NIRO FIDDLES . . .

There is a saying that Nero had been fiddling as Rome burned. The modern man has also been fiddlIng as planet earth is progressively moving towards doom.

The humankind has arrogated to itself the exclusive ownership of mother Earth. And this species has systematically marauded the planet bringing utter devastation everywhere.

No tiger has ever chopped down a single tree. No elephant has ever taken out a single drop of water from underneath the ground. No animal has ever polluted the rivers so thoroughly, so extensively. No  animal has  devastated the mountains by cutting millions of trees.No animal has ever exterminated other species. Man has been guilty of all these things and many more.

We are very good at preaching. We keep talking about the dangers of climate change, global warming and carbon emission but, at the same time, continue with the destruction of the subterrain and devastation of Nature. Vast stretches of the Earth  under our feet, that were once filled with clean water, oil, coal and many other minerals for millions of years are now  divested of them. We have been systematically emptying the subterrain of petrol, coal and other minerals. 

You do not need a geologist to tell you the long term consequences of these yawning stretches of emptiness underground. The consequences are there for all to see.Lakes have dried up (one such lake is BADKHAL lake of Faridabad (near Delhi) , mighty trees have dried up and died because there is no water underground to feed their roots, vast stretches of green lands have turned into desolate desert, mountains have been having massive landslides because the soil which was held together by the massive that work of roots of evergreen trees is now missing. What Nature built in millions of years has been destroyed by man in a few decades.

Mountains are now disintegrating because of large scale denudation caused by rampant and ruthless cutting down of trees. Unheard of calamities keep striking because we have interfered with Nature. We have build massive dams blocking mighty rivers in the mountains and exposed these mountains to great risk. In a couple of hundred years, since industrialisation began, we have thoroughly poisoned our rivers and skies with deadly industrial waste products. No animal has ever done this in a billion years.

And then we, masqerading as the most intelligent species on planet earth, have international conferences on rising sea levels, melting glaciers, global warming, ozone layer gaps, and Climate Change. We have also invented carbon points to bully weaker nations !!

We keep deluding ourselves but the facts speak out for themselves. Once upon a time dinosaurs ruled this planet. They are extinct now. The homosapian could be the next species to disappear. We have so thoroughly damaged Nature that it is striking back at us now with great wrath.

Our immune system is in total dissaray. It is collapsing because we are addicted to a medicinal system which goes against Nature. We keep creating and trying new
antibiotics. But it is clearly a losing battle. T.B. has again become incurable The microbes have conquered penicillin and other antibiotics. New diseases are appearing ! In time to come Microbes can annihilate Man because of man's own folly.

The universe has an unwritten code and that is this : "do not tamper with Nature". Man continues with the destruction of mother Nature. We have even discovered phenomenal destructive power at the tiny atom and invented the atom bomb . We even have the audacity to change the Nature's genetic codes inside our own plants and animals, in our food !!. 

There is an ancient Indian saying : "Vinash kale vipareet buddhi".? That is, when the end is near
good senses desert us. This is happenning now.Alarm bells have been ringing for quite sometime. 

The modern 'NIRO' of this planet keeps fiddling while mother Earth burns !!

***

CHITTORGARH MEMORIES

It was a huge super-deluxe tourist bus. It surprisingly managed to negotiate the narrow entrance point at the foothill, on the road that took you up through sharp hairpin bends to the top.

The driver was a well built
young man who was an excellent driver. An ordinary driver could not have taken such a huge bus through those sharp hairpin bends.

When the bus arrived 'up above' at the chittogarh fort grounds we heaved a sigh of relief and had a birds eye view of Chittor town below and the chittor railway station.
( Buses were not allowed to go up on my subsequent visit two years later. Auto rikshaws had then been introduced to ferry the tourists up and down for a reasonable payment. A wise step ! ).

I had seen so many forts earlier - the red fort of Delhi and the Allahabad fort for
example. These are noted for their grandeur-in-stone. These forts are essentially massive strong fotified
areas into which army and people retreated when under attack by a much more powerful enemy batallion, in order to protect themselves while reassessing their strategy.

