Salutes Delhi

Salutes Delhi! You are two-eyed. But they have different visions, different dreams, different destinations. One of your pan-shots swankily zooms on the glizz-nd-glamour of resurgent India. Whether it is right-eye pan-shot or left-eye, I do not know. But yes the other eye's camera shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. Its a grizzled, murky screen having classic comicities and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis. Its Muhharram today. Many a offices are closed. It just means you can drop your purse on the DTC bus floor and still left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. So at least you could see a fee feet around you. Great solace. The air too was not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deos from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations. See when TATA offered these buses (along with the kickbacks per piece and which was more important to our rampant governmentvallahs ) the real cost of the machine was just meant to carry this type of load. The festival load. Once in a time load when people do not travel on account of holidays or some other emergency.

On this observable stage a 14-year-old man-kid jumbled into the finally justified interiors of the poor green line. Boy he was the man! Carried a pole that would tower above the poor bus if their vertical components competed. He slanted it, his small hands manoeuvred it smartly and the camel was safely in the room. The pole was the dancing axis of so many types of cheapest kid toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhood mushrooming in slums. All fellow-riders watched him in half amuse and half irritation. Lampoons like yours truly even laughed at the free show. Anyways, coming back to this character valiantly playing its part in the grizzly black and white ever spooling movie. He rushed to the conductor seat after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the busvallaha about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. The boy-entrepreneur got DTC day-pass costing 40 rupees. Man o man! How much this kid earned to afford the pass. Anyways that is none of our concern like most of the Delhi things should not be. One fact was inescapable: the well-meant boy was well-prepared for the day. The way he had tied the muffler, the way his cheap jacket was buttoned up to the collar, the way trouser well-fitted his thin legs and the way well-cleaned shoes purchased from the road-side hawker, all these portended a good successful business plan.

One problem with new DTC bus is that its door opens too invitingly with a hiss, as if it is specially inviting you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an Advasi family raided the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulked, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the black old lady draped in a big raggy blanket shouted. God knows how many of them were! It was a collectively lampoonish unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabbed the hand-rails overhead and tried gymnastics. One of its hands also busted the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and conductor shrieked painfully. So many raggish kids carried their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dumped the gypsy spirit for a while. Their neighbours almost vomited. A sleek lady carried a toddler on her shoulder, one infant in her lap and most probably the another one inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shone from the short kurti she was wearing above the gracious folds of a dirty long skirt. It just became a thoroughfare. The conductor fought for tickets. They stood their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where were they going? Whole of NCR was their destination. It was just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with conductor acquired serious colours. And the moment it did, they just dumped themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanished from the scene. Delhi, salutes! You bear witness to the two movie-makings by the camera lenses in your eyes!

Early winter musings

Farmers are always done in...fucked in fact. Either it’s the impersonal hand of God that simply holds them by ears and smilingly makes them see the mysterious spectacle of undoing all their hard work. If God gets ready to do some more important undoings somewhere else, thus sparing the tillers for some time, Government does it from His side. Low prices hit the farmers even worse, because here they complete the crop cycle with certain dreams but return almost empty-handed from the market. So caught between these two supernatural forces, the poor farmer gets just one weather-saved and market-saved crop in four seasons. And that surplus keeps him on the path of survival. This time paddy has been fucked by the Govt.-cum-market forces. I have seen light in an old farmer's eyes, 12 years ago, when he sold Basmati rice at Rs. 2600/quintal. Mind it that was more than a decade ago. Can you believe the same stuff fetched a paltry 1400 to his son? Almost half! Meanwhile costs of farming inputs have skyrocketed. It just defies logic. Capitalism how can you leave a certain section in lurch like this. A landless farmer from my village had taken a portion of my land on rent for paddy farming. The sum we agreed upon was just on the basis of expected price of 1800/quintal. He returned from market and did as you can image. It was just a sentimental landvalla and a crying landless farmer. So I had to share his loss. But this act of philanthropy left a hole in my pocket. If market forces and the shining economy of India, for their survival, presume such acts of kindness from semi-poor guys like me, then to be hell with such a system. I think those who have lakhs of crores in Swiss accounts are better for this task. But you beat the Swami who talks of getting that money back. Another farmer, nursing the market insult, was just hatefully staring at the stunted growth of his winter tomatoes. An ex-serviceman, in late forties, this farmer has been working with all his army ethics on his small landholding. 'This country is up for bloodbath, I tell you!' he fretted. Gosh! Guys there was real fire in his eyes and practical intent in his words. 'The fuckers have stashed all the money in Swiss accounts. That’s our money man. While they cheat us through low agricultural product prices and very high cost of livelihood. The behen****s... ', sorry guys an angry farmer cannot do without gali-sali, 'have fucked farmers at all fronts.' 'Unemployment...these graduate farmers of 21st century India are not dumbos like their forefathers. Believe me man the day will come when they will just barge in Parliament and just kill the lawmakers there!' Dear-o-dear what a stormy spectacle it became. He was literally shaking as if we just had the first leader of peasant uprising from this part. Just imagine what if Anna-type movement is caught in the whirl-wind of such disgruntled hard workers! The future seems really up for some jerks and pulls.

