Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 13

Winters are Here- Notes from the Cold

Winters are here. Not the devastating one which numbs one’s soul and drives deep into the body like the brutal edge of a knife piercing through a slab of ice, with wisps of smoke rising from it. Delhi, the city of extreme weathers, is not there yet. The evenings are cold, but bearable, the mornings are chilly, but welcoming. The war between the Sun and the winter continues. The Sun is brighter than the summer days, but not cruel. There is more brightness than the heat, like a strict disciplinarian father, observing his loveliest daughter, an Elizabeth Bennet to a Mr. Bennet. Winter, in Delhi, steps in slowly with unsure steps and once it finds the ground firm enough to bear its heavy steps, it stamps with the madness of a wild beast, as January brings in the New Year. The bright sunbeams of the initial days of splendid winter mornings dies, helpless in the face of a sudden vengeance of the grey winters descending from an unkind heaven- fog, mist, smog; its broken wings spread, decaying, dead remnants of a failed fight. The dense fog descends and the Earth is wrapped in the silences of the winters. It is devastating, yet beautiful; crushing to the soul, yet charming. Something like love with all its magic and madness. That is how my city walks towards the winters. Those who love outdoors and are weaker in spirits, despair; those with braver outlook, wade through the chilling yet mystical cover of the fog; writers and poets pull the curtains and in the warmth of a burning soul, read and write, half-lying in their couches, wrapped in furry blankets.
Those on the streets, struggle to steal some warmth- in tattered clothes, in shelters, demonstrating the failure of the collective to support their brethren. The homeless pulling their blankets over their heads on the streets, stand like a sore-thumb and ugly slogan of the heartlessness of their counterparts in the city, whose city they build- making flyovers, making Metro, derisively addressed as Biharis. The city dwellers consider them stupid. Yes, stupid they are to continually elect the governments in their own states which criminally neglected the governance, forcing this cold exile on them. The caste and religion which they follow while voting in their own cities and town, and elect incompetent and corrupt leaders, with the satisfaction of having stood by their religion and caste, dissolves under the giant wheels of a gargantuan city with the heart of stone, as they all merge into a common identity of migrants, huddled under the flyovers. Take that, Ashoka the Great of Patliputra, the city of refugees laughs at your people and washes its hands twice when it touches them accidentally. They shiver incessantly and humanity shivers with them like that lonely leaf on the twig, struggling a hostile weather, about to fall and die and decay without a moment’s notice.

The decaying, foul smell of mendacity rides on the evening winter winds as Champagne is poured into the glasses, and music flows against the clinking of crockery in the back drop of a benevolent idol of Santa riding his carriage smiling at a corner, welcoming the New Year. Nights come early and dark blanket envelopes the city as dead as its inhabitants.  The winters are here. The city, like every year, looks forward for a possibility of redemption or an even definite decay, in this season. Will the chill beat the warmth of human spirit or will the glow of human heart rise above the grey darkness of the numb, fogged senses? - is the question which every winter brings to this city. This city which died seven times to come back to life again awaits redemption. Will this city and the heart of it which pulsates in the some dark, cold corners, that red, organ of the size of a human fist, beating against the cold, survive the biting slaps of an impending winter?  As the season oscillates between beauty and bitterness, between sensuality and sadness, between magic and melancholy, I read, a Gustave Flaubert quote, " Are the days of the winter sunshine just as sad for you too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins. " and wonder if he was talking to me when he wrote that.

Why Congress Should not Try Muddying the Waters and leave the Army Alone?

In a world offering unprecedented anonymity to people on social media, and a tempting opportunity of unimaginable dishonesty to people on mainstream media, it is appropriate to make a disclaimer pronouncing my lack of credentials when I write about subjects in which my interest is limited to being a logical and nation-loving India. I was not an economist when I wrote about demonetization and I am not a military or defense expert, when I am writing this post about the needless controversy being raked about the appointment of the new Chief of Army Staff (COAS).  I wrote earlier on Demonetization as an ordinary citizen and possibly, as a poet and a writer, with no ax to grind. My intent of writing on the appointment of the next Army chief is similar. I do not know the new Army Chief, Lt. General Bipin Rawat, nor do I know the two officers he superseded, both by all accounts of exemplary merit. We live in odd times. The social media is a lawless arena. It offers great opportunity to naive and lesser knowledgeable souls like me, it also offers those with lies in their eyes and conspiracy in their pen to use this lawless playground into a location for creating propagandist Frankensteins and set about unsuspecting masses to chase and fight them. So editors would happily write their official designation in their Twitter profiles and then put a remark with asterisk, something akin to declaration running at the end of mutual fund investment advertisement, that tweets are personal. The opposition party out of power, having bitten dust in the last election, though have lost the numerical supremacy in the electoral battle on account of their dynastic politics and unprecedented corruption, insists on continuance of their role in national governance and polity. 

 We are living in a world of easy information availability and if one were to put his mind to it, truth will easily be out. But then, unfortunately this is also an age of information deluge.  Before we could dig into one falsehood and extract the lies, comes another falsehood, more evil, more complex than the previous one. A defeat is a time for reflection and introspection. The problem with Congress is that they cannot do that. Introspection in the context of the grand old party is impossible, because it would mean a change in leadership, thoroughly proven to be incompetent, if not thoroughly corrupt. The dynastic politics prevents any genuine possibility of introspection and improvement. The dynastic heads at the top, Humpty-dumpty, mother-son duo, stay untouched, and beyond questions. The courtiers who derived power from the continuity of the dynastic rule are the most ruffled, and they have no qualms in stooping to whatever level, in order to, in some way, restore the earlier status. They have no respect for any institution, having trampled over all that the natives built for themselves, post independence. They build narratives, those narratives are echoed with amplification and beyond a point, no one cares what was the truth. It happened in case of Beef Ban, in case of Demonetization, and now they are intending to create a communal angle around the appointment of the Army chief. The apolitical, dignified and selfless nature of Indian defense forces is a matter of pride for an Indian citizen, especially when compared to the neighboring nations. While the respect for the Forces remain untarnished for the common citizen, Congress never cared about the forces. Possibly post-71 war, Indira Gandhi realized that while people respected the political leadership for the great victory, there was some glory to be shared with the armed forces. She did not like it much and possibly the pension for soldiers was altered, pay commission scrapped, withing three years of the 71 victory.  It was almost as if she was waiting for Sam Maneckshaw, the soldier's soldier to retire. Even Field Marshal, the Patron- Commander of the Indian forces was deprived of his dues, settled only when he was towards the last of his life. 

