TO CATCH A THIEF

TO CATCH A THIEF

It was a long overnight train journey - from Lucknow to Gorakhpur .The period was the last days of British rule in India. The railways in this
segment was known as Oudh Tirahut Railways -  OTR in short.

He was travelling first class as he was an officer of the government with a high salary. In those days very few travelled first, the highest class. The
compartment consisted of two comfortable and wide lower berths and one upper.The other upper space was the hat stand. In those days all the officers travelled with what was
known as a SOLA HAT .

There were only two passengers in the compartment. He found the other traveller to be a well dressed cultured
businessman and was very much relieved as he was carrying gold ornaments for the marriage of his daughter. Now he could sleep through the night.

The train left Lucknow at the scheduled time and soon picked up speed as it was an express train. Both the passengers soon fell asleep to the gentle rocking of the berths and the roar of the wind.

He woke up sometime later when someome started hammering at the door. The train was in motion, in a
low speed. He looked through the glass shutter and saw a poor man
standing outside on the narrow footboard of the door. The man explained that he had a valid third
class ticket but could not find the compartment as he arrived late on the platform when the train was already moving."

Sir, I will sit on the floor near the door and shift to the third class at the next station", implored the man. The next station, Gonda, was a good one hour away.

He was undecided whether to let the poor man in.Times were bad. He looked enquiringly at the other
passenger who asked him not to open the door.

"He clearly looks like a petty thief. Let him keep standing outside" said the
sauve businessman disdainfully.

But he eventually opened the door out of pity. It was dangerous for this fragile man to keep standing on
footboard in a speeding train. Since he was an officer of the British Empire
his decision prevailed. These men ruled India with an iron hand within a velvet glove.

He decided to keep waking till the next station but, tired as he was, he fell asleep.

He woke up abruptly. There was a big commotion somewhere outside his
window. The train was not moving. Yes, it was Gonda junction. He was alone in the compartment. Looking
under his berth,he found the attache containing the ornaments gone !

As he sprang up to rush outside, a police constable entered. The constable ,who gave him a resounding
salute, was carrying his attache !

The constable told him that the thief was caught by the other person in the
compartment. He loudly called out the other person to come in. And as he
was preparing himself to thank the businessman. he found the poor man , whom he had 'rescued' from
the footboard, entering.

It came to pass that, as train dropped speed on approaching the Gonda
station, the 'businessman' quietly removed his attache and was hurrying out when he stumbled over the poor
man sleeping on the floor and woke him up. The poor man had seen the attahe under the berth of the kind
officer and was quick to raise an alarm as he overpowered the thief.The
constables on the platform did the rest.

When the officer took out a big currency note to reward the poor man he declined to accept it.

"Sir, I only repaid your kindness" he said respectfully as he stepped down to hurry to his third class compartment.

The engine was giving a long whistle for onward journey . . . .

( I got this story from the horse's mouth in my childhood when the said
officer, now a very old man, stayed with us as a guest. In those days I used to get along famously with old
men who told me true tales from their own good old days !!)

REACH FOR THE SKY

Napoleon once famously said that the word 'impossible' should be removed from the dictionary. As a child we all are little Napoleons. We intend to conquer our world of ambitions. So it was with me!

At the age of six I was riding an adult bicycle. At
thirteen I was unlawfully driving my father's six cylinder Land Rover and I
was determined to fly an aeroplanes as soon as I was allowed to get into the cockpit. That is the way young boys are ! No sugar and spice.

I soon found myself in the university hostel. Here I came across an affluent, suave, strikingly handsome boy from a top public school ( these schools, exclusive and expensive, are perhaps known as private schools in USA). It was his humility that set him apart from other elite-school boys. The disdain and the arrogance was altogether missing. He was absolutely at peace with himself and with the world. As I look back
through the mist of time his eyes had the compassion that reminded me of Jesus!

This RDJ, as I would prefer to call him here, was a member of the local
flying club. He would often come late for dinner into our hostel dining hall and then over the meals expansively tell us the direction he went flying that day and the cities he flew over. How I longed to be in his shoes !! He gave me a bestseller paperback "REACH FOR THE SKY ", a saga of awesome courage of a never-say-die British boy who joined the RAF as the  clouds of the second worldwar were building. He soon lost both his legs. This boyhood hero of RDJ, the 'legend' named Douglus Bader, got himself artificial legs and came bouncing back into the war as it broke out. He gave such a hell to Hitler's aircrafts
that he was knighted by the King !

I came over to another university for the post graduate programme and he went his own way. Much water had flown down the Thames bridge when, early one morning, a small news item at the bottom of the front page of the newspaper caught my eyes. And it numbed me.The report said that,
while in the process of negotiating his aircraft for landing on an aircraft
carrier, a young officer of the naval airforce crashed. He was RDJ.

Unlike his childhood hero, he did not survive the crash and he left a lifelong wound in my heart. His favourite book, REACH FOR THE SKY,  is still
with me as I look back through the intervening decades to the life and
times of the one and only RDJ.

Advertising and brain washing.

"BRAIN WASHING AND ADVERTISING"

Remember the song "you love them . .you leave them . . That's what
is known as technique". ? It was, once upon a
time, an international top-of-the-chart 'Hit Parade' song ! That was well before the feminist
movement spearheaded by the redoubtable Jane
Fonda caught the MCPs(!) on the wrong foot.

These opening lines can now be copied and
pasted on the walls of (among others) those
private banks who specialise in offering loans to wrong people, to those people who cannot afford to repay that loan. These banks specialise in customer baiting, customer 'dating' and then luring the customers into a trap, to be destroyed eventually (when the customer fails to repay the loan) to the benefit of the 'killer' banks!

The way these banks sell the plegded property of
'cannot-afford-but-want-a-loan' people for peanuts in shady deals when these people fail the repayment schedule has shades of LUDLUM cloak-and-dagger novels. The way these 'motivational experts' first entice the future "sacrificial goats" into taking loans is an interesting study in unethical use of motivational techniques.

More than half the cars on our planet belong to people who cannot afford them. It is a credit-card economy. More than half the cars that make the multi-lane city roads the world over look like a 2G internet lane belong to people who should have put that money to better use, for a better life. That these bank executive with big pay-packets manage to sell the idea of a loan to these 'goats' shows that
management techniques do work.

The advertising-world is unethically revolving around the word 'enticement'. The advertising people create 'wants' that did not exist in the first place. They add to a person's feeling of inadequacy and discontentment and impel him to overreach him/herself. After all successful marketing is all about what Peter Drucker famously called the art of selling a refrigerator to an Eskimo !! But that he also
talked about social responsibilities of business is now  conveniently forgotten !

One of the reasons why the classical theories of
economics are failing in a world that is now caught in the vortex of ecomonic crisis is the way market is unethically manipulated by those who know that these classical theories are made of the stuff the fairy tales are made of ! The 'real' economics in this age of unethical advertising does not have a level-playing field. It is not what the classical economics was supposed to be. It makes a mockery of Economics !

The world of real economics today does not have a win-win approach. It is the world war of lucre and the one who calls the tune does not pay the piper. He overwhelms the piper. He kills the mocking bird !!

THE SYMPHONY OF TRAINS

I have always had a great fascination for trains. I have always had a great
fascination for uncrowded big railway stations platforms of small towns.. I have always had a great fascination for those earlier-era station masters of  small stations on our way who stood at attention, dressed in a black uniform, and kept waving a green flag as the whole train, including the window where I sat, swept past them leaving the station behind until it disappeared at the horizon !

As a child I often used to walk down with my little sister to the railway station of our town. It had a very long, wide and glistening platform no.1 and this platform had
the town's best books-and-magazines stall.

We loved children's books
and magazines. Tripathi jee, the Always-Smiling-Ticket- Collector at the main entrance gate knew every school-going child (who visited the AH Wheelers' railway book stall) of the town. So we never ever purchased a
platform ticket and always returned his smile! And an interesting thing about my childhood was that, as we entered the main platform, we were overwhelmed by the 'blissful aroma' of fresh books and magazines that came wafting from the book-stall two hundred yards
away!  A child has an awesome smelling power. Of my earliest days, I remember being aware of the presence of my mother or father in the room with my eyes shut !

A train journey from Delhi to the south in a first class lower berth has always been fascinating to
me. If you want to know about the moghul Emperor Babar, you can easily know about him by reading the history text-books. But to know him
inside-out you have got to read TUZUK-E-BABARI  ! Train travel, First class lower berth, from Delhi to
the south was always as fascinating an experience to me as reading TUZUK -
E-BABARI. In one you know the real Babar, in another the real India.

From the window of the moving train the constantly changing scenerio has been ever so fascinating! And no one
in those days missed a glass of the delicious ITARSI STATION milk, the
purest tastiest milk of good old days (not any more though!).

Things have completely changed now. We have lost a way of life, acquired another. Gone are the days when time moved very leisurely, when one had time for a long chat with the neighbour at the wicket gate outside, when children played together outside in the fresh air.

