कुत्ता / आदमी

ज़ुबाँ क्या पा ली आदमी ने
खुद को
बावज़ूद अपनी तमाम खामियों के 
इंसान का दर्ज़ा
दे डाला.

बे-ज़ुबाँ कुत्ता बेचारा
विरोध अपना दर्ज़ न करा पाया
औ'
बावज़ूद अपनी तमाम अच्छाइयों के
रह गया
एक अपशब्द-मात्र बनकर.

Show me my path, O Swami.

At a time when there is no sun,
And life seems to be all rain;
I pray to you, O Swami,
Come -
Show me the right path once again.

Life has been confusing
For eight long years now;
I hope sincerely -
You will come;
And with your blessings
Me bestow.

Sometimes I feel like running away
From all my present and all my past.
Go into a Journey to the Unknown
And in spite of all the adversities -
Last.

Attract me immensely the Two,
Who went all the way to Tibet from Germany.
And witnessed the fall of the humble-most people,
In the onslaught of the Chinese tyranny.

No, try I as much as I may,
I am unable to recollect their name(s),
But didn't you say that for me,
(The inheritor of the longest surviving civilization on Earth),
The name doesn't matter,
Neither does fame?

On the Roof Top of the World,
For seven long years they stayed;
Saddened at the pains of the locals,
They cried with them,
When tears they shed.

I want to travel all the way to Dharamshala,
And meet His Holiness
The Great Dalai Lama.

Carries he still a smile so genuine,
Despite knowing that his motherland is
Going not to be free
By whatsoever mean(s).
I wonder what makes him
Keep himself so serene.

Then there was this man Rahul Sankrityayan,
Whom I have been reading of late.
Ran away from his home he did
In the search of real wisdom
And in the company of Sadhus,
Turned himself into a scholar great.

There have always been journeys to make
And there have been people who know
Exactly what they need to do.
Be he Gandhi, Hitler, Laden
Or be he You.

I am ready to walk my path,
Only the direction remains elusive,
Which I cannot see.
Surrender so I myself to you, O Swami,
Come and show me my path Thee.

Sair kar duniya ki gafil, Zindagaani phir kahaan.

I do not remember the name of the One who ran away into the wild as much as for the sake of the love of Mother Nature and Ultimate Freedom as much as due to his troubled family background. Living as a destitute, he managed to survive for around 2 and half years in the wild, before he succumbed to death in the icy American state of Alaska. He had miscalculated the time when the river flowing outside the jungle will be full to its rim with water; and it was this miscalculation that proved to be his undoing. This is the story of the English movie “Into The Wild” that I saw a few months back.

Yes, there are people out there who choose to explore the Unknown over spending their whole life selling soaps or sitting in front of a computer. It is just that they are a bit invisible and you need to look keenly for them in order to discover them and their free spirit.

Even more interesting is the fact that you might not need to look far away to discover them. There may be people you are close to who have been on the Ultimate Journey of Life, have come back and have lived a successful life thereafter.

Last weekend, when Tudu came to my place, the conversation entered the topic of “How to live a life more free, a life in which you need not go to the office daily, and a life which is more exiting and full of adventure.” Both of us are already our marriageable age, and are quite perplexed whether we want to enter the institution of marriage or not. Marriage, after all, is a point of no return; isn’t it? And the decision to enter it must be a well thought out one.

It was during the course of this talk that he remembered that his father had run away to Burma by hiding himself in a Pani ka Jahaj in Kalkatta. He stayed there for quite some time before coming back to his familiar surroundings of Jharkhand. He has lived his life by working in the Trade Union of the Eastern Coal Mines and is planning to launch himself into local politics. He has even got an entry into the Kendriya Samiti of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and, God willing, will grow from strength to strength over a period of time. A life full of life and of activity, I would say.

I had also heard sometime my father saying that Babu (his father) had run away into the Himalayas just after his marriage. Since, I was not very sure of the facts, I called up Chhote Dadaji. He agreed and told that it was basically due to the love of adventure, for the attraction of the unknown that he had done so. The whole family was worried for a whole one month before my Grandfather dropped a postcard to his father from Lucknow. He was away from home for around 5 or 6 months - going through places like Badrinath and Haridwar with the unknown people that he befriended during the course of journey. Since my father was born in 1954, this must have been sometime in 1952 or 1953.

