Meetings With An Indian Railway God – Against All Odds

This is a true story that occurred in my life,
Which goes to show
What a limitless power it is -
The urge of Mind's sway.

I am a German boy of an
Old hoof-smiths' gender,
The first in line to fall out of my forefathers' mould
Due to the innovations of modern day surpassing
Our handling of the beasts of burden of yore.

And as major push towards a life of wanderings and explorations,
That, in the end, led me to encounter
This story of which I am telling here,
May be counted the fact that a certain
Hereditary restlessness was in my veins,
Possibly already stemming
From a very outgoing nature in my good mother's parental home
Where traditionally the village folk, young and old,
Used to gather for common parlour -
A hub knob of a whole tiny big world in itself -
Instilling in me a thirst to go out
Into the world to explore for myself
The hidden truths behind the phenomenal and ephemeral.

And I landed, eventually, in Southern India,
In the city of Madurai,
Dressed myself up like as any good local boy does,
In gallantly draped white cloth.

Coming in by train. I
Met at the Madurai station,
While idly loitering around after arrival,
Their local railway station master -
One imposing, smart-looking figure.

We were dressed both the same style, he and I,
And he might have liked my going after
His country's fashion, thus sifting me out.

He took me upstairs to the station's cafeteria,
And it was there and then that I realized
How stupendously wise
Great people of India are.

This station master was such a cosy pychnic -
Garrulously talking it away
In lovely tones telling me and my travel companion,
Who had an amuleted dog with him,
Wise, well-focused words in a stream of various contexts -,

And most amazingly:
He knew everything even about dogs,
Since my companion had brought one cute dog
All the way from far Varanasi.
Yes, he knew all about
What's common and what's different with various pets,
With their behaviour, their likes and dislikes,
And everything about them.

But not only that - he left me with
The feeling that this was a man
Who could tell you about anything -
Any other topic - you name it! - as expediently -
Things one wouldn't have come to think of, otherwise.

From the cafeteria Madurai's station master then walked to downtown
Together with us two tourists
Finally to bid farewell at the junction to his home.

In those days I then had commenced to
Study to read the Tamil alphabet.
Thus it had come about that some Tamil man told me
That Madurai station master
Was commonly known in town as
The Railway God of Madurai.

I was, at that time, at the tender age of twenty.
For the next ten years to come
I had not taken to travelling at all
Spending time in my German home.

But I had never forgotten, whenever
I recalled my trips to India,
About one impressive Tamil man - and his eloquent wisdom:
This man was the one they called the Railway God of Madurai.
And many many times it was that
I told stories to friends
About my endearing encounter with this one impressive Indian figure.

Another ten years into time I moved out from Germany
And I settled down in a town
On the southern island of Mindanao
In the Philippines.

And again, I came to tell many of my new friends there
The story of my one-time meeting in Madurai
With one whom they called their Railway God.

Another eight years later,
I came to visit the town of Madurai
Once again, and I went to look for the old station master.
I stepped inside the office room, where,
At the Madurai station it read 'station master',
But the old man I was looking for,
Was not there, instead four flabberghasted young men
Asking me what I was up to there.
They wouldn't give me any clues, and seemed to be engaged
In a power dispute among each other at the time.
So I just left it all at that.

Another two years later in time, travelling once more,
Again I happened to be
For a few days' stay in that same city of Madurai.
I had made, in the meantime, some acquaintances
With local boys there, all very friendly to me.

During that one stay then,
Suddenly I was invited by the boys
To join a Hindu funeral party.
'If I would like to come - and see
How we Hindus deal with death? '
So I went with them, and
Already on the way to the house of the deceased person,
I somehow felt a premonition in my chest.
I asked my friendly guides -
Really but knowing yet nothing, just giving it a try -
If the dead person were the old
Railway station master of their town.

And lo! to my very surprise,
This is what they confirmed:
'Yes, station master! the station master has died, '
So they replied,
'And his sons want you to be there for their father's funeral.'

And there I was, face to face, with my
'Most Remembered Indian of All Times', once more,
As he was seated,
Having passed on to a higher world
After one dignified full life-time,
In his grandfather chair there, with his horned glasses on,
Looking toward the main door
As if he were still alive.