It is preposterous for such a party to now show concerned about the appointment, and cry hoarse about the appointment of Lt. Gen. Rawat superseding two other officers. Two Congressis, Shahzad Poonawala and his brother, came forward, even alleging the communal angle. Now, I will not write a detailed note of how there is a merit in this appointment superseding the two officers in question. It is not for me to answer. This question is aptly settled by Retd. Gen Syed Ata Hasnain in his post on Swarajya Mag (Read Here ). He explains how possibly the experience in North-West and North-East, both with sensitive borders and acute insurgency, of Lt. General Rawat went in his favor vis-a-vis Lt. General Praveen Bakshi, a cavalry officer and Lt. General PM Hariz. In the context of attacks on Army in Kashmir and recently in North East, it does makes perfect sense. The congress on the other hand, not only called this appointment cherry-picking by government of the day, the foot-soldiers of the corrupt queen, ousted from power, even called it RSS design to avoid making a Muslim, that is Lt. Gen. Hariz, head of Indian Army. That their allegation were false and unfounded made no difference to them. They spoke their nonsense into the abyss of absurdity called twitter, with their blue-ticked soldiers amplifying it dutifully. Only few days back, we had all the media propagandists tweeting how it was unsafe to do financial transactions on-line, on account of hacking of the Twitter account of the prince. What was shamelessly exposing was the fact that they all tweeted tweets which were identical, verbatim. It was also interesting that their Twitter accounts were allegedly hacked, but none of them advocated leaving twitter until the security is improved, they attacked the security of a totally unrelated applications. If modern IT is so insecure, what do we do, send pigeons and fly kites? They would not answer that. The game is clear, this is what Rahul Gandhi meant when Congress lost the Delhi election that they ought to become more like AAP. So it is shoot and scoot game is at play. Poonawala claimed that Lt. General Hariz was superseded since government wanted to avoid a Muslim commander. The dubious duo conveniently ignored that even if seniority was followed, Lt. General Bakshi would have become the chief. If they bring about the argument that Lt. Gen Hariz could have succeeded General Bakshi, that is also not based on facts since Lt. General Hariz is set to retire before General Bakshi. One would breathe a sigh of relief that it is just fortunate that their conspiracy theory is weak on facts. But then it might not have been, what hell would have broke lose in that case.

The argument is so absurd, especially coming from Congress. APJ Abdul Kalam, the late president, also the Supreme Commander of Indian Forces, in his second term, was supported by BJP, but was ditched by Congress because in his first term, he refused to toe the Sonia Gandhi line. No one uttered a word when a Muslim Commander in Chief was replaced by a woman congress leader from Maharashtra with dubious record. Congress had set aside the seniority principle in appointments in their regime as well recently, even if we do not go as far back as the appointment of General AS Vaidya. Admiral RK Dhowan superseded Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha to become Navy Chief in 2014. Outside Army, in 2012, Congress appointed Syed Asif Ibrahim as IB Chief superseding, four officers. BJP was the main opposition, had 159 seats. BJP did not utter a word, not on his religion at least. But Congress, with 44 seats in the parliament and grand illusions of its stature even as opposition would not show even a modicum of decency, would not leave any institution un-attacked. Little do they appreciate how deeply they annoy any nationalist Indian, as their politics continue to revolve around the Mother-son duo, while senior leader in their own party languish in subordinate roles.  I don't care what they do with their ailing institution, I have quarrel with them trying to tarnish a fine institution in their zeal to attack the Narendra Modi government. There will be finer writers and better experts who will blow holes in the fake outrage of the Congress. I am writing to record my protest. I am writing because lie unchallenged will become truth. I am writing to tell the despotic dynasty, with everyday tantrum, Initially the nation was excited, now, it is bored, soon it will be annoyed and disgusted. I had written earlier as well, I urge you once again, Let the soldier be. 

Happy Birthday, Jane Austen

“What chance would the craftiest biographer stand against the subject who saw him coming and decided to amuse himself.” – Wrote Julian Barnesabout Gustave Flaubert, in Flaubert’s Parrot (Click here to read review), a semi-biographical fiction on Flaubert. Essentially his point is let the writer be, as a person, that is. Jane Austen makes for an even difficult person to be traced. Mr. Austen Leigh (Jane Austen’s nephew) wrote about her, “ I doubt whether it would be possible to mention any other author of note whose personal obscurity of was so complete.” It sure does help when we consider the work of a writer which defined the way we looked at things for generations to come. That is the reason having spent one chapter arguing against it, Barnes ended up writing Flaubert’s Parrot and I end up writing here about Jane Austen. But this is not a biography, not even a biographical note (which can be found on Wiki - Link here ), rather a homage and an ode.
            Jane Austen was borne this day, on 16th of December, 1775. I am always in awe of women writers. The amount of attention they pay to the words they pen is evident in the exquisite arrangement of the language, and how the works of most women writer caresses the soul. Virginia Woolf might beat me up with a stick, if only she were alive today, for suggesting women’s writing to be different from that of the writing of male writers. But then it is true. Both Heart of Darkness and Orlando for that matter are great work of literature, but there is a wry baritone which runs in your mind when you read Joseph Conrad, which is distinctly different from the soft and elegant tenor of Virginia Woolf or Jane Austen. I am particularly fond of the writings of women author from Eighteenth and early Nineteenth century. There is certain calm, a noticeable peace and patience about those writings. Probably it reflects the time in which they were written. When you read these books, they don’t leave scars on your soul, they leave your soul smiling and satiated.
            She died at the age of 41 on 18th of July, 1817. She published six novels in this short time- Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Emma; her first- Sense and Sensibility written at the age of Twenty-One. She wrote about the dogmas of her times, and without any bitterness of feelings or shrillness of sound she describes her world as a neutral narrator, with an almost uninterested vantage point. But that is nothing but a smart and successful tool to fool us. We know she is not merely a talkative bystander when she wrote what was to become the most famous first lines of a novel for all times- It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" in Pride and Prejudice. As we read through the anxiety of a mother of five girls, Mrs. Bennett, struggling to get her daughters married in a prosperous and respectable family, we know that Jane is breathing in not only Mrs Bennett or another woman in the story. She is in all the women of the story, while Elizabeth Bennett is what she strives to be. Elizabeth, the scholarly girl, is not a cynic; she has a deeply romantic world view. She is not the one wanting to let go of her intellectual moorings to leap into the world of love. She represents the girl who gets it all by refusing to let go of her true self. She thus becomes a woman of aspiration for all girls, and remains so now after more than two centuries. Her stories are happy and hopeful with the bright sunlight pulsating across the pages, even in the rains and storms.            Jane Austen, George Elliot, Charlotte Bronte  and Virginia Woolf are the writers, whose work stand as light houses, on the voyage of women emancipation across the centuries and their glory lies in the never-fading, never-diminishing charm that their work holds, in the timelessness they encompass. There work irrespective of the styles they represent, have one common theme- of women discovering the inner beauty of their soul, of women choosing intellect above the skin. All these writers, build amazing characters, way ahead of their times. All these writers did not write critiques of their times, they were much smarter. They instead created lovely characters who were ahead of their times and thus their characters became their argument against the inconsistencies of their times.  That is why they succeeded so profoundly. Their heroins are incongruous to their times, but by God, they are so adorable that one want to be them. For a young girl, no sermons would set her on a path of intellectual discovery swifter than a reading of the character of Elizabeth Bennett; and Jane does it without killing the softer romance. Miss Elizabeth Bennett's emancipation is not in quarrel with her desire for love, it rather created the foundation for a self-respecting and real romance. They did not give their readers a shrill slogan; they gave them a dream to pursue. She celebrates womanhood, she is proud of being a woman. For Jane, her story is the message, her characters are the slogans. Her slogans never shout, they whisper softly, they speak to the soul- about identity, about social divide, about intellectual discovery, about refinement of the soul. It is this tenderness of representation which makes Virginia Woolf compare her with none other than Shakespeare when she writes in A Room of Her Own, “Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That is how Shakespeare wrote.” And she didn’t have a room of her own, she wrote in her sitting room, hiding her papers whenever someone walked in.  She would never come in the way of the story she told, she would only breathe into her words at a very subliminal level.   

