it has no gates, no walls
it is open and clear
for the astral fairies,
for men and demons even
to walk and play
in life’s fury.
My markets are international
no country has any
brand monopoly
truth is my profession
duty is my fashion
fears and lies cannot
trade on my velvet carpet.
Love is my scepter
Truth is my law,
all pay annuities
of submission in their
free togetherness.
O’ messengers of hate and lies
burn your banners
if you wish to enter.
Sabita Sahu
 |
Between the surd and the absurd man wavers perplexed to discover some logical certainty. Between dawn and twilight too he staggers as he has to finally move into the Methuselah night. So, one may ask: Is life an event, a happening, a revelation of nuances of reality or a commission to perform following a pre-written script? If man is a free agent to move and create a structure of values without sacrificing the central thrust of his freedom, why does so often he recant like Galileo, Martin Luther and Savarkar what he stood for all his life? If a man holds his logic dear to his heart why does he fear counterbalancing negativity of other free agents of lesser sense of moral logic? Daylight is swallowed by the dark evening notwithstanding the twinkling stars braving the darkness – man too does it. But man dies while the stars continue their fight to burn darkness; whether they would win one day is immaterial. These questions have been asked by many in the past and many such questions would be asked in the future; I am just a gap filling speck of ignorance.
No one in our long past centuries and the progressing time has given us an answer to anything: be it life, be it man’s destiny or goal. Many have devised many ways of countering death, fighting sickness, old age and the other things built into them. What the Buddha said was a withdrawal from life. Buddha escaped his responsibilities and tried to overcome the pain by his eightfold (ten fold) path. But all paths lead to Death which perhaps can never be transcended or conquered. Is it nature’s determinism which our lives are patterned into? A compatibilist, Danial Dennet says, nature has no control over us, it is the other persons who try to control us. The Truth of this is felt by all human beings almost everywhere in the human sphere. The philosopher – religionist, the politician, the law giver impose their “moral” authority on us. Writers like Vyasa – Valmiki also to a great extent impact our moral sense, thereby, diminishing our freedom. But those who say that freedom and responsibility (as man, citizen, husband, father etc) are compatible with this external determinism often tread on our corns. Because they drive us towards a fatalism which militates with our freedom. The freedom to choose political ideology or faith leads all of us to struggle. The Balochs, Hongkongers want democracy but they face the challenge of power groups which never yield. Constitutional democracy also becomes a jail term for a freethinking man. In Bellow’s Dangling Man Regimentation at times is preferable to freedom. The tentative slogan is Freedom cancelled – Long Live Regimentation. But who or what really wins? Both die in the hospital or by the roadside.
In the new world, we experience a strange reality which man’s free will has created. China thinks communism is the best ideology, at least superior to democracy. Xi Jinping is now playing God; maybe he has the right to. China claims victory over Covid 19. The One China Policy now apparently means China is the world. Almost all smaller countries are indebted to china. Pakistan is a vassal; Nepal is valet, Africa is a colony… All land and water in God’s creation or the Big Bang blunder are China’s. Jinping exudes divinely ordained confidence in the Red Flag, for communist China is now the safest almost the richest and (untested) the most powerful. Jinping could say without a wink Arunachal is a part of Tibet; Ladakh is her territory. The Himalayas are no more the Indian Nagadhraj; in fact the South China, East China seas are fully chinese. Xi can create artificial islands and use them as nature subservient and manipulable. IS THIS HUMAN FREE WILL?
If money, military power are symbolic of human free will supported or unsupported by determinism, is it also an enabling factor in ignoring and suppressing all other Free Will(s) of the world? Or, is it possible that nature supports lies, deceitful diplomacy, Salami technique and machiavellism in China’s (Xi’s) free will? If this be so all free will could be subordinated by ruthless self glorificatory power push to make the world One China or one anything. An argument may be, so what? Why can’t China be accepted as the ideal, the model of governance and life management? A vast population of 1.4 billion is happy. The average Chinese is well fed, well clad, well employed. The system of education is ‘good’, its science is efficient, health care is great ( as has been demonstrated by covid- control), and China has put her money in almost all countries America, India, including. Moreover, on September 4,2020, China has successfully sent to the outer space a Space Plane which has unthinkable military perversities. Although undeclared, this classified military secret or astounding aerospace achievement has been caught by satellite imaging. Why not yield the pride of place to China, its political system and its free will to control all human affairs.
All these questions are merely rhetorical. Nature allows the Peepal tree and the willow equal opportunity. The bulkiest vegetarian, the Elephant, and the squirrel move with equal freedom. The virus too is free to kill following its own nature. But what is important and vital is responsibility; freedom without responsibility is anti-nature. We should now delete Cain’s words “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” from all books including the Bible. Otherwise, this Jinping may be a true anti-god, anti-nature and anti mankind. Man is free to help another’s freedom to flourish. This is Man’s sense of responsibility and for that, he is called human. Free will without responsibility is meaningless and this now must be understood by the democratic and the civilized world.
no asp bit me,
none killed me in any battlefield
built no monument for me
lay me in love’s flowery bed
a bastion draped
by muslin woven into a lotus
preserve me not like a mummy
but I am not normal,
I am infected with love
and half asleep in love’s grave
do not disturb me for
I am meditating to be born again.
