To exist for which love.

It has never been an easy life; whoever said it was is delusional. I am not saying it has been a particularly hard life. I was born into a comfortably middle class family. My parents always provided and we have never had to struggle to achieve material things but we all struggle in our own ways; we struggle to be brilliant and we strive to achieve better things in life. It is human nature to always want more. Nothing is ever enough. Some of us live through our lives constantly in motion, the fluidity of our lives may astonish some but we live on, flowing towards better things. Most of us live through life never having experienced kindness or love, only being witness to the brutality and demeaning nature of reality. We are constantly on show, subject to the eyes of the world and the touch of illusions. We escape to wherever we can.

I believed that love would shine through all kinds of darkness and I do not mean love purely in its romantic stance; I mean the kind of love that a blade of grass feels when the rain drizzles caressing it or the kind of love that our skin feels when touched gently by the morning rays of the sun. I am talking about the purest form of love, unadulterated love. We are lucky to witness it in our eternal lives. It goes beyond everything. I saw it in its most potent form and it took me a while to adjust my senses to it. It was so piercing in its nudity that I almost missed it, overlooked it. It was on the day that I accompanied my granduncle and his wife to the hospital. She has been paralysed waist down for over 7 years now. That day she was coming in and out of reality and it almost seemed like her soul was wavering above us mere humans. She could not speak or recognise anybody that day. It turned out she had a physical reaction that resembled a stroke and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Sitting in the backseat of the car with her and my granduncle, I tried not to look worried or intrusive. I just stared outside the window and thought to myself that I am never getting old,I refuse to let my body get the better of my  mind. It was then that I heard it; the faintest murmur. It was so soft that it barely grazed her ear lobe. He was talking to her and tucking her hair behind her ears, she was completely oblivious to his actions. Her mind, copulating with the sedative, had procreated another world itself. She was not in motion, had not been for over 7 years. Her life, along with his, had been static. They were frozen in this reality.

He has never been the kind of person you would consider sensitive or gentle; I would not be overstepping myself in stating that many might have considered him rude and almost obnoxious. Everything about him screamed hardship, his voice was like sandpaper and yet here he was gently mumbling to her, making her comfortable. The love that flowed through him towards her grazed my arm and I recoiled in shock. It felt like the sting of a cactus. It was strange and yet I seemed to be a part of that love by default. The whole way to the hospital he held her hand gently and whispered in her ear while she drifted in and out of consciousness. It was the start of the end.

The days that she spent in the hospital, being poked and prodded by doctors and nurses went by in a blur for her but for him it was as clear as seeing in the light and as difficult as finding one’s way in the dark. He never left her side, his home and his life were all shunned and he was back to his sandpaper self. His stooped body hardened by his years in the army and his life devoted to his ailing wife had shielded itself from fellow humans. He had channeled all the love his body possessed and directed it to his soul mate, he shunned everyone else. While she lay on that bed, saline dripping into her ancient veins he looked on silent and numb. His eyes accustomed only to her face, everyone else was a blur.

The days when he sneaked in love letters to her through a friend seemed archaic; her blushing care-free face now a repressed memory. His happiness seemed wholly entwined with hers. He knew no other life than the one in which she was his to protect. Long gone was the time when he dreamed, when he rushed to catch a glimpse of her. His everyday was outlined to serve her; he cleaned her, fed her, held her, talked to her and saw only her. He had forgotten, somewhere down the line, to look for himself. He existed only for her and she existed. Her legs lay limp; their life had been slowly drained out with the brutality of disease and old age. Her eyes wandered for more but rested on him alone. Their comfort lay in their existence and their solitude. They want no more than each other in their world. Their love did not touch others, his was directed to hers and hers was slowly fading. He struggled to save her and she struggled to live.

They were here now and here there is no dream and reality to outshine. Here he took care of her. Here she was confined to the four walls of her disease. Here they are together but here they no longer lived.

The value of 'woofs'

It is to live that we dread, death is just a vague concept that we have dramatized through time immemorial. It is to truly live that we do not and will not come to terms with because for that we have to put ourselves out there; for that we have to let go of what it is we think we should be and be what we truly are. My tale lies in Bombay, ah yes…the eternal city of Bombay now known as Mumbai. I have not quite gotten the hang of that name, for me it has always been and will always be Bombay. I dreamed of it as a child, it was the place I was to find my soul in. I do not quite know what exactly it was that fascinated me about Bombay. I have tried to remember time and time again but have never succeeded. It is one of those things that I will probably remember one vague day and forget it the moment it pops into my mind.

