Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 22

About Death

The harrowing face of deathA vacuous grief,Peeking from behind the shoulder, Watching through gray eveningsAnd dark, unending nightsSlimy and serpentine, Slowly slithering across the streetWaiting for a faltering step,A heavy knot rising thought the chest,A broken soul, a weakened will,A shivering shadow of a fading love.Death has many facesDeath, the faceless demon,The vampirish monkey lurking in the darkReady to pounceAt tired, unloved soul, Hungrily waiting for the momentWhen dust meets dust and Returns ashes to ashes.I laugh in hoarse voice,Face heavenwards,Mocking death, proclaim,For I will live forever,In love, in thoughts,In solemn, poignant moments of longing,In lingering laughterIn pulsating ideas, In tears unshed,Which will live forever,A feeble breeze of my soulContributing to the 
thundering storm of eternity.

The Sketch of A September Sunday

 The Sunday isn't rushed. It calmly waits with the benign sun resting over its shoulders. Voices are slowly breaking in. The cycle shop opposite my place has opened up, with metallic sounds rising in rhythm as they take out their tool. The plants on the terrace dance in the mild breeze. Everything mild, nothing harsh, nothing hurried.The morning milk market Is already gone, without traceExcept for blue crates.Men on cycles ride by.I think, men who ride cycles are the first to wake up on Sunday.Autorikshaws are out. The man on the bike, looks bothways at the turn, confused, and then rides straight. The sun has laid its hammock over the trees and the morning languorous and glorious, lies in it. The newspaper lies neglected on the terrace. 
A man with long tattoos on his arms walks in from the lane in the front. He is wearing a strange kind of pants. Sardarji follows him on a bike, his turban vibrant as his face his. Someone shouts in the cycle shop. Human voices still struggling against vehicular noise. The pigeons looks happy, purposeful, not having a Sunday? Winters aren't here yet, but days are calmer. The earlier sternly face isn't there, like that of a father who kid, just turned eighteen has already made up his mind. This is the time, before the chill of empty nest descends. Parents are in Kerala. I think of them, tried calling them yesterday. Their phone is switched off. Must call again. I am their guardian now. Even when the image of my mother holding me in her arms, a two month old, with father in uniform, sometime around 71 war in Pathankot is vivid and alive, I know, I am now the guardian to them, to watch over them. A little girl in saffron kurta runs in the street, purposeful, like the pigeons. As a child, we always have purpose. Too much of deliberations kills the direction, until the time when we no longer know where we were going. Th squirrel plays on the tree in the front. It sits silently, having noticed that it has been noticed. Watchers always kill the beauty of innocence. The riot of green dances before me, like an orchestra rising to the rhapsody. The day has begun. Three kids walk by, that reminds me, Nonu is still asleep. One fine Sunday, one benign, blissful sunday. 

The Anatomy of A College Reunion

"Every Parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of resurrection" so said the great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. A journey filled with tearful departures- a string of them, begun from the engineering college, NIT Raipur, where I spent a great part of foundation on which my later life was to stand was made. That was the place where to put it poetically, we turned from tadpole to the butterfly, and to put it plainly, we turned from boys to men. This 13th, September, we had a reunion. 
It was in Bhopal, for two reasons- one was logistical connectivity and secondly, the city somehow had the most enthusiastic lot, the lot which could protect their enthusiasm through the years of growing up and growing old. I wanted to go and was inclined but some I spoke to weren't much. Why should I go? who was I to meet? Is this whole exercise is to meet balding, graying men with slight paunch, like me, struggling to establish their own station in life and on some sorry occasions where meeting with old classmates turns into a shameful and embarrassing exercise of those you knew as loving friends, trying to establish their own successes in life with such obstinate absurdity that the exercise becomes sad and painful? But then a call from the friend came in and all the thoughts regarding the futility of such an event melted away. It was the same, hopeful sound with which I was so used to hearing twenty years back, the irreverent and affectionate sound of the name. 
It was a long getaway for all married men, away from daily grind of marital bliss and family nuisance. We would once again call each other by first name, and once again the mist on the mirror will dissolve and show the face we once knew as ours. We are so wrong to believe that we go to reunions to meet old friends. We go for reunions to rediscover our own selves, to find the man that many loved. We are trying to find the man who we could tolerate and even love.
It is not to establish our success, it is to savor the sweet weaknesses of our souls and to meet those who softly will run their fingers over those cracks of personality, without the fear of them getting deepened into ugly wounds. It is to breathe once again the world, which did not want to improve you, make amends in your behavior, which loved you for what you were. The skins were thin, the masks, not yet arrived. It is to return to the times when handshakes had not yet replaced the bear hugs and love would flow without fear of formality. The morning Sun of greeted us with those friendly embrace which I knew would linger on for the rest of my life. 
Reunion is also a moment for forgiveness to those who in past, somehow let us down. As time passes by, things fall in place and good is good but bad isn't as bad. A teacher who didn't grade well, a mate who stole love, an institution which threw us in the world unprepared to brave the storm. The past reconciles in the present and the future redeems the past. We lived, we survived and we flourished, and it is time to return and enter into the past with soft gratitude. In the past, we were the men, who had nothing and survived on hope and feeding on hopes, we marched into the world. We embrace and hold one another, and in silence, breathe the harsh growing up we had when apart and cherish the love which joined us in the past. The common sight of the glorious mining tower, visible from the dusty exit of the railway station, which stays with every alumni of that college in that sleepy town, the college, the Alma-mater which claimed not only those four years, but claimed a little bit of our selves which even today stays back there in those pastel colored walls of the hostels named alphabetically. As we spiritually touch each other, friends from another times, we touch those walls, our fingers running on those walls, and those tranquil, shadowy, peaceful wooden benches of the Hostel mess, where a Dayaram will bring food for our hungry souls, the blue walls with dark green curtains of the Indian Coffee House, in which I held those hands which would someday hand me little, pink future of mine, which now blabbers endlessly around me as I write this. We missed each other for such long, at times, it seems a miracle that we survived this long without one another. For our past connects us and in our past, we are what nature had made us. And not to forget what Emerson said about old friends, the ease of dropping the pretense and celebrating what we are- 

