The primal absurdity

 

Trying to squeeze out freedom like someone trying to force out the last bit of paste from a spent toothpaste tube. The paste made of wonder, danger, deceit, mischief, treachery, hope, love and hate.

To clean the unclean, spotted fangs of slavish prisoner’s conscience. The ritual of cleaning efforted with a fascinating evocation.

The pursuit of a mirage—a clean God; a pure Goddess. And the intention of pilgrimage itself enough to give oneself a clean chit.

A pilgrimage, taking intriguing path between love and cruelty.

With showcased sweetness and hidden pungency, the mankind tries to bridge the path between banquets and battlefields. A dagger in one hand and dove in the other.

All this in pursuit of a faint interlude of happiness; a brief blessing against the persistent curse; some secret sorrow sucking frustration and pain into one’s being.

Some spans of undivided attention, pointed focus and forceful direction in the vast sea of variegated shades of frenzied follies.

The malignant mirage, in clandestine complicity with chaos, cajoling with elaborate courtesy. Calling with its gaudy flavor and colorful theatrics.

The happy runner in the sands dying as a resentful, exhausted, embittered wreck in the desert. Flesh frozen with fear in the breathlessly sweltering heat. Maggots would then cast clumsy coils of decay and rot.

The scandalized sunbeams softly yielding to darkness through the evening.

But the sky would still peer with mystic subtlety.

A crudely satisfying day for the destiny.   

Primed to be sinners

 

Ingenious ways of killing, not to give death but make life so difficult with pain and torture that even death seems salvation, a favor if someone takes mercy and ends the torture, life itself.

Death approaching so slowly, with painstaking bits, as to make it maid of honor. The tortured body dying with urge to embrace it.

Life dysfunctional, the only function left—to cease to exist.

That’s the benchmark of human cruelty. Not of killing; but of making life so painful as to make death a reward, a favor; of turning it reverse—making one anti-life, the survival instinct feeling like a demon, the worst enemy one can have.

All this is clearly written in the open book full of petrified details of fossilized past. The book of bloodied history—visible-invisible wounds and cuts at individual, collective and institutional levels—chronicling mankind’s gravity-defying will to inflict pain at all costs in any situation.

The ugly ducklings ruling from the dark underbelly. The palace and seat of governance above glittering with polished protocols and illusionary facades.

The flimsy make-believe textures, tastes, complexity of flavors, tangy sauces, herb-spiced flavors, the roof-top parties, the apparent truth and beauty ruling the world. While in reality, ugliness and falsehood running the machine.

The dark gods of hypocrisy ruling like the utmost sovereign, ordering royal princes and father king to be murdered, usurping the crown, celebrating their memories, ordering a magnificent mausoleum for the murdered kin for offering prayers for the peace of their souls.

The foundation is cruelty; love is merely a duping façade.  

The stinging metallic bees of death and destruction

 

The drones came and changed the war. They are more effective than fighter jets and ballistic missiles. A cost-effective mechanical killing by coordinates. Safe sustainable murders measured in pixels. Distance from the war fronts is no longer a measure of safety. Death is delivered remotely. An annihilative silence before sudden erasure, bodies falling, screens going dark.

Death no longer a tragic, intimate, bloody reality. It’s something remote, algorithmic, unblinking, surgical, clinical. Even death disembodied from its evil but still human game of providing chance at equal footing to the combatants, for blood at both ends, for casting the dice for either a win or loss. It’s completely bloodless at one end, the end that holds the cursor and clicks a command from a remote cozy coffee-tabled safe cocoon.  

When low on battery, having failed to attack a military target, the bloodless vultures can stealthily wait and then suddenly take off and attack some civilian target who happens to be near around—some jogger, cyclist, a couple in love or a car full of innocent civilians. Target locked autonomously by the mechanical agent of death, the machine-led relentless predatory prowl and then the precision kill.

Russia is honing the art of drone warfare: the dehumanized, mechanically calculated, cold, inhuman sky-borne violence. The drones smirk like gods without heartbeats. The killers who never blink an eye before slaughtering an innocent life. Death outsourced to these darkly buzzing angels in the sky.

Recently Israel used a bird drone to eliminate a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon. Soon we will have fly drones, followed by mosquito drones and still more mini drones, micro drones, to enter the next level of taking the frontlines to streets, courtyards, small alleys and bedrooms.

We have great capacity to manifest violence in myriad ways. A predilection to disarray, disorder and chaos. We are steeped in the tradition of violence.

Given the digital footprint, each global citizen can be scanned, surveyed, analyzed, condemned and punished by using these micro-drones without the sufferer realizing how and why did it happen.

A new kind of violence and punishment. From sporadic vicissitudes, war will turn an eternal reality. The air humming, buzzing with the underpinnings of some lethal machine barely visible to the naked human eyes.

War reduced to cursor’s movement. Fingers which never touch blood can safely fly steel vultures in the sky to unleash a violence with no witnesses. Massacres would turn mere footage. Just footage.                  

 

The perilous churning of contrasting elements

 

These are strange, enervating, fuddled times.

Troublous pensiveness in the air.

Languidly palpitant sense of insecurity weaving puzzling spools of illusions.

Bayonet fighting among ideologies has left strange crossbreeds.

Communism has borrowed so heavily from capitalism as to leave the latter pauperized in ideological terms.

Democracy, on its part, has overblown itself so much that democrats need to turn autocrats to put the house in order.

