i do not have any personal grudges against the Gandhi - Nehru family.( even if i had that would insignificant from the power heights of 10 janpath). nor for that matter would the grudges of hundreds of others. they can contend elections and win at will. they are the fittest to rule this country, exactly the point that disconcerts me .
every eligible Indian of sound mind and right age , from r k laxman's common man to myself is as eligible to be the prime minister, as fit to govern as rahul and priyanka are . why then a national obsession with their intentions and non-statements?
years of being ruled by supposedly greater powers have probably dulled national ambitions. we always try finding people more qualified, better for a particular job than ourselves. someone who is reluctant to enter politics will never be an able prime minister. the making of such men rest on their sureness in decision making, their ability to discern what is the best for themselves and how to go about it.
growth is a natural condition for and living organism as well as a non living institution. if we enter a particular field, it is with the hope of reaching everywhere that our potentials will allow. men who vie for subordinate positions are consigned to the dustbin of history before the embers of their pyre die down.
unfortunately, india's grand old party has little faith in the concept of republic that it helped create. though today's congress party is in no way a worthy successor to the movement that the indian national movement that brought to its feet the mightiest empire known to man.
its time the party started creating its heroes , starting from nehru and stop using the mahatma to further its political ends.
if you are an ambitious person the party has little to offer you. with all the world's luck you can become a stop gap( like rao) or a lackey ( with regret , dr singh). we can never be the people we want to be.what kind of legacy will people like arjun singh and pranav mukherjee leave, weak willed subordinates? perhaps.
i would like to pay tributes to Jefferey archer . his 'first among equals' gave me a definitive belief that we can be exactly the substance of our dreams. if we have the will and the fortitude we can shape our own skies.
reminds me of Mao, 'women hold up half the sky'
or as in my case, all of it..lol [:)]
Friday, March 23, 2007
secularism
i immensely envy Rahul Gandhi.
with his kind of intellectual prowess and fabulously flawed sense of history someone else would have queued up for a manual, unskilled job.but some are more equal than others, even in a (working?) democracy such as ours.
this man will be India's prime minister one day, a job which may not be all that unskilled. ( though successive office bearers have managed to make it look like one). i would not get into his merit to be one, for one any good scales to do so we are sure to uncover a history of failure. my contentions are different, something that lies at the very heart of parliamentary democracy. about the suitability of every Indian to reach the top post, even when his name does not end with a Gandhi or Nehru.
i always felt of the late p.v.narsimha rao's regime as something of a whiff of fresh air. together with Nehru and Gujral they were the most learned men to occupy the top post. of course there where flaws in his regime intertwined with the obvious economic astuteness . the biggest failure was of course the failure to save the babri masjid. this is the fact that mr rahul gandhi chose to highlight to prop up his secular credentials and echo dynastic supremacy.
unsurprisingly,not one murmur emerged from the congress ranks. senior ministers of the rao cabinet stay shut without venturing to correct a 35 year old ignoramus's world view, whose only 'achievements' are a columbian girlfriend and endangering indo- afghan relations by hobnobbing with karazai'a daughters. and of course, getting Delhi university admission norms changed for him to get admission in Saint Stephens college ( introduction of sports quota)
coming back to the babri masjid. their are times that larger tides of history engulf and alter the movement of daily events. their is very little for anyone to counter these flash floods. December 92 saw a fervent mobilization of marauding masses like never before.it was laced with emotion and passions unseen after independence. today we can sit back and analyse the event with the benefit of retrospect.
the masjid always had a turbulent history and December 92 was only a climax to what started after mir baki's razing of original temple and the installation of deities in 1949.
the question is extremely complex and there can be no one single answer to satisfy all sides. our best bet lies in letting the issues dissipate with the passage of time and eventually reach a judicial compromise which incorporates some demands of the two communities involved. to try and re-project history in 'what if' terms is meaningless and selfish.
rahul also exonerates his father and presents him as a keystone of secularism. his history teachers perhaps forgot to tell him that it was his dear father who facilitated the opening of masjid locks , allowed the shilanayas ad launched his campaign from ayodhya in 89.in the shah bano case we learnt the full extent of his secularism.
