A tremulous candle in a raging desert storm...Has the war begun?

A tremulous candle in a raging desert storm...Has the war begun? ....

May 28, 2013 at 5:44pm

Its long, its boring, and its taxing on one's pateince- this note; another one of sunnymindcaves luxuriant indulgences . There are better things to do than read -- or write -- long facebook notes between strenous hours at work . So you might as well not read, and no one will say you missed much.   Unless of course....
May 28, 4.00 pm
Jaswant Singh Aman :  Were it not for a name that I so profoundly respect - JSA - I might even have let it pass. Seriously,  you are right: its typical Indian trade mark: evade responsibility by blaming the victim.  But the story of victim-hood has layers that run deep into another Indian patent: do nothing except display one's victim-hood, and that too only in matters that pertain strictly to oneself - the neighbor can go wherever he finds a dark pit. Make victim-hood  a qualification, a medal, a trophy And victimhood too, not of the variety of noble innocense outraed, but mosly of a favour denied.... How many of us go beyond getting personal grievances removed, and  grievances too as " deep" as seeking transfers to postings nearest to one's residence. Armies of hundreds of thousands of jobless youth roam the streets while all that the "haves " can think of  is a reduction in the number of working hours and an increase in emoluments at par with whichever state offers the highest. Where is personal accountability among our citizenry.  A government can be voted out as  much for not creating enough jobs as for not obliging the employees with lucrative postings and transfer policy....These are our Pandvas - please don't mind - and we are also a part of them. ( And I am CERTAINLY NOT talking about Punjab nor about a government of any one political party in Chandigarh or New Delhi. The root runs deep --  and wide.
Nor does it absolve the governments of the day anywhere  of their larger responsibility. The system needs to be uprooted to be  reclaimed .. say some spotless voices . Yes it calls for a Krishna. I once a wrote  a piece along these lines in the Indian Express Delhi and Bombay: "Waiting for the Hero" and it was aptly described as " cri de coeur of the nation" by the then editor - George Verghese. If I can find that somewhere, I would like to re-post it, for your eyes only, Jaswant Singh Aman Sahib. That does not absolve me of my responsibility.

"Chashm-e-nam, jaan-e-shoreeda kafi nahin
Tohmat-e-ishq-posheeda kafi nahin"....

..I need to search deep within too, and look for the right armoury. Arjun was a great matchelss  marksman, but he wasn't a Bheem.  Bheem had the strentgth of elephants, but Bheem  could not hit a door with sledge-hammer - so poor were his skills at  weilding bow and arrows. To each one his peculiar skills and his peculiar weapons for achieving a common goal. Why, Krishna did not even touch arms, except that controversial wheel of the chariot...To each one, a dfferent role. Each one must search what that role is.

We will move on from just looking towards and at each other with helpless hope. Each one of us will turn our gaze to whatever little tool or weapon or skill or means which nature has blessed each one o f us with: someone with the skills to mobililise masses, another to  chart out a strategy, still another to raise funds, a fourth and a fifth to arrange logistics, a sixth to use his skills at communications -- number six: the sixth sense... and so on. No reason to lose hope.
History is unfolding every moment. The landscape is dark, and heroes are few and far between , and candles weak and storms rage. And yet, I keep faith in history and destiny and the people.


Sometimes I get presumptuous and like to see myself as  Robert Browning of this small act on this page: incorrigible optimist even in the presence of death ("Beautiful Evelyn Hope is Dead"  and he writes  an ode to tragedy at par in intensity with Shakespeare at his very best. :
".....
 "She pluck’d that piece of geranium-flower,      
Beginning to die too, in the glass;                5
  Little has yet been changed, I think:
The shutters are shut, no light may pass   
  Save two long rays thro’ the hinge’s chink.""

And yet, Browning takes us through the vast prairies of death. But only to blow a conch at the end::

"But the time will come, at last it will, 
  When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)    ......

Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,   
  And your mouth of your own geranium’s red—       
And what you would do with me, in fine, 
  In the new life come in the old one’s stead.      

So hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep:
  See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
There, that is our secret: go to sleep!      
  You will wake, and remember, and understand."

Evelyn Hope is the promised land, the dream, the ideal.


Out of her  Second Coming will Krishna also arise and Pandvas finally peal off thier cowardice and lethargy. This is the story of human race...not just of India, of Punjab, of you , of me alone....

For the moment, this hope is al I have to offer to you. Its a weak and tremulous hope. And in the all-enveloping dark, it might even seem just a weak mirage.

But I prefer to chase this mirage  than sit on my haunches, delivering sermons of death. Yes,  I chase dreams and yes,  I chase phantoms. Yes, , I set paper boats afloat. The ocean is large. The boats are  humble. Always humble. But they keep their little paces going. The ocean keeps boasting, these boats keep moving, buffetted between tresses and troughs, tossed around, mocked, ridiculed.....But boats alone conquer shores -- without boasting..... I am a boatsman. I love boats. Everyone who wants to conquer oceans loves boats....I know you also love boats. That is enough to start the voyage.......And when a tempest comes, when a tempest rages, we will see  how tempests are tamed .......You will and so will many others.  

God and the chunky Mouse

"There will be days that will come to you as teachers. You can sit at their feet and learn how this universe moves on indifferent to your grief and your problems and all the million other worries that weigh your head down. It may be the day of your greatest grief, your greatest loss and you may see the world engulfed by a ravenous darkness. You may think this is the end of the world and the sun is never going to rise again. But dawn will break at the appointed hour and the sun  will rise in all its accustomed resplendent glory.The winds will blow, kissing green grass, or brown as the case may be, as usual. Venus will hover above   Moon, or Moon hang from Venus, just as it would have had nothing happened to you. There will be no earthquakes, no volcanoes will blast open the earth, no tempests will disturb the oceans, and even the cock in your village will crow at the usual hour. So much for the grandeur of the tragedy of Son of God - or his joy and glory.

 But bend, then, your frame and lower your ear to hearken the beat in the heart of a cat who has just seen her kitten gasp to death before her eyes, or the oxe that has wounds cut deep into his nape by human cruelty, or to the tree felled by the last night's storm, or to the rose plant rendered bare by flowers plucked from it by some wanton school children. Or look , if you can, into the eyes of a goat being taken to a slaughter house or at the frightened face of a rat crouching  , frozen in fear, at the sight of the approaching cobra. Consider all this, and consider  a cow whose calf is writhing in some unknown pain before her eyes. Consider this, and then look towards the Sun or the Moon or the Venus or the Oceans or the Winds or the volcanoes. They still move in supreme indifference to all this sorrow, as they do to all the laughter and fun that Nature revels in on a different day.

What do you do then when grief and sorrow and a million other worries weigh you down?

Turn away from yourself and laugh and joke and giggle and gossip and run or jump or play hide and seek with  kids in the town. Play the rope-skip with village girls or run on sand with urchins who know no  worries other than hunger and physical pain. Turn away from yourself. Simply turn away.

Suddenly the clown  in Nature or God will reveal Himself to you and reveal to you the supreme truth. Your grief is as petty as your bliss. Move beyond both,and consider the profile of a saint as a clown. When nothing else works - and nothing else ever does, except for those who love self-deception but anyway, When nothing else works laugh without reason, act without motive. Stop taking yourself seriously. Get tired and go to sleep. God will reveal Himself to you as a little mouse peeping through the chinks of your door. You might find it too un-sublime but God or Truth or Universe feel no obligation to appear sublime to you. As Namdev said, the elephants and the insect both mirror God.Not that they are, but they are. Just as you are. Laugh with the insect or bow before the elephant , or bow before the insect and laugh with the elephant - Nature will bow with you and laugh with you regardless.

But remember, Nature is not here to echo your notes of grandeur; it has work to do. The sun is not here to seek a mist to hide behind to keep you company when you are broken with grief.The Sun has work to do. The Moon will never know you lost a leg or have developed a disease that will never cure. The Moon has work to do. The cat and the cow and the dog and elephant and even the trees and plants in your village may be too arrogant to notice your sorrow. They have work to do. Everyone, everything has work to do.

