TWO MOTES IN A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT

INTERPLAY OF MORE ENERGY
ALONG A RAINWASHED LANDSCAPE



THUS SPAKE ONE MOTE

"I speak from the vantage point of a couple of large scotches on the rocks and apologise for nothing that ensues.I just finished watching David Dimbleby’s ‘Seven Ages of Britain’. Being an Anglophile, I could only marvel at and admire the brilliance of David’s mind and admire his congeniality and lack of airs. This is one of the many admirations that one need not apologise for. I read your blog and sometimes it provokes me out of my indolence which, I reckon, is a condition of acceptance and surrender- without an emotion attached to either. But you incite me only to a perpetual intellectual masturbation without the prospect of a climatic orgasm. Harcharan, what in us seeks salvation, if that is what we indeed seek.? Move beyond the treachery of words. This is not a contest of wills or that whore who parades herself as intellect. It is the hunger of the soul, way beyond the etiquette of rectitude, way beyond the purist ignominy of joie de vivre. Where does our peripatetic mind lead? Do we seek and kneel in the temple of Love? But then what is love but an evocation of Beauty? Beauty indeed has to be the absolute truth. Is it?Beauty owes its existence to its unattainabilty. How can such a feeble thing as familiarity kill divine Beauty? Can you imagine the wonder, the awe, the unspeakable, overwhelming sight of a sunset to eyes that have never beheld it before? My God, it would blow your spirit away. Do you know how we see it through the car windscreen? “Look at the colours in the sky.” “Yeah. Where shall we have dinner?” It’s Prufrock measuring our lives every day of our lives. Harcharan, I have known the tremors of love. I have been where my whole being was but a trembling leaf to a single moment of eye contact with the women I loved. I have known the pain of abstinence where to touch the woman I loved was to defile her purity and beauty. Where I withdrew my hand even though the women I loved craved for it. I could not defile them. ‘Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!’Can you imagine being married to a woman that you loved with everything inside your chest? Can you imagine where three months of sex with her bring you to? Your nerve ends would have withered as you turned your back and felt irritated by her need to cling on. Is there a more gruesome murder of something so divine? That such an insignificant thing as familiarity should have the power to demolish the divinity of celestial beauty is our curse.Therefore, Harcharan, the womb of death which contains the primordial seed of eternal life. Not the chicanery of words, not the perfidy of the strumpet intellect but the peace of the sanctum sanctorum which launches the storms and captures them as they return spent. Activity is not turbulence. In space there is no movement except the imperceptible movement of rotating universes. The rotation is not efferent, it is concentric moving to the still centre of the singular point which contains the ever expanding universes.‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone’The truth is absolute in its transience. One does not disprove another. We just acknowledge and surrender to the truths as they manifest themselves. Acceptance is acknowledgement- no more no less. Nothing more or less is required because the acceptance of a contrary truth in another moment does neither violate nor disprove the one which preceded it. EASE is a mundane but de profundis state of a mind which has known the pain of beauty one cannot blemish by laying a finger, but can let you gaze at its alluring face forever and feel the claws gripping your heart which a lifetime of familiarity cannot wane.Pray that I never approach a keyboard after a couple of scotches- for your sake and mine."

RAJIV MUDGIL
LONDON
January 31, 2010 4:37


AND THUS SPAKE THE SISTER MOTE

"Do we need those props like the elixir and the rocks to move away from the need to apologize and explain? The obstinate shrinking away from the eternal orgasm has been the curse of all those who always seek a wooden permanence in these orgasms, refusing to accept their movement from one climax to another as the only form of eternity nature permitted us ( for our own good!) For those who accept every moment as eternity ( as I do, for example) life is -- has always been, will always be -- an eternal orgasm, even if masturbation, intellectual or otherwise, may be the only way to reach it. I have nothing against anything for everything in the end is a child of nature, even the windscreens of Prufrock's car. (Oh, how often have I enjoyed wonderful rains or gorgeous rainbows or the awesome rising and setting of suns through the closed windows of a moving car or a bus! Recall the days when we first travelled from our college to the roots of the Himalyan foothills which take you to the valley in Kashmir! Recall the river that stretched itself into the heart of infinity at the point we enter Pathankot! And that was more than thirty five years ago! And the sight is mine to behold every time I indulge in what Wordsworth called the bliss of solitude. In fact, any time I want to indulge in the sight, I am transported to that bliss of solitude. With me, means have always followed ends!)

