The struggle must go on!

The brutal murder of Maniappan Raman Kutty, an employee of the Border Roads Organisation, by the Taliban in Afghanistan is yet another example of how a warped vision of the world can try to drown out the legitimate concerns for development and progress of the people. The Taliban's sole aim seems to have become the overthrow of the Hamid Karzai administration, and the reversion of the Afghan state back to the Dark Ages. In this process, if innocents die, merely because they did the unforgivable deed of assisting the current Afghan government in dispensing its duties, well that's fair, because this is war.
But, it really isn't fair. If you have an issue with Karzai, talk with him, or even declare an open war on him, and resolve the matter once and for all. Don't slowly and steadily corrode the nation for which even you profess love and affection. Don't harm those whose intentions are noble, who only desire to assist your people in their aim to progress, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the world. They don't seek to take sides in your struggle, they don't care who rules the State, so long as they can go about their job of helping the people smoothly. These are the basic expectations from those who seek to help your people.
And, whilst I write this, I am cognizant that somewhere down there, even I am reconciled to the fact that we are speaking to a wall. That those who seek to harm, harm not because of ideological persuasions, but out of sheer animosity, a despicable desire to undo all the good that can be accrued out of development and progress. Kutty hasn't died a victim; he has died a matyr; a matyr to the cause of humanity, a hero for the oppressed people of this world, a man who despite all odds persevered to assist those who were related to him, not by blood, but the holiest of all relations, by their humanity. His death must not go in vain. His deeds must live on. The struggle must go on.

The dawn of a new Bihar (and a new India)?

The end of the Laloo era in Bihar may take some time to sink in, but whether this is the beginning of the end, or just a momentary glitch in his glorious reign, needs to be seen. In 1947, an independent study conducted by a prominent research institute in the United Kingdom had remarked that Bihar is amongst the most developed and most advanced provinces amongst all of the British Empire, and with some autonomy, may even rival the mother lode herself. Flash forward to 2005 and you see a state that has progressed all right, just the direction of progress has been in reverse. The per capita income in Bihar is below Rs. 4000, amongst the lowest in the country, while more than 65% of the population is illiterate. Mind you, it isn’t as if the people enjoy living in such squalor. The very fact that you have so many Biharis crowding all the major metropolitan cities, working in any capacity available, is evidence that given a conducive atmosphere, the people can and will work hard even there. A major chuck of the Indian Administrative Services’ higher echelons are from Bihar, a testament to the sheer genius resident in its people, for it isn’t easy to crack the UPSC exams.
But when the political system is so corrupted that it is almost synonymous with corruption, I don’t feel any enterprise can survive solely on its merits. The countless movies depicting the absolute lawlessness in the state testify to the absolutely dismal protection that the State provides to its law-abiding citizens.
Of course, the specific contribution of Laloo is debatable. His regime started barely 15 years ago, while it can be reasonably established that the downfall started sometime around the mid-1970’s, around the time of the Emergency. With increased politicization of the education system, and an increasing propensity in the political class to accord more importance to sheer muscle power over principled stands, a society based on knowledge and awareness shrunk back into its shell, back into the Dark Ages. Maybe, Laloo with all his popularity could have made a difference. He ought to have used his rapport with the people to better their lives. That he did nothing of that sort and instead chose to treat the State as his personal fief is the tragic part of this tale. A man who could have been the knight in shining armour became the all-consuming dragon.
Now the NDA is presented with a massive mandate, a mandate one prays it doesn’t fritter away like Rajiv Gandhi did. A comatose state has, through this verdict, announced its intention to rejuvenate itself. Laloo himself said once, “Biharis don’t aspire to become kings. They assume the roles of king makers.” A king maker always remains so, a shadow behind the throne. His powers are limited, his mind restricted to ensuring his primacy. He is no one’s beloved, no one respects him, no one aspires to take his place. Whether the NDA wishes for Bihar to continue to assume this despised role is not known, but one thing’s for sure; the Bihari now aspires to be a king in his own right!
What however is clear is that this verdict is a sign of the changing times, a welcome sign, a sign that all is not lost, and that the people are maturing, that democracy hasn’t yet been smothered by the demons of corruption and casteism, that governance still matters, even at the cost of ‘secularism’. India has reason to rejoice. What must be seen is how long this optimism lasts.

Salut, mes amis!

I usually am very cautious, even shy about expressing my feelings, especially when they concern other people. It isn’t because I tend to disparage people, or run them down. On the contrary, I nowadays somehow always try to find something to appreciate in every person. I say this, not because I wish to be praised, but because this nature of mine is in some way because of the excellent friends I have had the honour of being associated with.