It is not easy to write about Jane Austen. It is not even brave; it is actually foolhardy to try to explain that greatness. Virginia Woolf wrote in 1924- “Anybody who has had the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of two facts: First, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are 25 elderly gentlemen living in the neighborhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult offered to the chastity of their aunts.” I still attempt to write about her, not as a literary historian or an author of such worth to attempt to evaluate her, rather as a fan and an admirer of the limitlessness of woman’s mind when she decides to soar high. I also write as a father to a little girl, in whom I see Elizabeth Bennet of Jane Austen, Jane Eyre of Charlotte Bronte, Dorothea Casaubon of MiddleMarch and well, I would confess, Dagny Taggart of Ayn Rand. I hope I will be forgiven for this audacity.  Happy Birthday, Jane. May your stories be read for all the centuries to come, may our girls be intellectually as brave as Elizabeth Bennet who would look into eyes of every challenge and proclaim in a soft yet unwavering voice , “My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.” Forget the grays, girls, true emancipation will come about in the bright sunlight of Ms. Austen’s world. We need more, not less of it.
My Review of Middlemarch - Click here to Read

Book Review: Our Particular Shadows

It is a pity that I had kept this book unread for such a long time. But then, this is the second book by Radhika Mukherjee that I was reading. The earlier book (Broken Shadows Review here ) was such a sweet pleasure that I wanted to read this one with due respect that her writing truly deserves. Writings of some writers are like ripe fruit, which if handled carelessly would fall and explode. Her writing is like that. Her earlier book to me was a sweet surprise, this one was an eager expectation.
Radhika writes prose but it is so near to poetry. In fact, when you read it, let yourself emerge in it. It has the magic, the vigor and the flow much nearer to spoken-word poetry. The magic of experimental prose is in the honesty it carries. It is as if the writer decided not to let his own consciousness stand between the page and his soul, as if the medium merged into the creator and they are no longer two distinct entities.
The magic rises from the mundane, a night, in its silence, weaves a song, softer than the silence. Words are caressing, mystical and nurturing. They rise like a wisp and wrap themselves around your soul. The collection has seven stories in its thin form, thin yet succulent - Longing, Promise, Magician, Poison, So?, Shot! And Quiet.
There is a silent night of longing, the night, which is not any other night. This is where philosophy melts into romance- The first story, Longing. Although it seemed, the longing became too for the writer’s soul for the longing end in the minute light as she stares into the firefly. Not a greedy soul, she says, We spoke of wondrous worlds! And sealed pacts that only spirit will ever know. My soul returned- a deep peace…With one last glimmer, my friend flew away and twinkled from a distance. Melted into the stars- And it was enough. For all my eternities.
A moment of love, an eternity of memories. How much love is too much love? A moment, a lifetime. An eternity in a moment, like a sea-shell holding a pearl in its breast. Her writing is not sad for a moment. Not even in longing. It is evident, as Longing, is immediately followed by Promise. She is deep, she is not an easy customer, not one to be fooled. We know it as she writes, Maya was spreading her sore-missed mantle over me again. She knows it is Maya, an illusion, but still she smiles, and the world smiles with her. The wisdom to know and an ever greater wisdom to allow not knowing. The acceptance of the world as it is, an illusion, a fantasy and still welcome it with open arms, emancipation.
 She is always optimistic, always hopeful. Even when she is waiting for the Poison. Even poison is a victory. She is a Sufi here in her prose, a dancing dervish. A soul stretching from eternity unto eternity, and when she ends the next story So? With,  "at least you smiled, now perhaps we may cry, 
and what hits us is the oneness between grief and happiness. Two sides on one coin, the other side of the moon. The light melts into darkness and the dark fades into light, the twilight which we call life.

I am totally in awe of Radhika Mukherjee’s talent. She is a mystic poet who camouflages herself as a story-teller. Her writings are not for you if you are looking for trendy stories. If you want to read something timeless, something which will survive both the reader and the writer, do read this. I am greedy. I do not know if Radhika plans to someday write a full-length novel. If she does and if these stories are any indications, we might have a writer penning something like The Waves ( my review ) of Virginia Woolf someday. Her writing is experimental prose which is so rare to find these days. Dive in to discover the divinity in the magical world of words. This is the book you will keep coming back to, whenever your soul is bruised by the brutal world we live in, and I am sure, it will always soothe your senses.
Amazon Page :  Click Here