Bombay, the city where people go to become movie stars and film geniuses. That is the common notion people have about it, Bollywood being so famous does not help, but in fact Bombay is so much more. It is where people go to make dreams happen. Yes, Bombay happens to be the most populated city in India. Something about it draws people in like ants to a caramelized bread pudding. The different kinds of people you meet here is spectacular. Everybody is everywhere doing anything and everything. The smell of the sea envelops you like an old friend, the marshy areas over power your senses most days and let you be just when you think that your nose is never going to ever know another smell. Time moves ever so fast here, one minute you are drifting through the streets of Bandra, a short pit stop after a meal in Andheri and before you know it you find yourself fighting off harassed commuters on the local train at the Dadar station. Another blink of an eye and its nightfall and you are sitting in Marine drive watching the waves, wondering if life has always been this peaceful. It is a complicated city filled with complicated people who dream. Every city in India has a story, has individuals who dream the loveliest of dreams. Bombay is one such city where I dared to dream a lovely dream.

People are always running here, running to get to work on time, running to finish work on time, running to squeeze in a meal, running to meet a friend, running to get their kids to school, running to get to college, running to yoga classes, running to open up their shops, running to hospitals, running to watch a movie, running to meet an appointment, running to live, running to die…people are always running to run their lives. Bombay has this crazy energy about it; you are constantly on the move. People pass you by on the local trains, buses, autos, taxis and on the road and sometimes, whenever you get that sometime, you wonder where the hell is everyone rushing off to and then you realise there is somewhere you have to be as well. So rush away you do. You rush and yet you never quite do. You miss out and then again you never quite do.

People are amazing. The people of Bombay, of any place in this ginormous word really. They kill, they steal, they do horribly horrible things, they take away your life and they destroy you. Then there are those people who help you out when you are lost, feed you when you are hungry, save you when you are drowning (even when they do not really know how to swim), they save your soul and patch it up for good luck. People are like that, they kill you and they save you. Yes, even though you might not want to be killed or saved most times. Human beings are a complicated species. We, the Homo sapiens, tend to be self-destructive. Ah, the qualities we possess are fascinating. We harm others to harm ourselves. A little bit cowardly, since we can never face ourselves directly. We harm, most times to feel good about ourselves; to tell ourselves that we are in control; that we can control. We constantly amaze, we can damage and wondrously salvage matter. We constantly amaze.

I was heading out of a medical facility, having spent my morning with an empty stomach and the night with the much dreaded Dulcolax; all for a couple of x-rays that were just going to confirm that I was indeed a defected piece of work. The traffic in Lokhandwala was really not helping. I was not in the best of spirits and my company, my crusading aunt, was facing the brunt of it all. The sullen silence had been replaced with dramatic “I told you, I was dying.” dialogues. I was not at my best, not even close to it. I was crawling my way to the car when out of the corner of my eye I saw her. She was bending down; her shapeless dress hugging her serenity. She had things in her hand, blue plastic bowls. They looked plastic. Their body surface reflected the morning sky. She had a container with food in one hand, I am not sure if it was a container or a bag. It all got a little hazy after that. Her hair was short or was it tied? She was moving or was she still? All that stuck to my memory was that she glowed like a subdued, calm sun. Some blue bowls were on the road, right in front of my aunt’s car. There was food in them; the food was mushy and gooey. It looked like what babies are given initially, love and nutrition meshed together. Did I mention that she glowed? She glowed in the most unusual way.

There were some dogs around; a few had started on their meal. They were used to her, used to the blue plastic bowls with mushy food, used to her smell, her voice, her presence, to everything about her. She was talking to them. They understood everything she meant. I stopped. Stared. Time had taken away my limbs. She turned to me, smiled, and so did the dogs. My aunt had started up the car; I looked at her. She understood without me even saying anything. I thought of telling her to move because my aunt was trying to get the car out but I did not. She understood anyway. She looked at me apologetically. She… looked at me apologetically.She moved the blue bowls out of our way, I helped her. The dogs understood. They backed away. A few ran. They looked at me while they ran; I saw the fear in their eyes. They were telling me that they knew the kindness they had received was too good to last. They knew better. The dogs that were more familiar with her moved away but stayed at a distance. They knew she would not go that she would stay, when no else would. They had faith in her and she in them. We drove away. I looked back. She was still smiling. She reminded me of that feeling I had when I reached Bombay to study. That feeling that there was good to come, that I could just be, that dreams did come true. I do not quite know why she reminded me of that feeling. I figured she reminded me of good. I do not consider myself a pessimist but I know many would say that instead of helping stray dogs, which are anyways a nuisance, she could have devoted that time and those resources to helping humans. I guess when we cannot do; we pick on those who do. It is human nature after all. Is it not grand enough that she did something? That she did what little she could.That she made a few dogs somewhere in Lokhandwala feel safe, warm and wanted. Most of us spend so much time in stating a brilliant number of things that could change our world but never getting around to doing anything about it, never managing to understand the stuff that people like her are made of.