Satellite T.V. and internet
has drastically changed the society. It has changed the way we interact socially. We have no time for others now. I see young friends sitting around a restaurant table with each one busy with their Cell Phones ! Today 'games' are not played in the open but  on the laptop. Today 'ginger bread' is not a bread nor is ' ice cream sandwich' a food item ! The younger generation do not talk to each other except on cell
phones! I can feel Orwell smiling in the grave ! He only mis-timed the title
of his famous "1984 " by a few decades.

Times may have changed but trains still keep moving along the railway
line which is half a mile from where I live. In the stillness of the night when
the city sleeps I still clearly hear TATAK . TAKK . .TATAK. . .TAKK . TATAK . .TAKK. . as trains roll along the railway track..'. It is a symphony to my ears! I know that it will never ever change- " For men may come and men may go but I shall go on for ever "

THE OLD MAN AND HIS CAR

A black old small car was moving along a wide road.

The car had a rusted old bike on top of it, in the
luggage frame. A bald old man, the owner of this car, was seated in the back seat of the car. It was ten o'clock in the morning. All traffic was moving towards offices.

Nagpur in those days was a quiet, uncongested, city. The mile and a half long straight road that connected the civil lines residential colony to the
main office-complex building had little traffic on it.

Mr. Sukla, that old man in the back seat of the old car was an officer in my office.He did not know how to drive so he had a driver. The driver kept his old bicycle on the roof of the car.

"Learn driving mr. Sukla!", his friends would say, "and get rid of that rusted bicycle-on-the-roof."

Easier said than done ! Nobody came forward to help him learn driving. . . Ultimately I had to take the task upon myself.

"I will help you to drive the car. Your training starts tomorrow." I announced
one day.

Mr. Sukla was very pleased. "Thanks. You know, I am a very focussed fellow," he declared, " No problem at all for you."

Next morning I drove his car to a nearby open field and he sat besides me. I explained to him the basics and asked him to hold the steering wheel as I drove the car.

"Try to keep the car moving in a straight line by using the steering wheel." I told him.

Mr. Sukla was a quick learner. Next day he was in the driver's seat. After a week, the car was on the road that connected our  colony to the office.

He got the learner's driving licence and was ready for the first day of driving to the office on his own !!

"I have finally got rid of the driver and that ugly rusted bike. Ha ha !" he proclaimed as he settled in the driver's seat, " Now I will always drive my car myself. Thanks to you."

Then he set out for the office driving his car. He kept blowing the horn
though there was nobody on the road ! I followed him at some distance in my bajjaj 150 scooter just as an observer. He was after all my student !

Driving smoothly, he covered half a mile of the distance to the office on
the deserted road without difficulty.

Then a young man wearing a bright red Tshirt and riding a sports bicycle
materialised before him at the next road crossing.

This cyclist was practising some stunts in his bike and enjoying himself. Until now mr. Sukla was 'focussing' on the road but now this 'focus' shifted to the red shirt !

He did not overtake the cyclist as he should have done. He slowed down
and tailed the cycle. And he kept blowing the horn!

The cyclist found this very odd and became nervous. He kept moving the bicycle to the left of the road, to the right and again to the left of the road to shake off this
'tail'. But Mr. Sukla's eyes were now totally 'focussed' on the red shirt and he kept right behind the bicycle, the horn blaring all the time.

As I watched helplessly the nervous cyclist eventually turned sharply to the left and rolled down the slope of the shallow wide storm water drain.(which was on the left hand side of the road and was absolutely clean and dry) in order to avoid the car. And to my horror and surprise the mr. Sukla followed him even into the drain !

The car was out of control now and overturned even as the cyclist paddled away to safety. It came to rest upside down with the four wheels spinning in the air and throwing up dust!

when I walked down to the drain, the cyclist had paddled back to the car and was pulling mr. Sukla out of the car through the car window !

With some effort and the
help of the cyclist, Mr. Sukla slowly crawled out of the upside down car,
dusted himself thoroughly, thanked the young cyclist for helping him get out through the window and walked up from the drain to the road where my scooter was parked.

He covered the rest of the distance to the office on the pillion seat of my scooter.

"I don't understand why that bicycle kept in front of me" he was muttering " I was blowing horn but he blocked my way. Cyclists should not be allowed on the roads !"

The next day the old black car was back on the road. It was seen moving from civil lines to the office complex at ten in the morning with a bald old man sitting in the back seat. And, as in the past, there was a rusted old
bicycle on its roof! In other words the driver was back!!

I was parking my scooter when mr. Sukla stepped out of the car on reaching office. As I turned back and faced him, I raised my eyebrows as if to question him about the futility of my efforts and th reappearance of the rusty bicycle.

" You see, one way or the other a bicycle had to be a there," he explained with an apologetic smile, "it is safer to have one on the roof of my car rather than drive myself and face it on the road! I Hope you will not mind it."

I did mind ! After all it was a lost effort on my part after so much of coaching. But then I recalled an old man crawling out of an inverted old car in the drain! So I smiled and patted him approvingly and walked away!

THE RAISON D'ETRE OF LIFE

Lanepool, the great historian, has famously written that "Humayun (he refers to the Moghul Emperor of India who struggled to survive the wars and defeats and then died falling down a high staircase) tumbled through life and tumbled out of it". That is a sheer poetic expression indeed !

Life is indeed a tumble  through TIME. Some have a short journey of a few
years, some travel for a longer period and carry a baggage (pun intended).
some drag on to an almost hundred year to a merciful nirvana.

A question arises here as to what should be a life well lived? Is it the "Riches" that matter most in life or is it the "fame" that makes life worth living or is it a long lifespan PER SE?

Well, it is none of these things.

Is it then the 'quality of life', an expression that has unfotunately acquired a heavy mundane meaning? Not even that.

If riches were the end-all, why would so many of the millionaires the world over be committing suicides? They had everything that money could offer!

And so far as fame is
concerned, it insidiously works like LSD - the 'dose' of fame must keep getting higher and higher to keep away the 'withdrawal symptoms'. It often ends up in ultimate misery through an overdose of it.

There is a timeless jewel of a couplet by Kabir Das, a great sufi-saint of 15th century India. Here it is :

"Go-dhan gaj-dhan baaj-dhan aur rattan-dhan khaan

Jab aaye santosh-dhan, sab dhan dhuri samaan"--

(--The wealth of Cows, Elephants and the likes; of tons and tons of gems,
render themselves meaningless, like dust,
when the treasure-trove of
contentment unveils.)

Happiness is a state of mind and happiness flows from contentment (Santosh). The problem with modern living is that we are chasing goals. We want to be achievers. A mind that is constantly chasing goals is not a mind-at-rest. It is a restless mind. Scientists know this state of mind by
its EEG wave patterns and know how it breeds health-issues.

A different pattern of brain-waves pattern develops when peace and contentment decends. This makes the life well lived. And that should be the goal of life - the ultimate RAISON D'ETRE !!

THE MAGICIAN AND THE BULLY

This is a tale with a twist, of a MAGICIAN and a BULLY.

It happened once upon
a time. In my student days. Here we go . . . .

We find ourselves in a university hostel, a famous one. The hostel has many rich traditions. One of them is the practice of a "social" being held before winter vacations every year.This SOCIAL  is primarily an entertainment
event put up by the hostel boys themselves before a select audience comprising of elite of the city and held in the hostel's very spacious
"common hall" which has a raised stage at one end, the type seen in the old theatres.

This year they have
further spiced up the 'social' with a magic show by a reputed magician And he is now performing on the stage.

He produces a glass tumbler out of thin air and invites the audience to
peep into it and see a colour-photo of any celebrity he/she adores.

There are good looking female too in the audience. One of them is the first one to go up the stage. A few others
follow and come back
wide eyed . . . Many more mindblowing items follow.

And then comes the star item - the TOUR DE
FORCE. But let us first meet the 'BULLY'.

This boy is one of the 'seniors' of the hostel, and a sort of difficult-to-get-
along-with type, of a very interfering nature. And today he is feeling slighted because he could not get a seat in the front rows. He is standing at the back of the auditorium and 'targeting' the Magician in order to draw attention to
himself. The Magician has made a mental note of this impudence.

And now back to the TOUR DE FORCE. The Magician produces a
snowwhite silk hand kerchief out of thin air.

"Any perfume ! Any ! you
name it and enjoy it in this kerchief." he announces.

People go up and
came down - wide eyed and all smiles !

This 'BULLY' now again raises his hand. He is in the habit of questioning an act.The magician has been patiently clearing all the objections raised by this bully.

This time when the bully raises his hand the magician does not answer from the stage but comes down and walks all the
way to the back of the auditorium where this
boy is standing. All heads turn to the boy.

" Sir, I will feel honoured if you come with me to the stage," he is all humility and deference as he says
this." give this item a try sir !"

The boy seems elated and mollified. He is now surely getting attention. Girls also are looking back at him. That's ego- boosting for any hostel boy !

On the stage the Magician asks him his choice of perfume. The boy wants
EVENING IN PARIS.

