Nomads

Muflisi aur yeh Mazahir hai nazar ke samne
 Saikaron Changez-O-Nadir hain nazar ke samne
Saikaron Sultan-O-Jabir hain nazar ke samne
 Ay Gham-e-Dil kya karun, Ay Wahshat-e-Dil kya karoon

Le ke ek Changez ke Hathon se khanjar tor doon

 Taj per us ke damakte hein jo pathar tor doon
 Koi tore ya na tore mein hi barh ke tor doon
 Ay Gham-e-dil kya karoon, Ay Wahshat-e-dil kya karoon...

extract from Majaz Lakhnawi's awesome poem 'Awara'

I am a nomad,son of an ancient land of nomads.Descended from a peculiar mix of people who lived at the confluence of a traditional thoroughfare for invading armies over the millenia.Alexander the Great and his Macedonians would have known my ancestors in the Punjab.Ghauri,khilji,Tughlak and Nadir Shah all came into India through those broad plains.

The result was a landless,literate,proud people,difficult to govern and always looking to the far horizons to find that fortune or just see the world.They covered the breadth of India,then Europe and the Americas until there is hardly a country in the world that has not known some of us.Where we settled we took on the indigenous customs,inter married with local people and are a generally law abiding people who brought raw intellect,strong bodies,a sense of independence and the realization that wherever i am is home.

All of us have a story to tell.Shaped by where we were born and where we grew up.For those who have ever done even basic diving - its a totally different perspective,widening your world with a view above,below and all around at once.Difficult to know where to focus on at any one moment!Its sometimes(for me its most of the time)tough to know which way to take,which story to follow and which crossroads to take.

In the potpourri that is India with a myriad cultures,traditions,mores;not one single strand can represent the complete picture.Each state tries to impose its language or its sense of asthetics.Can we as a Nation survive the regional parochialism?

I remember a decade back the Punjab government decided to have all road signs changed to Gurmukhi.Me as a Punjabi who can speak but not read or write gurmukhi had a terrible time driving around the countryside.The irony would not be lost on you-A Punjabi lost in Punjab!

My whole issue with Islam is that they try to 'impose' their beliefs through force rather than letting the finer aspects(and there are many)shine through to persuade.Its as if Islam was born for the Jihadis.The politilians have used it to foster insecurity and keep the mullahs as shepherds to control the flock.I was startled to discover that in Kashmir ,most riots happen on fridays which being the day of Jumah,fire and brimstone preaching by hardline mullahs in every mosque leads to a squabble bursting out onto the streets raining stones and what have you on whatever catches their fancy which is mostly the police and security forces.

This is the age of PR and none can do better than our political class.The question that most disturbs me is that the majority is too defeated to change the status quo and a small inority feels that there is no alternative to picking up the gun.

Who will stop then?Change their world view?

Its just not in India.Look at Syria,Libya,Pakistan,Africa,the Balkans...

A Zulu friend around a long ago campfire in the South Africa bushveld during a heated discussion on what ailed the mineral rich continent said,"Nkosi sikelele i Afrika".

God Save Africa.

I can say the same for India and about two fifths of the rest of the World!!

Dichotomies exist.Only in the promixity does one feel alive.Memories of being chased by an enraged Elephant in Betla National Park,being a few feet away from the unfurled trunk ready to pluck me out and ground me in the dust.Having survived,the rest of the normal,boring day seemed like a miracle!

Too many of us are living with petty politics,selfishness and obsession with our infinite jealousies.After thousands of years of living in societies we are as yet marooned from those next to us.

Be not like the butterfly(Monarch not included) that lives and dies in the same patch of garden where it was pupaed.

Be a Nomad.

 

Curiosity Killed The Cat.Or Did It ?

Some people leave a lasting impression in your life that speaks to you from their grave.Br Kyle my teacher in high school was one such.In his thick Irish accent he would say,"Mr Prabakaar...dont look back when you are old and grey and say...I WISH I  HAD DONE THIS..."

 

There are so many things in Life we prevent ourselves from doing from eating what we want to going to places that seem expensive or frivolous.

 

Today this post of mine is dedicated to that Teacher of mine in a school that I have not been for 25 years.He thought me to be CURIOUS.Be curious.Have Curiousity!

 

Do not in the last flicker of your life,lament something that once piqued your curiosity but you neglected to go see it or do it and now never could.I do not know whether you or I will die unhappy but it certainly will be dieing UNFULFILLED.If you seized that chance you might have been sorrier or unhappy if that thing had been unapprovable(to society)?