  

Seven Lessons of Writing- From Poet-Philosopher: Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on 15th of October, 1844 and having contributed a verse, as Walt Whitman would say, left this world after an arduous but rich life on 25th of August, 1900. In the span of 55 years that he lived, he produced enlightening, path-breaking work which changed the course of human thoughts. He was admired, revered and even hated as a philosopher for his unorthodox ideas, his unconventional view on Christianity, his never-heard-before commitment to Individual will, which was a sharp turn from the Christian view of keeping individual interest subservient to the larger social goods. He gave us the idea of an all-powerful, unyielding, unapologetic Overman which awaits man on the other side of the abyss. His eminence in philosophy is well-established and his influence, undisputed, but his literary presence and impact is also grand and glorious. Nietzsche shares with Yeats believe in the natural aristocracy of men, (when he claims- Men are not equal), and believes in the possibility of men who have the courage to rejoice in the face of tragic knowledge.
Beyond a point, literature and philosophy merges. Like two rivulets playfully stepping down from the mountains, unsure of their path and their destiny- arrogant and audacious, eventually merging and settling down into the immense expanse of ocean- into a peaceful universality, twin rivers of Literature and philosophy flows down from the solitary heights of human sensitivity. In Nietzsche, one finds an extraordinary amalgamation of a brave and sharp intellect, responding to the world around with the sensitive perception of a poet.  We look here Nietzsche as a poet and a literary figure and what we can we learn from Nietzsche as writers.
Thomas Mann, to my mind, corroborates this amalgamation of Literature with Philosophy, this coming together of two forces of nature which define our world when he searches the equivalence and equanimity of the soul between an extraordinary Litterateur and a pioneering philosopher and writes – “Nietzsche and (Oscar) Wilde- they become together as rebels, rebel into the name of beauty”.  It is not for nothing that Nietzsche is sometimes considered as a worthy inheritor of the philosophical legacy of William Blake and Walt Whitman in his rejection of duality and the celebration of individuality and self. It is on account of literary strength of his philosophical work that many later day writers like Knut Hamsun, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ayn Rand and Jack London who accepted the Literary greatness of Nietzsche when he wrote “I am in the opposite intellectual camp from that of Nietzsche yet no man in my own camp stirs me as does Nietzsche”. 
We however, look here not at Nietzsche as a philosopher, rather Nietzsche as a writer and the lessons he left for writers of the day. In fact, the great appeal of Nietzsche lies in the perfect balance he finds between his relentless search for truth, his willingness to challenge the old wisdom and the beauty of his language. His literary style offers his thoughts the wings to carry them to the skies from where they may be visible to the most skeptic of the mind. TS Eliot goes to the extent of saying-  “Nietzsche is one of the writers whose philosophy evaporates when detached from its literary quantity.” Literature, fiction or not, is a search of truth as well as an attempt to share with the world an attempt to share with the world the truth painfully gotten. No wonder, an iconoclast worshiper of truth found great love among writers of the world with Bernard Shaw admitting that in Nietzsche he recognized apeculiar sense of world akin to his own and who was celebrated by WH Auden when he wrote, “O masterly debunker of our liberal fallacies”.  His writings carried many lessons for writers.
Write with a Purpose:  Nietzsche argued that one should write with a purpose. To him writing was a search of Truth. It was not a matter grandiose eloquence; it was a painful wandering into the dark alleys of life. His wrote, “Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.” Look for a higher reason, a bigger message than the story. The story, the poem is a vehicle for the idea.  Don’t look at the market when you write. Nietzsche says, “Whoever knows the reader with henceforth do nothing for the reader. Another century of readers- and the spirit itself will stink.”   Find your sacred message, your voice and build your world around it- your poetry, your stories, your novels are exquisite clothes for an exquisite thought. Don’t fall for an easy path. Have something to tell before you decide on how to tell it.


