Beyond morality and immorality

 Only the terribly guilty conscience will look at things through the moral--immoral dichotomy. Things are neither moral nor immoral. We just jump from this side to that just to help us keep believing in our very own meaning of life shaped by our circumstances. A person caught in the quagmire of moral and immoral is kicking to reach nowhere but self-doom. A clear, transparent conscience will look at things without the tag of either moral or immoral.

Beyond the prism of morality and immorality, all of us have at least the choice to improve upon the worst in us. The littlest step away from the worst in us may turn out to be the biggest step of our life.

And most importantly, don't hold any grudges about anyone or anything because in the end all of us are mere travelers on the highway who just accosted a fellow journeyman or woman, said hi, hello, or exchanged words and moved on the path of our destiny. Coming across fellow travelers on the path is merely incidental. It's not the destination. The destination is always for the lone self.

Speak up please!

 The Western media finds it so easy to lambast India as a pandemic victim. Pouring more of scorn and less of concern over our suffering. But they lose their reporting spirits in condemning China who is actually the perpetrator of this pandemic.  China is too powerful now. And reporting truth is inversely proportional to power. So China goes scot free and India that's hugely damaged gets further bashed up. But don't worry, we have the oldest spiritual values on earth. We will bounce back like never before! This is our dark night of the soul. The rising sun of a new day will see the best version of India.

An appeal to the Honorable PM

 Dear PM, we have lost so many elders, middle aged and young lives -- far far more than what the official death figures would have us believe -- in the first and second waves of the pandemic. The experts are already warning, like they had earlier, that the next wave may hit our children. If you fail to avoid that catastrophe, history will judge you very severely. Kindly pause your dream of making Bharat a Vishva Guru. You will be hopefully still the ruler of Bharat for the next three years, so we are all helpless in beseeching you to learn the skill of listening. You speak so well. But there is a thing called listening also. Please work on this skill. We don't want the status of the master of the globe. We just need the assurance that we will no longer die on the roads without oxygen. We would certainly clap with you as our rover lands on the moon, but before that we have to stay alive. Give us the assurance of basic medical facility. Please help us restore our belief in life and living. The ultra nationalist magic potion, the hallucinating pill of religious superiority, the blinding opium of jingoism and rhetoric fails in the face of even manageable crisis. It may help you to get votes, but it doesn't help us at all when all we need is a simple bed in a common hospital to survive. Please rule India as a different and changed person for the next three years without bothering about winning elections at any cost. India doesn't need a Congress-mukt environment. We need an environment where people don't die like worms. We need a system where we don't have to survive with fear and insecurity. Please change for the better. Otherwise, the next pandemic wave will see us crying over the bodies of our children. And those tears will never forgive you or the system you lead!

Strong leaders plz stay away. We need meek, affable ones!

 What is common among Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Indira Gandhi, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and scores of declared and underestimated dictators? Well, irrespective of their political approach, they shared the huge commonality of being very strong and powerful leaders. They were bigger than the entire system they were part of. Bigger than the institution itself. And when a part proclaims to be bigger than the whole calamity strikes. No wonder, there were mass sufferings under them in proportion to the clout they had built up. Given this, do we need too powerful leaders? In the contemporary political scene also rhetorical, powerful leaders have brought mass miseries to their people. Simply because they just don't listen to anything apart from their own ego-saturated mind. I am very much scared of too powerful leaders. Their strength is derived from tears in too many eyes. After a time they look like scarecrow to create panic among the people on the street. Blissfully silent, meek and affable Manmohan Singh Ji creates a nostalgia now. I am sure he would have spoken less and done more to handle the pandemic that is slaughtering us.

Please learn to listen!

 Great  power always brings mass suffering in its wake! When BJP obsessively talks of Congress Mukt Bharat, they actually mean opposition-less rule. And opposition-less rule is almost synonymous with dictatorial rule. A healthy democracy is the churning result of a seesaw competition between equally strong parties who try to excel on the issues of development instead of flimsy rhetoric which have no say in alleviating mass miseries. Do religious wars give us oxygen when we die like gasping fish on the roads? Do grand temples and sky high statues give us hospital beds when all we need is a simple few days of care to avoid death? 

Why is America the strongest democracy in the world? It's because there are two equally strong parties who actually fight on the issues that really matter. Hope the current Indian government learns some lessons from the mass suffering in India and gives us common necessities of life instead of communal opium and an intoxicating, false, blinding and rhetorical sense of nationalism. Please learn to listen to those who differ with you. Don't just build a narrative to condemn them as traitors! Please learn to listen! There is a world beyond wining elections at any cost. Sometimes costs are too high! Great rule might be about great power. But grand and glorious rule is about taming that rampaging power to make it a slave instead of allowing it to sit on our head and be our master.