When mangoes will fly

My eldest brother, Dorai Anna, is twenty years older than me. In addition to the many other wonderful things that he is, he is one of the greatest story tellers. Yesterday I sent him a piece on Benazir Bhutto’s brush with Vipassana meditation, and, he responded with this story. The Vipassana story is blogged in a separate post on this blog.

Some years after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s assassination by hanging, Benazir went to Bangladesh where she met a Pir (an Islamic mystic). She asked the Pir if her father’s murderer would ever be killed ? In other words, would she find, justice, as they say. The Pir closed his eyes and said, ‘Zia (General Zia ul Haq who ordered Zulfiqar Bhutto’s hanging) will die when the mangoes will fly…’ Like most statements of mystics and oracles this did not make sense to Benazir. However, no further explanations were forthcoming. In 1988, Zia was killed in a mysterious air crash. One theory about the air crash is that a box of mangoes was kept in the plane after all the security checks were done, and, that box contained a bomb…and when the bomb goes off, the mangoes fly…

It was a very interesting story, like the hundreds of stories my brother has told me…

As I was meditating this morning, the mind was doing its usual rounds of disturbing the awareness…the one thought that kept coming back is Benazir’s question to the Pir, ‘Will my father’s murderer ever be killed ?’ Having read Benazir’s autobiography the pain of that question comes through. In her autobiography she has talked of how she touched him for the last time through the bars of the death row cell he was held in, and, that sentence brings tears to my eyes as I write…the knowledge that her father would be gone in a few hours and all that meant…the search for a similar disposition to the person who brought about her father’s fate was only natural…

And then, another story came to my mind, which was still dancing around, disturbing the awareness. A story of another daughter whose father was assassinated, Priyanka Gandhi, the daughter of Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv died somewhat similarly to Benazir, he was assassinated by a person who detonated a suicide bomb.

Some years after her father was assassinated, I am told, Priyanka sat a Vipassana course. Soon after she sat the course the question of sentencing one of her father’s killers who had survived the bomb explosion came up. I shall not be so naïve or presumptuous as to draw a connection between her sitting the course and the action that followed. However, both she and her mother appealed to the President of India that the killer should not be sentenced to death. “Just because I have lost a parent, it does not mean another child should lose a parent,” is what Priyanka is supposed to have said.

I cannot verify to the actuality of the course of events regarding Priyanka and the commutation of the death sentence just as I cannot verify to actuality of the story of Benazir and the Pir. As Goenkaji, one of the the principal teachers of Vipassana, would say, “A story is a story…that is all…”

What strikes me about these stories is our linear approach to life, which has its origins in Newtonian physics. Every action has a reaction that equal in nature and opposite in direction, or something to that effect, is the basis of most justice and human thought. It is also based on the linearity of time.

This was brought home to me once as I sat listening to another twenty first century sage, Ramesh Balsekar, in his house in Mumbai. Talking of Karma and reincarnation he once raised the interesting proposition, “You are saying that you are what you are today because of what you did yesterday…perhaps it is the other way around, what happened to you yesterday, is because of what you are doing today…”

That is the sort of statement that, on initial impact, makes one wonder whether the speaker is in full possession of his marbles…however, on reflection, it become crystal clear (at least to those just as insane) that our understanding of life is based on linearity, time goes ahead in a line. If one sees time as a circle which wraps around us it becomes so obvious…to take it further, take away time completely and there is no cause, no effect…any way all these are what Ramesh would himself dismiss as ‘concepts’.

The important issue is that as long as we look for cause and effect, right and wrong, we will continue to be trapped in the linear flow of life and energy. The same patterns will continue and history will continue to repeat itself.

If we want to step away from the constant mousetrap of action, reaction, we need to step back and stop, and, in that stopping, aka Noble Silence, new patterns will emerge…it is like the little touch you give a kaleidoscope and the broken glass rearranges itself in a new pattern…a new mental model will emerge…and an awareness of why mangoes will fly…nevertheless still a mental model and not reality...