Do not weep or offer roses
for I am measuring my
length on the ground to
build the foundation
of my new life.
Yes I am off the scene
to enter in a new role to enact
in the next act to tell
you how peaceful it is to sleep
in the grave where
the hands don’t rise to steal
when hunger squeezes.
Suffering, grief, sorrow
pain whirl in the abyss.
I’ll be up again
to play Cleopatra
and sleep on the monument
embalmed with love.
My confession may not
leave a mark on time
but the epitaph will
be remembered by all.
Sabita Sahu
walked back from silly laughter
the phone rang to ask me
how many steps I have walked
how many breaths I have taken
before the phone ring stopped me:
My stupid love has all such absurd
questions to tease me to madness.
I shot back how many minutes
you delayed in picking up the phone
he smiled back saying –
I count my minutes of missing you
my years have counted
the words not spoken, the sighs
and my love rises wavelike
on the dry beach always.
I laughed within and said – ok-
I’ll start counting till I reach
and tell you the number I break
calling your love to wait and wait.
Sabita Sahu
Everyone at some lucid moment of his/ her life says when
asked, What are you thinking (or doing) - I am searching for meaning. The
Buddha did the same and before him many others wasted a lifetime, searching
for meaning. In the post - Buddha generations too people have searched for
meaning. If someone sought the meaning of Thunder, another the meaning of
death. Sadguru has tried to find out the inside story of Death. Viktor E.
Frankl's meaning is -"say yes to
life inspite of everything". A condemned prisoner stays awake nights on
end, before climbing up the gallows, to find meaning of his own fractured reality.
All men of power, spiritual or political, search for meaning. And some men like
Caligula declare Two truths as their discovery: Men die and they are never
happy. So what is this meaning? The meaning of meaning!
If search for life's meaning is a human obsession, meaning has no meaning, for man's search for meaning is endless. Poets, philosophers, and almost all suffering men search for meaning. If Shakespeare says "life's but a walking shadow," an idiotic tale without significance, another poet says "tell me not in mournful numbers life's but an empty dream." This goes to show that meaning is never universal; whoever finds whatever meaning is circumstantially justified. Each life has a meaning, if it remains undiscovered, the search will go on in another life: That is why we are led to believe in reincarnation. Most people, however, wait for a Messiah, a redeemer to give a meaning. The Messiah changes from age to age, from divine incarnation to political incarnation. We all wait for a Godot to validate our lives.
But what is this meaning? If the meaning is, Sansara is unreal and life is a lie, we deny identity. Each man at every stage of civilization tries to find the meaning of his self (and soul), which in modern terms is identity. 'Who am I' is the question in every thinking man's mind. Buddha - Ashoka - Descartes- Einstein and all of us quest for our identity in the context of the larger reality of the world. If Arjuna threw the Gandiba away it was because he could not be certain about his identity in the context of the reality he faced at the Kurukshetra battle field. Each man is an Arjuna in his own battle field of life. The meaning he has of his life is often self - negating. And for that, he waits for a Krishna to reveal to himself his identity. But in the new world we cannot expect a Krishna to sing a new Gita for us. We have to find our own meaning to go forward in life. A man living in the present day world confronts several contradictions vitiating the meaning of his identity. He lives in a country he calls his motherland. He is born to a culture, a language, an economic class, a climate. He is at times moved by patriotism, nationalism but he understands liberalism, universalism as higher values. His first conflict comes from the question: Am I a Hindu (because my father was one, an Indian, an Odia or I am a Man, a proud member of mankind?
If I am a proud member of mankind, what is the source of my pride? This question jams the mind. Am I not responsible for all the horrible wars, murders, rapes, conspiracies and thousand other things which shame my species? Am I not responsible for climate change? Am I not responsible for poverty, hunger, inequity and also this Covid? These questions kick my sense of identity away from world consciousness to my own existential self. As an Indian now I am worried about the Chinese incursions into our territory and the Indian and People's Liberation Army standing in eyeball to eyeball confrontation. I am also worried about the GDP tanking 23.9% and the jobless youth savouring their anger in cold resignation. And the rich and mighty indulging in drugged fancies ruining the youth. My national identity is now in doldrums.
Many people thought and also think today that identity is not for the present but for the future. They argue that man leaves behind something like a story, poems or inventions helpful to man, posterity will remember with gratitude, and that identity is the most authentic. Many people do that. But when today you hear people say that Vande Mataram is not worth singing, you doubt the identity of a creative man. Others argue: why not the man who designed and built the Mahanadi bridge be remembered with reverence by posterity? People, in general, enjoy the benefit of a genius's labours. A poet is remembered, if at all by a few but the bridge actually serves the people for hundreds of years. The derived idea is man should forget his self and dedicate his life to men who need the selfless service of others. If this is true of grace and identity how many Indians remember a single name out of the six hundred Covid Warrior doctors who died in 2020? What meaning emerges out of our reality is a story of two breaths.