Do not blabber and confuse the Reader: Writing is the search for truth, an attempt to empathize, an opportunity to be kinder. It is not to threaten the reader, to overwhelm him with your intellect. A writer must not be too conscious of himself. Nietzsche perforce, owing to his poor eyesight wrote in short sentences, in aphorisms. He advises not to make your writing too ornamental or wordy, if you write poetic prose, it should be to ensure that the feeling is made vivid on the dead pages. Talk to your reader as you would talk to your friend, for the purpose of sharing and empathizing. Have courage to speak the truth. He say, “Courage that puts ghosts to flight creates goblins for itself: courage wants to laugh.” Writers are the bravest of the souls, for they rise above their time. “Brave, unconcerned, mocking, violent- thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman and always loves only a warrior”- He beckons the writer.  Write With Your Heart: Do not attempt to write what you think people want to read. Write what you know of, write what you feel. Open yourself to the humility of nakedness of the soul. Dig deep into yourself and put forth what you find in the darkest, most unvisited corners of your mind and heart for the world to sea. He writes in Thus Spake Zaruthustra,  “I became weary of the poets,  of the old and of the new: superficial they are unto me, and shallow seas.” Enjoy your writing. Sing through your sufferings. One must write in one’s unique voice.

Learn from the Great Minds: It is absurdly narcissistic to believe you know all and not seek help and knowledge. Be open to accept. Read more, reading is the accumulation of tools to go for the hunt of a written word. Reading is a part of writing, sparring before the battle. Nietzsche advises, "No river is great and bounteous through itself alone, but rather because it takes up so many tributaries and carries them onwards: that makes it great. ..it does not matter whether he is poorly or richly endowed in the beginning." Writing is a profession of constant education. Being a writer is opting for a career which is going to be forever a work in progress. You grow by reading, by collecting knowledge. A writer who does not read is never going to be a great writer. Read the great classics, read them to learn not to copy as Nietzsche says, “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.” And Zarathustra urges his pupils, “Now I bid you lose me and find yourself; and only when you have denied me, will I return to you.” Keep reading, the worthy and the unworthy, of conforming, confounding and contradicting views. Be open in the choice of your reading, as long as you read. Learn to identify and build on your own voice: says he, “One must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean.”


Respect and Love your Profession: Writers are often type-cast as misplaced, lost souls- social misfits, doomed, sad souls. Don’t let it embarrass you. Love your profession, be proud of it. Nietzsche writes “Men seldom endure a profession if they do not believe or persuade themselves that it is basically more important than all others.” He elaborates more poetically (though to be fair not only about writing rather for all or any calling in like that one may have) when he writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “I love him who makes his virtue his addition and his catastrophe: for his virtue’s sake he wants to live on and to live no more….I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over men: they herald the advent of lightening, and as heralds, they perish.”  Isn't that all writers want to be? to be the harbingers of future, the fearless pioneers, willing to expose themselves to the possibility of ridicule, humiliation and being burnt as witches and madmen. Stay true to your profession; don’t be swayed by the public opinion, the mind of the mob. “They hum around you with their praise too…They flatter you as a god or devil; they whine before you as before a god or devil. What does it matter? They are flatterers and whiners and nothing more.”Stay Interesting: Truth is harsh and often colorless. We need style to render it acceptable. The lyrical prose, the sharpness of description, or one true sentence of Hemingway- is what makes the truth acceptable, even amusing to the people. Write in proverbs and aphorisms; learn from the Hunchback and madman of Nietzsche. That is the purpose of art- to make the truth bearable. Nietzsche writes - The champions of truth are hardest to find, not when it is dangerous to tell it, but rather when it is boring. Reach out to the world which is ready for you. Good writing is never for mass-market, it slowly grows on the reader as we search for our life’s answers in it. Be discerning in the choice of your audience. Nietzsche advises, “Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but to be learned by heart…Aphorisms should be peaks- and those who are addressed, tall and lofty."