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Why does truth pinch most of the time? Simple! Because it is no chocolate, sugar candy or mellowable sweetie-pie lump of ice cream. It is hard, sour, iron ball guys. It has pinching rough stony edges to its surface. Come into contact with them and they will take a few flakes from your skin leaving a red or purple bruise depending on the intensity of truth contained in it. Now the question arises, 'Why does it almost always leave a grimace on our face instead of a smile?' The simple fact that all of us almost always rub cold shoulders against this ironed ball having thorns for our soft skin, proves on fact: that we are not subjectively inclined to accept the objective reality as it stands in abstract. But does not that mean that we have moved poles apart from truth and its manifestations while going on the path of individual and collective improvisations at the subjective level. May be the reason for our success in emerging at the top of food chain in the game of 'survival of the fittest' is that we have institutionalized ourselves to negate and defy, and do without, certain basic truths that form the core of creation and nature. Nothing wrong with that! It, however, is paradoxical that most of these scions of truth--against which we have always been taking cudgels--form the core of our moral, humanistic, religious, spiritual and aesthetic vision enshrined in preach books. Strange!

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Early winter mornings are fresh even in the polluted and dirty sections of NCR. Heavily encumbered sectors in Noida do have their share of early-morning charm as they try to find out the order and symmetry meant for them in master plans. They cannot see much among the defecating, exciting, commercial, crash and crying hulla-bullo going around. The buildings are semi-daunting: a curious mix of residential-cum-commercial styles. You see a bit of house, a bit of manufacturing unit, a bit of service industry, a bit of business, a bit of exploitation, a bit of comfort, a bit of pain, a bit of life and a bit of death. It is a self-absorbed world, a cesspool, a whirling system drawing so many survival-lorn masses from nooks and corners of India. They live identity-less here. The enterprise thrives here. The malik goes smirk in his big car. The labourers go pitifully, deeply shackled by the duties and falling bodily and mental notions of being a human--and how can you expect to be Ganga-clean if you eat, drink and sleep at the very place where others and you defecate and procreate at the same time. You find a kid left alone in this non-caring world. A small sack on his back. The rag picker. He has manly eyes and a kid’s stature. When you are left alone so early in your life to enjoy or suffer life on your own terms, you just become one of the thousands of flies fighting for as pace on shit and sweets with the same relish. You just know one side of life--survival. By any means and at whatever cost. And what does this survival produce: stunted, frail. sick, dehumanized, spiritless multitudes who just add to the census sheets of India. But they serve a purpose. They carry the shining tag of economic boom and growth on their frail shoulders. They survive by any means. That is their biggest achievement. The widow, the prostitute, the raped girl, the mad women(carrying the sex toy for so many frustrated and hungry souls). They beg, pickup rags, sell their diseased bodies, operate tea stalls, try to pick out the moments of the day while someone ignores the cancer warnings to buy those poisonous sashes carrying gutka and tobacco. They even cock a snook at the great plans in the plan books for this great Delhi suburb, the pride of Uttar Pradesh. They just settle down at any place in between the industries. Their tiny hovels,a curious world of dwarfs. But they live as tall people who sleep and fuck proudly in congested hiccuping afraid air and bring about additions to their world like ant swarms. You will see their holy places as well. A drop of gangajal in the sewage nullah gurgling with puss and bacteria of uncaring humanity. The mandir stands nonchalantly. It’s Gods having forsaken it. It was never accepted as their earthly shelter at all. Anyhow a poor man's God is no God at all. It has been proved. The mosque minaret too sulks over this majestic swarm lost in a terrifying fatality just somehow holding onto faith like their broken spirit holds onto their more broken bodies. A mere purposeless appendage. They have their open shit plots. The stench too overbearing and thus fighting to retain its status and repel any encroacher coming with a non-shit purpose. Just imagine what will be the garbage dump site of this bigger garbage pit—it is literally a hell hole. It but serves as the playground-cum-business-cum-schooling arena for the orphans, half-orphans, bastards, urchins, nameless boys and futureless girls. In this hell of a hole, a fat pig brushes its shit-smeared muzzle against the holy mouth of a robust bull chewing the half-shit fodder and lying at ease in this kaliyuga playground. Well, well...you just have to pass through just one street and get the gist of life in these perilously throbbing veins. The blood is poisoned. The organs are diseased. What is its future? May be even God does not know. Probably, He is not concerned at all. And why should he be! Because He is the king of heaven. Why should He have any business with such hells?

