Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 30

Why I Write (or Blog)?

There was a time when I was a very young man, with idealism intact and big ideas to change the world. I was formally attempting to be an Engineer, trying to "use the knowledge of basic sciences for the good of the society" as it said on a plaque at my college, but I was not at peace with the world which I was supposed to contribute towards. It was a society, which was living with decaying laws, and did not have courage to embrace what was true and bright and honest. I was not a happy young man as they say, but I was rather a troubled soul with more questions than answers. I was sad, aghast and disgusted with the world and I knew it.



A lot many things around me did not make sense, and I had a point of view, a defined opinion about those things which troubled me. Those were the things which were totally incongruous to my idea of a right world. The world which lived inside me was built around the ideas like love, trust, honour and truth. The world around, the real world everyday defeated the faith I placed in what I believed to be the building block of the world. I would retire to a corner with bruises and then try to bandage the wounds of the day with writing on a torn piece of paper, on the other side of Control Systems equations or an empty pack of cigarettes, whichever came easy to my hands.

 

I had strong views and opinions and when I wrote them on a paper, I felt liberated. I had let the spirits soar in the open skies. I felt free of a certain sense of bondage. As I wrote, I understood the world, and anger melted on the papers, sadness settled down.

 

Then much to the surprise of most including myself, I could emerge out of the college and went in for the job. The green, pleasant plant of writing slowly dried down, unable to bear the demands of marriage, family and work.

 

I have never learned or trained myself about how-to write, but still friends loved what I wrote when I wrote more than a decade ago. When we met as grown up men, they would fondly remember what I wrote. I was a sad but brash and aggressive man in my youth. When I met my old friends, we would speak fondly about the audacious adventures of those virile days, but eventually, we both with invariable end missing the contemplative young men who wrote well. 

 

Nature has placed a promise in my being which I felt, I was killing day by day by not attempting to nourish it. So I one day sat myself down to write. I used to be good with lyrical and poetic writing, with free flow of thoughts, moving like an idyllic, playful rivulet flowing through the mountain on a bright, sunny day. But to my horror and despair, in my second attempt at writing, I was stuck like the morning traffic of the city. I was not able to write. Words would not come to me. My feelings were all muddled and hazy, all the sharp edges of my opinions were blunt. I knew, I had to break out of it and so I settled on prose instead.

 

Then, I wrote and thus came into being my collection of essays, "If Truth Were to be Told" which rose from my attempt to re-discover myself. I wrote about my struggle to regain what I believed I was blessed with before I squandered it off; and self published it, put in on Amazon and I was happy about it, happy about reclaiming myself.

 

Then I went on blogging, first on hubpages and then eventually landed on this domain. It began with a view of creating what they term as a Writer's platform. But then, the book and the intent to get readers for it, took back seat. I was falling in love with writing. I read some pragmatic advise on blogging. I felt I could refine the name of the blog some way. Bryan Allain in his commendable book, "31 days to Discovering Your Blogging Mojo" suggested that one should name the blog, based on the theme, on why you write. I tried but failed, I could not make a coherent theme of my writing. I only knew, I wanted to keep on writing.

 

The pressure of quarter closure hanging on my neck will pull me out of it every morning, but come evening, I will be settling down with my Kindle, devouring great authors of the past. I was suddenly a member of a community, I was in a city where I belong. This was a different city, a city which spanned multiple continents. The inhabitants of this city were different from those who I met during the course of my job. They were noble human souls, who welcomed my ignorance with sagacious advise. Professional writers would talk to a novice as if I were one of there own, what great sense of camaraderie. I was suddenly Batman, with my secret life. Poor readership of my book, or blog did not matter, the smirk which I could sense in people's words when they mentioned that I wrote did not matter.

 

All that mattered was right around the time when the submission to slavery was almost complete, and the threat of moronic and cowardly ordinariness loomed large, I was re-discovering myself through the words. I would sit in front of my laptop and take out the sandpaper to sharpen the lost edges of my senses. I would rediscover my opinion. I wrote to understand my point of view about things happening around and in my life, and more significantly, to make sure that I had a point of view.

 

It gave me a new world in which I was once again the king, a world where I could build the castles and where I could be the valiant price to fight the evil in the world. George Orwell in his essay on Why I write, brilliantly lists out four reasons of why people write, namely, sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, Historical impulse and political purpose.

 

 I write for a mix of all those reasons, but I write for one more reason. It makes me a citizen of a world where I am not out of control, where I am not a dice which gets thrown on an unfriendly board everyday, by an uncaring player. This is not a savage competitive world where I work during the day. It is a world of noble residents like Mark Twain of yesteryear and Marta Moran Bishop and Roberta Goodman and Lubna Kabli of current times. This world is inhabited by citizens who do not thrive on my inadequacies, but rather, who are thrilled by my small steps to better writings.

 

For instance, Marta who advised me to write a short story instead, when stuck with the Novel, or Stephen King who will not know I exist but was kind enough to advised me to find a room with a door and urged me to summon the courage to close it, in order to write. This world soothes my tired soul, and embraces me as a long lost friend. This is the world I love and this is why I write. And when I write, I hope my daughter someday discover this gentler and creative world of art and beauty and kindness, and discover her father in it.

I know, we all write for all different reasons, and may be for a mix of reasons, but whatever reason may be the cause of initiation, it leads us to a nobler soul and a nobler world to reside in. Wouldn't you agree?

As a tree leans on its leaves

Waking up

Next to you,

Is the most beautiful

Part of the day.

As I hold

You little palm

With my

Rough with age hands

They hide within them

Just as you hide

Your being in me

When I come back

From cities far away,

Just as you some years back

You were hidden

In the two fair palms

Which cupped

My weary palms

With distinct

cigarette marks on them

On an October day

At the Coffee house

In a sleepy town.

I hold those tiny hands

Of you

Adorned by

A faux watch shaped

Like a butterfly,

That is so like your soul

Ready to scout all the flowers of this world,

And smile-

As a tree

Leans on its leave

For its very existence.

- 24-02-2014 - A Sunday Morning Blessed by you

Twin Blasts in Hyderabad? Is There a Solution in Sight?