Communism has to cast respectful glances in the capitalist corridors to find out exactly what it meant to do in the first place.

Capitalism has to lay down the golden mantle to seek some new relevance in the masses of grounded depravities among those where it could never reach and who in fact are the real drivers of its engine.

The left went so much to their left that they got scared to fall into an abyss and have to get to their right to regain their footing. They have to stop clearing the mossy tombstones of their founders, exulting internally and mournful outside, and draw new-age inspiration from much berated rightists.

The same goes for the rightists. They are the liberals of their end of extremity. They unbolt the same anger at the same enemy presented in different colors than the leftists.

Tariffs are the new torpedoes of war. They hover around undisguised. Diffidently now; with a potent force then.

Trump has started this new weapon of the new-age war, the war through torpedoes of tariffs. 

Swarms of drones are the new locusts. They seize the hitherto unseizable opportunity; conceive the inconceivable options to take war to the last nook corner into the civilian lanes and alleys. Targeting is more pinpointed, surgical and lethal. One particular person can be ant-picked from among the swarms of humans around.

The imperious desire to be more lethal.

Malevolence moving, humming pacifically. For the kill.

Evil-glowering of destruction and death.

No longer the bestial shouts of fighter jets. No vainglory of ballistic missiles. Just panting timbre of blades carrying the little voice of shaitan. Terror frozen in small civilian hearts.

Humanity with its somber, protracted sigh watching helplessly.

Ringing intonation of mischief taking a U-turn to retain childhood fancies through robotic warfare.

Artificial intelligence a pill for our collective stupidity and dementia. Over a period of time, the autonomic functions of human brain, which have equipped us to rule the planet, will fall out of practice, making us dulled poor masters of smart rich machines.

Robotic soldiers soon will be the elderly general’s childish computer games. Clicking here with a silly boy’s glee; killing thousands of kilometers away with the precision and seriousness of a deadly predator. 

Wild fires will be gone. You need forests for that. Right? So we will have more and more social media wildfires triggered by the weather elements of false narratives, fabricated data, rumors, made-up stories and juicy throng of lies. The spittle string of conceit showered on dunderheads.

The protracted sigh of truth and justice drowned in the liquidating timbre of dark-tongued devil.

We have the inherent streak of violence in our genes to tear flesh in wars. We can’t bear the torment of joy.

Ugliness easily outweighs loveliness.

Festering wounds cast a black magic spell and invite followers to get addicted to them. And they jog-trotting after it. Quizzically. Demonstratively.

Peace and joy will be left behind beckoning despondently. But there will be less flesh to tear and claw because of the mechanization of the human body. Still we will continue tearing each other through ideas, ideologies, business rivalries and ever-combating politics.

Entire earth is basically a big house that always carries undercurrents of violence, stratagems and cunning schemes to outpace the other—your neighbor, your irksome family member, the rival caste men, the rival ethnic people, the rival religion, the rival business, the rival continent, the rival hemisphere.

There is an undeniable, unsavory antipathy towards the other; willfully abhorrent and contemptible.

Existence on earth is defined by self-interest, rivalry and competition across all hierarchies.

Bonhomie is just a mournful conjecture. A way-worn adjutancy.

Humanity is betrothed to the dark woman of violence.

Even the spreaders of love for humanity—the spiritual and religious heads and their sects and institutions—are industrious rivals ingratiating each other in their unusual manners. They bawl and drawl to catch more and more followers. And to validate their brand of ‘love for humanity’ they will easily break the rival heads.

That’s the dilemma of being earthlings.

That’s how life has incidentally evolved on this little place.

That’s what life means to the Homo sapiens, the group of venturesome black head lice.

Love is a mirage and now even the mirage is getting naturally supplanted by hostility.

I sometimes wonder, what would happen if earth is someday challenged by some other form of life, from some far off planet in the cosmos, having a totally different meaning of life than we have here.

I mean suppose we have a confrontation with a technically superior but a form of life to whom cooperation and common interest (antipodal to our existence centered around rivalry, competition and self-interest) is the basic instinct that has factored their evolution.

Won’t we appear heathens to them? And they would, of course, try to mould it as per their own interpretation of life. However, I know that we will be very strong rivals even when pushed in a corner by a far more technically superior form of life.

The hunters and the hunted

 

The common people would never want a war. But they suffer the most in a conflict. The egoist leaders are mostly saved from the destruction of war. That’s why it’s so easy for them to keep yelling, shouting for more blood.

And when did any war achieve anything? Wars and violence just prepared the seedbed for more wars in future. A war is just tilling the land for more hate; sowing the seeds of malice and distrust—to harvest more fodder for future wars. And the fodder is the common people like you and me dear reader. Let’s say NO to wars in our name!

The world is always nearer to destruction in proportion to the greater number of strong, egoistic, macho leaders operating in different countries at the same time. So dear common people, we can at least choose lesser ferocious leaders.

Of course, all those who fight for power are predatory in nature just like their analogues among animals, birds, reptiles, bacteria and bugs. So, obviously, the clawy and dangerous people will definitely occupy the top slot in the social food chain. That’s inevitable. But we the common people must strive to elect the least fearsome from the power-hungry pack. The lesser the claws and incisors the ruler has, the better is the skin of the masses. Because the Alphas will fight and the fight among the extra-strong Alphas will result in the masses getting trampled unnecessarily.

So o thou rabbits at the lower level in the social food chain, kindly choose the leaders with blunted talons either because of a muted ideology or relatively humbler personal traits. Let’s have humbler leaders!