Wanting to be Read- Plight of a Writer

A common statement and position many writers take is that we write for ourselves and we don’t care about other people’s opinion about our writing. It is self-deceiving and kind of self-protective position. We want to save ourselves of the scathing impact of brutal reviews and avoid the embarrassment of reviews which do not happen. Let us get this straight. Writers write to be read. Reviews are a sign that they are being read. That apart, in the today’s world, and possibly it always has been that way; one picks up the books read and recommended by those we believe in, in matters literary. From that perspective, reviews are very important to the writers. 
Don’t look down on the desire of a writer to be reviewed. Don’t be so judgement, not in such a hurry. It is not always commercial reason that one wants the book to sell. It can also be because the author truly believes that he has a message, he has an emotion to share with the world. It can be that and just that. Reviews make the books roll. They make people pick up the books and read and in a way, allow your words to touch their souls. 
I have been reaching out to people through giveaways, seeking and hoping for reviews for my stories collection. I must tell you it is very humiliating. We writers are like aliens from the outer world sending out messages in the ether, our pleas, and our requests to be heard. The world doesn’t owe us a reading. We try to polish our words, string them like exquisite beads, so that our readers might get charmed by their beauty and their hearts be stroked by one small, hidden messages skillfully sneaked into the stories we write, wrapped into the poems we stitch. I don't write for myself. If one were to believe in Sartre, no one does. His explanation is that writing being such a subjective art that one cannot actually make sure what one has written is right unless it be read by others. I will quote a complete passage of his from his famous essay - What is Literature? which beautifully brings home the point, much more elegantly than I ever could. He writes, "The creative act is only an incomplete and abstract moment in the production of a work. If the author existed alone he would be able to write as much as he liked; the work as object would never be able to see light of the day and he would either have to put down his pen or despair....it is the conjoined effort of author and reader which brings upon the scene that concrete and imaginary object which is the work of mind. There is no art except for and by others." And while he contends that the risk the writer takes is far greater than the reader since he is the first in the uncharted land, and he risks much walking in there as he writes no matter how far the reader goes, the writer goes farther; he still maintains how the two complement each other, and are necessary to one another,  when he concludes that reading is a pact of generosity between the author and the reader. I would further stick out my neck that generosity to my mind is more on the part of the reader, for the author is serving his own necessity, while the reader indulges the author out of his or her own volition. Reader has a choice, writer doesn't. Writer has a gift for the reader, but the reader can still decide not to receive it.

It is disappointing when someone opts for the giveaway and doesn’t read it. It is sad. Selling is another matter altogether. When someone buys your book, some unknown benefactor and then writes a sweet review, happens rarely, but when it does, it is such a big boost. But expected or unexpected, reviews mean a lot to the writer. They prove that the words you wrote in utter loneliness are being heeded to by a world largely disinterested in what you keep scribbling in your journal, looking at the vast nothingness outside your window.  

In a world of self-promotion and networking as an essential part of writing today (I don't know what Salinger would have done in today's world of book launches in Five star hotels and getting invited via network to literature festivals), it is not always easy for a writer who would more often than not have resorted to written word primarily because of his handicap at socialization, let alone his impossible awkwardness at self-promotion. Trust me, I know that man. The man who wants to tell people what he has written and wants them to read those words because he feels those words will have answer to their questions as well, but is too embarrassed to admit having written, in the first place. I am that man. It is awkward to admit it but many I have deceived and pestered into reading my book would know that already. Writing in any case is setting yourself up for public humiliation, so well, why not admit it. I seek refuge in the words of Samuel Johnson- “ I would rather be attacked than be unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent to his word.”  And would end with thanks to those who took time to review “ The Rude Tenderness of Our Hearts ”- to Bhumika, Purba, Alice, Bithika, Archit, Puja and few others who left review under the anonymous title of Amazon customer. You have helped me have courage to keep writing more. It also reminds me of my own unkept promise of reviewing one ARC. I am so bad. And to think of it, it is one of the writer whose work I so profoundly appreciate. I will write that review soon. In fact, today I had set about to write that review, but it became this post. That is an honest confession and an apology to that writer whose review I owe. She knows my apology is directed to her, and I know, easy to please people that writers are, she will forgive this delay.

Of Ruskin Bond and Alice in the Wonderland

My Daughter with Ruskin Bond at Times LitFest   Kids have the purest of the hearts and neatest of the intellect. This intellect is not yet a tool to defend or explain oneself. It is rather to seek the knowledge, to understand and come to terms with the world around them which as yet is a new, fascinating entity to their fresh eyes. It is such a pity that we have so few writers who are able to understand, respect that unadulterated intellect and that wide-eyed curiosity of a child. 
 When I saw the expectant children listening with unwavering attention to octogenarian author, Ruskin Bond, speaking lucidly with the boyish glint in his eyes, I gather, what is that one thing which makes writing for children so fulfilling, yet so rare. When one listens the way he responds to the children, one understands the mind and heart which doesn't have a disparaging view of the consumers of his art. He bends down gently to listen, to embrace and find comfort in the company of these little people who will some day inherit this world. It was no surprise then that when asked his favorite childhood book, it was Alice in Wonderland. It takes one to know one. 
Most of the writers for kid's stories have either used kids as the props or wrote as a writer looking down at the kids. Those who wrote with due respect to the children as the readers and as people with a keen sense of awareness have been far and between. We can count on our fingers writers like Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, AA Milne, RK Narayan and now Ruskin Bond. It is coincidental as well as somewhat prophetic that Ruskin Bond gets the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Times Literature Festival in Delhi on this date, 26th of November, 2016, which marks 151st Anniversary of the first publication of iconic Alice in The Wonderland. 
In the writings of all these greats, we find that writing for kid is extremely difficult. Contrary to what a lot of sub-standard literature which passes off as children literature would make us believe, Children literature need not be lazy representation of stupid facts. It is rather a simplistic and elegant representation of complex facts of life. It needs a purpose to serve. 
The work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who went with the nom de plume of Lewis Carroll stands testimony to this. Dodgson, a lecturer of Mathematics wrote one of the profoundest and quirkiest tale with immense honesty and great interest in what effect it would produce in his readers. While Dodgson was a mathematician, Ruskin Bond was poor in mathematics as he said today; what connects the two is the immense comfort that they show in company of kids. Whether it be wise advise of Bond to a child who asked about his best childhood friend, that one should be one's best friend, or the diary of Dodgson, mentioning specifically the days when he had the company of kids, it shows. He at one place refers to Alice, the little girl as one without whose infant patronage I might never have written at all. 
Dodgson wrote the story of Alice, a little girl set out on adventures with an eclectic set of amazing characters on her way, while on a trip on 4th July 1862, for Alice, one of the three daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, George Liddell as Alice's Adventure Underground. Persuaded by friends and with illustrations developed into a novel, it was published on 26th of November, 1865, 2000 copies in all. The book had a slow start but soon became a rage. The quirky genius of Lewis Carroll found an admirer even in Queen Victoria, who desired that Lewis Carroll dedicates his next book to her. True to his genius and naughtiness of the readers of his first book, Lewis Carroll wrote his second book and dedicated it to the Queen of England. Only catch, the book was called "An Elementary Treatise on Determinants"- A book of mathematical theorems (linear equations). 
Of late, Alice books have moved from kid's bookshelves to parent's bookshelves. Presumptuous people that we adults are, we presumed that these books will bewilder the kids, or that it is beyond their comprehension. It is more to do with our own busy, uni-dimensional lives with little time for anything and a laziness which has crept into modern life, in general, and modern intellectual life in particular. In an effort to escape the effort which kids undoubtedly will need to sail through these mesmerizing tales, we have taken these books away from them and given them books of rhyming notes with little message. Those books would do nothing to prepare them for the future, which these books certainly would. I have immense respect in Virginia Woolf as the final arbitrator on any matter literary, and totally agree when she wrote that the Alice books are not books for children. They are the only books in which we become children. Let us not deprive kids with such marvelous treasures on account of our poor judgement. Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature at University of Kent at Canterbury made perfect sense when he wrote the following lines.  It has become academically fashionable to claim that these are children's books no longer read by children. I cannot see why this should be the case, unless parents have lost their nerve. 
As adults, we hold the power. Let's not get unnerved. Let us open up the vistas of glorious literature to our children, let us help them be better prepared for the capricious character of life which awaits them. Let us write for them with respect and let us read to them with affection.