There were dozens of mourners,
Women, men, and children, lining up on all sides,
In and around the departured one's house,
And they were, as it seemed,
All waiting for me, -
To anoint the forehead of
The Railway God of my memories.

This is a true story that occurred in my life,
Which goes to show
What a limitless power it is -
The urge of Mind's sway.

My mother's maiden name was Sedlmeir.
Sedl in Tamil means a fair ground's carousel.
Ayyar denotes any Tamil family of good standing.
In my mother's German parental village home
May well have stood in the old days
Such a Sedl carousel.

We are all still linked up together
Through the cultural links created
By our ancient fathers,
Which at times bring us together, quite mysteriously,
In present days,
As I've enjoyed to experience in this outstanding story.

Wo bleiben die Pioniergeister der Geldabschaffung?

Es muß wohl erst einmal zu einem gewaltigen Schub an Pioniergeist auf seiten von mehr und mehr einzelnen Menschen kommen, damit das wild wuchernde Zahlungsmittel und nahezu alle Menschen mehr oder weniger würgende Geld außer Gefecht gesetzt werden könnte. Denn, wartet man auf eine diesbezügliche Initiative von oben herab, also von den Trägern der politischen Macht und von den führenden Industriellen, so dürfte man vergeblich warten und es wird sich noch lange keine Abschaffung des Geldes am Horizont abzeichnen, denn gerade jene sind am allerwenigsten daran interessiert, da es bei ihnen persönlich aufgrund ihrer Stellungen in der Regel verglichen mit den Massen der Durchschnittsverdiener sehr zum besten steht.

Solche experimentierfreudigen Straßenanliegergemeinschaften, wie es sie bereits in Berliner Kiezen und vielleicht auch an anderen größeren Orten der Welt gibt, die innerhalb ihren Mitgliedern ein Warentauschsystem und andere Selbstversorgerwirtschaftsvarianten pflegen, müßte es langsam vermehrt auch in die Provinzen der Länder, an die kleineren Orte, ziehen, damit das letztendlich angesichts des weltweiten finanziellen Unfriedens auf der Welt unausweichliche Aufkommen von vom Ziel her notwendigen Volksbewegungen, die auf die allfällige Einstellung des Geldwesens drängen, nicht unnötig lange hinausgeschoben wird, und bis dahin noch viel mehr menschlich-existentielles Leid in Kauf genommen werden muß als es jetzt schon der Fall ist.

Es ist nicht damit getan, solche und ähnliche Artikel, wie diesen hier, nur zu lesen und innerlich vielleicht dazu zu nicken, sich aber dabei denken: sollen nur die anderen das Geld abschaffen, das ist nichts für mich. Mit einer solchen Einstellung kommt man dabei nicht weiter.

Jetzt die Köpfe zusammenstecken und in seinem unmittelbaren nachbarschaftlichen Lebensraum zusammen mit den anderen versuchsweise, ohne mit den Gesetzen dabei in Konflikt zu geraten, auszuprobieren, im kleinen Rahmen den geld- und somit zwanglosen, also auf Freiwilligkeit basierenden und nicht penibel aufgerechneten Austausch von Arbeiten gegen Waren einüben - das ist es, was die Menschen ihrerseits fürs erste dazu tun können und tun sollten, damit die Abschaffung des Geldes schon jetzt so langsam in Schwung kommt.

Die bierselig dahingleitenden Stromabwärtsfahrer auf Finnlands Keravanjoki-Fluß blieben obenauf

(eine Meldung aus den Neuesten Heimatnachrichten der finnischen Zeitung vom 2.8.2008, übersetzt aus dem Finnischen)

Vantaa, STT

Zu einem bierseligen Stromabwärtsgleiten hat es heute 1'300 Hitzköpfe in den Keravanjoki-Fluß gezogen. Es kamen auch reichlich Schaulustige an den Ort, um dem Bier-Happening am Fluß beizuwohnen.

Die ersten Dahingleitenden begannen ihre Stromabwärtsfahrt am Vormittag um 11 Uhr und trafen nachmittags gegen drei am Zielort ein. Das Gleiten auf dem Strom setzte sich bis in den späten Abend fort.

Laut Polizei und Rettungsdienststellen lief das Abwärtsgleiten relativ reibungslos ab. Die Rettungsleitstelle sah sich nicht gezwungen, irgendwelchen auf dem Fluß Dahingleitenden, die sich dem Wasser anvertraut hatten, beizustehen.

