29
If Smartly Suave Politics kills; then
it Rejuvenates Too!
After emerging
battered and bruised from the fuzzy constellations of the rally that day, the Sadhguru’s
disciple’s spirits threw themselves into a dumpster. He seemed mammothly sober,
humble and broken down. Eyes had a dreary look. No one would’ve believed he was
the same exorcist who with his bulging red eyes, vicious looks, hawkish stares,
grotesque grunts, elfishly strange body movements, hands holding a broom of
peacock feathers appeared a wily Knight on a crusade against the nether world
of evil spirits.
For a few days he
stopped talking and imprisoned himself inside the hut. His ever encomiastic
disciple, Bhagat Ram, thought guruji had taken a fast of silence. Away
from the disciple’s encomiumly-derivated, silent piousness about his guru, the
latter’s mind was still buzzing with an optimistic epode which the MLA had
loudly sung above the pandemonium after that political epopee:
“Maharaj, we”ll make a temple for you!”
From the lofty
position of this Elysian thought the hut seemed a trumpery truculence of
worthless grassy things. As an afterthought to the above comparison the Sadhguru’s
hermitage in its new avatar lighted up the dark corridors of earthly cravings
deep inside the caves of his asceticism. Life-long cultivated spiritual jewel
of his former guru charged up each worldly nerve inside his cerebellum.
Aha, the lucent prodigality of the boons of sagehood! And here he was painfully
swaddled in these grotesque sinews which Bhagat Ram’d painstakingly prepared
with bloody efforts; the reeds and thorny shrubbery cutting and piercing his
palms and fingers.
Believing the words
of that amphistomous politician was the only lifeful, silky gloss over the
darkly mourning self of his godhood. But no message arrived. He stopped seeing
his supposedly haunted clients. After all, it’s so difficult to rewind back to lackluster
past once a sudden windfall takes you to the highest flying cloud from where
the futuristic gaze gets an opportunity to envision so many glittering things.
His wait seemed stretched
to the legions of impossibility. His condition became more wretched in the
company of those nettlers. Their eyes seemed perpetually mocking at him. It’s
however another matter that most of the time they’d no clue to the atrophying
disappointment infructuously swaying to and fro in the material nerves pathologically
strewn across his formal, pontificated, ascetic body. Aah, the underside of the
world of politics! How mercilessly they forget a promise (until some motivation
forces them to recall the forgotten word)!
High above the
clouds of his hopeless depression a new raylet was brewing up refreshing hope
of Hindu revivalism and resurgence. Just two years were left for the
parliamentary elections. The pious bouquet of Hindu Godly omnipresence and omnipotence
was now to be rasped more and more to turn it a piercing trident. New political
godfathers of Hindu mendicancy were hectically chalking out a gasconading
scheme. As a gaudy ornamentation to the ideology of Hindu revivalism a fixed
number of temples were to be constructed in each of the assembly constituencies
having sitting MLAs of the party. (Was it to make up for the unfulfilled desire
of constructing the Ram temple at Ayodhya?)
The village sarpanch
came to the mound to rejuvenate and free him of the dragoons of depression. He
was lying almost half dead on his straw bed. In an elvishly strange manner he
was inspecting his blunt trident as if he would butcher anyone who dared to
enter the hut.
“Namashkar
maharaj!” the village
headman peeped into the hopelessly disfragrant air inside. “Not feeling well
under this thatch!”
The mendicant
raised his eyes at him. His gaze tried to lop off the real intention behind the
visitor’s accost.
“No son,” he faked
a smile, “what’s the difference between a hut and a palace to a servant of God
like me? Not a bit! In fact, I thank God for giving this small hut to me, for I
don’t deserve even this.”
He spoke so
dejectedly as if all his long-cherished dreams had been tossed into the trash.
“Then He wants to
take it back from you,” the headman said it rather bluntly without giving any
clue to any type of context.
“I’m bound to
follow His will!” the monk sighed resignedly, firmly sure that the village panchayat
had decided to clear the site.
The head villager
seemed to clearly see all this suspicion in the hut dweller’s mind and after a
meaningful laugh came to the religioner’s rescue.
“Oof... you
misunderstood it maharaj!
What I exactly meant is that from now onwards you’ll not have to thank God just
for a hut, but for a temple!” beholder of the grassroots administration at the
base of barely functioning anarchy exclaimed in sweet-sour euphoria.
Overarching
emphasis of the word ‘ temple ‘ struck him like the extraordinarily momentous
chime of the heaviest bell in the largest temple. His whole body vibrated with
materially divine dispensation. Tiniest particle of his physical self danced in
enchantingly fragrant resonance. He felt like ascending heavens perched atop
lofty temple sikhara
Politically
impressed, the grassroots politician complimented the ritualist, “I didn’t know
about your approach, maharaj. Our shoes give away chasing these MLAs for
getting littlest of works and grants. And here you’re farting in this straw and
still get....”