The magician looks crestfallen. "Sir this is difficult. Can I have another choice?" he begs three times.

The boy resolutely refuses to relent.

"Very well then, let me try" declares the Magician with a flourish, " But you
will have to shut your eyes firmly as this is going to be a very very difficult
task to perform". The boy readily agrees.

Now the Magician puts away the white kerchief. With the boy facing
the audience with his eyes firmly shut and he himself standing right behind
the boy, the Magician picks up one of his lousy weatherbeaten shoes and
brings it right up to the boy's nose and says, " Sir, inhale deeply, smell
and enjoy ".

The boy inhales as deeply as he could and becomes rapturous with joy.

"Aah Yes ! This is the perfume I love. Great !" he exclaims and as the
audience roars and roars with all shades of laughter, he opens his eyes to find himself in a very embarrassing
situation of a dirty shoe plastered on his nose !

The boy sheepishly gets down from the stage, staggers all the way back.
Peogle are still laughing as he disappears through the door at the back unnoticed. The show continues for quite some time after this event...
but this boy is nowhere to be seen.

We do not see him for a full one month. And then he is back in the hostel one fine morning.

He is  a very sober person now, thoroughly chastised - after his COUP DE GRACE !!

UNDERSTANDING MEDITATION

UNDERSTANDING MEDITATION

Euphoria is a state of bliss, a state of mind where you are at perfect peace with yourself and with the world.

There are two ways of arriving at this stage.
The first is through drugs. This is an easy, popular and dangerous path and ultimatfly leads to the destruction of both body and the mind. So many
Celebrities the world over have diedprematurely through this kind of drug
abuse.

The other path is through meditation. "Meditation" is a fashionable activity now, with Celebrities since the later half of the twentieth century claiming to practice it. It has, infact, become quite an industry, generating big money.

There are various brands of meditation and each targets an appropriate group - from 'quick fix' to
the musical ones, from 'executive' yoga to 'religious' ones.

But what exactly is the REAL ancient science of meditation ? And what is
the goal ?

The real meditation is what the ancient Indian sage Patanjali wrote
about in his famous "Yoga Sutras". Its ultimate goal is salvation. Brain activities starts changing very early as one practices this meditation.

Unlike the 'executive' meditation popular in the west, the traditional
one requires a certain measure of discipline of body and mind. Even as you start 'activating' the
premordeal force latent in all of us through Patanjali's meditation, you
start feeling a blissful intoxication - with regular practice, that is. Even if
the progress is slow you will start noticing changes in your physical and mental makeup.

At the outset you have to understand that meditation is not religious
activity. It is a spiritual practice. Which means that it does not require
application of any beliefs in a particular God or for that matter any God. The requirement is that you
change how you look at the world.

The fundamental concept is somewhat like this :

Imagine that your mind is a lake at the bottom of
which lies something called perpetual and pure bliss. You are viewing the
bottom of the lake from the top, resting on the surface of this lake.

Now, you can 'see' this 'bliss' only when two conditions are fulfilled.
One, the water of this lake is uncontaminated and clear and, two, that there are no ripples on the
surface of the lake. To achieve this requires some changes in your
mental makeup.

The water gets cleaner and cleaner as you clear the cobwebs of hatred, jealousy, vindictiveness,greed and other negative muck that has accumulated in brain-cells over the years. And, for
this, the fundamental requirement is the practice of 'forgiveness' and 'contentment'. Keep Practicing this and the water of the lake will get
more and more clear.

And to control
the 'ripples' you have to cultivate a certain measure of 'objectivity' to
whatever unpleasant (and pleasant) keeps happenning to you until it
becomes the second nature.

Once you have started the process of bringing these change in you, the rest is a daily regime of a practice involving focus of thought on a single point for the entire duration of
the daily practice session. You can get the details of this daily session from any standard book on RajYoga and may also refer to the original
work of the great sage Patanjali.

But take the first step now - the process of 'cleaning the water' and 'stilling the waves'.

GHOST IN MY BATHROOM

I had just finished taking
bath and had barely put on my trousers when this
happened. Out of thin air
and in birthday suit,
materialised a man in my
bathroom. He resembled
Bertrand Russell but looked younger. He was sitting on something
which I thought was a lawnmower.
The only thing he was wearing was a smile.

He came off the machine and offered me his hand for a how-do-you-do. I panicked.

" G-H-O-S-T . . ." I shrieked.

He brought out a sleek
transparent blue glass
revolver and trained it at
me.

" If you shout again I shall
liquify you" he said in a
metallic voice. I thought he meant 'liquidate'.

My mother-in-law was
already on the other side
of the bathroom door. Even in this hour of crisis I was averse to seeking
her help. She had unilaterally positioned herself in my house for the past two years and all my efforts to dislodge her had failed.

" Rajneesh! Are you
alright?" she asked and
then muttered something
unprintable.

" so that is the mother-in-
law " The ghost observed
and told me even her
name.

That reminded me again of his presence and I opened my mouth to
shout.

" G-H-O- . . . " I had barely started when he fired from his glass revolver. A beam of white rays hit me on the face and I found that I had lost
my voice.

" Idiot! I am not a ghost."
he said and then extending his left arm, he
asked me to feel his hand.

Nervously I brought my
hand close to his. He
grabbed it and pumped it a number of times.

" How do you do ! I am
John Pfafe from the
'Nuclear Express' group of
newspapers. I have come
all the way from the twenty third century to
interview you. I have to
write a staff article on "The effect of a resident mother-in-law on a twentieth century male".

My mother-in-law was banging the door.

"Rajneesh open the
door. Are you committing
suicide", she asked hopefully. As I had lost my voice I could not say a
word. He ignored her and
explained to me the
concept of travelling in
time.

" who is there inside the
bathroom". My mother-in-law shouted and started banging the door very
hard, "what is going on inside. I am calling the
police".

"Let us go outside", said
the "Nuclear Express" man."It is impossible to
converse here".

He suddenly yanked open
the door. As my mother-in-law was resting her ninetyeight kilogram body
on the bathroom door in order to catch the conversation, she neatly
tumbled into the bathroom. Before
she could recover, John Pfafe had pulled me out of the bathroom and firmly shut the door. And bolted it.

"That's is much better", he observed,"now we shall go to another
room and talk".

He pressed the lever of a
small box hanging from his waist and my voice was restored.

Suddenly there was a
strange and faint electronic drone from the bathroom and this guy
panicked. He rushed into the bathroom and I followed him in.

The mother-in-law was
missing and the machine
too !

"your lawnmower" I
exclaimed, "It is not there".

"IDIOT" he shrieked " that
was my TIME MACHINE".

And then he suddenly
became demoralised, "how will I go back now!"

And he has not been able
to go back yet. It is now
three months since my
mother-in-law dissappeared for good with his Time Machine. He keeps sitting outside the
bathroom door and says
that he must go to the
twenty third century.

I have firmly told him that we are all going to the twentyfirst century. But
he listens not !!
(a copyright article of mine published way back in the twentieth century)

WORDS THAT MADE HISTORY

There are WORDS that sum up a fleeting moment in history . Uttered at the right moment by famous persons, these words become timeless gems. Here are a few!

'PECCAVI'! This was a one word telegram sent to England by Gen. Charles Napiere when he annexed
the Sind province (now in Pakistan) to the English domains in India. In doing
this he had exceeded his brief that he would only quell the rebellion and
come back. PECCAVI, a Latin words, means ' I have sinned' and the PUN
was intended to convey, in one word, a moment of contrition and a
conquest !!

And what do we see here ! An absolutely naked man running down a busy city-road shouting 'EUREKA.!
EUREKA ! '( I have found it, I have found it !). He is on his way to the palace of king Heroin the second. The man is none other than the great ancient Greek scientist Archimedes and he has just 'accidentally' made a discovery while sitting naked in a bath tub trying to figure out the solution to a problem tormenting his king !The sheer serendipity of such simple discovery made him forget that he was stark naked !

Next we arrive in ancient city of Rome. The great Roman dictator Julius Cæser has just been stabbed in the recorded
history's most infamous act of betrayal. And you can feel the anguished dismay in the exclamation of Julius Cæser as he says "ET TU BRUTE !" (And you too Brutus !) as he looks back and collapses after being stabbed in the back by his most trusted friend Marcus Brutus and dies.
'ET TU BRUTE' has come to symbolise an act of betrayal of trust !

And, finally, in a fast forward, here is the clincher, the 'mother of all famous Words'! While addressing a mammoth
gathering of 2,50,000 civil rights supporters on august 28 1963 from the steps of Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC during the epoch-making 'March On Washington' rally, Martin Luther King jr.'s Impassioned and repeated exclamations 'I HAVE A DREAM' sent shock waves across the world, asking the world if there was any substance in the claim of a 'democracy' in USA when half its population of coloured people was
suffering from a state of denial, of unfulfilled dreams a hundred years after the emancipation of slaves in USA.In awarding him the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize the committee did an honour to itself. And by the time he was assassinated in 1969 the process of undoing injustice to 'coloured'
people was already in motion.