Two blasts happened in Hyderabad, one foiled, last week. Cacophony rose on the television and the theatre of absurd is ready for a play, a whole new season. Reasons and explanation are being deliberated over the deaths, now crossed sixteen.



There is something strange about what we call a national conscience, if there is one such thing to go by that name. It gets shaken and outraged over some things while sleeps unperturbed with an unburdened soul regarding others of similar or even gruesome matters. The very next day a report of the death of six policemen in Maoist attack came in apologetically in the back pages of the newspaper, ashamed perhaps at relative public apathy. Having just finished Kurt Vonnegut's 'Fates Worse Than Death', I was wondering why one death is different from other. He used the argument in the context of death by nuclear attack. But the question easily can be posed in any other context, to no valid response or argument or explanation.



Why the outrage on the molestation of a teen in Assam gathers enough outrage and creates enough steam that the creaky, engine of justice chugs to function, at the same time the little girl brutally ravaged in Rajasthan or six year old raped with nauseatingly disgusting brutality doesn't cause more than a murmur? There is something wrong with us, something seriously wrong- and dead. We are a nation with barely awake conscience with the leadership in an even worse stage of comatose stupor. In spurts, we get annoyed and aggrieved, through a sleep which stretches across centuries. On occasions we are stormed out of slumber, we make sleepy utterances like Death, blood, hanging. The government merrily obliges and we both go back to the sleep, with baby smiles on our lips. One good thing which I can foresee arising this apathy precipitated by routine terrorise attacks, we will very soon be able to frustrate the terrorists, since it will stop being of any consequence, in terms of large national outrage.



The blasts happened in Hyderabad, people died, scores are injured. Citizens act with restraint, they can not act anyway other than that. After all, it is only some people dying in a nation of a billion, not a new state being formed or temple built. A very sad and poignant moment, no jazz for the youth to yet bring out their candles or threaten self-immolation to force the government to act on those responsible for not having the video camera functioning at the blast site or for letting those responsible for this walk out of a Kolkata jail. After all who as the time, people in Hyderabad are more busy with Telangana and those in Bengal are busy attesting cartoonist professors.



The Home Minister says, "intelligence was there." Goethe retorts, "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." The state home minister denies. Centre rebuts with information regarding four more intel inputs. Then a News is released about an injured there. Same man was injured in Mecca Masjid blasts. A very accident prone gentleman this is. He seems to be following the blasts, too closely. If not anyone else, this gentleman ought to sue the police and the government. If it is former then he must be one with the worst fate, or looking at it otherwise, must be of great fortune that he escapes all such mishaps alive. Either ways, this is too much, he must single handed bring forth the right to recall. Every time terrorists want to attack the state, they end up attacking him. No proof of this poor man ever having said," L'Etat. C'est Moi! ( I am. The state), a la French emperor. He sure has very easy to establish ground to seek damages from the state.



Police had picked up some men earlier for the earlier blast. The government decided to balance investigation across the communities. They felt the communities cared, regrettable if we as citizens gave them a reason to believe so. So to counterbalance, NIA brought in another set of people convicted for the same crime. The Home minister refuses to comment on who could be behind the blast, as he does not have enough proof. He made some claims to please the selector of the cabinet some time back, but at that time did not have evidence and one month down had to retract. Now he has wisened up, unfounded claims does not please anyone, not even the Madame.



The news is already dying down. We can not do much. There will be some programmes over the weekend with candle lights, celebrating the spirit of Hyderabad as the city will get back to work. As if the city were given a choice in this regard. No NCTC can replace poor policing on the ground, and no policing can help unless it is efficient and free. Why police reforms are not coming by, will someone ask before we slip into another long slumber? Is it because the brown rulers who replaced the white ones do not what to let go of the trappings of the royalty, which in pre-democracy age controlled the whole of administrative machinery, with a total control, beyond question and beyond reproach? I still remember, calling up friends in Mumbai after the blast there few years back. Now it has become all so commonplace and routine. Office next week, work and then pay taxes. So we live as a sleepy nation, in a deep unending slumber.



Arundhati Roy will write couple of more articles on how these blasts are a result of the actions of an arrogant state which hanged Afzal Guru, and How she wants to cede from this nation to form a one woman country. As a citizen of this country, I feel extremely lucky, because it is only luck which keeps me alive. I have to be watchful to keep myself alive, pay taxes so that the police gets paid and work on VIP duties to guard the weddings of sons and daughters of politicos and I can in spare time fight to create Telangana or to save cows or kill them, or to get rest of the Indians out of Mumbai except on the occasions when I want NSG to be flown in to the city from the much hated north. The Roman Emperor in the movie, The Gladiator, mentions the idea of nation being so fragile that anything more than a whisper can break it, I wonder how our nation survives the cacophony.

Some Thoughts on Fatherhood

Fatherhood is not a biological accident. It isn't about a winning swimmer, it is also not about being a source of money and food and object. It is not a proud proclamation of your manhood. There is nothing incidental about being a father. Being a father is a thoughtful and conscious decision. It is a decision to love, to protect, to comfort, to be the buoyant wind beneath soaring dreams. It is a selfish decision to lose the self, and to seek the purpose of life in someone else's goals. It is not a default outcome of an arbitrary natural process. It is the choice a man makes, when he decides to reach out to divinity, by surrendering his own mortality, by lighting the candle of his life, to enlighten the dark alleys of life for his progeny.



It would be preposterous though it is extremely common to put oneself on a pedestal for the reason of having given birth to a child. That in itself is the most accidental win, no one can claim actual fame or praise on that account.



A little pragmatism would make one presume that it is the contribution to the overall upbringing of the child which could earn a father the respect, and a place next to gods. I would posit, not even a contribution to the child's life lifts the father to an angelic level, deserving worship by the mere mortals. There a selfish desire which reflects in all that a father does, to propagate his own life and thought forward.





Every man lives with some ideals and thoughts which are considered too ambitious and pure even for his own consideration. There are those values that a man holds dear to himself, but are embarrassed even to bring it forth, even goes to the extent of disowning those when exposed to the world at large. Those deeply held faiths, in extremely private thoughts are left hidden there in the dark privacy of heart for the fear of being impractical.They are the white pigeons which one is fearful of allowing in open skies for the fear that they might not be able to take flight.



