded anything from him and all I did was shared some funny jokes and may be I expected the same in return. big deal. And then I forgot about him. But memory is such that it has its own way of digging.

And his name resurfaced afresh. This time I made a mission to find the reasons for his absence from the canvas of my life. And then I found out he was long dead.

Mirror-Image

+++(विश्वासम् अधि लेखितम्। )+++

If I say I love my mirror image,
you would possibly diagnose narcissism in me.
Let me make your job easy:
I do not need a mirror image to love myself.
But I am curious to know,
what is in it that makes the mirror image so loving and at the same time so frightening.

My mirror-image is living my life 30 years backward.
We met at a juncture, flowing in the opposite direction.
I ran away from the Ashram life and my mirror image from the corporate life.
I did not walk out of Ashram life
fantasizing the charms of the modern world,
but experiencing hollowness within Ashram life.
If you cannot see what lies beneath empty smiles and masking garbs in a decade,
any world is good enough for you.+++(5)+++
I did not abandon one illusion for the sake of the other.
I chose the other because the other never claims to be true.+++(5)+++

I once dreamt of Rishi life.
And that led to some Ashrams.
And that was the end of it.
But the idea to be far away from the maddening crowd always remained there.
I tried to make a colony of people like myself.
I am glad it was never materialized.
For that was yet another delusion.

We live in the aftermath of idealism.
Our ancestors adored lady poverty.
The narratives of Kaiyata or Udayana still resonate among the pandit households.
And sometime recently, our fathers cremated idealism.
And they learnt to package the ashes in beautiful bottles
and they learnt to make some quick money.+++(5)+++

My mirror image wants to go to the world
that was under the dream of Vasistha,
the world that was made of idealism.
And we created modern society using the cinderblocks of idealism.
And my mirror image does not want to face it.
This replica of mine is not me though.
For he is smart, intelligent, and he can be rich without even selling his soul.
But he got into the dream where idealism appeared once.
Her beautiful touch, her fragrant breath, her gentle glance.
I cannot tell my mirror-image, the shadow he saw of the ideal
is merely the ghost from the past, coming to haunt him,
torment him of the time that is no more.

Now he has two little kids growing.
Just like I once had.
And he is giving them this dream, this idealism.
I also did the same to my kids.
And they grew up, became strangers.
Prajapati has given each soul her own dream.
When the dreams are not shared,
we are nothing but strangers.+++(5)+++

My father once said, we are all strangers meeting for some time.+++(5)+++
My friend once said, we met like two logs in a flowing river.
I envy my mirror-image for living the life that was once mine.
But I wish I could talk to this replica of mine one time more.
And say why this will just be yet another dream.
At the end of the day, I guess we all need some dreams to live by.
For if we wake up, we will actualize our loneliness.
I do not know why, loneliness scares me.
Dreams and delusions have at least charm.

विश्वास-टिप्पनी

अन्तन्तः, सौन्दर्यस्योत्पादनं हि जीवितस्य मुख्यं कर्म मे भाति - तद् एव भुञ्जते देवाः।
तद्-अर्थं धर्मार्थकामाः क्रमशः साध्याः।
तच् च निरन्तर-भू-रस-चोषण-प्रधान-जीवितेन न सम्भवति,
न चाधुनिक-विज्ञानस्य मनुष्यस्वभावस्य वा निस्सीमोपेक्षया प्राचीनवद् वर्तनेन।
अपि तु, भौतिक-ब्रह्माण्ड-सहित-सर्व-गत-विमल-विज्ञान-रक्षया सत्-सन्तत्या दीर्घं जीवितव्यम्।

आवयोर् विचारे भेदस् तु
“स्वातन्त्र्य”-तत्त्वे स्यात् …

प्राच्यानां विधि-निषेधा अस्मद्-हिताय प्रवर्तन्ते;
ते च सद्यस्क-देश-काल-वैपरीत्यं विज्ञायैव परिवर्तनीया

इति मे भाति।
कदाचिद् भवान् -

“विधिनिषेधा उत्सर्गत एव तिरस्कार्याः,
सद्यस्क-देश-कालाद्य्-आनुकूल्ये सति तु ग्राह्या”

इति मन्येत।
तथापि नैतन् महद् अन्तरम् -
यतः परिवार-स्तरे हि शास्त्र-निष्ठा-मात्रा निश्चेतव्या स्यात्।