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.                           

                    

Rashe Ram doolah ban gaya!!

Rashe Ram is a low caste landless young man. But he has his specialties. He is dark, muscular, works like a bull as agricultural labourer. He has no land of his own but has the unrivalled farming spirit. He is special in other ways as well. There are many who think he is dimwitted. It sometimes gets verified when many a time he puts more physical effort like a bull and misses the small witticisms expected of even a 10 year old.

He stays in a 30 square stinking, hot, unplastered brick hovel, no ventilation, just one door. His father was Lame Dheere Ram, christened so because he limped and walked dheere dheere, so they started calling him Langda Dheere. Dheere worked faster than any two legged man. Most efficient of workers, he coked a snook at the society by going into drinking unchecked and then shouted through the night, targeting particularly an ex-sarpanch for what crime God only knows. We can only surmise that possibly that village headman had denied him a BPL card that would have entitled him to some government run charities and subsidies. He did a favour to his children by not dying somewhere else than a state road. So one night when he was hit possibly by the car of another drunk man on the wheels he had at least ensured that his family will get something in road accident claim. So they got 10 lac for the patriarch getting crushed under the car. One drunken man getting paid for another drunken person’s binge driving.

So Rashe had a 30 square yard house, 10 lac rupees in balance, a strangely looking mother whom people say is just marginally better than a mental house case, and a younger brother who appeared far better. On top of that he is of marriageable age now. But there is no bride for him in the conventional arranged marriage set up. In Haryana already sex ratio is very low. In such competition who will give him his daughter. But then without marriage what is the purpose of Rashe Ram’s life. So all his relatives gang up to purchase a bride for him!

India is teeming with unfortunate human beings. There are millions of Bangladeshi settlers in slums who just sell their daughters to the leftover grooms in Haryana. Then there are criminal gangs who abduct girl children to later either push them into flesh trade or semi prostitution while occasionally selling them to the ineligible bachelors in Haryana, old men still having the dream of an heir, or widowers still having dreams of domestic life. Generally these caged birds, the purchased brides, do not even understand the language. Right from the beginning it is a fight. The girl’s effort to run away and join back her gang to be later sold again as a bride. It is a good business. Smarter ones just vanish time and again, getting multiple few-night husbands and more money for the gang-keepers or even their own parents and relatives.

Having been squarely rejected in an arranged marriage proposal, Rashe’s anxious relatives and well wishers searched some middle man who would get them a bride at a price. So the bride was arranged at INR 60000. Strangely, just a day ago a proud Jat farmer in the neighbourhood bought a buffalo at INR 83000. So it was considered a good bidding for the groom Rashe Ram. She was sharp eyed. Pretended not to understand even a single word of Haryanvi. Allowed Rashe Ram three nights as a husband and then in the wee hours on the pretext of going out for the loo in the open vanished into the dark folds of night. Much angry the groom-side again approached the middle man. Threatened dire consequences. They ladkiwallas said, ‘See it was your duty to keep her within control.’ But they said since the middleman is strong enough to get you a second chance we will send someone else but you have to ensure that you retain her this time. So within a week Rashe Ram got remarried, the ceremony included just garlanding and then running away like they had abducted the girl. His second wife appeared on the older side. She was really docile and appeared keen to stay. Possibly she came from even more wretched surroundings. By now much spoilt Rashe Ram had an issue. He told something to his anxious relatives. All of them agreed she was not fit for now eligible Rashe Ram. They even took her to a doctor to explore the prospects of children. Population census of India waited with anxious beat of heart till the doctor declared she cannot bear children anymore. She had borne children in the past in her previous innings as somebody’s borrowed wife. ‘Even her stomach had been cut…there were stitching marks,’ they told the middle man again and complained of wrong delivery. Strangely he again got under pressure and promised to provide a better one. The golden moment of third marriage arrived just in a week. This time all concurred that it is the best option. So Rashe Ram thrice married, with dreams of children, his broken teeth smile and intangible words is at the threshold of marital bliss.

I asked my mother why is she waiting so long to give bridal saugat to Rashe’s wife, a goodwill gesture as a fellow villager. ‘Let them finally confirm her as the real bride. Then I will put my 500 rupees to risk..who knows about these people!!”

Broken Dream

Starting with a bit of self introduction.

