Achante makan! (Father's son)

Acha, they say today is Fathers' Day! Wonder if we need a day like that; wonder if it is a marketing ploy created by greeting-card companies...

Anyway, it is good we have a day like this, to remind us of the role fathers played in our lives...

To be honest, there had been many occasions when I had felt you don't like me, or worse, that you hated me; times when I had felt that you stood miles away from me geographically, ideologically and emotionally...

But, then there are a million occasions when, in hindsight, I recall the lessons you taught, the pains you took and the extents to which you went to give us the best that was possible for us. The small things that are everything, in the sense that they leave indelible marks on the fabric called existence. I remember the way you punished us for mistakes we made and your making it a point to point out why we were being punished; I remember how you bought us those small books every Sunday on the lives of great people, mostly people who sacrificed their happinesses for the greater good. You could have just bought us comics alone (which also you did) or books on the lives of people who made money big-time, but I am glad you didn't. I am proud to think of myself as someone who stands up for something and somebody with some courage of conviction. And we owe it to you...

I remember, there have been times, more recently, when I have made you feel low and lonely and unwanted, times when I have protested against your ways, but believe me when I tell you that we owe a lot to you, though I do regret that you behaved in certain unpleasant ways when I needed you the most.

I do not crib for the nothings of life (like the food we get to eat in hostel etc) and have learnt to look at the larger things - the ones that matter.

Thanks dad, for the love you showered on us, for the time and energy you invested in us and for instilling in us for example, the value of enjoying a meal at the home of the disadvantaged and to help give him pleasure, even if for moments...

LOVE YOU DAD!

(The title alludes to the Malayalam song I learnt to sing as a child - "araaro ariraaro, achante mon/makan araaro, ammakkyu nee teynalle ayiravaLLi poovalle...")

Corrupt corruption

The headline blares, "Anti-crime journo killed" and soon a government agent adds an assurance that they won't tolerate attacks on journalists. What can be more ironic than this being followed by a news report that Raj Bala, a 51 yr-old lady who was among the peaceful agitators at Ram Lila Maidan and was beaten up by the police earlier is in a CRITICAL condition in hospital.

Why is Raj Bala in hospital and why is she fighting a battle with death? Isn't it because of the same government that is portraying itself as people-friendly? In contrast, media-savvy lawyer-ministers who pretend to be omniscient know-it-alls speak with cunning and cold-blooded calmness in press conferences as if it is no big deal. Oh, is the 'tamasha' of Indian politics actually laughing matter? The common man has become desperate for reprieve and there is some hope from some vigilant quarters (Anna Hazare...). May their breed grow!

If the government and those running it from the power-centres of Delhi had a human heart, they will NEVER inflict injury and suffering on any citizen, leave alone peaceful citizens who mean no harm.

It is such a shame that we tolerate injustice so easily... 

We can only hope for a better society and believe Shelley when he says, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

Maqbool pe fida

And yet another obituary in the newspaper columns...
Except, this one flowed out of the boxes earmarked by
Prim and proper, politically-correct editors and
Oozed even to the front pages and editorials
Of so-called leading dailies and found guilt-ridden glory on
Breaking-news channels, and was discussed in prime-time talks...
M F Hussain died in London. He didn't want to, they say!
He became a Qatari - they say he bled when he did that.
Like all great men, he created ripples that grew into waves
So high that they engulfed the creator
And like Hemingway's old man he said,
"You can destroy me, but you can't defeat me."

It doesn't matter who was right, it doesn't matter now.
He may have been to some, this wily, scheming Mussalman
with scant respect for the goddesses of yore...
(And they didn't complain when possibly mleccha sculptors
Carved the nude curves on ageless stone and bronze temple images)
But, for me, the greatness to transcend the ordinary in artistic ways
To bring the land's work to the world's attention is
Worthy of fulsome praise, even if so often we cut open his life and work
And say "he could have" and "he should have"...

We know that
What Satyajit Ray did through his films
Maqbool Fida did in his paintings...
And like the former got the Bharat Ratna on death
We wait for government files to now move for him...
Hope he gets on death what we couldn't afford alive...

He has CONDEMNED us to the fate of the knowledge
That we won't (not cannot) change!

Militant atheism?

Who am I, to disturb the delicate balance of your universe?
Who am I, to say that I have lived it all and take high moral ground?
I have stood for multiple voices in empty stifling silences
and against bigotry for its holier-than-thou stance,
in politics, in religion, in spaces that seep into the mind...
How can I, with thorough conviction say,
that the grass is greener on this side?
I shall desist from my hegemony and not
become an Animal Farmian animal.
I apologize, I AM truly sorry...

Un-Spiderman!

I have grown up to believe that what distinguishes humans from other animals apart from the magical tool called language is a higher form of memory called nostalgia. This is not like the dog that salivates on remembering food or the predator recalling an effective way to trap prey. Nostalgia in the dictionary has to have an element of sadness at the fact that one is distant in time and place, but what the dictionary does not capture is the fact that this distance also endears one to people and events one wanted to forget in the past. Nostalgia has this divine effect that lets one forget cruelties and forgive trespasses. It lets one come to terms with one's past by providing a perspective that no one or nothing else can give. It lets one step back to a distant time and place and have a bird's-eye view, instead of the more common worm's-eye view. On one hand it lets one hold on to the innocent time when "the world hardly existed beyond the garden-gate" (Robert Lynd in "The Hum of Insects") and on the other it lets one realise that the mountains one made out of molehills were merely a result of emotional myopia!

I revel in nostalgia, whenever I can, and I unburden myself of the cobwebs in my system! Thanks to the people I met on my way...