Bombay is a magical place, in its own right. You find a variety of people here. You find railway perverts who jump at the opportunity of crowds and close spaces to touch you, you find auto rickshaw and taxi drivers who refuse to take you to your destination because it does not suit them, you find people willing to con you at the blink of an eye, you find people ready to sell your everything when your guard is down, you find people boasting of being benevolent souls when they cannot even sit in the same bench as a slum dweller, you find people who will masturbate beside you as you sit and talk to your friends on marine drive and then you find chaat-wallas who cure your sorrows with their taste-numbing sev puris, you find restaurant owners with multinational family members (beside Andheri station) who make you feel warm and chat you up while you wait for your order of brun-maska and bread pudding, you find daughters of prostitutes who are making an effort to change their fates, you find eunuchs on the street who bless you with all their hearts, you find tired women in the local train who help you squeeze your way into an already bursting women’s compartment, you find people who care and love you for who you are and you find a smiling woman who feeds stray dogs in the morning just because. She lives even when you forget to.

A Change.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
-William Butler Yeats

In the early 1900s W.B. Yeats’ in his poem, “The Second Coming” wrote about the drawing of an end, an end to the world as we know it and the birth of a new age. Of course Yeats, as scholars have cited, was referring to the end of the Christian eon but his prophetic poem seems apt for our ‘today’ even more so for our bleak tomorrow. Look at the world around us; we seem to be spiraling into chaos. Chaos through over-consumption at a pace that is rapidly depleting the resources at hand, we seem to be ‘consuming’ towards our doom. No longer is chaos a problem to be dealt with in the future. While the second coming may have been prophesized by Yeats, the question that arises in the scenario today is “Will the world emerge from the crisis we face today and be reborn, or are we doomed to face the pits of pandemonium?” Yeats hinted at the beginning of a new era, but that idea might not hold true for us. Will we be annihilated and be reborn from our ashes or will we cease to exist altogether?
The grand curtain of 2011 unveiled the Arab Spring movement, Occupy Wall Street movement, protests against the economic crisis that gripped European nations like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy, and protests held in Chile and Israel. All of these proved that the world economy is undergoing a drastic change and people are noticing and taking a stand. Corruption, capitalism, greed, exploitation are words we are all too familiar with, realities that we live with. In India, we saw the Anna phenomena grip the entire nation and force the authorities to take notice. For just one moment we thought things could change for the better and that we were capable of bringing about drastic change. The Lokpal Bill put forth by Anna and his team is still to be formulated leave alone implemented, the fervor that gripped the nation less than a year back is slowly deadening. The question that is on everybody’s mind is “What next?” and “Where do we go from here?”
The condition in which the world finds itself today is our doing, we may be quick to shift the blame onto others but the time has come to take responsibility for our actions. Jean Paul Sartre once stated that, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” We live but yet we do not want to be responsible for living. In a capitalistic society we lean towards a monetary transaction of life where the value of things is their monetary weight. The socialists have been pushed into hidden corners; their attempt to change the world has more than often backfired. When given the chance they have failed to implement their ideology.
Time and time again the issue of sustainable development has been discussed, debated and swept under the table. Today it is one of the crucial problems mankind faces; well it is not just mankind but all living species to be accurate. Nations all over the globe strive to achieve development, to be modern and to keep up with the so-called evolved nations, but in this race to catch up no one seems to be taking into account the disastrous outcomes that will follow. Is it denial or just pure neglect?