Well it has been a bit tough ride so far, but believe me every sweat-lorn step has not been without big-big revelations. The greatness lies not only achieving lofty targets, but in dodging the failure as well. I have been doing it so long that the CONTRADICTORY thorns dividing success and failure have been burnt to give rise to a beautiful rosy realization that only karma, the selfless work, is supreme.

Everybody believed I had all that requires to be a civil servant, so driven by this belief, I just gave peak years of my life preparing for civil services. Got interviewed once, but the real dilemma started when I came to the bitter truth of having spent all my four chances.  It was but not before a severe jolt of self doubt. In the coveted interview I got 110/300. I do not think I had done wonders just like someone who got 250/300 also must not have broken all limits of human personality functioning to have that high score. It brings to the forefront the main problem in Indian recruitment system: unquestionable authority in the hands of the interview panel. Unfortunately it is more misused than getting good administrative officers. I was a village frog. So with sheer labor earned 1082 in written, a decent qualifiable score. OOfs, what range they have in interview marks! 110 to 250. It has all the potential to break all effort. How the hell one will cover up 140 marks?! 

Then PCS was left to keep the flame of the undying passion still alive. I belong to Haryana. As all of us well understand, our choice of PCS is just limited to the home state, because the way SPSCs function it is the least of secret. Well, in India most of the corruption breeds from the safe corridors of constitutionality. State public service commissions function as personal fiefs of the ruling party. It was Chautala government when I put up my well polished claim for the state civil services. Easily I crossed the hurdles to reach the interview stage with very high marks. But the all-sweeping powers of the interview panel saw me being rejected with just 28 marks out of 75. There were cases where candidates got as high as 70 marks. Anyway, I learnt a few political lessons, so during the next recruitment, I knew exactly well how to go through the interview stage. But believe me it did not involve any money going out of my already famished pockets. So, all cheers. I went comfortably home with an SDM rank (HCS, 2004, Roll. No. 1093) and the future all bright. Everybody knew that nobody deserved to have his say in any type of favor done to me, because I thoroughly deserved the post.


But Chautala proposed, Sonia disposed. Before we could join, she had the CEC Krishnamurty dashing down to Chandigarh, announcing state assembly elections, putting all appointments on hold under election code of conduct. And during this time the type of wanton drama played by the Governor, state principle secretary and everybody else, it does not even deserve to be narrated by the civilized being like me. Congress came to power. Only after entering the precincts of Punjab and Haryana high court I realized what a powerful entity state is. It is a big behemoth. The way proceedings were monopolized in the court made me so helpless and victimized by the same state which is constitutionally obliged to protect my rights. But here I was paddling like a skinny dog, trying with my meager financial resources to beat the mighty current of state. Is judiciary fair? I always had doubts. But with each day, the realization dawned how fascistically this system of justice acts. Who appoints the judges in the first place? Directly indirectly the politicians hold the string of the puppets dancing on the political stage. Each day for a talented unemployed is torturous. Here after spending thousands all we got was a few minutes stay in the house of justice. For two years the Lord of justice did not even open its ears to our ever increasing clamor for justice. And then the verdict came, it had all the loopholes to make us sit out of employment for as long a possible. We went to Supreme Court, but I don’t have any hesitation in saying that like state high courts are playing puppets to the state governments, the citadel in Delhi is always under the influence of central government. After all who appoints and promotes the judges at all levels. It’s just a well oiled machinery of mutual benefits, that’s all…nothing else.

Chautala had been wrong in installing his stooges in the HPSC before being voted out of power, because many board members were made to resign just in the middle of their term. So when Hooda came to power he found a board full of members with terms for the next 6 years. One unconstitutionality gave rise to another. The new iron lady of India easily got the hand-made President to issue a notification suspending all the HPSC members. Meanwhile, while all these stronger wheels clanked on the high road of power, ego and what not, our heads rolled. 

Congress said Chautala had manipulated the selection process. Ask them what they have been doing all these five years. For one wrong of Mr. Chautala they have ended up doing tens. In both supreme and high courts, government of Haryana had given the plea that it has not any vacancy to fit us in. But see what they do. In January of this year, they put up this notification for fresh recruitment. Isn’t it the contravention of their own pledge to the court that they do not have any vacancies. We went to get a stay on the fresh recruitment. But the great legal luminary—having the infinitely open-ended space to write anything suitable for whatever ends he might deem fit—just smartly said no, the government can do as it likes.