Chittorgarh was a different cup of tea altogether. It is not just a massive fortified structure, it is a small  township atop a  hillock and the hillock itself has been fortified. In a way, thus, it entitles itself to be one of
the largest forts in the world. It is a vast flat land up there. There are
roads, trees, vast water catchment areas and grass lands. There are temples , magnificent buildings and
ofcourse the famous VIJAY STAMBH,

a breathtaking tower that takes you up
through a winding staircase for a good view of the whole area around
and the lands yonder! Vijay stambh was, as the name suggests, constructed to commemorate a victory.

And at Chittorgarh there is the LEGEND of the valiant Rajputs, of Rani Padmini ; of the 'Jauhar' (self
immolation) of hundreds of women when Allauddin Khilji broke through the resistance of the valiant rajputs to get what he had come for - the stunningly beautiful Rani Padmini, the Queen of Chittorgarh.

( Poet Malik Mohammad Jayasi subsequently immortalised the event in his famous PADMAVAT  in 1540 CE).

In the company of a good guide you can 'live through' a period now buried deep in history. The guide takes you to the room where Allauddin khilji saw Rani Padmini's reflection in a huge mirror while she stood in the adjascent room.

The guide takes you to the ground where, in the year 1303 CE the rajput women consigned themselves to fire, to save their honour, in the ceremony called Jauhar. The very ground on which I stood was the theatre of one of the
bloodiest pages of Indian history and the thought sent a shiver down my spine. It was a very spiritual moment for me. I felt that I was myself actually witnessing those events unfolding before me - events of centuries far back in time, the war cries, the battles, the jauhars, the mystic singing of Meera bai and the courage of queen
Karnawati as Bahadur Shah laid a seige of Chittorgarh !

Chittorgarh is where Meera Bai the most famous female Hindu spiritual poetess
lived.

Her compositions are still popular throughout
North India ("mero ♡ to ♡ gridhar ♡ gopal ♡ doosaro ♡ na ♡ koi"). Her poems follow the Bhakti tradition and she was devoted to love of Bhagwan (God incarnate) Sri Krishna. Here is what wikipedia says about her :

" Folklore says that her
love for Krishna was
epitomized by her final
disappearance in the temple of Krishna in Dwarka. She is believed to have entered the sanctum of the temple in a state of singing ecstasy after which the sanctum doors are believed to have closed on their own and when later opened, the sari of Mirabai was seen enwrapped around the idol of Lord Krishna symbolizing the culmination of her union with her Lord."

There is also the folklore that she was made to drink poison for her love for God (in his incarnation as lord krishna) but poison turned into nector when she drank it.

Chittorgarh is remembered for its legendary queen Karnavati, the grandmother of the great Maharana Pratap. There is a legend of Karnavati sending a Rakhi (the sacred thread that a girl ties on the wrist of her
brother during the hindu festival of Raksha bandhan) to moghul emperor Humayun when chittorgarh was under seige by Bahadur shah,
asking for help. Humayun abandoned an ongoing military campaign to ride to her rescue, thus her name became irrevocably linked to the festival of
Raksha Bandhan . .
. . . Humayun failed to reach there in time.
Before his arrival Bahadur Shah had entered Chittorgarh and ransacked it for the second time. Realising that defeat was imminent, Karnavati and
the other noble ladies of the court immolated themselves in a mass
suicide by fire, while all the men donned saffron clothes and went out
to fight to the death. Humayun did defeat Bahadur Shah and then reinstated Karnavati's son Vikramaditya Singh as
the ruler of Mewar ."

I will be remiss in these reminiscences if do not mention the great son of
Rajputana, Maharana Pratap (1540-1597) who dedicated his entire life fighting the greatest of the moghul emperor, Akbar. While he could not
recapture Chittorgarh , he recaptured vast areas of Rajputana. His last epic
battle against Akbar at Haldighati (june 1576) has been immortalised by the hindi poet Shyam Narain Pandey in his epic poem HALDIGHATI.

The journey back into TIME being over now , our bus left the fort on its
long journey back to Delhi. As the bus travelled downwards I had the strange feeling of stepping out of the pages of
history into the material world of the day. Somewhere inside me was the feeling that a long time back, in another life, I belonged to this place,
Chittorgarh, which will always be remembered for the valour of the
Rajputs men and women.

Legends never die. As Tennyson puts it, "men may come and men may
go but I shall go on for ever".

Chittorgarh will always be there . . .
far into the future , in timelessness !!

LOVERS LABOUR LOST !!

