Guru Finds A Guru

Guru and I smoked a great chillum last morn, after which he said something wise. Simple stoners are known to do such things quite often. He said:

Saab ji, is desh mein bas Bhola ka naam hai, unka kaam nahin hai. Sadhu-mahatmaon ko bhi charas nahin milti. Hamara kya hoga. Hum tho chhup-chhup ke peetay hain.

He asked me to convey this message of his to the world. So allow me to translate:

Sir, in this country Bhola exists only in name. Reality is starkly different, where He does not exist at all. Here in Bhola Country, even our holy men cannot obtain the Noble Herb. What will happen to us? We must hide and smoke.

[Bhola is the nickname of Lord Shiva, the Destroyer, the greatest god of the Hindoos, who legend holds was much addicted to cannabis. Bhola means "simpleton." There are many, many funny stories of The Destroyer. Whenever a Hindoo lights a chillum, he offers a salutation to Bhola. There are thousands of these salutations. There is no word in either Hindi or Bengali for “Cheers!” – a salutation for a glass of alcohol.]

Well said, I thought, and offered him some wisdom myself. I said that the problem is that we think of Law as something that emerges from the noisy deliberations of some 500 or so “elected representatives” of the masses crammed together in a room called, fittingly, the lok sabha; "lok" meaning masses. 500 people create a new law, indeed, they manufacture new laws every day – and all these new laws are binding on 1000000000 people. Law is brute force. We are ruled not by Law but by brute force.

This is not how Law has ever emerged in the past, I told him. And Law comes always from the past. That is why we value customs and traditions. English law was never written, but always based on local customs and traditions. Law was never "made"; it was "found" - by a discovery process involving the search for decisions in similar cases in the past. This requires serious private scholarship, not noisy parliamentarians.

It is Law that is our biggest problem I told him – and The State teaches all the Law. He seemed to have got my drift, and nodded sagely.

As an aside, these elected representatives should only be allowed to enact “public law” – binding only on the departments of The State whose budgets and activities they are supposed to administer – in the interests of the commonwealth. In India, it is these who are lawless in the strict sense of the term. They are 99.99% “misproductive.” And the lok sabha dictates the lives of all us private citizens instead.

Getting back to our stoned conversation, Guru, like all simple stoned people often do, then said an extremely stupid thing. He said that The State should be asked to do useful things. Why can’t they clean up all the pollution in the Ganga and Jumna instead of shoving bamboos up our backsides? he asked. It struck me Guru needed a guru himself, so I proceeded to cure him of his schizophrenia.

I said: Guru, we cannot expect anything useful to happen from the efforts of The State. It is not The State that is causing the pollution. It is ordinary people, mainly businessmen. They must stop it themselves, under the pressure of public opinion. If we ask The State to do it, we will be asked to pay more taxes, then The State will set up a big baboo department – and things will only get worse for both the Ganga as well as the Jumna and, who knows, perhaps the Saraswati too. Get it, dude? I asked.

It was cheering to see his wide-eyed enlightenment. So I continued to press the point. This applies to education too, I said. If we ask The State to solve the problem of illiteracy, they will extort a new tax, set up baboo departments – and nothing will happen. Illiteracy is a problem among the people. They must cure themselves of this disease through their own efforts. He was grinning widely by now, and there was a dull glimmer in his bloodshot eyes.

Actually, this also applies to endemic violence in parts of India, where people are calling for The State to create order out of chaos. Ultimately, there will always be parts of the world where violence is the norm. It is these people who must opt for civilization. Only then can they be possessed of “civil government.” Only then can they have “local self-government.” Think about that.

Guru seemed to have drifted away, lost in thought, and this also happens often to simple stoners, but I dragged him back to our conversation, thereby driving the lesson home. Alakh! Khol de Teesri Palak!

I said, Guru, there are two kinds of ships on the great oceans. One kind are run by businessmen. They ferry passengers and cargo from here to there. They charge for services rendered. The other kind are pirate ships, who loot the merchant ships. Our The State is one such pirate ship. Nothing good can be expected of it. They are, quite literally, "good for nothing."

Indeed, this is ultimately the result of grave philosophical errors – errors so deep that we have no idea any more as to what is good, what is evil, what is Law, what is a public assembly meant for. We don’t even know what money is.

Anyway, it was nice meeting Guru after a long time. The charas he so generously shared with me lit up my head alright. That too in the morn, when it is best. And one good turn deserved another.