Now, having robbed of a decade of my penance for a cause, I do slog out in the private sector. Believe me, my pain is double, because as an educated and law-abided citizen of this country, I always had this notion—born of my bookish knowledge—that state is there to protect my interests and courts are there to save my skin from the larger forces. I but stand robbed of my fundamental belief. Its not just a matter of losing a job, it is the matter of losing your identity as an empowered citizen of an independent country. Now when I slog out in most crowded buses, where getting a foothold is as precious as getting bonus from the government, I certainly don’t feel like an Indian. I feel like an emigrant in my own land. I REFUSE my office colleagues when they try to put the tricolored toy on my desk. Sorry, but this is my tiny revenge against my own state. Somehow, when terrorists strike against state in any part of India, against all my wishes, I find myself giving them a silent salute. 

Now Mr Khattar is at the helm of the affairs. He can just walkover the issue, claiming he or his party are not a party to the issue. Moreover, there must be so many in his party to get their wards selected as PCS officers feeeling cheated for so long. The government also must be itching to put lameduck memebers in HPSC to work as their recruitment stooges.

Sorry, but its as natural as this. Just wanted to say something on this. Thanks if you have borne the trouble of bearing with my brow-beating thus far! All in all its just sham democracy in India. We are just puppets dancing on the make-believe stage while the real game is behind the scene.

Chance Pe Dance?

If we consider success and failure (the outcome or the result) as the twin sides of a spun coin (effort behind the result), we need to consider the difference between landing headwords or tailwords as the result born of the last moment’s extra swing, spin or any other momentum or movement tilting the scale on this or the other side. Now, there can be three factors involved in this extra force deciding the winner and the loser:

1.     The coin spinner or the tosser (subject)

2.     The revolving coin itself (object): if we suppose the object to possess some vague, mysterious, inexplicable factor born of its inanimate freewill.

3.     Some abstract entity (negotiator or referee): functioning either in the form of physical or natural laws like the atmospheric elements or in the shape of supernatural laws to either act/favour on behalf / or against the subject or the object.

As per the above supposition, the success or failure in a toss of coin—or our luck or bad luck in drawing a card from a pack—becomes a very subtle and nuanced game of multitudinous factors hidden in the simple act/result of the coin landing on this or the other side.

Everybody is well aware that purely mechanical laws of physical sciences defined by the input and output process do not completely cover the range of occurrences coming across in real human lives. Human lives come across too glaring loopholes to allow the application of scientific principles to human endeavours taking them as simple inputs and outputs. Oftentimes, mountains of work irrigated with the human will power, blood and sweat does not fetch even tiny molehills. On the other hand, sometimes an anthill of an endeavour fetches the mountain of a result. This mere incongruity in the outcome validates the point of including the subtle role of the outside agents (either in the form of physical things around us or the beings, things and forces whose working laws we have not interpreted and explained so far).

The role of ‘outside agents’ is unreasonable to the persons of logic and reasoning. They will shout, ‘It’ll leave us as mere helpless pawns shifted and shoved on the chessboard of destiny by paranormal forces.’ Let the logicians huff and puff with their explanations. The mysterious factor still haunts, and those who believe in luck, fate, destiny and the most common denominator God will continue to shine as the superbly carved beads in the same string held by the cord of belief in the supernatural. They will continue to flaunt the divinely held string till the theoreticians break it with the pull of their proven hypothesis. The onus is on the latter for their path is made of either proving or disproving. The former meanwhile is just happy in surrounding itself to the misty, hazy, cavernous pit of unexplained, inexplicable, only to be realized and felt factors.

Even if we choose a set of most clinically chosen set of mechanical skills (standardized and equalized) and put them in a competition, we still have the position of one outperforming the others, i.e., we still have a result in the form of winner and loser. So if science cannot avoid the emergence of a winner from among the set of equally equipped instruments, we have to accept the futility of classifying winner and loser. It is a very lousy shortcut to define the helpless termination of a phenomenon—a mere hypothesis such as time (Einstein said there was no real time, it is just relative realization) that has just been coined to meet a tiny, practical end. It operates in a chosen utilitarian, abstractly chosen set of possibilities and choices, so that the one category or group of players falling into it is defined winners; while punishing the others with the yardstick of failure. If you remove these carefully chosen set of conditions and eligibilities—that are purported to remove chaff from the grain—every endeavour becomes beyond the tortuous segments of loss and gain to become a pure work, a complete phenomenon, existing unblemishedly in the fabric of happenings.