But I understand your acting difficult with the infinite peace and joys that spread around you and your anxiety to reduce even acceptance to a pursuit. And your description of the notes of music as mere grammar ( "play of words!") For me though, the melodies are the only truth that exist, and I do not -- and must not --look at the details of what must appear to you as the architecture of music. In this, as in many other things, we are, have always been and will always be different from each other. And thank God for this. Nature can not afford two idiots as identical twins in the same age. But I celebrate my idiocy and leave you to pine and writhe in your self-erected chambers of analysis. I do not care if love cannot bear the touch of reality, if I can not get up from the bed of a woman with the same passion that I had gone into it with. A woman is under no obligation to sustain my orgasm for ever if that's my idea of endless love! I have to pass through moments of boredom as much as through delirious zones with her and be happy that one is not the other. But nature has given man -- and woman -- the ability to live life as an endless series of orgasms and treat the whole life ( rather than a sliced moment of it ) as an act of implosion, turning themselves into fire-balls of pure self-created, self-destructive ecstasy. I am no piper of John Keats' Grecain Urn, and do not seek to freeze a single moment into eternity! That moment is one orgasm and there is no need to mourn its passing away because there will be another ( There will always be; their always has been in my life. ) I do not know if you will ever get rid of this punishing habit of intellect to mock the passage of orgasmic ecstasies from peak to peak. While I jump the peaks, you are stuck moaning their intransience, their limitedness. Like Walt Whitman, I do not care to look a moment in the eye and judge it mortal because I know the same moment will be born afresh and that these constant rebirths of a given moment are the only form in which eternity exists. I do not love one peak more than the other because I know that these are one woman in dressed in different bridal attires. Jump with me into the florid intransience of moments, jump with me into the waters which are for ever flooding our momentary streams. Do this, or sit there in Prufrock's car " with a closed window at four", cursing both the car and the rainbow that dances outside it. To me, the car is as beautiful as the rainbow is, and both are "magic casements opening on the floors of perilous seas." Its yours to be cursed with insistence on accepting reality and life on your terms and to treat each magic casement as one view-point only. While I celebrate and exult in the "contemprarneity" of each moment, each orgasm, each ecstasy, you mourn the in transience or "temporaneity" of these peaks of existence. You look at the given views as temporary; I look at each one of them as "contemporary." Hence you remain stuck as I move; to you , this life will always remain a movement from one paralysis to another, with health held eternally out only as a Muslim's promise for future. I bound from peak to peak, loving the blessed athletes and kissing the parlaytic souls along the way, for both the blessed athletes as well as the paralytic souls have faces that mirror mine. I love my dreams; you distrust your visions. (And something in you tells you that no dreams are trustworthy because they are all transient; they shall pass. Something in me loves their passing away and coming back again. Something in me loves the rapidly shifting patterns of sunlight on a rain-washed landscape. Something in me celebrates that all truths are transitory and that for each truth that passes away, a million more will be born. I see in transitoriness of patterns nature renewing itself for ever; you insist that there is a permanence, an immortality beyond this dance of moments. You insist that orgasm with your woman must last beyond the first six months of marriage. I do not pine like the piper on the Grecian Urn.

And God be thanked that we are the way we are, two Gods that inhabit the same planet, totally in love with each other and each utterly distrustful of the other's reality.
And God be thanked that I will never need those limpid glasses and dancing rocks in a glass to move beyond the need for apologizing. ( Not that I would mind a shot, but that will only be to move to another level of insanity once I am done with the one I live in.
Besides, if I join the party, you will run away from it, as you of course know ! I thank these two glasses of scotch that have so released you from your prison walls. Have two more and celebrate me!

