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?

**********************************************************************************************************************************

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.

Lost in Red Mist

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.     

Indian novelist speaking from buffalo barn

https://youtu.be/wYjWF8NoEiU

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.     

Latest books by Sandeep Dahiya (sandeepdahiya.com)

Beyond and Beneath
A Half House

Chimp, Champ and Chops

sandeepdahiya.com

Beyond and Beneath by Sandeep Dahiya

http://www.amazon.in/Beyond-Beneath-Sandeep-Dahiya/dp/8193238214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457589491&sr=8-1&keywords=9788193238219

Chimp, Champ and Chops by Sandeep Dahiya

http://www.amazon.in/Chimp-Champ-Chops-Sandeep-Dahiya/dp/8193238222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457589518&sr=8-1&keywords=9788193238226

A Half House by Sandeep Dahiya

http://www.amazon.in/half-house-Sandeep-Dahiya/dp/8193238206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457589469&sr=8-1&keywords=9788193238202

A half house

Azadi...Azadi...Azadi!!

Kanahiyya is out on bail. The JNU campus celebrated like a freedom fighter has come out of the jail of an enslaving government. Thousands had gathered to celebrate, jeer, laugh, mock and shout at his homecoming. It at least proves that those who shouted anti-India slogans are not just a minority, there are thousands of JNU students in general who pay lip service to their ideology and follow them in spirit, who share the belief, who agree with the few who have been in the news recently for ant-India posturing and sloganeering.

In his homecoming speech Kanahiyya and Co. were shouting repeatedly, ‘Ladke lenge Azaadi!’ I just want to ask what freedom you are asking and fighting for? You get a room at the monthly rent even less than a snack at a junk food outlet. You pay fees even less than a cinema ticket in a multiplex in a mall. Your lunch and dinners are subsidised to the extent that even a daily wage earner pays more on a roadside stall to quieten the hunger rats in his famished stomach. You are absolutely free to follow your basic instincts, so that you simply focus on scholarship instead of wasting time like typical non-JNU youths in curiosity following the opposite sex. You are free to get education from the best scholars in the country. You are free to grow up and spend your formative years in an environment that puts you ahead in competition to become IAS officers and build lucrative careers in MNCs. The Government of India gives you all these facilities because you are considered to be students par excellence. Just because you crack an entrance exam! But do you consider yourself to be just students? Aren’t you jumping too far ahead into future to be petty politicians even before you complete your scholarship? Scholarship and research has taken a backseat; politics is driving the students’ psyche now in JNU. And it is sad and pathetic. The Indian Government spends hundreds of crores not to hear political shouts, it does for research, growth of minds, discussion, better citizens, not the ones who shout, jeer and cock a thumb a the Indian state almost on principle.

Being a JNUite has been misinterpreted in a way so as to mean only anti-establishment. The problem with a premiere institution is that its students might carry a superiority complex that in turn makes them think that whatever they act, feel and do is better than the ordinary. The JNU fame over the decades has developed a mentality that they are exclusive and better than the rest and hence need to hold privileged, apart-from-the-rest attitude and opinions and only this mentality can instigate some of them to shout pro Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt slogans. There cannot be any other psychology other than this. The highest seat of justice has decaled them to be the enemies of the state, who are these little extra-idea-fed hatchings to question the procedure of justice dispensation at the highest level in the country. It’s a direct declaration of distrust in the state. As sun warms up, rain gets us wet, this leftist ideology has inherent tendency for chaos and disturbance that ultimately leads to violence. These little intellectuals are just in infatuation with the idea. It’s better they go romancing with the girls instead of being sloganeering paper tigers playacting the show of revolution on a safe stage in a highly-subsidised educational institution. How many of them go to the real mess in slums and bring ‘Azadi’ for the hungry and the destitute?

It’s highly deplorable that JNU campus is now politicised beyond imagination. How can students pursue scholarship in such surroundings? The management has to stamp its authority and put scholarship over politics. That is what JNU should be known for, not slogans like ‘India go back!’ If India goes back, will most of them even be able to pursue their education in costly institutions outside? They come from very poor families. Isn’t it freedom that they are privileged to get the best education at the cheapest rate? Isn’t it freedom that Kanahiyya whose family runs on 3000 INR dents Indian democracy with his anti-state propaganda and hogs national limelight? They are getting damn subsidised education from the poorest of the poor man’s money that directly indirectly goes into government’s coffers. They are just supposed to be good educated citizens of India and do something extra than the lesser mortals to make India better.