Through our children we let those pigeons out. They don't owe anything to us on that account. They at the same time, give us the audacity to adopt and embrace in public some of those ideas. One is able to do that for one realises, it is ideas that makes a man. It is the idea with which your progeny is likely to remember you and think of you, long after you are gone. You want your child to know you and remember you by the values you hold dear, and prods you to struggle to uphold those values for your child to see. Fatherhood makes you want to be a better man.



In fatherhood, one re-discovers the beauty and rebuilds the magic in life. It is not the beauty of child but beauty of life itself which touches life of the the father.

What can be more charming than the most beautiful girl in the world sleeping with her fairy hair band held in her hand, her round face a mirror of contentment and peace.



While writing this post, I wrote the following, looking at my five year old, as she slipped into sleep next to me.

"May peace always be on you. In the darkest of your nights, which you will have like everyone else, remember, there will always be a kinder, older and loving moon shining only for you, your father. I will burn my being to light the darkest of those nights with happy willingness.



May your sleep always be so peaceful, so salubrious, so happy to you and always so easy to come to you after every tiring and trying day, which you will have many, being the embodiment of a soul of constant struggle which comes to you from me.

May the God bless you for I know, your innocence holds within it promises of a great struggle for a better life, and a greater victory than what I cannot even fathom today with my limited imaginations. You will soar like an eagle over the mountains of low-life traditions, conventions and orthodoxy, and I will be the wind beneath your wings to carry you through the most arduous of your flights. I will be the moon of your nights, and wind of your flights, even when I am there or not, life being so unpredictable. Life can be unreliable, unpredictable, not your dad, who will always be there, even when he is not there. I want you to believe in it in the loneliest of your nights, for I will always be flowing through your veins."

Some Mixed-up, Hazy Thoughts

There were some unusual things
which happened this week. First the most pleasant, the weather, fast receding
winters, was held in the course by the sudden, uncertain rains. There is
always something therapeutic, something pleasantly nostalgic about rains. It provokes thinking, which it did amply. I thought so much about so many things that I lost the sense of what I was thinking.

Then there was something called “A Billion
Rising” to protest against the suppression of the women folks and the put forth
the argument, an absolute one, for the equality and freedom of women across the
globe, marked by impromptu dances, congregation of women and gender-rights
activists and debates and speeches, the high point of the week gone by. The
news of  the brutality meted with on a six year old girl on the
city borders of National capital of India sneaking in to the dailies as a small column, was not much impacted
by the high profile protests on the streets of the country and the world. A man
convicted of raging war against nation, finally hanged, to quote from the
Supreme Court’s judgment to ‘soothe the collective conscience of a nation.’





I have always been for a hard
posture, but the delays, deliberation and final enactment at this time, of the court
decision, raises more questions than it answers. A swift justice cannot be
questioned, but a delayed one, is bound to raise question. A swift rebuttal by
the state is what the nation looks for, and that might in a way offer hope to
the battered and deterrent to the perpetrators. But this was different, it
converted a nation striving to be the thought leader for a now not so new
century, into a group of high decibel, blood thirsty crowd, asking for blood.





The clamor for the death was also
much in the chorus during the protest for the brave heart of Delhi. While I was
much a part of the protest, I was wary of the power which the populace wanted
to place in the heart of an autocratic, unloving government. I wish people took
note of the rounding up of protesters from places so distant from the point of
the sad death of the policeman (some were caught from a Mall, and even metro
trains) charged with the murder of the policeman, even when the doctors of
government hospital who attended him, took a view contrary to that of the
state, regarding the death in the question. It is not hard to imagine, what hell can break loose, when we bestow too
much of the power in the hands of the state which has no love for its citizens and which is so deeply alienated from its masses.





Further, violent punishment has its place
in the retribution, no denying this. It is troublesome when the state uses it as a tool to please the mob, and it takes horrifying proportion when you realize that the state has understood how to sway emotions by kills. It can not clean up the world. Not in
itself. Violence against women is not a gender issue. People do not rape women,
or for that matter, molest women because they are blinded with lust. They do it
because, it imparts them with some sense of power. A street hoodlum who refuses
to pay small fare to the grocery shop is not doing that because he cannot
afford to, or because he feels that he can establish his power by avoiding to
pay up. An act of violence against women is nothing but a sense of inverted
insecurity about power.

Education consists of two parts, one is acquiring power
and the more important part of education is to inculcate a capability of
handling power. It takes more effort to set of schools and colleges to impart quality education, even more to get people to value it. What I refer to by the term is not the industrial concept of education, heralded  by Arindam Choudhury, where Anyone can dream- with a silent corollary - as long as you dream similar to others, and you are rich enough to afford it; I refer here to the education which Sir Ken Robinson struggles to propagate. What we often mistake for education is merely qualification, and which to my mind is a great reason behind academic inflation, term first I heard in the TED speech of Sir Ken Robinson. We do not need the education which promises to create an assembly-line to mass produce millionnaire (it doesn't do that, anyways, forget those full-page newspaper advertisements), but the one which listens to your callings and makes more of what you have in you, and which teaches you to be a better human being with sound understanding of old-world morals. Trust me, when I say, we need to those old moral values more today then ever; Moral values, not the principles of orthodoxy. An education, which challenges, awakens and struggles but retains an inherent calm and kindness beneath. But that is a subject for a separate full-fledged post. We need education to  How sad is the state of educational system, we all know who struggle to get our kids to good enough schools. We know how our educational systems at the very basic of it is manned mostly by failed professionals, particularly at the formative age.





To modify the social paradigm is
an onerous task, as onerous as the task of handling plague and lawlessness in
the Roman capital, compared to instead embark on the festival of gladiatorial
games which the Roman emperor chose to indulge his citizens with in the Ridley
Scott’s movie, ‘The Gladiator’, as he says, “ I will give them something they
have never seen.”





The steps which can actually make
a difference to the lives of the current and future citizenry of a nation will
always be difficult to take, will elude public acceptance simply because we
today are so steeped in the idea of instant gratification. We disbelieve, and
more importantly dislike anything which is to happen far in the future and which
requires more efforts. We tend to take the easier path and laud those who
suggest easier path.





