Yonder lays the shore

 Yonder lays the shore. 

To my increased dismay …Oh my God! Electrician was surprised to see that they have made their home in AC’s box – the small tiny insects–– were roaming all over the box and blocked the system of its operation. Perhaps they were wandering in the sky with air and taking their food from trees and garbage but they have no home of their own so they decided to occupy the small place very cozy-comfortable place inside the pipe of the AC box. They made their entry inside the pipe-box of my AC and doing all kinds of dancing, partying and playing with their friends after a long time since lockdown. Might be they needed it for their safety also. Whatever it be!! I lost my peaceful afternoon in hot summer. Were they the only creature in my house? There is a small and silent place over the roof of the book-case and lo! The wonderful feast for the eyes …there were pigeons looking for the safe home to keep their baby safe, and  they came and laid their eggs. I have had no courage to shift their eggs somewhere else; I know they will not come again to touch them, once I shift them. So I kept silent. How can I take rest when they are coming off and on to feed them and care for them? Of course they need care, so they were there on the roof of the book-case, dropping all kinds of litter. Friends! There was no break for me. I allow them to do all kinds of activities and relocated myself to other place. 

No respite for the time being! Look at the serpentine prowess of the ants going under the hole and coming outside the kitchen and claiming their rightful demand of food carrying on their tiny back. No, I cannot  keep them hungry when I am gobbling day and night?  They were the migrants coming from the under-world, I found everyday they are coming and going for food and they have made their home there too.  I was feeling guilty when they creep inside the hole, after all they are not pleading, they are earning through their hard labour and I must be just  to them.  When I cannot provide shelter to homeless, how can I rob off their venturous journey – coming and going every day?  

Nevertheless,  is it not true that we all search for a home–a physical domicile or structure in which one can reside. In a legal sense, a home is the place of permanent residency where one lives, or intends to return to live. Though a home has specific legal connotations, from tax liability to a person’s status as it is used to determine many things, yet over and above the best part is its emotional connotations….Which is a grind of daily frustration and ends with a revelation of gratitude.   It is the only place where you put your hands on the doors and eagerly waiting for the hands to open it. 

It is true that…we have  encroached the forest, the water base and the  sky and what to say of the other planets and moon of our solar system too.…. NASA   continues to explore…Life beyond earth, a place for future living beings…to find an analog of our own planet out among the stars ….the climate on mars is similar to earth and had liquid water for survival.

I am excited to learn that people are buying plots there to escape the humdrum drudgery of the earth. We will be surprised more and more as we continue to extend our senses to the outer solar system and beyond …Mars, Venus and Jupiter are  the planets which must be seen for possibility of owning a house …can we colonize at least one planet, since we understand, that  our future lies not on earth but in the stars  …why laser porting may be the best way to reach other galaxies and how one day there may be ballet dancers on mars. May be Pt. Ravishankar ji will  play Sitar one day ....our destiny beyond earth space is inevitable  and  colonization is the only option remains.  life needs matter, energy and time ….but there are  extremophiles creature that can survive under extreme condition ...so we can too !! I wish I could be hallucinated by the desire to carry roof over our head, plants for air, countless species all cohabiting on this incredible planet and can bottle up all our memories there to keep and  feel at home !! what a wonderful ideas– an attachment at core.

I remember when at a very tender age I along with my sister used to look to the advt. for a tiny home away from the dreary place we were occupying. My father’s face flashes with wonder-satisfaction when he got a full room for himself.  He was surprised to see that he was now the owner of the room he could sit and do whatever he liked. He spent a very difficult time for many years without home. 

Everyone aspires for a home, a place like a branch needs tree to sustain its blossom that encapsulates the joys of having one’s home taken over for its sustenance, an unshakable tie or bond. 

Oh! I deviated from my track, the noise of life begins again, echoing whistle from the distance when there were frightening drizzling rain, the house was in creepy darkness and I was looking for a torch to enlighten myself and the place. But after lightening the torch, I saw a huge wild cat, sitting on the dining table, peeling off banana and enjoying lunch vigorously. Tiny smudges were seen on the fridge too where he might have attempted for food. No, ‘vigorously’ is a wrong expression, he was hungry so he was exploring the food in different flats and accidently he found my house full of banana, fresh from the market. He put his foot down and went for his rightful claim. I allowed him to gobble all what he could and legitimatized his lawful claim. 