But yes, if you seek their company, you can try this. Love them and laugh at and with them - at the trees, at the Moon, at the Sun, the crow, the calf, the cow , or just a grain of sand - everyone. Be their mate, or play-act as one. May be, they will laugh with you or run a little race with you for fun. And even if they don't, you will still be happy. Your love will lit some dark corners in your soul; even your empty laughter, just giggles, may get a cat interested and that might give you happiness. Be a clown to a cat or to a mouse.Be a clown to the SUn , to the Moon, to the sand, to the sea.  The clown alone is the saint, for he alone knows - or knows how to pretend to know - that being happy without reason is the only way to be religious, for it is the only way to mock your paranoid concerns and the only way to be grateful without expressing it in a formal prayer.

All else is mere hypocritical wisdom, a mirror image of your exalted self-love."

He looked at the forest and he heard it laugh . At him?  He couldn't tell. But for a moment, a smile falshed across his lips."The rascal," he almost said, but kept quite. The words started echoing in his mind, eahc word resembled a laughter. 

This was enough to see him through the day ,laughing with people whom he hadn't talked to for ages. At the end of the day, his mind got tired of laughing and when he looked in the mirror above the wash-basin, he saw and heard  a jester laugh uncontrollably at him. He couldn't but laugh back, even though it made him feel so insignificant, and even though somehting in him still said, "You are sad today.". Feeling insignificant also made him feel "non-responsible" ( irresponsible, he thought , was not the right word, for it still implied some responsibility, which implied fake sense of   self-importance). Feeling non-responsible made him feel light. Feeling non-responsible also releived him of the huge task of writing on Facebook about a legend who had died that  day. He joked -without knowing it, or without realising it at least -even about the legend: his wife and women.  Tired as he was - for the first time in life, he had realised that the energy sapped in living up to expectations was physical  -  he felt sleepy and staggered toward his bed. He forgot where he was, but it didn't even seem to matter. This was the house of the one man whom he had truly loved all his life( or what seemed like all his life) , and who had truly loved him all his life. It didn't matter that the man was also his boss. But the boss had always behaved like a beloved and he had also learnt to teae and trouble him. This was one warm feeling he had, nbefore he laughed at himself for the feeling and at himself and his 'beloved' . He threw his head on the pillow, and it sounded like a wooden log.  And It would be eternity before he would want to wake up. He smiled, almost laughed, at himself and closed his eyes. Outside his window, twilight still lingered, having one last look at the receding hemisphere before it. 

To embrace an enemy is to find a friend

"Perhaps god and life want us to embrace everyone and to try to take everyone along..To embrace an enemy is to find a friend. To embrace an enemy is to discover a friend, to discover that the enemy was never there, that he was nothing but  our own secret and camouflaged hatred, and negativity given flesh and blood.. To embrace an enemy is to gain a friend , and to gain a friend, you need nothing but to have someone to love. To have someone to love , you need nothing but love in your heart. Those who love are never short of the beloved. No one has ever gone around with a selection criterion in his hand to find an object worthy of his or her love. To love, you need nothing but love in your heart and be worthy of it. It can't be any other way. ... To embrace an enemy is to find a friend....The day we are able to do it, we would be closer to what the Guru meant by "sagal sung hum ko ban ayee"...eh summat saadhu te paayee."

She had spoken like she always did. He felt a surge of love in him, a surge that seemed keen to embrace the universe.

"I am glad I have to look up towards the skies to find you these days. Even the mud my feet are in is envious of the skies you adorn these days...Even the mud my feet are in wishes to relieve them and lighten itself and ride my wings..."

Mornings can be like little daughters, caring yet carefree

Earlier this morning, under a partly overcast sky, through the early morning chill, driving through Bathinda and Mukatsar villages with poetic names - Bambeeha, Kal Jharaani, Badal and many others, along narrow but firm rural roads with rich and magnanimous orchards on one side and vast lush green fields, stretching into the heart of infinity, on the other.....watching the ascetic sun climb through lazy haze. Mornings can be like little daughters, caring yet carefree.