Sometime back when all political groups
were struggling hard to gain political legitimacy riding on the bandwagon of
caste-based reservations, I remember reading a journalist, who quite
courageously wrote in the thick of it, that it is amusing that those coming out
on the streets and vandalizing public amenities have never thought of coming
out on the street to claim for schools and colleges meeting the best of the
standards for the brethren of the sects and castes they claimed to represent. That
would have made sure that from those sects which are not fairly represented at
the moment in the share of power, would have given rise to bright intellectuals
which the system would have no choice but to assimilate as one of its own at
the highest levels. But then, that would still need a lot of work. It takes less effort, and creates greater visibility to be a cause-fanatic instead.

Do we have it in us to teach our kids the old world values, to vacate the seat for women and elders alike in a crowded bus, to tell them not to jump the queues? Each action of ours, however insignificant it might seem at the time, carries in its womb a larger societal change, as the society changes bit by bit. How often do we teach our kids that the whole point of becoming stronger physically and intellectually is to support, nourish and protect those who are lacking? You cannot threaten people into behaving,  after all you can not be keeping watch on everyone, at all places.they have to be taught into that. This is what differentiates human species and helped us survive this long. This kindness, which ensures that like lions and other predators we do not throw our olds from our prides, and which ensures that unlike other animals, our offspring get years on end to grow and accomplish, before being required to hunt for themselves. It is not a matter of gender discourse that this basic human kindness be kept alive. It is not us against them, it is about Us- the Humans.





 The path of right will always be long and tedious
and will demand sweat and blood. But to me it seems, we are many times so
driven by our own selfish needs and at times sense of uprightness that we do
not want to take that long, winding path to justice. I am not suggesting that
the fundamental changes will weed out the aberrations. They will remain, but
much less. They will not be a pattern, but a rare sight which can be easily
addressed with swift hand of law. It is because of our intent to follow the easier
path, that we instead of demanding the structural, fundamental changes to
protect the rights and well-being of those with less of power, we seek
resolution in deaths, killings and violence, in sudden spurts of uprightness. In
doing so, we seldom realize, that the demon in governance we thus release will
some day, hold us up by the neck, and then trudging in our own blood, we will
stand up and throw the question at our selves, just like Russell Crowe-‘Are you
not entertained?”

Book Review- "The Seeds of War" by Ashok Banker

Book Review- The Seeds of War

Writer- Ashok K Banker

Publisher- Westland Books

My Rating-  4.5/ 5 ( highly readable, recommended)It isn't not easy for an author or any artist, for that matter to surpass his or her earlier acclaimed work. The sword of his own success looms ominously over his subsequent work. Ashok Banker with his new book, "The Seeds of War" ran with this challenge. The tension is much real as was proposed by the noted author Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Love, Pray on her much loved lecture on TED. Any writer embarking on a series of story inevitably runs this risk. It is easy to imagine the worries that must be tugging at Ashok Banker's heart when he would have set himself on the task of writing the second of Mahabharata series. It is unnerving even for the reader who picks another book of an author whose earlier book one has loved, and I did pick this book with great fear and trepidation. Ashok Banker sure deserves blatant praise for having surpassed his last book with this charmer.



His having tried his hand at successful Ramayana series would not be a guarantee of a Mahabharata series, latter being, much more humane, much more complex even in the original. That the original itself by Ved Vyasa is so seeped with real human emotions, and the inherent strength and frailty of human minds would have rendered any attempt to re-write or re-interpret the venerated tome a daunting task. A deep-down, philosophical analysis of the characters of Mahabharata by Gurcharan Singh in his treatise "The Difficulty of Being Good" which I read some time back and still treasure in my mind, further increased the sense of trepidation and anxiety with which I had picked this book.



I wasn't necessarily worried about the quality of writing, having read and reviewed "The Forest of Stories" earlier.  I wasn't anyways worried about a rock-pop commercialised treatment of Indian mythology, which is something that Banker has always remained guarded against. I had intensely and thoroughly disliked the much-famed Meluha series, which urbanised and modernised the Shiva mythology. The dislike was not due to some religious reasons but merely because of literary murder of a high quality epic which I thought it to be. Follow up series came into being, building on commercial success, and I refused to pick another book of the series, I respected the rights of the author, but respected my rights as a reader even more. To be fair to Ashok, he forewarns the reader thus in the introduction itself, when he says, 'it is not a sci-fi rendition. It is not a futuristic version.' Seemingly aware what his book is likely to compete on the bookshelves in the book stores.



[image error]In terms of analysis and research, maybe it might not equal to Gurcharan's book, but in terms of flair, beauty and exquisite words-play it is quite a readable book. In fact it is an amazingly refreshing book. The words go on a long-winding poetic path which is in keeping with the norms set by the original which it seeks to re-tell and which keeps you enamoured by the sheet beauty.

The book wakes up in the intriguing world of mythology, telling the story of our lives, which as the author tells is a part of seventh of the fourteenth cycle which will eventually destroy itself to oblivion before giving way to the eighth cycle. Each cycle was to begin with one of the fourteen Manus, ours being Vaisvata Manu. I never knew that before, and that makes it interesting as I am already set and willing to walk on the path beckoned by Ashok Banker.



And who on the Earth knew that Yama was the nephew to Indra, from the first page onwards, you are on the journey to discover things most of us never knew of, no matter how aware we believed ourselves to be of mythological facts. These small discoveries makes the journey very interesting. This story of origin is way better than the Darwin's.



The step back which Ashok takes into the story of Bharat, with the ancestry of Yayati, his father briefly covered, though brief, is enough to kindle the the anxiety which will be enough to lift you up in a kind of hot-air ballon on a sojourn above the mythological landscape which lies below you.



While we all know the story of the Great War, multiple version of which has been told to us many times in the past, but what went before the war is usually too quickly run through, with very less attention. As the name suggests, The Seeds of War, is largely referring to that epoch when the stage was being set on which the Great War drama called the Mahabharata was to be eventually played.

