Laxmi Dhaul’s Blog

Todays Dracula does n’t suck
Blood - haemoglobin or
corpuscles he sucks
energy
from his victims
Straight from the jugular
the vein closest to the heart.

Energy
is in great demand
Its what makes the world go around
And separates the haves
From the have nots
and brings terror to
our doors.

No garlic to this rescue
Nor the crucifix and once
The current day Dracula
is satiated and his quota
replenished
……..and the victim sucked dry
And cast away dying deprived and derelict

Dracula goes forth- debonair
welł groomed armed
with his grin charged with
the blood of the under dog. Never to be satisfied
he still seeks fresh territory
Compulsive obsessive traits
Live for ever……
 

Those little drops of water collecting
By the side must be tears
from some yesteryears.
Tears accumulated but withheld for another day.

And now that day has come
And the tears emerge slowly.

I can see you  shake your head
The glory of old age is not what is understood
The glory is not the crown but a silence
Of what is not said

And now the years have passed
And there is the finality of ‘no tomorrow’

Old age is not the wonderful state
that younger people idolize
and use the words ‘noble’ and ‘dignified’!
It is fragility and pain that is unspoken

What dignity is there in helplessness
What words can be used for pain
How do you share the sorrow of not being
Master of your own fate ?

They call me a gizmo mum .
I collect and use  more cameras,
cell phones and laptops then most people!
And yet my teenage  daughter laughs
When I tell her ………….

That though  she is
the ‘i-pod’ of my eye and
the ‘i-trip’ of my life
the ‘i-mate’ of my heart 
……………….She is still the ‘i-ching’ of my soul!

The earth shakes, the ground trembles
Lightning streaks across the sky
Shiva with his flaming locks
a drum in one hand and the vigilant cobra round his neck
one thigh high balancing on the other
is about to open his ‘third eye’

Destruction,  the end of creation
The great lord of the Himalayas dances
The mountains tremor, rivers and streams go underground
animals and beasts and birds gather
Siva the ascetic clad in tiger skin
covered with fresh ash from the crematorium.

He controls the fragile balance of
 creation, life, destruction.
With no death there is no birth….. no rebirth
The endless karma of life
He meditates with all three eyes shut
in the Himalayas and once awakened
The third eye can never close again
It can only destroy itself !

Sharekhan had been caught a few days ago. He loved being called ‘the king of the jungle’. There were not many large animals left in the forest although he had heard that when one of his ancestors had roared the emerald forests would tremble and shake, shedding their leaves and that the smaller animals would run for cover. Times had changes and it was difficult to find a full meal these days, he had to migrate closer and closer to the villages where the human beings lived. Then one day as he was close to the edge he was trapped and caught and taken by cage on top of a vehicle. The journey was long as he saw the sunset and the moon and sunrise and again the moon stationery in its oblique splendor.

He had been taken to the ‘Mumbai’ zoo, the second largest in the country and was given the largest cage that wild cats had. ‘Wild cats’ what a name he said wryly. He had seen many stray cats roaming freely around the zoo trying to get morsels of food from the cages of the ‘big cats’ but they had another name ‘stray cats’. It irked him that ‘stray cats’ were free and he was not “Ah yes…… but they were hungry and he was not!” he told himself.

Then one day whilst he was waiting for his noon meal, the usual chunk of raw buffalo flesh, he saw that the zoo keeper had left his door unlocked .

“AH-ha” he thought “ now finally – release …..I can go free , but let me wait for my noon meal , I don’t want to leave this zoo cage with an empty stomach and am not sure how I will return home to the forest.”

Once he had been served his lunch the royal king of the jungle decided to nap as was his habit. It soon became evening and he saw the guard come and wink at him, as the guard passed by he noticed that the lock to sharekhans cage was open. He observed the glint in the lion’s eye.

“Oh ole chap and where will you go? once you leave the zoo you will only enter a concrete jungle. No getaway there .There is only one way out for people like you and that is straight up !………….” he said adjusting his little khaki cap on his bald pate , grinning, showing a small cluster of his red betel nut stained teeth and pointing a brown gnarled finger heavenward . Sharekhan roared at him and was livid at what the stupid guard had said to him. “ I shall be free tomorrow , I will be far away from that silly guard” Sharekhan thought as he nestled in the straw and fell into deep sleep.

Sharekhan tossed and turned that night he dreamt that he was running through the streets of the crowded city, he could hear the human beings chase him in those filthy smelly ‘four- tires’ that left a trail of black smoke and shoot their pistols at him. Then he suddenly heard a huge bang and he awoke startled. Someone had banged his door shut .