The words 'I HAVE A DREAM' have come to represent the aspirations of those who have been denied opportunity and seem to echo back whenever or wherever earthshaking injustice occurs- to a Yousafzai
Malala of Pakistan, to a Nirbhay of India or to anyone else anywhere else with a shattered dream for the future !!

It is the indictment of the human race for the neglect of the mute unpriviledged brethren. It is the indictment of religion for failing the prophets and above all it is the indictment of world's super-rich for their crass mentality !!

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT

The train had started moving when we entered platform number one at Gorakhpur railway station. We had to run after the moving train to enter a compartment at the tail end of the moving  Allahabad express. It was a near miss !! Lucky that it was a steam engine that picks up speed slowly.

We took possession of two vacant lower berths, and pushed our big last minute bags under the berth.Thank God, there were vacant berths to sleep.We were tired and and needed sleep.

We were going back to  Allahabad university hostel after the winter vacations at Gorakhpur. Our big last-minute-bags were bulging with lot of things packed into them. Much of it was, as always, home made eatables - crisp fried salty 'mathari', yummy sweet 'laddoo', spicy fried peanuts rice-flakes, pickles and other mouthwatering stuff- it would last us more than a month through the peak of winters. There were two big cans of high quality Ghee (clarified butter) too !

The train left behind  the well-lit railway station platform and buildings big and small as it cut across the sleeping city. It picked up speed and was now racing through wilderness.It was  pitch dark outside at ten o'clock on that cold winter night of early january. We  shut down all the glass as well as wooden window shutters to keep the compartment warm and private.

There were three other persons of one family in our compartment. They were going right upto Allahabad - a balding  daddy, a mummy and a fat short boy in early teens. They were now huddled together around a tall big tiffin carrier, munching packed dinner of puree , fried vegetables and lots of other things. They were constantly talking with their mouths full !

We had brought too many magazines with us to read in case we did not get berths to sleep. Now that we could sleep, we would read them in the hostel. we pushed these magazines also into our last minute bags.

The train moved on, to the gentle rocking of the compartment, the dull roar of the wind and the steam engine's distant sounds  ahead of us. It made me sleepy.

It was well after midnight when the train stopped for a few minutes at a non-descript station. A tall man with a weather beaten face wearing a heavy olive brown long overcoat and dirty black boots pushed the door open and shuffled into the compartment. He wore a deadpan expression and carried no luggage. He looked like a police constable minus his cap and baton. When I asked him about the destination he said that he was going right upto Allahabad, the last station. He immediately climbed up to sleep on an upper berth, boots and all ! In a couple of minutes he was heavily snoring.

I bolted the doors from inside so that we could now sleep undisturbed through the rest of the journey as none of us would be getting down before Allahabad. After a while the only sound in the compartment was of
the TATAK TAKK TATAK TAKK of the train moving along the track. I then fell asleep.

At atleast at two stations through our journey there were heavy knocks on the door but none of us got up to  open the bolts. All of us kept sleeping through the night.

It was a couple of stations before Allahabad that I woke up with a start when the train stopped with heavy jolt and metallic clangs . I threw up the window shutter and peeped out.

It was already early morning. Outside, on the platform the Chai-wallas ( tea vendors ) were moving over the platform, chanting GARAM CHAI GARAM CHAI (hot tea  hot tea) !

We bought big steaming hot kullhars (earthen cups) of ginger tea. The 'constable' was not in the compartment - obviously he was in the toilet.

We continued sipping our tea - nothing like having a steaming hot cup of sweet ginger tea on a winter morning!

After a while the fat boy  picked up a towel and entered the toilet. So where was the
man-in-overcoat ! The bloke was supposed to go right up to Allahabad !! Something very strange !!

I asked the daddy of the family, just for curiosity sake, about the 'constable'. It was none of my business, though, to monitor the movement of that chap.

"why, he hurriedly got down, when the train was already moving, two stations back - dragging out his two very heavy bags !! You must have been sleeping!!" he exclaimed.

Two heavy bags ! But this guy had entered the compartment without any
luggage !! Something clicked in my mind and I peeped under the berth.

I was in for a shock!

Our bags, with all that delectable eating stuff that
would have lasted a whole month were missing - stolen by the man in long overcoat !!

The thought that the 'constable' was right at that moment enjoying our
delicacies over several cups of hot tea two stations away was very very upsetting but that is what life is - full of shocks and surprises !!!

THE WIZARD : Of medical diagnosis

I was in a place called Sarai kale khan. It was sort of a village within the city and was behind the Nizammuddin railway station in New Delhi.

I crossed the railway line at the level crossing. The main road here goes straight but there was a turning to the right and this road ended some hundred metres ahead. I took this narrower road.

At the end of this road
there was a two storey pink-colour house on the left hand side. Across
the road and facing the house, there was a large covered hall, open on all
sides. Beyond the road's end there was a private farm of herbs.

The hall was now very crowded. People were waiting there for the
Ayurvedic doctor.

The doctor, clad in a nice and simple pyjama kurta, now crossed the road
and entered this hall.
This was Dr. Brahaspati Dev Triguna (1920-2013), a tall and graceful man
with the built of an international athlete. He settled down to see his
first patient. Each patient had a token number.

He placed the first three fingers of his right hand on the pulse of the patient
before him and observed the beats on all the three fingers. The patient, as
usual, started to tell him his problems but he stopped him.

" l am here to tell the problems." he said as he kept feeling the pulse and noting down the result. He, then, explained to the patient what the problem was.

" Now you can tell me if you want to add anything to what I have told you."

There was nothing to add.

When my own turn came he examined my (nadi) pulse and gave me a precise diagnosis of my health problems without asking me a single question. And then he wrote the prescription and turned to the next patient.

I got up, crossed the road to the double storey building and presented
the prescription to the compounder who was in charge of the pharmacy
there. Herbs were being mixed. Several persons were grinding the mixtures for various prescriptions.
Most of the medicines were being prepared on the spot by hand. It was an awesome task preparing the prescriptions of over two hundred patients. . . .

Now a word about Nadi Vigyan - the ancient
science of medical diagnosis by an analysis of the pulse. Like much of the science of Ayurveda this is also a gift to the modern world from another amazing civilization which vanished, though not totally like the civilization of MAYA of mexico. This was the ancient and very advanced civilization of the prehistoric India - then called "Bharat Varsha".

In the modern medical practice a doctor checks your pulse normally to
see the pulse beat per minute. He does not diagnose the nature of
ailment by feeling the pulse.

Now how do you feel the pulse when you have a fever? You place your fingers on your wrist, under the thumb and check the pulse beat. In nadi diagnosis you do something somewhat similar but in a very
detailed and precise manner. What you do is that you place the first three fingers (leaving out little finger) in such a way that the index finger is closest to the base of the thumb.

Now,when you feel the pulse. The pulse beats will be felt on the fingertips of these three fingers. The
nadi vaidya checks the strength (and weakness) of the beats and the manner in which blood is coursing through the nadi on each of these fingers. It is a profound study and it is not easy to master. The very elementary principle of ayurveda is that VAT (the AIR element)is diagnosed from the index finger, PITTA (the HEAT element) is diagnosed from middle finger and SHLESHMA (loosely speaking you can call this cough element) from the ring finger. This is of course a very rough explanation.

According to the science of ayurveda (the science of life), our health and
illness stems from the permutation and combination of the forces of the three basic elements in the body - vayu ,pitta and shleshma.

Dr. Triguna had taken the science of nadi-diagnosis to an astounding level,
difficult for a vaidya in the present times to reach.
According to the famous Dr. Deepak Chopra of
USA , Dr.Triguna was by far the best nadi vaidya in the world. Like all great
people he seemed to possess a divine
gift (in India we call it SIDDHI) for pulse reading. He was a devout worshipper of God Shiva and there was a shivalaya (small private temple of hindu God Shiva) adjascent to the hall where he saw his patients. On occasions when I reached his clinic much before the opening time (I used to come by train from a nearby town),
I found him seated in the shivalaya, deep in meditation.

Dr. Triguna had been given manywawards in his lifetime including the
Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award by Government of India. He was also the personal physician to
the President of India. He held many assignments in the ayurvedic institutions in India and abroad.

Here is a link to Dr. triguna talking to the media in the USA.

http://www.zoominfo.com/p/
Brihaspati-Triguna/34617228
THE DELUGE. THE FANTASY AND
THE FACTS

DEATH STALKS THE COOK

That year in the winters there was a sharp increase in the number of
monkeys in the town. They would appear anywhere. They moved in
hordes- the male the female and the kids. And they attacked at the slightest provocation.

Electricity poles on the roof of the houses were their first target! The
leader- the fattest of the daddy monkeys - would climb up the eight feet high eiectric pole on the roof, shake it so thorouhly that the wires touched and shortcircuited, blowing
out the fuse. Then, satisfied with the damage done, they would come down and create havoc elsewhere. They devastated the kitchen garden, uprooting the plants.