An elegiac emotion
choked his throat.
“Getting what?!” the
poor mendicant’s heart gave a richly rapturous whoop.
“A donation... or
grant? Well, be it! For a whole, big temple and an order to the panchayat to
get the job done as early as possible.”
Unable to
understand the real shape and structure of this blissful aberration in the
gloomy path of his sageship, he just drew an aura of smartly suave spiritualism
around him.
“Do’u know him
personally, maharaj?” the grassroots politician asked with a greedy
optimism.
The ritualist but
won’t answer. He just smiled ambiguously. Its intended meaning was to portray
himself as someone having connections in the higher echelons of politics.
“How big the
temple would be?” he asked in an impetuously impulsive tone.
“From the broadness
of their mouths biding orders it seems it surely’ll be mouthful. I mean bigger
than what’u expect!”
Once again the Sadhu’s
mind jingled with heaviest bell in the largest temple.
When the ecstatic
noise in the religioner’s ears stopped, he heard the headman saying, “Definitely
it’ll cover whole of this mound. Not only that we’ll have to uplift the eastern
part to create more space.”
Undulatingly
rag-tag mound of Hinduism was now to be cut, chopped, cleared, patched and
enlarged to make a shriny signpost for the purpose of leading and guiding the
path of the nation to superglory and help it avoid the destructive detours of
unfaithful, disloyal pitfalls scattered around.
The other hutment
came in between the would-be-priest’s eyes and the broad vision ahead.
“What about that
hut?” he pointed to the dungeonic redundancy. “It can’t be there if a temple is
to be built.”
“Who says it’ll
remain there, maharaj? A kind of unholy thing in your courtyard. It’ll
be removed at the shortest notice. No problem about that. It’s just a make
believe thing in the name of a hut!”
“What if the pond’s
lessee protests?”
“Why worry maharaj?
It’s the panchayat’s
land. He’s hired just the pond, not the entire land. Also, he’s an easy going
man. He’ll simply ask his man to take some other corner for keeping his eye
over the fish.”
After the village
headman was gone, the lotus of his hopes and desires once again started to
smile high above the motley meshing of muddy waters. God definitely exists to
listen to the heartiest prayers of his devotees, he thought. Now it appeared to
him he’d remained passive for a long, long time. Even his infirm leg seemed
excitedly eager to step into the ‘tomorrow’ impregnated with positive, paying
possibilities. Even though it wasn’t the hour suitable for a leisure stroll, he
decided to go for a walk in a pleasantly humming world beautifully laid out
beneath a sky where ethereal angels ride on heavenly chariots. And down he came
from the mound, symphonically shrouded in the cacophony of inner voices,
external thoughts and intermingling emotions.
Impeccably free
and fair countryside to the south caught his fancy. Chirpily going in the
direction he hummed whatever he could. High on a joyriding ruckus, it felt like
the start of a great journey. Grassy plateau smiled with its leveled-up pedestal.
Jal tree with its peculiar witchy, hotch-potch trunks and foliage
applauded in rough approximation of the porous pretensions dancing inside the
big bulk of his body. The little pathway moving serpentinely across the
alkaline wasteland seemed transfixed in statuesque serenity. Ruggedly greying
shrubbery seemed sitting bow-headed like a servile disciple. Birds flying
leisurely above the pond and preying along water edges no longer sounded
mocking with the righteous vacillations of their free, natural souls. Magic and
music masqueradation it sounded now.
Oh, the mystery of
human mind and heart! How an itchy and fidgety noise becomes soothing and soft
music. He felt hugely empowered in assonance with this new spirited symphony of
this newly blossoming earthly orchard in the endlessly barren desert of his
mendicancy. It was far more hallucinating than deepest of a Cush
It’s a universal
fact that the power has a tendency to be misused. Very easily it becomes an
aide in the blind appropriation of one’s astraying senses. As soon as he came
across the old watchman and his old dog coming from ahead, his empowered senses
found a suitable channel for fruition with their mercurial disposition in
relation (or retaliation) to this weak pair.
“Hmmnn...” he
grunted absonantly.
Old faithful
growled with a disavowing whine in protest against the wrong eye at its master.
Their neighbour attempted a severe blow at its head with his crutch. But his
stationary attack (devoid of any sharply variable manoeuvre in its kitty) which
started with an electrifying aplomb, fizzled out like a damp squib. The dog
easily escaped the wood’s circular sway and barked more profusely from a
distance. Unable to do anything he laid his hands upon something. Picking up a
big clod he threw it with his strong hands. It hit the dog’s leg which
barkingly belched. Angrily limping it moved to a safer distance and continued
with the job.