All of us work for success. Victory is the favourite child of all endeavours in the universe. Failure is the shameful, unwanted, depraved bastard born of misfires and mis-hits accruing from some fault, either this way or the other, born of invisible or invisible factors. The role of those who genuinely took part in the race is irrelevant; the ones whose fierce competitive urgency catapulted the eventual winner to draw out the last ounce of strength to emerge victorious. When the winner hits the finishing line it is just the culmination of a phenomenon, the whole phenomenon of race. We but just pluck out the winner like we take away a ripe fruit, while putting in the dustbin of failure the windfalls that lie on the ground, the unwelcomed testimony to the process of ripening when chancy windfalls saw many being dropped onto the ground. The fallen ones but become the groundwork of the victorious, the one completing the race of ripening. Unfortunately, the whole set minus the ripe and victorious is cast away as the scrap in the process of hatching a victory: the long and wordy, sweat laden steps carrying one onto the top. These are the oblations and sacrifices to the Goddess of victory. The Goddess chucks up their flesh and takes big swigs of their blood, leaving no vestiges of those struggling sinews whose failure gave us our soul-satisfying winner! 

It's high time we include the losers in the over-swapping concept of victory. Like the rocket fuel burning and turning to ashes while catapulting the victorious satellite into the required orbit, the fellow competitors also fuel the race. If not for their pushing with their best competitive spirit someone would not have been pushed beyond limits to achieve some victorious feat. The losers are thus contributors to someone's success. Let's change the concept to make it more humane at least!  

Why is it so tough to be an atheist?

Well, the debate about God has been a long and wordy one. Millions of logical arguments fall short of defeating one single word ‘faith’. Our daily experiences, daily haps and mishaps, inexplicable occurrences, now rapidly explicable natural and biological phenomena, fossil researches with solid proofs of natural evolution, scientific theories about the origin of the earth (in addition to the solar system and the universe as a whole), profoundly inexplicable natural symmetry (the balance of forces holding the universe in a revolving, periodical, harmonized symmetry), all these and many more keep us in wonderment about the possibility or impossibility of a creative design behind all this.

Given our varying situations in life we rush either to the Darwinistic evolution concept or the concept of creative design, both occupying their extreme positions! Most of the time with tidbits of scientific facts in our puzzled heads, taking cursory looks at the Darwin end to do justice to our modern educated selves, we blindly, helplessly move to the extremity of faith. The latter with its swiping injunctions of mysteries of life, with one solution pill called ‘belief’ makes life far less complex. It gives respite to the hassled logic-laden senses as well. It is a good addiction to this blind supposition. Religion indeed ‘is the opium of the masses’!

Let us first take the religionist theory. Drawing inspiration from the mythical clues (vaguely and always open to interpretation in convenient ways) in the yellowed and much hallowed pages of scriptures and holy books, it maintains that this beautiful planet dazzling with life and much more has been created by the Lord or the God Himself or an all potent entity for some Godly purpose. Believers maintain that the faith has to be unquestioning and blind and beyond the reach of all our senses, except one super-sense of ‘faith’. The belief cannot be made to stand in the witness box to be questioned by the pinning arguments of the so called atheists in a court presided over by an indifferent agnostic judge. Since we are not animals, we with our evolved brains possess the faculty of seeking the logical foundations to our blind ‘belief’. However very cleverly the act of mere questioning anything holy has been termed as heresy, a nice nipping in the bud, a nice way of bypassing all the arguments that might at a point leave ‘the defenders of faith’ at the dead end. It is considered sedition against the Omnipotent, as if the all absolute, the all Potent Potentate is an unsparing monarch demanding unflinching loyalty from the subjects without ever giving any clue about Himself. Since he has allowed us to evolve with an evolving brain, reasoning by the organ cannot be a taboo. A thing created by Him, or at least allowed by Him to take its present shape, doing what it is just supposed to naturally do cannot be a taboo and sacrilege. So we are allowed to follow the path of reason (gyan marga) to seek proofs leading to His existence or nonexistence. The institutionalized religion but seems to be a game stopper in this venture.