Later, after coming back to Mahnar, my native place, he, being a compounder by education, started a medicine shop and served as the local doctor for the village, treating poor patients for very small token fee and giving them medicines. The day he was cremated, after his untimely and sudden death, the whole Mahnar Bazaar was closed. Around 1500 people from Mahnar and near-by villages had come to my home that day.

Are these lives not as successful as the one that we are trying to lead? Yes, they definitely are. Unlike the present generation, which spends its whole life first in school and then in office, the people of yesteryears  probably did have a better sense of freedom and adventure. Where has that unbound spirit been lost? Why is it that the only fight that we are left with today is concerned with earning our daily bread and raising a family and nothing else? 

Let me have a peek at my own life.

The only time I have run away till date was on the day of my class 12 Mathematics Board Examination. I had run away to the Shankar Talkies, the only Dolby theatre in the whole of Deoghar district at that time, to watch the newly released Haan Maine Bhi Pyar Kiya Hai. And I was not alone; we were a group of 4 or 5 boys. We had sneaked away into the open and under the darkness of the evening had walked all the way to the Shankar Talkies. One thing that Vidyapith was really low on was movies. We had to wait for months together for seeing a Hindi movie, and that too after a lot of censorship from the office of Shakti Maharaj.

Chhote Dadaji, while telling me about the run-away adventure of Dadaji, told that that was an era when people were influenced by Sri Rahul Sankrityayan, who had apparently given the slogan - ghar se bhago.

Dadaji also told a very beautiful shaayari, which is –

सैर कर दुनिया की गाफ़िल,
ज़िंदगानी फिर कहाँ?
औ' जिंदगानी है ग़र फिर तो 
नौजवानी फिर कहाँ?


I find myself humming this sher very often these days. 

May be one day I will muster enough courage to go on my own journey. May be that day will be sometime in the near future. Kyuki zindagi me kam se kam ek baar to bhaagna banta hai, mere dost.

The theory of divine frustration.

I have not seen God. But there are people who claim they have.

Many of those who claim so go a step further. They claim not only to have seen Him (or Her), but claim to have done all sorts of activities with Him like walking, talking, walking while talking, sleeping, having lunch, dinner, snacks et al.

Thankfully, there is none yet who has claimed to have had SEX with Him. Or if there is one, I beg pardon for my limited knowledge. Would having SEX with Him be qualified as unnatural? In case that has been the reason none has claimed to have gone to this extent, we might very soon come across someone innovative enough claiming that as well. Remember, Delhi High Court passed a judgment last year legalizing some aspects of Sec 377 of the Indian Penal Code? That decision is yet to be challenged in the highest court of the land.

The people who claim to have so interacted with God are known by various names – some call them Baba, some Father, some Priest, some Maulvies, some Pundits and so on – it all depends on what school of thought one subscribes to. I will call them Godmen, a term very secular and fairly well known.

These Godmen paint a very colorful, yet immensely hazy, picture of the God they claim to have seen. Some say that He has got a billion hands with a million heads (He has to take care of this whole Universe and beyond after all!!) while some say He is just a bright light, brighter than a million suns put together (Is that why those who claim to have seen Him get a bright aura painted at the back of their head?). The purpose of doing so may very well be to keep the queue of their devotees as long as ever. They seem to follow the corporate world funda very well - “Confuse if you can’t convince.” This serves them in right esteem. Some of them are known to have assets going into millions, far greater than even those of some corporate houses.

Religion and Spirituality should be given the legal status of industry. They are big time money churners. They were the first exports that our Motherland made to the outer world.

But, the end point is, I have not seen God. I am not even sure if He exists.

But there is one question that has bothered me always. What am I doing in this world? What is the purpose of my existence? And why only me? This is a question that has been bothering the whole human race since time immemorial. A lot of time has been spent in finding an answer to it. An immense number of books have been written on the subject. But the answer remains elusive as ever.

During the course of my search, I came across a theory. It is not anything great. But I did find it interesting. I do not know who the propounder of the theory is. In any case, in the matters purely of God, it probably does not matter either.

The theory calls itself “The Theory of Divine Frustration.”