Not knowing what
to do with the beast, the religioner fixed his statutory warning at its master,
“You fool, you’ve thrust enough animosity in that old headed beast!”
The frail old man
stared at the dog; his eyes biding it an order to shut up its mouth.
Their neighbour
was boasting with super-eminence, “Enough of your old, nuisant faces! But no
more of it! I’ll get both of you thrown into the pond, where the fish’ll eat
you relishly!”
The watchman kept
on looking at the dog which was still replying from its master’s side. His eyes
were almost pleading before it to remain silent. For heavens sake! But the
flawless love of animals isn’t bothered about such things. It thus continued
with its faithful work.
“Look you little
monster!” the big neighbour shouted. “A big temple is going to be constructed
there!” he proudly pointed in the direction of the banyan tree.
“A very big temple
under my command!” his elflocks jerked like storm under the impact of viciously
vaunting head. “All over that place! Without wasting any time remove your dirty
thatch from there! Otherwise, you’ll find it raged down when you return after
this fishy sortie!”
His niggling naily
words hooked the pond overseer’s look. Tiny old man looked at the hate
harvester.
“So you feel bad!”
a farcical chuckle emerged from the big, hairy bulk. “Ok, remain there if you
can. Get the help of your employer. Still, I’ll be able to do what I want,” his
fiery temper suddenly decelerated down to icy frigidity.
This frivolous
metamorphosis seemed paranormally awesome. The watchman had no doubt about the
authenticity of the verdict just ordained. He surrendered his ears to listen
whatever sounds the rogue zealotry in his neighbour’s heart produced.
“You thought that
you’ve grabbed that land to pass your old days and die peacefully one night so
that in the morning when I see your wrinkled corpse I give a horrified cry!”
the leviathan seemed ready to levy a war.
The pond upkeeper’s
soul was trying to fathom why a human being hates another one so impetuously.
Stentorian notes
of his neighbour hollered like a tornado over his head, “Aye you Muslim, why’re
you staring at me so defiantly? Be ready to move out of the place any time!
Take a place over there, in the company of ghosts! It’ll be a nice neighbourhood,
for you look nothing but a ghost!” he pointed to the scavenger community’s
cemetery in the woods along the pond’s eastern end.
The fisherman
deemed it fit to put an end to this one-sided battle by surrendering as soon as
possible.
In a hesitant but
perfectly pacifying tone he could just whisper, “I’ll do as you like, maharaj.”
“You’ve no other
option! Do’u? You know it. Don’t you? The kind of connections I’ve!” the aggressor
almost burst of his pride’s levitation.
His neighbour
heavily nodded consent.
The eviction order
had been passed swiftly with the quickness of thunderbolt. Like a striking
storm he moved ahead on his path of celebration without caring for the victims.
The victim, however, stood there stonily without feeling resinous exudation of
any type of emotion. He seemed agelessly impassive, unreflective to the throes
of human as well as natural passions surrounding him. He turned his weak,
fragile and veiny neck to the would-be-place for his hut. It seemed a hazardous
crystal-gazing into an uncertain future.
“It’ll take two, three
days to clear that,” he thought, looking at the place where the woods vanished
around the pond’s south-eastern edge.
Following an
inevitable urgency he started in the direction.
Lurching in gay
goosery the religioner, on the other hand, sneaked into the southern
countryside where he’d never gone earlier. Quite hazardously he trudged upon
narrow field embankments. In most of the fields tiny whitewashed ancestral
shrines, modeled on the larger common faith, stood in Godly objuration for the
wellbeing of their progenies in their particular families. As he passed them he
went on bowing his head in gratitude and obeisance, devotionally imploring them
to pray to the higher Gods for his brighter future.
He met some
farmers working in the fields. In their typical jesting curiosity they asked
where was he going.
“Wherever God
takes! After all it’s His land!” he said oozily, his gratitude to Him
plenteously flying in four directions.
As there was too
much to be imagined he kept on moving into the balsamic isolation of the
countryside. Lost in the opalescent opportunities, which the day to come
promised, he didn’t realise how and when he came to cover about three
kilometres. Wildly footloose and chasing sylvan serenades he reached the
metalled narrow approach road leading to the villages further south and
south-easternwards. This road branched off the main district road from a spot
about two kilometres westwards to the pond.
“Oh, I’ve come too
far,” he sighed with abstemious despair. “Mandora is one kilometre from here,”
he recalled the name of this village from where a man’d come to him, fell at
his feet and convinced him to visit his evil bestruck home where each and
everything was astraying to the wrong end.
“Now that I’ve
come this far, I should go to his house. He’s a firm believer... will throw his
whole body headlong on my feet!” traces of fatigue in his body felt a soothing,
balsamy buoyancy.
