NavDharmyug

नितांत अन्धकारमय रात्री भी समाप्त होती है, सो यह रात भी हुई। नेताजी प्रसन्न हुए। कल की रात ज़रा मुश्किल से गई। कश्मीर में गोली चली थी। कुछ हिन्दू जो अमरनाथ दर्शन के लिए निकले थे, शहीद हुए। बड़के नेताजी सुबह सुबह आने की निर्देश दिए थे। तीर्थयात्रा एंगल हिंदू हृदय सम्राट (प्यार से हम उन्हें हिहस पुकारते हैं) को अत्यधिक कठिनाई देता था। मीटिंग समय पर आरंभ हुई। हिहस शाँत थे, विचारमग्न थे। 'हम्मम..' - हिहस बोले मंत्रीगण उत्साहित हुए, प्रफुल्लित हुए, मानो चकोर को चाँद के दर्शन हुए। "गृहमंत्री जी, इस देश में तो रहना ही कठिन हो गया है" - हिहुस बोले गृहमंत्री राजा महाराज जिन्हें सब प्यार से 'राजमा'कहते थे,की नज़रें कलाई से उठकर हिहस की ओर बढ़ी, मानों उलाहने से कह रही हों-  'हमें का पता, काहे सबके सामने बेइज़्ज़ती कर रहे हो।' राजमा बोले- 'हिहस, बाक़ी जगह ठीक है, कश्मीर की ही समस्या है, देश में रहने में कोई समस्या नहीं है।' ' अरे हम हमारे रहने की बात कर रहे हैं।' हिहुस झुँझलाए। 'रात भर हमारे ही समर्थक गरिया रहे हैं। आप को देखना था अन्य दे...

“ We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feelings. It seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to meditate such sorrows away. ” – Edward Hirsch. Friday, 13 th of November, 2015, a sad, severe attack in Paris, at Bataclan concert hall and State Stadium claimed promptly by ISIS caused the death of 129 people and many more injured. As the details emerged, the gruesomeness of the attack became known about how armed gunmen fired at innocent victims, young and old, without discretion. The parallels to 26/11 in Mumbai are uncanny, which left 260 dead. The perfunctory sadness shifted quickly to justifications, with something as silly as Hijab ban by noted Indian jurist and a journalist linking it to US action in Iraq. While both could be reason, they cannot be justification. We quickly moved into the phas...

Blasts Which Killed 256 People (Courtesy: Huffpost) It has been a longish week. Every week is the same, seven days, but some weeks have more than a fair share of events which demands your attention. This week was such. These are the weeks which decide what we will emerge as on the other end of the time. This week, we learned much about Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, brother of fugitive, Tiger Memon- Key operative behind the 1993 Mumbai Serial Bomb Blasts. The media went into tizzy with the announcement of Maharashtra Government’s Announcement of death sentence to Yakub Memon, scheduled for 30 th of July, 2015, at 700 hours, post dismissal of his curative petition on June, 21 st .  As the channels planned for a walk towards gallows kind of programming, to much of their satisfaction, suddenly they had something better to debate and discuss. Nobody would have expected support to pore in from places of eminence, like retired jurists and artists for the man convicted of plann...

Two blasts happened in Hyderabad, one foiled, last week. Cacophony rose on the television and the theatre of absurd is ready for a play, a whole new season. Reasons and explanation are being deliberated over the deaths, now crossed sixteen. There is something strange about what we call a national conscience, if there is one such thing to go by that name. It gets shaken and outraged over some things while sleeps unperturbed with an unburdened soul regarding others of similar or even gruesome matters. The very next day a report of the death of six policemen in Maoist attack came in apologetically in the back pages of the newspaper, ashamed perhaps at relative public apathy. Having just finished Kurt Vonnegut's 'Fates Worse Than Death', I was wondering why one death is different from other. He used the argument in the context of death by nuclear attack. But the question easily can be posed in any other context, to no valid response or argument or explanation. Why the outra...