He heard her stern chilling voice,
above the office typewriters noise.

he was in her office  in the top floor hall.
to propose to her he had made this call.

she was a typist, a fashionable dame
with him she was playing cat and mouse game

for many years she had given him a bait
and brought him to this desperate state

'will never marry you' she said without grace ,
'you had better get lost from this place'.

the agony caused by her venom and ire,
seered him totally like a raging fire.

his soul was now in terrible pain,
and he felt his blood quickly drain.

in her love he had for years toiled
and now he found his dreams foiled

"If she cannot ever be  my wife
what is now left to live in my life?"

that was now his aweful thought,
his own despair he vainly faught.

"I will jump down from a very great height
you should not take this matter light".

he said this to her in a quivering voice,
above the din and typewriters noise.

he also gave out a violent sigh,
but she thought he was telling a lie.

"you can go and jump down to  death"
she declared this coldly under her breath.

"I have heard men giving such  empty call
just go to the roof and have a  fall".

in utter disbelief and a mighty shock,
he listened to her cold disdainful talk.

and dashed resolutely out of the room,
and madly climbed up for his doom.

across the vast roof  like a horse he ran,
maddening fast as anyone ever can.

he dived down from the crumbling ledge,
and landed flat on a very  thick hedge.

life was saved but his ankle sprained,
he got up, and limped with a great strain.

up the staircase he crawled  to her ,
she heard his rant but did not stir.

"forty feet down the roof's slippery ledge,
and saved by some blessed garden hedge !

"you are no doubt  a lousy liar"
she said this with a mounting ire.

"failed you have  to keep your word
why should I marry  such  a nerd."

"get out of here and save your face
before I make this a police case".

on hearing this he beat a  hasty retreat ,
and  was soon lost  in the crowded street.

'no use giving away your life from a height
for a dame who  cares not for your plight.'

this was what he finally thought
and took a decision on the spot

his romance went up in a smoking curl.
he went home and married a fat old girl.

she is a good girl in all respect
with a golden heart and great tact

she cares for him and cooks his meal
and he finds this as his life's best deal.

falling in love was a stupid state
it led him to a very uncertain fate.
         - - - - - - -

KINDERGARTEN PHYSICS

Kindergarten Physics. . .

There is a small black ball, the size of the ball you use for playing the game of squash-rackets. But this ball is unusual. It is extremely heavy and of a density beyond imagination. No one can lift it as it is far heavier than the Earth! It is, infact, as heavy as the universe !! Actually it IS the universe !!! 

This is, nodoubt, getting confusing. Some explanation is needed. Let me explain.

Now, if you see the map of our
solar system you will notice the vast spaces between tiny orbiting masses. The fact is that the universe has very little mass and limitless spaces. It reminds me of the huge inflated big potato chips packets with a few chips and lots of air inside !

Now the Creater (there has to be one as Einstein said) removes ALL spaces between the masses in the entire universe and there is now one compact  big ball. 

It is still too big though the 'light years' distances are now gone.

Now, this mass is composed of (even a child knows this today) ATOMS. And, as you know,  there are  spaces between atoms too. The Creator removes these spaces also. Now the size is really small. But the Creator is still at work !.

The fact is that the atom is a mini universe in itself. (Remember the wisdom of ancient India's Sages - यथ पिन्डम तथ ब्रह्मान्डम - that is, as is the universe so is the atom ). Read this:

"Atoms are composed of particles
called protons , electrons and
neutrons . Protons carry a positive
electrical charge, electrons carry a
negative electrical charge and
neutrons carry no electrical charge at all. The protons and neutrons cluster together in the central part of the atom, called the nucleus (like our Sun), and the electrons 'orbit' the nucleus (like the planets of our Solar system)."

Now the creator removes all the
spaces inside each atom also! What now remains is like the black squash- racket ball. GOD can do this and has been doing this, in CYCLES, timelessly. So the ball is now ready for a divine 'game' !

And then this ball is struck with divine power.. it explodes .( yes that is the word). And its fragments keep moving in all directions. . .
keeps expanding . . . Creating
spaces. They are still doing so.

That is all about the BIG BANG THEORY and the expanding universe. (In a NON-TECHNICAL
language). The kindergarten Physics !

***

A FRIEND OF THE POOR

Deep in the Himalayas, in India, there is a picture-postcard town named
Almora.

It has a settlement on both sides of the ridge of a mildly curving five thousand feet high hill which runs in a somewhat east- west
direction.There are villages here and there in the misty valleys down below.