To quote Yeats, ‘Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.’ And I am not being over-sentimental here. For me, friendship is a very dear, a very treasured, a very sacred relationship, one to be guarded against all harm at all costs. Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever. True wealth cannot be found in your bank account. It can only be found in those you call friend, those with whom you share your deepest feelings, and those who accept you for who you really are. When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

For the last two blogs, I have been very sentimental, very emotional. It is a departure, a very marked departure from my usual expressions, and one that I am enjoying. This may just be the last one in this new genre, so I wanted this to be special. So, I am taking this opportunity to thank all my friends, who stood by me through thick and thin, who criticised me when I was wrong, who applauded me when I am jubilant, who wiped my tears and supported me when I was grieving, who laughed at my inane jokes and didn’t beat me up in frustration. I may not be able to name all of them, but that speaks for my good luck, for in the words of Henry Brook Adams, ‘One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.’.
So, thank you, Purnima, Winny, Subu, Satish, Pudi, Rajesh, Rohan, Nitya, Savita, Roopali, Remya, Maya, Murthy, Vinay, Neeraj, Aditya and Aabha, for tolerating my eccentricity, my childishness, my insensitivities, my rudeness, my brashness. Thanks for showing me the mirror when I stood in the wrong, when I was misguided by my senses, when I was getting my priorities wrong. Thanks for helping me grow up and outlive my fears, my apprehensions, and my misconceptions.

To conclude, I quote Winnie the Pooh and say this to all my friends that If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

A Lover's Sigh

The two hardest things to contemplate in life are failure and age, and those are one and the same. Perfection is the natural consequence of eternity; wait long enough, and anything will realize its potential. Coal becomes diamonds, sand becomes pearls, and apes become men. It’s simply not given to us, in one lifetime, to see those consummations, and so every failure becomes a reminder of death.

But the loss of love is a special kind of failure, I think. It’s a reminder that some consummations, no matter how devoutly wished for, never come, that some apes will never be men, not in all the world’s ages. What’s a monkey to think, who with a typewriter and eternity still can’t eke out Shakespeare? Such a love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Unrequited affections are like a disease of the mind. They give a touch to illusions, make bodies shiver, dreams bleed and loneliness to creak the stairs at midnight and terrorize us. There is nothing more painful than seeing someone you love loving someone else.

And yet, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing two people you love loving each other. In the end, if the one whom you love is happy with someone else, can we insist our love is more sacred than her affections? Sometimes, it makes sense to fail, for true love is giving all you have to someone you know you’re going to lose. He who has never experienced hurt cannot experience true love. Many have found the paradox that if one loves until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. Khalil Gibran so beautifully put it, ‘Think not, you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

I also loved once; maybe love is too strong a word for my emotions then. Maybe it was the infatuation of an emotional teenager, maybe an adulation of a star struck boy, but in my heart, I believed it to be love. I wanted a perfect ending to my ‘love’ story. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Now if someone says, “I love you” to someone, I feel as though that person had a pistol pointed at his/her head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? “I love you, too.” I haven’t become skeptical about love, just circumspect.

A Fool's Guide to Love

Love draws lines between us like an astronomer plotting a constellation from stars, joining points into patterns that have no basis in nature. In the geometry of love, everything is triangular. The butt of every triangle is the heart of another, until the roof of reality is a tessellation of love affairs. Taken together, they have the pattern of netting, and behind them is Love. Love is the only perfect fisherman, the one who casts the broadest net, which no fish can escape. His reward is to sit alone in the tavern of life, forever a boy among men, hoping someday to tell stories about the one that got away.

But what is the basis of Love? John Nash said it so beautifully in his Nobel acceptance speech, “It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logical reasons can be found.” A splendid irony if there was any.
A very dear friend of mine opines that it is essential that in one’s lover, one find both beauty and brains. It is fine for her to say so, she herself being endowed with both gifts. What is to be the test for mortals such as myself, I wonder? So, the search must proceed on a more idealistic, a more holistic note.

Love, the elders opine, is a matter of the heart, and not so much of the extraneous senses. And so, to seek true love, one must delve deep into the hoary depths of the heart of one’s lover, and test the purity of that love.
One may query, is one’s love itself pure enough to stand the test, to justify one questioning another individual’s love? To the sceptics, I only can offer the reassurance that this isn’t a mechanical process, or an obvious process, to be performed step-by-step else failure is one’s reward. The test for the purity of soul is a mental, a spiritual process. One scarcely even realises when one is being tested, when one’s actions are being weighed. In truth, one never even realises when one is testing someone. A conscious effort to guage love is nothing more than a charade, a farce, because when one doubts something, no matter how bright the truth may be, it simply cannot pierce through the darkness of such a doubt.

So, when does one realise that one has found the perfect soulmate for oneself? Well, maybe when you realise that the mere presence of that special person in the room increases the illumination, the aura, the joie-de-vivre in the gathering manifold, when that every gesture of your beloved seems so special, so unique, so inimitable. When she laughs, it is like the sound of a thousand wind chimes ringing in the breeze. When she smiles, it seems like a rosebud has just begun to blossom on the face of the earth. When she frowns, in her anger, one feels the fire of Hades, undesirable, unwanted, and most of all, something that one wishes to dispel as soon as possible. Even when she herself never calls asking for your help, if you can sense her troubles, that’s telepathy. When not a single day seems worthwhile to you if you haven’t seen her face at least once, if you haven’t spoken a word to her, if you haven’t given her joy, that’s true love. And believe me, all that you will feel for her then, she will feel for you as well.