Tenacity of an Artist: Keep writing, without giving up, without wavering. The one who reaches the destiny is the one stays the course. Writing is a solitary profession. It takes from life, without ever being able to immerse oneself into it. It needs complete dedication. We become better writer by writing more. If the soul stirs with an ungovernable desire to assert itself tyrannically, and the fire is continually maintained, then even a slight talent gradually becomes an almost irresistible force of nature- Nietzsche writes. Writing is lonely job; there is no two ways about it, no deception can work for long. You need a strong sense of purpose, a lofty ideal to pursue and a great strength of character to persevere as a writer, to survive the mocking smiles of the world. A thinker grows every day, his days are never stagnant. A writer is full of doubts and writing is his way out of the maze of confusion, his days gray, uncertain. Every writer will find voice in Nietzsche’s words- “My today refutes my yesterday. I often skip steps when I climb: no step forgives me that.” The solitude and longing is so deep and sometimes so haunting, and there are repeated bouts of self-doubt, and looming question which threatens to engulf the whole being of a writer- “Is it worth it? What for?”   Zarathustra offers the answers to his lonely wait- “This tree stands lonely here in the mountains; it grew high above man and beast. And if it wanted to speak it would have nobody who could understand it, so high has it grown. Now it waits and waits- for what it is waiting? It dwells too near the seat of the clouds: surely, it waits for the first lightning.”

It is very hard to find a teacher as competent and as honest as Nietzsche who practiced what he preached. He wrote with great flamboyance, which a characteristic voice, and told a great truth, the individualism, the will to power, the idea of Overman. He was a man in a hurry, he was bursting with ideas, had great courage in his grieving frame to be able to bring it out.

It is not for nothing he said about himself, as some kind of premonition “I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.” I cannot agree more.

  This is my tribute to one of the greatest philosopher and bravest writer on his death anniversary on 25th of August.

Independence Day & Our Kids

Courtsey: The HinduLiberty means many things to many people. That is not new. We all know that. We all strive to liberate ourselves internally and externally. Being liberated mean many things to us at many times. Liberty is like a fragrant air which cannot be explained well enough in words. It is an idea which escapes the understanding like the most subtle and profound things in life. That is not a matter of concern. Unbearable is not multiple interpretation of liberty, unbearable is to have no interpretation of liberty, to not know what liberty means. It is no wonder that philosophers have been aspiring to define liberty which toggles between the extreme definitions of Thomas Hobbes “A free man is he that… is not hindered to do he hath the will to do.” and the more moderate one of Locke “In political society, liberty consists of being under no other lawmaking power except that established by consent in the commonwealth…Freedom is constrained by laws in both the state of nature and political society.”
We need to teach our children the meaning of liberty. I was talking to my six year old few days back and was telling her about how we got independence on 15th of August 1947 as we approached our 68th Independence day, and she was quite confused about what independence was all about. She is not having the benefit of being a soldier's son which I had. I was awakened to the need of teaching liberty to my little daughter by the confused look at her face and tried to debate if one, it was necessary and two, if it was possible. Was I driven by my own dislike of the market-driven media which was pushing the idea of a generation with exemplary intellect merely on the ground of information overload flooding the today’s generation or my own idea of why liberty is a great, even if a lofty idea? Am I trying to make her swallow the sun? But then I thought and the answers are here about why kids ought to be taught about liberty.


      The Idea of Liberty :     Liberty is the respect of free will. It is the healthy respect of self and    within it is ensconced the respect for others. We are all our life struggling to walk towards  that ever elusive goal which defines our life. Our kids need to learn liberty and value it. Our  quest and love for liberty is what elevates our existence as human beings above all the other  mortals. The early they learn about liberty and start taking their little steps towards it, the  earlier they grow as human being.



   Liberty and Independence : Independence is the sub-plot, the corollary of liberty. Liberty thrives on an inherent sense of responsibility. It is important to teach kids not only the value of liberty but also the price of liberty. Liberty doesn't come for free. We need to teach kids early that they cannot have their liberty paid by the currency spent by someone else. We need to buy our own liberty and pay with our own blood. Liberty is always a choice and like any other choice, comes at a price. It is only with independence, social, financial and moral, which entitles us to enjoy freedom. Didn't Nietzsche say, to command, we must first learn to obey?


Liberty and Individuality:  
John Stuart Mill states that within the idea of liberty “Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is supreme.” The idea of liberty is tightly bound to the idea of individualism, the idea of free-will. It is something that our kids need to learn, to hold on to their own individual thoughts, never to succumb to the force of the mob. An early learning of the idea of liberty prepares the child to withstand the ridicule which faces every independent minded person and which in any case, is responsible for any progress in the society.