Two features which were common in the bunglows of the old british days were :
1)  There was a walled big
courtyard on the opposite side of the front lawn for the ladies of the house. The kitchen was far at the back of this courtyard, away from the main building.
2)  The doors had wooden square grills on their upper half portion with big glass panes. So you could see what was going outside with the door firmly shut. It also provided ample light to the rooms.

That fateful day in the winter Katwaroo, our young and tough cook,
came out of the kitchen, which was at the far end of the big courtyard. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. He locked the kitchen door and turned round to proceed to his quarters outside the walled courtyard.

He spotted a small monkey in the kitchen garden, in the tomato beds, damaging plants. Katwaroo picked up big stone and tossed it at the monkey only to scare it away. It hit the monkey so squarely on the face that he fell down, screaming hoarsely. Within seconds dozens of ferocious red-faced big monkeys materialised from nowhere and raced to attack Katwaroo. It was total WAR. An army of monkeys against one defenceless man!

The door of the Kitchen had already been locked by Katwaroo and there was no time now for him
to rush back to open it for shelter. So he desparately turned towards the house for safety, with countless monkeys on his trail !

There were two rooms with doors opening into that verandah to which
katwaroo was now desparately racing.
In the morning the glass-pane door of father's room had been latched from inside by katwaru himself when father
left for office (he had put the latch at the top of the door). The other room's
door was also bolted from inside, at the top and the bottom. This other room was full of children from the neighbourhood. We
were busy playing indoor games.

I rushed to this glass paned door when I heard the howling of the monkeys. As I peeped out through the glass panes, I saw katwaroo racing for his life into the verandah. He was now very close
to the door of father's room. A ferocious huge monkey had caught up
with him and had torn away the bottom of one of the pyjama legs, drawing blood.

With the door shut from inside, katwaroo's life was now in grave danger as it was a race against time, race against killer monkeys. Several fat ferocious monkeys were now closing in. Katwaroo was trapped !!

What happened next was sheer magic. In one fluid moment that is forever etched in my memory,
Katwaroo thrust his powerful right fist through uppermost glass pane,
shattering it and injuring the hand. In that split second he opened the inside latch,moved in and slammed the door shut. The door hit the face of the first big daddy monkey that was trying to follow him into the room. The monkey recoiled in pain and withdrew.

The verandah was now filling with howling monkeys.They were rapidly filling it and pushing at the closed door.

Suddenly two powerful gunshots rent the air, shaking the doors and rattling the glass panes. Our neighbour Singh saheb had fired two shots in the air from his double barrel gun. I saw him on
the roof of his house with the smoking gun in
his hands.

Within seconds not a single monkey was anywhere in the entire
colony ! They panicked and disappeared .

Katwaroo came out. I gave him some antiseptic and a wad of cotton-wool to treat his bruises and cuts.

With a matchstick he set the cottonwool wad on fire and pressed it hard on his bleeding leg and hand.

"This works best" he said returning the antiseptic to me, and walked towards his quarter, loudly whistling.The race had ended !!

I looked at the receding figure of Katwaroo . . . and I recalled a famous quote : "When the going gets tough, tough get going." YES INDEED... !!

THE KING AND I

Deafening sound of a gun-shot fired closeby !! I was on the roof in the morning sun, reading a magazine for small kids like me. Our bungalow was close to the market.

My mother asked me to get inside atonce. A second gunshot boomed as I raced down the stairs.

In a while katwaru, our cook, came rushing from the market with wide eyes and a bag loaded with vegetables.

" The pagal rajah has shot dead the young constable. Police has now surrounded the hotel" he said.

Pagal (mad) Rajah !! Oh my God !! I had had my close encounter with this Pagal Rajah only the previous evening when I was in the market with my little sister for black-and-white peppermint drops.

As we were paying money to our friendly old shopkeeper, this guy strode in. He was a tall, hefty character with a weatherbeaten face and a cocky gait. He looked like Hollywood's gun totting John Wayne.

He immetiately got interested in us.

"well young man," he addressed me in a barritone voice, " can you tell me who wrote these lines : 'for men may come and men may go but I shall go on for ever".

Good heavens ! Only the other day our teacher was reading this poem of Tennyson to us ! I told him the name of the poet and also the title of the poem - 'The Brook'.

He looked  stunned "Absolutely correct. I can't believe this !" he exclaimed "well well , young man, you certainly deserve a prize for this".

And he ordered the shop keeper to weigh a pound of peppermint drops for me.

It was while I was showing reluctance to accept a gift from a total stranger that I saw stark fear in the eyes of the shopkeeper. "Don't refuse this.Take it and leave the shop atonce " he whìspered handing over the packet.

Rushing back home I saw my father in the verandah, relaxing in an armchair, sourrounded by the aromatic smoke of a hand-rolled cigarette. I narrated the incident.

"My God ! He is that 'pagal'(mad) rajah" said my father, "give this packet to some poor boy. And avoid going to that shop for a few days".

And now that Rajah had shot down and killed a cop !

A barrage of shots now suddenly erupted while katwaru was emptying his vegetable bag. It continued for a while and then it was suddenly all quiet. And soon traffic resumed on the road beyond our spacious front lawns. Katwaru now went out again and came back shortly with the story.

It came to pass that the rajah came back from his estate near the Nepal
border the previous evening and had taken lodge in his usual hotel
overlooking the road crossing. He was accustomed to the traffic
constable saluting him in the morning when he sat in the balcony. This morning he saw a new cop right under him at the crossing. The cop looked young confident and tough. And the cop did not know the erratic and eccentric Rajah.

This cop did not salute the Rajah. The Rajah felt insulted and after a while ordered the cop to salute him. The cop looked up and then ignored him. This was unacceptable to the rajah.The rajah then went inside and came back with a double barrel gun. He raised it and fired a shot close to the cop's boots. And as the cop looked up, surprised, the Rajah commanded " Now salute !".

The cop shouted back that he would get the madcap handcuffed. The next  moment a gun shot boomed and the cop was dead. The Rajah had shot the cop in the head.

When the police force arrived to arrest him, the Rajah started firing
indiscrimately at them and seriously injured a cop. He was then shot dead. . . !!

I revisited the city of my
childhood recently after donkeys years . Our sprawling bunglow has now been replaced by a huge shopping complex. The area around the main crossing has also been cleared, including the old hotel, to make room for wide roads. But to my delight our childhood old peppermint shop was still there !

When I entered the shop, the old shopkeeper's son (now himself an old man) was handing over a few
cadbury's chocolates to two tiny tots, a little boy and his sister !! It was just like my ciildhood days!

I smiled back as the boy and the girl looked at me with a fleeting smile.

I did not ask them any
question on Tennyson !!

KNOCK ON THE DOOR

In the dead of the night
some one was knocking at the door. . . KNOCK . . .KNOCK . . .KNOCK . . . I froze with panic and
fully covered myself with the quilt. With baited breath I waited.

The knocks came again . . Knock . . .knock . . .Knock !

Some fool in the room got up and opened the door. We had decided in the evening that the door will not be opened at night under any circumstances.

A moment later there was a dull thud. Something hitting the floor. Then
silence returned. Inside the quilt I shivered and covered my ears with
my hands. There was now a DEAD BODY outside for sure, with a tiny deep
hole just above one of the
ears. And the door must be lying open now, for a dead man cannot shut the door. The remaining seven
of us were now 'sitting ducks' .

That was a cold december night in Kanpur India- many decades back. I was a student and was in kanpur for a cricket
test match. The house was of a friend of my father and the drawing room was virtually a dormatory now
with eight boys occupying
it. All for the test match !

A serial killer had been on a rampage for sometime now, bringing the cities
of kanpur and lucknow to a state of dread and a sort of curfew. Already there were many many killings. No blood, no strangulation. Very neat job by a highly skilled killer.

The psychopathic killer was an ex- dentist-gone- mad and his modus-
operandi was usually this: dead in the night he would knock on the door three times. If someone did not open the door after the knocks he would repeat the knocks and then loudly call  T E L E G R A M.
When the door opened he swiftly struck the victim with a sharp quick strong blow of a surgical needle above one of the ears, killing him instantly. As a doctor he knew the exact vital spot above the ear. He was a terror called
'Kanpattimaar', the scourge of the two
cities.

There was a killing every week and he kept his movement between the two cities unpredictable. There were no clues left behind- no fingerprints no footprints,no witnesses. Like the 'Maneating leopard of Rudraprayag' (googlesearch JIM
CORBETT) who remained elusive for a long time, he
had become an terrible enigma, a WILL O' THE WISP, driving the
authorities into desperate frenzy.

When I had boarded the
train at Lucknow for
Kanpur I had a sense of
relief. The killings had just
started again in Lucknow
and everyone was more or less certain that the killer was not in Kanpur at the moment.

At kanpur railway station I got into a rikshaw asking the man to take me to
Gwaltoli colony where my father's friend lived. He looked positively reluctant.

" what is the matter?" I
asked the rikshaw driver.