The stories woven in intrigue and unbelievable magic, is built around the basic fabric of human emotions, as one finds in the interesting, episode of Kacha's killing and eventual restoration of life to him and to his guru, The Shukracharya. What stays with you as a lingering after taste is not the magical sanjivani which could bring dead to life, what stays with you the father's love for his daughter, Devayani, which makes him forego concerns of his own life to save his daughter's love. The grace and dignity with which Shukracharya handles the knowledge of the fact that Kacha was the son is his most formidable adversary, Brihaspati, leaves us, blunted with a graceless society of now, longing for the world gone by. The episode ends with the first prohibition in the human history.



One laments in his heart at the heart wrenching episode when Kacha readies to leave the Ashram having learnt the art of bringing the dead to life, in the face of moving pleas of Devayani to marry her. But with a swift change of the scene, brings to fore the strength of the spurned woman as she curses Kacha to forget all that he learnt in the fictional period of a thousand years. That sure was not a world where women had not choice, they did have the choice and did fight to exercise it with a vengeance which we are in today's world cannot even fathom. The fiery freedom of the women comes into full blossom  in Paksha Two, with unknown and unquestioned motherhood of Sharmishtha. It was Puru, the illegitimate child borne by Sharmishtha, who was to later be the pioneer of things which were to shape the future of India.



The story has very interesting and engaging account of largely unknown story of a very basic human greed and failing when Yayati cursed to sudden old age seeks to exchange it with the youth of his son Yadu. Yadu refuse and so do all other sons, all but Puru, who loses his youth and gains the kingdom. I could not help think could this be a symbolic story. A story in which the father, a corrupt and indisciplined king, on the edge of the precipice of old age but still refusing to let go of his ways, had to give up the reigns of running of his kingdom to the young Puru, who had to make the difficult choice of losing the fancies and fantasies of youth for the sake of getting the country run well, and thereby growing beyond age and gaining a well deserved rule.



The floral speeches and long-winded sentences notwithstanding, much in line with the tone and tenor of the story which it attempts to re-tell, the perspective has modern relevance, and true to the story, Indra comes out to be a mean, non-serious king with greatness thrust on him as he curses Yayati post death to suffer between the world of Gods and men. This fall though sad in itself brings in a great philosophical debate between the fallen king and Ashtak, the righteous one, philosophical high point of a wonderful story.



This is one section which I would suggest readers looking for meaning of life to read many times. That is what mythology exists for. Though we have lost time or interest for the mythological stories in our dumb submission to the unkind pursuit of commercial objectives as sole purpose of life. There are great lessons hid in the layers of interpretation, which these mythological stories carry for each of us to learn for and utilise for improving our lives, even in this century.

It is very rare to find intellectuals of the day to dig out those pearls of wisdom from beneath the charming mythological stories, and when you find an opportunity to find one, it would behoove well for us not to let such an opportunity pass us by, unexamined. This book is one such opportunity, to understand life well, through a story well written. Highly





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The Death of Letter-writing

[image error]I am currently reading Letters by Kurt Vonnegut. It is an amazing collection of letters, loaded splendid wit and amazingly disarming honesty. I have been off and on worrying about the dying art of letter writing, in spurts. Last I went into bout of sadness about the fact that no one writes letter anymore was when I had heard the rendition of the letters of Ghalib, the great Urdu poet, in the magnetic and soulful voice of an equally great Urdu writer, poet of the day, Gulzaar.

What imagery, what honesty, wrapped in such shiny, twinkling couplets like





" Jamaa karate ho kyun, raqeebon ko/

yeh tamaasha hua, gilaa Naa hua"

(Translation- The way you gather those

who strive and compete with me for your love

to listen to the woes of our love/

Turns what would be

Otherwise a plateful banter

Between two lovers

Into a vulgar spectacle)





The visual description and verbal imagery transports you into a different world, when you read and imagine Ghalib writing about the rains in Delhi, stating,

"Abr ek din Barse, to chhat chaar Roj barasati hai"( when the cloud rains for a day, the roof rains for four days).

One can actually visualise an ageing poets, with dense, white beard, sitting alone in one, rare dry corner of a damp, dark room, writing the letter, enveloped in a feeble light. One can not escape the charm of the florid writing and the mesmerising imagery contained therein.





When a letter is written to a friend, or family or beloved, it transcends the limitations of written words. Through letters two souls embrace and connect from a distance. When I write a letter, having immediately seen something or experienced something, it is an immediate declaration of a sense of longing that I impart to the targeted recipient of the letter. A letter says, at this moment this is what I see, or explicitly feel ( former can be done through a picture and latter surely though a well conceived FB status or tweet), but where the latter stretches beyond other tools of communications is when it explains and shares the implied thoughts and implicit feelings.





With the all-pervasiveness of digital technology, in terms of cameras, and smartphones, always connected over the mesh which holds our generation in its tentacles, we can share the picture of what is in front of us with those who might not be there with us at the moment. But, a picture, though is said to be worth a thousand words, is handicapped to be able to explain the feelings that your mind has experienced at the time when I saw a sunset, a lonely tree on a hillock, a couple having coffee together. A picture may be able to show what lies in front of you at the moment, a letter tells the recipient that I so longingly wish you were here with me when I saw that. That is what sharing life is about.





Those who access the picture you share get to see what you saw, but are left to themselves to interpret what you felt at that moment. Many times I do feel, that my inability to write to my spouse, to my parents have got a great deal to do with the stress which at time creeps into the relations owing to my ever frequent travels. Which picture can equal the endearing honesty of Kurt Vonnegut's letter in terms of so many things these lines convey about his state when he writes,"Jane (his wife) is at loose-ends these days- but sweet and cheerful as always. Our neighbours are awfully dumb and nights are awfully still." You can not event speak on phone like this, and methinks, not even in person.





By refusing to write, and trying to do with 140 character tweets, easy share of pictures on the Facebook, we not only deprive the current but also the future generation from any possibility of understanding us. What we share, the pictures, is nothing but what is. When we write about it, interpret it, we share with the reader of the letter, the human eye and the human heart which watched what is contained in the pictures.





I had a nine year long courtship and when I look back, I think we survived those days of love and longing, and are still going strong, on account of insights we gained into each others minds and hearts through letters we wrote to one another. It has been long since I wrote to my wife, may be a decade or so of our marriage. I still remember, we used to write to each other, even after we had met for an hour or so over a cup of coffee. The magic of those letters easily surpassed the time physically spent together. Those letters went beyond the limited times we were spend together, in those days of strictly rationed togetherness.





