Mantraheenam, kriyaheenam, bhaktiheenam…

 

A crippling sense of being “mantraheenam, kriyaheenam, bhaktiheenam…” has sneaked into me that mounts by the hour. It is a sickly, stifling feeling of speechlessness, powerlessness, helplessness, awe and fear: a kind of encircling gloom with no “kindly light” above or around to summon and beseech: “Lead Thou Me On.” Make no mistake please. I have not plucked out these self-effacing Sanskrit words from a redolent shloka out of any great bhakti bhaav (with ‘bhaktveers’ galore, my kind of bhakt/bhakti has no place anyway!)  My spirit of ennui has anthropomorphic origins.

I have found myself idly wondering: did indeed God create man in his own image? If it were so, wouldn’t the world today be brimming with happiness, peace and love? Instead what have we? Wars, violence, vandalism, brutality, hatred, greed; man killing man; and Nature; and, perversely, digging up his own grave as also of the earth itself.

Mother Nature - the Master Magician - by its sleight of hand tilted the scales in favour of the Homo sapiens’ ape-like ancestors fighting for survival in the jungles of Africa, diverting their evolutionary pathway from muscle-claw-tooth power to the power of the brain.  It is that power which enabled humankind to transition from a hunter-gatherer to a suited-booted, polished, civilized state of luxurious life. We built great monuments, edifices, ships, airplanes… Thinkers, philosophers, artists, poets made our lives sublime by investing their brain power in creative pursuits. Scientists used it to unravel the Universe wrapped in its myriad mysteries by delving into the depths of seas and soaring to explore skies and stars, paving the way for a life of luxurious splendour with wheel, electricity, machine, computer (and now) ChatGPT at our beck and call.

So far so good.

It was in man’s hand to let this great evolutionary journey not go astray, and not turn this globe into a garbage dump. Though it sounds utterly naive now, perhaps it was possible for the nations to join hands together and create gardens of amity and peace and enjoy the blessings and bounties of Nature in harmonious co-existence, but we made WMDs instead! Sadly no lessons were learnt even from the horror of two World Wars and pandemics. And the 21st century man who should have combated disease, hunger and poverty, and fostered arts and sciences to their zenith ennobling human life, is behaving like a blood-thirsty barbarian of the old.  Instead of fighting the demons of climate change and global warming, we squabble like petty-minded, uncouth imbeciles. 

Obviously, not any divine/godly element but it is the Neanderthal blood that pulses in our veins.

Cut to homeland. My Bharatvarsh of Vivekanands, Gandhis, Tagores and Homi Bhabhas could indeed have been a ‘vishvaguru’- a lodestar luminous with the beam of humanistic spirit of ‘sarv-dharam-sambhav’ and sunshine of scientific temper. Instead, by turning the noble concept on its head we have hurled it in fast reverse with our newly minted tool kits.

Assaulted by such dark thoughts - like someone perched on a cliff, viewing the yawning abyss - I brood. Love, laughter, my airy, buoyant spirit of unfettered ‘freedom’ denuded of their vibrant hues of rainbow sulk in sullen crooks and corners of my heart- circumspect about venturing out to sing and dance in merry abandon; and my little realms of science, history, reason, knowledge and sanity, sink and implode. Toxic political cacophony poisons my ears, spills all over, and makes my little earth look sad, the blue of my sky grey, my Dhauladhar grim, my dawns pallid and wan. Why then won’t I be mantraheenam and kriyaheenam... friends?

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