" saab aaj yoh gwaltoli
ilaake main hi hai" he said in hindi ( sir he is lurking in Gwaltoli area itself today).

The reference was to the
serial killer.

I offered him one and a
half times the normal fare. He accepted. A poor man, afterall, sets more value on money than his own
life.

But now it was my turn to worry. I could well have confined myself to the safety of my house in
lucknow. How I regretted
my decision of coming to
kanpur risking my life.
Cricket match my foot !

Arriving at the house at
Gwaltoli I was quickly
introduced to the other
boys occupying the
spacious living room. In
those days the "drawing-
cum-dining room" concept was not in vogue and houses had large separate drawing rooms.

Over dinner I came to learn that the serial killer's latest victim had lived two houses down the road. No wonder the rikshaw driver was reluctant to come!

"if somebody knocks on the door at night don't open the door under any circumstances" said our host. "we have a killer in the city." We used to
affectionately call our host 'Bhagwat uncle'.

When I woke up in the
morning I recalled that
there was a dead body
outside. I made a
headcount to see which
one of us was missing.
One . .two . . three . . All
were there except Umesh! I felt sorry for him. He was such a warm hearted
character. But why did he open the door !

Next moment someone came out of the bathroom, wiping his face with a towel. He turned out to be Umesh ! who got killed then !

It came to pass that
the one who opened the
door was Bhagwat uncle himself and, thank heavens, he was very much alive!

It turned out  that it was the old milkman who knocked early in the morning. He used to deliver milk in the colony, carrying his huge 'milk-can' . The sound of something hitting the ground came from his huge milk can !!

As an epilogue to this TRUE story I may add that the 'kanpattimaar' was
eventually caught shortly afterwards. He was not in news after his arrest and we lost track of him.

Whenever I pass by the
parivartan chowk area in
Lucknow I always recall the 'kanpattimaar'. He had made his first 'kill' here.

And whenever I hire a
rikshaw outside the Kanpur railway station I recall the fear in the eyes of that rikshaw driver.

And I canot avoid recalling the killer whenever there are three loud knocks on a door at a measured
interval : 

KNOCK . . .KNOCK . . . KNOCK . . . !!!

ONE AFTERNOON IN THE LONELY HILLS

ONE AFTERNOON IN THE LONELY HILLS

The flight from kolkata to
Silchar was delayed. We
waited and waited. Then, instead of the usual Boeing 737 which mercifully disappears way above the
clouds for a short supersonic ride , they provided a low flying old fokker-friendship plane . We flew leisurely over Bangladesh and, down below, I could see the roads, the rivers and even big and small vehicles on glistening ribbons of roads !

While waiting at the Kolkata airport I came across a very friendly police officer whom I will refer to as Mr.B. He was also going to Silchar. As he was a Delhi based warm-hearted  punjabi gentleman , we instantly bonded as I was also a Delhiwalla. We got into chatting. I told him that as part of a management lecture-tour I would proceed from silchar to the capital of one of north-east states.

"well you are in luck as I am posted there and I have a car for the long journey over the hills. You will travel with me in my car". I gratefully  agreed.

But at Silchar I found that the Director of the Institute had sent his car all the way to silchar for me and I felt that it would be highly discourteous of me if I didn't use it. Mr.B agreed with me.

"what we will do is that your car keeps right behind mine for the entire eight-hour journey. You will need to eat something on the way and I have arrangement for that".

There was lately some law and order problems on this route. His company assured security.

The driver of my comfortable small car was a cheerful young fellow but we had the language problem !

We kept right behind mr. B's big black shining car for some fifteen minutes and I relaxed and opened a newspaper.

Suddenly my driver took a left turn and the speeding black car vanished along the straight road. We were
heading elsewhere. I asked the driver to turn back and follow the black car. He said something which I could not follow. We talked in different languages ! And he kept moving on this new route!

After ten minutes of drive we arrived at a beautiful sprawling bungalow. There was a riot of colours in  the well maintained lawn with flowers in full bloom. The car negotiated a curving driveway and came to a stop under a portico. An elderly gentleman came out on hearing the crunching of gravel in the driveway. He greeted me. And he mercifully addressed me in english. The driver told him something in a language I did not know.

"I am sorry you were upset with change of route" he said, "actually we had arranged a breakfast for you here before your long journey".

The breakfast was excellent and it was only after I had started eating that I realised how hungry I was. I had only had a cup of coffee so far and now it was close to nine in the morning.

Then we embarked upon our journey.The next four hours of journey was
eventless and through woods that were lovely dark and deep. I recalled Robert Frost's famous poem. He was riding a horse and I was riding a car !

I had nobody to  talk to. Longing for some tea and snacks I kept looking out for a roadside tea shop. There were none that I would have liked to stop at.

It was around one o'clock now. The car was negotiating a steep road in lower gear with the engine howling. Then a sharp right turn and the road levelled for a one mile long straight road ! The car picked up speed.

Far ahead of us I spotted some people standing right in the middle of the road. Perhaps they were road-repair crew so common after the monsoon. As we came close I saw them - eight gun-totting men in some kind of a uniform I was unfamiliar with. They were agitated and ordered the driver to come out of the car when  the car stopped. The driver was now explaining something and pointedly gesticulating towards me.

For endless moments they talked. Something was wrong! Who were they ? I just sat there in the car and waited for their next move. I was definitely worried.

Now their leader moved towards me and opened the side door where I was seated. He motioned me to come out and follow him up a flight of steep steps on the hill across the road. I was now very scared. I had to step out and follow him.

We crossed the road and climbed a flight of steps. The others brought up the rear. Here I found a small house, well hidden from the road. He pushed open a door and gestured me to move in !!

A tough tall youthful man with a thoughtful expression on his face was seated behind a big office-table in this room reading something. As I entered, he suddenly got up and moved towards me with the agility of a leopard.

And as I braced myself for something unpleasant, an anti-climax happened ! He smiled and extended his hand for a handshake !
"Welcome dear sir! I am the officer in-charge here. Mr.B was very much worried when he found your car missing. He waited here for a while and then left, with instructions that you should be stopped and given some tiffin before you proceed further. From here onwards there are no way-side tea and snacks shops and it is still a long journey.

I explained to him why I could not follow mr. B.  He nodded in approval.

" yes, it was very thoughtful of them to arrange a breakfast for you".

Then he called someone to bring my lunch. I had a hearty meal ! And then he joined me for a cup of hot darjeeling tea !

The rest of the journey was eventless. I arrived in time in the big and enchanting state capital. I immediately proceeded to the house of mr. B to thank him for arranging that hearty lunch for me. And he further loaded me with a great punjabi dish of Chhole bhature !

Thus ended a memorable trip  through the lonely hills in the enchanting north east India.

THE WORLD BEYOND

Occult is defined as "involving the supernatural , mystical".

The ancient Indians believed that the human existence on the earth is "MAYA" (an illusion). That birth and rebirth are  just a "cleansing process" for an ultimate world beyond. To most people this may not be a very comforting thought !

 Is there a world beyond ?

A cousin of mine once lived in a girls hostel in All Saints in Nainital (in Uttarakhand himalayas, India).There she came across some girls participating in a SEANCE (Seance means a meeting at which a spiritualist attempts to make a contact with the dead). Her friend told her that, in a seance where this friend was present, a question was asked (to the 'spirit' present in the room) as to where that spirit lives 'now' ?

The answer was : 'in between in the layers of atmosphere . . . cannot  state more'.

Human curiosity to know the unknown is such that people still indulge in SEANCES the world over. In the Uttarakhand region of himalayas India it is known as "JAGAR " and is widely practiced even in the 21st century !!.

There is however always the scope for doubt. How do you, for example, know if the person who is 'revealing the truth' is really in touch with anything supernatural ? He may be just applying his intuition in a state of self-induced hypnotism ! Or just fooling the spectators.

Can we brush aside the supernatural as a FAKE phenomenon ?

If you think that science has all the answers you are wrong. That our human body has an electromagnetic field was known to the Indian yogi all along. You can find it mentioned in yogi Ramcharak's books written in late 19th and early 20th centuries. But science denied it until 1954.

More than a century back there was an American lawyer by the name of
William walker Atkinson. He later became a mystic and went into publication business, publishing a
magazine dealing with yoga and mysticism and churning out articles
after articles, books after books of the highest value. Though he never acknowledged it, a great number of masterpieces authored by yogi Ramcharak that were published by his publication company were infact written by this william walker Atkinson himself under the pseudonym of Yogi Ram Charak. Here is an excerpt from wikipedia about this great man:

"William Walker Atkinson (December 5, 1862 – November 22, 1932) was
an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, as well as an occultist and an American pioneer of the New Thought movement. He is also known to have been the author of the pseudonymous works attributed to Theron Q. Dumont and Yogi
Ramacharaka . [1]
(excerpt from wikipedia)

Books on yoga and occult by Yogi Ram Charak were exceptionally well written and dealt with the subject in a depth and with a clarity rarely seen except in the books written by Swami Vivekanand. His "Fourteen lessons in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental occultism" is a masterpiece for its mindblowing information on human being's awesome hidden powers and the world beyond.