Ishq pehro pehar dar pehro pehar, pehro pehar

Ishq adhi raat, subhah-o-sham, waqt-o-bewaqt, 

HB 

Na sanam si, na khuda koi, na koi dil ruba /
Phir bhi dil vich ik munnawar Ishq da paigham si /
Na tammana si sile di, na sitam da khauf hi/
Phir bhi har chehra damkada har svere shaam si, 
Hai udon di gall jad har gall hi malhaar si 
Te Maha-saagar bhi maaruthal de ghar mehmaan si/
MasjidaaN de hirdiaaN vich ga rahi si baansuri
Renn bhinni mandiraaN vich barsadi aazaan Si

Ishq adhi raat, subhah-o-sham, waqt-o-bewaqt,
Ishq pehro pehar dar pehro pehar,pehro pehar
Bhataknaa galee-o-galee, shehr-o-shehar, shehr-o-shehar
Ishq dil narm-o-narm, duniya haqeeqt talkh-sakhat

Ishq charhde lehnde lehnde charhdian ton bekhabar
Ishq nu maafiq ne zehraaN , Ishq layee amrit zehar

Phir oh din aaya jehda aya hi karda ei, kde talliaa nhi
Gall? Ohi ! Mansoor siani bheed ch kyon rallia nhi

Hoia bus enna k moorakh akal toN gaafil riha
Hoia bus enna ke ashiq jaahil da jaahil riha

Ahal-e-daansih jaag payei , dekho chamak, dekho damak
Ishq de annhe shama-daana di akkh sharma gayee
Akal hai aj nartaki, pendi chophere hai dhamak
Jaan iklote awara di bohat ghabra rahee.

Haan eh gall kuchh hor hai, kall hor si aj hor hai
"Badwakhat hai ishq" phir ohi kadeemeeN shor hai...

Valentine with a hole in "her" heart: Rinnkie on Madhubala

Born on Valentine's Day with a hole in her heart -Madhubala

How do you begin to tell the story of a woman you did not know at all when she was alive..? So what does one say about her when she is dead. People love a story. I have none. People cook up stories. I won’t. The bare minimum that she deserves, like any dead soul, is respect - and humility that precedes that respect and trails it. How does one describe the haunting silence within her that perhaps never sighed ; that somber breath of longing and ecstasy that was never taken ; that melancholy of tears churned deep down that never ever fell … It is all about a woman. Her heart. A heart so heavy, yet so hollow, that never really throbbed..

Well, in fact Madhubala was born on St. Valentines Day, ironically, with a hole in her heart. A heart that in spite of its condition, evoked and spread endless love among people known and unknown, and that is as much as a heart can do. She died because of this nagging disease at the young age of 36. But not before she brought more light and more fragrance to the world of glamour – like a scented candle lit from both its ends – and like this candle, ended up perishing soon. But as long as she was alive, love was the muse of life that juxtaposed divinity, and in the process, consumed life itself. She was at the peak of her career and popularity with the release of ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ and ‘Barsaat Ki Raat’, when she was devoured by the very heart that she swore by.

Almost half a century after her death, till today, one has to say the name – Madhubala, and the invariable response is that of a collective sigh. The name is synonymous with beauty. Once mentioned, images in the mind start to billow out a spell of feelings almost magical – a fresh pink rose with dew drops and with blobs of honey. Can beauty of such indescribable magnitude suddenly lie so still yet wrap up the beguiled filaments of love, loss, and then look at the beauty of moments left behind. Sweet images of moments gone by but captured and held by the camera, on screen forever. Moments, ingrained in the mosaic of memory forever. Images and memories superimpose each on one, and turn into an experience to be lived and relived.

Time and tide aren’t ever held hostage to the dungeons of logic or reason. The moments gone by, are but, gone by – relegated, even obscure, but still effective - Somewhere. Somehow.

And then a song suddenly seeps through the soul, ripping off emotions of that bygone era, like a sprouting foliage in all its glory, sent purposefully as if to re-live those moments and bask in them.