 

Do not abjure or ignore it.Confess.If a person has to have a fault let it one about which You are passionate at least.It would be a pity to be damned for a paltry thing!

 

I have heard tell that in those last moments when a being is almost devoid of all faculties,of all urges and senses the sense of curiosity remains.Not for all the things you did but those you did not.

 

Do not live in dread of missing something.You may fully expect never to become Prime Minister of the Nation.If that happens,well...Now here is the chimeral difference.

 

Do not miss the unattainable but what is within your grasp.That is the point.

 

Imagine going into Death without having tasted the Good,the bad or merely the Indifferent.Here even indifferent becomes a positive attribute.It is something,not bland,mass-less,egregrieous as it may be.To know at that final moment that it was no one other than you yourself,through careful caution,careless choice or failure to follow your curiousity and where it would have led?

 

Could there be a more hurtful pang in afterlife,if such did exist?

 

On mellow evenings when the sky is leaden with the promise of rain and a faint whiff of autumn on the air,I feel the missed roads I did not take.Its not a feeling that can be shared cause its merely the shadow of doubt or relief or fear.

Because I did hope
In the New milieu
To find answers for old questions
Torn from the pages
Of the Book of Life

To grieve or cry in ecstasy
Or give Curiosity another chance

To see where it would lead anew.
Green or Grey
Happy to accept
The Choices I made

The above poem is my own.I chose to stop sketching,writing and a few other pursuits in the mundane daily living.Sometimes its important to remember that you are you and there is none else in the whole wide world.

Who Killed the Mongoose?

In tufts of greenery,nature fights to holdout in our overcrowded cities.Viciously concretized,unplanned,undermaintained cities.Of filth strewn over roads.The Emerging markets of the World.

 

Vignettes from childhood,of playing football and taking a dip in the nearby pond.The gennext bathing with perfumed anti-bactireal soaps!

 

Vignettes from childhood;hiding cuts and bruises from distraught parents.Gennext,using bandaids for a mosquito bite!!

 

In the small back gardens,sometimes mere dumps behind outhouses where the tropical shrubs took hold,came to live a family of mongoose.using the sewers as higways they melded from island to island in search of grubs,beetles and other food.

 

 

Rising above the grass on their hindlegs as once their predecessors might have to run from the fox and the jackal a century past.Now the brick walls burden the horizon.A tired kite with a broken wing watches from above.

 

I would see it pawed scratch marks in my alley especially after a sharp shower in the night had whet the mud.Of a mixing of two worlds in the middle of night.Of the mongoose's search for food in my yard.

 

Today in the morning while collecting my newspaper I found it dead on the road.Was it a passing car?a stray dog?the tired kite?a wandering jackal?Who played a dirge for my unseen mongoose.

 

Or did it just die of defeat.Losing the battle to meander the shrinking pools of food and water.Giving up the land of its ancestors to be spoiled with filth,concrete and people.

 

Overwhelmed.

 

Just like so many other drifting into nothingness,a once great land living under the burden of a greedy population trying to gulp down the remaining resources.The Buddha came and went.The Jain Muni.Mahatma.

 

 

Children of a lost generation.Shorn of principle or respect for their fellows.Intent on consuming for the selfish whole.

 

"In the Begining lies the End".Wasing their dust onto the street without understanding that the next gust of wind will blow it right back.

 

Why just India.The entire Globe losing.Aborigine children stolen and raised by foster parents bereft of indigenous culture that kept them alive since Father Time.The Bushmen,hunted by black and white alike until the great Kalahari swallowed their existence.Of a thousand nameless tribes slaughtered in the name of progress.

 

Valuable knowledge,traditions,language and culture wasted.

 

The Vulture is dead.So is the Mongoose.How many more will follow before the End?

The Breath of God?

Do you know that you breath the same air that was inhaled or exhaled by The Buddha?Yes the inert argon atoms in the atmosphere are the same ones and will be for all those who came before us and those who will come after.

 

The Vedas  state that nothing is created and nothing destroyed.It just changes shape.The atmosphere holds everything in the same proportion.The atoms interact with each other.Is the outer body experience that some go through a primordial instinct of the big Bang theory.Of creation itself?

 

Not till Galileo proved that the earth moved round the sun and not vice versa did the west accept this theory.The eastern ascetics have always known.For Vishnu 4 billion years are but the blink of an eye.A moment like millions of other moments.Isn't that cosmic time?

Listen to what the late Carl Sagan said:

“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.