I went inside the close room to avail the match box and candle, since I did not open it for many days so lo!! Small cockroaches started running like anything on the floor and almirah, looking for the small bits of food particles. Oh! I was feeling guilty !! we consume so much everyday and these poor creatures are looking for small waste particle from my place. Let they relish their party with friends!!  I closed my eyes and somehow escaped from there.

what to say about lizard ... I hate and feel nausea when I see them I shout like anything but small baby lizards were flying on the floor and mother lizard was searching for food like small insects for their ration.  I was almost stopped then and there. They are destined to be predator and me the prey… I was locked inside the room and frozen too when I saw…It was hanging on the thresh-hold of the door and I was kept like a prisoner at my bed-seat only. I cannot move, albeit they will fall on me …as if the sky is falling on my head I was swayed towards left side, but there she moved too.

This was the small and temporary confinement. But is it not true that each one of us is locked in our solitary confinement of mental gaze, set on the uncertain and daunting alleyway, crushing a tunnel vision? I, then somehow, swallow this confinement…I was recapturing the forgotten rapture of mine, when I was stuck in the lift for several hours waiting for rescue.  Let these small insects decide among themselves who wants to survive and who wants to sacrifice their life for others.  Though I cannot relax in between their buzzing sounds, yet I keep their honour and dignity and try to safeguard their private spheres to survive…right to protect their wellbeing …. 

……. Unfortunately when one is forced to cut one’s roots and leaving home and family, one is obliged to build one’s home in other things, like professions, music, stories and journey and in many other ways explores one’s home in things outside home to feel at home. But we are never far apart from our previous home. It is one of the most re-affirming experiences in life and gives a greater sense of one’s history and identity. It is the note from which a whole chord of life is built.

 In a strange place when someone says, “feel at home”, I can realize, it means to be with oneself, residing within oneself.…‘To thine own self be true’ is a line from  Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. The phrase has evolved, and in recent years ‘being true to yourself’ has become a common, fashionable term. It is used to mean not worrying about pleasing other people, or living by someone else’s rules or standards, but rather living as your natural self, without compromise.

Being oneself sets one’s identity different from the crowd and becomes the regulating force of the whole circumference which embraces the totality of dimension.  So if one wants to sit at home and knit a wardrobe for one’s dog, then by all means do so without having an existential crisis. Rather it will uncover the existential structures which underlies and makes possible encounter with others. The structure, by anticipation, is Being-with. One keeps running here and there madly for one’s being, searches among grass for the source of the fragrance, yet, does not know that it is within. Remember Kabirdas’  “तेरा साईं तुझमें ज्यों पुहुपन में वास, कस्तूरी का हिरन ज्यों, फिर-फिर ढ़ूँढ़त घास॥ Ah, it is a longing for a nondescript,  the longing for impossible things, a ripening from the core, a seed growing in our own bodies;  The word is “sehnsucht,” and it roughly means an inconsolable yearning or wistful longing for something one cannot explain or does not know, prevents the soul from reaching its peak to release a deep emotional state and melancholy. without its dangerous edge, that cuts and wounds us while setting us free and beckons us exactly to....

Hamlet’s plight was an existential quest for ‘being’. For him the dilemma “to be or not to be” poses a gruesome tragedy, where he could not decide how to overcome this state. So was the plight of Arjuna in the battle of Kuruksetra, but the beauty of the situation is whereas Hamlet’s words “the rest is silence” is uttered when he is quite conscious of his death which indicates that the real self is void and silent, Arjuna’s declaration ‘I will do what you say’ is encouraging and full of wisdom.  Hamlets’s way was that of resigning to fate whereas Arjuna accepts and fights back. 

For the migrant workers,  Home's not merely roof and room of four walls, but an instinctive force to hold the drudgery of chores exaltation of being …accommodating all kinds of friction …. the sum of their existence, so they can cross miles after miles to reach their home, nothing to offer yet going back to their root. Thus the ache for home subsists in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not to be questioned. Longing for home is nothing but the foundational instinct.

But, over time, I’ve found that home is not always attached to place. …home becomes an extension of the self along with me and “my set up” which one has visualized into an imaginary tent, like a huge circus tent, folding, adjustable items which we carry around with us and set up wherever we are. Part of setting up involves one’s belongings, and some of the absences like the people I left behind. I keep them inside my homes even when they aren’t around; what is absent, then, becomes present. The space between what there was and what is ---makes various parallel knobs between one’s existing life and past reminiscences. It is strange that sometimes one feels homesick for a place that doesn't exist, for people one hasn't met, and for time that one will never get back one feels a pang – a strange and inexplicable pang that one had never felt before. How fondly the home-sick dwells—to die at last pondering over the past, and pines for scenes then far apart, long to be among some scenes far, far away! Amidst the dark of the night slumbers when there is no more war to rage on– eyes gawking homeward?