Once upon a time, in one of these villages down there,lived a poor lanky
boy. He was then in his early teens. This was a good hundred years ago,
in the British colonial period. Even in the town of Almora, then, medical
facilities were limited even though the town was very 'modern' for that period

because of the long years of dedication of one great British officer named Sir Henry Ramsay(1816-1893) Outside the town no medical facilities exsisted.

And so it came to pass that when the boy's old mother fell seriously ill, there was no way she
could be helped. He saw his only hope, high up in the sprawling town far above the village. He set out to climb the narrow long meandering track and arrived in the town in the misty morning. There were many doctors
in the town but none was willing to come with him to the village for he had little
money to pay for their services.

" And so my mother died for lack of medical attention as I stood there watching helplessly. And it was then that I resolved to become a doctor so that I could render free service
to those who had no means to pay."he concluded as he refused to accept more than a token fee from my father
for rendering a first rate personalised medical service to a sick member of our family.

This narrative dates backs to the misty past, in my childhood, when we were in Almora for a brief respite from the raging summer of the dusty planes below.
.
This messiah of the poor was then a very well known and respected man. He was Dr.Thapa M.B.B.S. who dedicated his whole life to the service of the poor as he had resolved in his childhood. He was blessed with a long life and long years of service to the people of Almora. And yet today he is a totally forgotten man, swallowed in the whirlpool of time !!

WHOSE STORY IS THIS ?

His story and history are not synonyms and yet the latter word seems to flow out of the former.

History is indeed a record of the activities of MAN .Women do take centre stage now and again but it it more an exception than otherwise. It is more or  less MAN all the way, It is his story indeed.

You can never recreate the factual history. This is primarily for two reasons. One, the recording of history usually takes place on a subsequent date,sometimes too far into the future and the historian uses his imagination to
reconstruct the events and gives an account of 'what might have happened'. And he records it in a way that people should like and remember him . So the details are not entirely reliable, not always true.

The second reason why actual history is never factually recreated is a motivated one. History is written by the one who wins the war or his successors. It is entirely the conqueror's story.

He writes it the way he wants - he likes to be always seen as the hero of this story and the vanquished one as the villain. Historical FACTS means nothing. The perception of these events as seen by the conqueror's historians means everything.Thus, Since history is written by the one who wins the war, it is half the truth, the other half being the unrecorded 'wrongs' perpetrated by the victor. It has always been so. Had Hitler 

won the second worldwar there would have been no records of genocide of jews or the terror of Gestapo.

History has unfotunately been a chronology of negativity - of wars and conquests, of bloodshed , of deceit and revenge . And sadly this is what is taught to the school going children and this gets implanted on their tender minds. What has a child to learn from this ?

A questiom arises here and it is this : why should a child learn history as it is taught at present. What does he/she learn from the
malovolence of Hitler when the tender mind should have learnt about the compassion of Mahatma Gandhi

and Mother Teresa. Why should the mainstream history not include the works and life of great scientists like Newton, Einstein

and Hawkins , of great mystics who preached and practiced higher values in life. And why should mainstream history be mainly political rather than that of human achievements that bring people together ? Why should history divide the nations ? Why should history breed hatred anongst people ?

Somebody has to answer
these questions . . . .!! It is long overdue.

THE GREAT LOST CIVILIZATIONS

There was a time way back in the hoary past when great civilizations
flourished in the Middle East, in Central America, in INDIA, in Mesopotamia and elsewhere too. These civilizations were very advanced in science and technology but they  disappeared mysteriously all over the world . It is still a mystery how and why the great civilization of Mohan jodaro perished

This could be possibly due to the DELUGE referred to in the mythological lore of many countries. In hindu mythology too there is a mention of a deluge (called PRALAY) a few thousand years back.

We have no records now to know about the level of accomplishments of these civilizations except some very sketchy information. Still, whatever little is left for us to discover is amazing. For example how were the pyramids made ? what machinery was used to lift such enormous blocks of stones and to make perfect massive structures ? And how did the ancient Indians and Babylonians know such accurate details about the universe and about the smallest of particles and their inter relationship - YATH PINDAM TATH BRAMHANDAM (as in the universe so in the atom). How did the Mayans possess such amazing knowledge about so many things?