A message for someone

 

Fight for a kingdom and be a king. That’s your ‘right’ beyond the debate of moralistic right or wrong. But remember kingdoms have their consequences. It’s very natural for the kings to be killed by their own sons. Just a natural consequence. You hand over the lust for unrestricted power to your son. He will be a worthy inheritor of your legacy and would dethrone you on the chessboard of power when he comes of age.

In the same vein, if you have been lucky to have official powers and privileges—for which you get paid and are expected to do your service strictly as per the contract—you will sometimes get an itch to set-up a mini-kingdom by going out of your domain and misuse your power and privileges for unjustified gains. That of course is also your right. But remember your son will inherit the same mini-kingdom of misuse of your privileges beyond your official domain. He will dethrone you when his time comes. He will also kill you to occupy the little throne that you have set up by inflicting injustice through the misuse of your powers and capabilities. He may not slit your throat directly but will definitely do it indirectly. He won’t respect you, he would be undisciplined and you will see your little kingdom falling apart under his erratic lifestyle. That is as good as a son killing his father. Again it’s not about right or wrong. Simply cause and effect.

The more you ‘make’ as an angry, arrogant and violent person, the more you expose yourself to be ‘broken’ by the bigger forces of similar nature. And the rot begins at home, remember this. Again, simple cause and effect. Nature doesn’t operate on moralistic principles. It’s only about what you are doing at what frequency. Life will give you back a hundredfold of exactly what you are investing in the same currency. If it’s arrogance, ego and greed that propels you, the trajectory of your life will be defined by the same factors. Keep fighting. When will you ever stop? And if petty, tyrannical fights of this nature make you feel like a soldier, it’s a nice cover for the demons inside to be decorated with honorable military dress.

If you see yourself in this write-up and get angry then I’m sorry. As a writer, I just hold a mirror in front of the reader. What you see in that is your own making, your own labor. If you don’t like the image that stares back at you, change it. If not, keep the angry fight till your last breath. You may achieve anything but not peace.

The futility of human existence

 

And who would triumph these days? Faker than the fake most. Not probably. Definitely. And who would rule? The fakest among the top fakes. A darkness that eats the little silver lines of light. That’s its diet. Darkness rushes in from all sides to eat the tiny slivers of light, just like a flock of goats and sheep running to nibble a few dry wisps of grass in the desert.

A snarling extension to one's persona

 

As if hundreds of stray dogs weren’t enough, the village lads have started keeping pet dogs, not with the cause of polishing the streaks of affection in them. The pitbulls and other fierce dogs—hardly needed for security—are a fierce snarling extension of their angry selves to present an intimidating picture. Two lads walk with their dog. Another one passes on his bike. ‘Take away this fat sloth!’ he taunts. ‘Saale, we will make him pee on your bum!’ they shout with derision. A fierce dog is an expression of raw, romanticized anger to them. And they flaunt it. It scares ageing people like me though.  

A master of lies

 

This neighbor believes in his lies to the extent of turning his white lies into golden nuggets of truth. No wonder, it also means that he naturally changes any fact into fiction. It entered my mind to suggest him to take to writing, a profession suitable for creative souls like him. But then he thinks that writers are most negligible and mad people. In any case, he uses his creative instinct to milk situations and circumstances by twisting reality in a way to make him accomplish little cheatings and sweet little forgeries. It’s a kind of gentle milking, not an outright stabbing robbery.

A bunch of grouchy fellows

 

This particular petrol pump has a very combustible staff. They have frayed tempers all the time. It seems staying near oil has given them fiery tempers like the commodity they serve to the engines. Say anything, and they will speak very tartly as if that also is a part of their job. I have never seen anyone smiling at this establishment. I always keep wondering how come so many snappy, cranky people have been brought together by the chance winds. I once tried to infuse a flame of smiles there, but it aggravated the situation. So I also try to be like them when I’m getting petrol there. Do in Rome as the Romans do.

The perils of communalism

 

If we look into the communal history of the last four decades, we find a disturbing pattern in India. Big communal violence has shaken our social fabric almost once in a decade: Delhi riots (1984), Mumbai riots (1992-93), Gujarat violence (2002), Muzaffarnagar riots (2013), Manipur violence (2023). Statistically a big communal flare-up jolts the fabric of our unity once in a decade. And during the lull period, there are little-little fireworks that are kept alive by politicians, vigilantes, hardliner religious leaders or anyone belonging to the power-aspirant group—the slow-smoldering smoke in the social fuel wood that reaches its burning point after a decade.

Polarization on religious grounds is a dangerous pill of instant profits. So the communal element is a big trend in our politics these days. But statistics point to a great danger to our unity if this divisive element isn’t weeded out from our socio-political stream. As we can see from the above statistics, minor communal haggling and rhetoric creates enough fire under the social ground that it bursts out in a big flare after a decade. But the law of mathematics doesn’t stop here at the once-in-a-decade big communal flare-up. The big-scale communal fires separated roughly by a decade will churn out something far bigger in nature after their incubation period is reached. For example, the exponential growth of hate like it happened in 1947. That was preceded by a communal bug that incubated for almost 90 years when the Britishers systematically introduced the element of communal divide in the Indian society after the first war of independence in 1857. And now, with year-long little communal propagandas going full throttle, resulting in a big tragedy almost once in a decade, we may reach the very same partition-time critical limit of social breach in 2040s, that’s almost hundred years after 1947.

