Faith

I was travelling from Yumthang Valley to Yume Samdong, also called the Zero Point, in Sikkim in a Jeep. With a temperature below the freezing point, cool mountain wind caressing my face and a terrain that was bound to either take your heart away or your life, I felt blessed to be there at that moment, far away from the worries of the world, far away from expectations and deliberations, free from the sweet shackles of shimmering relations. Just me.

And then I came across these stacks of stones placed very carefully on both sides of the road. And there were many of them. I asked my driver, who was a local resident of Lachung, the nearest inhabited place, about them and what I got to hear was at one hand a very simple and straightforward explanation, and on the other hand a deeply moving expression of faith and beauty amidst the toil of nature.

“We are Buddhists. This is how we pray to our God for the Snow.”

“Ok. Tell me more.”

“This is the time when we expect snowfall in our land. Where you are going now, Sir, you will find fresh snow. You will play with it and click pictures. For us it’s the matter of livelihood. As you can see there is no snow to be seen around even here at Yumthang Valley, leave alone Lachung.”

He was right. I was waiting with baited breath to see the snow all around me but all I could see was the visage of huge naked rocky mountains.

“If we do not get the snowfall in time, our crops will die. If that happens, it will be extremely difficult for us to carry on with our livelihood. So we pray with these stones to the God for a timely snowfall.”

He said this and drove his way to Yume Samdong, dodging a few boulders that rolled their way down on our jeep. And then it struck to me. Even when you are at a place so far from worldly distractions, worries and woes, you are afraid. You are afraid of the nature and for your survival. This is what makes us a living creature. And to counter it, we have faith. Faith.

Let me be here and soak in all the pleasure, for the nature beholds the beauty.

And let me feel the fear, for everyday I used to die.

Let me live the moment and take a leap of faith.

And let me be a stone left there to pray.

I opened the window of my jeep and inhaled life.

(First published on http://shishirkc.tumblr.com)

Free to Live

I despise the rules of the game.

The game that faces play with each other.

The game that a mortal wins and loses to another mortal.

I reject the order of the world. Universe.  

The order that kills the unordered.

The order that beautifies beauty and abandons the ugly.

I ignore the grammar of the language.

The grammar that has no meaning for the uninitiated.

The grammar that not a child knows

Yet he explains with vigor, his thoughts.

I ignore the knowledge of the world.

Knowledge that makes me conscious.

Knowledge that forces me to acquire more of it without any purpose.

I abandon the rationality of humanity.

Rationality that murders the creativity.

Rationality that rapes the innocent art of children.

Picasso said – "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child”

I hate world acknowledging Picasso.

Or for that matter Einstein or Brahma or Peacock.

Who are you to prove the existence of the illusion

That you see through your conditioned thought process.

What is Art? What is Fairness? What is Life? What is Sex?

I want to go, move, die in the womb of nature.

Nature alone beholds the truth. The truth of illusion.

I am an illusion.

Free to wander and live and die.

One Day

The CM wakes up rubbing his eyes. Its 6:30! His wife is already in the kitchen preparing breakfast for the two children who are polishing their shoes and getting ready for the school. They are still not out of the sleep. 'They' includes the children and the wife. CM has to drop them to the bus stop and buy packets of milk and bread for the family. Last night, he had gone to bed at 12 in the night after a hectic day ----

THE HECTIC DAY

The CM wakes up rubbing his eyes. Its 6:25! His wife is already in the kitchen preparing breakfast for the two children who are polishing their shoes and getting ready for the school. They are still not out of the sleep. 'They' includes the children and the wife. CM has to drop them to the bus stop and buy a packet of milk for the family. Tomorrow he will have to buy the bread..it'll get over at today's morning tea. He wakes up..and ya.. by the way.. he is not the Chief Minister.. he is a Common Man.. just a pun.. ;) These smileys.. I tell you.. are really useful but our CM really hates them.. why? He, most of the time, does not understand why the hell has SMS been invented at all.. and the SMS lingo goes out of the head.. leave alone smileys. He gets ready and drops his two sons to the bus stand and comes back with the milk. His tea is ready.. hot and steaming.. he wonders how his wife predicts exactly the time of his arrival and he always finds his tea ready for him.. hot and steamy. He picks the newspaper from the gate, takes the front page and gives the middle ones to his wife. They both sip their tea and digest the coverage of massacre that took place in a village nearby. CM gets to read the front page.. the most important of all.. the wife, a bit weak hearted, gets to see the pictures of the dead bodies..huh.. I don't know why they decide to print the detailed photographs in the middle pages inspite of knowing that its the wives who are going to witness them first.

Anyway.. coming back to the cause of the massacre..a boy from a lower caste eloped with a girl from a Brahman family.. so the boy's family members were burnt alive and other people in the village of the same caste were raped and murdered.. wives.. daughters..everyone.. casteism!

