Musings and Mutterings: Sandeep Dahiya (www.sandeepdahiya.com)

The posts on this blog deal with common people who try to stand proud in front of their own conscience. The rest of the life's tale naturally follows from this point. It's intended to be a joy-maker, helping the reader to see the beauty underlying everyone and everything. Copyright © Sandeep Dahiya. All Rights Reserved for all posts on this blog. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author of this blog.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Inclusiveness

Bright smiles, colorful saris, spirits doused in devotional chants of "Hare Rama Hare Krishna'. It seems so good to see ones own cultural colour on foreigners' skin. Russian soldiers signing 'Mera joota hai Japani....sar pe lal topi rusi...' A young Chinese singer crooning "Tujhme rabb dikhta hai' in a reality show in China. A British wedding making a global-cultural mark with the groom, bride and guests gyrating to the beats of 'Salaam Namaste'. Well this is a beautiful small world with cross-cultural mixing. Why make it big, compartmentalized with racial, religious, cultural and ethnic differences? Life becomes far too beautiful when we accept, assimilate, integrate and reciprocate. Differences melt. Insecurities go away. We have one sun, same moon and the same starry roof over our heads. Why then some forces are madly dividing the world? Let there be integration. Or will it take a common enemy, some alien species, from far of space to invade us to make us realize it's just a very small beautiful planet buzzing with just humans?

Dostoevsky's Gambler

Conceptualized set of sins and vices! Too hypothetical concepts to tame the basic instincts in humans! A vice is not a vice everywhere. A so called 'vice' with larger motivation loses its dark shades. Without a supportive chorus in the background it again becomes a loathsome act in abstract. But there is hardly anything in total abstractness, except in pages of books and brains revising these for oneupmanship to win a point. Reality is too muddled up. There is hardly any vice that goes totally unjustified. Read Dostoevsky's Gambler. It treats gambling as a viceful and then not viceful art driven by pure psychosis of a helpless heart mad after chancy windfalls of win and even loss and even beyond.

Love your chains

We can fly and rise higher only if we are tied to certain responsibilities and commitments; our freedom-lorn spirit tamed to an extent by social conventions, individual values, family setup, the sweet-sour tides in our offices, etc. But most of the time we find it as a drag on our real enjoyment of life. We just feel how great life would be without all such traditional stuff. But guys tell me, can a stringless kite fly?The kite flies because there is a string pulling it to higher skies. It also tries to negate the limitations set up by the string. It shakes its head in negation. OK! What happens when its dream to be string-free become true. It just takes a few ecstatic circles in air and falls onto the ground. Those free dives of its dreams prove to be its death dives. We are the stringed kites fella. We fly and rise high only because our destructive passions and traits are tamed and tied by a string. So love your commitments, your responsibilities, and your struggles for small small things in life

Impediment to Humanism

Times changed over centuries. Almost everything changed as well. But religious differences are the same. Bloodshedding in the name of religion is the same. Is not it high time that world community start dismantling the hold of exclusive religious principles on people and states? It is the time for an all inclusive world religion, the religion of all humanity, humanism. It can have Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Hindu Gods and other major deities in its fold. Main issue is how can the Islamists be convinced to see beyond the rigid confines of their unchanging tradition?! All other religions are melting under the warm sun of internationalism. But icy blocks of Islam are holding their medieval solidly crystallized layers like polar snows. Will Islam ever be lenient to non Muslims!? World peace and harmony depends on this question. If internationalism succeeds to liberate humanism buried inside Islamic fanaticism, we can expect to have a peaceful world following the religion of humanism.

In any case religion has to be systematically dismantled to lay the foundation of a common world, like it was constructed in ancient times to stamp man's authority on earth under subversience to natural forces

Pseudo...

'Pseudo' meaning 'bogus, sham, phoney, imitation, artificial, mock, ersatz, quasi-, fake, feigned, pretended, false, faux, spurious, counterfeit, fraudulent, deceptive, misleading, assumed, contrived, affected, insincere' is a very effective prefix to nouns. It's a very potent weapon to hide personalized opinions and malafied judgments to pass as universally acceptable, nicely-packaged theories. Pseudoism is very convenient. It's a very presentable mask to hide the ulterior motives. Truth has never been convenient. Pseudo-truth is a sugar-coated candy, leaving us water-mouthed with anticipation. No wonder pseudoists have been more successful than their unprefixed brethren.

Pseudo-secularists (product of seven decades of pseudoist education under Congress) shine as orderly intellectuals; secularists pass of as mere bunch of disorderly people, not able to maintain the hypothetical sanctity of their opinions. Pseudo-nationalists like Nehru annexed power at the time of changeover, while true nationalists like Subhash Chander Bose, like thousands of others of his league, disappeared.