Even impartial mathematics is pointing to the dangers to our unity by the communal bug if political parties, organizations, institutions, religious leaders and other influential groups don’t discard divisive communal rhetoric from their plan of action to gain power and influence. 

Urbanization

 The ones who stay in a village may have a notion about relatively cleaner air than the cities. But things are changing very fast even in the villages. In the villages also the disposable plastic per household is on the increase. The farmers keep dung heaps, not too far from their houses, which they use as farm manure at the beginning of a new crop season. In order to avoid the plastic from going into the fields they keep burning the little heaps over the weeks—a very simplistic solution to turn the plastic rubbish invisible in the air instead of seeing it in physical form in the fields. So I can smell poisonous plastic burning multiple times a day. Little do they realize that the very same plastic now goes into their lungs in another form. The day is not far when the hypothetical solace of breathing better air in a village will lose its relevance. The villages will turn as polluted as the cities unless we find a better way to dispose our plastic. It could be as simple as collecting your plastic garbage in a sack and dump it at the dumpsite outside the village near the town. But who will take that much trouble. We need quick solutions for everything these days.

The pride of naked nativism

Railways, airways, ships, computers, television, bra, lipstick, tops, sandals, phones, judiciary, administration, hill stations, cricket, political system, business,  commerce, almost everything around has roots in colonialism and the society of colonisers. Discard all that first, only then your naked nativism will have any legitimacy. But I was wondering what would be left then. Only false pride in naked bodies would be left perhaps. 

A,simple Jat cricketer was lamenting that Team India should be named Team भारत because the word India is rooted in colonialism. Poor chap, little did he realise that the game that earned him millions was started by the colonisers themselves. So now people are throwing bouncers at him, asking him and other prpogators of new-brand Nationalism to stop playing cricket altogether. Boycott 'India' would boil down to boycot 'cricket'. And if cricket is gone, half of India will die of boredom. 

Lekin agar har ek angrezi cheez ka boycot karoge to nange ho jaoge. Aage ki taraf dekho nahi to muh ke bal giroge.

Wealthy Beggars

 

There are very well educated and well-off beggars as well. Their first instinct is to demand money. Like this gentleman in a BMW on a congested road at the local town. In a messed up bumper-to-bumper situation, a rickshaw-puller gives a tiny bruise to the expensive machine’s taillight. The rich beggar gets down, puffing out fumes of anger, and slaps the poor, old, weak rickshaw-puller. And straightaway demands money for the damage. He holds out his hand. He wants money at any cost.

The Funny Game among Errant Kids

 

Let’s talk about Afghanistan from the geostrategic point of view. Please don’t feel bad if the life of an Afghani citizen is seen almost inconsequential in this talk about ‘the great game’. Isn’t it all about the strong gobbling up the weak across all species in the naked, raw game of survival? The cosmic juggernaut is nothing but an expansionist onslaught that uses weak as the fodder for the strong to take the march of expansion towards more elemental sophistication. In the same vein, geostrategic manoeuvring is primarily about the interests of the superior powers. The interests of the hosting yard teeming with its poor masses, where the game is played, are inconsequential just like your feet hardly care for the world of the ants as you march on the higher scale of your ambitions, far higher than the tiny world of ants.

Whoever goes to Afghanistan doesn’t go there as an enemy of Afghanistan. He goes there as someone else’s enemy. The rugged, barren land is a huge arena for the bad guys to play out their muscle-flexing and brain-tweaking games. It’s like in a bullfight the grass gets trampled. And trampled have been the millions of Afghanis since the past many decades. The Britishers went there as the enemies of the Russians. The Americans went there as the enemies of the Russians. Presently, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are there as the enemies of America. Pakistan has more reasons to meddle there. They are there as the enemies of India as well.

The Afghan tragedy is that nobody has gone there as a friend of Afghanistan. It is always some outsider’s enemy. And enemy’s enemy makes a very shaky friendship. China and Russia will realize it during the coming decades. For the Russians it will be a repeat lesson if they cross over the line again. And a superpower-intoxicated China has to learn this Afghan lesson inevitably if it really wants to claim the superpower status.

The Afghanis have more or less accepted poverty as their most prized asset to sustain their fierce pride, clan loyalty, spirit of independence and a culture of killing and dying. Dying and killing isn’t too much a shock in Afghanistan. It’s very easily digested. Craze is craze. Someone fights for superpower status, the Afghanis fight to keep their ideology and medieval principles. It’s their opium like there are other forms of opium world over to drive people, states, institutions and societies crazy. Just true to the main Homo sapiens trait of opium addiction, the Afghanis love taking long draughts at their version of opium.

It’s good that the Americans have packed their bags. Instead of having their army in the enemy’s backyard, it’s more practical to have a lethal naval unit that can move to any part of the world with effective deterrence. On top of it, take a quantum jump in space warfare. Be several years ahead of the nearest rival. Be in a position to harm the enemy’s space assets. It’s just like sitting on the high ridges from where you can easily target those struggling up the slopes. If you have to play your silly game at any cost, at least play it well. The formula is: Be up there in the skies, higher than the others and trample down your enemy if they dare to stare at you in the skies.

Meanwhile, the ‘graveyard of empires’ is surely going to be the graveyard of the next superpower also. Taliban know that the new friends aren’t supporting them as such. The Chinese are merely opposing the Americans. In this, the Chinese are repeating the American mistakes of nurturing a genie that is sure to go against the master at any cost. Well, nothing immoral about it, it’s simply the genie’s opium. Over all, it’s a smoke-clouded, crazy game among opium eaters of different varieties.

