The Awakened One

Siddhartha was perhaps the most fearless man that ever lived. It takes great courage to walk out of a palace in the middle of the night and not ask a god or man for help. Or carry any weapons to defend yourself - like Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Spend 13 years wandering through forests, through cheetahs, thugs and hyenas and never flinch. Or ask a god or man for help.
To sit under a Bodhi/Peepul tree and never get up till you had found the truth. With due respect, even Jesus, MLK and Arjuna and Gandhi and the Prophet..and tonnes of brave heroes had their moments when they asked the Divine for help.
Siddhartha just sat under the Bodhi tree and never flinched, never got up..till he had Awakened.

 

Rooftop Bliss

"No one can free you, but yourself".
- Siddhartha

Sitting on the rooftop of a Delhi café, I see the tops of the peepul/gulmohar trees shining. Glistening in the post-monsoon bliss. Like a woman after an orgasm. That is what India is, at her essence. A beautiful,. rain-soaked woman.

Nothing else feels like home to me (Someone I know, told me that years ago, before I realized it). There is an almost avant-garde, undercurrent to her soul, that lurks wildly like a gentle goddess, "Kali" or "Radha" perhaps? All mad, slightly intoxicated women, in love with crazy men.
There is that trippy intoxicated, weed-smoking husband of Kali's. And Radha has nightly dalliances with her flute-playing lover. Let us remember that the Kama Sutra was born here - a place where love is an art form- raised to the form of a spiritual text.
Obviously, this is a  love-struck land. The rains add to that feel of rain and ecstasy.
Then, there is that Siddhartha vibe, that is so prevalent in the air, like a song. You cannot deny 5000 years of a liberal, secular history.
Siddhartha (the Buddha) and Dara Shikoh (the liberal, Mughal scholar-prince)  walked on this very land, this very soil and profound metaphysics and secular ideals were born here. The ideals of the first city republics..From the Greeks to the Magadhans.

And they want to turn this land of trippy sadhus, intellectual princes and bohemian lovers, into a bourgoise "bahurani's" republic..
The land of the monsoon and the love-struck peacocks. And intellectual princes, looking for the meaning of life, under the peepul/bodhi tree.