Isn't it the height convenience by pseudo-all Nehru, who was chronically friendly with Stalin responsible for the death of 20 million people. During 1937-39 alone 800,000 people were purged for being the imagined enemies of the state. Of the many theories about Bose's death, one is that he died in Stalin's prison in Siberia. Even BJP is playing safe and taking up the convenience of maintaining friendly relations with the erstwhile superpower at the cost of the reality behind Netaji's death. If they tell the truth, how will it affect our relations with Russia? Even if the theory of Netaji's death in Stalin's prison is true, nobody can blame Putin's Russia. That was under Stalin's Russia, who purged his own people.

Going against the instincts

We have wreaked havoc with nature. Forget about our behaviour, even birds are changing. Basic instincts carefully nurtured by nature, and coded into genes across generations, to entitle survivabilty are being jolted. A massive money-plant has grasped our neem tree. It is a parasitic effort at survival. Nothing against nature here. A dove put a few sinews just 4ft above the ground in the fragile lap of these leaves. What a short-cut. Less labour, almost no pains to ensure survival of the hatch-lings. There are cats. It laid 2 eggs. Was seen for a couple of days. But its shortcut on maternal pains wasn't enough. Then it was gone. Today one egg is gone..and the other is fruitless.

Caste-based Job Reservation

Jats you do not deserve reservation, just like no other community in India does. If not for political expediency, the concept carries no advantage. In fact it keeps the caste identities, the bane of Indian society, alive and kicking well into the second decade of the present century.

Caste based job reservation has become too big an element of politics in India. The issue is politically so sensitive that just an off hand remark by RSS chief was enough to decimate BJP's hopes in Bihar assembly elections. So nobody dares to touch the issue at the practical level. I have seen three generations of elite dalit families reaping reservation benefits to rise on the socio-economic ladder. On the other hand, I am surrounded by poor educated dalit young people who haven't benefited from reservation in any way. The solution can be: Let reservation be a first generation benefit, i.e., the children of a reservation beneficiary will not be eligible for the scheme. When a dalit gets a job on reservation, he/she is supposed to bring up his children in a way that they can compete against the best. It will help in spreading the reservation benefits horizontally rather than the vertical compilation of benefits in the already rich dalit families. Unfortunately it so far has been the trend. Job reservation is supposed to provide more and more people with basic amenities of life rather than some particular families reaping the benefits on account of the already existing benefits.

Schopenhauer

Will to life...unavoidable helplessness to fall in love .... to reproduce ... to procreate. Schopenhauer tells how the will to life ensures survival of species. In animal world it is the direct spark of mating and procreation. In humans it is pleasantly drawn out to involve romantic situations. ...of falling in love...of enjoyment...of pain..ecstasies and all.

Our Moon has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita

Our Moon has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita. A poignant memoir, it throws light on tragically understated history of violence against Kashmiri Pandits. Kashmir is too big an issue, and common tragedies of the common people too small. They pale into the shadows of mighty forces fighting for it. Read it and you will have more pragmatic assessment of the contemporary issues. You might even become free of conceptually-aligned, hypothetical-hold of pseudo-secularism. It will help you in criticizing religion-ordained violence without getting scared of losing your status of an enlightened, secular person. Evil mutations of misinterpreted theology are eating into the body spirit of a shared humanity. It has turned the body diseased. It needs surgical operation. Doctoring, knives, scalpel, injection, bitter pills. I wonder are these the only options left to deal with the affliction. Well, beyond critical limits, I think it's the time of decisive action.

Koh-i-Noor is best suitable for Taliban

Some information for those clamouring for Koh-i-Noor's return. The balooon of human greed has to bust. It cannot be otherwise. The famous diamond has rolled into pockets, only to be snatched away by greater ambitions. Each house it landed in very soon got toppled from the seat of power. Lineages of dozens of kings who grabbed it came crashing down. Finally the ship which was carrying it to England was barely saved from doom. Stricken with plague and lashed by storms it just made it to the destination. The day it arrived on the British mainland, July 2 1850, Queen got a cane hit on her head by an attacker leaving her a black eye and a scar on forehead which remained for years. Also on that very day her most trusted Prime Minister of four decades, Robert Peel, fell from horse and died. BJP shouldn't take a risk. I think Pakistan is more suitable for its ownership. Or Taliban, which is still a better claimant. Haaa haaa