With the ravages of time everything perishes except huge stones and some engravings on stones. For example if our civilization perishes in a Deluge, all the great technology will perish. There will be little left for a future civilization to know anything about us except from the stone structures or, may be, steel (upto a time) left behind. They will, as they  build up a primitive civilization from the scratch, wonder how the Eiffel tower was built. And if by chance they get to see a decaying supersonic aeroplane, they will consider it to be an amazing residential structure of some earlier ancient people !

The problem with modern man is the presumption that we are gradually developing from the APE and that there was never ever an advanced scientific civilization before ours. This presupposition creates a mental block.

Everything in nature moves in waves - sound, electricity, light and other energies they all move in waves(cycles). And so do epochs -the rise and destruction of civilizations. Deluge also comes as a pattern, in cycles. This has been propounded in the ancient hindu philosophy which holds that there is a great deluge after each cycle of time and then destruction takes place.

The world is now in the process of accepting that there were indeed many advanced civilizations in the prehistoric past. Consider this excerpt ( * it is from the link given at the bottom ) :

"Ancient knowledge was a lot more refined and developed than we have been taught hitherto. From batteries to planispheres, an assortment of gadgets have been excavated and found. Two notable finds were the Nimrud lens and the famous Antikythera Mechanism. The 3,000 year old Nimrud lens was discovered at the palace of Nimrud, in Iraq. Some experts believe the lens was part of an ancient telescope the Babylonians used, hence their advanced knowledge of astronomy. And the famous Antikythera Mechanism (200 BC.)

was created to calculate the movements of the sun, moon and planets to predict celestial events. Unfortunately, we can only
speculate on the ways many of these devices were created, used and why the ancient knowledge pertaining to them disappeared for millennia afterwards.

(A planisphere, or sky wheel, is an adjustable star chart used to identify constellations and celestial objects for a specific date and time)

Who were these awesome people ? Was it an age far superior to ours in all facets of human achievements? How did these civizations totally disappear ? And when ?

These question are infact far more important to us than whether there is water on planet Pluto or oxygen in Jupiter's moons or, for that matter, the ongoing charade for the elusive God (!) particle !!

  (http://listverse.com/2013/04/12/10-mysteries-that-hint-at-forgotten-advanced-civilizations/)

***

THE FAMOUS ANIMALS

An exceptionally long life or extraordinary courage or out-of-the-world charaterstics result in timeless fame. And When animals become part of some awesome chapter of history they too are remembered for a long time to come. Let us have a look at some animals who achieved timeless fame.

One such animal who walked into the pages of history was CHETAK the
legendary horse of Maharana Pratap,

the great rajput king of Rajputana India. Maharana Pratap refused to become a courtier of the moghul emperor Akbar and remained independent, fighting battles against the mighty Emperor all his life. The name of his beloved horse was CHETAK. This celebrated horse was with him in many bloody battles including the famous battle of Haldighati. The famous hindi poet Shyam Narain Pandey seems to be in his elements as says this about CHETAK in his famous long poem "Haldighati" :

" Run. beech. chaukari. bhar. bhar. ke. CHETAK. ban. gaya. nirala.tha . . / . . rana. pratap. ke. ghore. se. par. gaya. hawa. ko. pala. tha."

( chetak was galloping over the stage of war like a phantom-in-ecstasy . . /. . Even the winds and the elements of nature were in
absolute awe of this awesome horse of Rana Pratap).

We find a European version of Chetak in a horse by the name of MORENGO. He was the famous horse of
Napoleon Bonaparte and this horse was a battle veteran. Here is wikipedia extolling the horse called Marengo :

"Marengo (c. 1793–1831) was the famous war mount of Napoleon I of
France . Named after the Battle of Marengo, through which he carried
his rider safely, Marengo was imported to France from Egypt in 1799 as a 6-year-old. The grey Arabian was probably bred at the
famous El Naseri Stud. Although small (only 14.1 hands.) he was a reliable, steady, and courageous
mount. Marengo was wounded eight times in his career, and carried the
Emperor in the Battle of Austerlitz, Battle ofJena-Auerstedt , Battle of
Wagram , and Battle of
Waterloo . He also was
frequently used in the 80 mile gallops from Valladolid to Burgos, which he often completed in 5 hours."