In future, fundamentalist Islam is a bigger threat to China than America. America doesn’t operate reformation camps for the Muslims. There an ordinary Muslim goes about his/her routine without too much pressure on their faith. The insurgent groups in Central Asia and Taliban are well aware of what is happening to Uighur Muslims. It’s a temporary accommodation on their part to take China as an ally.

One, but, must not forget that fundamentalist Islam’s first priority is keeping their faith intact, however objectionable the outer world finds it. Therefore, China will surely realize it later. The badlands of bloodthirsty jihadis aren’t that much of a threat to America as they are to China. The superpower status definitely costs you the sleep of many nights. Americans, let the situation keep worsening in China’s backyard and its flares will surely reach the red bastion. In fact, by being there America was doing a bigger favour to the Chinese than to itself.

What about Pakistan? They haven’t learnt any lessons from their fire-mongering against India, which ultimately destroyed them to the extent of making them a vassal state of China. Wait, China is a very tough taskmaster. The Red Father will extract the costs at a nice rate of interest. The Chinese are not like Americans that they will pour billions of dollars in the name of fighting terrorism while you keep sheltering Osama Bin Laden. They know how to take more at the cost of giving less. Very strict businessman, I tell you. A democratic creditor will at the most pull your ears and shout at you for bunking your payments. However, an autocratic creditor will spit on your face and put its index finger in your arse for the littlest error. So take care! Already there are proofs of this in our neighbourhood.

What about the modern, educated, cultured voice of sanity in Afghanistan? They have no option. They have to leave and set up their world at some other place. The simple message for them is: ‘Please leave at any cost, however possible!’

Pakistan you be careful of the TTP. They will continue pulling your beard. And China you, don’t count off ETIM like you have done so far. Taliban is a great encouraging example for them. They have an idol now in the form of a triumphant radical Islamic group taking over an entire country. India, keep supplying the Northern Alliance with material help because as a regional power aspirant you too are helpless. So to keep your interests, you supply guns to the Northern Alliance. America, you please keep a low profile for some time and focus on your technologies. There is no need to get into a street brawl with the red bully who wants to dissipate you. You just mind your own business for some time and don’t get instigated by the puns and pranks about your so called ‘defeat’ in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, victory and defeat mean almost the same. Their own defeat is no defeat. And the outsider’s victory is no victory. Why the hell people go there to fight? It looks like a circus ring now. Abandon it. Of course, help those who want to come out, give them visas and facilitate their rehabilitation. But allow the lovers of medieval practices to lead their lives as they deem fit. After all, it’s their opium like you have your own.  

The fight for world supremacy has better avenues. This barren land is very boring. Go and write success stories on the sea and in upper atmosphere. Have countless submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers. There is more mobility. Now please disturb the aquatic world. There has been enough terrestrial mischief. And run to the high ridges, I mean go higher into the skies and throw pebbles from there at your enemy’s pot. Well, in any case, the space wars will acquire legitimacy very soon. So why bother about these poor Afghans. Leave them at peace in their caves, elder councils, medieval beliefs and chuckling smiles at both dying and killing.

The Grubby Game

 How to make yourself appear more presentable, if you cannot absolutely bring out any change to your own self? Well, our cognition and interpretation of reality is relative and comparative in nature. Use it. Make yourself stand by the side of a still messier persona and emerge as smarter guy—apparently though—without any change in substance. You will be at least symbolically better.

Well, Taliban are far smarter than the last time they were bundled out two decades ago. To make it better for them, they are learning politics pretty fast apart from firing guns. So they may be up for a better innings this time. Given their past, they are almost unacceptable to the world outside Pakistan and Afghanistan. They cannot change their skin altogether. So what was the option? They allowed IS-K, a far bloodier version of terrorism, to stand by them and thus appear more acceptable and less savage. A very smart game!

Please don’t commit the mistake of categorizing terrorism in good or bad terms. These are plants from the same nursery. Taliban, IS-K, TTP, LeT, JeM and many others are simply different plants in the nursery managed by Pakistani generals and the ISI. These are mere chess pieces, move up one, take back the other, sacrifice this one, abandon that one as per the varying situations. The more pieces you have, the better it is. That’s why the Pakis keep many outfits under their patronage. You cannot just rely on one.

In the face of the gruesome bomb attacks at the Kabul airport by the IS-K, when there was a stampede to leave the country as the Taliban took over, the West would naturally find Taliban a bit more digestible because maybe they are apparently less bloodthirsty.

The West should not be too bothered about who rules Afghanistan. They should forget about it for some time. If at all you can do something, facilitate the safe exit of those Afghanis who want to leave the land in turmoil. Then leave the field clean for the nursery of fundamentalism to thrive unchecked in the backyard of China. Terrorists have no friends. China may think that its clout in Pakistan will be sufficient to keep its Uyghur plans intact. They will realise the folly of this assumption in the coming times.

The concept of Islamic jihad is above and beyond either alliance or falling out with outside powers like America and China. China is temporarily part of the scheme just because America is out of it. Its temporariness they will surely taste with much bitterness in mouth with the passage of time despite tea sharing with Taliban leaders.

Did you ever see a case where there was a fire in a house and its immediate neighbour did not feel the heat? The Chinese will also feel the heat. About the Pakis we need not say anything because to them feeling the heat is a normal part of life by now. They are used to it.

