NP'S Journal

THE UNIVERSE AND YOU The Corona lock-down is being extended. Indefinitely. Interminably. At first, you had thought it would be a matter of roughly two weeks. But to your dismay, it did not end. Then two months. You thought you would die.  But you did not die. Now six months already into the lock-down, you have not died. Neither Corona nor your fear has been able to break into the shell of your life, although you have been deprived of the zest. You have been sitting idle. Nothing really is interesting inside the house. Everything is hackneyed. Everything is uninteresting. So, you are curled up in your armchair, legs bent up into the tight hold of your arms, head hanging down the lower jaw resting on the knees and the eyes are wide open but seeing nothing as the interior of your visual limit looks insipid... Please listen to me! Just do one thing to get freedom from COVIDIOCY as well as to exercise your workability with the following activity : Take a set of crayons and a drawing she...

THE VIRAL CONFUSION  COVID-19 or Corona, aptly the Virus of the Century, has already taken a heavy toll on the life and living of the modern humans worldwide, and is going stronger by the day. In a matter of months, the nondescript invisible virus has influenced your mind so much that the huge nuclear stockpiles, terrorism, corruption, exploitation, horrific superstitious practices, hunger, malnutrition, genocides, caste violence, environmental pollution, extinction of species, traffic accidents, industrial accidents, urban crimes, cancer, other dreaded diseases...have failed to do for decades. The virus is killing people outside and you are hiding inside. Your body is numb. Your mind is restive. There is indecision. There is ineptitude. And you are caught in an utter confusion... Your work-free, yet hugely anxious mind now hosts the whole lot of questions : Is Corona indestructible? Is the problem irremediable? Will the virus kill all of us like it is killing in Europe and America...

MY GOD, YOUR GOD A theist, or a monotheistic, or a polytheist, or a heathen... A fundamentalist, or an evangelist, or a prorselytizer... A die-hard, or a convert, or a secular... A Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Sikh, or a Jew, or a Zoroastrian...  You may be one from the above list, or all. But definitely, you are not an atheist, or an agnostic, or an infidel, or a pagan, or a savage. There is God in you. If there is Lord Krishna in you, you are a Hindu. If there is Allah in you, you are a Muslim. If there is Jesus in you, you are a Christian... Just wait. Can there be God inside a human body? May He be. I admit there is a God within your body. But I swear, there is no God in me. God cannot live within my body. I know I am impure. I know I am not sacred. My body contains filth, toxins, impurities and germs. I smell foul. Headaches, heartaches, stomachaches, backaches,  arthritis, maladies, diseases - all have made their burrows in my body. My mind is ...

A GIANT IN ME There is a giant in me. He has alwsys been in me since times immemorial. Yes, the giant is sleeping in me. No! He is not sleeping. He cannot sleep while I am awake. He sleeps only when I sleep, and wakes when I wake. He remains awake, wide awake as long as I am wakeful. He walks with me, runs with me and hops with me. He goes with me and comes with me. He does not leave me alone. Now that I have been locked in, he is sitting inside me with his eyes red and round, open and wide. He has a violent stare. He is lurking...On the prowl.  I do not know when he came and settled in me. I only can remember he has been inside me since the root of my existing memory. Over years, he has grown powerful and deadly in me. I can realize knowingly or unknowingly I have cultivated him in me. Now he has become too obstinate. It is not possible for me to move him out of me. He has been in me as a necessary devil. In fact, the giant is loyal to me. He is serious about my well-being. He fig...

PRIVACY  There is a life inside. There is a life outside. Before Corona, you mixed them together. You confused your private life with your public life and the public life with the private life. You were a hybrid of waywardness and homewardness. Being in one, you had urges for the other. Occupied in one, you faced demands from the other. However, you managed both the lives with constant adjustments and compromises. Sometimes, you felt well-adjusted and sometimes, ill-adjusted, but you would manage. It kind of was customary. All others did, so you did. So you were not much critical of your disturbed privacy. You took that hybrid life for granted.  Now just over two months into Corona isolation (In fact, country-wide curfew/lock-down was imposed in India in March 2020), you find there is a clean divide between your private life and your public life. You realize that private cannot be public and public cannot be private. For the first time since your birth, you nurture yourself in...