The fourth report of the United Nations Global Environment Outlook stated that, “by 2025, about 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under conditions of water stress”. We know that the damage has been done but why are we not working towards securing a better future? Even now we continue to plunder our forests, gorge on our resources, create industries and harm the environment in all ways imaginable. Yeats rightly foretold that, “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. All we do is helplessly look on while we head towards our doom.
At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, held at Davos-Klosters, Switzerland from the 25th to the 29th of January, 2012; Paul Polman the CEO of Unilever stated that, “There is definitely a readjustment that needs to happen in Europe, because, if you want to really simplify it, we've lived above our means, and we‘ve done that for too long, and the moment of truth has arrived.” This is the line on which my essay draws a strand. The Euro debt crisis is not only confined to the European Union but will eventually impact the rest of our globalized world. The entire world’s financial system is interlinked, so a problem for Europe is a problem for the rest of the world. Since the financial crisis of the United States in 2008-2009, the global economy has been hit pretty hard and has been heading downhill. The Euro debt crisis that came to light in 2009 proved that we were heading for a rocky future. That the United States and the European Union which are considered to be the major players in the global economy could be subject to a financial crisis exposed the vulnerability of the rest of the world. It is just a matter of time before the other nations jump on board the debt wagon. Polman’s quote is not only restricted to the Euro debt crisis but on the condition of the world today, the condition of humankind today.
We do not require statistics and data to figure out that the resources provided by the earth are not adequate enough to sustain us, let alone provide for future generations. What we have we are consuming at the speed of light and the strain on the earth is beginning to show. At a population of 7 billion worldwide, it seems incredible that we have lived comfortably so far.  Inequality, socially as well as economically, is rampant. People are dissatisfied with their governments, their quality of life and the entire system on which they function. The time of difficulty is fast approaching. The optimist in me would argue that things change constantly; we live in a state of flux. The future will bring better things, better opportunities and will provide us with alternative resources. However, the pessimist in me has more reasons to despair. Man’s greed will be his downfall. We are all aware of the infamous ancient Mayan doomsday prophecy that supposedly places 2012 as the year the world ceases to exist or the time when humankind will be wiped out. Sadly, the prophecy doesn’t seem to be entirely off, if we continue down this path of self destruction then humankind might cease to exist in our lifetime.
Modernization, industrialization, globalization, the evolution into a modern state etc. all concepts we once aspired towards, which have now become a reality, but the price we have paid for it seems exorbitant.  We live in an economy that functions on an economic structure, functions through economic means. We are defined by those economic means, so the fact that the essence on which we exist is under threat is a matter of grave concern, but then are we really doing much to change anything? I could go on and on about the reasons of the Euro debt crisis, the depletion of resources, the dangers we face and how over-consumption is eroding the foundation of our life, but then what would it amount to? Too many people have stated what is wrong and why it is wrong, fewer however have offered valid suggestions to counter the wrong being done, fewer still have implemented their suggestions to better the state of things. I am just another voice seeking a reason, a reason to have hope.
The chaos has seeped into the core of our beings; too many of us have resorted to violence to find a solution. It is an all too common cry that the system does not work, the system has failed us etc. but what we fail to understand is that the violence and chaos resides in us and to calm that storm is another matter altogether. Albert Camus once wrote, “We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.” We are at war, after all, with Mother Earth. We are at war with corrupt governments, we are at war with financial crisis, we are at war with backwardness, we are war with corporate structures, we are at war with diseases, we are at war with pollution, we are at war with nations, and ultimately we are at war with ourselves.