It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”

It is generally accepted that its dificult for westerners to grasp nonlinear concepts.The cycle of birth and death.Don't the atoms remain .Aint our bodies made up of atoms?Give up your cravings,let the soul control the body and thereby its actions-did the Buddha not preach that as a basic tenet of his 8 fold Path.The Hindu mystics around the dawn of civilization said the same things only in a different manner.

On this Earth Do Stand I
Unvanquished,Unslain,Unhurt.
Set me O Earth,amidst thy nourishing strength
The Earth is my Mother
Its Child I am                                                     - Atharveda

Alexander could have said this,so could Nebuchanezzar,Chengiz Khan or Ashoka The Great.

 

What is electricity.Isnt that Life itself?All the functions in our bodies are made up of electric impulses that fire with specific codes that guide our actions.The scientists can quantify electricity,show us its composition.But can anyone say what electicity is derived off?Isnt electricity the name for Lord Shiva,the Hindu god of preservation and destruction?Does it not give us fire to mould things as well as having the capacity to destroy.

 

In the begining lies the end.Life begins with a child and ends with old age.We know the ions and atoms will decay with time and some others will take their place.The same things in a different form.

 

The Sadhus have aimed to control their joys,sorrows,wants,likes,dislikes.Separating the soul from the ego.We say we are neutral or impartial.Truly?Dont those infinitesimal beliefs of colour,religion,caste caste a pale shadow?

An ignorant man is lost, faithless, and filled with self-doubt;
A soul that harbors doubt has no joy, not in this world or the next."                                                                                                                      - Bhagavad Gita 4:40

Who is qualified to judge the ignorant man?

Not I.

The God is the Universe.We are part of this universe.No wonder no one has seen God because he truly resides within these atoms that make up what constitutes US.WE the People.

 

It is not a benevolent God.It shakes,is riven with faults,feels slighted,gets hurt,feels insulted.Because its us.

 

Balance.Balance between war and peace.love and hate.eat too much salt and you get hypertension.Eat too little and get hormonal imbalances,calcium deficiency.Raze trees,burn and slash the mountains and the mountains start to fall as landslides.

Every religion in its own way teaches BALANCE.To create a state where pain does not hurt too much and joy does not cause too much glee.Some feel meditation is the way or Yoga or the pursuit of money.Each path has its success and an exhaustible capacity to fulfill.The milestones are inside our head.

This is Zen.This is Tao.This is Catholicism.This is the way of Sikhism.Divinity is ours if only we can listen to our daemon.




 

The Zen is inside You

                "Twenty years from today you will be more disappointed by the things
                  you did not do,so sail away from safe harbours
                  Explore,Dream,Discover."                                                    - Mark Twain

I used to be mortally afraid of water in my teens.One day as a challenge I enrolled myself for swimming classes.I went with my neighbours sons and the minute the trainer asked us to take a deep breathe and go under water,I panicked.Only ONE thing stopped me from running away.The thought of having to live with the shame of showing fear!!Ego won that day and the result was in the gruelling summers there is no better relaxation I feel than going for a long swim.

What facilities lie inside you you do not know.When you draw out each breath under water one realises the significance.To understand Yoga you need to swim.Draw breath and see the bubbles rise.Let it all go at once and nothing left but to rise to the surface.Learn to hold your strength and prolong the time to stay where you are.

 

Some do it with hallucigens!Its the search to separate the soul from Life itself.As Siddhartha himself.Seeing rest as the completion of a mission.Death itself the aim.The daily striving means that one is alive.To feel hurt is to say that emotion is alive.Its to ask that ONE eternal question,'Who Am I?"

 

What Am I?just follows.Most never find the time in their lives to ask themself.Some do but lose the thread along the way.A few are  truly afraid to ask and surround themselves with noise to drown out their daemon.

In History the first example of daemon  is in the writings of Alexander the Great.He who was controlled by his daemon to keep pressing.His senses were in finding new horizons .Soul or Atma,whatever the case may be,sometimes one feels born to do something.Even amoungst the billions on this planet each one is born to do something that they can do better than anyone else on earth.The success is in finding that elusive "WHAT".

 

What is difficult is letting go....just not thinking about things that need doing.Can we change the circumstances?Can we control the environment?Can we determine the ultimate result?

 

We tell our children not to waste time.Truly is anything a waste?Sitting alone on a bugyal in Garwhal Himalayas smelling the myriad orchids,lianas in full bloom and watching the bees sift from flower to flower might be a waste of time for me the equities trader,missing out on capitalizing profits?There are other traders but knowing that you may never again be in that moment or pass that way...is that a waste?