So I end exactly where I began – How does one end the story of a woman one did not know at all when she was alive..? What does one say about her when she is dead.. People love a story. I have none. People cook up stories. I won’t. The bare minimum that she deserves, like any dead soul, is respect, and the humility that precedes that respect and trails it … I will just dedicate a song - A song which not just lit up the screen of Hindi cinema with colour back then, but one that still fires the imagination of a nation that loves to love Hindi cinema, and its actors to the point of worship

Happy birthday Madhubala .......Happy Valentines Day
Romi Mittal Sammy Gill Sukh Arora Camaal Mustafa Sikander Praneet GrewalAnooradha Minnie Patel Anju Mahendroo Parveen Sethi Reshma Singh Deepika Chand Namita Khare Lalit Sharma Winky Kaur Harpreet Dhindsa-Sahota Chanda Gupta Harcharan Bains Sanjay Arora Bobby Sing Rohina Mehra Doc Nirmal DhalluKulwant Grewal Balwant Singh Sanjeev Ahluwalia Jagwant Singh Brar Nayaz GillPreety Goraya Preet Gill Supreet Dhiman Sonia Chamkaur Puneet Kapoor Abhishek Sharma Brahmanand Singh Rani Bains Harina Sohi

Kudrat deese, kudrat suniye

"Kudrat deese, kudrat suniye, Kudrat bhau sukh saar
Kudrat paataali aakaasi, kudrat sarb aakaar" - Asa di Vaar

(Kudrat = Energy that takes shape in infinite forms and permeates every particle of dust, every breath of the winds, every force of motion of matter and energy. Kudrat is Nature in this sense of Nature, not in the sense of a mere scenic landscape. Kudrat as the embodiment of Eternally Loving Energy is what we all bow before . )

"Skies beyond count rolling upon skies beyond limit
Scaling the heights and depths of the cosmic infinitude,
And these countless forms and shapes that forever emerge

This ,my friend, bespeaks the stern love we all feel;

Nature, the Mind of God visible made
Nature, the Silence of God to symphony turned

This - the sole vision that you see
Everywhere, and the sole energy that you hear.

(Note: Humble attempt to capture the spirit of the meanings of that wonderful and breathtaking moment which the Guru's loving pen turned to verse . HB )

Fabulous Weather....Ocean looks so calm and tranquil....wish I could borrow its serenity...!!!
It remembers me of a quote: "“if the ocean can calm itself, so can you. We are both salt water mixed with air.”

Bhai Mardana in Gur Granth Sahib

What amazing lyricism and force and vehemence is on display here in Shri Guru Granth Sahib...Chanced upon it in a debate in Siyasat ...Deeply obliged to Beant S Sandhu for enlightening us on this one from Bhai Mardana ji. 

ਸਲੋਕੁ ਮਰਦਾਨਾ ੧ ॥ 
सलोकु मरदाना १ ॥ 
Shalok, Mardaanaa:

ਕਲਿ ਕਲਵਾਲੀ ਕਾਮੁ ਮਦੁ ਮਨੂਆ ਪੀਵਣਹਾਰੁ ॥
कलि कलवाली कामु मदु मनूआ पीवणहारु ॥
The Dark Age of Kali Yuga is the vessel, filled with the wine of sexual desire; the mind is the drunkard.

ਕ੍ਰੋਧ ਕਟੋਰੀ ਮੋਹਿ ਭਰੀ ਪੀਲਾਵਾ ਅਹੰਕਾਰੁ ॥
क्रोध कटोरी मोहि भरी पीलावा अहंकारु ॥
Anger is the cup, filled with emotional attachment, and egotism is the server.

ਮਜਲਸ ਕੂੜੇ ਲਬ ਕੀ ਪੀ ਪੀ ਹੋਇ ਖੁਆਰੁ ॥
मजलस कूड़े लब की पी पी होइ खुआरु ॥
Drinking too much in the company of falsehood and greed, one is ruined.