To read the book "Fourteen lessons in yogi philosophy and oriental occultism"  of this author you have a link here. It is FREE !

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.yogebooks.com/english/atkinson/1904-09fourteenlessons.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj99NrG27vqAhXDyDgGHUaUAFsQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw14DA8qqpSLzYh_HiXpkgxB

DADS ELDER BROTHER

DADDY'S ELDER BROTHER !!

It was a sunday. I got up early and after my bath and breakfast, went to my friend in the neighbourhood for
playing games. My friend was a cute four year old girl in the adjacent bunglow.

When I came home after a couple of hours I found a stranger sitting in
the verandah in my father's rocking
chair and smoking from his tin of State Express cigarettes - and reading the newspaper.

Even though I was just five year old, I did not like this cavalier attitude of somebody smoking from my dad's tin of cigarettes without his permission . I thought I should find out who he was.

I musterd up courage and
approached him. He was almost my father's height and had a somewhat
similar face. Not quite though. The face was bigger and sort of puffed up and the eyes were barely visible . This gentleman had a big red nose and huge swollen lips. Who was he and what was he doing in our house when my dad was not there !

He found me staring at him and smiled patronisingly. I did not like
to be patronised by a stranger so I did not return his smile.

"who are you ?" I demanded.

In the meantime my mother came out with a cup of tea for him and was about to say some thing with an amused expression in her eyes when he stopped her.

"I am your Taujee" he said
affectionately. Taujee means father's elder brother.

I never knew that my
dad had an elder brother too. I had always been told that he was the eldest.

"And where is my father ? I asked the so-called self styled Taujee.

"He has gone to office early", he replied and went back to the newspaper he was reading.

"But today is a sunday !" I retorted.

"Your father has some important work there today", he said from
behind the newspaper. I thought he was deliberately hiding behind the newspaper and shaking with laughter !

Anyway the idea of spending my sunday with a chap with a big red nose was appalling and I proceeded to my friend's house again, to play carrom.

When I came back in the afternoon father had still not come back from office. As my father used to go to the club in the afternoon for playing tennis, I thought he must have gone directly to the club.

I did not see him at all that day as I went to sleep quite early. The taujee of a fellow kept occupying my father's rocking chair and kept smoking his cigarettes. I thought he was wearing my father's tweed coat too but I was not very sure. May be it was his own coat !

I saw my father only the next morning when I got up. I told him about the stranger who was, in his absence, occupying his rocking chair and who kept  smoking his cigarettes .

"He said he was my Taujee. Do I have a taujee?" I asked him.

" Any body can become a Taujee. I find that you are going into those bushes when you play Hide-and-seek with your friend. That's where one becomes a taujee. ", he said and mom could not help getting into a fit of laughter.

I wondered what was the joke ! What had the bush got to do with becoming Taujee. And how could I become a taujee myself. I was only a kid ?

The mystery was solved shortly afterwards by Katwaroo, our cook. I had come out and was sitting on the steps outside in the verandah, totally confused and wondering why mom was laughing so uncontrollably.

And then I spotted Katwaroo wrapping some rags to the tip of a long bamboo pole and pouring kerosene oil over it.

" What are you making" I asked him.

He told me that he was
going to set the kesosene soaked cloth to fire and burn down the big hive of yellow wasps in the bush.

"They had attacked your
dad yesterday morning", he said pointing out towards the bushes,
" Didn't you notice how big and red his nose had become yesterday !! The whole face was swollen. He looked like another person. Nobody could recognise him.". And he continued to tightened the cord holding the pieces of rags to the pole.

Oh my God !! So the joke was that fiction-of-a-Taujee who was actually my dad ! Dad had been attacked on his face by a swarm of yellow wasps when he was pruning that bush!  And I took him to be a stranger !

No wonder my mom got into a fit of laughter !!

On one big impulse after this momentous discovery I rushed back to where my father was sitting and,
throwing my arms around him, buried my face in his chest in a huge hug.

"What happened ?" he asked , totaly surprised by this display of emotions.

I said nothing. With a twinkle in my eyes I planted a huge kiss on his
cheek and dashed out of my house to share this  great discovery with my girl friend !!!

OF NAILS AND MIRACLES

OF NAILS AND MIRACLES

On my way to the barber's shop in
Hazratgunj Lucknow, I took a shortcut through a bylane in the Maqbara colony opposite the Halwasiya market. At a particular point in this deserted lane a crowd was spilling into the street from a house. It was early in the morning and the bylane had hardly any traffic except those going into that particular house.

As I walked by the house on my way
to the barber, I asked a young man
standing outside as to whose house
it was.

" This is Dr. Pepper's clinic," he
informed me," he is there, examining his patients."

I arrived at the barber's shop and
settled down for a haircut. A barber
is like the internet. You ask him
about anything and he has the
information !

"who is Dr. Pepper ?" I asked him as
he got busy clipping my disorderly
hair.

" He is not an M.B.B.S. doctor." he
said, "He is a MiracleWorker. He
inspects your nails and then tells you your health problems right from the day you were born. And he gives
herbs. All free. If you have not
visited him so far you have missed
something remarkable."

" If everything is free what does he
do for a living ?" I asked.

" He has a ten to five job." he said."in the mechanical engineering line.
People call him a doctor because he
is far better than a doctor. Even
doctors come to him for treatment -
by the backdoor ofcourse, to save
face !"

The next morning I was at Dr.
Pepper's house.

He was a lean and thin aging and graceful man with clear intense eyes and a thundering voice. Sitting in an armchair in the covered verandah, Dr. Pepper kept examining a patient, tapping each nail with a matchstick. The patient had placed all the ten fingers on the wide arm-rest of the doctor's chair.

"Did you ever go to the sea shore for
swimming?" he asked the patient.

The sea coast is a good thousand miles away from Lucknow.

"No. Never." replied the patient.

" But ten years back you were
definitely doing something in the sea. Try to recollect" he insisted.

The man was silent for a while and
then remembered something.

" Yes yes, I went on a pilgrimage to
Puri in orissa ten years back and
took bath in the sea." the patient
said.

" And you were bitten by something
while bathing. Here on the leg." he
tapped the patient's right leg below
the knee.

"Yes ofcourse. How do you know
this ?" the patient interjected.

Dr. Pepper ignored the question and
turned his eyes towards us.

"This man was bitten by a fish (he
actually named the fish but I don't
remember which). His present
problem is the result of poison from
that bite. He has been suffering for
ten long years."

And Dr. Pepper then abruptly got up
and left the clinic.

I was preparing to leave when, after fifteen minutes, he came back with a paperbag full of some kind of a grass.

"Here. Take this." he said, handing
over the packet to that patient.

Then he asked the patient to note down in detail the method of treatment."You have this weed in plenty in your village." he informed to the patient.

I did not leave until the last patient
had left. It was an awesome
experience.And then when he asked
me if I wanted anything, I asked him
if I could have a photograph of his.

" what will you do with the
photograph of an old man?" he
asked, amused.

" I will write a feature on you for a
magazine " I said. "this is my first
visit and I find that you are an
extraordinary person."

He was silent for a long time. I
thought he was now waiting for me
to get up and go. And then he spoke
softly , almost inaudibly.

" You have asked me to choose
between the gift that God has given
me and publicity." He looked at me
and smiled."what do you think I
should do ?"

I had got my answer.

"I understand " I said " I am sorry it was a very inappropripate request"

I touched his feet and came out.

But I remained in touch with him for
a long long time afterwards, visiting
him whenever in Lucknow and taking people to his clinic - till his last days.

That was a long time back.
Surprisingly nobody knows about him today, not even in his own
colony. . . .That is the way the world
is. That is also perhaps the way he
always wanted it to be !!

THE THIEF AND THE GENTLEMAN

THE THIEF AND THE GENTLEMAN

He was quite weary as he slowly walked back home from his office that summer evening. His house was in Mohaddipur railway colony Gorakhpur, a ten minutes walk from his office.

His family was away, in the cool mountain town of Almora where his in-laws lived. It was the summer vacation in the schools.He was, for sometime, HomeAlone

As he drew nearer home he thought he would have a cool shower bath, and then, read morning newspaper
leisurely over a cup of home made darjeeling tea, sitting in front of the desert cooler.,

He shuffled into the verandah and turned the key in the big brass padlock. And then, as he threw the
door open, he stepped into utter chaos.

The house had been ramsacked. Almirahs and trunks were open and
empty, their contents thrown on the floor. Even the wall clock was not spared - the thief had opened its
innards to see if any valuables were hidden there ! All the cash kept in the almirah had been stolen. The rear door was wide open !

He reported the theft at the police station. And as he knew someone highup in the department. the police
swung into action.

Next evening as he languidly
returned home, a policeman came with what he claimed to be the thiefCof his house. The tell tale signs of police 'questioning' were on the
thief's face and body. He wondered if the man was the real thief ! His face
was vaguely familiar. Where had he seen this man before ?