I got my education from Jat College in a small town in Haryana and always held a grudge for not having studied at JNU. Thanks to our extra-brained JNUites, my grudge lies in a dustbin now. I am happy for getting my education where I did. At least I believe in Indian democracy as it stands. Who knows what an intellectual-psychopath I would have turned out had I joined that institution! At least considering myself luckier after watching the jeering crowd yesterday night after the freedom fighter came out of the jail for the cause of the masses.

Jats and JNU

Jats and JNU have jolted the peaceful march of Indian democracy. It’s really tragic how politicians and masses ganged up to destroy the civilized norms in Haryana. Jat reservation issue has been misdirected and mismanaged to just end in loot, arson, killings, inter-caste conflicts, loss of public and private property, and above all the destruction of social bond in Haryana. Socio-economic standing of Jats in Haryana does not seem sufficient to put them in the backward category. There are strong proofs that violence was politically instigated to garner political mileage. The sinners of Haryana have to be brought to justice. Post the storm, the positive elements of society need to take out a helping hand to those who unnecessarily suffered. It’s the time to rebuild the fractured fabric of society. Jats have to realize they can become famous for far better things than they are presently.

Elsewhere, gangs of straying intellectuals in JNU are playing into the hands of anti-establishment elements. It is highly deplorable that a premiere institution where per student annual subsidies are to the level of 300,000 INR is found to be involved in such activities. It’s high time that the students and staff in JNU realize that they can do a lot better than they are doing now in return for all the crores of subsidized education. Crying against system all the time is no sign of an extra-evolved brain. Extra-smart brains bring more positives for the society, instead of shouting ‘India we will destroy you!’

You tube promotional video of my upcoming book 'A Half House'

You tube promotion of my book 'A Half House'

Sandeep Dahiya - Author

Sandeep Dahiya is an emerging writer, poet and blogger. Taking inspiration from his see-saw existence drawn between a traditional Haryanvi village and metropolitan Delhi, he mediates to carve out a reliable identity from the two opposing worlds. He holds a decade of editorial experience with reputed academic publishers in the country. His works include: Footsteps Lost (Minerva Press); Verses from the Land of Farmers’ Messiah (ABC Publishers); A Half House (Invincible Publishers); Beyond and Beneath (Invincible Publishers); Chimp, Champ and Chops (Invincible Publishers).

Sandeep Dahiya grew up at a village in Sonipat district of Haryana. Having his education in a village school and graduating from a small town college, he just did marginally better than other students and dreamt big. Moving further he completed M Sc in Ecology and Environment, and Masters in Journalism and Mass Communication. His teachers at the small village school thought he could become an IAS officer. However, during summer vacations in Shimla, a lady official who decided the best travelogue prize for the camping students made a still better remark that he could write. He remembered it all the way while he tried his best for the IAS and the PCS.

Coming from that part of north Indian countryside, where literature will be the last thing on anybody’s mind, where agriculture is culture itself, where perhaps people would prefer a buffalo over a book, he tried to be the black sheep that is trying to get out of the herd to set its own offbeat course. Following a self-possessed and self-nourished dream comes with its own set of trials and tribulations. More than once he abandoned the dream of full time writing. Many a time he realised his limitations as a writer. Still many more times he felt himself a victim of the forces beyond his control. Having spent a decade in the editorial departments of academic publishers, he gets up again to try further and get a slippery foothold led by the anticipating whispers of the inherent voice.

He fought for the most prestigious civil services examination in India. Fought decently well also, given his own limitations and more importantly the literary limitations of the socio-cultural unit he came from in the village in Haryana. The harder he worked, the more distant became the goals. He saw the worst of politico-bureaucratic-judicial game. When he finally fell his inner voice told him, it is more on account of the system’s failure than his own. So he has sips of justice in the form of inner thumbs-up by his soul.  