ਕਰਣੀ ਲਾਹਣਿ ਸਤੁ ਗੁੜੁ ਸਚੁ ਸਰਾ ਕਰਿ ਸਾਰੁ ॥
करणी लाहणि सतु गुड़ु सचु सरा करि सारु ॥
So let good deeds be your distillery, and Truth your molasses; in this way, make the most excellent wine of Truth.

ਗੁਣ ਮੰਡੇ ਕਰਿ ਸੀਲੁ ਘਿਉ ਸਰਮੁ ਮਾਸੁ ਆਹਾਰੁ ॥
गुण मंडे करि सीलु घिउ सरमु मासु आहारु ॥
Make virtue your bread, good conduct the ghee, and modesty the meat to eat.

ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ ਪਾਈਐ ਨਾਨਕਾ ਖਾਧੈ ਜਾਹਿ ਬਿਕਾਰ ॥੧॥
गुरमुखि पाईऐ नानका खाधै जाहि बिकार ॥१॥
As Gurmukh, these are obtained, O Nanak; partaking of them, one's sins depart. ||1||

|SGGS-553...( Courtesy Beant S Sandhu from Siyasat

Close encounter with life and death..

"Something that transcends both life and death touches us at moments of close encounter with either. Its not easy to face life at close quarters, because at close quarters it always smacks of death; its not easy to encounter death either because the very fear of it blinds us to its true nature. Obviously death by itself doesn't even exist, but the thought of a time when this wondrously colorful panorama will be pulled away from us is hard to live with. Life is an addiction, and death is only an item in it ; death has no life of its own. . Withdrawal from life's addiction, or even the thought of this withdrawal, fills us with fear.There are some among us who are able to mock at both life and the withdrawal. We call them "Buddha". It is tempting to try to find out who they are and how they look at and treat life.Its beyond me, but something like a phantom in a dream invites me to know them, and then, if possible, laugh with them.May be, they look at the rest of us as guests who are making an issue out of leaving a hotel room.What a joke then we and our concerns about life and death must appear ! "

PAU: Invisible tendrils still touch and tug at tender nerves in my heart

PAU: Romance and realism over its name: its billion tendrils that tug at my heart...

February 18, 2014 at 2:44am

PublicFriendsOnly MeCustomFacefriendsGovernment of PunjabSee all lists...Government of PunjabPanjab University, ChandigarhMahilpur, India AreaGo Back

 Personally, I am for Punjab Agriculture University retaining its present dignified name. The rest of the debate over a possible or a propsoed change in its nomenclature  is therefore of no interest to me. ( The debate appears elsewhere onf Facebook) An old-fahsioned romantic that I am, I was against renaming of the school at which I had studied in my childhood and adolescence -  from Govt Senior Secondary School, Mahilpur, to Sardar Baldev Singh Mahilpuri Memorial Govt Senior Secondary School, Mahilpur. But where the PAU is concerned, my voice would matter a lot less. In a democratic government, every single individual has only one vote. So when i tried to argue in favour of no change in my school's name ,  I was out-voted and overruled ..I had loved the dignified simplicity of my school's old name  - Government Higher Secondary School, as the school had a higher secondary system at hat time.
It mattered little that I had earlier discouraged a move to have the same school re-named after my grandfather who  was the founder of this school and had remained the president of its Management Committee  for 45 years. Had I wanted, I coud so easily have pursuaded the Chief Minister purely on merit to rename the school after my grandfather's name. But I opted for romance rather than for petty presumed family glory.

For the same reason, I have a strong emotional attachment with the present name of the university where I have spent some of the best  and the most productive and creative years of my life. I was 27 when i joined it. What divine fragrance filled the air of the open and beautifully maintained fields, grounds and even roads of the varsity in those days. Plus , the love, the warmth, the incense of pure affection and the romance of being  a teacher to young and beautiful minds for whom love had a meaning as real as their breathing and as real as breeze  caressing  their young and glowing cheeks, and as real as  the fresh dawn of an awakening to a new throbbing sensation of life, a new lighting up of their minds - as real andas beautiful as  fresh glow that filled their souls under every moonlit night that washed the quietly sleeping hostel buildings  ---  even as my beloved children slept and dreamed their beautiful dreams under those roofs. ..Oh, how my heart would leap up in my late night lonely but not lonesome walks around the university grounds, looking at the silent walls of those hostels and other buildings..These walls themselves had a life and minds of their own, as had the nightly spirit of the whole campus that walked by my side as I thought these thoughts.... It was truly like living a dream.

