TO A FRIEND WHO WOULDN'T LET ME DISMOUNT THE PEDESTAL

"I have never quite allowed the adolecent in me to stop launching paper boats. I have never exchanged these boats with luxury ships of the rich. Only the rich grow old. They will always wait their youth out to be able to amass enough to enjoy it later. A bit like the Brahmin who wastes this life preparing for the next. Youth is never 'later'. It is always 'now'. The next moment, you are a moment less young. The trouble with most of the young I know these days is that they do not seem to deserve their youth; they cast it away counting their coins in the bank -- what a waste of youth!"



"Love is neither for the timid nor for the wise; they can have their cars and houses and power and fame in stead of love, and they are most welcome to it. Love does not mind it one bit if you want to leave it for those petty toys of clever boys. And love is most certainly not for the selfish. "

PAY LOVE'S TAXES IF YOU WANT TO ENTER HIS KINGDOM


Thanks for the high praise but may I please remind you about what I said about the challenge of being asked to mount a pedestal one doesn't think one deserves! But, my dear one, about what you say about the virtues of age, I hope you won't get me wrong, but I have never quite allowed the adolecent in me to stop launching paper boats. I do not sing with Jagjit Singh " Woh kaagaz ki kashti, woh baarish ka paani" becasue I never lost them -- which is becasue I never exchanged my youth with worldy wisdom or material success. I have never exchanged these boats with luxury ships of the rich. Only the rich grow old. They will always wait their youth out to be able to amass enough to enjoy it later. A bit like the Brahmin who wastes this life preparing for the next. Youth is never 'later'. It is always 'now'. The next moment, you are a moment less young. The trouble with most of the young I know these days is that they do not seem to deserve their youth; they throw it away counting their coins in the bank -- what a waste of youth!"

I valued life and I valued youth in it, and so I never let it slip. And I have always mocked the years that have failed to transfix me -- unlike Yeats who chose to spit in the face of time which he said had transfixed him. I hope I don't sound arrogant, but well, I have invented a new birth for myself each fresh dawn and have stayed ahead of the sun only to wait for it at the horizon and see it off, wish it bon voyage down the seas and so it can emerge awash with freshness the next morn. That alone has kept me alive, that alone has kept me singing and celebrating -- even amidst the desnsest zones of dark despair and pain born out of betrayal and love. I have often said that no one should enter the Kingdom of Love if one is not prepared to pay its (love's) taxes. And I have always joyfully paid those with the blood of my heart, and sought more and more time in his Kingdom by rendering more and more of these taxes. What am going to do with this blood if it can not even buy me the pain of loving with all the teacherous joys it promsises. But persist with it, and love will reward you if love finds you worthy. And the more I have bled, the more has blood quickened in my sinews. Love is neither for the timid nor for the wise; they can have their cars and houses and power and fame in stead of love, and they are most welcome to it. Love does not mind it one bit if you want to leave it for those petty toys of clever boys. And love is most certainly not for the selfish.

Have i deviated? Well, har su dikhayee deta hai woh jalwa gar mujhe ..!

MORTAL MEMORY IN AN IMMORTALLY SHIFTING KALEIDOSCOPE

TO MY DAUGHTER WHO RESPONDED TO MY BLOG ON IMMORTALITY



(These were my thoughts after visiting my grandmother's memorial during my adolescence. I slightly refine it to make it more intelligible. )



Where my grandmother lies, grass has grown. And flowers. Not only flowers; from those flowers, bees will suck out honey, feed their young ones, who would cross-pollinate other plants and flowers in nature; other birds, animals will feed on this grass, these plants and will produce young ones who will carry my grandmother's innumerable forms in their veins . These animals will perhaps be devoured soem day by some predators, who will carry the blood and flesh of their victims transformed into life down through their ( the predators') progeny. And carry my grandmother's million, million reincarnations in them The ashes that contain the particles that were once my grandmoteher's flesh have gone up in the viens of the blades of grass and plants that I now see growing here.