Every time he falls, deeper are the analytical impressions on the neurons of his brain; graver have been the bruises on heart. If nothing more, it gives him the mood and inclination to write. Churning out reflections and sentiments that  life’s thousand catapults give to all of us uniquely, Sandeep Dahiya writes to basically satisfy the inner cravings, and more importantly to create scenes and visualisations for a better world both for himself and the larger cause of humanity.http://www.sandeepdahiya.com/

sandeepdahiya.com

http://www.sandeepdahiya.com/

The cover pages of my upcoming books!

Smog, slog and life on winter's doorstep

Just watch out the lilaceous glow on people's faces. It will tell you that winter has just starting spraying its aura around. November is cool. Forget all talks of global warming, pollution, dirty political thuggeries, traffic jams, disappointments on cricketing field. The weather in November puts the common man, the man in the arena of trials and tribulations of saving some grace to see through the day with life intact, on a strong wicket. The glow on common man is just like that witnessed by numerous faces after witnessing yet another century by Sachin.

Delhi is chaotic. But have a round of Connaught Place (thankfully the collonaded facades are up for some renovation) and you will feel the historical smirkness still pervading in smoky, hazy afternoons slowly passing into the folds of evening. Just go there with an accomodating spirit and you will find why despite so many metropolitan outcrops around, Connaught Place is still the heart of Delhi. In the fantastic maze turned up by the white collonaded blocks time, history, modernity all stand captured in a mysteriously pervading easeness.

Elsewhere, you will find four causes to mutter for a single cause of musing. Metro, yes...a massive collective reason for a bigger musing. Flyovers....again do us proud as we saunter over without wasting any time. But have the eyes to spot dirt cheap humanity scattered around below the flyovers. Kids, women, men....black, filthy, sick, torn and tattered dreams wander in equal measure. These poor human souls left out of the gift of enjoying even the balmy effects of early winter. Take a deep look in the eyes of some young female beggar, and you will fing a big chance for a beautiful life and persona wasted. Whom to balme?? I just look at the faceless vault of sky and ask again and again, "Why?" If you can give so much to so few, then why not just common minimum for all of us!!! Anyway, disparities have teased us from times unknown.   

Ateet ke aayne se: Diwali (October 21, 2006)

                            

The Diwali festival was raising its celebratory hood with bang, smoke, splashes and splendor. We bombard, more than the firecrackers, each others with the messages of ‘Happy Diwali’. It is however another matter that in its modern avatar the great myth with its practical substance has been robbed of its true humanistic essence under the internecine attack of constantly aggravating pathos and passion of the modern generation. All those desirous of having a big bang in life get a suitable bombarding opportunity on this day. When people literally surpass each other in a mock war to split eardrums and leave the air polluted to the hilt, it is no longer in commemoration of the completion of that great task undertaken by Lord Sri Rama validating the eventually succeeding nature of the good over the evil. Most of the revelers in fact grin like the progenies in Ravana’s army. The meek mythological murmur is painfully pinched down by the evil’s fire-banging spirit lurking around on the rooftops on this darkest of the night in the year.

On this day, Lakshmi (the Goddess of wealth and prosperity) is worshipped and true to its nature the Goddess blesses a section of the trado-religious section of all the destitute head-bent humanity. These are the traders, entrepreneurs, people of enterprise and business. For almost a fortnight preceding the festival, bazaars, stalls in narrow streets, shopping malls, mega malls, shopping centres and sweet shops are tested to the capacity of their salesmanship. Festival enthused people just beat each other in taking the traders’ profit to a new, newer and newest pinnacle. During evenings the provisions and the prodigious Lalaji burst out of the narrow confines of little shops and get adjusted on the stalls encroaching onto the narrow walkways among the beehives of shops. People just unmindfully bump into each other in the mass trail. Even vehicles baulk, screech and squeeze to have their mechanic share in the fun and funstry from the side of the machine world. Especially the ladies and girls attired for a festive outdoor in jeans, colorful tops, fancy salwaar kameez, flowing duppatas and trailing pallus hypnotically move along this logjam, their minds buzzing with indecision regarding what to purchase and what not. In between are the rangeela elements who frustrated and deprived of female proximity born of the famed sexual divide in India seek solace and scent females from the closest quarters, the world from porn movies giving them glimpses of what lies beyond this. Frustration taking sadistic sips from whatever chance bumps, pats on the buts, brush against the shoulder and even pinch at the most delicate parts.