Religion with its tools of sin (and consequent loss and punishment) and pious deed (leading to profits and His blessings) seems insufficient in providing a logical backdrop to our actions, reactions and the outcomes if we drop the further conditionality of the past (previous birth with its unknown summary of good and bad deeds) and the future (with its yet to be list of gains, losses, punishments and rewards). These two unseen voids have enough space in them to eat any ‘what, when, why, how, where’ questioned by the present. If we just analyze the present we find glaring incongruities: mountainous efforts ending in molehills of achievements; tiny actions resulting in sky high rewards (like a lottery draw); a person born in a slum and dying in a still dirtier gutter; someone being born with a golden spoon and dying in a still more glittering palace; some nice fellow getting a disease inexplicably and suddenly; a wretched human being with his still more wretched deeds continuing to enjoy perfect health; sufferings and tears incessantly striking a life even though nobody has a word to justify the victim’s punishment of this nature; amazing and unjustified profiteering and consequent happiness showering upon somebody against whom many can point out hundreds of reasons to make him eligible for punishment instead of this blessed state. To cover up these mocking loopholes we have this account book of sins and pious deeds full of unknown statistics of the previous birth, the ones belonging to the present, and to be carried onto the next birth in future. These are but grossly hypothetical conditions to shut down the voices of protest against His justice (or injustice) by condemning unjustifiably suffering nice human beings for the unproved, unknowable misdeeds of the last birth and warning the unjustifiably fattening and prosperous piglet version of a human through punishments for his misdeeds in an unknowable, unproved next birth or afterlife. With these two open-ended eventualities at the extremes in the past and the next birth, we need not even question any state of affairs on the earth. These are the super dead-ends for any kind of logic or reasoning. It literally means to shut down the basic faculty of the questioning brains. Then we have other protective layers in religiondom: it is a series of immensely pacifying nouns like luck, fate, destiny! This series further patches up any remaining loopholes in the believers’ fabric. In religion with its indefinitely unfathomable dark seas of the past and the future, beyond our time span on earth, the boat of reasoning just falls short of any chance to reach the coast with any proof to the contrary.

If we accept the validity of the preordained law, guiding every activity (right from the littlest movement of a tiny sapling from among the millions of others like it), we need to accept that not a littlest step in our life is caused by our free will. We then become slaves and puppets in the hands of that invisible player doing puppetry with invisible, untouchable cords. But how much of puppetry is sufficient for the unseeable actor? Isn’t He ever bored of the play across billions of years?

Suppose we have to draw a card from a pack. What are the factors that define and control which card lands in our hands? The mathematics theory of probability (with its assumptions of limited number of players and elements) makes it look like a subtle nuance born of free will (of touch me, touch not others) of the static card and the free will (will I touch this or that one) of that hand controlled by the brain.

Religion says there is no chance factor in the phenomenon of an unknown card landing in the hand that just moved uncertainly. If it is accidental, the phenomenon becomes more important than the players (card, the hand, the brain). If the chance factor is assumed to be valid at all hierarchies (stretching up to the utmost question of our very existence and the existence and origin of the universe itself), we can vaguely surmise that the creation has been an infinitely mammoth chain of chance phenomena spreading out in a chain reaction constituting a series of accidents. But as a series of accidents, why does not it get annihilated? Why does not it abruptly end in a collapsing chaos born of a momentous slipup in the sustaining chain of infinite chances and the chosen causative chances (like the sudden emergence and bursting of a bubble)? Possibly it is a cosmic bubble born of some accidental coupling of chance phenomena and it will burst out without any reasonable causative factor, again a bigger destructive chance factor.

Why do we believe in God? Generally under the burden of circumstances we have to drop our reason to take shelter under the tree of faith and save our skins from the scorching sun of realities hammering down merciless hot rays. Reason is very heavy. Blind belief is very light. Under the bombardment of uncountable forces beyond our control, we are bound to feel left out in the race of life. We are supposed to get depressed about many whys and whats. The reasoning with its cold hard ramrod of objectivity is a poor comforter. It’s like a cactus in the path of a tired desert traveler. It has no water. It has no shade. It has just prickly unlikeable facts. So the tired traveler follows a mirage to reach an oasis, an oasis of blind make-believe faith where he gets shade, solace and cold water. A perfectly reasonable human being deprives himself of the luxury of all these weightless fruits of ignorance. Once the heavy sack of reason is dumped it becomes easy to glide through testing times. The simple elements involved in a God-believing head just pay a small-time lip service to the achingly grinding realities and the world beyond.