- HARCHARAN BAINS
CHANDIGARH, FEBRUARY 1, 2010

JAB AANKH HE SE NA TAPKA TO PHIR LAHOO KIYA HAI

FLOODING THE SKY

(ONCE MORE PRAYING SPONTANEOUSLY -- IN HINDI)

TU RAAT BHI, KIRAN BHI, SEHAR BHI, DOPEHAR BHI,
ANJAANI DAGAR OR ATKHELIAN KARTI LEHAR BHI;

DIYA BHI MANZIL BHI TU , SIYAAH RAH GUZAR BHI TU,
MANZILE MAQSOOD BHI, ANJAAN SI DAGAR BHI TU.

NOOR BHI, UMANG BHI, CHANDA BHI OR CHAKOR BHI;
PIAYAR KI KHAMOSH RAHEIN, VALVALON KA SHOR BHI.

JAAGTA SA KHWAB DIN KA, HAQEEQATON KA AKS BHI ,
MAUT KA GEHAN SANNATA, ZINDAGI KA RAKS BHI.

SOYA SAQOON, JAAGI TARAP OR PHARFRAATA PANKH TU,
GHAR KI IK KHAMOSH VEENA, MANDIRON KA SANKH TU;

SHAM DHALE TO SO JAANA TU, LE SAPNON KI ORHNI,
RAAT KHUD LAYEGI SAPNE BAN CHANDA OR CHAKORNI;

BREHMAND MAIN HAI GOONJ TERE RAAG MERE PIYAAR KI,
CHAR SOO BAAHEIN PHELAATI MEHAK TERE GULZAAR KI.

SHAM KA DHALNA SUNHERI LAALI AMBAR PAAR KI,
TU HI BAADAL, TU HI BIJLI, BAARISH TU HI MALHAR BHI.

BRHAM BHI, BRAHMAND BHI, KAILASH VARINDAVAN BHI TU,
JISM KA YE SHOR PAAGAL, PRASHANT GEHRA MANN BHI TU.

YE BHI TU OR WOH BHI TU,OR MAIN BHI TU OR TU BHI TU ,
GHAR BHI, JANGAL, JHEEL JHARNA TU HI TU BUS TU HI TU.

KIS KI YE TALAASH AANKHEIN RAAT DIN PHIR KAR RAHIN?
MANN YAHIN, DUNIYAAN YAHIN, SEHRA YAHIN JAB GHAR YAHIN;

NAAD SA UTHE HAI MANN MEIN JAOON MEIN JIS BHI TARAF,
IS TARF TERA TARRANAM, NRITYA TERA USS TARF.

KHO CHUKKA HOON HOSH APNI, HOSH MAIN AAYOON BHI KIYOON?
MANN TERA AANANT AMBAR, OR KAHIN JAAYOON BHI KIYOON?

IK DABI MUSKAAN SE JO NAAM MERA BOLE DE,
HAR TARF ANAND HE ANAND KE DAR KHOL DE.

'BECAUSE ITS NOT CANTANKEROUS, ITS NOT NEWS'

OCCASIONAL ABERRATION

(A light hearted detour into the world of the high and mighty Mughals of the Media, all in good fun)

" BAK RAHAA HOON JUNOON MEIN KYA KYA KUCHH,
KUCHH NA SAMJHE KHUDA KARE KOI "

Media Musketeers:
Oracles of Untruth ?

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed."
- Elbert Hubbard

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news. - A. J. Liebling

Should the Media give up what some see as its illiterate obsession with cynicism and arrogant self righteousness, just because it can afford neither? No, because no one should give up his or her sole access to bread and butter. This, and how would you feel as a mother if your son was Tanvir Ahmad, the former Pakistani Air Chief Marshall, whose picture in a Government of India ad about female foeticide has the Indian media 'up in a horrendous cry / Such as women make when their husbands or their lap dogs die."