The guard passed him by and said “See Sharekhan you are better off where you are, once you give up your soul there is no spirit left in your body “

Sharekhan refused to open his eyes, he refused to eat for the next three days, it had slowly dawned on him that when he had the opportunity to escape he let go the chance because he really didn’t want to. The zoo managers were concerned for his life, they tried to douse him with vitamins and tonics they purged him and put the choicest meats in front of him. If Sharekhan died of starvation it would hit the headlines in the newspapers and they would be out of a job! . Sharekhan on the other hand had lost his will to live, his spirit was broken. It took him a while to reconcile that his life was in his own hands - he alone had been given the option to escape but he didn’t have the courage to face the consequences! When Sharekhan finally died several years later the news said ‘The longest living lion died in captivity ……in Mumbai zoo’.

I am a jamun fruit tree and I live in a forest where the local tribals love nature! They used to call us trees their friends and they used to sing and dance around us. They were known as the Bishnoi tribe and this tribe were scattered over several parts of north India. But their livelihood came from our produce, they would sell or eat the fruit, they would use our branches for shade and if they had to build a hut they would cut only the branches that they needed and use our dry bark for firewood. But I have heard that there are others who don’t care about their trees and they are willing to cut them down. These people don’t realize that it is our roots that keep the nutrients in the ground and it is because of our roots that land erosion during the floods do not happen.

I remember the story of brave Amrita. She was a young Bishnoi girl and she was walking in the forest with her friends when she saw some guards from a distant kingdom enter the forest. The guards told the young girls that they had come to the forest to cut down a few trunks of trees because the king wanted the wood to build a summer palace . The girls panicked and immediately went and circled the trunks of the trees with their arms. The guards got angry and told the girls to stop hugging the trees and go back home.

Amrita said “ No , we are Bishnois and we love our trees and nature and we cannot let you cut down the tree. You will have to cut us down first.” Another young girl said “ We are Bishnois and we believe in doing “Chipko” to the tree. Chipko in our language means to hug the tree.

The guards furiously retorted “Please don’t do this, please don’t obstruct us from cutting down the tree - because the king has given his orders and we will be compelled to hurt you against our wishes !”

The next night the king heard the unfortunate story of these brave girls and passed through the forest. He had been shocked to hear about the merciless behavior of his guards. Expecting the little hamlet to be in gloom he was surprised to see the village celebrating.

“ We believe in preserving our forests Your Majesty , for us our forests are our life and our means to a livelihood. Our daughters have gone to a noble death but if they had not done what they had done yesterday they would not have been able to stop your men from cutting our most prized possession – our trees. The death of the trees is the death of mankind ! ”

“It is when I hear this story again and again” said the jamun tree “that I feel that my life has well been worth it !”
 

The house was silent late in the night and she lay on her back, frail and tired in her room which had been made into a small hospital room for her. She looked up to see the fan rotating constantly the purr of the blades moving the air. Who said “air made no noise “? “ Cant you hear the dull grey sound the fan makes – like the insipid taste of yoghurt ?” she asked herself . She lay on her back, it was the end of the ‘diwali’ season, the day that is supposed to be a day of celebration in India , the day when the whole country was lit up with decorative lights . She had celebrated Diwali for 94 years she thought to herself “and this would be the 95th “

The only other sound she could hear was the sound of the lift go up and down, up and down…… all five floors. “They called a ‘lift’ an elevator in America”, she thought to herself “ that’s where I had studied in the 40’s in Michigan Ann Arbor” . Her memories were rambling - the years in between had no chronology, no value ! Every time the lift came up she could feel her weakened intestines constrict supporting the ascent of the lift and the weight of the passengers and every time the lift went down she felt her guts relax. This constant contraction and release reminded her of so many things in her life which she had faced .
She imagined the wizened lift man Aziz going up and down in the lift. She had seen him for the first time almost 40 years ago, when he was a young man fresh from his distant village. Through the years she saw a young man metamorphise kafka-esque into an old man with a stoop and a toothless grin! . Did he also have to bear the load of each passenger that he transported up ? She smiled knowingly that he would shortly tell everyone, that, he was finally going to retire and go back to his village and therefore collect money from all the residents as a baksheesh for good service and as his “goodwill pension”. Over the last ten years he had done this thrice before and everyone humored him because he knew the comings and goings and the deep secrets into each of the tenants families. She knew he would return again ! She always associated him with the colour of brown , his dark tanned skin , his brown teeth , his brown uniform.

Lying down in bed bored, restless with the tubes of the life support machine entering her emaciated body she was strangely at peace. The crescendo of the lift as it went up and the waning sound at its descent and the constant purring of the fan gave her the answer. Life would still go on …”up and down, ….up and down” . She knew that she had only a few more days to live …. It was a relief, soon the silence that would surround her would have no purring and no up and down ……only silence !