Demonatization - The Dignity of the Poor

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail…The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write these things. It is his privilege to help men endure by lifting his heart.”- William Falkner, Nobel acceptance speech, December, 10th, 1950
The moments of crisis brings out the best and worst of human spirits. Then there are moments which rewrite the course of a nation. For India, the wars of 62, 65 and 1971 were such moments, so was the Emergency imposed in the late seventies by the Congress government. When we look at those moments, we wade through the old, black and white pictures of those family photographs and wonder where our parents were when these events were unfolding. I am writing this on #Demonetization, which is one such historic event.
Before you sigh, roll your eyes upwards and throw your arms up in despair, and walk away, let me put forth the disclaimer. I am not an all knowing economist; I am also not an all-feeling journalist. I am the common man, who has stood his turn in the queues to exchange the currency and then to withdraw the money.
I write. I write poetry and fiction, mostly. But then why am I writing and further muddying the waters in which already too many people have stepped in. That is answered by Faulkner in his Noble Prize acceptance speech. I write on behalf of the poor man behind whose name every black money hoarding businessman, every corrupt politician, every tainted bureaucrat hides.
Tragic stories are floating in the market. But then, they are just being visible now. The poor man is confounded as rumors float. Some come and tell him that his zero-balance bank account will be acquired by the government, with all the money into it. But you stand in the queue and the anecdotal poor man is not complaining. He stands in silence, with great grace. He is the man who sends his son to army to stand guard on the Line of control. He is not a retired income-tax officer, nor will any senior Income Tax officer marry him. He is facing unprecedented hardships. He neither has resources nor inclination to visit exotic foreign location for introspection for months. Unlike a middle-aged man about to touch his fifties and still in search of his widely anticipated political mojo, he makes money each day and feeds his family.
He does not seek greatness. It is just logical. He understands that when things of this magnitude happen in a country of this magnitude, inconveniences will happen. He knows the inconvenience of processes first hand, much better than those who claim to represent him, when he had visited a government officer to get something as basic as a BPL card or a Ration card, and was asked to pay bribe in cash. This demonetization has discomforted that Babu. What is great about this drive is that it even hits those who charged in kind for making of a ration card. He laments that a child died because the parents could not pay in the new currency. But amid all the noise he understands that even without demonetization, that heartless hospital would have been turning away kids who had no currency at all. He understands that with this revolutionary effort, maybe, just maybe, cash will reach some hands, or better still, there will be some hospitals which will not need currency, new or old, to attend to a dying child.
There have been plenty of stories about maids. Once again, please don’t shut your laptop down so hard. The helps I had at home, both of them had the zero-balance account under the PM Jan-dhan scheme, but had never deposited any money. I asked them why. They had their fears. This is the basic of the worries, whatever might be. For long, we were under slavery. The government did not belong to the people. When the British left, white officers were replaced by brown baboos. Congress was a club of rich people and the Jawahar Lal Nehru, foreign educated, son of a rich lawyer of Allahabad became the first Prime minister, even when the appointed committee chose the one who began his political career from peasants’ movement in Bardoli. The voice of the people was vetoed and the man whose dad knew the founder of the new company called India, became the CEO.
The distrust to the government was thus perpetuated and a layered society was created as dynastic rule was legitimized, slowly but surely. It is this distrust which makes it difficult for the poor to bear the trouble of demonetization and its fall-out. It is truly to the credit of the PM that poor have not only been able to overcome this inherent distrust towards the government, the rulers; they have rather risen in his strongest support.

It has placed the opposition in a very difficult situation. They are out on the street protesting. Situation is very funny. The opposition is out protesting, supposedly on behalf of the poor, while those they claim to represent are protesting their protest.  Some politicians are so distraught by the loss of their personal, illegal wealth that they are unable to detect the disgust that their desperate dramas are creating in the minds of those they claim to be representing. This is not to say that there is no inconvenience. There is. Not everyone has means to do online commerce. Which is sad after almost seventy years of independence. But things are not as bad as the naysayer claim they are. Truth always lie somewhere in the middle of the extremes. True, fifty regrettable deaths have happened. Some out of those fifty (remember in a nation of 125 Crores), were later found to be unrelated to the government move (sample, someone died counting new currency notes, would she have not died if the notes she was counting were old currency? Or Newspapers reported someone died at the ATM in Mumbai, at a place where there was no ATM.). But consider the proportion. Only two months back, around the same number of people died and was in news. Only, the deaths were not spread across 125 Cr people, it was limited to the city of Delhi. And the CEO of Delhi, the Chief Minister, most incensed by this Anti- Black money move, submitted the courts that he had managed to spare only five minutes to spend in his office as the city reeled under epidemic. How seriously can one take his concerns? 
The poor have been most decent and graceful under such testing times. The rich and affluent have been crying foul. The poor understand that the history is being made. And he wonders that some years down the line, the same question will be asked. Where were you when this historic fight against corruption and black money was initiated? Did you handle it with the quiet dignity and poise of the poor, or with the noisy, complaining arrogance of the affluent when the nation sought your support to create a better nation for future generations? Future will pose that existential question to all of us when the time comes- What did you do when your nation called you for your services? What did you do when for the first time the gulf of distrust between the government and its people, perforce was being filled, as an unnoticed fallout of an anti-corruption move? How did you respond when the economy was shaken and cashless and accountable business became the order of the day for the first time in the life of our nation? Did you welcome it as a mature citizen or you went down as a cribbing, complaining kid? I write not with data. I write as an ode to the poor man in the queue, I write to help him endure this moment by lifting his heart. Let us all do that. 

