A Pen to Purify

The pen fell down into the shit-pot. He got hold of a toilet brush and tried to manoeuvre it out. He could not. He tried several more times, poking about with the brush. The pen would come up for a while, and then fall down again with a splash into the shitty water. He shied from using his own hand to remove the object. The mere idea made him nauseous. His hands continued to work the long-handled brush as his mind dwelt on the undoable act of removing the pen with his hand.
He cursed himself for his fondness to solve Times crosswords on shit-pot. He cursed himself for his carelessness in letting the pen slip his fingers.
Lo! The pen had disappeared! His lapse in attention had caused the brush to make a few random strokes. The pen had been accidently pushed into the hole where potty goes when you flush.

He was dismayed. Uff! What will happen now? The pen would travel up...then down....then down again. Down, down, down, down. Into the bowels of the earth. The pen! Into the bowels of the earth. The pen soiled with shit and urine. The pen that could have signed names. That could have written poetry..prose...newspaper reports...school exercises...competitive examinations....
The pen that would have made persons out of people.

That pen now lay embroiled in muck. Every pressing of the flush button caused jets of water and human refuse to push the pen further toward the chambers.
His brain refused to cease thinking about the pen. He couldn’t consume his breakfast for the thought of it. The journey of the pen began to haunt him. Finally, he walked up to the Municipal Corporate Office and demanded he be given a map of the city’s sewers. The officers were astounded. They asked him why. He could yield no answer. All he could do was to reiterate that he wanted...no...needed the map.
They thought he had a nut or two loose in the head. They decided to humour him. So they asked him to wait. He waited. Hours ticked away. He grew impatient, but the thought of tracing the pen spurred him...kept him sitting at the municipality office as it he had grown roots there.

They took pity on him. The map was found for him. He was asked to Xerox it and to return the original to them. He did what he was asked. His feeling of utter dejection that had been increasing ever since he had lost his pen appeased a little. He was doing something to get it!

He went home and spread the map before him. With trouble, he located his area on the map. He wasn’t much of a map-reader. He rued having wasted away his geography classes in school, then realized his geography classes had little or nothing to do with the present map study. He continued to pour over it.

He found the point where the sewer pipe of his building met the street pipe. He traced the pipeline with his finger, for he had no pen. He used a pencil to mark the point where the street pipe became narrow. Too narrow for his pen to travel transversely. He wondered if his pen had passed that point – it could have, if it had been oriented properly. He saw that near this point, a manhole was positioned.
He rushed back to the municipality office.

“I need to know the name of people in this area who are in your employ to clean the manholes. I have lost something valuable.”

“What?”

There was no mistaking the municipality officer’s avarice.

“A pen.”

The officer was disappointed, nay disgusted. He gave him the names and addresses he wanted without further interest.

He sped out of the office. He was afraid if his pen had not been stuck inside the pipeline, it would be well inside the river near his city where all municipality pipes drained. He did not want that to happen.

He found the manhole cleaner at home. He was not very keen on opening the manhole when his job clearly didn’t require him to. The drain-cleaner wanted a bribe. The pen-owner didn’t want to give it, but wanted his pen back. So, he bribed the cleaner.
The manhole was opened. The cleaner went down inside it, grumbling. He struck his hand inside the pipe where the pen-owner thought his pen might be. His hand came out holding nothing. He groped again. Nothing. He was impatient. He insisted that the idea be given up. The pen-owner insisted. He was frantic.

“Search inside the manhole, too, if you please.”

More groping, probing, searching, sifting. No finding.

At last. “There it is.”

He forgot it was mucky, shitty water. He nearly snatched the pen out of the startled cleaner’s hands.

He had work to do.

He had a pen to purify.

The West's penchant for 'Real India'

A young boy is caught while pick-pocketing and is in the process of being thrashed senseless by the police. "You wanted to see the real India? This is real India", claims the kid as he falls into the arms of an American lady. The lady who had been overflowing with the milk of human kindness, responds. "Here, let me show you a bit of the real America," and nods to her husband who in turn proceeds to empty his wallet for the boy's defence.

A country as sensitive as India where every third or fourth film is banned for hurting the sentiment of some section of Indians or the other, did not find above scene from the 'Slumdog Millionaire' inoffensive. It seems the Golden Globe Awards were bribe enough?

The Man Booker 2008 went to Aravind Adiga for the 'White Tiger', as it again showcases the real India.

Real India? Real India! Real India my foot! Both the above-mentioned literary pieces only portray one side of real India - the only side that the wesetern world seems comfortable with. And not only comfortable with, but the only side that must be advertized and made the single important thing about India.

Do tell me, is the seamy side of India the only, mind you, only significant thing about us? Are we nothing else? How can responsible people like Adiga and Vikram Swarup not recognize these awards as sweet poison, as a roundabout tacital method of India bashing?

I am angry. Seriously angry. I want Adiga to throw back his Man Booker - not because he does not deserve it, but because of the reason he has been given it. I want the spurious love of the west for the Indian underbelly exposed for what it is. I want a comlete picture of India to be presented to the outside world, where slums do not out-balance sky-scrapers.

But then, this has another side to it. Let them sit complacent and comfortable about the weak us. Maybe one day we shall surprize the living daylights out of them! Let's do it!

