A Speck of Life

I gently blew off the dead speck with due respects. 
I hope it would glide on and settle into the soil which nurtures grassroots. But it more likely would have to bide its time in the cement footpath before getting back among grassroots. 
I had been worried when it seemed that the whole business of its lively existence had come down to just some smelly red smears in my palms which I would soap off and forget in an instant. I was relieved when I found the fallen dead speck from my shirt folds though it was shorter than the elongation in the exclamatory mark here! 
This dot which had instinctively dot-doted its predecessor dots had flown on its own tiny wings and had enough wits, to keep abreast and dodge the latest from the brightest and best paid medical brains. This once lively speck, I hope, was just an innocent cousin of it’s more well known airborne specks, but it too had to face the common danger of swat, electrically charged or otherwise. 
It must have had its fine hours, I presume, deftly dodging killer hits, able to execute its precise pricks and enjoy its bellyfuls. Though my specie tries its best to wipe out its kindred I fondly hope this special speck had done its bit to leave behind descendants. 
Oh, Thou flapping about on your vivacious winglets, I know I can’t create even a single one of you. I know I can but swat and squash many of you, but so will I, for now, with regrets though and with salutes to thy remains, although merely a fleck it be.

Jai Radhu!

Radhu looked upto her aunt for everything in her life. She had lost her father while she was in her mother’s womb and lost her mother to insanity soon after birth. As a child she was crying, desperately crawling to catch her mother who was herself mentally a child then and was playing about trailing strings of many colors. Her aunt had rushed to take her up at that moment.

She grew on her aunt’s lap. Her aunt too was suffering from the loss of uncle and Radhu was her god-sent prop. But her aunt was soon becoming god-mother to each and every child and grown-up near and far and was doing a great job counseling many people and guiding the destiny of countless people who came to her.

Radhu surely must have felt jealous of all this. Which child would like a hundred sibling brothers and sisters competing?

She grew up a good girl. Her aunt did whatever she could to make Radhu educated though her other relatives, going with the times, tried to prevent the girl from getting smart.

Her marriage, done with glittering ceremony, was not a great success.

She turned to her aunt again. But she had her greatest shock when her aunt, in her last days, refused her.

Did it hurt her love?

Soon when Radhu’s end came, she bravely preferred to die of tuberculosis in the hut in which she had lived with her aunt, with her sacred memories than in a modern hospital with all facilities, in holy Varanasi.

She and her aunt were both beings of light, each acting according to her script.

Jai Radhu!

Swami Sampurnananda, Genre 273, No. 24.

The Great Rope Trick

He was a Vedantin. He believed he lived mostly in his mind. Body was just an appendage he ignored. He would like to ignore his mind too. But he felt he had not yet reached that stage. He kept to himself most of the time. He didn’t despise the world. But he saw that most of his fellow humans in the world lived in a lower plane of existence. They would have to exhaust their Karma to come up higher. What if some of them wear the robes of a committed Vedantin? Let them be. He would better keep to himself and his thoughts of Vedanta.

That was him at his healthiest best when he went to his neatly made bed (which he made himself) in his spick and span room (which also he maintained).

Morning 6.30 a.m. will see him working at maintaining his considerable muscles. The body was all-in-all then. How enjoyable this working out his body! He pitied those who were still in their bed then. He loved to watch in TV, people working out their body in different games.

Now watch him when he is ill. Normally he did justice to his food. But now he has his own discoveries about which food agrees with him. Damn the dieticians. Their science is so imperfect. They’d have no chance with him.

A man mistook a rope for a snake. When light dawned, he saw the rope. But his reflexes did not yet ebb. He pounded away at the rope with a stick.

Perhaps he is right. Maybe, external action catharsizes and kills the snake relentlessly biting away in the mind.

Swami Sampurnananda, 29 October 2003, Genre 273, No. 20

The Old Beggar Woman

Her old bones lie on bed till sun shines down the entrance of her shanty hut. She lazes as the sun warms her barely covered cold skeleton. As the sun packs punch into his rays, she reluctantly gets up. She has to obey the call of her duty. She has to do her bit to fill up her belly to keep hunger away for as long as possible. She has also to care for another soul. She breastfed him when she had the stuff. Now though her son is forty years old, he is but an infant mentally.

She waited for that opportunist rickshaw-wallah who charged her sixty rupees to take her to her spot and to bring her back at night. She crawls into the rickshaw in the morning and crawls out of it, to sit on her bricks at her fixed spot. She can't stand. She barely moves. She stretches her hands and she can talk. Talk indeed she can! She calls out the passers by in endearing terms. Her large, gluttonous, meat-consuming, circus-animal-handler-cum-rope-walker late husband, used to love her for her talk. Now she employs that charm on the passers by, mostly pilgrims. They give her coins, fruits, chocolates, odds and pieces. She gathers them into the folds of her sari.