The shop-fronts decorated with lighting patterns galore as the high temples of the great Indian mass-psychology driven consumerism. The firmly believing devotees meanwhile with wads of money in their wallets moving in a queue to shop mechanically like bottles get along on a conveyer belt to be labeled exactly the same. Truly the festival colors everybody in the same color despite gravest of differences among all. The high priests meanwhile—the shopkeepers, hawkers, vendors—very expertly perform the plundering rituals of businessmanship. Market becomes the new Dharma. Its scriptural book has the pious injunction: Purchase as much as possible on Diwali eve even leading to your beggarly status during the non-festive days! Uncountable schemes, discounts, credits, cuts, offers and coupons make it seem like the modern ways of subtle pick pocketing! This great predatory peek in people’s wallets using the knife of market principles, using surgically clean and expert fingers by the hand of market consumerism! This is expert encroachment into the corridors of mythology to enlarge its market domain.

The sweet makers start storing the dish and delicacies weeks ahead for there will be a huge rush. Indians are paranoid in certain mass behaviour. For petty selfishness ranging from spitting, peeing on public places reaching to life threatening acts of food adulteration (like fake mawa, urea in milk, poisonous colors in sweetmeats) they behave as easily as just doing the early morning ritual, permitted, allowed both by nature and society. The perishable stale products are attractively packaged to go into religiously blinded guts. On Dhan Teras it is considered auspicious to buy gold and silver. The great myth propagated by the maker of the God, the Super God, the smart selfish mankind. More than any God, it is the jewelers who get propitiated on this day. Inside the glass fronted welcoming exteriors, exquisitely plush furnished interiors, under the glare of all those jewellery items lined almost from the floor to the ceiling, big bloated ladies and gentry religiously put budgetary caution to winds. They stab in their wallets to get finally a bit of pinch on their real skin. Here thousands do not matter. Outside a famished, sunken, skeleton of an old beggar is a pariah and they feel like getting a heart attack even at the thought of giving ten rupees to that unfortunate creature. ‘We do not support beggary,’ they simply quip and take to their smart heels.

A day before the pious night itself, the night of Diwali, there was an unseasonal rainstorm. It occurred at the worst time it can. It stole the festive glitters from the eyes of at least one community, the farmers. Basmati paddy just two weeks away from harvesting, with its grain heads bulging with the pearls of the farmer’s eyes and other varieties (like Sharbati, 1121) already under the process of harvesting, all and more got whiplashed suddenly by the weather spoilsport. Many farming dreams were broken.

The next morning the farmers found the crops flattened. Farmers just got busy in using their mundane calculation abilities to estimate the scale of loss in monetary terms.

‘In the standing crop the loss isn’t much because the yellow traces had started. The grain has been completely formed,’ one quipped.

‘But still it is a big loss. All those grain-heads and spikes which get buried and get into contact with the damp ground will turn black. It’s at least 20% crop loss,’ the other protested. 

‘No no it’s too high. It cannot be more than 10%,’ the simple calculations went forth.

So the farmers debated about the loss. What else could be done? It is the irony with the farmer that both God and the market seldom get propitiated at the same time. They take turns to fuck the farmers’ fate. Just once in a cycle of let us say five years both God and the market bless the farmers concurrently to give them some monetary chance to help somebody go for long-pending house reconstruction, marry off a daughter waiting her dowry to be purchased, buy some long-dreamt electronic gazette, etc., etc.

With fluctuations in their loss figures, their participation in the great and glittering festival time market decorated in cities and towns went up and down. And during those three or four final hours of Diwali celebrations the victorious firecrackers ruled the sky. These were the stars creating a lower vault of human aspirations. With their flash, boom, burst and brilliance, they even puffed out the flickering, faded, silently smiling lamp far away by a poor threshold, a farmer who had possibly lost too much in the storm.