As we move forward, we share so little. Without letters, my wife can not know how annoying it was to find in the morning that my socks were so discomforting due to sweaty feet, and nor could my four year know how overwhelmed I was when I saw a cute monkey toy at the airport and in my heart thought about her. How do you describe the salubrious air of Bangalore or feisty feast of Kolkata over a tweet? With letters only we can continue to share our lives and thoughts. It was still manageable till the time email wasn't yet dead. Still, we would write long mails, describing our agonies, annoyances and ecstatic moments. But with Facebook and twitter, even that is gone and we are sharing less and less of our own selves with those we love. The ease of expression has killed the expression.





I pledge to write letters, and I muse fondly about my daughter's career ambition of becoming a postman when she grows up. I know, once she grows up, she might not want to become a postman once she outgrows her Nursery Rhyme about The Postman, and I will run a serious risk of being considered insane and/ or anachronous old fool, by friends and family for writing letters, once again. But I am of the belief that this venture of mine will help nourish some fledgling relations, currently living on the strength of nostalgia. I will write letters, and send them to friends and I will wait for letters from friends, will they also write? Will you write a letter after reading this, do let me know?

A Stifled Song

"Without music, life would be a mistake"said Nietzsche, the nihilist philosopher. Plato spoke about the all encompassing nature of music when he said,"Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything."



A wise man in Kashmir, sought to contradict them and said music was the way to hell, and the harbinger of moral decline of social morality. He, in one ambitious step, nullified the wisdom of centuries; re-defined religion and killed music in the land of amazing beauty. 



He one night came on the national television, gleefully claiming his space in the drawing rooms of a nation to claim that when girls are put in the close vicinity of young boys, without the great, protective shield of the veil over their heads. 



We are, pushed by these 'protectors of society' into Stone Age. The censor board already has been rendered redundant by the street protests, some days back against a mediocre movie, which gained audience on account of controversy, days after missing the misfortune of missing the audiences, by virtue of a dogmatic and eventually, conceding producer.

First abused on social media,

Music flees Kashmir

Kamal Farooqui tries to defend the indefensible, tries to hide behind the rhetoric against the indian state, whose hospitality he happily enjoys. The matter is up on all channels, except discovery. Though I would have been very happy to be watching the Grand Mufti ( what a grand name) on Discovery as the member of lost and extinct species. 



Since that is a wish not to come true, I let my five year old play with the block, cherish her play of 'Snow flakes, Snow flakes, Li Lo snow flakes'. I am waiting for the slanging matches on the television, with angry participants, and an angrier host, foam out of mouths, shouts. This is the way of the things, this will be getting worse in the days to come, as we move towards the elections next year.



 All the intolerants, angry, violent voices has come forward. Those who were lesser cowards, abused the singing kids from behind the social networks, bigger ones threatened the state, which dithered, then tweeted, then dithered again. The Pragaash girls, all girls rock band had a voice too feeble to survive the cacophony of threats. A nightingale is killed, with its tiny neck broken by harsh rope of intolerance. Angry people, with their respective sets of mobs are setting their stalls, showcasing there wares of violence, threats and abuse. With elections around, buyers would be soon coming along. 



I brace myself for a shrill, silence, devoid of music. The nation decays, Mufti smiles and kids lower the gaze, take off the wings and put them in the dark, iron box under the bed. There is no sky to soar across to, there are flags of groups and parties, leaving no patch of free sky to fly in. We all the citizens of this nation which pretends to be the largest democracy, are resigned to a life, without the giggles of the kids and the music of the soul. We are doomed to a life which is a mistake, a mistake which will pass across generations, as the government stands mute spectator. The valley looses its heavenly voice.

An Intolerant India

I remember with fondness, a time when I was six years old. I was travelling with my mother in Bihar when she and all the famous fives of them(Five sisters, my mother and her sisters, my Maasis), boarded the wrong train. Those were the times of tight purses, and strict expenses. Thus as we had it, we could understand the blunder which was committed, only after journeying in the direction opposite to the one originally planned for. By the time, trains were swapped and new tickets were bought, the funds touched the bottom lining of the purses they carried.



As we rode back to Munger, the hawkers came into the train compartments with loaded temptations. Ah, those were wonderful times of great snacks selling with lovely sounds inviting you to buy the stuff, against the chugging sound of the diesel trains. One hawker, I remember, was selling eggs, the boiled one. I asked for one, and he stood there. I asked my mother more, then I begged and I do not remember well, but I may have, rolled on the dusty floor of the compartment. Driven to the wooden wall of the train, my mother claimed that I was just throwing tantrum as the saint that I was, I never had eggs. Now, being thrust into sainthood is a bit too much even for an adult, for a child it was totally unbearable. Tears rolled and I muttered, "But I do eat Eggs." I was immediately shut to silence, perforce, lest the hawker continued pestering those ladies with so light their money bag that it would have strolled up in the skies like helium balloons had they not been clutching it so hard in their worried hands. To every one's relief, the hawker passed on, not hearing my plea and the journey could conclude, eventually in the right direction, without an embarrassing intervention of an egg.



That was my first encounter of an affront to my kiddish freedom of expression. Well nothing unique there, we all have had such moments in our lives, especially those who grew up in those days when parenting with friendship towards your kids was considered poor parenting or usually no parenting and constituted utter parental neglect. That my parents, now being grandparents, deny ever having subscribed to muffling the voice  of a child as a part of parenting, when it comes to my little daughter throwing tantrum in front of them, is another matter.





But let us go with the fact that we all have faced such experiences when we questioned our right to speak out, eggs or no eggs. In fact, if I were to think of it rationally, they had valid reason to curtail my right to free speech, at least on this occasion. My freedom of speech, denied them the right to not hear it and required to be funded by them.



We, as a nation, have just passed with the Sixty-fourth republic day last month on twenty-sixth of January. That was the day on which we as a nation gained adulthood setting up our own code of conduct. That venerable tome contained within its being sacred Article 19, sacred for every free thinking individual of the nation. The nation coming out of a long colonial rule, prized this right to free speech close to its heart. All the leadership of the time, had faced the brunt of a heavy-handed state, crushing any dissenting thoughts with swiftness in order to preserve a fledgling colony. Their own experience made them value the significance of varied thoughts and opinions. We only grow through the ideas which challenges our own.