Die diesjährige Route ging vom Ort Rekola aus und endete bei Vernissa. Die gut sechs Kilometer lange Strecke wurde als besonders gefährlich eingestuft, da es entlang der Strecke Stellen mit Stromschnellen, im Flußgrund stehende Baumstümpfe sowie verschiedene Einbuchtungen gibt, welche, falls es zum Aufprall kommt, das Schlauchboot zerreißen können.

Das Ereignis kennt keinen offiziellen Veranstalter, so daß es auch nicht unter Verbot gestellt werden könnte. Es gibt keinerlei Sicherheitsvorkehrungen am Ort des Geschehens, womit die im Suff im Schlauchboot auf Segelfahrt Gehenden ganz sich selbst und ihrem Glück überlassen bleiben, während sie auf dem trüben Wasser dahintreiben.

Mit diesem bierseligen Stromabwärtsfahren fing es bereits vor über zehn Jahren in kleineren Kreisen an, wonach aber dann das Anwachsen der Zahl der Teilnehmer ausser Kontrolle geriet. Dies veranlaßte die Person, die sich das Ereignis ausgedacht hatte, dazu, ihre Internet-Seiten im Zusammenhang damit einzustellen.

The Will In The Animal

Why won't the acclaimedly intelligent beings of the animal world,

Called the humans,

Eventually understand the language of their fellow creatures?

What for example the message of two cute icebears were,
Who, amidst the dreadful melting away,
From underneath their bear feet, of
Their ice-shaped habitat on the Polar Cap,
Experienced already for over two generations,
Took to such great pains as to

Embarking on a hazardous
Kind of last-chance kamikaze trip of
Hundreds of kilometers,
Partially swimming, partially afloat
Atop drifting ice blocks,
All the way from Greenland to Iceland:

'It is you, you presumptive two-legged lords on the planet,
None else but
You,
With these magic mirrors of your killer-blink-eye hanging
Around your proud necks,

Who art guilty of the reckless diminishing of
Our home in the polar ice!

Since you are ultimately bound for extinguishing us altogether:

Shorten this painful life now,
Shoot, if you can, now! '!

People's lives are led in this magic mix of our world,
So you say,
By intuitions from consequences
We choose to involuntarily take part in,

And you say,
For a major part
People's lives are led
By all these fair & unfair provisions of Providence
We inevitably take shares in,

And by intimidations and by acts of aggression for self-maintenance,
So you say, our lives are led, too.

I once asked a modern Socrates about this thing,
One bald-headed bold-hatted clear-minded thinker
With a prickly animal instinct in his head -

One also you might have met already once
In a tiny far away forest ville.

He remarked to my questions:
'But where is the will of the animal in this concept? '

Well, well well, I said, and am pondering now:

'What makes any whale suffer to go back up the Thames again, after a lapse of 92 turns of the sun? '

I now feel the winds of the will in modern scientific man
When he spreads
'The life of a whale wistfully straying in people's waterways
Must be that of one misled! '


Erhard Hans Josef Lang

Bittgebet an die Götter unter uns um Baldige Abschaffung des Geldes

O Du im Schilf des kosmischen Flusses Dich aus Dir selbst Gebärende,

die Du von unseren Vorvätern bereits angerufen wurdest,

welche sich, dabei zum rechten Weg findend,

den Opfergängen des Lebens näherten,

gewähre denen, die heutzutage, wissentlich oder unwissentlich,

durch ihre Dienste Dir opfern,

alle möglichen guten Dinge, einen Anteil, der einen Wert besitzt

von soviel wie ein tausend der Opfergaben.

Das Fließen dieses Muttergewässers,

welches eine reiche, den Geist verfeinernde Essenz destilliert,

wird mit eben der gleichen Essenz unsere Mängel reinemachen.

Deren strahlend den gesamten Geist beleuchtende Natur

säubert alles Unheil.

Ich erhebe mich daraus geläutert und aufgehellt.

Gehe du, O abgelebtes Geld, den am weitesten von uns entfernten Pfad,

den Pfad, der dir gebührt,

welcher von denen, die zu wahren Göttern werden,

nicht begangen wird.

Ich lade dich, der du sowohl sehen wie auch hören kannst,

mit folgendem magischen Spruch auf:

Behellige nicht mehr länger unsere Kinder oder unsere Kameraden!