There is no such thing as death in this universe, except perhaps the death of memory of one form seen in a flash of a moment through the narrow aperture of a given form of life. We often confuse mortality with memory. Memory perhaps dies as we scatter only to spring forth later in billions and billions of life forms. We want to be re-born with the memory of who we are...no one really wants an immortality in which he will never remember in his next life what he was in his last. What we love is not immortality, then, but the preservation of the memory of the life that has been. Otherwise, as biology, physics, astronomy, mysticism -- all show: nothing that is here will ever go. Only, it will not stay in the form in which we see it for a flitting moment.. Our love for fixed forms is all we understand by immortality. Nothing could be more laughable when we already know that this universe is not a sequence of well partioned parts but a flux in which fixed forms have meanings only as stages in an endless continuum, running back and forth and possibly in all directions, with time losing its linear character which it has for the limited human mind.
Immortality as deathlessness of memory is pure nonsense. It has a profound meaning only as an endless chain of forms morphing back and forth into a myriad shapes un-discernible to the helplessly slow exposure of human mind - this morphing too moves at a speed not observable either by the naked human eye nor by the tools of logic. It needs a leap of imagination to grasp the totality of the fast changing patterns in which everything is there for ever in a whole which is for ever changing both as a whole and in its astounding variety of parts, moments meaning nothing but the endless churning in a process of endless transformations. Say the scientists and the mystics alike: the essential nature of life as of the entire universe is dynamic. Nothing ever stays as we see it in a given moment. Immortality of the universe alone has a meaning -- and we survive with the universe in its endlessly shifting kaleidoscope.
As for preserving anything for ever, well, not a single moment even in our piteously short life can be preserved. Every single moment is overtaken by another before we realise what has happened. Our mind moves too slowly for the rapidity of the change of scenes around us and in our lives. What you are reading now has already passed into a flux and is being overtaken this very moment by the ceaseless and imposing march of crowded instants, each new instant forcing the old to give way, quietly, helplessly, inevitably -- unnoticeably but unmistakably.

EXCITEMENT OF RELATIONS

There is no adventure in life more challenging, more exciting, more full of twists and turns, more demanding and yet more rewarding than building and sustaining a human relationship. Nothing else in this world can give greater joys or deeper pangs than this. A human relationship is a greater test of character than anything else ever invented by man or nature. Everything else – money, power, status, ambition – is driven by this basic primeval force. Anyone who has an instinct for this adventure will rarely fail in life.

Aflaaq se oonchi hai

larz-e-zindagi


Bhari bazm mein cherh na tu , jo hai baat raaz ki,
Husn-e- benaqaab jalaal-e-aina saaz hai.

Jalawa bhi dar haqeeqat, hai tilissim-e-rung-o-bu,
Aur naghma-e-hayaat bhi fareb-e-awaaz hai.

Doobi khudi na gar teri ehsaas-e-bekhudi main ,
Zazba-e-baahami mehaz ehsaas-e-imtiaz hai..

Hai teri deen daari gar nukta-e-nazar he,
To tu banda hai na aur koi banda nawaaz hai.

Samjha hai jis ko tu ne ye hajoom-e-kaikshaan,
Woh chashma-e-khwabaan ki faqt ik aarzi parvaaz hai.

Tere junoon ki razm-e-khairo-shar se larz-e-zindagi,
Aflaaq se oonchi hai jo teri zabeen-e- niaz hai .


II


Kab tak chalegi gufatgoo, yoon parda-e-alfaaz main,
Haqeeqat numaayaan saaf hai, nadaani-e-hijaab main.

Na chhupa hajoom-e-jazba, ye mohtaj-e-lazzat-e-zubaan nahin,
Shiddat-e--junoon-e-nazaara, faqt zeb-e-daastaan nahin.

Idhar jaan ba-lubb hoon main bhi, aur jaan ba-lubb udhar tu,
Be-naqaabi-e-be-pravaah ka, zara dekhna assar tu.