These are some of the inane issues I have been thinking about ever since my friends in newspapers and television decided that Tanvir Ahmad ad was the worst thing to have hit the national security since the Chinese invasion of 1962. Some of my greatest friends are from the world of journalism, all of them gentlemen and ladies, despite their profession.

This said, the media breast-beating over Tanvir's picture on a Government of India ad makes my jaw quiver on the edges of vomiting. The reaction of the nation's, indeed humanity's conscience keeper (for that's what our media likes to believe and proclaim about itself) would have been ridiculous – even hilarious -- were it not nauseating and had it not touched an issue of the profoundest import for the whole mankind. But of course, the media can , as is its wont, pat itself on its back for its 'impact', - what with the Government of India also agreeing to play ball by discovering that female foeticide is strictly a parochial issue from which the Pakistani mothers can, and indeed must be excluded.

What is the media trying to suggest? That it is alright for a female foetus to be killed in the womb if the progeny of that foetus later is going to grow up to be your enemy? Or that female foeticide would have been justified – even desirable and necessary – if we knew in advance that the female in the womb would in due course give birth to a Hitler or even a terrorist? In that case also, you end up killing Hitler's mother to save Hitler from being born! That’s really living up to the great reputation for "Indian mentality." Chor ko nahi , chor ki maan ko maaro.( Don't kill the thief; kill his mother instead, so she doesn't give birth to more thieves.) Are the ethics of the "sacred campaign against an outrage against humanity "(words of a famous journalist to describe the social scourge) limited to ensuring the birth of 'good children, guaranteed never to be our enemy'. And is the media even slightly sensitive to what the mother of the Pakistani Air Chief would be going through, reading about the moral indignation of the Indian 'intellectuals' – howling that it would have been okay from the purely human standpoint to have killed through female foeticide so that she couldn't give birth to a future Chief of Staff of an Air Force of a country inimical to India?

And who shall decide whether the girls who are eliminated before birth would become mothers of future terrorists, traitors, criminals, serial killers, corrupt government officials or politicians, or prophets of communal hatred? Or may be, despite their nationalities, an Einstein, a Lincoln or a Mother Teresa? Can a Gandhi never be born in our enemy's land?

That the Tanvir picture on an official Indian ad could have been turned into an opportunity for show-casing the country's global stature, broad vision and even moral courage and magnanimity on matters humane is no one's concern. Attributing the "Himalayan blunder" to something so unexciting as a mere official's oversight would rob the media of a great shot at cantankerous nationalism. And because it wouldn't be cantankerous, it wouldn't even be news. No one –but no one – anywhere in the media has risen up to speak the obvious: that female foeticide is not a provincial, racial or nationalist issue, not even an Asian or a global one: it is a profoundly human question, one that cuts –must cut – across geographical boundaries. It is humanity's one common agenda, other than environment. And therefore, while one may perhaps be justified in holding that Tanvir's picture could have been replaced with that of ,say, legendary Air Chief Marshall Arjun Singh, there is no justification for whipping a national(istic) storm.

But then, Pakistan is an enemy, and to be concerned about their future mothers as a part of our "human obligation" is unforgivable -- and probably not 'saleable'. Humanity begins at home and at home must it end too. I can already hear growls and see naked canine teeth of self-declared watchdogs at the mere thought of my words ever making it to the pages of a newspaper or to the "BREAKING NEWS" on some cleanly professional television channel, forcing me to resign my post and giving the media another "kill" in its proud Roll of Honour further establishing its credentials as a moral vigilante. (Some of the headlines could run like this : PAK SYMPATHISER IS BADAL'S ADVISOR - GOVERNMENT MEIN GADDAAR – "BAINS KI BE-HIYAEE: ADVISOR OR A PAK SPY?" – ADVISOR KI ANHONEE BATEIN – "STANDING UP FOR THE ENEMY" – AKALI SYMPATHIES WITH KHALISTANI SPONSORS OUT IN THE OPEN: ADVISOR'S MEDIA BASHING FOR OPPOSING PAK GLORIFICATION)