Fear is the reason why we cannot carry forever the atheistic load. The fear of uncertainty. The fear of loss, pain, disease, death. With so many negative possibilities it is difficult to carry a scientist’s brain all the time. The reason leaves you all alone in the dusty blizzards, the chancy falls, the accidental winds that may strike you, your possessions, your near and dear ones. We thus seek a divine guard. We are habituated to His presence, as a word, as a never seeable, just feelable (decided by us how to feel it) entity. This surreality is strongest of any proveable reality around us.

Every living cell is led by the natural instinct of survival undermined by a fear of mortality. From the savage times to the present civilized ones, the fear of the one beyond our comprehension (rather than the love and devotion of it) has been the driving force in institutionalizing our surrender through reverence and rituals. The nerves of the institutionalized religion throb with the lifeblood of fear. The strength and girth of our reason depends on how much capable or skilled we find ourselves in our fight against the unknown or the unknown forces. Lesser insecurity means stronger footing of the reason and the vice versa.

The world of believers teems with tools to appease the Almighty to save us from the unseen perils and fetch us boons and blessings. It is utmost selfish give and take relationship with God: give us your blessings and we will pay back in the form of reverence. The mountain of belief has too broad a base and too high to be broken down to pieces with the tiny hammer of reason. Religion has been a multi-pronged weapon all through the ages of our evolution. By the way, was there religion during the times of single celled amoeba in the primordial sea? Or the God was just happy without the pompous ritualistic show? Quite wonderfully, religion has been an all nice type judge between the exploiting classes as well as the exploited ones. It has maintained itself pretty well I must say. Both the exploiter and the exploited have received equal solace from it.

When no worldly human help is coming forth, the feeble flickering otherworldly light steadily burns inside that pitiable creature who drops his reason and falls on his knees to pray. It is the oasis stay for the worn out desert traveler. Reasonless, beyond earthly justice and injustice, smitten with a meek acceptance before the pleasantly hallucinating light, he becomes oblivious to the present’s pains. His heart mellows with genuine tears of repentance for those unknown, unproveable past birth misdeeds. He has bargained to get something in future. He has accepted his unidentifiable culpability in lieu of blessed and gainful future. It helps him in wading through the foaming and furious desert sandstorms. He constructs this strong, illogical, unreasonable check dam to cut down the furious lashes by the circumstances. It provides him strength, solace (this unseen brother, father, mother, patron in the unseen, unapproachable world) without being there, he being the only witness to his own prayers. He thus is able to take those steps that he won’t have taken otherwise in the absence of his never-to-be-seen friend. The idea and concept has gone so deep in our biology that even in its surreality it has acquired more concrete acceptance and shape than a stone pillar just by our side which we can touch and kick to verify.

Religion also is the dustbin of our wrongdoings and sins. Many of us take shortcuts to bypass the pious injunctions to follow the path of suitability, practicality and efficiency; getting those pin-prickings and chidings by the conscience. In lieu of hundreds of intentional and unintentional wrong-doings we try to counterbalance the negative karma through some willing unwilling charity, pilgrimage, prayer and even meditation.

There is no fixed religiosity. We adapt our faith to its suitability to our lifestyle. Our God is our own making. So rituals and the means of appeasing Him are even more directly manipulated by us. To meet diverse demands, we have hierarchy of Gods and Goddesses ranging from ancestor and corpse worshipping, animistic deities of the savages to the new corporately branded, more powerful, more beneficent, more cultured and cleaner Gods of the uppermost class.

