Madgulkar's Jogiya

First Day On A Brand New Planet

When I am trailing along alone in the vast quietness of a forest, on a 5 minute break from the dust, dirt and disgruntled thorns, I realise apart from a few creases, life has dealt me a good hand. No doubt, money situation is getting exceedingly tight, but I tend to worry about it only when I'm back in the civilisation. I am not a recluse. I love people. Meeting people, talking to people is an exciting experience, but equally exciting is to stop by once in a while and see what those thousand different you's inside are trying to convey. And certain settees help, like an ocean-facing sand mound or a brooding dark green canopy above. Interestingly, the situations which would be dealth with very passionately and sometimes foolishly when surrounded by crowds, are analysed and dealt with in an admirably detached manner. The happiness, sadness, light, darkness, clarity, confusions of the usual life are the last thing on my mind, and I trail along wherever the path takes me.

When I am in there, cut off from the world, my senses are flooded with what nature has to offer. The seering sun has scorched every bit of exposed skin and turned it darker, but the heart is lighter. The thorny undergrowth has been puncturing my skin and feeding on blood from the moment I stepped in...and sometimes even the face carries the brutal crisscrosses, but you learn to look at it dispassionately. I swore so much the first few days, but then I remembered that these are not as painful as the wasp stings that I bore almost deliriously for last 5 years. You get used to it.

And for every such incident, there are outright rapturous moments. For example, the day i discovered a stream in the middle of a completely scorched, sunburnt landscape. I was lying down on the forest floor, exhausted after the day's work and as so happens every time you become quiet, the forest came alive. I could hear very faint tinkling in the distance...it turned out to be a steady water stream flowing almost noiselessly into the ravine besides the forest. The water cooled my feet till it was time to leave the forest.

Or the time when a whole flight of common crow butterflies decided to block the sun overhead. Every time I moved, they pranced around like little ballerinas covered in black. Finally getting tired of my continuous cues, the whole flight settled with careless abandon. Seeing life so manifold, up so close, with such abandon makes me treasure every living existence including my own.

Then the one night I decided to spend on the desolate beach along a private property. It was cold (!)...unimaginably so. I took refuge in a casuarina plantation nearby. It was no warmer inside the plantation, but man, have I been in a more musical blanket or what! The wind turned into a bow and struck the stings of the casuarina leaves, creating sounds similar to the melody emanating from the depths of a cello...the continuous hammering of the waves against the shore, acting as percussion...the moonlight streaming live through the casuarina top, creating light and shade effects witnessed till date only on screen in Ye Raat Ye Chaandni Phir Kahaan...

The song playing at the back of my mind is - First day on a brand new planet...

"Heaven" of Freedom

A quick thought on religion/god/spirituality/philosophy: I am not a believer. I was never a believer, and I am never gonna be, because I don't think god exists. I think the concept was invented to act as a torch of optimism when the going is not good. I am not one of those who are jubilant rationalists and sneer at anything that doesn't fit the definition of rationality. I used to think, those who don't believe, shouldn't believe; and should allow those who want to believe, and as long as this freedom exists across the fence, everyone could peacefully indulge in their own ideology.

However, my dominant thought these days is: believing in god or in anything else that's not yours but used by you as a guiding principle for your life is not as benign and harmless as it sounds. I think (very humbly and politely, though there's this danger that it may not sound so), influences coming from someone/somewhere outside us are nothing but impersonations of that someone's beliefs and definitely hamper our growth. Especially beliefs wrapped in sermons that are told by someone we love, we respect, we look upto. Someone telling you how to lead your life in terms of actions or thoughts or beliefs makes you less evolved, and also less aware about your capability to evolve. You may say, people who are aware of this problem will steer clear of it and not necessarily turn into blind followers. Well, blind or aware, it is in human nature, that answers provided by someone else will mask your own process of thinking, questioning and exploring. Like those readymade Navneet-Vikas guidebooks in school days where the answers were clear, precise, made-to-order, ready-to-fetch marks, but zero on allowing the individual to think about their own answers, or for that matter their own questions.

If we don't have anyone preaching us or telling us what to do, we might lead lives that are not as cleansed, ordered and convenient as today, we might become blinded by our own doubts, there might be anarchy and chaos, lot of depressed souls, and a lot of time will be spent in figuring out solutions for problems which have already been figured by someone else. That's the cost. But there's also this possibility of coming up with original and maybe, more powerful and effective solutions for the problems in our personal and social lives, then that chance is worth taking. And imagine original unadulterated thinking from 6 billion people. That's something to aspire for. If for nothing else, only to realise the full potential of each one of us as individuals, and a collective.

This may seem impossible. We can't escape some of the impressions and influences. Some of these happen pretty early, some of these happen subconsciously and many times unavoidable. What I am saying is that getting influenced is default anyway, so we need to rise above it if we wanna discover who we truly are. I don't know about you, but the biggest aspiration of my life is to realise my potential as a human being...my whole, complete potential. To discover who I am. What am I capable of? What are my limits? How can I push those limits? What happens to me when I undergo these transformations? That is what the word divine means to me. Anything that hinders this realisation, or even directs, redirects it in any way is a dangerous sect not worth practising.