I have come away from the varsity, but its invisible tendrils still reach out to the nerves and veins around my heart, tug at them, asking me to " come over, come back" , as a mother's heart reaches out in painful loneliness to her children who have gone away in search of "greener pastures" - as if  pastures greener than mother's love existed anywhere. The loving but insistent tug of the years I spent at the university is hard to resist.

Every time someone brings that name up, it wakes up a billion half-asleep strings of the violin that lies half-smothered, half-tired and yet always ready to spring to music.

Punjab Agriculture University ! Ah there is something in that name that is  pure as  romance - the name walks like a stunning yet elegant beauty wherever I walk, going wherever its children go. May be, to some the name is too prosaic - what is so romantic about agriculture? Ask a farmer's son. he will tell you. Or ask me. May be,  to some others it is too precise and too scientific and therefore appropriate but un-romantic.

It is all that - and more. When I rejected the thought of Dr Borlaugh as a prefix for PAU, i was not driven by any high sounding patriotic considerations, nor did the confident nationalist in me fear the coat-tails of a scientist just because he had a different colour or different nationality from mine. These might be very proud or holy considerations for some. And I respect that.

But for me - no, i did not even need to reach the point of such high voltage nationalism. To me, the pure child-like innocence of those over-simplistic, sentimental and plain things like human love and romance of my affair with my children and the way they touched my heart with their gentle, young finger-tips -- these are enough to make me want to keep the name of my mother as I first heard it when I opened my ears to this world.

I have never stopped calling my school at Mahilpur simply as Govt Higher Secndary School . And i will not stop calling my mother institution at Ludhiana by its maiden name - Punjab Agriculture University , even if for some reason my own government -- or the government of which I am a part - decides to change it .I have always been a beloved and loving and therefore a spoilt child  of my mother. Like all spoiled children, i will dig my heels in, cry myself hoarse, shout, shriek or do whatever it takes to have my way with on my  mothers name. But even if I fail, I will not stop calling my mother by the name with which she first told me why she belonged to me.

Others can have their politics over it - in favour or against the government. They are welcome to it. Mine is a different problem, and a different dream. I will continue to live it.

NOTE: and no name is being changed , either!. It is only about a suggestion from someone to that effect !! The piece , at a close look, is about the extreme and painful difficulty of being asked to conform to the withdrawal of things whose presence in our lives we are as used to as we are to the presence of indulgent mothers. A very cruel ask indeed. But life can indeed take some precious things away from us; but nothing - nothing - can - force us to accept their replacement with something else.

Stop resisting - and pushing. Life will yield herself to your lap --Hazel

Stop resisting - and pushing. Life will yield  herself to your lap

The mud my feet and the skies you adorn..Hazel

"Perhaps god and life want us to embrace everyone and to try to take everyone along..To embrace an enemy is to find a friend. To embrace an enemy is to discover a friend, to discover that the enemy was never there, that he was nothing but a our own secret and camouflaged hatred, and negativity given flesh and blood.. To embrace an enemy is to gain a friend , and to gain a friend, you need nothing but to have someone to love. To have someone to love , you need nothing but love in your heart. Those who love are never short of the beloved. No one has ever gone around with a selection criterion in his hand to find an object worthy of his or her love. To love, you need nothing but love in your heart and be worthy of it. It can't be any other way. ... To embrace an enemy is to find a friend....The day we are able to do it, we would be closer to what the Guru meant by "sagal sung hum ko ban ayee"...eh summat saadhu te paayee."

She had spoken like she always did. He felt a surge of love in him, a surge that seemed keen to embrace the universe.

"I am glad I have to look up towards the skies to find you these days. Even the mud my feet are in is envious of the skies you adorn these days...Even the mud my feet are in wishes to relieve them and lighten itself and ride my wings..."