The Talibs have as much a right to rule as the Americans, Russians or Britishers if they can capture Kabul like they have now. Let it be the way it is. Why force a change? When the land is ready for it, the change will come from within. Give resources to the Panjshir valley group to retain their freedom so that this can be used in future. Don’t allow Ahmad Massud’s land to fall in the hands of Taliban. The West still needs a bit of foothold in the backyard of China. This little space should be sufficient. Use it for geostrategic purposes, focus on ETIM. If you have the guts and resources to nurture it, do it. Recognize Taliban and give them the protocol-driven respect that a ruling group deserves. It will make them more responsible and bring less mayhem in the lives of ordinary Afghans. Why douse fire if the water you throw works as fuel and aggravates even the embers.

At the moment, we can try for a better Taliban. It’s prudent to abandon the ‘no Taliban’ strategy. Their political office in Qatar has given them some training and experience about how to handle things diplomatically instead of talking through guns all the time. Slowly they will loosen the Pakis grip on their wrist because a grip by an outsider is the least they want. Till now they have been focused on ousting America, after some time and cool Afghani deliberation they will prefer to have their hands free of the Pakistani grip also. They just cannot help it. They have to shake off any foreign grip. Pakistan has been handy for the Talibs so far in capturing Kabul. But if they stabilize their power for a considerable time in Kabul, Pakistan will be less handy.

So guys, aim for a better Taliban and the worse of other terror outfits in the new superpower's backyard.

Dumplings on a Rainy Day and Croaking of an Old Toad

 

Soul is the real substance! This physical being is just the shadow of that true self. Ironically we grow up believing the shadow to be the substance and substance to be the shadow. It requires reverse conditioning to be truly on the path of evolution.

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For good people it’s very difficult to enter a relationship and still more difficult to come out of it! For bad people it’s very easy to get into a relationship and still easier to come out of it!

***

There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliant, relatively swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our suitable share of tit-bits of truths from this sea to complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, self-consciousness, our perception of the things, our vision of the world and the people around. 

***

  

Women are humanist! Almost perfect except one thing! Their humaneness crosses the zone of perfection and slightly touches an arena where bitchiness for their own sex starts in free flow. It is here the man's chance to appease his women opens up its welcoming arms. A man has to realize that it is more practical to say a few negatively critical remarks about other women than millions of appreciating words about his woman!

***

In the burning whirlpools of the desert storm, some tears shed by a suffering heart vaporize and go high in the sky for rainy prospects. Don’t get senty guys, it’s just an airy oasis.

***

Don't take victory for granted. She is a very choosy bride. She has her own, sometimes illogical, criteria to pick up the groom.

***

A nuclear bomb undoes all other types of technical superiority in conventional warfare. Similarly, leaps in space technology will see a country undoing various technical superiorities in the hands of rival countries on land.

***

To escape boredom, a man has to just extend his normal schedule; the same extension, which overlaps a woman's effort to tide over her boredom, turns her into a sinner.

***

The best compliment for my book Faceless Gods was by my friend's six-year-old daughter. Struggling to hold the fat book in her small hands, and lost in the dense text, she gave the expert review, "Uncle has got a very nice handwriting."

***

Truth need not be salted. Even in its bland form, it's more vocal than any well-peppered, politically correct, hypothetically safe and socially convenient cuisine.

***

We deserve our airy moments—little-little somersaults and froggy jumps over life's grounded roadblocks; tiny ballooned flights above the rough, rugged realities on the surface. But we must not forget, we are terrestrial beings not the airy angels. So guys ensure that you land rightly on your feet after airy jaunts and not crash-land on your bum.

***

Staring at the misty past

and forcing myself not to see the future eager to unfold itself too fast,

I wave at the nostalgic strains still beckoning and faintly alive,

How I wish I could dive

back into the pools of the past,

To have my moments last

at a place that held me in its cradle soft,

That pious embrace which still holds me aloft!

The Overused Broom

 

Within a year of springing a massive surprise for Modi at the centre, people gave still bigger surprise to Kejriwal in the Delhi assembly elections. Kejriwal had become Delhi Chief Minister, for the second time, and vowed to manage more prudently this time.

 

Of all the millions happy, unhappy, jubilant and sad souls lost in the crowded hubbub in Delhi, he was nursing his share of injuries. He was no money-making contractor, he was no real-estate property dealer, he was no builder or an industrialist either. He was a mere grassroots level social worker. He had his common dreams of bringing the real change beyond the hypothetical clamouring, the selling of dreams. When Kejriwal landed on the poor man’s stage, the aam aadmi’s stage, with broom in his hand and a vow to swipe away their miseries, he had appeared a messiah to him, a great sacrificer who had kicked a highly prestigious job to speak out the voice of the masses. He had believed in him. While Kejriwal build up hopes in many poor minds and famished hearts, he did his share of clearing the slums and gutters, taking it as the new revolution. It was no politics, it was beyond that. Despite many voices to the contrary, he believed in it.

During the previous elections when Kejriwal had played the mastercard of fielding the poorest of the poor next door people, giving hope to every tom, dick and harry that he or she can not only be an MLA, but even a minister. But much water had gone down the gutters to further pollute Yamuna since then. The social movements are easier to shout, political parties are harder to manage. It needs to be a smart politician to manage a party, and run it as per your whims like you run your business. It needs money as well, and lots and lots for that matter. Beyond the symbolism of turning sweepers into ministers it needed money and people with clout to survive as a party against the seasoned soldiers already in the fray having money, muscle and legacy.