Next we turn to the foothills of the beautiful himalayas in the uttarakhand region in
India.Here there is a place called Kaladhungi. It is some miles from the famous hill-station of Nainital, in the plains below. Kaladhungi is associated with the famous tiger hunter Jim Corbet. When we arrive at the place where he used to live, we see a well maintained enclosure having two graves. These are the graves of his two beloved dogs - ROBIN(he) & ROSINA(she).The owner of these hunting dogs was a legend called JIM CORBETT. The exploits
of ROBIN & ROSINA in his accounts of tiger-hunts endear them to the readers. If you have not read his book "The man eating leopard of
Rudraprayag"  you have missed masterpiece of tiger-hunt stories.
(google search Jim Corbett to know more about this legend of kumaon hills.). These celebrity dogs of the
celebrity hunter have a permanent place in the pages of history.

Then we have the grand old tortoise of India, a huge one. He was called ADWAITA ! He lived in Alipur zoological garden
Kolikata (Calcutta) and lived upto the age of 256 years !!

Wikipedia records thus about Adwaita the tortoise:

"Adwaita (c. 1750 – 23 March 2006) was a male Aldabra giant tortoise in
the Alipore Zoological Gardens of Kolkata (Calcutta), India . He was amongst the longest-living animals in the world.
Historical records show he was a pet of General Robert Clive of the British
East India Company, and had spent several years in
his sprawling estate before he was brought to the zoo. It is said that the
Aldabra tortoise was a gift to Clive from the British
seafarers who had captured the tortoise."

Next we pick up a bird - a parrot. Parrots are perhaps the only birds that talks like humans. They remember and repeat what is said in their
presence. we have a parrot in England who is master of dirty phrases. He is still alive, living a long life. His name is charlie the Macaw.

"Charlie (1899 - present) is a crotchety old blue macaw that may have already lived through three
centuries and is still going
strong. While it’s impossible to know
the exact date he was born, estimates put it around the very end
of the 19th century, and even if those estimates are off by a few decades,
he has still lasted a lot longer than the average 50 year life span of normal
macaws. His current owner claims he was a favorite pet of Winston
Churchill’s, who supposedly acquired Charlie in 1937 after the macaw had already
managed to outlive two previous owners. While the Churchill claim is
hotly debated, what is certain is that whoever did own Charlie during World
War II taught him to say some very dirty phrases, mostly about Hitler and the Nazis !"
(A macaw is a long tailed colourful parrot of the new world - the American continents.)

What we have next is an army officer - a
Sergeant . In 1918, his exploits were front page news in every major
newspaper in the United States. He was known as Sergeant Stubby. He was
wounded on several occasions during the conflict. And as time rolled on he became a celebrity.
He was a DOG - the only dog in history to be OFFICIALLY  given an army rank !!

And finally a most famous mule who never actually existed - "Fransis the
talking mule". He was the hero of a novel by David stern. He acted in several films too - a number of very funny Hollywood films were made in
the 1950s with the mule as the hero !!

For contacting this mule use the link below  :

http://horsefame.tripod.com/francis.html

THE SAINT FROM HIMALAYAS

He had attempted some competitive examinations but could not succeed in getting a job so far. PC was worried and getting disheartened. He had an excellent academic career but no job in sight.

He was now waiting for the results of the PCS examination, a coveted government service in those days. He had not much hope. The vacancies were few and contenders in thousands.

This was the pre-independence forties of India in the British Raj. Good jobs were very few. In the PCS, one started the career as deputy collector, a position of a good salary, much status and power in pre-independence days.

" Go to NeemKaroliBaba," a friend suggested, " He may help you know your future. He is a Trikaldarshi (it means one who knows the past, the present and the future) ."

This was in Nainital, a lake town nestled in the Himalayas. Neem Karoli baba was a revered saint. His ashram, then, was at a walking distance from the town in Hanumangarhi (He established his famous KAINCHI ashram on Nainital-Almora road subsequently).

PC was removing his shoes to enter the hall where people were seated on a carpet before the saint when Neemkaroli baba noticed him.

" Aao deputy collector saheb aao ( come in, our deputy collector )." accosted the baba affectionately.

He came in, touched baba's feet and sat down before the baba in the crowd of bhaktas (devotees).

" Baba, will I be able to get any job ?" he asked, "I have another examination coming up the next month.I am losing hope now."

" No more exams." baba chided him affectionately, "you are already a deputy collector now."

The results of PCS exam. were published in the newspapers after a few days and he had been selected !