Well, since I am not a professional journalist, I can not even get anywhere near thGe precision of the modern day Shakespeares. We live in an age when television is glad to translate itself literally into "doordarshan" (how close they are to reality!) And the radio till recently was the other electronic Oracle of Delphi – 'Akashvani.' But compared with the massacre of truth we watch and read everyday now, we are already nostalgic about those innocent good old days of All India Radio. We have moved into an era of the newscaster as an actor, of the reporter as a script writer (not for nothing do they call a report a 'story'!) and of the editor as a philosopher-psychiatrist-economist-physicist-professor all rolled into. It’s an age in which television reporters must look and speak like criminals, and astrology, not astronomy, must explain the events of the universe to the viewers. Astrology, palmistry, even occult, Tantrik practices and beliefs are the flavour of the season. But to be fair to the TV channels, their colleagues elsewhere follow occultism and Tantrik vision of other and more ludicrous varieties.

Tanvir Ahmad's case of course is not the only instance of the media "hounds" (how they love this expression!) performing their sacred duty towards the nation. (That's the sole reason why they are in the profession of course!) They would keep you abreast of "developments" by carrying their OB vans right inside the bed-rooms of a family whose daughter has been brutally murdered, to show you 'gory details of reality' by lingering their cameras ( or pens or laptops) for hours and days and weeks on a servant suspected of killing his aged keeper; or showing you ' every angle of truth' in a rape 'item' or by giving close ups of a murdered ninety year old lady lying in a pool of blood and , if they can find it, gore.

Meanwhile, the families, relatives and friends of the victims as well as the doctors and the police must clear the way for media musketeers for "miles of footage" of broken ribs, slashed throats, or of a stray dog eating human flesh. That's someone's idea of "feel good factor for a nation." The reporter must get at the truth and be the first one to do so and beat the rival channel by that extra fraction of an extra fraction of an extra fraction of a second. And he must make the story "exhaustive, in-depth and realistic" by getting all the neighborhood to comment on the 'character and background' of every one who could remotely feature in the "news story at this hour". And in cases involving rape or murder, he must, if unnecessary(!) "reconstruct and re-enact" the "episode."Plus, how can the viewer be allowed to remain ignorant about the fraction of a second by which one channel beats the other to the story? ("Yeh poora khualsa hai kewal "Kal Tak" ke paas") And in case the viewer has forgotten that our channel is always the first to break news, it is our duty to keep reminding him of his ignorance every five to seven minutes - even if he forgets the actual story by that time." And keep Breaking News, till it is completely broken - to pieces- and can no longer be recognized.

And as for educated reporting on sensitive issues, I am reminded of a story titled "Sikh intellectuals guided by emotion" in a highly respected national daily in January 1985. I was one of the speakers at a seminar in which former Prime Minister I.K.Gujral, Late Lt Gen J.S.Arora and journalist Kuldip Nayyar were the other participants. This was in Khalsa College, Amritsar, during the tense and frightful days following the Operation Blue star. I believed – and said – that the army's handling of the situation had been a disaster which should worry us about the professionalism of our elite units (92 army personnel had died in a single day of an operation conducted on an extremely limited and focused area, well mapped out months in advance.) I had lambasted the Government of India for allowing the situation to drift towards this calamity and using the army option much ahead of the more advisable security and political options. I had voiced the Sikh anguish and anger against the Congress Government and said that a government that rolled tanks and armoured vehicles into the holiest of the holy places of the Sikhs was never likely to have much credibility with the Sikh masses, unless it apologized unconditionally. The apology, I emphasized, SHOULD NOT BE FOR TRYING TO ELIMINATE TERRORISM AND EXTREMISSM BUT FOR DOING IT IN THE MOST DISASTROUS WAY POSSIBLE, A WAY THAT WAS BOUND TO BE COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. I said that the Operation Blue star was a "cure more killing than the desease". Events post Operation Bluestar saw militancy rising to a pitch never seen in Punjab even during Bhinderanwale days.