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Always there are easiest of routes to the toughest of destinations. Every hard situation has the softest of a solution. So there is no hard problem in the real sense. Our solutions make them so. When in the face of a tough situation blame your solution not the situation. Isn’t life all about taking smart short-cuts to beat the puzzling array of problems randomly cropping around us? So be the solution provider. Behind most complex of a phenomenon there is amazing simplicity. Read that. Those cute fundamentals will tell you that every situation is a living being. It has a soft and sympathetic message for you only. Listen to these delicate murmurs and it will help you in breaking hardest of superficial, outer cores.

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For the lovers of freedom, responsibilities sound as prison chains. Responsible people on the other hand find themselves squeezed in a tight corner by responsibilities which do not allow them to enjoy freedom. The question is: Are freedom and responsibility inherently contradictory in nature? Is it really possible to make them complementary to each other by melting the contradictory edges? 

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HOLLLAAAAA!!!!!!

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

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I think it always (without exception) helps not to lose your temper. When you lose your temper, you not only deprive somebody’s chances for more happiness; you in fact deprive yourself of the same. So why fall in the trap of such a bad bargain. If nobody gains anything out of it (except perhaps that hypothetical and flimsy enemy of ours, called “ego”) why invest in such a loser scheme?  —Sandeep Dahiya

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May be there is a fixed quota of suffering in the cosmic account book of karma to be doled out to the humanity. If that be the case then feel proud for bearing the heavier load from the destiny’s side, while so many others trudge ahead with unjustifiably lighter weights on their shoulders. Feel proud that God considers you as a tough guy capable of handling the issues on the wrong side of the fence. While you sweat it out with the larger issues, possibly your each and every step paves the road for some easy stroll by a frail fellow human being. Just carry on mighty guys! No use in browbeating now! You have been chosen for breaking the tough nut so that many a weak teeth can munch survival crumbs.    —Sandeep Dahiya