If we take our reasoning to the extent of denying God’s existence, we need to contrive a whole new hypothesis to explain the glaring inexplicabilities tonking their heads against the firm, proven walls of science. Science has not been perfected. Till science gets perfected, the concept of God will remain relevant. Moving backwards on the path of evolution with its sequential linkages of cause and effect, passing through millions of interlinked causes and effects across the billions of years of time and infinite distances of space, we arrive at the final entity—the Big Bang, the so called first event to take place in the primordial vacuum from whence our notions of space and time flow outwards.  This is what our astro-physicists try to make us believe. How can but we assume a primary cause without no further preceding cause or causes?? A commoner like me is plagued by such neighing doubts. Just have a look at the vast and infinite fabric of the sky at night and you just marvel that no it just can’t be the simple handiwork of some suitably fallen chance on the event horizon which explained by the scientific parameters has resulted in the infinite network of astronomical (heavenly) bodies. A mere thought about the perfect balance of the forces in nature is sufficient to make one again fall prey to the hand of some Superiormost designer behind all this. The nearer you look around you, the more proofs you get to become an atheist. The farther you look, belief sneaks into your wondering eyes and puzzled mind.     

Just like we have tried scientifically to define the edges of the solar systems, is it possible to take our know-how to the outermost edges of the universe? Suppose we succeed in accomplishing this one day, what will lie ahead to explore. What beyond? Will we reach God then?! 

        

Astro-physics is based on the space-time model mostly based on the emanation of light travelling at the speed of 300,000 km/sec. With our rapidly improving telescopes we are peeping farther and farther into the space to retrieve the light travelling to us from the farthest possible body. Will we ever reach the farthest source of light—the last primordial flicker at the farthest most end? If we provide some representation to the God, I think this final object has to be the one!

Lost in our inability to either prove or disprove His true nature, we have contrived this immensely utilitarian hypothesis that like all other man-made systems has immense usage for the humanity both at the individual as well as collective levels. I don’t know what will be the nature of this argument once artificial intelligence starts its path of inevitable evolution further down the path of scientific progress when most of the natural functions (having a long and arduous trail across millions of years) will be replaced by metallic, mechanized short-cuts; when the artificial intelligence will learn to sustain itself without the control of its erstwhile master, the man. Possibly in his quest to know the truth and the consequent booms showered on him as a result of utilitarian science, man himself will one day become all powerful possessing super-intelligence. May be then the debate about God will come to an end as science will pluck out one mystery after the other; we will overcome one obstacle after another that during the previous generations had forced us to become helpless leaving us in a state of dumping our reason to surrender before the blind faith in some superpower; a time when the all powerful reason will become so strong that the vulnerable soft skin, warm blood and the heart’s mysterious sensations will turn obsolete; when we will harness the full potential of the brain’s billions and trillions of neurons to be further aided by the artificial intelligence to peek in every nook corner; may be then the present shape and size of God will become obsolete and outdated (like we condemn the savages for animism). During that era of cold, hard, steely reasoning, the man will himself achieve (in what form the species will be then we do not know) the Godly status and turn himself into an all powerful entity matching the supernatural hypothetical entities of now. Whatever hypotheses mankind has contrived across times, he has always surpassed it and proved yesterday’s fiction into tomorrow’s reality. Then may be the fiction of God will be made a reality by the man himself, making him capable of performing supreme feats that we presently ascribe to the Almighty. All along we have believed and prayed to the God to become as powerful as Him. Or the God of those times will still be a more powerful being because the concept of God is in our genes? It just might adapt to some new form!! 

Looking at the bloodied hands of Communism!

Darwin says all beings, across species, and the related phenomena across various natural processes, are propelled by the survival instinct among the constituting elements. In this tussle between the superior and the inferior, the nature evolves in its multitudinous forms comprising tragedies, ecstasies, pleasures and pains. It is basically a class struggle both at the intra- and inter-species level. Both in natural and human systems (we humans now operate now almost in exclusion of nature), the fittest ones adapting better to the plummeting circumstances are the ones to take a lead in either milking the resources or in laying the framework for the overall system to function.

The human system is a big behemoth, intriguingly evolving, following the parameters of the jungle in its human variants. There is basically a fight for individual and even collective interests. Of course to make us believe that the human society does not follow the raw principles of nature (like the lion eating the deer—unsinfully—to survive), we have interposed the institutions of religion, morality, ethics, concept of good and bad, sin and pious deeds, karma, etc. However, as per social selection (derivative of natural selection), the human society moves ahead over time defined by clash of interests at various levels in different fields. If we remove the differentiating layers and levels in the society; if we remove the hypothesis of sin out of this struggle—like we have removed from the struggle between lion and deer—the leftover will simply boil down to a struggle between the more skilled and the less skilled. Out of the numerous levels of interests (ranging from individual, family, religious, state, earth,….), one clash of interest is at the level of the upper and the lower class. From the start of the known history, human affairs have been shaped directly and indirectly by class struggles (between the upper and lower), among individuals within a particular class on the basis of their less or more suitability, and even among the individuals of different classes. Although with changing times, the fields of struggle have changed as well. This broad overarching struggle contains many sublevels to trickle down to the tiniest triumphs, humiliations, wins, losses, exploitations, etc.