The trajectory towards the emancipation from the burdensome yoke of obedience and subservience, which took flight upwards, wobbled sometime in the late 1970s with first ever imposition of emergency, and thankfully the last.



We came out of the emergency with the dictatorial doctrine humbled, but the Djinns of dictatorial thought never went back into the proverbial lamps from where they came from. The history since then has been peppered with the instances of control over free speech.

Salman Rushdie was probably the first notable in this regard. He came out with a novel, which went on to win him many laurels across the literary world, earning thereby a seat for him among the knights and barons of literature. That was worst moment for Indian democracy. One could have still lived with a suppressive state, which being in full public glare and constant scrutiny by an ever alarmed judiciary was less prone to act arbitrarily, at least not on its own. The sordid saga of banning the Rushdie book, brought forth the mob to call the shots.

A public threat by religious leader was not used by the state  as an occasion to step forward and reaffirm its support to lonely and dissenting voices and put on leash the ferocious animal on non-tolerance which the leader threatened to let loose. The state buckled and banned the book. I have not read the book, The Satanic Verses, till date and have read Rushdie only recently, his memoirs, Joseph Anton. But I was so very disappointed with the state which bowed to the wishes and fancies of the mob.



The book was not to be a part of school or college curriculum. One had to buy it to read it. The right to read or not read was always with the individual. Why should the state intervene and decide for the people, what they ought to read and what not? It set about a very dangerous precedence, the fall outs of which we are watching even today. I do not have much of love for a particular kind of music, but that does not automatically entitles me with a right to put to end that kind of music, only because I could gather some number of like-minded people to come out on street and threaten with numerical power an eventual possibility of violence.



After that we had many of such instances of intolerance, with the paintings of MF Hussain banned, and the highly acclaimed artist being forced to flee from the country and eventually dying in exile. Even his death could not bring about much change in the way we are governed. The logic of my being against the actions against MF Hussain is similar to that about Rushdie. The exhibitions were not held in college campuses, he did not threaten to put those pictures considered offensive, (even, I do consider them offensive to my taste and faith) in your houses and hotels and public places. You were not forced to watch them as you were not being forced to read the Satanic Verses.



As an apology to secular thought, people many times tend to consider the Ramanujam's essays on Ramayana under the same category. But on this I beg to differ. That was a totally different case. This book which many found offensive, being contrary to majority religious beliefs, was being forced into college curricullum. That way it was being thrust in  your face. That is wrong. Not for banning the book, the book should be available in the book stalls, and it should be left to people to decide if you want to read it. There is Arundhati Rai, a perennial rebel, threatening as a columnist put it aptly, to secede from the country and establish a mobile republic of her own, with herself as the government and citizen. I never agreed with her ideas, but I had my keyboard to write about it. I had my own limited vocabulary to counter her exquisite one, to urge people to not read it. But I never subscribe to have a right to get people on streets to burn to book and bring the state to ban the book.



Last couple of years have been a journey in the downward spiral as a nation (as we reached the low ranks of 140 in a list of 170 nations in terms of freedom of expression, so much for being a democracy) at such breakneck speed that it threatened to break the collective collar bone of our national intelligentsia. Our collective heads hang in shame as the nation reels under the draconian Article 66A.



A common citizen was put behind the bar, last year for having merely as much as asked the details of the wealth of a minister's son, two young girls being put behind the bars questioning a bandh following the death of a leader, A cartoonist was put to jail in the West in the most modern and cosmopolitan city of Mumbai , and another cartoonist in the east, in the land of first liberal reforms in colonial India, was sent behind the bars for lampooning the chief minister of the state.



Noted sociologist made a statement regarding corruption in a particular section of the society in Jaipur Literature Festival this year, and the whole world pounced on him. That he was speaking on the topic of corruption being a social equaliser was largely ignored. An unequal ordinance allowed an enraged Nikhil Wagle to tweet the very next day that most of the corrupt of the people were Brahmans (as you would note, I could also mention his tweet clearly not Nandy's statement), with impunity protected  by unequal law. I do not know what gave birth to it, who probably by bringing out the term Harijan took away the pride of identity from a society already reeling under the historic wrong. I am always of the view that negation of your own roots and your own self never can lead to a resolution. The same lost identity was later stoked by the wily politicians, who used their lost identity and pride to their advantage, building on mobocracy to fill their coffers and build their statues. But this is another subject altogether, what was regrettable in the whole affair with what great alacrity the state moved to act against the poor sociologist. In the extreme south at the same time we had Vishwaroop, to my mind a mediocre movie brought to the fore of national consciousness by the opposition it faced on the released. It was banned by the state on the behest of some fringe religious groups. It is indeed a sad state of a failed State, as the state stands unable to protect the right of a voice threatened with voilence. The same state which baton charges the peaceful protest, once it evaluates the electoral value of protesting masses near to nil, stands helpless in the face of violent mobs.



We would to well to remember, it was the same state which responded to the outrage on the death of gang rape victim in Delhi ( In the memory of the one with no name ; http://www.saketsuryesh.net/2012/12/spring-in-delhi-winter-nation-in-angst.html) after ten days, responded to communal speeches of a certain minority leaded in Andhra after ten days, and even to the ghastly beheading of Indian soldiers on the border after eleven days. You can almost sense someone watching out of a large pane window in the seats of power in Lutyen's Delhi, and counting men on street out on protest against a particular cause and mapping them to the votes they would map to before acting on their demands. The state's action in all these instances would be amusing, had it not been so alarmingly threatening to the very idea of democracy. The state stands complicit with the groups threatening social structure, under the pretext of being offended over one reason or other. The state which ought to be committed the most lonely dissenting voice, sides with the numbers and power.





I am dreaded to think what kind of world we are setting up for our children to live in. We always believe that the worse can only happen to our neighbour, never to us. We believe so till the time disaster knocks on our own doors, we do not have even as much time for the change of clothes, let alone change of thoughts, before being thrown into the dark corner of a police cell. This idea may seem too pessimistic at the moment, but it may not be far away for the precipice we have allowed our state to step on to. Let us rediscover the pleasures of Shastrarth, or debating and not let dogmas kill debates. We owe it to our children, to preserve for them a world in which they can think, write and speak with freedom.