Feminism Without Noise- A Room of Her Own- A Review

"Surely since she was a woman, and a beautiful woman, and a woman in the prime of her life, she will soon give over this pretense of writing and thinking and begin at least to think of a gamekeeper (and as long as a woman thinks about a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking). And then she will write a short note (and as long as she writes short notes, nobody objects a woman writing either)" 
I had read the above passage in Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and was immediately hooked. Orlando was the first novel of Ms. Woolf I had ever read and much too late in life.  I had stayed away from her, fearing the feminist credentials of her, which are almost as famous as her writing is. However, Orlando was such an eye-opener. It is such a vast canvas over which the story is spread-out. She masterly tells the story, with a easy efficiency of a master who is totally in control of her craft. Orlando was of course followed by Mrs Dolloway and The Waves, all masterpieces in their own being. But the spread of the story and the nuanced, unafraid manner in which she wrote Orlando stands apart from any of her other work. No where will one find a patch of ink blot, not one slip of a pen- every word - smooth, sophisticated and nuanced. 
The gloom, the dark sadness of a world of early Nineteenth century slithers through the pages of Orlando. The days are not very bright, the sky is not azure, the sky is dark, as if the rains are about to pour over. But Woolf is never sad, never disappointed. She fights, but is never shrill. She is analytical. Looking at the today's world where the symbolism has become so all-encompassing that even elections are being fought on symbolic gender equality, it seems so soothing and fresh. She writes so cleverly in A Room of Her Own, with so much control over what she writes. She never allows her narrative to become propaganda. 
She describes her own world, in way only she could. A wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver grey in the air. It was the time between the lights when colors undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish..
She floats, rises above the world, and we, the readers rise with her, levitating above the world, we look at the beauty of the world, till suddenly we are stopped in our way. She then writes, ever so softly, without us noticing where the seductive pen of the brilliant writer is taking us, about how men are caught up in their own self-image and how women are the mirrors in which they see themselves. Virginia Woolf, refers to her inheritance which enables her to write. She then takes us to the world when there were few occupations available to women. She explains that could be the reason why we don't have female writers in the history. She also refers to the male writers and quotes how in the list of greatest of English poets there are few who were not rich. She does not let it go off her hands for a moment, never let it fall into the rhetoric. She writes- It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control. 
She points out that if one went only by the writing of the men, and the role of women in them, one would believe that women had a very important role in the society. However, she points out that the fact that no women wrote those stories, proves, on the contrary, that women, in reality, were relegated to a role of insignificance in the society. She imagines a character named Judith, fictional sister of Shakespeare. Assume that her sister was as gifted as Shakespeare himself was. In a society, where no reading and writing opportunity was available to women, what would happen to her. Woolf writes:She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers. 
Ms. Woolf traces the imaginary life of Judith and without melodrama ends it with a sadness that suddenly wraps itself about you that you almost lose your breath, when she writes- who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body? She says - That woman, then, who was born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife with herself. It is not only about being a woman. She aptly mentions that writing in itself is not an easy profession. She writes..To write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world's notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle scrupulously verifies this or that fact. Naturally, it will not pay for what it does not want. ...A curse, a cry of agony, rises from those books of analysis and confession. 'Mighty poets in their misery dead- that is the burden of their song. Such is the general state of the affairs, and it turns even worse for women writers. She writes- The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility. The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you chose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw, Write? What's the good of your writing? Women writers were not only not encouraged they were considered incompetent. She draws a parallel to the view the world had towards a woman preacher, as she quotes Dr. Johnson- "Sir, a woman's composing is like a dog's walking on hind leg. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all." The affection with which she mentions Jane Austen should be a benchmark for all women writers. She writes- Here was a woman about the year 1800, writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That is how Shakespeare wrote, I thought...when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare..
This book should be read by all the people who love reading and writing and see how far we have traversed from the time when women seldom wrote, and were seldom appreciated for writing when they did. This review is to open a window to this great book by a great writer, and as a tribute to women writers who have arrived in more ways than one, whether she is a JK Rowling, or Marta Moran Bishop, or Chitra B Divakaruni or Radhika Mukherjee. 