 

Wouldn't Life be boring if everything was predetermined as the Godmen would have us believe.Knowing that there is nothing you could do to change an outcome.Its the unpredictablity of Life that makes it so interesting.

 

Those who got swept away by the glacial floods at Kedarnath would not have known that there wont be another morning for them.Longterm plans,empty wishes.

"The Voyage of Discovery is not in seeking new landscapes,but in having new Eyes".Proust.

The Hills have Teeth....When the Ganges Shrugged

               "Off purifiers,I am the Wind,of the Wielders of weapons I am Rama,
                 Of Fishes I am the Shark,And of Rivers flowing,I am Ganga."
                                                                     - The God Krishna in Bhagvad Gita 3:14

The Wrath of the Ganges might be a more apt heading considering the death and destruction wrought to the Northern Indian states of Uttarakhand and Himachal.Having trekked,travelled and visited almost every place that is headline news today causes me to shudder in despair.

 

 

In a way this was almost expected.The same Bhagirathi river had almost dried up in 4-5 places for a stretch of almost 12 kms due to the various hydel projects and dams on it at different places in Uttaranchal around two years back.Swollen with water,silt and chunks of mountain it is a frightening sight,even,to people who were born on its bank and have never seen it rage thus.

 

I remember one memorable,bitterly frozen night at sub zero temperatures at Rambada.Midpoint to the holy Kedarnath shrine.The Mandakini flew in a tiny stream beside my cottage,gurgling on its way to the confluence with the Bhagirathi at Rudraprayag.Today Rambada has been wiped clean of the map.Gaurikund has been swept into the river.Joshimath is cut off.No one knows what happened at Gangotri or yamunotri or Dharcula?

 

Years of rampant corruption,concretization of almost all small towns in an ecologically fragile and earthquake prone zone.Building six lane highways to the Badrinath shrine by dynamiting the mountains,damming the river,creating silt.Add population pressure,resultant waste-biological and environmental pollution and we have the perfect recipe for disaster.

 

Can we lose the Himalayas?create an environment so hostile that travelling or living amidst them becomes a risk?

 

Over the past decade all this noise over the Tehri Dam was neutralized by the powers that be by saying it was 'for the people'.Catchy slogan but deadly.These hills fall in Zone 5 or MSK IX level earthquakes in the highest risk zone!!

 

 

Although I am no geologist,I was told that if Tehri Dam is breached,it will take 7 minutes for Rishikesh and 9 minutes for haridwar to be washed away(as in wiped off the face of the earth kind).All it needs is that One Big One of the century.nature waits.

 

Nature waits.And nature has its revenge.My thoughts go out to those shivering in the rain,huddled in the mud.Cityfied tourists more used to seeing the world outside through tinted glasses.To see car sized boulders rain down on their heads,swirling waters try to drown them and in many cases succeeding.

 

Nature lies submerged under a rampant Ganges river today.On the day that its descent to Earth is venerated by a million Hindus as Ganga dussehra.Is the Mother River of India sending a grim message?

 

The destroyer is not Shiva but -

 

Population

Pollution

Parviscient Government

 

Projects located on the Rivers in Uttarakhand:-

 

Loharinag Pala hydel project

Pala Maneri Hydroelectric Dam Project

381 MW Bhaironghati hydel power project

Phata Byung Dam

Singoli Bhatwari Dam

 

If completed these projects are expected to leave the rivers dry for a minimum 50-70Kms running the water through tunnels.

 

The Mountains I have loved all my life have finally shrugged.How much further rapine and plunder can their stoic facades endure?

 

Sir Alex:The Anti-Hero

Let me tell you at the outset that I am not a Manchester United Fan.There was something about the Liverpool team of the late eighties,when I began to understand football,with the sublime strikes of Ian Rush and the strong physical presence of Kenny Dalglish that made me watch games unblinking for 90 minutes.Mostly on TV but a few at Anfield that made me a 'self-confessed' Liverpudlian!

1999.UEFA Champions league Final.Ole Gunnar Solsksjaer scrambling in the mud and snow,shoots out his foot inside the eight yard circle and into the roof of the net.The match time was 92.17min.Manchester 2 Munich 1.The red shirts won that day without two of their legends - Roy Keane and Paul Scholes.

That in microcosm has been the USP of Sir Alex Ferguson.Never give up.Never back down.If you were an opposing club supporter,to see him hardjawed,grimfaced,pacing up and down the sideline with barely held in aggression was to hate him.You knew him and his team would coming at you.

