Covering ground

This has been up here too long:

tough as we sound
our eyes
on the fireflies
-Paul Pfleuger, Jr.

I have been too lazy to refresh this and although there was one haiku that haunted me throughout this winter, it was too special to put up somehow. But talking of things that need to be cleared, here is the new one:

falling leaves
my friend and I
discuss clutter
-Connie Donleycott

It is autumn again and the leaves are falling. We have two Ashoka trees and the leaves are yellowing and dropping off in abundance. It is hot and dry too, so the ground crackles with the ones that are a day old, but the very top layer of the carpet is made up of softer vegetation.
My mother hated the mess they made. I always thought fallen leaves romantic and often tried to curb her zeal in ruthlessly clearing them out. If she had her way my mother would sweep the yard four times a day.
But holding house in her stead now, the leaves no longer seem that enchanting. We burnt a huge pile of them yesterday and just as the colony sweepers started to walk away from the still-smouldering fire, there was a dust-gale. It brought down a fresh flutter of gold and there was no help for it at all.

I wish my friend was here, even if only to discuss the clutter.

Sighing

...at the gulf between theory and practice.

Things to do

A nice warmish afternoon. Shall I play the Chaap Tilak playlist I've carefully put together and take up my dhurrie to embroider? Or pick up the Georgette Heyer I have a bookmark in? Or watch an episode of Burn Notice that's streamed and ready on my laptop? Or follow a juicy debate online that's ruffled a lot of literary feathers?
Or work perhaps - get on with some pieces I'm doing and need to be delivered before I start feeling harassed about them?

An embarrassment of riches. A blogpost's the only way to resolve such delicious dilemmas.

Janus-ing

saying goodbye
the river flowing
one way
-Cindy Truong

Intelligence and Knowledge

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev always makes sense to me but I particularly loved his piece in Deccan Chronicle yesterday. He talks of intelligence vs knowledge, the incisive nature of one and the burden of the other. Knowledge has always been held rather low by spiritualists - it falls short, the intellect itself is thought to fall very short when it comes to spiritual challenges. Then he touches on the burden of identities - what you think you are and the labels you pin on yourself that tell you what to think.

All of which strikes a chord, so I'm placing the whole thing here for my record.

It is very important to know the difference between intelligence and knowledge. Intelligence is like a flashlight. If you flash it, it’ll just show you what’s there. Knowledge is like a projector; if you switch it on, it will project its own story. Now, if you come with a flashlight and flash it on a painting, you will see the painting just as it is.

But if you come with a projector, which also has light in it and turn it on, you don’t see the painting but the cinema that’s running inside. Maybe you’ll see M.G. Ramachandran dancing, but not the painting the way it is. That’s the difference between knowledge and intelligence. This is why knowledge is a huge burden in the spiritual path, because it always projects its own story on life.

Now if you meet me before a class and ask me what today’s class is, I won’t know a damn thing. I don’t have the burden of knowledge in me. People who are burdened by knowledge cannot smile, cannot laugh, cannot be open to many things. When I walk on the street, I don’t walk with the burden of knowledge on me. On the other hand, intelligence is something that everybody is endowed with, but they keep their flashlights covered.

Because they like it so much, they painted the glass with their own designs, now they don’t see anything the way it is. If you value your intelligence, you should not paint it with anything; you must just leave it the way it is.

Now, the moment your intelligence gets entangled with identifications, it is all screwed up. It’s all distorted. It doesn’t show you things the way they actually are. It’ll distort everything, depending upon what types of identities you have taken. You need to understand this, if you sit here with any kind of identification, you will not see anything the way it is because the very structure of the mind will function from that identity.

If you have no identifications at all, then your mind will become still, empty like the sky. It can contain everything at the same time and not be burdened by anything. Knowledge means a certain accumulation. In that sense, knowledge is an impediment, but if you see things the way they are, that is not an impediment that is the only way you can walk clearly.

Meditation cleans the flashlight. When you become meditative, your intellectual capabilities will be at least 10 fold more than what it is right now. Not that meditation makes you intelligent, but because meditation clears up the mess, the muck that’s gathered on the glass of the flashlight. It just clears it up, more and more. As it clears up, the flashlight becomes more and more powerful; it shows you things more and more clearly.

All about cats - 1

Cats, cats, cats in the garden. A few months ago, we had a fresh line of cats. The incumbent went missing and a new-looking series took charge. Those numbered three. All striped fellows, of which more anon.

Then, recently one of said striped fellows turned out to be a felli, er... female feline, of whom Shweta said, "Zaroor kahin muh kaala kar ke aayi hai!" It was to be expected from a young cat in vigorous health but the colour was spot on. We even know who the father is. "Not a good character," Shweta thinks, but sins of the father etc because we cannot bear to hold the father's character against the kittens. They are all black. One has a hint of white on the paws, therefore Socks. The other... well, is Doosra.

The mother is very good, as you will see by and by. Very poised for a first-timer. She is affectionate, not over protective and is a rather enthusiastic participant in all manner of rambunctious games.

When she goes off on her motherly and catly duties, she is firm that they toe the line. Her preferred hidey-hole is a small protected space we have where we house our water pump. Stay here, she tells them, and they do, come rain or shine. My dad goes spare worrying about them there, half lest they gnaw at the wires and half that they may be hurt; we now have to check everyday before we switch the motor on. And since we cannot make them leave - the Vyases have not progressed so far in cat love as to touch them - we wait till they go voluntarily.

Here are some pictures. 

Mother Cat

Safe House

Doosra

Sorry for the messed up chronology but I have videos coming up of the Striped Triplets and some of the Black Twins in play. But you're used to Star Wars and all, what's a little mixed up cat genealogy?

