Confession of a Hobo

Just before leaving to new places, I have felt a strange calm and have sung to myself many times the CCR chartbuster, “Someone told me long ago/There’s a calm before the storm” It is a calm that has some practical uses too. This calm draws my attention to details; like, have I taken the ticket for my journey? , how much money do I have with me, have taken my toothbrush etc.

It is a heavy calm that  also. It weighs down on me so much that I would have preferred a little disorderliness and haste to this meticulousness. It is a terrible calm that calls to be torn apart.

            I have used both trains and buses equally for traveling and flights sparingly. Buses and trains were the ones I enjoy travelling by. Flights bore me. There is nothing in flying. Travelling by land makes me see the familiar move past the window, to give way to the unfamiliar. Though bus makes me feel claustrophobic, it helps to reflect. I remember once as I travelled from Chennai to Bangalore in a late-night bus, my thoughts ran like train. Sitting in that bus with constant flashes of neon lights on my face through the glass window, I thought and I thought. I don’t remember what I thought; but I treasure those sensations. And I know that those sensations have gone into making me. That night I readied my self for the hypothetical question, that when I travel or if marooned in an island whom would I like to have as company? I would prefer no one.

            Train on the other hand, in my opinion is travelling and destination combined. As I see the world move past, I also have an option to pretend what I am not to the co-passengers. This is a freedom that I can hope for only after arriving at the destination.  This may be the freedom for which I find excuses to move from place to place. But to make this excuse is  very essential too.  To quote Gibran: “For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould. Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall l? A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.”

            To pretend, not to be judged by your past, a new-identity are actually way afar. The moment I step out of the bus or train, I suddenly become like a whiff of smoke or wind—unidentifiable, formless. Looking for an address, or sitting in a bus-stop, I become nobody. But soon I realize that, it was also for this I traveled. The calmness that hanged so heavily on me has imploded into this nameless thing.

            

Nights that don't Kill

Days are where we live.
Nights are where we die.

The day wearies me;
But the night doesn't kill.

May be the evening,
Doesn't stab me enough.

"Even in spring leaves fall. Some for ever"

Adventures in the Boundary of Darkness

I ran out into the night,
I hope,
I’ll encounter creatures that dwell there,
Will feel them
And they will whisper stories,
Which will whirl my senses

I shouted for them.
But they hid themselves in light:
They expressed their inability from their caves.

Desperate,
I waded through dark,
Into darkness.

I gasped for breath
I understood I crossed the boundaries of darkness.
The air became thick.

When I opened my mouth to breath,
I tasted coagulated darkness.
Bitter it was and I swallowed it.

I had a faint hope of turning back:
Found that the air behind me freezed.
I closed my eyes with my inability
I couldn’t open it again.
I knew I was getting freezed.

I prayed to the creatures of the dark,
To come from there caves with little light To melt the void around

The Shoe-Sport Fever

The recent fever that grips India seems to be neither IPL T20 nor the general elections. It engages old and young alike. It is shoe-throwing. There were some speculations in the media on whether it will be made an Olympic event.
Shoe-throwing in India has a very recent history.

But competitive boot throwing has it's origin in New Zealand, where famers throw gum-boots. The one who throws it the longest wins. In America a similar sports called “shoefiti” is the one which involves throwing a pair of shoes with their lace tied together on to electric lines. It is a less competitive sports and serves the symbolic purpose of showing the availability of cocaine nearby or a gang turf.

The Indian version, no doubt, is a far advanced one, combining the best of the two worlds--the sportiveness of gum-boot throwing and the symbolic function of shoefiti.
The Indian version, or “Indian shoe-throwing”, as it is aptly called will be held mostly during election campaigns. It has its origin in America. It was invented by a Iraqi journalist named Mutander al-Zeidi on December 14, 2008.. Like all manias it crossed it's 'tipping point' within no time. It too had its share of rough time, as it is the case with any iconoclastic art forms or ideas. In February 2009 a shoe was thrown at Chinese premier Wen Jiabo, when he was speaking at the Cambridge University. But the news was censored in the local Chinese media.