To dream a political dream is everybody’s right, more so in a democracy, and still further so in the world’s largest democracy. So he had also dreamed. While his hopes gradually dismantled, as he worked more and more vociferously in the streets, in the nukkad sabhas, in the slums spread the message and ideology, his chances were becoming slimmer to get the contesting tick, to become an MLA, to carry out his dreams of a still better society. The times had definitely changed. The Aam Aadmi Party was not just the motley group of social activists; it was a political party with all the traditional requirements to succeed against the stronger claimants to the throne. The more he worked, the more distant he became from the party patriarch, and more so as the dates of announcing the AAP candidate from his constituency drew closer. The day in fact arrived and his dreams shattered and his belief finally broken that in indeed it is politics, nothing more, no revolution. He lay in his room. A successful contractor who had spent his life in making money and building clout had grabbed the ticket. The poor social worker was left with his broom to clean his house that had missed many a cleaning while he went out of his way to clean wherever he found the space and time to do it.

 

He was lying sullen, broken and sad. As a wounded man he was putting question mark at AAP’s changing priorities to field more suitable candidates and leave genuine workers like him cleaning the slums with broom. He was accusing, with his whole self. He had even shouted aloud when the news had been broken to him.   

Most of the AAP MLA contestants can be easily farmed for fraudulent charges!

 

For most of the time while he had devoted his selfless services in just return for mere bread and butter, the Delhi NCR saw unprecedented real estate boom for the last two decades. It had created a niche class of property dealers who used muscles, politico-bureaucratic links and a tendency to look over the small hedge of legalities, to become really rich. In the same chain of development, there were contractors or thekedars who climbed the ladder of prosperity very smoothly by stage-managing things at many levels. At the state level, the moment a property dealer or contractor gets to a level wherein he can afford to loiter around after political guns in the area in his SUV with a bunch of ideal thugs, he jumps into the political bandwagon. These new political hatchlings mostly join the regional outfits because the latter have very strong identity-based politics for the local population.

So over the last two decades, while he just added more grey hair to his head with his social service, Delhi got its rich share of crorepatis. They had achieved all. Since every rich Indian inherits a political tendency, these newly rich politically ambitious groups of people either sneaked into the BJP or the Congress. But there were still scores of such political aspirants left for the AAP to be welcomed with their stashes of currencies. He did not qualify to enter the political party because he had no clout, no money. As it is, in a crowded mess like India the eligible seats for political representation have severe limitations to accommodate the huge number of newly rich people eyeing legislative assemblies. The AAP patriarch smartly smelt the political hunger in this big section of newly rich contractors and property dealers, just like he had smelt the activist hunger in the revolution-aspirants in the civil society. The grand social worker, Anna, and the smaller hatchling, the social worker of our anecdote, nameless, just extra enthusiastic, both had served their means to a particular end. The newly rich and the locally influential crop of political dreamers were the ones that counted now.

To help the AAP in raising its political platform these left-out political aspirants were in a position to donate crores for the noble cause. From his personal experience the ruminating activist, left out in the race to get the MLA ticket, recalled, with simmering wounded soul, very decent-sized queues of crorepatis seeking ticket for contesting assembly elections. They donated like anything. The party of the common man was pitted against the party of the rich and thus needed more money to run and operate in a corporate manner to beat the rivals to fetch victory for the masses. His broom now resting in his room, he helplessly witnessed and yelled at anybody interested in listening to him that inside the room the AAP was filling its coffers with money from these newly wealthy cherubs; at the public platform they were ensnaring the poorest of the poor through their politics of symbolism in the form of same jersey, same old car, same muffler, and what not.

He condemned the tsunami type victory, carried by hollow symbolism and less of substance. It propelled all and sundry, raw, immature crorepatis and even some lucky but smarter than him social activists to the legislative seats. He knew it well that very rarely can the paths from the contractorship, property dealing and even social activism (mostly as a profession) avoid illegalities. He had been successful himself in not falling in the trap of such shortcuts. But that sounded like a mistake now. He knew many of the AAP MLAs who could be found guilty of provable indiscretion. His soul was burning that with proper case studies into the history of these MLA hatchlings they can be easily put in the dock.

He was hoping the BJP and the Congress were listening to his soul’s raving. But he had now apprehensions that the BJP will allow the AAP to grow to some manageable size, because AAP’s growth would be only at the cost of the Congress. Spitting out dejectedly he realised that the AAP and the Congress are into the politics of symbolism that pacifies and pampers the bruises of those deprived socially, politically and economically.

While he was prognosticating doomsday for the AAP for having cheated the genuine workers like him, a more practical person told him:

The BJP will not totally wipe away Kejriwal. Despite best political brand management, the traditional BJP vote bank has remained the same. So now the effort seems to divide the non-BJP votes. Congress ruled for six decades with hollow symbolism that ultimately busted as the poorest of the poor remained the same and its Ministers broke all records of corruption. As a new-born baby that is yet to get its skin tainted with sunburns, the AAP is trying to shift Congress loss to its favour.  

He was watching the oath-taking ceremony on TV now. With a sunken heart and dejected spirit, he looked at the broom lying in the corner. He did not feel like picking it up even to clean his room.

A Little Slice of Peace

 

Can Indian Government's population policy be freed from political compulsions?

