I don’t know what makes me write this blog... Is it my love for simple country life or is it the mocking attitude of city people about lives that are so simple, humble, basic and rooted to soil? A metro friend of ours happened to visit my state Haryana on way to Punjab and while he was traveling there, he sent me a sneering message that in Haryana, Jats wear sports shoes even with trousers…certainly I was sympathetic to the lack of exposure to the true face of life of my friend. As much as my pride was wounded I was angry at the ridicule. For these simple rural folks what do fashion styles matter! Is it good sense for them to wear leather shoes with their trousers and then go walking miles to their fields and working there all days and when their crops are ready, keep vigil through the cold dry barren nights to protect their produce from wild animals and even theft?

There is nothing romantic about country life – it is sheer hard work and endless toil, when the men and women have to work in their fields with bent backs regardless of the scorching heat or the shivering cold, how they have to stay awake nights to water their fields when their turns for water comes. Fortunately for the strides that the country is making in terms of irrigation channels, they are no longer at the mercy of weather gods. I fail to understand how urban people (me included) don’t take time to reflect as from where their food, vegetables, fruits, milk come from. It is all due to the strenuous efforts of people in villages. We need our villages and with rapid invasions of satellite towns, mushrooming of more towns, increase of population, certainly village land is squeezed, forests are depleting and land under plough reducing as farmers are giving in to the lure of getting good money from their lands as they also want to improve their lives and move to cities since farming does not make for a very lucrative career activity.

Life is not easy in villages as even after so many decades post independence, our villages are still deprived of the basic amenities of life such as hygiene, fresh water, roads, and sanitation and sewage facilities. Although public schools are opening in villages and many of the villagers, considering English education as the route for their children to aspire for better life are sending them to these schools but the dropout rate is high because of necessity of manual labour despite all the mechanization in farming and cattle rearing activities. But it will be wrong to say that villages have remained insular from the onslaught of economic liberalization as every house boasts of satellite TV connection, power supply, gas stove, toiletries; all those things about which we never bother to think as we consider them quintessential to our existence.

The soul of any country is its villages, they are the storehouse of culture, myths, folklores, and they are where our antecedents belonged to and lived and dreamed, some of who thought big and migrated to cities to carve bigger dreams. Yet villages give a feeling of rootedness, a sense of belonging as you inhale the rustic aroma; a heady concoction of dung, foul stenches, muddy filthy bylanes and the freshness of green pulsating fields as the children in their barely covered bodies and bare feet run amok playing with toys which will draw sneer from their city counterparts; for these children dirty is not soil as it is supplicant, life-giver and nourisher. Its here on this soil that you feel time at a standstill, that frozen moment when you realize how unfettered and basic life can be without any complications; when all you need is fulfillment of basic needs like food, cloth and shelter and how all else is trivia; just an indulgence and when time is aplenty to muse, contemplate, introspect and retrospect. It is sheer pleasure as you hear the village elders recounting and sharing anecdotes with the rhythm of gurgling sound of their hookahs as how the world has moved as they muse where things will end and if life will ever be spartan and pure as it was once. Certainly they are wise in their own innocent sense and they are the men of the soil.

P.S. For those who don't know about the tree in the latest album - it is my tree as I love to call it, besides Gulmohar & Amaltas. Here is the link for a read of the blog i wrote on this tree. http://icysvolcanicworld.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D49635B9037005B!980.entry?_c=BlogPart

Anyways I have my own definition of love and with full apology to the dear pious soul of St. Valentine, I don’t believe in you and I m sure you must be having a real laugh up there seeing all the hoopla created on Earth on your birthday. I am sure you must be smiling at this global annually conducted extravagant vengeance of your execution. Isn't this some real redemption of your service to the young lovers!

However, this is not I meant to dwell upon as I have something very interesting to share. I read that a common gene named DARPP – 32 has been found to link madness and genius. This gene will provide an adequate answer as to why some of the best minds have also been found to suffer from some psychotic disorder.

Researchers have found that 75 percent of people inherit a version of the DARPP-32 gene, which enhances the brain’s ability to think by improving information processing by the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for thoughts and actions. The researchers also found that the same gene also shaped and controlled a nerve circuit closely involved with schizophrenia. The circuit links the prefrontal cortex with another brain region, the stiatum, which affects brain functions that play an important role in schizophrenia, such as motivation, learning, and working memory.

If this were the case then no wonder that great geniuses like artist Van Gogh (who famously chopped off part of left ear during a bout of depression), brilliant Russian dancer Vaclav Nijinsky and writer Jack Kerouac, have rightly displayed self-destructive behavior and suffered from depression, as also the Nobel prize-winning mathematician John Nash mathematician, whose life was the subject of the film “A Beautiful Mind” struggled with schizophrenia. After all, it was their genetic right!

Cry from the heart

We recently lost someone to suicide. She was a vibrant, charming person who was full of all colors that life can offer someone but somewhere melancholia was always at the hinges trying to break through and rip apart the psyche. The vivacious charming mother of two small boys takes such a drastic step over a family tiff to douse herself in flames… husband lunges forward to save and also gets consumed by the lashing flames which are feasting on a life…prognosis is poor with 95 percent burns with no skin to show except the large eyes but without the big, perfect lashes that once shaded them. Fortunately husband recovers his burns while she struggled for life where there were no hopes for it for six torturous days, begging for water, taking in each visitor into her haunting eyes as the memories she will take with her as she takes her final journey to the next life, uttering one word “help” and to take her back to her haven, where she played, danced, shared laughter, joys, pains and shed tears with her family and her babies…. But now returns to her home wrapped in a polythene sheet for the last rites.

Pooja why did you do it? Such a talented, educated and brave soul…why did you do it? Did you not think of those small ones whose one crucial hold on life is gone with you, did you not think of the man who was so besotted with you.. How will your child brave this world when he has seen his mother, his succor in flames desperately lunging for life?

It is a terrible twist and irony that talented people are prone to depression and nurse suicidal tendencies. Why don’t people give themselves a last moment to reflect before their passions overtake their thinking power completely… can any problem be bigger than life? Now with her gone, so much is lost. Life is gone yet living will have to continue…

I miss you. I wish I knew you more except those brief moments we met here and there. I wish I had acted upon the invitation you always extended to me to drop at your place. I pray for your children and your soul. I pray God takes care of them since he has called you up there.