The secret of personal Ahimsa

I wish that my Room had a Floor;

I don’t so much care for a Door,

But this walking around

Without touching the ground

Is getting to be quite a bore!

_Gelett Burgess_

No wonder Burgess found it difficult, living in air is something which does not suit the cochlear fluid, I hear. Don’t ask me what that is, the cochlear thing, I have no idea; it seems to be the fashion to say such things though, why desist?

My guess is it has something to do with the positioning of our body. It maintains equilibrium (What a nice word, brings back memories of something strange and concealed.)

I remember an Old Kalari master we had.  He was totally mangled by his opponent in a one-to-one combat, though he had always boasted about his prowess in this most ancient form of martial art.

(Bodhidharma the Buddhist Monk from my land introduced it in China and later other martial art forms like Kung-fu, Judo, Taekwondo and Karate developed from it. It is said to be no mean form of self defense).

Anyway, people went to see him at the hospital and asked him what happened.

He was terribly bitter and angry. He complained:

“He didn’t allow me to stay on my feet.”

Now the Kalari is a form of art which relies on foot positions and structured feet movements to face an opponent and defend oneself. There are certain chants like:

“Pressing to left, rising on the right, stepping back and swaying to right, stretching the left forward, going on the haunches, pouncing high to right, clawing in the air ” etc……….

This chant goes to some length and has to be learned by heart and followed strictly to block, move out of range, attack and so on.

There are 18 such fight techniques in it.  Only the supermen go all the way. I am still to meet one such. Six is the best most can do at this time. I have seen certain poor souls who were just into the system. There won’t be any soles on their feel.  The art form is practiced on hard murderous grounds and you just can’t wear a foot wear because it would impede the ‘stance’ you need to be in. With all the jumping and pirouetting that you do on the ground your sole goes.

I thought of having a go at it once, but thought it better to keep the soles on my feet. Anyway, street fighting has nothing to do with the foolishness that they teach in martial arts schools. Any hoodlum can beat any maestro in such arts-forms hollow any day. The real life situations have nothing to do with such bowing and scraping to the opponents. It’s sudden, violent and murderous.

Do you know the best way to keep out of a fight – Never think of fighting at all. You think on it, then you start picturing it in your mind. You start  fantasizing yourself blocking, evading, landing good punches etc the next thing you know is that you are in a fight and are being pummeled. This comes out of experience you know.

So my advice is, think pacifistic thoughts. Be like a Gandhi, practice ahimsa. It would save your lives. If someone hits you show the other cheek, every time. The guy would think you a coward and would feel no thrill in hitting you further. That is the whole secret of personal ahimsa. You don’t have to take it as a divine doctrine. Take it as a pragmatic approach to survival.

I know there are wicked people out there who would not stop at that. Well they might kick you a little more. But showing machismo and getting kicked in that very sensitive part which contains your entire machismo is not the way to go about your life.  After that there would not be much machismo to speak of.

Well the thing which recalled all this to my mind is the chance meeting with a thug of yester years. He was in a bad shape now in the latter half of his life. I have seen his hey days. He had some knowledge of martial arts too, but did not depend on it in fights. Our acquaintance began rather amusingly. I was in college and group from our hostel had gone to see a movie in the night. I was with them.

On the way back we pass several coconut groves. Because of the healthy respect for us collage students all the coconut palms were fixed with sharp steel blades scattered along its entire length to discourage stealing. If someone goes up he would come down cut all over.

Well that usually does not deter the brave among us. We were merely frolicking and had no other intentions what so ever, we would eat all those coconuts we get when back at the hostel. It had a definite taste you know.  Some of the group   was adept at going up the palms wearing chapels, on the feet as well as the hands. It is some trick I can assure you. This minimizes of the risk of being injured by the embedded blades. And to lessen the noise of the coconuts falling we would hold our dhotis under it, like the fire men holding a carpet under the falling bodies.

All this would be entirely in darkness to prevent detection. After the coconut is cut the guy above would whistle softly, someone would shine a small pen torch on the dhoti which is held by its corners by four of us.  The guy would drop coconut precisely on it. There would be utter silence all round.

But the owners of the groves had their suspicion and had employed that thug I spoke of to look after them. On this day after we had plucked a dozen or so coconuts he came roaring towards us wielding a bike chain in his hand. We just could not run our friends were up in the palms still plucking. We were rooted to the ground. Now bike chain is not a proposition that one can like. We were all brave, but not that brave. Then one of the guys above in the palms called out hoarsely.

“Chakko, it us, Jayan up here.”

Well the thug stopped and peered at us.

“Oh, it’s you urchins is it?”

We said “yes.”

“How many did you pluck?”

“About a dozen.”

“How many are you now.”

“Well, about that, more or less……….”

He sat down.

“Well, pluck about another fifty, be quick about it, before some other fools come along, I have some stuff back in the shed. Let us all have a ball.”

We laughed and did so. The party at his shed went on till the small hours of the next day. After that he was a powerful friend to us. You have something threatening you physically; he was the guy to call in. Because of his name (he cut off a piece of ass from those he paid a visit to, they won’t be able to sit down in a hurry), the trouble-some elements would soon disperse.

He is in decline now. Has the same affection too, he still calls me sonny.

The exploits in his younger days have completely mashed him up. Well every one, you know, to their lives…………….