कविता

कभी यूँ लगता है , कि मन उमड़ रहा है

क्या कुछ नहीं कह डाले प्रवाह जो बह रहा है

पर शब्द सूरज की किरण हैं

पकड़ो तो नहीं हैं

आँख बंद कर लो तो रोम - रोम में वही हैं

कविता का प्रयास ही एक हार लगती है

की हम इतने लीन नहीं हुए की कविता का ख़याल भी नहीं आया

My small glimpse into rural Bihar...

When i boarded the first AC Rajdhani back to Delhi from Bihar, i felt soo very odd! Straight out of rural fieldwork for 10 days, with a face tanned like a monkey and with such earthy impressions fresh on my mind, I felt almost mean when Hanju Marandi, a local Santhali guy my age, who worked with us, came in the help me load my luggage. To travel in such style after doing grassroot work! But i must say the cool AC and the steaming cup of black tea soon helped me feel quite justified in my actions :) Anyway... the trip, though shortened to half its original length, was so enlightening. Really, India is a country of countries... We went to 3 villages in a district in Bihar. each of these villages was vastly different.. the first one had mostly Santhalis living in it, the second had Many Muslims apart from some Santhalis and others. The last had a predominance of people from the Yadav community. Each was so different. I felt that the Santhalis with their simpler ways were so much more nicer and relaxed... I was pleasantly surprised to find villages in Bihar so green and clean. Banana, Maize, jute, paddy, lady finger and chilli fields lined the roads, bamboo groves near every house, pigs, cows, ducks, chickens, goats, brown sheep and buffaloes being reared and feeding on fresh fodder. Elder Women still donn saris without blouses... the lungi is commonly worn, saw small pretty village temples, entered a small local Masjid in the village, where children get Madarsa education as well... Owning to the active political awareness in Bihar, the people in most of these communities are strongly aware of their rights, especially so for the Yadavs and the Muslims (considering the villages I saw). It was funny as well as intriguing to delve into the internal politics of the village and understand the opposing stakes in the local school and in resources that come from the government. Every group and side had their own story to tell us, spiced with a few village scandals.... or a new, educated and pretty bride just married into a Santhali family, hoping that she can continue her studies... women trying to guess if I was married or not looking for markers of marriage, a bichiya on my toes... Of course all was not beautiful... we also met a boy who was 18 and stunted, whose mother had TB and had 4 children and her husband had abandoned her... the poor boy could not control his tears and it was so disturbing to see someone in such trouble! It haunted us for days later. Caste and gender issues were many. Some houses were made of bamboo and were so cool, the lack of electricity did not bother at all... owning to rains and flooding, many homes are built on small stilts. The room in the hotel with its concrete and cement was hotter.. fresh handpump water (in regions that did not have iron and arsenic in their soil!!) was ever so refreshing... And of course, cheap fresh food on highways and walks down sludgy village roads in the rain with dark beautiful clouds visible up to the horizon... 

Even though rural work was not new for me, this trip remained quite special. And it was great to see Bihar form the inside rather than through the stereotypical lens that Biharis are known through. It is a very alive country indeed!

Misdirected hatred

The Indo-Pak match is really bringing out the fact that our nation (i know little to comment on the other other side of the border) is extremely happy to deeply involve itself into things that matter little.
Anything, for that matter that allows us to forget that there are urgent things this nation needs to address. That we may be stuffing our pockets and doing a bit better even as our lives are more and more meaningless. That we have allowed our realities to be defined by soap operas, mundane family obligations and well paying but hardly engaging jobs.

With so little left to wholesomely identify with, obviously India battling in Mohali is the perfect rescue. The bharat bandh, advertised for the upcoming IPL (for some more mass hypnosis) is almost real in Delhi today.

But then we can't be satisfied with just that! We need to feel good about ourselves... and what better way than finding someone you can hate?

In the marketplace of a middle, lower middle class colony (i hope i have the classes right!) in South Delhi today, I saw that some people had put up a pandal with a big TV screen to show the match. A young sikh man, maybe in his 30s along with a couple of other men (non-sikh) were swaying huge Indian flags on the roadside. Each time India would hit a 4, 6 etc, who knows maybe even take a single they would take run around the roundabout in the market waving their flags, while some hired drummers would beat drums. Several auto drivers had abandoned their work (which comes to most of them easily) and had joined the audience of about 50 odd people. At intervals one would hear chants of Pakistan hai hai!

The more we display such brainless hatred, the more it reflects the fact that our own cultures, systems and values have gaping holes and that people are less and less willing to question themselves.

Swearing by the historic tolerance of our nation is of little meaning, if the pride that comes with it, makes us hate all others who's culture is not 'as exalted as ours'.

While most people are enjoying the match today, even as they jokingly deride the hype and political gimmicks that are going on along with it, many of them are secretly fighting notional identity battles inside their hearts. While we are busy winning small battles here, we may find out, too late, that meanwhile we have lost the main front.

To k

A lost cause am I

A shooting star am I …

But I belong to the sky

We both do

You and I

Stuck in time warps?

The trouble with tradition is that it becomes its own enemy.

As we romance and deify our religions and ways of life, we are increasingly incapable of adapting to the future. We fear the loss of something that was (as it was) beautiful and wholesome, the future always seems to destructive to our sensibilities. And often nostalgia or fundamentalism become our means of coping with this.

Of course, the new world today also brings such irreverence and lack of responsibility that you are inclined to believe that the world is getting worser. Maybe it is, but this may too be a result of our ineffective adaptations. That we cannot catch the essence and the truly liberal and beautiful aspects of our traditions (and all they all have it) and move those forward along with the swiftly moving times.

For the times are always a changing, and it takes a free mind and spirit to move with it, without also getting carried with the current.

A mind that has understood the spirit of humanity and also its abysses.

90 per cent of the original species of the world have gone extinct since the living world began. It is probably the nature of life to outlive itself. but this destruction happens in the natural world with relative (only relative) harmony, while in the human world it bring infinite pain - wars, riots, feuds and anger.

If only we can surrender to our own demise, we shall find that we rise as phoenixes.

Our cultures are not our identity alone, they are only vehicles, to experience something that shadow dances behind them. But the uncertainty of being socially undefined is much.

This is of course the tug of war of life, between our own spirits of freedom and security, we are at the end fighting our own selves more than anyone around us. But this realisation does make me less antagonistic to people who are holding on, for hey they're not just blind bad people, but are trying to make sense of their place in this world. I am probably doing it in the same way, in other areas. And the old too has its place in the new, so must these people who are romancing the past.