The Common Theme Between DeMonetization in India And Trump's Election

India for all practical purposes refers to the East of the East and US of America is the West of the West, and the twain, wise men said, shall never meet. In the span of two days, one rolling after another, like the wheels of a great Juggernaut, bashful, arrogant wheels, changed the way we look at the world. We have been raised with a concept of right and wrong. It was a good idea which provided a pattern to a world which is as illogical as the forces of nature, its whims unfathomable, its furies uncertain. But those ideas were formed in a dynamic world, and were as volatile as ecosystem in which they were formed, raised and eventually flourished. 
Wisdom is like a freshly caught fish and goes stale quickly. The biggest wisdom which survives time is the one discovered by good, old Darwin, whose law of survival, the survival of the fittest is one which has survived change of civilizations, change of regimes, and change of political seasons. Men are feeble animals. We have nothing except our minds which is our probably most formidable organ. We do not have the speed of a leopard, the strength of an elephant or the teeth of a Lion. We do not even have a killer instinct to compare the wild animals. We develop it mostly out of our necessity or hatred. We are the devices for our minds to play with. We are able to protect ourselves, and more importantly our future generation using mostly this great faculty nature has provided us with. We cannot have any of the wisdom, with the whitest of it form, fool our minds. Our minds are watchful, and are mostly driven by nothing but survival instincts, which also converts into the customs and culture which has stood by us against the harshest winds of time. 
Security, survival instinct is something which drove the United states to make an odd choice of Trump as their president. This does not preclude that those who insisted that Hillary ought to win were also driven by their own survival instinct. The Pundits declared the results of the elections from their high pulpits and then went on designing the results to suit their deductions. US probably never had it so bad. There was no good choice. They had to chose between the worst and the less bad and there was no way of knowing which was which. This is not about deriving the same. It all will depend on which side your were looking it from. One had a string of misogyny on his side, another a history of defending a child molester and repeat offender of a rapist. But it was not about morality and righteousness. That is where Hillary got it wrong, and Trump, accidentally or somehow got it right. 
The elite thought leaders, those who thought they knew it all ignored the man who was going to vote. They had made that mistake earlier in India, in 2014. The elite media, the intellectuals threw their weight behind Congress and the man on the street, the man driven by the most primitive instinct, of survival and security, went with Modi. This essay is not about finding equivalence between the elected, between Trump and Narendra Modi. While Trump came into politics as an amateur, Modi has spent all his life in public work, even though not as a politician; while Trump has been known to have splurge in wine and woman, Modi has been near-ascetic in his life. This is not a commonality between the two elected men, this is about the commonality between the two electorate. There were people who placed themselves on high pedestals and laughed, speaking sermons about the goodness, the righteousness, the love. Those were the same people whose role in spreading violence via various modes was thoroughly exposed. The ecosystems were established, just as it was in India in 2014, and everyone wanted it to continue, under the garb of justice, feminism, liberty, call it whatever high sounding name you might, it was the elite and the powerful and the classy, busy trying to serve their own survival instinct, the continuity of things as they were, no matter how many people were dying. 
There was another class, which could see things, in spite of supposed lack of education more clearly. They could see, even with their intent of preserving the left-leaning, falsely righteous way of life, the fire of violence which they had lit far away in Asia, was slowly extending, like a forest fire and reaching to their shores. The liberal elite in their greed and their lazy lustful existence had almost missed the fire which followed the warmth. I do believe all men are equal, must love another, and must be free. But there is again this thing about the way things are done, the way things have preserved the life of the original inhabitants. It is about survival. The new coming in to far shores and wanting the change the ways of life of those who have been raising generations in those lands is scary idea. It is unavoidable, but it is fearful when it is done by force. It gets people raise their guards when they feel that the change those coming in threaten to bring with them will not be slow amalgamation of cultures, which takes and preserves the best of the two worlds, but will be a clash of civilizations. There was a new wave threatening to overwhelm those who felt it was their land. Amalgamation requires a certain level of flexibility on the part of the two parties. It is impossible when one party considers its inflexible orthodoxy as its right. And the history around the world was not very reassuring. And nobody bothered to reassure them. How could they trust the guest who instead of respecting the customs of the host, wanted to have his own customs, at least for himself, if not to impose them on his host. Not for now, they felt when they looked at other countries of the world. No one bothered to assure that man, if they did, it was not seen in their actions. The man on the ground, who do not read the complex yet luminous words of those who lived in safe, secure surroundings would not understand them and if they understood them, they could not believe them. They were pulled away by their affluence so far away from the poor that they could not understand him any longer. Even after Trump won, they called his voters the working class white men, a description full of disdain and even xenophobia towards those men, although they will blame them with the same. 
They could not address the fear of the man they call- semi-literate, working, white men. The hatred to the man oozes through their words. They call themselves liberals, and while they mocked the insecurity of the man on the street in America, they are now driven mad by their inability to maintain a status quo, which could have protected their polished, prosperous way of live, for them and their off-springs. So we find the pretense of peace is gone and wicked hatred in the beings of those who once were voice of righteous sanity is exposed. In India we have seen the bile spill on the editorials, over champagnes. Both Modi and Trump, to the elite represent the men who came from nowhere. They come from the place were one life stands for one life and majority life is not lesser than the minority life. The assumption that just being in majority population brings a lot of confidence in people is incorrect. Poverty, lack of power makes people week. Another assumption that Majority populace can never come together as one unit is also wrong. 
This is one common factor about #DeMonetization. When Narendra Modi made announcement of cancelling the legal tender of existing currency, a strange euphoria gripped the nation, which sustains even today as people have started facing hardships. The elite, the righteous of the nation, the old order, media and erstwhile rulers alike are not able to understand the phenomenon. They don't understand that the poor are not so unhappy. They had little to lose, they know you have lost big. Your losing big gives the poor a chance to hit at equality much more certain than what all those lofty leftist lectures offered. It offers them a future for their children. Those who have never seen the hardship will never understand this. The poor can go a day without even food for the welfare of their children. It is all about survival instinct. It is about protecting our selves and our future generations and their distinctly Indian identity.  Luxury makes our understanding of social principles and identity concerns weak. Those with bungalows in Lutyens will not understand this. But this is what connects Indian poor in favor of Narendra Modi with those voters of Trump. It is about fear and it is about the disenchantment of the fearful from those who mock their fears, who call their natural instincts, evil. It is not about race or religion. It never is. It is always very basic. Sometimes fears are genuine and one ought to address them. Once we had politicians and writers and thinkers who would do that without apology. Those who spoke of the English way, or American way or Indian way without squirming and feeling ashamed. Majority is also a voice and has its own fear and you cannot trample over it. That is democracy. Cultivating minority-only politics will serve only so far as long as the majority does not feel threatened. When there is pollution, action is taken in Lutyens, the last man in the street is as vulnerable as a fresh migrant, and as afraid. Someone ought to listen to him. You cannot think for him. You have to listen the his thoughts floating through the air. You cannot merely shout rhetoric in his name without giving his thoughts a voice. You cannot shout him down. That is what happened in the US, that is what is happening in India, when a Kejriwal or Mamta or Mulayam claims that the poor is getting discomforted for the government action on black money. Poor is not greedy, he will let go of his today, for the tomorrow of his children. 

Why Ravish Kumar Drama on NDTV is Presumptuous and Incorrect?

कहते हैं , जब रही ना मुझे ताक़त ए सुख़न 

जानूँ किसी के दिल की मैं क्यों कर कहे बगैर।  


This delightful verse comes from Ghalib, which is so meaningful in today's world where truth is being replaced by rhetoric is laden with so many interests. I had once written about it and named it "Responsibility of a Writer- As Per Ghalib.
(http://www.saketsuryesh.net/2016/04/r...)"  

The couplet means as below:If I am no longer blessed with the Power of my Pen,why should I have access to the recesses of someone's heart. 
What Ghalib is essentially saying, in my interpretation is that "unless my pen has the will and the strength to honestly convey the interests and thoughts of those who cannot speak, why should I continue to enjoy their trust and have access their hearts. This takes an important perspective in today's context, where a day ban on NDTV has given an opportunity to Ravish Kumar for making his point, however, fallacious it may be, in an entertaining way. This, in itself, is not a very bad thing, except for the fact that it was projected as a part of News program and by implication was supposed to be represent fact. It is nothing of a news but a drama, devoid of facts, full of implied innuendo and fake claim of victim-hood. 
Here are the facts of the case:
1. NDTV ran live reports, right in the middle of terrorist attack in Pathankot, where the reporter broadcast live the location of ammunition depot, the location of Aircraft in the airbase, vis-a'-vis the location of the terrorists. 