Ae ve mere peer di jugni ji

I realise I’m beginning to make a symbol of fireflies. The other day, I relished the idea of a firefly-guide, dancing ahead of me as it illuminates the path. The words for it sound so nice – jugnu, minmini, minugupurugu...
Shweta and I were trekking once in Coorg. It was a simply wonderful; each campsite during the six-day trek was special. We ploughed through spice and coffee plantations one afternoon and arrived at a flattish sort of a valley where we set up camp. It had rained earlier but the mud and fibrous grass had caked into fairly hard ground. As we sat about, we puzzled over crater-like depressions that riddled the field. Largeish depressions; in fact, I sat comfortably in one. Then we remembered we were in elephant country. These pockmarked fields had, perhaps only last night, had a wild herd cross it, and what I was sitting in was a footprint.

We had dinner around the fire and by the time we wound down to snug sleepiness, the looming hills around us came alive with fireflies. They blinked and messaged – their codes complex, secret and very beautiful.

All this to point to a new header:

tough as we sound
our eyes
on the fireflies
-Paul Pfleuger, Jr.

We have tried to be brave this year. Disbelief comes even now, especially every morning at the point before complete wakefulness. Reminders come in bald statements: Mum’s dead. Of course. It’s silly to be sissy about death. It comes to everyone and when it’s such a good one, it’s cause for rejoicing. Also the alternative to this bracing attitude is a very crumbly mess. Not a good idea. It would be unworthy, unfair to the woman who put in so much to strengthening us, and quite wrong.

It is enough to be given the occasional firefly.



---------
The title is from this Coke Studio lyric:
Ae ve mere peer di jugni ji (oh, the light/spirit of my sainted master)

The song by Arif Lohar and Meesha Shafi is here:

Jab koi doosra nahin hota

मेरे साथ साथ सदा रहा, वो मेरी नज़र से छुपा हुआ
येह अजीब हिज्र-ओ-विसाल है, ना कभी मिला ना जुदा हुआ

He is ever with me, even if hidden from view
A strange union-separation; we never met, never parted

मेरे साथ जुगनू है और जुगनू की इस सफ़र में भी साथ क्या
ये चराग कोई चराग है, ना जला हुआ ना बुझा हुआ

I am guided by a firefly, and what a companion he is!
Is it a lamp, then? never lit, never extinguished

Happy Birthday, Amma!

Ab lagan lagi

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!
-Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Power play

It is a ridiculous situation. My laptop charger cord has worn at one point and there's a loose contact that needs to be treated with kid gloves. This has ramifications on my lifestyle. For one, I cannot occupy any seat where the cord loops around the laptop - the joint can't take such maltreatment. When I achieve the happy position of having continuous supply I cannot move lest I disturb it. To add to my woes, my battery has almost completely given up even a pretence of holding any charge whatsoever.

To which you may ask: why not get it fixed? Good point.
First, several months ago, my sister's laptop charger/adapter cord refused stoutly to work and she bought another. Three months ago, my own started to show its inner wires at one point. We took in both to be repaired, after which, for a few days, we were in the happy position of having three working wires between two laptops. Then Shweta's box went bust. Then the other one developed a problem with the pin socket. During one visit to the repairers in Secunderabad's Chenoy Trade Centre, I pulled out all three cords, each labelled neatly as to ownership and current problem.

Long story short, we are now again caught with one completely useless wire and two temperamental ones. I could get my loose connection fixed but what's stopping me is the sheer embarassment of turning up there again. So I've taped it up, sit only where the power outlet is to the right of me and endure a very painful back.

I need a new laptop.

Sanson ki mala

प्रीतम, हम तुम एक हैं, जो कहन सुनन में दो
मन को मन से तोलिये, दो दो मन कब'हूँ न हो

Preetam, hum tum ek hain, jo kahen sunan mein do
man ko man se toliye do do man kab'hoo na ho

On loop today, one of my Nusrat favourites, this bhajan called Sanson ki mala. There are many versions of this song - Nusrat and party have sung it at many concerts, certainly whenever they've particularly wanted to please a prominently Indian audience - but like a gosling, the one I like best is the one I heard first. It was on a world music channel on yahoo radio - a slow, mellow rendition - and I interrupted my work to make a note of its details. Greatest Hits Vol 2. And a link, if it will open on your browser, is here.

My mother loved it too. I played it for her one afternoon in the last weeks of her life. Towards the end, music didn't always succeed in distracting her from the pain, but this time it did. She nodded, chirruped and shook her head - such familiar gestures, such typical meiotic signals of deep appreciation.

हाथ चुढावत जा'अत हो, जो निर्मिल जानके मोहे
ह्रदय में से जाओ तो, तब मैं जानू तोहे

Haath chudavat ja'at ho, jo nirmil jaanke mohe
hriday mein se jaao to, tab main jaanoo tohe

The only moving thing

I bring down this haiku by Edith Bartholomeusz that graced this header space these past weeks:

into the sun
where eyes can’t follow
a red tailed hawk

In its stead, one way of looking at a blackbird from Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

I didn't understand this wonderful poem when I first read it; perhaps I still haven't fully. I turned it round and round as if it was a beautiful locked box, left it lying on the shelf a while, went back to examine it. Then one day when I was old enough, brave enough to let go of structure, it came through.

When poets talk, I feel sometimes, it is rude to stare at the words themselves, beautiful though they might be; that you must look politely at the spaces in between while you listen.

In this twelfth way Stevens offers, sometimes I see a rough but vivid charcoal image - the river is moving. The water is choppy, but fleetingly, fragmentedly reflected in the waters... a hint of a black bird.