THE SOUL OF SILENCE  Village is Village. Town is town. None can live in the other. Each lives in its own habitat. Each is being inhabited by its own 'habitants'. The rural habitation of villages and the urban habitation of towns are strikingly different from each other. Each is featured with its own characteristics. While village is purely village, town is purely town. But in this all-pervasive gloom and doom of Corona, there is no village in village, no town in town. The soul of each is dead under the viral onslaught. Lock-down, curfew, social distancing, self-exile, quarantine and isolation have taken a heavy toll on the life and living of each habitat. There is silence. There is solitude. There is abnegation. There is alienation. There is no daintiness of the pastoral graphics of the country life. There is no alacrity of the hostile hustle-bustles of the city life. All the respective activities are under suspended animation. All are hibernating. You are hibernating. In your ...

THE AFTERLIFE  Know not if I am thinking oppositely or equally. But I believe there is life after death. No! Not spiritually. I am referring to the death of Corona. The virus will die, but we all will continue to live. Be assured! There is life after the death of the virus. Sooner or later. And the type of the life you will have will be the same as you had before the outbreak. You are not a politician and it is not a political election. There is no win or defeat. It is just biding a few-months' time idly in lock-down. So do not nurture a change in your mind. If you lived a lavish life, you will relive lavishly. If you lived a beggarly life, you will again be a beggar. A social will be a social again. An antisocial will be an antisocial again. And, for your kind information, everything is ever ready to throw their door open. Off-shop counters, spa's, beauty parlors, gyms, sports clubs, betting clubs, laughing clubs, water resorts, parks, film halls, hotels, restaurants, food sta...

A REFUGEE I know you are hiding. Fear of Corona has overwhelmed you. The fort of your house has protected you from all sides. It is said that one's home is the safest place, even safer than the heaven. Now, you are huddling in a corner like you did as an infant inside your mother's saree-skirts, in an unseen fear, or under your cut as a school kid, for fear of your father after yours pinching of his pocket was caught... Since then, in other numerous occasions you have made bushes, boughs, cattle sheds, backyard thickets, scrap stores, garbage dumps...your hideouts. Many fears petrified your past, but each time, you came out safe with only a minor or  little harsh admonishment... And now, you are hiding in side the fortification of your house, although nobly, while the virus is lurking near your doors and windows. The fear inside you is mounting each passing moment in dread of Corona's hideous look and the lethal suckers on the virus' body. In any moment, it may pounce u...

NO FEAR ! No fear! Pick the positivity. Filter positive essence from the negative crude... The whole stock of life lies within. And in fearlessness surges the strength of living. Take the virus by the horn... There is hope. In our hope is life... Comes strength also in our refuge. Surrender completely at the feet of God... There is life. There is always life... Otherwise, life is temporary. Life is solitary. Life is lonesome. You are alone. All alone...! Do not take your life as separated from those of others. Life cannot be fragmented. You cannot be separated from others. Fear will eat you up. Find your life in lives of others and theirs in you. Dissolve the block of your self into the selves of others. And see your fear is gone.  If you still have fear of death, think of rebirth. Imagine. Draw up. Envision a sweeter, better life. Shelter in it. You will be transformed into a deathless feeling. You will not find negativity.  Your fear will go... Just sit alone. Close your eye...

THE OUTBREAK  China's 2002 SARS-COV has returned in its new avatar as COVID-19, popularly Corona virus or Corona in short. WHO panics and promptly responds declaring it a pandemic, as the virus emerges from Wuhan, China, and looks straight westward at the Organization. The whole world drops dead as the virus begins its onslaught right from its birthplace. It marches on. It jumps from country to country, continent to continent - an epidemic without border - as follow frightening sounds of cough, groans of fever, pants of broken breaths, sighs of fatigue...caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome. The pandemic, they say, is the so-called Apocalypse, much more devastating than its forefathers. It strangles people to death within fourteen days of its onset. Acute respiratory failure, pneumonia, septic shock, blood clots, chronic fatigue,  acute injuries to heart, kidney, liver, then death of the whole body within the span of two seven-day periods, while people have thought of l...