These observations were trashed as "militant slogans eulogizing Bhinderanwale". Wrote a seasoned reporter of a highly respected English daily for its readers: "It was not a statesman like I K Gujral or an enlightened journalist like Kuldip Nayyar who carried the day at the seminar. It was a young lecturer from the Department of Languages and Journalism in the Punjab Agricultural University who stole the thunder and swept the audience and carried the day. Taking resort to a highly militant idiom, Mr. Bains used the language of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale, questioned the Indian state's standing with his community and justified the anger of the Sikh youth indulging in killing of innocents." The reporter had forgotten to mention that I had vehemently pleaded for Hindu-Sikh unity, out rightly condemned violence, spoken with pride about Sikh patriotism, asked the community to remember that even in the political cameos, all parties except the Congress had stood by them, and that if every vote cast in favour of Rajiv Gandhi was to be seen as a vote against the Sikhs, then the votes against Rajiv must count as pro-Sikh – and by this yardstick, the country was still at the back of the Sikh community.' Despite this, almost all the English and Hindi newspapers lynched me for taking "an anti-national stand", and that too when I had repeatedly said that I am "Proud to be Indian, Proud to be Sikh" (Later I wrote an article with that title in the Tribune of Chandigarh). And I had said all this at the peak of militancy in the heart of militancy, the border belt of Punjab. (My whole speech had been tape recorded by the organizers, so I had something to back my objections against the media.)

I protested (I was young and very idealistic about the media at that time) but barring an innocuously published "clarification" in the "Letters to the editor" columns, the newspaper in question chose not to be embarrassed by the mountain of evidence against its massive – and at the time, extremely hurtful for the nation – untruths. Other papers fared only slightly less ignobly.

There was a piece I once wrote about the media atrocities during the days of terrorism. I sent it to one of the leading English dailies. It was rejected of course. Freedom of press mmust not be used agains the press, said a senior editor of the paper after reading my piece. he said he was shocked that I wrote the piece. Sensing that he was very upset, I said its okay and that I will be fine even its not published. He gave me a look of utter disbelief , " Publish it ? Of course it will NEVER be published. IT SHOULD N-E-V-E-R HAVE BEEN WRITTEN !"

(For More , visit this space space next week.)

AN AMATEUR'S FLIRTATIONS WITH POETRY (IN HINDI)

HAR SOO BIKHRE ROSHAN PAL SE KAISE JAAYE DOOR KOI !

Chehak uthe jab nannha suraj mann ke surmai aangan main,
Neem khwab se uth uth panchhi khailein soone se mann mein,
Mann umang yoon haath phailaaye, jaise sehmi shaakh koi
Aasmaan se barse pal pal, pawan nirmal raakh koi;
Mann hai ya koi peer bairagi, rahe na ban ke apna sa,
Door gagan mein pankh phailaye, khulee aankh ka sapna sa.
Ye main hoon, ya tu hai sajni, ya dono ka mail hai ye,
Kahoon phrebe-nazar isse ya kaayanaat ka khel hai ye. Idhar, udhar, har soo , har pal mein, aks tera ya tu hai ye,
Rooh Ka har kona mehakaati, awaara khushboo hai ye.
Tu bhi , main bhi, ye bhi, woh bhi , or ye sara ambar bhi,
Sagar bhi, darya bhi, galiyaan, kooche or mera ghar bhi;
Aankh ka sapna aur tarap bhi teri meri baahon ki
Hai kashsih yeh ek unkahi, bus un-dekhi raahon ki.
Tu bhi chal aakash chal raha, aur chal rahi dharti bhi,
Ik azaad sailaab sa hai tu, aur zara sa darti bhi.
Chal uth likhein naam gagan pe, tera bhi aur mera bhi.
Ek anant safar jeevan hai, par jogi ka phera bhi.
Tujh main mujh main, sabh main bikhra anjaana sa noor koi,
Har soo bikhhare roshan pal se kaise jaaye door koi