I may not agree with all that I seek to be defended, but it is the right to freedom which I hold dear. To me it is what the idea of our nation is built on. I know, when I say these things, I offend people. I would only request them to give a heeding to what I have written, and revert if you agree and ignore if you do not. Though I wish to, I would refrain from being as aggressive as noted author Chrispher Hitchen's was when he wrote,"My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, any where, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my A***", I would rather leave you with a milder, but firm and vivid and urgent request from John Milton who said "Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to consience, above all liberties"  and as Thomas Jefferson said, "the error of opinion may be tolerated and reason be left free to combat it."

However, I must contend, though in Monarchy, State might be treated as father of its citizens, in Demodracy it is the child of the citizens. We get the state what we make it to. You can not blame the errant kid and let him go on erring. As responsible parent citizens, it our job to set right example for the state. Last heart, a ray of sunlight which smiled through cold winters in Kashmir, the all-girls band, Pragaash, has stopped performance, due to abuses and threat on social media. It was not because of state censorship or millitant threat, it was for people protesting on the internet. Please do protest by all means but earn enought words to be able to do it in a manner civilized enough not to kill a contrary thought. Do not be a thought fundamentalist, for the state, like a growing kid will be keenly observing you and learning like a kid what might be allowed conduct under the rules of discipline of its parent.



Pictures Courtsey: Flickr.com (From CC)



My other blogs on similar subject:

How Free was my Country :http://www.saketsuryesh.net/2012/11/how-free-was-my-country-arrest-for.html

The Joke is on US: http://www.saketsuryesh.net/2012/09/the-joke-is-on-us-sorry-commentary-on.html

Anger on the Social Media

Courtsey: Google Images

The social media has brought in great changes in the way we live our lives. It has touched the way we shop, the way we connect to the people around us, the way we think. We no longer drive to our friends to have tea with him and talk to him or her, rather we poke ( not a nice word, I think) each other. These are the changes brought in to our lives by all pervasive social media, but that is not what I wanted to talk about. I have been thinking about the impact social media is making with respect to the causes which we follow as masses and the impact of social media on it.



The twitter, Facebook pages and now, the cause pages has made it much easy for us to pursue a cause. It is easy to pursue, easy to get angry and as violent as the non availability of physical media could permit on the Internet. It is at the same time as addictive.

We closes the twitter at night with anger and wake up in the morning, all charged up with renewed fury, scouting for the latest annoyance to get furious about. Supported with a glib keypad, we shift from one annoyance to another, swiftly with the grace of an expert dancer.



The social media has brought down the walls a bit too much. While in the older, saner times, it would take a great deal of deliberation, thought and effort to decide on the friends we had. We had the liberty of time, and it was taken up with well-deserved seriousness. Becoming a friend was not something to be taken lightly, it was a life-defining activity. You would take days, weeks and months, before graduating someone from being an acquaintance to being a friend.



We would chose friends with great deal of thought, with those, who even if not matching us in temperament, but in line with our fundamental thoughts of right and wrong eventually allotted a space in our lives, our minds and our thoughts. With social media, it became easy to be friends.

All it needed was the click of a button, twitter called those you consented to be in touch with by an ego-boosting term called 'follower' , which many are late to discover after getting the venom thrown at them by so-called follower on account of some belief held dearly by them, as totally misleading as erroneous.



It is so easy to get angry on the social media, that I feel at times, it is causing two way damage. One, it brings too much of negativity in the thought, as it is so easy to get angry on the social media. You need not think great deal about how to project it, how to follow your anger through to a logical conclusion. Two, very soon the seriousness with which your beliefs ought to be taken fizzles away.



To quote a case, I had a classmate in the college, much to religious in his thought and way to fundamentalist in his approach. We would meet up at time, and with a proper address for the time of the day, went our way. We never sat together, eat together or drank together. When I came across the same person, many year later on Facebook with a friend request, I agreed. So on the social media we were friends, while as I had explained, when we were at a physically knowing distance earlier, we never could go beyond being acquaintance. I was spared of his militant religious thoughts and he was blissfully left in peace unburdened by my religious thoughts bordering at times to utter atheism.



When connected on Facebook, my thoughts were as much in his face as his were in mine, to the discomfort of both of us. I understood long back that we both have lived long enough with our respective thoughts and convictions to consider any conversion. But I am not sure he shared the view. The ease of propagating the thought on the Internet probably prompted in him a desire to mould my thoughts and those like me and thereby change the world. I used to be known to slip easily into violent actions when young, but this gentleman, who at that time was quite a good citizen of the small republic of our college, turned out to be quite belligerent in his thoughts. Very soon after we connected, we went into an argument where he proposed that indian army should get into a war with our neighbouring country, and I posited otherwise, proposing that we should take a stringent position without going to a war. He called me unpatriotic and coward in some well camouflaged words, and I did not like it anyways. I thought it was a healthy debate till then as I pointed out that such belligerence seeking soldiers to die on the whims of citizens sitting in our respective comfort zone, me selling technology and he trading stocks. Thankfully, neither of us was in a policy framing mode, but the sudden drop of decency as I was blamed for something which I was all my life sure I never was and never will be was shocking.



I thought about it for some time, then thought about the time when we were together in person and chose never to connect beyond a level. The answer was there, we were never friends, and that was because we were so different. This easy connect on Internet, offered immediate access to my thought and a strife devoid of any sense of mutual respect. The message was clear, I immediately disconnected from being a friend.

I can only share my thoughts with those who I am sure to have some respect for them, even with dissent. Your thoughts are precious, no one should be allowed to trample over them. You are your thoughts.

Thus I resolved to a. Be selective of those I connect on social media, and be ruthless in disconnecting those who are discomforting to my basic beliefs and b. to be selectively with causes, so my anger, my fury on the causes which I follow do not become too discomforting for my own being. It is important to be watchful about the causes your pursue, and not be addicted to an eternal, ever-present sense of disgust and anger. The responsibility to ensure that our causes do not become too common place rests with us, also does the responsibility of maintaining our own sanity.