2. The ban has been imposed under Rule 6(1) (p) of the Cables act. The act prevents live telecast during anti-terror operations. 
3. While we are being made to believe that this was the some kind of first ever action on any TV channels, there have been multiple instances where channels have been banned from operation from duration varying from couple of days to a month for telecasting content not compliant to the act. This is probably the first for this government which Leftist intellectuals fondly call Fascist, headed by the man, again they fondly call the murderer of Gujarat, in public forums. That the man has been elected by unwashed masses is of no discomfort to them. 
4. False equivalence being drawn with newspaper reports containing the same details, happily ignoring the fact that newspapers do not and cannot report live and therefore carries the danger. 
5. The media, by the virtue of being called public media is co-owned by the consumer and the creator, is used in this instance, as it was in the instance of Radia-gate, to put forth the view of the channel, the anchor and the management, without any voice of the consumer. This necessitates mime as a prop, instead of panelists with even the pretense of multiple opinions could be held.
6. Your have not been banned for questioning the Modi government. While that takes the sheen off your fake revolutionary image, that is the fact. You continue to troll Modi even in this program, with impunity. 
When facts are fickle and the truth is tame, rhetoric is the last refuge. This is what media is doing. This is what Ravish Kumar did the other night. The current lot of celebrity journalists are like soap-opera artists and are as self-conscious. They are the product of grandiose self image and false sense of self-entitlement, which they now find quickly slipping through their fingers. Ravish Kumar in the show placed two mimes, one named authority, another troll. His attempt was to show how the two are acting in connivance to disturb the natural order of things. His interpretation of the natural order of the things is quite Brahminical, a term often used in derogatory sense by the leftist media. There is an entitled class of journalists, far away from the class of journalists like Jagendra Singh (burnt alive under the watch of 'secular and socialist' government of UP) or Rajdeo Ranjan (Journalist shot dead in broad daylight under the secular watch of Bihar government). The elite TV journalists have made their career in the new wave of opportunity created by the launch of a slew of private news channels in mid to late 90s. The channels were not looking for great journalistic ethos, great writing techniques, greatest of integrity. Those were already taken by the print media. The TV media, which was a new animal, needed pretty good-looking faces, camera-friendly as they call it, and the pretty language, the class, the elan. It was like the Y2K hirings in IT industry, mass and mediocre, but eventually leading to great material success. Those who looked down at it calling it dishonest and clerical stayed put on the conventional mode of profession and continue dying in the hinterlands of Bihar and UP. 
The baba logs of journalism were quickly adopted by the dishonest government to extend the propaganda and kill the discontent. They built huge houses in south Delhi, had dinners with the powerful, aligned people for cabinet posts, and claimed to represent the poor in the far, remote corners of the country, to which they seldom traveled hiding behind what they called tyranny of distance (which never prevented from covering US elections from New York or lectures in some universities in Washington). When questioned, they hid behind the fictitious image of the journalist which common men held so dearly in his mind through the ages- the journalist, smoking cheap cigarettes through dark nights, angry with the world, furiously writing, all the time threatened by the corrupt police, politicians and bureaucrats, those thick, cheap plastic framed spectacles, and those loose check-patterned cotton shirts on impoverished frames, chasing the lofty ideals of truth and justice for the weak and the poor, dying all the while in his poor existence. That image guarded this new generation of TV Journalists from Public scrutiny, while their own conversations happened over Champagne,    and their luxury vehicles ran over crushing the voice of their own unsuspecting viewers. The freedom of expression offered by the government of the day, for them was measured by the freebies they were granted, apart from the say in power structure, like well, government appointments and policy making. 
Those they call troll in the studious, and block with the vengeance on the social media are the very readers/ viewers they reach out to. They never realized this, they never cared for it. They never thought law would catch up to them. PRESS written to the back of their fuel guzzling SUVs, was their passport to a world of elitism where the protests from the people never reached. The change of government made them very angry. They voiced their own opinion contrary to the opinion of the masses which spoke and brought in a new government with a strong and clear majority. Their purpose of carrying the pen, and the microphone was to amplify the opinion of the masses. They expropriated the resources, took proprietorship of the media which was given to them only for becoming the voice of the masses and made it their own, if not their master's voice. If Shekhar Gupta spoke of fake coup in terms of Indian Army, this was a real coup of intellectual army. Instead of weapons, here was media instruments and media space which was given to them to protect the people, which they turned against the people. People were called trolls. It was equivalent to the armed forces calling citizens stupid and train guns on them. Journalists were our thought soldiers. I remember on Interview of Smriti Irani by Barkha Dutt, where when She asks the minister about her view on the media. When Smriti Irani starts speaking, Barkha cuts her in between, trying to defend herself, explaining why what she presented in her reports was justified. Of all the things wrong with the interview, the most important was that the anchor felt she was more important that the person being interviewed. Ideally, even if Smriti were to ask Barkha as to why she did what she did, Barkha should have responded that her own ideas, interests and views were of no consequence. Rather here we had Barkha cutting the person she was interviewing to put forth her own view. Such was the sense of stardom and intellectual elitism, if we do not even go to people threatened by media stars and even coarsely abused, forget blocked on social medium.
"Shooting the messenger" is a quote oft used by the media to defend itself. Unfortunately, what we see now, on channels like NDTV (and I am not even going into their NGO avatar where they filed appeal to NGT seeking to stop all development work, and sacking of all the officers involved in that work on Indian ports), and journalists who are not known for academic brilliance on the Governing councils of educational institutions, becoming the message or the story themselves. Pray tell me whose message they carry, if not their own. They are no longer the messenger. They have become the message and the object of the story. They are not writing the headlines; They are the headlines now a days.  
 The class divide among journalists is also blatant and vivid. The journalist is the lobbyist. The collective stomachs of elite, English-speaking lobbyist of a journalist,  churns not at the killings of vernacular, old definition of the journalists; but only with the pushing away of the Gucci-trotting elites, whose i-Phones get scratches in the melee. It is only the latter which will bring them out on the streets. A competing anchor being sacked bring in collective glee from their faces, and then they talk about coming together to be some sort of Avengers for the media, when one of their own is penalized for breaking the laws. Everyone talks about self-regulation, but self-regulation would depend on having a conscience. It would mean having basic decency of calling the things as they are. When you run a one hour program trolling the government and your viewers alike, you cannot claim emergency. With this backdrop it is doubtful how effective your self-governance will be.
As Ghalib said, If your pen is not longer having the heart, or ears for the common folks (who you block on Social media, which is only platform they can reach you and who you make fun of using the same resources created ostensibly to defend them) why should you have the support of them?
Your utopia has been rudely intruded upon by the common-folks. Your intellectual priesthood has been blasphemed against. You have bitten the hand that fed you for far too long. And I am not talking about the government, I am talking about the hand of the last man in the last line of development who entrusted you with that pen, that microphone, which you pimped for that Kothi in South Delhi, obtained in return of arranging a kothi for someone in the Lutyens. You have blocked, maimed and mocked the person whose opinion you were supposed to carry to the government, who was supposed to consume the content your created. Your mediocre talents and your bigoted falsehoods are exposed by those who never had public space of discussion available to them. You must rise to the occasion, and creep out of this manufactured victim-hood, because no one is buying it anymore. The castle has fallen to the violent winds of democratization of truth. Do not get offended by the people who are more talented and more dogged in their researches, because they are driven not by monetary needs. They are engineers, doctors and CAs by the day, and their day jobs run their kitchens. They are driven by public interest, the search of the truth, just as the journalists in conventional sense once used to before the babalog trooped in. The castle has fallen, the cookie has crumbled. Dramas won't help, a little sincerity might. A pretty, camera-friendly face will not suffice. That is your only hope, Ravish Kumar.
For common people as myself, I suggest, if you are watching that ridiculous drama of Ravish Kumar to pause it awhile and read following quote from Ray Bradbury, the greatest sage against censorship on TV journalism, in his book Farenheit 451.
"The television is 'Real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest,'what nonsense.'"