He did have a cryptic sense of humour and of all the many quotes that comes to mind,the oneOn José Mourinho  ranks best in my mind

 "He was certainly full of it, calling me boss and big man when we had our post-match drink after the first leg. But it would help if his greetings were accompanied by a decent glass of wine. What he gave me was paint-stripper."

Hate in professional parlance translates into respect.Allegories to the corporate world are replete with words such as 'team building','leading from the front','judgement of the opposition','work ethic' etc are misnomers.They capture in words such a vast effort that few can manage and fewer still can match.

 

For such a dour,working class anti-hero,Sir Alex has shown how important it is to persevere,to experiment with new talent and tactics in a most uncharacteristic display of 'out of the box'thinking with just a hint of the old fashioned working class method of training and re training.Just show how important the daily,boring routine can bear results!

 

This aint an epitaph.I am sure that bulldog and sheerbloodymindedness will be in full display as a director of MUFCL.He was not a great player,but he is one of the best coaches in the world.Just look at the talent that he nurtured - Beckham,Giggs,Scholes,Rooney,Ince and offcourse the brilliant Ronaldo.

 

But the best testament to a teacher or a coach is not how he gets the brilliant and the best to perform but how he elevates the mediocre and the plain.Teddy Sheringham,Ole Gunnar Solskjaer,Irwin just faded away after their MU stint.He made the team work and it was the team that came to the party.

 

The best thing I can say for this man is that you couldn't bully his team.Ever!David Moyes hope you drop the baton...!!

 

 

You are Your Own Brand

Have you ever thought about this statement?

 

Have you tried to look around you and find out from your friends,collegues,acqaintances as well as relatives how they percieve you?What is it about you that they value?How honest do they think you are?

 

I ask this question because in the past few years I have met such people who on the surface are happily settled yet their perception of themselves is through such a prism of lies that reading their social network profile and knowing the real person is just such a world apart that it made me wonder how they justify their lies to themselves.

 

Might be that the word 'introspection' does not exist in their vocabulary.Yet do they not realise the futility of their life spent creating an impression of an active,productive individual with a clear social conscience!!

 

having spent an entire career in Sales,hundreds of manhours in training Salespeople how to sell a product and the I had a 'Eureka' moment.The product is secondary to the one who is selling it!I would buy an insurance policy or invest my money through someone who comes across as intelligent and who knows what they are talking about.Who seem honest.Who are approachable.

 

When trekking in the Himalayas I would ford rivers that flowed serenely with a less careful approach than those that rushed past with speed and a lot f white water.The two times I came close to drowning was when I recklessly waded into what looked like a shallow river but turned out that the current was stronger as it had hidden pitfalls!

 

We do 'judge a book by its covers'.That cover is the BRAND.That is you.That is moldable.But you have a choice:-

 

a)To be honest:show the world the person you are

 

b)To be dishonest:show a side that you think the world wants to see

 

Early on in my professional life I follwoed option (b) but soon realised that i could not meet expectations arising out of that style of working.Along with growing confidence in my own abilities I started owing up to my mistakes and foibles.Shockingly my collegues and clients loved the new 'human' me!!I have stuck with that as my brand since the last so many years.My conscience is clear,i do not need to avoid my mistakes-JUST LEARN FROM THEM.

Yet,whichever way you think its important not to feel guilty and not make the same mistake again.Let us not pity ourselves.We are where we must be,and we will do what we must.Life.

Not an Ideal Freedom...

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action —
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

~ Rabindranath Tagore ~

 

So said one of the greatest minds as a freedom song for the Nation.After Six decades,India stands at inflection point.Scattered,polarized on religion,caste,reservations.Weak Leadership.The "just Me" society,ridlled by corruption.Unfocussed,unseeing,unjust.

 

Ripe for takeover?An economic capture if not physical!

 

For those who are students of History,this was the exact scenario  in the 18th Century.The zenith of the Mughals had been reached a century earlier.The descendants enconsced in their Forts in delhi and Agra unaware of the miserable condition below their own battlements.Debauched and uncaring in their hauteur.The British came.

 

Disguised as merchantmen with brigs loaded with cannon.They found a country in turmoil.They tested,probed the defences and found Babylon.The rich resources and trade and the urge to have monopoly made them masters of political intrigue.According to Sir Charles Woods the highest number of British troops was never more than 70,000.Just that few controlled a Nation.

 

Hindu against muslim,muslim against Sikh-the famous 'Divide and Rule'Policy.

