NavDharmyug

We as a country have numbed down. The politicians, out of their own wily designs call it a resilient spirit.  They fool us out of their obvious incompetence, and confuse us with a helpless courage with which they credit us. What we are is a citizenry which has lost all hope, and which is as trivial and useless as the leaders that govern it. A soldier was killed in UK and it created a global furor, with the UK PM condemning the incident and the governments across the world coming in solidarity.   The following week six soldiers were killed and we greeted the news with our usual silence. It is not only about the governance, and how far in their incompetence the leaders will go; It is about how far we as citizens will go. The killing of soldier was not only marked by the PM of the country coming in to condemn it and getting visibly engaged right till the funeral. It was also marked by thousands who came out on streets to grieve the dead soldier. We are a dead society led by ...

Isn't it unfair to insist that stories should be cleansed to match the fanatic measure of moralism and righteousness. A story doesn't need to be a lecture or an essay in morality. I had recently shared an immensely beautiful, intricately ornate paragraph, picked out from "Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad on a social media site. As a rare one for me, I received an almost immediate response, objecting to the fact that women, some women was blamed for some sorry state of affair. Why women? was the theme of comment.   I was totally lost. The context was not there, agreed. But it wasn't supposed to be. It was written with a broad notice that it was an excerpt, which I was sharing simply because how exquisitely words were woven into that paragraph by the master wordsmith. The near-poetic feel of the prose was mesmerizing. It wasn't a political statement, neither from me, not from the writer. I could not understand the indignation. ...

I am not a writer. Well, at least not in the strict sense of the word. I do not have a room with a door which I would happily be willing to shut (to quote from Stephen King, who wrote, well, On writing, a pre-condition to be a writer is to "Have a room with a door and be willing to shut it) ; My books are not largely read, though I do compete strongly with Schopenhauer's first book which sold thirty two copies in all. My writings does not pay my bills and I do not have publishers lining up my door with Multi-million dollars contract. I have never been a banker, in this life or other, to make the matter worse, I have been spectacularly mediocre in Finance subjects in my Masters. But I write. I started writing long time ago when I was a child, and just as Maugham, I took to writing as a duck takes to swimming. I wrote as a matter of necessity. I would think a lot about things which are as per adult advise are better left alone. I would mostly have more questions than an...