This is irony at its starkest, although it hit me at a moment when cynicism and black sarcasm had no business around me.
In six days time, I am getting married. Today was the day of the first of the rituals - tilak 'chumaaoun' and 'lagan'. Typical Bihari customs, the essence of which is that elder married ladies give blessings of a propitious married life to the bride-to-be. The exact term in Hindi for the custom is 'suhaag dena' - donating some of the good luck of their happily married lives to the younger woman.
An aunt of mine is a widow, and she understandably abstained. What caused me to feign a sudden coughing attack to conceal a burst of inexplicable laughter was the fact that two of my other aunts came up for the auspicious rituals. One of them has been deserted by her husband, who has proceeded to marry a second time and the other has constantly been a sad victim of domestic violence at the hands of her spouse. That these two ladies be allowed to participate is understandable - senior ladies of my house are not that indecent as to publically insult them by preventing their participation. What takes the cake, I thought, is how their own conscience gave them the permission to carry on that act!
I concluded that they were certainly unaware of the significance of the custom, although, I do believe that avoiding the question why and saving face in public was a more plausible reason for their behaviour.
The observation insn't an original one - it happens everyday. But the nakedness of the act as it unfolded before my eyes made it more impactful for me.

India - Fear Thy Neighbours

India is the largest amongst the nations that make the Indian Sub-continent - largest in area, in population, in democracy and in diversity. A glance at the atlas would be sufficient to know that seven countries small and large make up the neighborhood of India - Pakistan on the north-west, Nepal on the north, China on the north-east, Bangladesh, Burma and Bhutan on the east and Sri Lanka on the south.

Ever since India came into being in 1947, she has been more than interested in holding out the hand of friendship towards all its neighbours. Pundit J.L. Nehru's 'Panchsheel' was the best possible foot forward on the road to harmonious co-existence. It looked askance at aggression and interference and promoted peace, co-operation and respect for boundaries.

And yet, what is the history of Independent India if not a series of breaches of the above principles? Pakistan has always been a formidable foe, with no less than two Indo-Pak wars and one Kargil scuffle recorded in history. The border is nearly always tense even in times of peace, with shoot-outs often being reported in the newspaper columns and the least one says about the terrorist outfits that find shelter in Pakistan and harrass India, the better.

India and China have always been cool acquaintances at best and dire enemies at worst. The memories of the Indo-China war that led to India's debilitating defeat would still be fresh and China still deems Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state, as its rightful land. The Dalai Lama seeking asylum in India and the China-Tibet strife have further deteriorated the bilateral relations between the two nations. Besides, that China is a moral supporter of Pakistan does not help matters any.

Amongst India's smaller neighbours, most are poor countries with unstable governments and economies. The negative effect of this manifests itself in the form of the cost of numerous refugees and millions of dollars worth of aid. One can cite the example of Bangladesh - the 1971 Indo-Pak war resulted in India's win and Bangladesh's creation. As if the cost of the war was not enough, India is still bearing the expense of a sizeable number of Bangladeshi refugees.

The war that India waged against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the late 1980s in Sri Lanka was also an additional burden; it is sadly noted that even after the goodwill gesture, Sri Lanka adopted a critical outlook against India.

Nepal itself has been a politically disturbed country of late and though her relation with India is amicable enough, there have been numerous instances of slight discord and tension between the two. The nations have often been at loggerheads about trade and transit issues snd Nepal did oppose India's annexation of Sikkim. The latest cause seems to be the flood in Bihar that has been blamed on the inefficient and insufficient dam-building processes in Nepal.

Analyzed like this, India almost seems hedged in between either openly hostile or ambivalent neighbours. Anyone gracing the chair of India's foreign minister faces a tough challenge indeed.

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10 Original Quips

1.Some dopers are heroine-worshippers

2.People who talk too much may suffer from foot in the mouth disease

3.For many, America is the better half of the world

4.A pimp is one employer who prefers a fresher

5.Height of materialism – letting a goods train pass before a waiting passenger train

6.The greatness of a war is measured by the thickness of the book it inspires

7.The cuckoo is nature’s way of teaching us not to trust sweet-talkers

8.A bad actor spoils his character

9.A condom is an anti-evolution invention

10.A Blackhole is the most selfish thing in the universe.

Ecology - Juxtaposition of Science and Spirituality?

This thought floated into the cerebrum during this evening, while discussing Nature Worship with grandpa. Baba says nature worship was a boon in disguise - people worshipped Ganga Maiyya and desisted from polluting her. There was fear for the sun, moon, wind, sea and river gods and godesses but there was a respect and a regard too - which has not died down even today.

From nature worship our conversation escalated to 'Aham Bramhasmi'. Baba interprets it as 'I am Him-He is me-He is in everything-I am in everything'. In other words, I am linked to water, sun air, earth, to a bird, to a butterfly, to a snake, to a tree just as my limbs are linked to my torso.

Now some Ecology facts. This is what the Wikipedia has to say about it -

"Ecology(also known as Oekologie, Okology, or Oekology, from Greek: οίκος, oikos, "household"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how the distribution and abundance are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes both physical properties, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors such as insolation (sunlight), climate, and geology, and biotic factors, which are other organisms that share its habitat."

Seems the Upanishads are the most ancient treatise on Ecology, eh what? Seems nice I am doing my doctorate in Spiritual Science :)

I believe the greatest pity is not that there are too many people being religious or too many people busy in destroying earth through new scientific discoveries. Pity is - we are neither completely religious nor completely scientific. Had we been either, there would have been no Science vs Religion strife.