When is Too Much,Too Much?The Dhaka Episode

The more one becomes Modern the more primitive one wants to be.Where once we ran after mobile telephony,emails,24*7 connectivity,we now want that small pause from being connected at all times,from being available to office at all hours,firefighting.

Time.The thing that has many definitions.But its one thing that cannot be put on 'pause'.It cannot be slowed down,at least not on Earth and not within the grounds of 'gravity'.

What we abhored is what we now desire.Privacy.The luxury of being away from 'breaking news' at all times.So how did this pursuit if happiness change over the last three decades?

Everyone seems to be having one foot outside the bounds of sanity.Travelling on the subway sometimes I watch the harried faces always trying to be 'cool',all knowing,skittish,scheming to have the last word.So what keeps one sane?

I think most of us in our regular lives almost daily cross the fine line between sanity and insanity.What pulls most back into the green is the deja`vu of the set routines,those infinitesimal positives that generate hope.

The demagogue inspires but also defeats the purpose of  communication.Because to them only what they say is right and all that matters.When you can obliviate the other's viewpoint,then and only then are you truly sunk.The small implosions define who we are and what matters.

If I only believed that I am the only one with the divine right to live or speak or in my faith then incidents like Dhaka will be repeated with more frequency in the coming years.This suspension of belief that other people with different outlooks too may be right is what defined Hitler and the what best describes the Islamists.

Mr Shekhar Kapoor,a very erudite film maker tweeted that this killing or the hundreds preceding it in California,Texas,Baghdad,Tel Aviv,Jerusalem,Hyderabad or Mumbai is not what the majority muslim view of Islam is.

On this the holy day of Eid I say,if the majority did not nod their silent heads silently or not weed out the killers of innocent amoungst them,then this radical islam would not have had the nourishment required to become the Hydra it has become!

Will the 'good'muslims kill the 'bad'muslims?Will the good ones become extinct?

What is certain however is the road to medievalism beckons.Until the humanity inside each one of us screams out there is no doubt that there will be many more Dhakas,pointless,anarchic but very much a symbol of modern man's quest for its primitive roots.

Punjab - The Land of Five Rivers:Reminescences of a Neem Tree,Part I

It is strange how the first memories of people we meet,places we visit,food we eat,are always the strongest.Ever afterwards we subconsciously compare our subsequent experiences with 'that' first time.

1979.A nine year old born and raised in the congested surroundings of Calcutta had his first rendezvous with the birthplace of his fathers -  Punjab.A village in Hoshiarpur district.A dusty forty minute bus ride from the district centre.

Those memories are as crystal clear as if it was yesterday that I got off the bus in the late afternoon sun of a mellow summer.The adobe brick house was the tallest in the village,with an open courtyard and one of the rooms was mud brick.

The roof dazed me.I had never seen so much open space in my short life.Wheat and yellow flowered mustard fields stretched out and across my entire field of vision.The dome of an alabaster white Gurdwara stood out amidst the green.

Sleeping under the giant Neem tree in the courtyard on 'charpoys' with a stick under the bed to ward of snakes.The brightness of the stars and constellations and waking up at 4:30am to the sound of shabad floating on the wind from the unseen Gurdwara.

So close to nature.To where my ancestors must have toiled for generations.

And the first peacock,not those mangy specimens of Calcutta Zoo,but a real wild one,dazzling plumage,the deepest blue neck and about 5 feet away.Thankfully a few survive till date in the surrounding villages.

Guests coming to see the 'important' visitors from the distant big city.Drinking gallons of smoked milk flavoured with jaggery.The freshest 'Makki ki roti' and 'Sarson da Saag'.

The village plumber and oddjobs man using a lassoe to trip bullocks before shoeing them.The thud as they fell and how important to get them shoed.The gentle ride on a buffalo cart,undulating between wheat and sugarcan fields and a mango orchard that stretched for 3 kilometres at places the leaves so dense that the sunlight could not penetrate to the ground at high noon.

Gone today in the mindless urbanisation.The orchards and wheat fields.For exotic vegetables.And the scrouge of mosquitoes that came fifteen years after my first visit when rice was introduced.

Those friends of my age with whom we contructed a swing from the branches of that Neem tree now long immigrated to Canada and the USA or UK.London,Ealing,Southall.Vancouver,Toronto,Reno and New York.

Gone that innocence.The landscape survives.A mere reminder of the 'Green Revolution' and the prosperity.A tough but satisfying life.