 

Has anything changed from the 1800s?In 2013 isn't it still the same?

 

China testing how far it can push India on its frontiers.Terrorists exchanging hostages at will.The Leaders advise patience.It buys up energy resources globally.It pushes all its South Asian neighbours.Does the Indian army lack the steel or does the Government lack faith in the army?Whatever it may be,the presence of Chinese troops inside the borders of India in Ladakh is not a good harbinger.

 

They want Arunachal,Sikkim.Yet India recognises the brutal suzerainty of Tibet by the Chinese?Our IAS and political leadership has such vast credentials-graduates of IIMs,IITs,Sorbonne,Oxford...an endless list.YET they blink.They wait and think while a Nation cannot defend its own borders!

 

I read that a study says India is the 8th most powerful nation in the world.What is the point of words printed on paper when our own citizens walk in fear of a repressive neighbour?

 

Mahatma Gandhi taught us to turn the other cheek.In this century this could be a suicidal thought.

 

I cannot express my anguish at such pussillanimity.For those too immersed in their daily lives and happy with their daily quota of shopping and TV,the world outside is crumbling.Its time to move beyond introspection and take action before its too late.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which Mouse doesn't want Cheese?

Because this is all I do. Or ever will. Because if you take more than a few steps, you can never turn back.Times when you want to tweek more than a few things with your Life.Time when it seems that all is a waste.All the running,the frustrations,the missed deadlines,the lost dreams.

 

The Fear of Death.

 

But then how many can tolerate  living more than One Life?Death is a blessing.Offcourse not for the teenager who chooses it over the fear of Failure.Or for not being good enough.

 

I for one have always feared Fear itself.Of making public gaffes,horrendous foot-in-the-mouth disasters.And of showing fear publicly.Having Got through those early years I do realise that no one cares.Human memory is short.Even of your neighbours!Till we can go back in time a la The House on The Strand-Daphne Du Maurier,we cant change the mistakes we made.

 

The cocoon of society hides many warts.Softens the edges of many failures.The success of Silicon Valley is an ode to failure.There is only one such place that encourages risk,asks that you try even if its to try and fail while the rest of us try to curtail risk,live within limits and navoid 'Tall Poppy Syndrome'.

 

"It does not matter how hard you fall.What matters is how quickly you get up" - Vince Lombardi.

 

Indian society abhors failure.A few marks less than thy neighbour is sin.Give up your passions because if you dont get a cushy job or that IIT or IIM badge you become a 20 year old failure.Maybe its the pressure of all the other rats in the system.Lemings running for degrees.

A 2012 report by NASSCOM says 67% of Indian tech graduates are unemployable?UNEMPLOYABLE!Cause we cram them with theory and little practise.Rote by learning.Unimaginative.Unsure of adapting theory to reality.

 

A Society that cares only for success is breeding amorality.Every parent wants to teach their child to be honest,truthful.When you see your neighbour taking shortcuts and succeeding,morality sheds its skin.For some its a seasonal phenomenon for others a lifelong vocation.

 

Yet,we all talk of doing good."It costs a fortune to Keep Gandhi in poverty"an admirer once said.Did the Father of the Nation,along with Independence bequeath another more insidious legacy to Indian society?Hypocrisy.Keeping up appearances.

 

I certainly feel so.We took the Mahatma to heart.India won indepencence but lost its soul.

 

 

 

Kashmir...the Lost World

Riven.Angry.Frustrated.Anguished.Pained.Hurt.Despondent.Hopeless.

 

All these words sum up the condition of Kashmir and Kashmiris at the moment.During my extensive travel the only word I heard was ,"Siyasat".Politics.I couldn't agree more.

 

I had stones thrown with murderus intensity by  groups of 14-15year old kids.I waded through a curfew in Srinagar when the state capital was locked down by security forces after an encouter the day before,to reach the airport.

 

Everytime my car passed a group of locals I ducked in expectation of a few more pigeon egg sized stones coming my way.I looked at them suspiciously and they looked at me with sad eyed frustation.

 

Kashmir is still as beautiful as shown in movies and eulogised in poems.The people just as hospitable and caring.The Dal Lake with its shikharas and houseboats still picture perfect.The Nigeen Lake secluded and serene.

 

 

 

Yet the wounds go deep that I wonder if they will ever heal?The current Government seems to have given up the fight to win over the people's mind.The sound of azaan from mosques was a constant reminder of the power of the mullahs.Whatever is spoken from the pulpit becomes the truth and it gets repeated...remember Goebbels and his..."Repeat a lie a hundred times and it becomes the truth" remark!