"Sir we have thoroughly questioned him and he has confessed to the theft in your house."

He wanted to be sure if the actual thief had been caught. His mental
makeup did not allow an innocent man to suffer false charges.

" If you don't mind I would like to talk to this man alone." he said to the policeman, "just to clear certain things. You can wait here in the verandah"

The man-in-uniform settled in an easy chair in the verandah under the ceiling fan. And he stepped out to
squat in the lawn with the thief for a quiet talk. He had serious doubts about this man being the thief. How
could they catch the real thief so quickly. And, in any case,the chapdid not look like a professional thief.
Not that he knew how a professional thief should look !

"Look here,You have to tell me thetruth. If you are not the thief," hesaid to the bloke when they were alone, "I will see that you are set free." Just because he knew
someone highup in the police departnent did not mean that you catch the first helpless man you see,
and produce him as a thief !

For whatever reason it may be, the thief held his ground. He said he had indeed broken into the house. And he looked sleepless. Perhaps the bloke wanted to avoid further workout on
him at the police station. But let him try again. he must be sure that thisCwas the real thief.
.
"OK. Can you tell me why you threw a wrist watch on the floor while walking away from the house." He
deliberately said 'wrist watch' to find out if the man had really been inside
the house.

The thief looked confused.

" what wrist watch, sir ? I did not find any wrist watch. It was a wall clock that I left on the floor after opening it. " he said, "People hide valuables in the wall clock"

And then, when questioned, he described in detail the layout of the house and where everything was
originally placed before the mess that he had created after breaking into the house from the rear door.

There was no doubt left now that this man had indeed committed the theft in his house the previous day.

There was a tiny tea stall across the road from his house. He got the chhotu (the boy servant of the stall)
to bring three cups of tea. The policeman did not grudge the waiting now and picked up a magazine to keep himself busy over the cup of tea.

The thief slurped his tea as they sat in the cool grass and described the entire 'project theft' in meticulous
details - in a very matter-of-fact way.

"Saheb, You won't believe me but it is a very hard job, this business of
theft.," he said. "You may not
remember it but you had, at times, looked at me as I kept watching you daily for one full week. When I came
to know that your family is not here and you were alone these days, I began watching your movements
closely. I used to sit there on that parapet and note your entire time- schedule. I had to be sure that you
would not surprise me while I am inside."

He smiled wryly as he
pointed to a nearby culvert which was his watchpost.

"Sir, all jobs need lot of hard work, even a thief's, if you honestly want to succeed."

No doubt the face was familiar. Now he remembered that this man was sitting at the culvert for the last few days !

He had no further use of the man and he told the policeman so.

As the twosome walked away, the words of the thief kept ringing in his
mind - "all jobs need hard work if you want to succeed" .

The last time he heard this words was ironically at a management development programme!! By a strange logic a thief was also a well-honed manager !!

LOOKING BACK

He punched the man standing before
him.The punch landed square on the
nose! I shuddered.

In my childhood I had read a nursery
rhyme which highlighted the qualities
of a boy ! Here it is :

" What are boys made
of ?
Snips & snails & puppy
dogs tails !
And what are the girls
made of ?
Sugar & spice & all things
nice ! "

while I was thus recalling the poem
he hit the man a second time
reaffirming the veracity of the poet's
assessment of a boy. And the man
started bleeding from the nose. There
was no 'sugar and spice' in this
situation !

And then he proceeded to beat up
the defenceless man so thoroughly
that the man collapsed on the floor.
Nobody came to the aid of the victim
though the place was full of people. I
was a mute witness of this act of
violence. I just stood there.

The unfortunate recepient of all these
blows was not an enemy. He was
not even a bad person. And yet
people who witnessed this act of
violence cheered him and there was
heavy clapping as the victim
collapsed on the ground.

I was watching a boxing bout !! He
was the champion boxer. He raised
his hand-in-red-gloves in a victory
salute. And smiled.

That was my first encounter with the
man named A.N.U. (as I would prefer
to call him here). That was in the
university days, way back in time. I
had just joined as an under graduate
and he had been there for many
years, punching noses, dancing in
the boxing rink.
Boxing was his passion in those
days. Nothing else mattered, not
even studies. He was a man of guts
and action. There was a hostel in the
university precisely for such men -
H&H Hostel, and he lived there. And I
believe his days in H&H were his
most cherished ones.

He was not my type. He was a man
of physical action. I shunned
violence even in sports, even in
thoughts.And yet what bonded me to
him was his disarming frankness and
indulgent smile. He was an open
book and he remained so all his life ,
through his struggles.

He was a man with dreams and
wished to live his dreams, to live his
life king size. He did not achieve
material success so necessary in life
to live such dreams. He had got a
teacher's job in a school and it was
then, years after the university days
that we met for the second time.

He had now left his boxing days
behind. He had become a food
junkie.He liked good food and lots of
it, and would not mind travelling a
good distance if there was a hearty
meal at the end of the journey ! 'The
best Jalebi is at Natthu's shop',

somebody would say. He would be
there in double- quick time! ' The
best 'Pakodas' are in X in civil lines'

and one would see him gobbling
those next day ! Even earlier, in the
university days, I had occasionally
seen him at Jagati's restaurant on
university road but that was for a
different reason.You cannot blame a
person wasting money on an
occasional visit to a restaurent for a
dinner if you have yourself suffered
the hostel food.

He was an active man and kept
himself trim through middle age. His
school hours were early in the
morning and he preferred to cover,
part of the distance, on foot. So he
got down from the bus two stops
before the school's stop and jogged
rest of the distance to his school
much to the amusement of students
and the teaching staff !

"Is there anything wromg in this ?",
he asked me one day.

" It is a bit unusual thing to do. But if
you are comfortable with it, it is
okay. "

Later in life I came across him a
third and final time in another town
where I had settled down . He was
now ageing fast and it was taking toll
of his body. But he continued to
maintain his jest for life - and for his
desire for good things. He would still
pick up the best shoes at S C
Sharma's in connaught place - of
course in sales at a heavy discount

;
he would get the more expensive
sunglasses at BonTon's in a bargain

and decent jackets in 'sales' at
Raymonds. He was, as it were, living
his dream vicariously , on a shoe
string budget.

And then I lost touch with him during
his final years. Neither he nor myself
were, in those days, internet savvy.
we completely lost touch with each
other.

I still remember him and I do miss
him. I miss his infectious enthusiasm
for small thing he wished to possess.
It reminded me of a child who
becomes happy when he manages to
get his favourite toy . He lived life to
the hilt in his own way. And he never
harmed anyone - except, in a way, in
those university days boxing
matches !!

LOVES LABOURS LOST

( my apologies to shakespears)

Miracles do happen. Here is one :

As the curtain goes up we see a
pretty young girl, a stenographer,
chomping snacks, seated behind a
remington typewriter.It is office lunch
time. The place is a city office-
complex in Nagpur in India.
The building is a three-storey,
rectangular and huge one, housing
several govt. Offices. At the ground
level a wide pavement runs around it
where we find cars, scooters and
bicycles parked. We also see some
office junk lying in piles here and
there on this pavement for early
disposal. Beyond this are well-
maintained lawns. It is lunch time
and office workers are lazing in the
winter Sun.

A boy named Gopalan now enters the
room and starts pestering this girl.
He is madly in love with this Rita.The
girl does not love him at all. A case
of 'unilateral' love in a manner of
speaking.
This 'Romeo drama' has been going
on for a long time now, ad-nauseam.
The boy is fed up and desperate. The
girl is a no-nonsense one. She is
also fedup.Today the boy has
resolved to settle the matter, one way
or the other.

" I am going to go up and jump down
to my death if you don't agree to
marry me. Its here and now." He
declares breathlessly.

The girl stops chomping snacks.well,
You cant eat as well as laugh ! She
saw something very theatrical in this
display.

"Okay Gopalan. You go and commit
suicide.If you do so, I shall marry
you. Now get lost".

She was still having fits of laughter
when the boy beats a retreat. He
resolutely runs up the flight of stairs,
runs across the length of roof and
dives. A free fall of some sixty feet !

Lunch time crowd in the office lawn
watch in utter disbelief as he goes
down accelarating( v = mg square ).
Now a miracle takes place !! Directly
beneath this 'y = mx + c' path was
lying a pile of empty huge cardboard
boxes for disposal. Gopalan hits the
top, goes all the way down and
crawls out at the bottom to the
shouts of " the bloke is alive !!" by
the crowd.

He has no time for them.
He rushes inside, storms into the
room where Rita is giving finishing
touches to her tiffin. She hears him
and then explodes.

" you lousy skunk! Do you think I am
buying this Jack-out-of -the-box
tale. Now I am going to report it to
the chief and the Police".

And as she
proceeds toward the phone, the boy
does the disappeariog act. ( THE
CURTAIN DROPS )

There is a footnote to this true story :
I met the boy years later. I found him
to be happily married to another
sweet girl.
Miracles do happen!
Q.E.D.