A MASTER'S SURPRISE AT HOW HIS TOUCH COULD TRANSFORM

MY GOD! YOUR BUD AND ROAR THING IS SO GREAT IT REMINDED ME OF WALT WHITMAN
'DO I CONTRADICT MYSELF
VERY WELL THEN I DO
MISSING ME ONE PLACE
SEARCH ANOTHER'
I am very happy that you have left your
teachers,undersigned included,far behind in understanding and unfolding meanings of life and living in your own wonderful way.My use of capital letters in the beginning is my acknowledgement of and tribute to your superior being.

Acceptance is ripeness and I quote Shakespeare:
'Men must endure their going hence
Even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all'

KAUSHAL

TO MY MASTER WHO SOWED A STORM AND NOW PRAISES ME FOR REAPING IT

Sir, this is unfair and makes me feel small. No student must ever be made to hear this, although every student in his early arrogance does like to hear precisely this. Long years repalce arrogance with acknowledgement of one's humble truth. And the torrent that you call a roar , you would recall, is nothing but the legacy of those years of Destiny when I was your student, when you first picked me out to pat me on my back. That day has never gone from my mind, and I have spent the rest of my life trying to build upon the love that a stranger of a teacher had showered on me on the very first day of my meeting him. Not everyone is as lucky as I was in having a teacher who insisted with me that I was good. ( And you are still doing the same thing with me, sir; neither have you given up being my teacher nor have I being your disciple. Take me in again, and teach me like you first did.Only I know how invaluable a wealth being a student of a Master is. Breaking rules and loving turbulence is what you had sowed in me; you can perhaps say that I have not allowed the plant to wither.(Or at least I have tried to keep it green and flourishing. That graduation student is still alive.) But how could I do otherwise! A superior gardner had shaped my years of learning. I am right what I was when you first told me what I had to be. - Harcharan

Acceptance and Comfort?

I know more about what comfort is not, and i love that. Turbulence of the mind- blowing kind, turbulence that leaves you shaking all over, turbulence that will smash all your long-held beliefs and attitudes, and lead you pitilessly, inexorably, irrevocably to the maelstrom of rapidly shifting patterns of events, thoughts, feelings and suck them all in at the center like a black hole sucks in light so it can never escape . by this have i existed and i invite you to taste the fatal but immortalising discomforts of living. and to know comfort for the first time.

TWO BEAMS OF SUNLIGHT

" Acceptance does not lie in doing nothing. Acceptance is doing what comes naturally. To a bud, its gentle opening; to us, our voicing of our being. I open silently like a bud and I roar violently like a Storm -- both states are natural to me. And I accept and enjoy and celebrate both."- H. B.



BEAM ONE

Light and revelation, discovery of lands new and revisited, flashes of inspiration in the moments which defy Time, wire in the blood- all defy the serenity of what is. An all pervasive dark soothes the homogeneous Spirit. Gentle fragrance of the half open bud does not even whisper a claim to beauty, much less clamour it. It does not seek attention or admiration. It just is- an un-embellished affirmation of existence unconscious of its own beauty or attraction. This, I believe is the natural state of beings- at one with the whole, more in acceptance than in curiosity. Is it our upstart ego which craves revelations and blinding flashes of light, questions and seeks answers, asserts itself and, in the act of assertion, becomes the bubble which seeks to understand the ocean it rose from? Bright light violates the soothing pall. There is music to be felt when you close your eyes and merge the dark on either side of this body, which is but a thin layer of the darkness itself.