I believe, the meaning of life is to live it with full concentration. If by living well and truly I can bring smiles in other faces I know what I am. If posterity remembers me that is their goodness - I won't be there to share the joyful remembrance of my work. Meaning was always contemplated over human suffering. Don't make your suffering meaningless.
You are the adjective
both are unrelated in substance
the noun changes-
shape, size, colour and meaning
the adjective follows it
chameleon like with
focal adjustments to catch
the form and spirit.
But can it ever?
The morning dew drops
give a pearly shape to the flowers
but when the sun touches mid point
the petals dry up
the adjectives change
their epithets wobble.
When the flower droops
in drowsy stupor
the adjective darkens
the petals close
in the fading hour
a noun is lost
the adjective is lost too.
We make all simple things complex for the human mind loves to play adverse, reverse and inverse games with life to make it vast, inscrutable and challenging. Man loves to fill his moments with loads of reality. If time according to John Barrow is God's device of stopping all things to happen at a time, it is man's desire to enjoy / suffer all things at a moment. Man makes things to happen following Nature. In nature everything moves, mutates, rotates dissipates and revives. Beckett's bald tree in Waiting for Godot oozes in the second Act; the possibility of regreening is immense. Santiago in his after failure reverie sees lions, pillows of death bed patients vibrate and things move on. If you ask why, the answer is the "sky is very very high" - which in childhood jocularity was quite a happy resolution to all incomprehensions. Man is a questioning animal. He never stops at anything. Never is content with any finality, be it death, a catastrophe or even Apocalypse. Look at the Pandemic Covid 19 which China gleefully exported and see how in Wuhan, the city of its origin, people gathered at a poolside in very large numbers, around 50k+ and cavorted in drunken orgy! Well, the show must go on - a cliche but so what!
In the history of the world, does not matter whether before
or after a sense of history dawned on man, at no time man surrendered to the
enforced revelations of anti-life. He fought his way to survive. The dinosaur
failed and many other named and unnamed species failed but man has survived and
has grown to be at 7.6 billion. The plague came and went, many other seen
-unseen anti-life forces have come and gone: And now this Coronavirus! Well if
China could celebrate the end of corona with unmasked joy why can't we? So many
vaccine candidates are now competing for the Nobel, India too has her own
Covaxin and three others. We will conquer. Why try to stop the process of
life? Why try to stop all examinations?
It seems now there is a competition in India for the most defeatist
coward prize which no one will award.
But all states, political parties in the opposition and the examinees in India
have raised their despairing hands in surrender to the forces against which
they fight day and night.
The JEE and NEET tests will be held in September. The
government of India mandated by the Supreme Court have announced the dates.
Admit cards have been already received by 85 percent of candidates. But a clamour
goes on for postponement. Appeals to the Prime Minister and Organizations
concerned have been made by state governments and student bodies. Some
motivated groups have started agitations: Why? Why try to stop the process? Why
not brave the crisis and try to overcome the unforeseen impediment by driving into a new future? If University
degree should be awarded without tests would the students be employable? If JEE
and NEET should be postponed should the aspirants lose one year without batting
an eyelid? If the present state of Covid and flood ravaged India is dangerous for
a three hour examination what shall we do if the situation (god forbid)
worsens? Why don't the opposition parties stay away from the sane judgement of
the Supreme Court? And why do some people for their obscure intentions wish to
stop the clock? Time will move even if the clock stops and those who do not move with time will be stuck at a moment of
regret. Yes, the situation is bad but if the exams and tests are postponed or
circumnavigated by political motivations the future may reveal our cowardice in
more trying manners.
Crisis always brings out the bravest elements even in the
most retarded minds. The indecisive people who fall prey to weak minded advice may not survive any
calamity. And in such cases the decision ought to be of the individual. Why
should a few weak willed candidates block the road for the heroic ones?
Gresham's Law has no relevance in such cases. The bold must be allowed to move
on. Life is short, losing one year in these times of uncertainty is unmanly.
The pandemic has already taken its toll on human self belief. Unwanted cynicism
and despair have already made many a young head heavy. If we willfully put more
bricks on the walls of uncertainty the strength to jump over may suffer a time
lag.
Man lives for his tomorrow working, dreaming, planning to
better his 'today' which each tomorrow brings. If that today is wasted by
yesterday's memories, life becomes memoryless, a gap in time without
connectivity. My today is a preparation for tomorrow, if I postpone my tomorrow
for a future date my personal history is holesome, not wholesome. We must remember- the Hero is one
who willingly suffers the unslaughts of time and creates his opportunities out
of the crisis which is not of his own making. But a man who does not have a
heroic temper and never seizes the string before the murmur stops is a mere
bystander. What the Supreme Court has decided is not a political decision. The
SC has decided for the future of India, for the future youth of India. Those
who by their unheroic temper display a fear of the morrow, should remember that
they are setting wrong examples of Indian youth behaviour. Life must go
forward. If some stumble and fall, so be it. For a few fearful persons the bold
should not be sacrificed. Fare forward traveller- charaibati...