Jo Kiya na chaaq daaman, woh daamn-e- ushaaq kahaan,
Jo ho daag-daar khird se, woh amaada-e-zabeen-e-pak kahaan !


III

Hum dav lagaane waale, kya mol-bhaav ki sochein,
Marmar ho ya daldal hon, kiyon, tapish-o-ghaav ki sochein.
Khwabon ko sajaana ho to bus khwabon ko sajaao
Bekhauf-e-shiddate-e dard hain,
Kiyon ghaav ki sochein.


IV


•
•khoye pal ke dil ke andar jeevan ka har bhed chhipa
khoye pal se hi paaya hai jo kucch tu ne paaya hai.
chhodne ka dar ek bhanwar hai, paaon ki zanjeer bani,
jisne bhi iss zameen ko chhora, wahi akaash pe chhaya hai.
chhupna uski aadat si hai, phir bhi sach kabh chhupta hai,
jitna sach tha khoye pal ka, utna saamne aaya hai.
tu bhi kabh tak jangal jangal chhupta phirta duniya se,
iss viraat andherepan mein, man tera rushnaaya hai. February 6, 2010


V

Ho agar hosh to itna
ke mad-hoshi ka aalam pahunche,
Rooh-e-jazbaat jo bharhke
to kahin aatish-e-sargam pahunche.

Sarfarazon ke liye sajjate hain sabh dar-o-rasan,
Ho ba-zid ishq mein lapton pe jo daaman pahunche.

Choom loon paayon jisse aatish-e-khurshid talab,
Ho fanaah dar tere magroor-e-kafan pahunche.

Kiya kehein aise dil-e-ashiq-e-gul ki auqaat
Ke kafan Jiska na ban aag ka parcham pahunche.
VI

Bikhre Marqaz

Kaayanaat ke bikhre hue markaz sabhi hum hain,
Hai alam ka har zarra chiragaan , tabhi hum hain,
Na ankur, na patta na saagar-o-sehra
Ho khoon mein toofan rawaan, jabhi hum hain.
Be-shumaar aate hain marg-e-ashiq ke sabab,
Marne ke mukaamaat to phir bhi kum hain.

Dance of energy

"At the macroscopic level, the notion of substance is a useful approximation, but at the atomic level it no longer makes sense. Atoms consist of particles and these particles are not made of any material stuff. When we observe them, we never see any substance; what we observe are dynamic patterns continually changing into one another -- a continuous dance of energy!" -- Fritjof Capra (Tao of Physics)

Hazel :Cosmos revelas and discovers itself through us

We --all of us living and non living things --are glowing points of consciousness on the landscape of eternal cosmic mind, each point at the same time an actor and a spectator. Nature constantly reveals and discovers itself through these glowing points. All experience of sensate and insensate creatures and all works of human art are mere apertures through which nature looks at and seeks expression of itself. Every living or non-living atom is Nature's tool in a cosmic theatre of self-love.

Trip abroad on hold

My trip to the UK, the US and Canada has been put on hold till the third week of March becasue of the forthcoming Budget Session of the Punjab Legislative Assembly

All prohesies are self-fulfilling

All pophesies are self-fulfilling. If the universe exists as it does because we believe it so, then this universe itself is a prophecy fulfilled. Each one of us can will himself or herself into such realised prophesies if only we are willing to and have the courage to make fools of ourselves by believing our own dreams. The only difference between a dream and and a prophecy is that the dreamer treats his vision as unreal while the prophet looks at his dream as reality. So for him, reality it does become. (MORE LATER)

Immortality is the moment after I die.