Wenn, nachdem alle Spuren des todgeweihten Geldes verwischt sind,

ihr zurückkehrt, die Spanne eurer Tage auszufüllen,

möget ihr, erweitert um Nachkommenschaft und reichliche Ausstattungen,

ein Leben führen, das rein ist und nur so glänzt,

und den personifizierten Idealen der fortgeschrittenen Menschheit, den Göttern, alle Ehre macht!

Das abgelebte Geld werden diese, die wahrhaft zu leben beginnen, los sein.

Unserem Gesuch an die wahren Ideale der Menschheit

und an deren Vollstrecker wird stattgegeben werden.

Wir machen uns jetzt dann zum Tanzen und zu freudigem Gelächter auf,

dazu zurückkehrend, die Spanne unserer Tage auszufüllen.

Penniless Pride Of Pristine Feathers And Claws

With his imago ever since childhood having been more like that of a
Swift-footed jungle boy'sWho rambles through all of nature's grounds,
Rain or shine, if it were, On fleet feet born of great young love,

While his in-born humble nature wooing
Most of the time he as fondly would lay bare,
With steps literallyTouching to the earth, while pressing forward
On the very nerve of good times,


With him and some settler's boy, reared like free colts by the countryside, ever
Mating with creation, jumping jolly
Across all sunny greens & shady forests of the boyhood days,

Gambolling ever playfully on meads and lakesites, nearby and afar,
At hide and seek with cows and calves, sprinting
Around hidden ponds, often only to be
Falling serene over romantic scenes at dusk with
Dragonflies blinking meaningfully
Amidst frogs and birds over waters kissed good-night by the setting Sun, along with
Contests of proclamations of
The Joy of the day's height,

While deeply, for a youngster, thus having experienced
Highly light-winged and very energetic feelings of life's force right there
In the lap of Mother earth,
As butterflies do, that no giant power may ever entrap,
In perfect harmony with the aweful boars, vipers and deer at closest range,

It so happened, that when as a grown man in his mid-forties -
Born a Westerner that he was but
Deep down inside of himself still being the very same jungle boy of old -
Later on in life he once wended his ways,
Clad traditional like any local man from Southern India's culture,
While also then bonding with the hallowed soil of
The Tamils' country where he was going about at the time being
With deepened sensations,
On feet likewise bared up to his down-to-earth attitude of
Being part and parcel of everything and the world naturally,
In a laissez-faire way of soleful gait,

At a time now in these post-modern days, when
Even in India, though rooted in age-old and beautiful traditions of
Cosmically empowered, solitary and congregational, divine merrymaking,
As chiefs of magically potent revelations since times immemorial
Have known to sport all of nature's powers - good or bad - in best possible ways, -

Professing highest souls of seers, in front of
Awe-struck people on silent soles,
Revered for their blessings from aloof -

Witnessing to prove all events to be taken
As distant but near echoings from drama plays on the cosmic stage,
Dramas of most fantastic gods and goddesses of
Translucently realistical, most refined figurings, that,
Most vibrantly alive, are worshipped again and again
So as for them to eventually be reining in regally
On one's happiness in life
By acknowledging a devoutly engaged interactive human players' part in overmind, so
Beautifully elated and enchantingly charged,

With this, or something like it, being the prevalent arena of emotions,
At a time when, thus, even in great free-spirited India's deepest provinces meanwhile
The antennas of the englobalizing television stations had started
To spread out their pictures 'from US' along with
The impending impressions and notions, such as
That boys and girls in other parts of the world,
Outside the fold of their own mother's culture, do
Hold very differently shaped ideals of what makes up for good forms and for true beauty,

And that in Western countries it were regarded
Rather as something cheap
For a poor teenage girl to be pawing and slurring her walks just
Like any cat in the streets does, when off on errands or to school,
Afoot on soles only running hot,
Starched by dust and by grime, -

Foreign notions prone to confound the young head of a
Proud young girl of Hindu feathers and claws,
To whom, well aware of her charms,
It would signal merely an untruth belieing her inner feelings
As what kind of cute birdie she felt she was,

If she were to demand for herself all of a sudden toImitate the trendy and be
Going out anything else from going out as ever before
Simply on earth-bound feet that she so subtly knows to beautify? -,