The communists have been tonking their ideas-infested heads against this almost inevitable defining differential in the society that seems to be pushing the motley mix of minority’s triumph and the majority’s woes. As a counter to this, one might say that the Western liberal democracy might reverse the ratio. However, it comes at the cost of an invincible super state which with the purpose of safeguarding the majority’s interests has to be a still exploitative institution that mightn’t exploit its have-nots much but then it can very easily do so to the teeming millions in the third world.

Taking up cudgels from the famished majority’s side, the communists thus unite the working class interests to make it super-strong so that it can suddenly go berserk and break apart the centuries old system of exploitation and its supportive elements. For this reason the communist movements are called ‘revolution’. Earlier it was against the monarchy, nobility, aristocracy embaling in them what we call ‘luxury’ beautifully and intelligently supported by the religion. Religion, for its pious injunctions seems to be more effective in stopping a poor person from seeking alternatives than stopping the exploitation by the upper class. So the revolutionaries as atheists pluck out the sinews of long-held beliefs, convincing, providing solace and sympathy to the underclass. A Godless person is less accepting; carries immense prospects of imposing his will through covert and overt means. Hence religion is held culpable by the revolutionaries in the sense that it forces people—makes them habituated to their woes as the will of the divine forces beyond their control—to become adapted to their ill fate rather than putting the same time and energy in remedial measures. Religion, of course, for centuries has been good, sympathetic, solacing companion to the masses helping them in licking their wounds and swallow the sorrows. Thus the revolutionaries break its façade, terming it stagnant in its principles and in cohort with the exploitative classes. Religion too unfortunately demands its share of glitter and glamour that only the upper class can provide. After all, a poor person’s God is a lesser God. The religion of the poor with limited resources is even termed as animism.

Once the revolution led by the newly pious injunctions of classless society tears out (generally in a bloody manner) the ancient system, the interests of the former upper class are either hijacked by a dictator or an all powerful super-body—polit-bureau or the central committee—which in itself replaces the empty seat of godhood; a tiny blackhole type superforce to root out the still surviving differences of any type. Unfortunately, differences are bound to crop up somehow. So they keep on nipping the buds. This sudden rush of purgatory blood leaves bloody tales far more horrible than the ones committed by the former system over centuries. The tales of atrocities committed in just years outmatch the ones perpetrated across decades or even centuries. It is just like a helpless group of sufferers running away from the semi-lethal teeth of a wolf into the shelter of a hungry tiger with super-strong claws. In this religionless weeding out for the cause of the supreme ideal, the religious tools of mercy and pity do not exist to act as check dams. After all, religion has been constructed to function as a check dam to save a situation where ‘the lion eats the deer’ principle is allowed to operate in milder nastiness in the human society. In a Godless state all hell breaks loose. After many bloody strivings, the communists much to their chagrin find that the divisive curse of the selfish, individualistic interests still survives in one form or the other.

Capitalist, socialist, liberal democracies on the other hand are less glaring and more subtle in their deeds, because here the old exploitative forms have been redressed as modern principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a subtle and white-blooded exercise: the old forces in their more acceptable avatars. It also promises to provide ample opportunities to the masses to struggle through the laswful checker work to move up the capitalist ladder to reach the class on the top. It believes in conversion rather than coup born of the clash of interests.

However hard the communist regime might try the class differentials will persist in one form or the other; simply because we are human beings, cast in so unique and numerous ways with billion ways of thinking; and not just same colour factory product.

PS: Something away from the main discussion in this topic! The reason why a democrat politician, an industrialist or a dictator occupies his/her influential position can be—among others off beat factors like luck, fate, destiny—that the said person is stronger in getting his conscience unchained from the restricting principles of good and bad in the game of survival. It boils down to: Who is more skillful? It is just a matter of more or less skills.