Chanakya

Machiavellian manager believes in the principle 'the end justifies the means'. Very smartly such an individual follows the principle: 'I will do anything necessary to achieve my objectives. 'Such a manager runs after this credo like fish swimming in the waters. With every breath he inhales the tendency to manipulate others and force them to perceive things in his terms. Utterly self-serving and duplicitous, the Machiavellian manager is made for success during these not-so-good times. The cold hard steely rationality in him reaches a peak to become almost amoral. Ever driven by these tendencies such a manager engages in more political behaviour than anyone around. The mind is always ticking to plan such schemes as will allow him to take advantage of others. Well, believe me I speak from personal experience. Each and every bit of this write-up bespeaks a thorough lynching by the Machiavellian hunter. It's a manager in Engage Learning! Gosh! Inherently spiteful, his designs are just meant to achieve certain objectives like a computer. There is not the least bit of human element. Haa...haaa just visualize the keema being made of a soft flesh like me by such a heartless, stony juggernaut! Buddies, just count your stars lucky that there is just one such Dhananjay Pandita in Delhi and that too is playing all his cards in the basement corridors of Engage Learning. He has inhuman, brown, snaky eyes. They just monitor the basement to strike poisonously at anything not matching his designs. God, this man's mind ticks 24 hours a day to plot, plan and do away with everything to his dislike like weeds in a farm. Well, well, well....this modern pseudo-chanakya will do such insidious things that people have been led to terrorism! Are yaar, I do not mean gun-totting explosives-laden ones. What I mean is that such an individual will force you to pick up guns against the real you...the real good self...pump bullets into you softer flesh to become better equipped in surviving in the mud. Ohoo this man serves a good purpose yaar...never thought about that earlier.

Life

Contradiction is inherent in nature. Positive–negative, acidity–alkalinity, dark–light are all manifestations of a homeostatic balance. You know stars are held by this same dual, contradictory nature. Gravitational force pulls the molecules to the core; at the same time super-temperatures force the molecules to stay away from the core at a feasible length. The stars smile and shine just because of the contradictory chemistry of these two opposing forces. Remove either of them and the star meets its death. Remove gravitational pull, the star will explode as a supernova. Remove the escaping force born of high temperature, the star will suck into its own core as a black hole. So survival means a fine zone in the twilight of creation and destruction. Natural laws apply to humans as well; they hold the same validity if we treat an individual as a system. A human life is a wonderful phenomena sizzling like a shiny star in the twilight of humility and pride, altruism and selfishness, good and bad, faith and atheism, etc. So greatness lies not in casting off one side of this undercurrent. It lies in just tilting your balance just a bit on the side of so-called good aspects in the pair. Why? Because we are social phenomena as well, apart from being the natural ones. Our consciousness equips us to shine and survive like a star–but with a definite purpose. The purpose of general well-being; of helping others in maintaining the same balance of survival; of contributing proactively to the overall balance hung between two contradictory frames. We can contribute more than our natural states have defined for us. Believe me! It works. Just help someone in need. It can be a tiny bit. You will feel yourself elongating your natural self a bit to the positive side. This is being human.

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Individual is for the social system; social system is not for the individual. System is always larger and will prevail when it comes to protecting its common interests in opposition to the individual ones. If the individual finds the system suffocating and intolerable then he has to bow out of the system and take natural state of freewill in jungles, which is just going backwards and denying the evolution of culture and socialization. ‘Individual will’, mind you, is always determined by the ‘general will’. Perfectibility of individual is not a totally hypothetical concept altogether. It is attainable. Man can give a full throttle of individual freedom on the platform provided by the social system. He has to obey certain laws nonetheless. There is no chance for him to escape the arena. To play the game and win it, you have to stay in the ring with your status of a social player. The system is too big. If he attempts an escape, it becomes a suicide morally, socially, physically. The attempt to escape is futile. Just by taking birth on this earth, the individual surrenders his right of a totally free individual will. He has the irremovable tag on his conscience, on his physical self, on his convictions: the tag of a citizen of the kingdom of social system.

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Guys, individual freedom has always remained a fundamental ideal and belief since historical times. However, it is not to be achieved by casting off all society and civilization or by going back to a so-called 'natural state'. The perfection of man, his freedom, his liberty, his happiness, and the growing mastery of his own destiny, all are dependent upon a clear understanding of certain laws of nature and society. We have to accept that both nature and society have worked according to these laws to enable us to get the idea of this so called 'freedom'.So pursuit of the interest of baby should not turn us blind to the interests of the mother.

Stringless Kite

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