One such young traditionally dressed local teenage girl,
Who had noticed our Western nature boy and
Friend of the Oriental Indian design, walking in the street; -

His simple outfit being simple as that of the truly meek and great souls, and he was-
On bare feet, as she was, who

Came up to meet him, as he meanwhile had noticed her alike,
Halfways on the town's lane-

On him a plain longgi, a length of
Wide cloth wrapped around his waist
Tucked up to his knees in style,
She in a fashionably designed young girl's floral dress -

And who reached out her hand towards his for an intercultural handshake of two souls
That would leave the two with a feeling
Of having understood each other
By way, only, of the other person's aura and display of style,
With not a single word that would have been required to be spoken, -

And she let the single rupee coin that accidentally happened to have been
Held in the palm of the Westerner's hand at the time, and which
During the handshake, by itself, had slipped over into her palm of the hand, proudly
Drop through her fingers and down to the ground,

With him, so as to reassure the girl's good sense of her own intuition,
Signalling to be sensitive enough himself to mend
Any eventually wrong interpretations of what happened
By immediately picking up the dropped coin, stowing it away into his pocket,
And by offering his hand for a new re-enactment of the handshake that was
Meant to be nothing else but one of a deeply personal intercultural meaning-

Without any money involved that time around -

Exactly as what the young dark beauty obviously had intended it to be,

Letting her thereby know that both of them had indeed grasped the mutual unspeakable point of the matter,

And they seized each other's hand spontaneously for a second time,
Completing their intercultural handshake, not without a certain pride,

Both of them smiling and thereafter getting off again on their own ways.

© Erhard Hans Josef Lang

The Spring Time Of Life Creativity

A spring time of life creativity
Long before us
There once had been -
This is from where we humans, too, are derived -
The Merman and the Nymph within the waters -
Universal Fluidum -
These are our origin, our kinship most intimate! -
And First Man, first to see sun's light on earth
Nourished by the saps through a hole-black Vulva,
Embossed into secret earth retreats,
Centrifugally centripetallyfertilizing,
Would have certainly had, you'd bet,
His visionsSet in tune with the unembodied premium
Young & sportive Cosmic Couple's dream creation world
That had parented Him in Her,
God all around,
Very accurately -

So many funny, strangely physical, quirky
Animal gook & geek heads to be
Visualized in dreamy mindscapes of sudden inspiration then,

Out of which grand seeing in
Gay times of Spring seasons, and a
Veritable peak time in young Nature come alive,
It holds that
The abounding nature spirits possessed of
Ever stronger body dreams naturally are
Pressing for the creation of
Themselves in Earth's solid matters,
All these selfsame animals, first seen in hazy dreams,
Now suddenly hopping around in flesh and horned,
Out there, beyond the loam -

The grand stage enactionment
Orchestrated through alignment of webs from
Threads spun in Cosmic Mind with the lively motions on
The planetary seed of our globe, the
Furtive spur for the earth seed to germinate,
Seconded and carried on further in First Man's visionary faces -

The earthen destillary's utensils handled
Through Her various moods of global tempests
And Her lighter weather tempers,
And Their means of fine-tuning the ladling storms cross- & directionwise,
On this our so revolutionary globe,
Destined to be focused on by real-time Gods in the making,

For the act of
A mysterious Creation's high-spirited,
Cosmodreamvision-empowered encapsulization into divinely
Potent magic seeds of ever more & more variegated new forms and
Figures of Life frolicking, all of which eventually
Chance to be mixed up, boiled and
Served out in seed form by
The adventurously playful cosmic visionaire's
Quickening arm of reproductionIn some deep-bottomed vaginal cups
On the rock of earth, during the festival of this
God's world arena's grand self-enhancement, with all
The happy-go-lucky planet's earth spirits concentrated and
Gathered in for a most favourably weathered
Spring time season of (r)evolutionary creation -

All spiced up ingredients of lively matter red-hot with
Most vibrant energy.

A season, surpassed since long by
Another era of actions on the globe,
The ones before us and the present one,
That but until this very day, though
Not any longer bent on diversifying seed creativity -

(With our human demigods taken over the command
Rather to the contrary as of now) -

Reverberates still so wondrous
Through high and low of the earth planet's go.

Copyright Erhard Hans Josef Lang