     Liberty, patriotism and our roots:      Patriotism seems to be an out of place idea in today’s cosmopolitan society, a world in which national boundaries are fast fading. We cannot negate nationalism, denying which would be tantamount to negating our own self. National pride and the sense of national self is not in contradiction with the idea of global unity. We cannot mitigate our own roots, deny our origins and melt in the global humanity. We need to learn about the sweat, blood and selfless sacrifices of those before us through which we, as a nation earned the right to govern ourselves. We need to teach our kids their roots and their origins, to help them find their own place in the world.




Let us teach our kids the story of our own independence, the value of free air in which we breathe today, and beyond the nationalistic idea, teach them the grand idea of human liberty. Their becoming a conscientious citizen and moral, independent thinking human beings depends on it. They need to appreciate the world that we live in and our responsibility towards it. As I said, Liberty means many things to many people; the worst thing would be to not have a meaning. Next time, don’t merely buy a paper flag; take time to teach your kid about liberty, of the nation, of the individual. Let us sneak in some stories about Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh, Patriots who laid down their lives for the nation, in between Cinderellas and SnowWhites of the world. The greatness is fast becoming history. All great wars have been fought, all great sorrows have been endured. We will forget what greatness is unless we repeat it to our children and as they say, those who forget the history are condemned to repeat it. Let us teach our kids about National flag, Nation Emblem, National Anthem, National Song and national history and maybe in the process, we will learn something. They will not only learn patriotism, they will also learn greater and more delicate things in life- things like sacrifice, courage and love. Let's teach our kids nationalistic value and they will not only become fine citizens, they will become fine human beings. They will appreciate sacrifices of those who still stand guarding us- the greatness of our soldiers which protects our mediocrity. Let us become worthy of their love, let us become aligned with the greatness of the nation we live in. Let us soak in this perpetual and eternal sea of humanity we call INDIA. Wishing you a very Happy Independence Day!! 

The Post has also found a place on parenting Website Yowoto

The Art of Journaling- George Orwell Diaries

The beginning of a Journal is a difficult task. It takes a great deal of courage and even greater amount of talent to be able to write diaries, when written honestly. Journals are a great way to get a good start into a literary journey if only one could gather enough courage and is blessed with talent to tolerate the mundane realism of life. You need a sharp pen and thick skin to get down writing a readable journal. It can be a starting point for a writer. You can use the real to reach out to imaginary. Not all diaries become The Orwell Diaries  or The Notebook of Samuel Butler,  Autobiography of Anthony Trollope or that of Mark Twain. Some are propelled by the honesty and courage of the writer to expose him or herself to public scrutiny and ridicule, but mostly, these memoirs are made memorable by the immense talent that goes into writing them.
Journals tell the world your point of view with a rare honesty. You have, of course, written them without knowing or intending that they will someday be read.  This is where the demarcation between the public and private position of the author on various issues melts and merges into one. Journals look back mostly at the recent past and allows the inherent way with words that the author has be exploited and make him look wiser than he really is. But then, they also make him look sillier than he really is if his lies are caught. A smart writer of journal travels through the truth telling with a skillful skirting of opinion. He does not make an opinion, does not posit, he merely states, or at least, pretends to.
George Orwell’s diaries (in all eleven of them covering the period 1931-1949) are similarly descriptive and do not eminently attempts to take a position. Even when he speaks about the Jews outnumbering the rest in the tube, Christopher Hitchens suggests that the writer merely attempts to objectively state a fact, and is not prejudiced. The simplicity and sparseness of style makes one believe Hitchens. Even when the writer at certain occasion makes a comment on the general state of being around him for instance, “..I don’t think an intelligent man can be consistently cheerful these days”, there is some attempt to escape the attention of the reader in spite of the universality and profundity of the statement.
One cannot help but notice a keen eye which notices the truth which hides beneath the labyrinth of pretense and hypocrisy which plagues the society as much today as it did in the 1930s. For instance, the statement, “…beyond a certain point (therefore) Socialism and Capitalism are not easy to distinguish, the state and the capitalist tending to merge into one” – a lament as true and as common today as it was then. Truth has this inherent capacity to transcend time, it survives time. In fact, the eternal existence of truth is the measure of its veracity.  That is what denotes the strength of a Journal, its honesty, not its style. Orwell’s diary doesn’t work on emotions like say, Paul Aster’s Winter Journal; it plays on truth, stark and glorious (not to say, that an emotional diary doesn’t have its charm, it does, in fact Paul Auster mesmerizes with his emotive narrative). It is not an introspective style of diary writing. It doesn't dwell into the inside of his own minds and feelings, it doesn’t brood in melancholy. It is an outward-looking writing which keenly observes the world around him with rare objectivity. He mentions painstakingly his statement of account and the miles he walked in the day (also the recipe of fruit loaf attributed to Mrs Searle).  Truth is strikingly attractive when it is without pretense. He writes, “Women are allowed to do all the housework unaided, even when the man is unemployed, and it is always the man who sits in the comfortable chair” and in its plainness and factual nature, it hits home the truth better than any complicated essay on gender equality.
The diary is a social commentary of the times Orwell lived in. The truth he writes stays true even today.  “A working man always feels himself the slave of a more or less mysterious authority” which would hit home any working man even today, though it would be hard to perfectly define the boundaries between a middle-class and working man that Orwell refers to in today’s world of knowledge worker as they overlap into each other. Sometimes the diaries gets too dreary to keep the interest of reader captivated but then one needs to sift through cabbages and eggs and potatoes (his domestic diaries which are the one’s made most popular through online blog being run by Orwell Prize, beginning on 9th of August, 1938) do become tiresome, for the egg is an egg even if they were laid by George Orwell’s Moroccan hens) to discover the grim optimism of war time in his war-time diaries. His writings turn political here, from the social commentary of the road to Wigan pier. These diaries without attempting to aggrandize the war offer a peek into the mind of common citizens as they wait for impending calamities and rare hope of peace, sometime ahead in their lives. He is tired of war, critical of leaders and saddened by the megalomania wrapped in patriotism and faux-nationalism but still hopes and writes, “I have so much to live for, in spite of poor health and having no children.” There is a general disgust of war and the dilettante decision-makers, the rabble-rousers- the media, responsible for the war being thrust on hapless citizens  which reflects in his writing for instance, when he quotes from Homage to Catalonia, “One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting..; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench..” The matter is even more relevant today with armchair pundits advocating war on twitter and Facebook. This is a journal which does not for a minute, pretends to be an autobiography, being too unemotional, too sparse and too objective to qualify as one. But it is the same laconic dryness which makes it interesting and even interesting at places while one wades through the mundane and counts the eggs hatched by Orwell’s Moroccan hens. We lesser mortals can only look in awe at Orwell’s Moroccan hens just as we are charmed by Mr. Eliot’s cats.
This post celebrates Orwell Diaries which starts today, though in year 1938. The same is being preserved in a blog format by Orwell Prize society which proclaims to be working towards transforming political writing into art.The Orwell Diaries