This is just one of the countless stories that surround this wonder saint of Himalayas. For a long time he lived in Nainital and then moved on to Kainchi, a few miles from Nainital. He was revered as the incarnation of the hindu God Hanuman in his life time. My maternal grand-father was a regular visitor at his ashram and from him in my childhood I came to know about this holy man who shunned limelight and talked little unlike the institution-builder saints of today who seek out the media and like to be constantly photographed. My grandfather had personal experience of awesome divine powers of this saint.

Here is a link to know more about him:

http://www.dlshq.org/saints/neemkaroli.htm

THE GREAT INVENTORS !

THE GREAT INVENTORS  !!

we are in the habit of taking everything for granted. As darkness descends, as the Sun sets, we just switch on the lights. we turn on the tap when we need water in our houses . we have gas to instantly prepare the stove to cook our meals - we do not have to go into the forest to get firewood for kitchen as our ancestors did in the past. We don't have to borrow fire from the labour or briskly rub stone to get fire. We also do not go out  searching of food everyday. Our food is available whenever needed - both cooked and uncooked - for a payment. They are so many  comforts in day to day living now. 

It was not like this always.

Yes ! Many things that we take for granted in our daily life now, were never there until the recent past. Come to think of it, About 150 years back there was no electricity (fan, electric light, heater,cooler ACs- as you keep reflecting, the list keeps growing longer and longer), no railways, no cars or motorised vehicles, no telephone,no radio, noT.V. , no music recordings of any kind, no cinema, no air travel and not even the  bicycle!! Most of these things are in general use for less than a hundred years. The internet came just the other day. There was a time when sunset meant darkness -end of major activities. Then dim Oil lamps provided a ghost of a light in the dark streets of big cities. Elsewhere it was total darkness. Homes were dimly lit with flickering candles, lanterns or oil lamps.

Even a person of ordinary means today possesses things a king of the olden days could not have dreamt of ! Emperors would have given away a fortune to get a working television network or a train service or, for that matter, even an ordinary table fan.

And yet (think of it) we never feel grateful to those very few magnificent men and women who brought about this qualitative change in the human race. They were not the warmogers who crowd our history books. They were not even the politicians who brainwash public to get the votes. They are all but forgotten ! Their birth anniversaries pass unnoticed.

To borrow from Winston Churchill's once famous remarks, said in another context, ''never have
so many (read- 'billions') owed so much to so few". 

The enormousness of the human civilization's debt to these few inventors becomes apparent when you are reminded that once upon a time there was no WHEEL !!

***

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 big railway stations platforms of small towns when uncrowded.. 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 we always returned his smile as we went past him at the gate! 

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 yardsaway!  A child has an awesome smelling power. Of my earliest days, I remember being aware of the even 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  !  Long distance train travel, First class lower berth, from Delhi to the south was always as awsome 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!). And also a cup of Dinshaw's mango ice-cream cup at Nagpur station. I had also a craving for the masala vada at Nellore station. 

That was in good old way back in the nineteen seventies. 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 internethas drastically changed our life style. 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 and smartphones 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  historian, had 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 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 popular lately? 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 patterns of high Beta waves and know how it breeds health-issues.

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

***

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  ins primarily an entertainment event put up by the hostel boys themselves before a select audience comprising of elite of the city and successful  former inmates. It is  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 drawing audience attention to himself by raising doubt about magic tricks.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. The boy is now facing
the audience with his eyes firmly shut with a large handkerchief and the magician standing right behind
the boy. The Magician picks up one of his dirty weatherbeaten shoes with his right hand 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. The magician now removes the handkerchief while still holding the shoe close to the boys nose. The bully opens his eyes to find himself in a very embarrassing situation of a dirty shoe almost 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 rear door  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 week. 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 died prematurely 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 . 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 religiousbactivity. 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 whistle 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 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 low roof 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 vaidyaraj.

The doctor, clad in a white simple pyjama kurta, now leisurely 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 sitting before him and focussed on  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 at a counter to the compounder who was in charge of the pharmacy.

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 ancientvscience 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 on ancient times. This was a very advanced civilization  who gave the world the fundamentals, astrology , astronomy, mathematics and many other areas.

In the modern medical practice a doctor checks your pulse normally to
see the pulse beat per minute. He checks for irregular heartbeats fast heartbeat very slow heartbeat et cetera. He does not diagnose the nature of ailment by simply 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
 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  kaff 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
illnes results from a 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