his successor v.p.singh, was much more a man of substance.he gave up his office to counter what he believed to be communalism. his ideals prevented him from accepting office for a second time in 96 . unlike sonia gandhi (refusal?) of office he wasn't mobbed by an army of boot lickers.
with his kind of intellectual prowess and fabulously flawed sense of history someone else would have queued up for a manual, unskilled job.but some are more equal than others, even in a (working?) democracy such as ours.
this man will be India's prime minister one day, a job which may not be all that unskilled. ( though successive office bearers have managed to make it look like one). i would not get into his merit to be one, for one any good scales to do so we are sure to uncover a history of failure. my contentions are different, something that lies at the very heart of parliamentary democracy. about the suitability of every Indian to reach the top post, even when his name does not end with a Gandhi or Nehru.
i always felt of the late p.v.narsimha rao's regime as something of a whiff of fresh air. together with Nehru and Gujral they were the most learned men to occupy the top post. of course there where flaws in his regime intertwined with the obvious economic astuteness . the biggest failure was of course the failure to save the babri masjid. this is the fact that mr rahul gandhi chose to highlight to prop up his secular credentials and echo dynastic supremacy.
unsurprisingly,not one murmur emerged from the congress ranks. senior ministers of the rao cabinet stay shut without venturing to correct a 35 year old ignoramus's world view, whose only 'achievements' are a columbian girlfriend and endangering indo- afghan relations by hobnobbing with karazai'a daughters. and of course, getting Delhi university admission norms changed for him to get admission in Saint Stephens college ( introduction of sports quota)
coming back to the babri masjid. their are times that larger tides of history engulf and alter the movement of daily events. their is very little for anyone to counter these flash floods. December 92 saw a fervent mobilization of marauding masses like never before.it was laced with emotion and passions unseen after independence. today we can sit back and analyse the event with the benefit of retrospect.
the masjid always had a turbulent history and December 92 was only a climax to what started after mir baki's razing of original temple and the installation of deities in 1949.
the question is extremely complex and there can be no one single answer to satisfy all sides. our best bet lies in letting the issues dissipate with the passage of time and eventually reach a judicial compromise which incorporates some demands of the two communities involved. to try and re-project history in 'what if' terms is meaningless and selfish.
rahul also exonerates his father and presents him as a keystone of secularism. his history teachers perhaps forgot to tell him that it was his dear father who facilitated the opening of masjid locks , allowed the shilanayas ad launched his campaign from ayodhya in 89.in the shah bano case we learnt the full extent of his secularism.
his successor v.p.singh, was much more a man of substance.he gave up his office to counter what he believed to be communalism. his ideals prevented him from accepting office for a second time in 96 . unlike sonia gandhi (refusal?) of office he wasn't mobbed by an army of boot lickers.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
of hopes and fears...
their are moments that change your life...never to be the same again. one such moment stuck me yesterday afternoon.
i have lived 22 years of my life fed on the diet of constant , superlative success. without ever realizing it i changed into a shallow, insular, arrogant bully. and then the crashes came . starting 8Th may 2006. and once they did, they did so in profusion ,5 in a year , on personal and professional fronts.
i had never known what it was to swim against time and tide. spoilt on a constant diet of lifeboats ..i cried foul.
the latest of the series came one day before . it was the deepest felt and yet,in a surprising manner the most easily shrugged off.
24 hours of aimless wanderings brought nothing home besides mounting tiredness and an ever growing morass of depression.
one quiet afternoon changed everything.
yesterday afternoon i stood on my back balcony. half in light , half in shade. mid march sun warmed my heart . and then the wind started blowing. funneled and channeled by the buildings encroaching both sides of the narrow service lane it moved across my face at kiss- a -second speeds.
bathed in this glowing, whirling, swaying orange fantasy i felt as if i can fly.( thanks to Icarus i did not try...lol)
suddenly, the whole logic and purpose of life came unstuck.
hounded by the fear of failure , its likelihood and its social fall outs i had forgotten something. i had forgotten to live. to make the most of a young brilliant life.
trapped in my own prisons of past and by the reasons of future i forgot to peek into the heart of my present. i had forgotten to cherish my efforts and endeavours , savour the golden minutes of hard work that i put in, and love the feeling of logging hundreds of tired days laced with optimism ..imbued with hope and colored with dreams.
i had stopped being myself .
i narrate this because its wider and deeper than my felt emotions.
it transcends the margins of my own set of feelings and realities and represents the story of every young man and woman who has ever dared to have a dream very close to his or her heart.
we forget that we are more than the sum of our circumstances.
we are the leading lights of the plays that our own lives are. we form the centrepieces of all the music that we unwittingly produce in our everyday lives.