The Audacity of the Corrupt

So I met him today. He, of feminine voice and masculine arrogance, looked at me from underneath the glasses and complained to the person who had taken me for the meeting. 
"He makes too much noise, that this is loss to public exchequer and things like that." Said he, with such an indignance as if I had offered him some corrupt offer. He was visibly agitated. Agitated about my request to him and his colleagues to remain honest and fair.
I couldn't understand why. How could you be angry about someone who had wanted you to act honestly and honourably? But then he was. The government of the day has changed, but that government is busy getting resolved the fight of languages. The masses rise for a stupid struggle. Language, mine and yours, ought to be respected. Languages, one and all, are anyways dying for the lack of love, but then, that's another days debate.
I thought of another government officer, honest but timid due to hierarchy, gnawing at any pretence of lawful honesty with impunity of an outraged animal. A lonely and feeble voice asking me to take it up with seniors, government, someone, which could stop the cruel wheels of corruption and let him live with an easy conscience. That man had a feeble voice, speaking through hints and whispers. The contrast is stark. The feral force of felony is no match for docile dithering of decency. There is something wrong about the world we live in. The honest are in hiding and alone, the corrupt are singing in a cruel chorus. 
The corrupt isn't ashamed anymore. They mock the honest, and are blatant with each passing day. Those who promise to act against them, lose the evidence once they have power to act. Honesty is no more than a vehicle to electoral victory. It takes too much of a spine to act, status quo is easier and less demanding to the conscience lying supine in the battlefield, defeated and vulgar. The honest is silent and succumbing, the corrupt, blatant and audacious. Whatever happened to the power of truth? My soul swathe in lingering lament. I want to write and escape into my world, where truth still walks with head held high. That's why I am a writer, this world is too harsh and doesn't become me.