On most of the days she shows profits. When dark sets in she leaves for the cold comforts of her home. Her son springs like a child that he is mentally, to clamour for any food she might have brought.

She fights, presses hard to get the last drops from her stony fruit of life.

Swami Sampurnananda, 18 Nov. 2003. Genre 273, No. 26

Robinson Crusoe?

He lives in his own island, but he carried portable bridges to contact whom he wanted. He folded them back with him to reinforce the secludedness of his island.

Earlier he used to protect his aloneness by flight. It was an amusing sight, his bulky mass in a quick run. But now his age has caught up with his body. So he uses the stratagem of fight, or rather, mock-fight. He rattles his iron-tipped sticks at the approach of newcomers or people he wants to keep off from.

They probably won't give him a private room, so, he picked up his own place, a tiny cubicle at the dead-end of a stair-case. That is his primeval cave when the elements trouble him; otherwise, the open terrace of the sky is his roof. His only mortal fear is that people who matter might put him up in a smaller place. So he takes his bridge with him and keeps contact with whom it is necessary. He works for his freedom, both physical and mental, by doing his bit of work every morning and evening at the kitchen store.

Generally he is happy hopping around with his sticks, rattling, singing under the sky, sitting quiet when he feels like it, and talking in short stretches with the select few.

But once wanderlust seized him. He collected holy waters from Ganga from Benares in the north and went in a most circuitous route, to pour it on the head of Rameshwar Shiva in deep south. Then he was quenched and returned to his far pavilion.

The big child is again happy in his vast mother's womb.

Swami Sampurnananda, 19 November 2003, Genre 273, No. 27.

How the cry ‘Jai Radhe’ started in Vrindavan

Govinda and his gang set out on their housebreaking expedition. Govinda was their ideas-man as well as an expert commando. Their daily round of duties began. Safes were duly cracked. I mean, what the house-maidens thought to be safely concealed pots, were soon broken, butter and curd taken, some eaten and some smeared on each others’ faces. Not long after, a motley crowd of milk-maidens was behind the culprits and the laughing boys ran away into the meadow with the calves scampering before them.

Radha had come from Barsana on an errand.

‘This Govinda is the villain. If only somebody could tame him’ a milk-maiden complained to Radha.

‘Why don’t you inform his mother?’ said Radha.

‘That’ll make it worse. Yasoda spoils him. Govinda then wrecks a double vengeance on the informer’ the maiden said.

Radha’s face hardened. She determinedly started to stalk Govinda’s gang.

Let’s play something new today’ a boy said. All looked up at their ideas-man.

‘We’ll play water-ball’ Govinda declared. They started to discuss rules.

‘What if somebody ties the ball to his clothes, swims underwater and goes to the goal’ asked a boy.

‘All right, nobody should wear clothes’.

Soon Radha came upon this brazen lot.

When they tired of the game, the boys were astonished to find their clothes gone.

‘Come in a single file. All your hands up’ commanded Radha’s stern voice.

‘Let’s negotiate’ Govinda pleaded.

They had to unconditionally agree to her terms. The first condition was that they should say ‘Jai Radhe’ 108 times everyday.

That night Govinda stealthily went to the Mother’s temple and offered 108 holy leaves. The leaves said, ‘Radhe Govinda’.

Swami Sampurnananda; Genre 273, No. 39, Lalgarh Kuthia Veranda, morning 22 Jan 2004

In and Out

Let’s call them Deva and Devi.

‘I bet he’ll look out’ Deva said.

‘It’s not he. It’s she. She may look out first but will look in soon’ Devi said.

They had stopped by Earth. Some quirk in the earth caught Devi’s attention, so they had stopped. He then wanted to play a game. He wanted to clone a baby from his earwax. She sportingly joined and added a drop of her blood and the baby, the would-be-human, lay on the earth. Then they programmed into the baby the knowledge they wanted it to have. Devi believed that all power is within and Deva that it’s all without. So they were hedging their bets very much like that baby’s later descendants called mother and father try to predict their would-be-baby’s looks.

‘All right, leave her, we have a long travel ahead’ Deva said.

Devi had a wistful look at her and followed Deva,

As they were traveling she looked back a few times. First time she looked disappointed but later she looked pleased.

Deva asked something to her. She was looking at the earth, so she didn’t reply. Deva caught her at it.

‘So you can’t forget your doll. Girls are always like that’ he said. Then he looked hard at the earth.

‘See, they are looking out. They have sent a vehicle to the next ball. They call it Enterprise. How cute! One day they may find us’ Deva said.

Devi smiled and quietly pointed a finger ahead.

There was a small procession far ahead of Deva and Devi and completely ignoring them.

‘They are our children who looked in’ Devi said.

Swami Sampurnananda, Genre 273, No. 42; 28 Jan 2004 Lalgarh Kuthia No. 1, 8.35 p.m.