Rajiv Mudgil, London
25 Jan, 2010



BEAM TWO

Gentle fragrance of the half open bud". That's what our thoughts, our curiosity, our desire to clamour and our pursuit of something are. We do not exhale fragrance. We exhale our being - in a way, the bud also does the same by allowing itself to open , howsoever gently -- and our urge to give voice to whatever goes on within us is the form our exhaling takes . Therefore, I celebrate ( not that you and I have any choice) the clamour of my being as much as I celebrate " the Gentle fragrance of the half open bud." Fragrance and clamour are states of being, and neither is better than the other, nor can be. Acceptance does not lie in doing nothing. Acceptance is doing what comes naturally. To a bud, its gentle opening; to us, our voicing of our being. I open silently like a bud and I roar violently like a storm -- both states are natural to me. And I accept and enjoy and celebrate both.
HARCHARAN BAINS
JANUARY 26, 2010

CAVES ARE DARK AND ANCIENT

(To a friend whose sunshine occasionally lits up my caves)



I sing odes to immortality - immortality that will die with me. I do not want immortality to outlast me.


CAVES ARE DARK AND ANCIENT, BUT A FLASH OF LIGHTENING NOW AND THEN REVEALS THEIR TRUTHS. THEY ARE SUNNY ONLY AT THE GATES, EXCEPT IF YOU CARRY SUNSHINE IN YOUR HEART WHILE YOU ENTER THERE.

Truth is transient and always and only yours to keep or wear it on your sleeve. And yes, the caves are ancient, the darker the farther you go into them. Thats what caverns are all about. They are made sunny under the fleeting flashlight of experience of the moment. Thus it has been and thus shall it ever be.

I retain in me the curiosity I first felt when I glanced at this world as an infant. There is nothing in this world that you and I , and all the others we know, do not know already. And yet, I choose to travel back blindfold on trodden paths so I may feel the thrill of discovering what I already know. This world is a make-believe, I have always held, and as a make-believe, it is as exciting, as painful, as graceful and as degrading as it would be were it real. And since we have known it only as a make believe, we do not even know how it would be different were it real.

I flirt with the flashy and changing patterns of this make-believe - in the absence of anything more real. I romance its untruth and glorify its transience. For me, immortality is nothing but the pouring of the whole spacetime into a single moment- this moment.

I sing odes to immortality - immortality that will die with me. I do not want immortality to outlast me. It is mine to keep.
And what I do in the caves is self-love and self-play. There can indeed be no ove without self-love, and all the play we lose ourselves in is a self-play. Remove the self, and the stage collapses. No illusions there, except that for me, since there is nothing more tangible that exists in this world, illusions are the only reality there is.
And thanks for your wonderful insigths -- wonderful for me. I am a child and relish the play of shadows. All castles are built of sand, and as castles of sand , they are lovable.

Do not look for concrete except if you want to remain stuck in time.

HAZEL AND HER SON - ANOTHER EXTRACT

ELEPHANT STORY

Hazel's son then embarked on his long journey which would take him to the shores of oceans seen only in a half-dream. He had one last look at the trees that had been his friends in childhood and in youth, the flowers he had laughed and played with, and for whom he had sung songs of love, life and mirth; the thorns that loved his tender flesh, the birds, the winds, the mighty river and the snow-capped mountains.

He gave them all a half smile, as much as to say, "A sweet time it has been watching the million colours of the rising and the setting suns in your enchanting world. But lonely spaces and hungry voids await me. I must rise and go now on my journey beyong the speeding horizons. Every silent and still midnight, my love for you will travel towards ths world on quivering tendrils of light. There is pain in my heart at this unhappy parting but no bitterness. I have been punished for my sins and there is no more burden of debt on my soul. I depart as I came - with love in my heart."
The wind tugged at his fluttering ears and he was reminded of his journey again. Slowly, he trudged out of the little corner of the forest that had been his village. Thoughts of future perturbed him, but something within him said, "Future is nothing but your present revealed."

And he was gone, disapperaing into crimson dust rising against the setting sun across the forest boundaries.