SHOE-THROWING HALL OF FAME

The first game in India was held at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi. Jarnal Singh, a reporter of the Hindi daily, Dainik Jagran, is one of the pioneers who brought the game to the masses by throwing his shoe at home minister, P.Chidambaram. He was criticized for being fool-hardy by ultra-orthodox sports haters and for lacking enthusiasm by fans of shoe-throwing. Despite being thrown from close quarters it not only did miss the target but also lacked vigor and purposiveness to hit its target—a negation of the spirit of the game. It is said, it was thrown not to hit. But it served the artistic and symbolic purpose. Times of India aptly highlighted this with a heading:"Shoe lobbed at Chidambaram, misses him but may hit Tytler."
Just three days later on April 10th, a shoe was thrown at Congress MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal.
The game also promises to unite people like no other sports have done before. On April 16th, Pawas Agarwal a former district president of the BJP threw his wooden sandal at Advani, during a public meeting in Madhya Pradesh.
And on April 26th a shoe was thrown at prime minister Manmohan Singh, in Ahmedbad. Hitesh Chauhan, a engineering student turned show-thrower demonstrated his on-field aggressiveness. He shouted "stop telling lies" and threw the shoe (analyst see this as the latest tactic of the sport, in order to intimidate the opponent)
But there is no arguing the fact that the game is in its infancy in India. Many remain divided on what the rules of the game should be .Is throwing itself is winning or should it hit the target? What is the distance the thrower has to maintain from his target while throwing the shoe? Still others argue t about the very nature of the projectile--stinking socks, aimed at the nose of the target, they argue, will be a better option than shoe.
Often, cops play a spoil sport. But thanks to the steps taken by the Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh, show-throwers are pardoned and let-off—a sign that the game is here to stay, at least during elections. At the worst the game will lie dormant in public memory and can be revived during elections.

Wondrous by Design

What is a religion worth which costs you nothing? What is a sense of God worth which could be at your disposal, capable of being comfortably elicited when and where you please? It is far, far more God who must hold us, than we who must hold Him. And we get trained in those darkness into that sense of our impotence without which the very presence of God becomes a snare.
FREDERICH VON HUGEL

At certain time in our life we think of our identity and our role in this world. Today I was constructing an identity through the things I had done or has happened to me. Did these things just happen to me or did I do it? What is the role of God in it? Or does he exist at all? Later I began to consider what all I have been through in my life. It didn’t make any sense to me because I was not sure through which perspective I should see it.
Then I began to see it clearly. It came to my mind suddenly that what is more important than answers to these questions is the fact as to why I ask these. Do I really need the answers to the questions or some explanations to justify my actions to a hypothetical friend?
The answer to any question will depend on why you ask the question. Mostly our questions are not questions at all. We’re just cribbing! We ask why such and such thing is happening in our life and not in others life. We think things would have been better if we had done it some other way or we had planned everything before hand. We ask because we don’t have control over things and we want to have control over our life and most of the times others life too.

This not just the case with individual people. It is also true when we consider the human history as a whole. And explains why there are so many ‘alternatives’ in the world—religions, atheism, communism, Epicureanism, capitalalism and so on. These answers were a product of the spirit of the age of its origin.

Bible says ‘you ask and not receive because you ask wrongly to spent it on your desires’. Meaning, God expects us to ask genuine questions. Adam sinned because he didn’t ask God why it was wrong to eat the fruit of the tree. And Job—he challenged God! And he was answered. We ask genuinely when we have insight and wisdom. That should be our actual prayer (...”that love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.”)
“Ask and you will receive”: God expects us to find out for ourselves that God exist and he will answer our questions.
The underlying meaning in the verse is that we should have the insight to ask with an open mind. We don’t receive when we ask for things that reinforce our identity in the world—that’s true for spiritual gifts and material gifts as well. And when we receive such gifts that we ask with a genuine heart we gain more insight.
People ask whether God exist or not. After sometime they abandon the question and drift into their own way of life, because they can’t find an answer. They don’t find an answer because they don’t expect an answer. They are asking for an explanation. Some find an explanation and believe in God; after sometime because of some life situation they reassess their explanation and on finding that it is unsatisfactory they relapse in their belief. Others float in their belief because of the culture and surface slush. This happens because their question is not genuine. If God were to come to these people and say, “ yes I exist because of so and so reasons” they still will have their own plans for their life. And if God doesn’t answer also they have another set of plans. It is a question through which they can base their life style and identity in this world.
God never explains. He only answers. He sings. He convinces. May be when God answers, you can’t explain it to your hypothetical friend. We can’t digest this fact. We can’t believe that God answers through our life. That the life of those who believe in God is itself an explanation that God exist.
This is faith--the answer to our question (or prayer).

A way to find out whether our question is genuine is to consider when we ask it. Do we ask ‘does God exist when we feel inadequate; when we feel that our identity in the world is jeopardy; when we secretly and uncomfortably feel that there nothing great about us? or when we feel that we don’t have control? Think about it.

If we ask questions or hold it in mind with no other intent than knowing the truth, God will answer. God answers when we start wondering.
As a matter of fact, it is true with any question we ask—whether it is regarding the nature of light or the foreign policy of America or whether God exist.