I'll sum up with quoting iqbal
sitaron ke aage jahan aur bhi hain
abhi ishq ke intehaan aur bhi hain
tu shaheen hai, parvaaz hai kaam tera
tere saamne bhi aasma aur bhi hai
to everyone who has ever been in love with a vision..a dream, an idea...
i have lived 22 years of my life fed on the diet of constant , superlative success. without ever realizing it i changed into a shallow, insular, arrogant bully. and then the crashes came . starting 8Th may 2006. and once they did, they did so in profusion ,5 in a year , on personal and professional fronts.
i had never known what it was to swim against time and tide. spoilt on a constant diet of lifeboats ..i cried foul.
the latest of the series came one day before . it was the deepest felt and yet,in a surprising manner the most easily shrugged off.
24 hours of aimless wanderings brought nothing home besides mounting tiredness and an ever growing morass of depression.
one quiet afternoon changed everything.
yesterday afternoon i stood on my back balcony. half in light , half in shade. mid march sun warmed my heart . and then the wind started blowing. funneled and channeled by the buildings encroaching both sides of the narrow service lane it moved across my face at kiss- a -second speeds.
bathed in this glowing, whirling, swaying orange fantasy i felt as if i can fly.( thanks to Icarus i did not try...lol)
suddenly, the whole logic and purpose of life came unstuck.
hounded by the fear of failure , its likelihood and its social fall outs i had forgotten something. i had forgotten to live. to make the most of a young brilliant life.
trapped in my own prisons of past and by the reasons of future i forgot to peek into the heart of my present. i had forgotten to cherish my efforts and endeavours , savour the golden minutes of hard work that i put in, and love the feeling of logging hundreds of tired days laced with optimism ..imbued with hope and colored with dreams.
i had stopped being myself .
i narrate this because its wider and deeper than my felt emotions.
it transcends the margins of my own set of feelings and realities and represents the story of every young man and woman who has ever dared to have a dream very close to his or her heart.
we forget that we are more than the sum of our circumstances.
we are the leading lights of the plays that our own lives are. we form the centrepieces of all the music that we unwittingly produce in our everyday lives.
I'll sum up with quoting iqbal
sitaron ke aage jahan aur bhi hain
abhi ishq ke intehaan aur bhi hain
tu shaheen hai, parvaaz hai kaam tera
tere saamne bhi aasma aur bhi hai
to everyone who has ever been in love with a vision..a dream, an idea...
Monday, March 12, 2007
dreams
if there is one thing that makes us different from all the other species on the planet its the power of dreams..while the size and intensity may vary for each of us...the phenomenon itself is unwavering.
animals live in a forever extended present. their thoughts and actions are based on a consistent appraisal of their changing worlds and the need to adjust along the short term time horizons.
they don't plan and any swift changes in nature's plans decimate their entire ranks...ask the dinosaurs...once the mighty, unchallenged rulers of all the lands.
and worse, they don't dream (at least in a human like fashion and vividness)
Freud believed that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. the unconscious which is the repository of the exchanges of our life and our personal analysis without us ever knowing about. the unconscious which is the reservoir of our primitive needs , a fountainhead of our desires, the keystone of our pleasure.