He started walking
along the road. Today he didn’t want to stop because that would’ve put an end
to the great fancy-work dancing in his heart. So, with a muse in his gait he
moved ahead while his soul sang:
‘Come along, come along
O journeyman!
Happily sings the
air in this weather fair,
Today the God has
blessed thou with a good omen,
So thou are
entitled to an unbridled fun.
Holy Father
bestows you new rays,
Now distances beckon you with promises and pays.’
Taking comfortable
sips from the chalice of imagination he trudged quite easily now.
Usually such
approach-roads are beyond the approach of repair. A malingering look of
pot-holeness is the most characteristic feature of these narrow connective arteries.
But then surprises do scour our disenchantment. The road had been holistically
layered in the recent past; more surprising for the fact that the main district
road still bore its familiar famished look: same bumps buzzing with
prevaricating platitudes. Contrarily, here on this road carts, bicycles,
tractors and other vehicles passed only with the noise of their engines. By the
side of this smooth traffic on the new vestment of tar, the pedestrian too
walked with his smooth limps constantly fuelled by the full finesse and
artistry of bright and optimistic thoughts.
Alas, even the
most globular of a fancy-lorn walk has to meet an end! More alas is the fact when
it’s caused by a momentarily tragic rebuke.
Holla! A naughty,
shrill horn honked from behind. Pandemonium hurriedly entered the sphere of
ruption. Without any rhyme or reason, it struck the senses like thunderbolt.
The pedestrian almost fell under the impact of this hellishly encomiastic
sound. The vehicle took a bizarrely vulgar turn and passed by him, shaking him
with the contentious waves around it. Pugnacious peels of laughter
supercrescently sounded above the rattling noise of the vehicle whose all parts
were buzzing with buffeting disorientation. Unwillingly it came to a halt some
fifty or sixty yards from him.
“Run, run.... Run Sadhu
maharaj!” the dragoons shouted in meticulous symmetry with the erratic vacillations
of their rutty souls.
He was death-dazed
by the periphrastic truculence of the incident, which was just a bit below the
low water mark of an accident. Crestfallen from the top of his temple sikhara
“Come maharaj!”
once again the invitation sailed sagitally towards him.
After the rally
episode they’d reverted back to their axiomatically foul behaviour.
“I’m not the one
who runs behind and barely gets stuck to the backside!” he shot back with
confidence. “Wait if you can, till I reach you cherishing my own pace!”
It struck them
with surprise. On a supremely cosier note he lurched ahead. Not even a bit
perturbed by their commandeering; almost with the ease of an elephant––contented
with space and time.
“Now once again
you’re trying to look special!” the head-nettler got annoyed. “Have’u forgotten
aftermaths of that rally?” he tried to break his confidence and make him run
for a place on the angry vehicle’s back.
“I didn’t ask for
a lift!” it sounded even more confident.
“Oldy has gone
crazy!” he banged his fist on the wheel.
“Then I won’t come!”
the religioner stood his ground.
They neighed in
desperation; anger spewing out of their souls suffocating of moral vacuity.
Prompted by hair-trigger temper the driver put the vehicle in reverse. It came at
full speed; almost with the intention of an accident. The pedestrian took an
evasive posture.
“I think you’re
waiting for the politician to pick you up!” immoral magnetic contours of their
taunting laughter spread in four directions.
“That time isn’t
too far!” he was transparently upfront.
“Is’t the head
priest of a big temple speaking?” one of them tried to catch him flat-footed.
“Yes! The
would-be-priest of a mammoth temple!” he was mountainously enthused.
“Still caught in
the false fancy of that political promise!”
“No! For the
promise kept!” it was a rock firm retort.
“Did’u have a
dream of it? I’m sure you saw a temple in dream and now running around madly to
find it!”
Once again they
tried to blatantly flout the earlier set norms of their laughter. They thought
they’d the last of it which was required to do washing. Washing meant humbling
one through lewd humour.
“It’s only people
like you who run after dreams. Never get them and just run! We, the servants of
God, are saved of such misfortunes. Go with your unlucky vehicle and try to
catch yours. Ours have been fulfilled!”
Their rigidly
convoluted minds started to have some infantile signs of elastication.
“You mean there
stands a temple instead of your hut. I didn’t see! Did you?” he asked his
fellow hooligans.
“You’ll see
it––all of you––in the immediate future!”
It was becoming
too much for their tenuous patience. So, in some seriousness they asked him to
clear the matter in the shortest possible time. But the Sadhu took his
time: too long wordy routes along the solitude of ambiguity. With aching hearts
they listened to this essayism. Finally when the truth came out they celebrated
as if someone of them had done or achieved something.
“Now
the place will remain crowded with praying women and girls” they glowed with
anticipation.
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