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

The mere idea of death shakes us. It casts a shadow, turns the world upside down, rattles the stage of our ambitions, dreams, hopes and aspirations. We don't even like to think about it. But ultimately death is the only surety in life. Our conscious effort to drive away the idea about our mortality is what we mean by life. The biggest commonality around, still we, still aware of the failure to do it, try not to know or remember about it in our own context. Paul can see it creeping towards him. It is so near that he has been touched by its shadows. The lifeful bright sky over him is losing to the deadly spell. Soon it will be dark. He will cease to exist as others and he himself recognizes himself the pioneer in neurosurgery and possibly its future as a science to deal with unresolved ailments of the brain. He will cease to exit. The consolation can be that he will be part of everything. As per medical science, his domain as a neurosurgeon, it's just months away. There is no hope. Not even in its most hypothetical form. He is but forcing himself to live. To live till his last breath. Life acquires a focus, a meaninful precision, a surety as the finish line looms just a hand away. As the dark Angel creeps towards him, he decides to live. To live substantially. Intensely. He wants to remember the idea of life more than the fact of sure death. Before his body is snatched away at its prime, he decides to jot down the meaning of life. A favour done to lesser mortals like us. In writing this book on his deathbed, he turns Saint Paul. Read it. You will know how fissiparous life can be. Yet how meaningful it is meant to be at the same time. He turns dying a mere phenomenon. And life still bigger one. Read it and you will love yourself and your situations more than you do now.

RIP Paul. You are an angel now. And part of a better world.

A Common Man's Revolt

'Jana Gana Mana...' It started at hyperpitch in the cinema hall before Kaabil would start. I didn't stand up as a symbolic mark of respect. Just a little, harmless revolt. Almost unobserved in the dark corner of a cinema hall. I was feeling cheated by the system. It was my mute protest against certain things that have darkened the spirit that pervades through the national anthem. It felt like breaking a law. A revenge. But that's the maximum level an otherwise law-abiding citizen can harmlessly reach in protest. Twelve years back a gross injustice was done to a very bright, duly selected Haryana PCS batch. The Congress government opened the floodgates of institutional manipulation. They misused the state vigilance commission to put put the most farcical report. Certain candidates were denied appointments on the basis of such crazy remarks like "the evaluator has cut down marks in one answer from 4 to 3". It was interpreted as a malafied means by the candidate to get undue advantage to get selection. Imagine somebody manipulating the system to get a cut in the mark to get an advantage in the merit list. Craziest and heights of official misuse of power. Hooda government manipulated judiciary later to keep the sanctity of this illogical document. This report stands as the legal basis of denying appointments to the candidates who had worked for a decade to succeed in the exam. Well, it now gets proved that when it comes to misusing power, the Congress in no exception. The present rulers, the BJP, have also smartly upheld the status of this funny, criminal report. Well, that's how things stand in BJP ruled Haryana.

As a sufferer of this report, guys please tell me, wasn't I right in not standing up to the national anthem?

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Of all types of death, including by disease, accidents, ageing, death born of someone's hate is the worst. Hate-born death slaughters the core principle of being humans. It strangulates the the basic constituent of our collective consciousness to survive individually as a part of the social set-up, a literally must-have for our identity as much as oxygen is must for our biological survival. Hate has potent carriers. It breeds death with the weapons of religion, caste, creed, race, ethnicity. From Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, to modern day ISIS slayings, hate wreaks the worst form of death. Death born of hate is the very negation of the meaning of life.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Lost in Red Mist

She is a courtesan fighting for a respectable identity in the quagmire of degenerated nobility, wars, intrigues, debauchery, lust and, last but not the least, love.

She is a foreign tourist in India, raped, picking up the fragments of her violated self, walking with bruised honour, her innate goodness intact, to reach the house of justice to salvage her identity, to redeem her pride.

A circumstantial pawn in the checker-work of sex trade, she passes much of her youth in the muck of lust only to regain herself back, to free herself in her forties, to begin a new life.

Kashmir is burning and in the bigger fire are smouldering little worlds of common hopes, mundane dreams, routine aspirations and regular cravings.

He is huge and lifts unthinkable weights for a living, goes on living and lifting weights only to be crushed by circumstances.

On a badly stomped platform he gathers the nameless pieces of his dusted identity to have a name, a face, an identity of a common person from the normal world.

In the Tsunami ravaged Andaman, she, an Australian anthropologist, survives and looks with hope at the remnants including the sole surviving Shompen tribal.

On the devastated eastern coast of India, he, a mere kid, takes the onerous task of caring for his still smaller sister, while the world around seethes in chaos.

He dreams big from his small village, only realizing later that the dreams that grow in disproportion to one’s circumstances are as good as nightmares.

He, an old man staying alone with a cat, patches up the holes in his present through tales of the past, to survive, expecting a painless end in the future.

She, a Western tourist at Rishikesh, opens her spirits while a whole world drags around her feet.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Indian novelist speaking from buffalo barn

https://youtu.be/wYjWF8NoEiU

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Lost in Red Mist