Freud believed dreams have two sources, wish fulfillment and day residue. to anyone who has ever dreamt this would sound prophetic. in his theory of symbolism Freud analyses the crucial nuts and bolts from our dream works, the subtle and simple movements of everyday interactions.
and yet there are millions who have never dreamt. some forced not to by the grinding poverty of their everyday day, others weaned away by the comfort of riches. sometimes i feel dreaming is a typical middle class pastime imposed upon unsuspecting audience by expatriate writers, dream merchants and quacks of all hues in search of universal palliatives.[:)]
and the most alarming fact is , they lack the barest conception of what they miss.
when i hear martin Luther king pronounce, 'i have a dream...' my levels throb with energy and direction towards the red hills of Georgia to see the rolling down of the the most spectacular sight of our entire lifetimes. Nehru's tryst with destiny, pulls me to the birth-dawn of a new nation untarnished by its latter failures. Tagore's clear stream of reason skips the dreary desert sand of dead habits and flows down the gangetic plains through the Bengali heartland.
such is the power of imagery , and of human mind. two hours of wanderings on a rainy Delhi evening , took me everywhere across the planet and back. in the extremely couple - friendly cafes that happen to be my usual haunt ( honestly...its only because of a total vacuum of choices..lol) i never feel alone. even when a hundred eyes reinforce the fact i never feel outlandish my dreams sustain my rhythm for better purposes.
everyone has a favourite dream.
here's mine.
its a mild summer afternoon.
the sky is a clear light golden. wide avenues are populated by tastefully located eateries. yellow leaves keep falling submitting to the whimsical nature of shifting pressure conditions and the consequent light summer winds. its a port city so the breeze is slightly more pronounced. white houses are interrupted by regulation black lamp posts. its a picture we have forever seen on the water color boxes that were so precious and hard to come as kids.
I'm walking. there's somebody next to me. i can't see her. my 180 degree viewing angle is totally unhelpful. and like is older Hindi movies , the dream stays steeped in suspense. its destined to keep us away from the charms of Mona Lisa smile as long as it rationally (come on its a dream...even irrationally can..lol)possible!!
perfect man (is there a creature like that??), perfect woman (more plausible...but again hard to believe), on a perfect vacation in a perfect world..lol....mills n boons should try me, I'm every bit of a bored American Midwest housewife as any is.
and yet, despite the scepticism and mockery, i believe in my dreams. i wait and cherish for those moments when they will materialize. when they will transmute from raw fantasies to tangible , calculable objects. moments when an entire lifetime of efforts will fuse to create one line, " the man who would be the king"
wishful thinking...lol...but then what are dreams for ..go see your dreams..conquer your worlds!!
animals live in a forever extended present. their thoughts and actions are based on a consistent appraisal of their changing worlds and the need to adjust along the short term time horizons.
they don't plan and any swift changes in nature's plans decimate their entire ranks...ask the dinosaurs...once the mighty, unchallenged rulers of all the lands.
and worse, they don't dream (at least in a human like fashion and vividness)
Freud believed that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. the unconscious which is the repository of the exchanges of our life and our personal analysis without us ever knowing about. the unconscious which is the reservoir of our primitive needs , a fountainhead of our desires, the keystone of our pleasure.
Freud believed dreams have two sources, wish fulfillment and day residue. to anyone who has ever dreamt this would sound prophetic. in his theory of symbolism Freud analyses the crucial nuts and bolts from our dream works, the subtle and simple movements of everyday interactions.
and yet there are millions who have never dreamt. some forced not to by the grinding poverty of their everyday day, others weaned away by the comfort of riches. sometimes i feel dreaming is a typical middle class pastime imposed upon unsuspecting audience by expatriate writers, dream merchants and quacks of all hues in search of universal palliatives.[:)]
and the most alarming fact is , they lack the barest conception of what they miss.
when i hear martin Luther king pronounce, 'i have a dream...' my levels throb with energy and direction towards the red hills of Georgia to see the rolling down of the the most spectacular sight of our entire lifetimes. Nehru's tryst with destiny, pulls me to the birth-dawn of a new nation untarnished by its latter failures. Tagore's clear stream of reason skips the dreary desert sand of dead habits and flows down the gangetic plains through the Bengali heartland.
such is the power of imagery , and of human mind. two hours of wanderings on a rainy Delhi evening , took me everywhere across the planet and back. in the extremely couple - friendly cafes that happen to be my usual haunt ( honestly...its only because of a total vacuum of choices..lol) i never feel alone. even when a hundred eyes reinforce the fact i never feel outlandish my dreams sustain my rhythm for better purposes.
everyone has a favourite dream.
here's mine.
its a mild summer afternoon.
the sky is a clear light golden. wide avenues are populated by tastefully located eateries. yellow leaves keep falling submitting to the whimsical nature of shifting pressure conditions and the consequent light summer winds. its a port city so the breeze is slightly more pronounced. white houses are interrupted by regulation black lamp posts. its a picture we have forever seen on the water color boxes that were so precious and hard to come as kids.