 

 

I did a straw poll of as many people in the street as I could reach...cab drivers,travel agents,stewards,waiters,shikhara rowers,houseboat owners and I was shocked that not a SINGLE person had a SINGLE positive thing to say about the politicians in the Government or the opposition.

 

There seems to be a vacuum and the UPA Government prefers to sweep things under the carpet,make pronouncements in parliament and then forget Kashmir.The media so forthright about issues is silent too for reasons best known to them?Ms Dutt and Mr Pranoy Roy have given it the go by.

 

Until I stepped into the freezing march air outside Srinagar airport,I had no idea of the level of disenchantment.Afzal Guru has definitely become a symbol of how the rest of India doesn't care about Kashmiri sentiment....put the guy into prison for 12 years,hanged him and finally did not even honour to return his dead body to his family.They feel he was punished in Three ways for a single crime.

 

Sitting in the safety of your home it is easy to pass judgment and condemn an entire people for the act of a few.As I sat in the Houseboat a couple of kilometres away from where 5 CRPF men armed with bamboo canes where killed by AK 47 wielding militants,I watched the news channel and other than the statistics there was nothing else.

 

Kashmir,caught between the security forces and the militants,its a difficult life for people on the street,without industry,growth and the travel trade falling into a downturn,things can only get worse.

 

I am struck by the attitude of the rest of India-IGNORE.

 

The Union Government neither tries to crush Kashmir the way the Chinese have Tibet,neither does it attempt to win the hearts and minds of Kashmiris and assure them that this great country that we call India is made up of diverse and imposing cultures that can live together.

 

On a day of curfew I really worried whether the dream that our founding fathers had would remain a reality?The maoists battling for rights in Chattisgarh,Jharkhand and Bengal.The Northeast in Assam,Manipur,Meghalaya,Nagaland marginalized.Sikh separatists in Punjab.Marathi 'manus'agitating to keep Maharashtra for marathis?

 

Never in the History of this country have we had such poor leadership,such paucity of empathy and such unparalleled greed.In the meantime a beautiful paradise is slowly dieing.The Sufi traditions replaced by strict sharia and once where Kashmiri women had gender equality today young kids are wearing headscarfs if not burkhas.The mullahs who from Mughal times waged a battle for power with such enlightened rulers like Akhbar are finally winning.Those who really love this country should at least once visit Kashmir and try to see their point of view.And show them that WE CARE FOR KASHMIRIS.

 

Gar Firdaus bar rooh-e-zaminast                   If there is a heaven on earth

haminasto,                                                          it is here

haminasto                                                          it is here

Haminast.                                                          it is Here. 

 

Alas Firdaus is dead and this heaven on earth gone to dust!

Culture goes the Vulture Way!

According to reseach by The National Geographic ONE language is lost every FOURTEEN days.By the next century nearly half of the 7,000 odd languages spoken in the world will vanish.

Its simply not the language that dies but the culture,the tradition,superstitions,beliefs,ideas and finally the people who spoke that language.This world has seen wars that were not only for politics,land or natural resources.They were also about people and culture that was alien to invaders.

The Navajos driven into reservations in Arizona by the whites,their fertile lands seized,their sheep and cattle butchered or the aborigines of Australia where the Government in the 1930s started a controversial program to raise aborigine babies with white foster families are but a poignant reminder that today's superpower nations who champion human rights are no less guilty.

I was born in Calcutta and I remember visiting my ancestral village with my grandmother in Punjab.The mile wide wheat fields,the blooming yellow and green mustard flowers and the dense as jungle sugarcane plantations left me spellbound because I had never seen so much open space in my life.It made me fall in love with a culture that was never part of my everyday existence.Everbody needs a catalyst and my grand parents were mine!

Yet my cousins who did not have the benefit of visits to the village have never related to the life there as its far removed from their Bershire home and their plum puddings.All it takes is one generation to lose what evolution and human civilization created over thousands of years.

Today India is excited about Taco Bell,Mcdonalds,KFCs etc .From a business standpoint the economics makes sense but its playing havoc with our traditional cuisine.Obesity,Diabetes were inherent Indian diseases which have got a huge fillip with the junk food culture that has just started to appear on our shores.

For typical Indian families these are baby killers - junk food,lack of open spaces for excercise,lack of time from studies to ensure a healthy lifestyle and a lack of awareness insofar what we eat.