Immortality is the moment after I die. Death quietly slips into eternity and leads life into vistas which could be as overwhelming as they could be ordinary. Death is a moment in life, and as someone has said, while life is, death is not. (There will be time for further elbaoration fo this.. may be tomorrow. )

DEATH AND IMMORTALITY

If there were no death hanging at the end of the journey, immortality would have been either meaningless or oh-so- boring! And so would have been the journey. Blessed be death which to me has always represented an intense (I hope so) moment in an endless, perhaps cyclical flow of time. And immoratality has never meant anything more than the seemingly endless rotating of the earth on its axis, revealing patterns which appear excitingly varied and shifting because of the brevity of view and the rapidity of exposure through a tiny aperture available to one generation.To misquote Voltaire, if there were no death, we would have to invent one. (And generally we do -- for others!)
Generally speaking, death is the only way to find out the truth of immortality. There is no means of knowing what lies beyond life except through losing life - in some way, and not necessarily in only the physical sense. Spake Nanak "NANAK JEEVATIAN MAR RAHIYE, AISA JOG KAMAAIYE". ( "OBLITERATE THYSELF EVEN AS LIFE IN YOU DOTH STILL RING / THIS ALONE SHALL TO THY MIND INNER ENLIGHTNEMENT BRING." Note: Don't read the translation if you can understand the original) And for one to whom this life represents no more than a mere fragment in an endlessly moving panorama, the deal is worth it. But it would be foolish to push the dealm inn the merely physical sense by casting away the throbbing current moment in favour of what follows next. The one is as exciting as the other is likely to be, and there is no point forcing a premature climax to the living moment. Universe moves -- and must move -- at its own pace, revealing patterns to eyes that are ready to receive new sights. Even if you merely stand and watch, the billion new faces of the universe would still be revealed to you each moment. It is not in the nature of life to with-hold. The palms of nature always stay, fingers pointing downward in a gesture of endless giving.

MOTES WILL BE MOTES,
AND NEVER SHALL LIGHT UNITE THEM.Amen!

I am somewhat baffled that you saw our conversation as an argument or a contest. I never sensed a dialectic. We were talking about different faces of the one godhead. Argument arises from assertion not from an unembellished narration of one’s state of being in that moment. I hope I didn’t assert, much less dismiss.

I do not see any paradox in dancing with my many conflicting shadows. Changing seasons don’t question one other; spring doesn’t recoil in horror at the sterile autumn. The colours of the spectrum, all contained in white, are still different colours arching together in the rain swept sky. Entities stand alone, self sufficient but each a manifestation of the One. Wilde said that the true mystery of the world was the visible not the invisible. In an existent so at one with itself, how can one thing be of lower or higher validity than another?

I neither sabre rattle nor surrender my arms- I carry none. I will walk far to sit with you in the shade of a tree where a light breeze gently touches my face. I will speak only when I have the urge. We should be comfortable with each other’s silences.

We should now change the subject!

RAJIV MUDGAL
LONDON, FEBRUARY 1,2002



....i have enjoyed every word that has been written in this post.
And since mr bains did not heed to rajiv ji s request of changing the subject...i think i ll do it.
You guys are brilliant and should get together to write a book..
Why not give something in return to this world from which you both seem to have derived enough orgasms..intellectual or otherwise.

Chitleen ...
February 2, 2010 1:30 PM

Rajiv, since boh of us insist on saying the same thing in different words - and one of us insists that only the other is disagreeing - I think the only way to express agreement is through silence ( if even that works.)Hence, here!

Quite another matter that I am somewhat of a braggart and like to carry my sabre --a bit of a stray dog (Eliot's ?) who likes to show that he likes to be feared while what he really wants is to be loved. I have never been ashamed of my untruths and of my pretentions -- and hope to God that I shall never be.If we seek truth and do not find it, there is some solace in sticking proudly to falsehood as your standard. That is also a religion and I have no intention of either changng or denying my religion. But, as is my wont , I have run out of steam -- or call it "inspiration" -- and have been flung back into the rut called ordinariness. (Okay, ordinariness is also a face of God. So no issues. But I am bored. )

Hope our meeting -- hopefully in a London cool breeze early next week will help me.

And thanks, Chitleen, for putting up for this long. I know how how hard it must be to put up with a fake. I know because I have put up with myself all these years.

Harcharan Bains....
February 9, 2010 11:20 AM