How can China avoid a sudden demise like the former USSR?

The more I read the facts and fiction of communist dictatorial regimes, the times when humanity faced a roadblock, the more I forget my own collective as well as personal pain. I feel blessed to be born beyond the communist shadow. If God has been merciful enough not to cast you into a communist land in either this or previous births, then you have no right to as for more. It’s already the best blessings from the Lord. It's a divine gift not to be born under a communist regime. Biggest pains you feel in a non-communist regime appear like luxurious sprouts in comparison to the horrendous systemic tortures perpetrated on the masses under the communist regimes. So to me, as part of democracy, the smallest of gains look like the biggest boon. Not that democracy is perfect. It has its own sweet set of nuisance. But these are lesser symptoms of non-fatal diseases like cough, cold, running nose, sneezing etc., etc. Communist dictatorship on the other hand is simply a terminator like incurable cancer.   

Communist ideology is an all-pervading fire which doesn't spare either good or bad. Intended to burn the evil, it stretches the definition of evil too far and turns fiery evil itself. It's a huge stone hurtling down-slope, squashing soots, saplings, petals, thorns and all. A fire needs fodder to burn. The communist ideology needs hordes of victims to survive. There is an endless chain of imagined enemies. Waves of purges. It's human industrialization. Humans just machines and cogs in the production line. And the looking at the ways and means of the emerging international bully, I’m afraid, at the end of it, the human civilization, despite its efforts at capitalist systems, will perish as a machine age managed by the communist system. But still that cataclysmic end should not make me skip my enjoyment of life in a democratic system.

Very often I wonder how communist dictators built cult status with millions of blind followers? It's a simple technique. First they rob people of their faith, turning them atheist. But we are genetically inclined to have faith. In the vacuum they plant their personality. Thus starts the cult of a dictator. Propaganda is used for the dictator's deification. And we have crazy, blinded masses, happy over having their God nearby.

However, the communist edifice which gets soaring high in the sky, also outgrows its sustainability like cancerous propagation of cells. Too much of laws, rules, regulations, legalized forced discipline creates a facade that goes too perfectly to soar too high to sustain its elevation. It then crumbles, perfection rarely sustains. That's why communist societies crumble. Like a castle of cards. It crashes. Like it did suddenly in Russia. To survive, a society has to have its pitfalls, imperfections. The facade doesn't go too high. It sustains. There are plus and minus which cancel out each other like in a democratic system. Oh, the glorious imperfections of democracy. That's why it thrives. In the same way, the well managed, rigid facade in China will crumble. It will collapse. Well, unless they voluntarily introduce some imperfections themselves, some traits of democracy, to make it pliable, some allowance of mischief, some humour, some criticism to bring down the upper stories of the facade which has gone too high. It won't fall then.

The sweet feminine push

Some sweet moments stand out from the dust of time on the well trodden path even years down the line. They haven’t actually changed your life with a huge jolt, nor let loose a tsunami cascading down the corridors of your memory. Rather they are very small happenings whose smiling smell defies to die in the ever-crowding chambers of your brain. They are simply like some small wayside flower you came across and whose smile you retain with you as you waft through the turbulent sea of life. One such moment stands out. Its imprint as solid like any other substantial event of my life. The memory leaves me with a nostalgic smile. It happened more than a decade back when I used to lumber along the sea of humanity struggling to complete one another day in the behemoth that Delhi is. Delhi was changing and females were seen jostling in the struggle shoulder to shoulder with the men-folk. A petrol pump and its female keepers womanning the oil machines! After guzzling fuel from the strong hands of the sweet girl attendant my cart, very old battered car, won’t start. Its battery gone weaker than the body. Embarrassed, sheepishly I looked around for help. Gracious heavens, two petrol attendant girls came manly--if we may say so, although given the men’s ways in Delhi it’s no matter of pride to be manly--forward and pushed the old hag and its owner with such dignified force and refined purpose that my buffalo cart surrendered its obstinacy to the feminine purity of their purpose. ‘Salutes! We are a gender-neutral vibrant nation now,’ my heart exulted with the starting jolts of the old engine. I looked back and there they were with a smile on their faces. The moment seems etched in stone in my memory chambers. Millions of chit-chatty things come and go and fall off like inconsequential flakes. Some things but stay with you. Take out such moments of life on some early winter day and relive those moments. As you smile with the recollection of those moments, and preferably sip ginger tea, you find life slightly better than before. And meaningful also. Happy winters guys!

Commonality gone and extraordinary emerges

I wonder how can a tiny act like simply cutting hair and adding moustache makes me look like Gandhi when he arrived in India to start his innings as a freedom fighter? Well, the job is worth it if it gives such an esteemed feeling! The journey: From outer shadows--which are ever shifting and fleeting--to inner substance which is ever unperturbed and waiting for the journeyman to come home at long last.

Saint or a Sinner?

Change...just 7 days interval between the two moments....mat kar garoor e Insaan....all forms and shapes are just temporary imprints on the shifting sands of time...just like waves on the ocean... don't hold onto a particular image😁

Well, some of my friends say it's as much of a difference between a saint and a sinner. Never mind. Shadows are just illusory projections cast by shifting angles of circumstances, prejudices and ego.

The guest

He has learnt the lesson: to survive you are at human's mercy. With his natural feeding ground, the countryside, turning into a chemical bowl of monoculture where poison kills insects, rodents and reptiles immediately in the fields--and humans themselves, slowly over a period of time as the toxicants enter the food chain and punish we humans for our collective sins--this beautiful multicolored wonder of mother nature enters houses, beating its natural fear of the two-footed most dangerous animal on the planet, and stands there like a well decorated beggar. What else to do? No option left. Struggling farmers pour chemicals, pesticides and weedicides in the fields. Nothing left for this free forager in the open lands. So it lands on terraces and yards to get survival morsels. Sometimes when its hunger is unbeatable, he follows people well into their rooms, like a cute kid hankering after elders for chocolate. Last time it came it had a huge bunch of shining and shimmering plumage, just on the verge of deloading. I could hear my mother requesting, "Arre pagal pankh hamare ghar gira ke Jaana!" But then in this he is the master of his own will. So here comes the colourful Romeo without his burden. He has shed his plumage and looks like a nimble, flirtatious teenager. Moves freely, flies with lesser effort. But it comes at the cost of love. Peahens won't give him a damn look without his decoration. And of course my mother is angry that he didn't shed even a single feather in our yard. "Go to them whom you gave your feathers!" The poor thing got reprimanded. She started with her household chores, but not before handing over a chapati to me to honour the colourful guest.