Yet culture when imposed is a crown of thorns.But the feelings that are lost make us forget where we came from?The vulture embodies that final connection between Life and heaven for the Parsis and pesticide has destroyed 95% of the vultures in India.A lot of indigenous identities are set to follow.

On This Our Republic Day 26th January 2013

Another day of posturing and 1970s patriotic songs.Another day of parades.If Mahatma Gandhi was responsible for India's independence from the British,then he was responsible for the adamant elevation of Pandit Nehru to Prime ministership,consequent alienation of Jinnah and the shadow cast by Pakistan that has stayed more or less menacing for 60 years.

 

Disappointing are statements by the RSS chief regarding rights of women and just shows how 18th century the self appointed keepers of the nation's religious morality are be they Hindu or Muslim.I always believed that the RSS with their morning exercises and the reading of patriotic literature were providing a good framework to the youth but alas the thoughts have killed all the hope.

 

 

 

The BJP till yesterday insisted on making Gadkari the chief despite allegations of financial skullduggery.Just goes to show that the country has a political choice between the corrupt and the corrupt...!!The same party when in government released terrorists,the Defence minister flew with them to Kabul to ensure they reached safely!Its the same Masood Azhar and Zargar who killed more indian Soldiers.Today they talk of a head for a head?Let every young Indian serve 2 years in the Army to understand what its like to not only love ones country but to prove it as well.

 

I feel proud that despite the dirty streets,indisciplined traffic etc we are being talked about as a new power nation.Yet there is no belief....most people would immigrate to any of the western countries if given a chance.Many die taking illegal routes and the ones who survive end up being 3rd class citizens of a country that they have no links to.

 

The Irish brothers of the Order of St.Mary's who taught me in the school of the same name knew more about India and gave more to the country than a lot of Indians.We talk of selflessness yet dont mind jumping the queue if that gives us an advantage.The hypocrisy has become inherent.And that truly is immoral.

 

I am proud because I am sure the US or Europe would not be able to provide social security if they had One Billion citizens?Our government and our systems are robust but until the average guy in the street starts believing in the country,we do not have a chance of being a great country.

 

The resources are there and so is the intellect.But a strange lethargy pervades the thinking,a lacunae so vast that it has the potential to derail growth,GDP what have you.

The British did us a service(Nirad C Chadhuri has put it succintly)by uniting a land riven by Rajas and protectorates.Sixty years on regional parochialism is creeping back.Let us remember the stirring tales of sacrifice in the successive war of independence,China,Pakistan and Bangladesh, the wars of 1962,1965 and 1971 where casteism and religion were discarded for Nationalism.Right now we need a young Atal Behari Vajpayee or a young Manmohan Singh to lead the country's rapidlily discredited politicians.

 

But most Indians would know thats an oxymoron!

Ash Wednesday...reflections of Self

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there

Is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And I pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and to not care

Teach us to sit still

 

Each one of us has our 'Ash Wednesday' moments in life....sometimes in the singular and sometimes plural.In 40 imperious lines the incomparable T S Elliot skimmed off the essence of what we live for.How much value have we created for others?how much space have we given them?And in giving space to others have we created any for ourselves?

 

Somewhere in our everyday actions lies the answer,but we are too busy to try and grasp.I hear talk of working to ones strength,of maintaining a status,self esteem,ego.

 

I dont hear talk of just working upon our weakness,our faults.The education system is in the grip of the "Alpha" image.Do not show your softness or others will take advantage.Do not be nice lest you be mistaken for weakness.

 

Don't you as the reader feel an immense pressure when you wake up in the morning to having to live up to your image?I have seen ruthless bastards cry...so I know that it takes more effort to appear strong than to show your real self with its multiple frailities?

 

I do.

 

In this obsession to create and maintain an image we lose so much of who we really are that we forget the simple pleasures of life,of the minute things in Life that give Joy!!Happiness is not a pursuit.And it never will be.

 

The Celebrities and filmstars are not different but a mere reflection of our own self.Yet we criticise them without bothering to see the man in the mirror.That is deja vu`.

 

In the end the guilt gets some.I do not say that you should share your deepest,darkest fears(though I dont see any harm)but do SHARE.It wont make you  different,yes,it might take a little burden of your conscience!In the cosmic whole of things...our individual existence is of the minutest example.Do you remember what you were doing on this particular day a decade back??And if you are still not convinced,ask your neighbour!!!!Listen to the gist behind the platitudes...and you will find a hollow echo.

 

Trust me YOU WILL NOT LIKE IT!