Life Is A Solitary Walk

The weather is still full of caprices and undecided on which way to go. The Sun is still brutal and unyielding, clouds are inconclusive. Such weather is perfect for brooding and pessimism. A weather like that diminishes the good, happy feeling and pronounces the pain which is consistent with sad, humid contours of a rainless day. 
It has been three years for a health-check which ought to have been annual. In the middle of this overwhelming, at times, unreasonably annoying days, I sat thinking couple of days back. I thought of my now near-regular 5-miles run, irregular diet and my general health, or rather not knowing the real state of it. 
For some reason, my mind kept on pulling to the absurd optimism in an impossible immortality and to the fact, that I could be dying in the middle of the unreasonable hope. I knew, a detailed peek into the functioning of my body was well needed, as I also knew, I waited stupidly for someone to drag me out of my slothful stupor to a hospital. Suddenly a eureka moment last week hit me. 
It is your life, you are the owner of this vessel, the master and the commander. Dying is a very lonely business, and to believe otherwise is nothing but naïveté. You might try to fool yourself by an imaginary deathbed surrounded by the relatives and friends. But nothing changes the fact that the journey further on is going to be solitary, if it all there is a journey beyond. It is often very hard to believe that this entire life, the struggle of existence is nothing but a walk to nothingness. We are there till a moment and then we are no more. A strange, quite discomforting fact, but could be the most true, nonetheless, truer than life. 
Even if life were an unending eternal journey, the time in world nothing more than a blemish on the azure, infinite sky that is time. The companionship, the relations all end in a futile failure. We need to own up life. We need to take it in our own unsteady hands as soon as we can have enough courage and strength to bear it. 
Well, this is the first health checkup done alone. Liberating, irrespective of the results. Results, well that is another story, merely tell, that you cannot outrun a bad diet. So food next on agenda after running. Take charge and make changes. 

Writing and Kindness

I dabbled into literature almost since, well, forever. I would read thick books and doodle on the last pages of my engineering notebooks as a college boy and in the last pages math notebooks with neat blocks printed over the pages. Some felt it was poetry, but to my young mind which I always refer to a troubled soul which knew little and felt much, it was the only relief which my troubled soul could find. When I dig deeper into my soul and look at myself twenty year younger, searching for answers in written words, my own and of the greats whom I read with great sense of admiration and hope, I tend to believe my early reading could have sowed the seeds of my own discomfort with the world around me. Literature made me believe in the possibility of ideals. I guess that is a danger that every serious reader carries. That, and the possibility of eventually turning into a writer himself.
I went through both, belief in the possibility of a life which we read that it has a possibility of becoming and turning into a struggling writer myself, struggling not to earn the bread by writing, rather struggling to write. I would not vouch for others but for me, writing has always been a very private affair. I have always found it rather embarrassing to admit in public that I write. I wonder if I would ever be able to do a reading session of my writing in public, even as small as constituting two people, one of them being me. I wrote, I published, I told people about what I wrote with shy hesitation and difficulty. Writing it out was such a relief. Writing would wipe out tears, and lend a smile on grayest of the dawns. But the biggest and most satisfying thing was that it put me in the know of amazing people, fellow writers and poets. I came to know amazing people who would pat on my shoulders on foggiest nights and urge me to keep writing.
The general bonhomie and generosity which I found in writers and artisans is so different from any of the people in any walks of profession. That could be because all writers and artisans are essentially child from inside. We believe in hope and we live in the innocence of hope. Even the writers who wrote dark stories believe in a world which doesn't hesitate in taking sides. Don’t get me wrong, it is not that all writers work in perfect consonance with each other, forming a mutual admiration club. There are not-very-nice remarks which Hemingway made about Fitzgerald, but that never kept him away from holding the other in appreciation of talent of the other. That is the innocence of child and that is the courage of a learned man which allows him to treat conflicting views with dignity. Writing is talking to oneself put on paper. Writing is a writer’s private search for answers for he is dissatisfied with the idea of living the life in a way, merely because that is the way it has always been done. This capacity to self-analyze, to deliberate, to argue with one’s own intellect and to devote oneself to a life of perpetual suffering and eternal liberation is what a writer work on. That makes a writer kinder soul. In fact, without a kind, forgiving soul one cannot be a good writer. One may argue that there are many writings which are written in anger. But I would then contest that in anger one can do many things, shout, scold, bad-mouth, fight and kill (if one has the courage), what for the life of me would prompt a man to pick a piece of paper or a ream, if one is really very, very mad and start writing with bad writing in furious strokes. It is an attempt to understand the anger and the source of it, an attempt to thereby forgive. It is bad for a bad person to be a writer and vice-versa. The purpose of art is to help us be kinder from inside.
There ought to be a sense of inner decency which should rise when you step into the realm of art, even if you want to become a loner like Salinger because you want to devote time to your craft or even because you feel that kindness you find growing on you, makes you vulnerable to the harsher world around you. I feel privileged to have found my calling in Arts, because it makes me a better person (well, my daughter is another reason, but I’ll let writing share the credit), and more than that I feel so happy to have found people so kind in this common calling. If you tend to write, do write even if it feels killing on some days for you discover your potential for grace and decency, your real station in life through art. If you do not write, and read, do find time for it. Kurt Vonnegut wrote,” Don’t give up on books. They feel so good- their friendly heft. ..Any Brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us.” Writing makes us a better man, helping us discover old values which we long thought dead like courage and grace.