They exchange their pages and now the wife gets to know the reason of the pictures she just saw and CM gets to see the pictures of what he just read. Both are horrible. After chit-chatting for a while, they get up for their respective works. They have no maid. So, the wife has to clean up the whole house and our CM takes care of the Chairs, Tables, Computer, Sofa and Dining Table.

He is now done with his work. He switches on the TV. The massacre is everywhere on the news. Some are discussing the cause with an ex-cricketer, some are interviewing a villager - "Jo kuch bhi hua, usme aapka kya kehna hai?".. Fuck off man.. his daughter and wife has been raped and murdered.. what would he say! He changes to an English News Channel.. they are covering the protest of the Indian students in Australia against the discrimination they face due to their colour. Huh.. these Indian girls spend so much trying to be the fairest of all.. and they take no time saying.. you are black.. not fair to the girls.. they must protest.. "Go on.." - this time the wife thinks, watching it from the kitchen!

Our CM thinks what would have happened if all would have been of the same colour.. no black Indians.. no white Americans.. no yellow Chinese.. OR all would have been of same caste.. no kshatriya.. no veshya.. no brahmin.. OR fuck it all up.. change it to the local cable channel.. he must be showing some new movie..

..aah.. its A Wednesday! .."koi maa******d ek button daba kar meri zindagi ka faisla nahi kar sakta".. he hears Naseeruddin say this sentence and over breathes this time with a smile on his face.. as if he killed those terrorists on the runway! Who cares.. both are Common Man.. one getting paid for being so.. the other paying monthly for watching him on pirated discs. The power of common man!

fast forwarding...

He takes his lunch box and water bottle to the 'Ambassador in its last days' and asks the driver to start. The wife goes back from the balcony.. now she will get to see him in the evening. Before that she has to do hell lot of work. Our CM is the king in his ambassador.. the car stops at the traffic signal. There are young boys outside the car selling 'White Tigers' and 'Alchemists' and 'Shiv Kheras'.. some boys are selling 'Forbes'..recently launched in India.. a small girl is selling roses.. he feels pity for her.. but what can he do.. roses are costly.. Rs 10 for one.. its an expensive affair..! Suddenly, he sees a boy of the age of his elder son in an auto-rickshaw buying 10-12 of them.. "Rs. 100-120???? What are these boys gonna do in life.. they spend money like water on their girlfriends.. caring nothing about the work their fathers... like me.. do!", CM thinks.

Its green now.. the vehicles roll off to their respective destinations.. and after 15 mins of drive he reaches his office. He gets in his room.. orders his peon for a cup of tea.. calls his assistants to start the work and opens his own files..

fast forwarding...

His Ambassador has finally given up.. the driver has taken it to the garage and most probably he will be the king again.. tomorrow. Today he has to take an auto-rickshaw. He waits for one at the cross 100 mts. from his office.. there is 'the girl in tight jeans' standing 5 mts away from him... there is no sign of an empty auto-rickshaw. After 20 mins of waiting, he sees one coming... he waives a hand and the auto stops.. but hey.. WTF.. it stopped for 'the girl in tight jeans'..! Frustrated.. he decides to give the city bus a try.. the frequency is quite high during this time.. he thinks.. and going by his thinking.. he sees a bus coming.. he gets inside and finds a seat for himself.. aah.. lucky man!

After 3 stops, 3 college girls get into the bus. One is holding a bunch of 1, 2, 3, 4, ...., 10, 11, 12.. ya 12 roses.. Our CM smiles! He thinks of the boy in the Auto Rickshaw..

"Uncle, please let one of us sit here.. we are very tired.. please!"

They got our CM..! He isn't even occupying the ladies' seat.. anyway.. after a little protest and a lot of counter-protests from the standing passengers.. who, all of a sudden, have started seeing the faces of their daughters in those girls about whom they were fantasizing about having sex with a while ago, he stands up. He stands up and the girls giggle.

fast forwarding...

"You are not even 5 feet long and you have a girlfriend?"

He hears his wife shouting at their younger son who is in eighth class. He, frustrated after the hectic day, also starts beating him up for having a girlfriend. His wife found an Archies Card in his school bag.. it was worth Rs 50! After all, how can a boy from a small town like his can have a girlfriend. Had it been a metro city, it would have been his elder son instead of him.. mistake.. for NOT having a girlfriend even in 1st yr of high school, our CM thinks! He thinks.. and he thinks a lot..! Idiot!

He thinks a lot and beats up his son for purchasing a card worth Rs. 50.. he beats him up for taking his seat in the bus.. he beats him up for stopping his auto-rickshaw for 'the girl in tight jeans'.. for buying roses.. for practicing a version of apartheid.. for raping women.. for practising casteism.. for his miserable life.. for not being brave like naseeruddin shah.. for every problem the world faced today.. he beats him up!

The Hectic Day Ends!