NavDharmyug

The mob is an outcome of fear. It feeds on fear and emanates fear. That is the basic anatomy of mob. It resembles a people rising, which is nothing but a pathetic attempt to cover an evil, selfish and feral rising. What differentiates the two is a distinguishing cause and a well-defined decency. People uprising is a chorus of empathising voices rising in a perfect harmony, while the mob is a cacophony of voices trying to outshout every dissenting voice. The line between an overwhelmingly beautiful note of music and the shrill noise is insanity if often very thin. The possibility and dread of falling to either side is always available to each mass of men (and women) coming together. The mob becomes an end to itself and threatens to muzzle those who do not agree. It no longer seeks to convince or convert. It demands slavish surrender of every voice of reason. It tries to crush you into supplicant subjugation. Unfortunately social media offers another platform of anonymity to people who a...

To doubt, to debate, to negate, counter and argue is the greatest virtue of human mind. It is a pity that we have long since forgotten taking a position. Then, one might argue, why should one take a position- any position? Why do I have to side with any truth which I have not discovered myself.   The people are divided into large masses, a huge chunk of human sea, split by diverse conviction.   Social media which was invented as a platform to share one’s own convictions has long since been reduced to a virtual battleground. A converse opinion is responded with  a feral violence. I do not feel happy anymore about debates. They aren’t debates.   There can’t be any debate without decency. The world is fractured and it demands that I lean to one side or the other.   Why must I surrender my right to be an individual and join a group to seek strength in number? Why there are no debates which either converts my opponents or me? We are fast turning into a wor...

I remember with fondness, a time when I was six years old. I was travelling with my mother in Bihar when she and all the famous fives of them(Five sisters, my mother and her sisters, my Maasis), boarded the wrong train. Those were the times of tight purses, and strict expenses. Thus as we had it, we could understand the blunder which was committed, only after journeying in the direction opposite to the one originally planned for. By the time, trains were swapped and new tickets were bought, the funds touched the bottom lining of the purses they carried. As we rode back to Munger, the hawkers came into the train compartments with loaded temptations. Ah, those were wonderful times of great snacks selling with lovely sounds inviting you to buy the stuff, against the chugging sound of the diesel trains. One hawker, I remember, was selling eggs, the boiled one. I asked for one, and he stood there. I asked my mother more, then I begged and I do not remember well,...