 

The question had always come back to him, slipping out of his mind and then returning without any answers.

The importance of this question attacked him with unpardoning urgency this time as he travelled by train in the undisturbed snow-bound wastes of Kazakhstan. Almost as big as India, the central Asian country has a population of just 19 million. Luckily for them, and terribly unlucky for us, he thought, the population of this similar-sized country is even less than the Delhi NCR. After landing up there he had not seen a single stressed out, worried and strained Kazak face across all age, classes and categories. In contrast, he could hardly recall a fully healthy face—even among the teenagers—in the frenzied Delhi Mob or anywhere else in India. His interpretation was simple: in congested ant swarms you cannot expect healthy, confident, strong-willed individuals. You find robust grass grazers like rhino in the undisturbed, undulating pastures, he mused as the train chugged ahead. In the terribly congested, stinking lanes of a place like old Delhi bazaars you see a sea of pathetically beaten down people carrying out their day to day survival fight. The contrast lynched him. There the humans can beat even famished stray dogs in pathetic appearances, he felt far away from that maddening crowd.

Indians have bred like anything, looking at the endless snowy dunes meeting the horizon he realised. Especially ‘they’ have been paranoid about adding to their population. He always addressed that particular section of the Indian population as ‘they’. He had had his quota of secular education and dithered from direct name-calling. But far away from the secular-bound reflections, he took a break, resolved to call a spade a spade. A brave endeavour by a secular-principled Indian, indeed! Unfortunately Islam came to be interpreted in terms of quantification only, he was more direct in his reflections now.

Of course Islamic frenzy has multiplied their population world over. So has the violence. Look at the quality of life in the congested neighbourhoods! Look at their contribution to world culture, peace, innovation, etc. Of course, it leaves much to be desired about their contribution to make this world a better place.

A painful injection to his secular self. He felt the pinch. He just waved away it away and tried to focus on the population-less charm on both sides of the train; miles after miles the distances seemed fathomless; peace appeared to take limitless snowy strides, without human intervention, without clatter and noise.

From the window of the train chugging up to some northern Kazak city his ideas hitting the cold hard reality on its head were abounding across the perfectly calm snowy desert. Already in India the reactive culture hate-mongers had more starch in their khaki shorts, more oiled sticks and more lungpower because the times had changed. The paper soldiers could now dream of making it a stronger India. He found his reflections not too extraordinary under the chime of the time and again fell to the temptation of looking them as the cause of the problems.  

Rampant Islamic quantification contributes more to world disharmony, and its role in world peace is almost negligible.

He had something to think about the clauses in the Indian constitution. In his present state possibly the Khaki-shorts-clad uncle would have embraced him as the bravest son of India.

It is high time that we pay a bit less lip service to the hypothetical Godly status to the so call democratic clauses in the Indian constitution that have done more harm to India as a country in return of just inconsequential praise and tiny certification of being a good democracy. Central government has to come out of that pit of idealist secularism and devise some direct and indirect means of checking the minority population.  

Sipping his morning tea in the pantry car, he had not seen any human intervention in the nature’s sprawl on both sides of the railway track, except occasional outcrop of a little hamlet and small town. Look at the nature, only the weakest species have the largest numbers, his mind was now taking a course where his khaki-clad-uncle would have given a rap on the knuckles. He had a friend who could barely provide even basic education to his two daughters, but he was under constant pressure to have a male heir.

Hindus also have their big role in breeding like ant swarms. Centuries old beliefs like the necessity of marriage, goddamned requirement of possessing a male heir, etc., have meant that Indians force themselves to just add to their species at any cost.

The people he saw on the stations appeared all healthy and hence happy and rich. His mind was drawn to the contrast in the crowded slum in Dharavi, Mumbai. There you fight even for your single breath. Now he was reflecting at the problem just as a problem. A secular idea indeed! His education was stronger for his temporary fits.  

Indian poor class does not produce more and more children to get more helping hands in traditional business and occupations. Ask any poor couple, do they expect help from their children once they grow up. Not many will be found to be optimistic about their future. In fact majority will agree that their position will come down after having more and more children. Still they produce. Strange!

He had tried many times to find out the reason, the psychology. Why the poor people produce children while caught in a strange apathy, a peculiar indifference, absent-mindedness? The poor old much maligned political class of India can silently take any blame while gathering the rewards in lieu of the blames. He was quick to direct his guns in that direction.

Indian political class has glorified poverty by paying lip service in the form of so many fucking social assistance services. These measures were never intended to remove poverty by raising people out of the pit by providing them concrete skills. These were just limited to providing them meals like you give charity to a poor beggar. Do not hate the poor, but of course we can hate poverty that kills the soul of a human being.

He looked at ‘poverty’ as the nasty instrument that dehumanised the self.

Let poor people face the music if they produce children beyond their economic means to provide them a decent life. Do not just give 25 Kg grain to the BPL section so that they carelessly add more mouths in their hut to chuck it out. Let all social benefit schemes be strictly conditioned in proportion to the number of kids they are having.

As the train chugged ahead on its path to still calmer destination, his mind was brimming with disincentives for the poor households brimming with loads of children beyond their carrying capacity.

Sum and summary is that we need to check population at any rate, he concluded. Otherwise we will spoil the chances of taking India to a decent position in terms of social development. Not only this, we will also spoil the environment anywhere we settle. He saw around, it was clean. Indians had not started settling in that majestic part of the world.