I'm walking. there's somebody next to me. i can't see her. my 180 degree viewing angle is totally unhelpful. and like is older Hindi movies , the dream stays steeped in suspense. its destined to keep us away from the charms of Mona Lisa smile as long as it rationally (come on its a dream...even irrationally can..lol)possible!!
perfect man (is there a creature like that??), perfect woman (more plausible...but again hard to believe), on a perfect vacation in a perfect world..lol....mills n boons should try me, I'm every bit of a bored American Midwest housewife as any is.
and yet, despite the scepticism and mockery, i believe in my dreams. i wait and cherish for those moments when they will materialize. when they will transmute from raw fantasies to tangible , calculable objects. moments when an entire lifetime of efforts will fuse to create one line, " the man who would be the king"
wishful thinking...lol...but then what are dreams for ..go see your dreams..conquer your worlds!!
Saturday, March 3, 2007
book review
i have been reading a lot lately.
i love reading contemporary Indian writing in English.
the book i have chosen to review is from this genre...its called "the peacock throne" by sujit saraf.
its a long book of about 750 pages and runs like a thread through the most tumultuous period of Indian polity. 1984 to 1998.
it traces the rise of a new political culture complete with the vices of a previous political era minus its scant virtues.
and yet the book never intends to measure character with a moral compass. it presents reality the way it should be, as and when.
in gopal pandey the books recreates the worn out common man and pushes him through the narrow corridors of power.
the peacock throne departs from the usual Indian story in may ways. poverty isn't fascinating or romantic...its painful,
despite the size of the book their is a careful economy of words .... modern India is too complex to be contained in any other way without missing out on one or many of the significant.
stories of great men and great institutions have perfect beginnings and tailor made climaxes.but this is a very ordinary story about very ordinary people. such subjects keep fumbling and faltering until they "fall" into a rhythm, which again is susceptible to fall at the faintest inkling of instability.
saraf's chandni chowk is everyplace in modern India though you may not want it to be, just as his gopal pandey is the everyman you will love to lose in a crowd.
despite its declared finite geographical extent its a microcosm of the whole breadth India.
my best moments came when the book enters its final lap in 1998.the book metamorphoses into a new avatar. suddenly its characters come alive and move around with energy and purpose. the book becomes a living , breathing document.
the masterstroke takes six hundred pages in coming as the plot develops, like a cake baked slowly. and then it comes. perfect. just like good monsoons it drenches you into literary perfection.
in a hundred pages it paints the most authentic picture of the dance of democracy. it shakes up an entire world and its way of life before restoring it to its former equilibrium. sandpapering the new rough edges and fitting them back to where they belong.
their are lines which stick to you long after the ensemble has collapsed on the altar of oblivion.on page 726 i found that one line.
gopal "das", new member of parliament for chandni chowk, and the crucial swing vote in a possibly hung lok sabha is in the PM's residence where a young minister asks him about his preference for any particular ministry.
our man looks at the floor and remains silent for some time, and then slowly answers, "i will take all matters into consideration and make a decision that benefits the people of chandni chowk"
bravo!!...this would have been a perfect climax for a perfect book.
but this is a flawed book written for flawed people....its veers away from predictables.
there's another gem of a line on page 698...a former sex worker-turned NGO wali says "today every woman in chandni chowk will turn into a whore"...if you read the book you'll realize the whole compelling sense behind it.
PS : the book turns out to be a terrific education of chandni chowk , its buildings and in fact a whole way of life waiting to be discovered. more details can be had at www.sujitsaraf.com. i have added images from chandni chowk.
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