It talks of a time beyond the comprehension of the human mind. At that time, there was no life, nor was there our beautiful earth. Not even the solar system as we know it. In fact, it talks about a time when there was no universe at all. The Big-Bang was yet to happen, or to be caused.

There was only one entity that existed then. An entity this theory calls the Frustrated Supreme Power. Where it lived and what it did to pass away its time are questions it does not give answers to.

What it does say however is that FSP was a very powerful creature. He had a lot of brains, but absolutely nothing to do. He was immensely bored with the vast spread of nothingness all around. He had no clue what He was doing there and what the purpose of His existence was. More or less the same questions that we all are searching answers to.

Being so frustrated, one fine morning (just for the heck of saying it – there was obviously no concept of time at that time) He wanted to really f*** someone hard. Not literally, but in the common parlance of using the word. So, He caused a huge explosion in the vast nothingness. This was the same explosion that billions of years down the line the humans were going to christen as the Big Bang.

However, that did not interest Him much. It was not too great a pleasure to see the huge particles emerge out of nothing and travel at immense speed in all the directions possible. Particles simply could not be f***ed. He wanted something that could be.

So, He created life.

But lo! He failed again! The life He created turned out to be a very satisfied one. It was simple and it seemed to enjoy its simplicity. Every morning it woke up with the rising sun and every evening when the sun went down the horizon, it went to its dwelling place for a great night sleep. As against His wishes, it turned out to be quite at peace with itself.

Something is lacking. He thought. Something the absence of which allows life to be so full of life. In spite of the big brain that He had, it took Him a full 7 days to realize His mistake.

Then He created the primitive humans; and gave them a bit of brain. The work done, He reclined back peacefully to enjoy the show. He was sure that He had succeeded this time. He even smiled at Himself.

He was right. It was not long before the early humans fell for the trick. One fine morning they decided that they will use whatever little brains they had; and so thinking they decided to come down the trees. Something suggested them that walking on two legs instead of all four will develop their mental faculty at a faster pace.

Ever since then, they are in the process of what they call development. Millions of years have passed since the morning they had decided to start walking on two legs. Till this day, the process of development continues. The life has gone completely out of control, the level of dissatisfaction has increased and there are lesser and lesser resources left with each passing day. These days, instead of walking in the sun and breathing in the open air, they spend their whole life sitting in cramped offices, mostly in front of a stupid looking, very well known electronic device. Even something as basic and as abundantly present as water is not freely and easily available.

As per The Theory of Divine Frustration, there will never be ample number of people who will realize that the ultimate and sole purpose of their existence in the world is to get f***ed by the FSP. If the number of people who see through the game overtakes the number of those who don’t, the very purpose of their existence will be over and the universe will go up in smoke. Interestingly, it further adds that those who understand the game will be more frustrated than those who don’t.

There indeed is a small school of thought, with a highly constricted following, that earnestly believes that the worst mistake their ancestors ever made was to start walking on two legs instead of all the four. 

Those who subscribe to this school happen to be the most frustrated amongst all.

वापस क्यों नहीं आ जाती तुम?

सामान सारे आज भी पड़े हैं
ठीक उसी जगह
जहाँ वो ढाई साल पहले पड़े थे.
बस उनके इस्तेमाल होने का
तरीका है बदल गया.

कम हो गए हैं बर्तन रसोई में; 
और कुकर है कि
ना जाने कितने दिनों से एक कोने में
गुमसुम पड़ा है.

कोई अब नहीं जाता
सुबह सवेरे उठकर बाड़ी में
यह देखने को
कि कितने निम्बू हैं पके हुए
निम्बू के पेड़ में.
या फिर कि वह छोटा पौधा पपीते का
जिसे देखा था कल
एकदम नया-नन्हा सा
वो आज भी ज़िंदा है क्या?

सूख गयी है तुलसी भी तुम्हारी अब तो 
तुम्हारी याद में.

क्या तुम्हें अंदाज़ है जरा भी
कि तुम्हारे जाने से
लावारिस हो गया है एक पूरा संसार? 

माँ -
क्या तुम्हें नहीं लगता कि
तुम्हारा इस कदर
गैर वक़्त चले जाना
नाजायज़ था?

वापस -
क्यों नहीं आ जाती तुम?