PS. What prompted this post was a rather undeserved act of friendship by Marta who has always been kind to my literary pursuit and recently sent across two wonderful children’s book for my daughter, Innocence and Wonder and Dinky's Quest- The Journey Begins . Both the books are amazing gift for little kids with brilliant poetry and simple yet forward looking language, engaging any child. But for me it was the gesture which set me thinking and therefore, this post. It was sudden, it was extraordinary and it was overwhelming. I wish Marta best for her writing and sincere gratitude. 

Making A Statement- The Absurdity of Being Tapas Paul

A man (and Woman) is known by the words he or she uses. We rise in words and we fail, falter and decay in the squalor of words. There isn’t only an ornamental appeal to right words spoken at the right moment for the right reasons. They are merely the ambassadors of the king that they serve, the ambassadors to the minds and souls they represent. Words people speak tell us about the moral leanings of people and station they occupy in social evolution.
Our leaders ought to represent the best in us. When they fail us, their failure ought to shake us. The passivity of our reaction to the misdemeanor of our leaders define the future we are setting up for our kids. We are thereby creating the world for them. Tapas Pal of TMC has made utterances of late, on three occasions which ought to wake us up out of our slumbers. Intellectuals of Kolkata sided with TMC against the communists in the recent elections. But then, the reign of Communists was no better. The number of goons and anti-socials has not changed in the social scenario of Bengal. They have merely changed their political affiliations. TMC did not invent a new kind of politics as everyone hoped. They merely appropriated the politics of communist violence. It is often surprising to me as to how could the intellectuals of Bengal tolerate such violent politics. But then, intellectuals are often through history tried to create and run their own society of violent aggression. Those who fought and spilled blood were provided the provided cover of legitimacy by the power of arguments created by the intellectuals. Intellectuals lived happily in the control they had over less intellectual and more aggressive souls over the larger populace which had neither the intellect nor the strength of violent aggression. That is until the time when they realized that they have been all the time riding the tiger that they can cannot get up of.
The violent one, the one without moral scruples, rose and thundered to kill and maim and rape the voices of dissent. The intellectuals realize the tiger that they rode on and to their dismay, realize that the power now was flowing in the reverse direction. They had to live with a pretense of their control. They need to come out on television and offer tepid defenses with glorious words. The tiger on which they were riding cannot be disembarked from. So Derek O’Brian at first avoids the Television to announce the grand apology. For the party chief, the matter gets closed with the apology. For the nation, it is a time to introspect.
Is this the kind of leaders we deserve? The leaders who incite the followers to kill and rape the opposition serves some strange sense of absurd machismo and invites applause in the close circles, much before it brings criticism on wider stage. Who are the people that applaud? Who are the people that tolerate this indecency of words? Do we realize the monsters we are creating as we allow it to go unpunished. Even violence, in a purer form speaks of righteousness and some glory as long as the cause is just and opponent is worthy. To propose violence against those who need to be defended is biggest cowardice. A man ought to know that. They are sorely aware of their own deficiency of ideology and they try to fill the gap which stares at their smallness with rhetoric. Noise, for them is only cover of their mental bankruptcy. 
They are the orphans of democracy, the errant child of a nation hungry for leadership of the righteous. But then, the applause to such stupid comments tells us about our own deficiency as a citizen. Worshipers of words are ridiculed and those with lack of words and lack of thoughts are hailed as heroes. They have no courage in their own ideas and therefore violence is their only argument. That is what plagues our society at large. Debates end in expletives. We can’t articulate because we cannot think. We are failing as a nation. Where the libraries are burnt, inflammatory words flow in the air. I have a problem in the statement- it’s only words. Words define who we are. We need the leaders who respect words and speak words which can be respected. Then only they can be guardians of our thoughts and only then can they teach us to rise in our collective minds. Every act of violence kills a word in the dictionary and every violent word marks the birth of an animal, which hisses with poisonous whiffs. They are the people who ought to be suffocated out of public space, they ought to be shunned out of public offices. They are lesser men, for they neither have thoughts glorious enough, nor words graceful enough to cover them. 
The numbers are shifty and they move. In Bengal, they moved from CPI-M to TMC and they will again. That is their nature. Mob is shifty. A mob is never loyal, they move to the side of power. Till the time, the intellectual with righteous indignation strikes again and creates a new axis of evil. We must be careful of the culture we build. It defines the nation. Intellectual movements must not try to hide behind brute force and must fight to create space on intellectual platform. The fight will be longer, but you will not be deceived in believing in a false change where one villain is replaced by another one. If you create to monster to fight another, you will end up with monsters ruling the world with humanity, feeble and outnumbered. Sanity is only logical counter-point to insanity.