The Earthworm Saviours

On bright mornings, we thank the universe for its beauty. On dreadful mornings we curse the land on which we walk. Such is life and life is such. The newspapers and news channels sing dreadful tunes of terrorism, murder, rape, destruction and corruption. We all know this; experience it every day in and out. We have accepted our fates, the existentialist in us fights to prove that we are masters of our own fate. The choices we make determine the paths we shall walk on but most days we just walk on pre-determined paths. Would that make us soulless, hopeless or even joyless? We would rather not think about it. However there are fleeting moments in our lives when we marvel at beauty, marvel at how things can be so simple yet so pure. The earthworm saviours made me marvel, marvel at how beautiful simple things can be and they even helped me save a little bit of my soul as well.
Clement town, a busy little town in Dehradun, Uttarakhand is home to a small Tibetan settlement called Dhondupling. Home to Tibetan refugees, this settlement was established in 1964 and the land is said to have been donated to the Tibetan community by Acharya Vinoba Bhave, famously known for the Bhoodan movement or the Land Gift movement of 1951. This settlement is home to three monasteries belonging to the three sects of Tibetan Buddhism, viz. the Nyingma, Gelug and Kargyu sects. The Great Stupa of the Mindrolling monastery, belonging to the Nyingma sect, is where my tale actually begins. It is known as the Great Stupa of Buddha descent from Devaloka which liberates upon seeing and is also called the World Peace Stupa. Getting out of the history of it; I tend to get distracted and go on another tangent, my story is simple, an observation I made one bright morning when the universe decided to let me in on one of its wonders.
On one very rare scarlet morning, when my bed did not look particularly cozy; I made my way to the Stupa for my morning walk. Well it bordered more on a crawl than a walk. The Stupa is perfect for a walk; its compound is sprawling with bright green lawns, tiny trees and pretty little flowers. The beauty about this place is that it is quiet and not the eerie quiet that makes you want to run away but the kind of quiet that makes your insides feel calm. Evenings here are lovely too, a little crowded but lovely. Getting back to my story, on one particularly active morning I made my way to the Stupa, foggy eyed and not very happy. Never really been a peppy morning person. I remember that morning being particularly bright autumn morning. The birds were fluttering about, getting their chores done and the sky was a murky blue, infused with bouts of orange. The sun could just about be seen, lethargically making its presence felt. The place was serene; time seemed to have reached a standstill. I looked around and there were a few people walking around, most of them were elderly Tibetan folk.
Interestingly, Tibetans believe that walking around the Stupa helps in accumulating good merit. I once met an elderly yoga teacher in this exact place, he had moved to Dehradun from Himachal Pradesh. A jovial fellow with the kindest smile I had ever seen, every time he smiled his eyes crinkled up and it seemed like he had never known sadness, only joy. He said that in our daily lives we are bound to do something wrong, walk into erroneous paths and that walking around the Stupa helps one cleanse oneself of this evil, if you can call it that, helps one accumulate merit for themselves and their loved ones, for this lifetime and beyond.
Like always, I plugged my ears with my headphones, changed the song on my phone to the upbeatest one possible and started my so-called workout. I started walking around the compound and I noticed these three Tibetan ladies, wobbling along. Their eyes focused on their faith and they somehow seemed so full of life, even though they walked at their own slow pace with their beads in their hands and their chants embedded into their lips. From the corner of my eye I noticed that they had bent down and were doing something but I did not pay much attention and carried on. After three, four rounds I noticed that every time they walked they would suddenly bend down, do something and carry on with their walk. Now, they had gotten me all curious so I walked a little slower, turned down my music volume and walked behind them.
After a little while, of following them aloofly, one of them bent down again and she muttered something in Tibetan to the other ladies. A little ahead all three of them bent down, that was when I saw the leaves and blades of grass in their hands and on further diligent inspection I saw that they were pushing the earthworms from the cemented-tiled footpath towards the lawns. That was what they were up to; they were saving the very confused earthworms. Then I started putting two and two together, the lawns had clumps of earth in them, the earthworms were digging up the mud and somehow coming onto the footpath. These ladies were putting them back in the lawn, saving them from getting crushed by unobservant morning walkers like me.
Buddhists believe that each living being, be it a human, plant or animal have their own causes and purposes that brought them into being. They believe in nonviolence and morality above all else. Nonviolence, after all, is a recognition that all beings deserve to live their lives and that enmity, hatred and violence never improve our state of mind. Just as a person would not cause harm to their own body, similarly they should not cause harm to any other living being. In this way one would also not be harming themself by harming another.
It was just an ordinary morning and an ordinary moment for them, they probably do this every day and not because they have to but because they want to. I doubt this action of theirs even strikes them as something out of the ordinary or something exceptional. To them, it is so simple. The earthworm is lost, out of its environment, potentially at risk of being crushed. So, they direct it towards the grass, a safe place. They save the earthworm, or any other bug that finds it has strayed into foreign land. It is simple and pure. I watched on as they kept doing it throughout their walk. It got me thinking about how lost we are all the time. How we soak ourselves in negativity and it becomes a part of us. That day I heard about a person who killed herself, she had been undergoing depression on and off. I wondered if someone had directed her mind to a safe place, would she still have been alive. If there were more earthworm saviours in the world, would our world be a nicer place to live in?
People are so angry all the time, angry at the traffic, angry at their loved ones, angry at themselves, angry at their messy pets, angry all the time for so many things-some of them trivial and some them more serious than others. Who can blame them, there is so much to be angry at but then there is so much to be glad for too. That day I was glad, glad that the earthworms in that compound, inside the Tibetan settlement at Clement had saviours. I was glad for those little recyclers of nature, without whom organic matter would not be broken down and converted into valuable nutrients required for fertile soil. I am not going to get into karma or how this whole universe is linked and this action in fact leads to the preservation of a higher order, blah blah blah. I just saw some ladies saving some earthworms and for that moment I was glad, I was happy and my faith in mankind might have been renewed a little bit. Rather my faith in myself was renewed a little bit. That is the beauty of seeing good, it makes you believe in it and it makes you believe that there could be good in you because for that briefest moment you were glad to be have been a part of that beautiful moment, even if you were silently following those women. I have no morals or words of wisdom to offer at the end of this story, just a good thought. I have not seen those ladies for quite a while now; morning walks have been overtaken by other things. I am sure though if I find my way one morning to the Stupa, they will be there saving earthworms, with those kind smiles and diligent eyes. So, if you get bogged down by all the negativity around you just remember that somewhere out there, there are some beautiful people saving earthworms.