NavDharmyug

  There is an interesting episode in Mahabharata , in Drona Parva . Mighty Drona, the teacher of Kaurava and Pandavas took charge after the great Commander of the Kaurava Army, Bhishma had fallen. There was a huge battle and Krishna predicted complete routing of the Pandava forces if Drona was to fight even for half a day. To circumvent this, Bhima was to make an announcement that Drona's son Ashwatthama was slain. This would have led to a dejected Drona surrendering his weapons and thus could be killed, unarmed. As Drona  did not believe in Bhima, he called upon  Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandava to confirm.  Yudhishthira, the righteous one, than famously said that  Ashwatthama was dead, not the man but the Elephant. It is then mentioned in before now the Chariot of Yudhishthira had remained at the height of four fingers' breadth from the Earth's surface; but after he uttered the lie, his steeds touched the Earth.  There is a certain glory and li...

  Before I get down to reviewing this book- A New Idea of India - by Hash Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri , I must confess that I stopped reading intellectual books claiming to have the recipe of success for the individual, the society, the nation and the world at large, long time back. The intellectuals intimidate me, their theories bore me. Most of the thinkers appear to me like mercenaries waiting and watching the successful trend to adopt them. They will pick already successful cases, build a theory around them and then trot it around as if they were themselves responsible for those successes. That said, I picked this book with a sense of old intimidation. A serious book on contemporary politics, society and economics with recommendatory and laudatory notes from almost ten leading intellectuals from both sides of ideological divide with a hard cover- the book came to me courtesy Indic Academy . It is a general refrain that one should not judge a book by its cover. Now, here is ...

Ye imaarat o Maqabir ye fasilein ye hisaar, Mutlaq-ul-hukm shahanshahon ki azmat ke sutoon; Seena-e-dahar ke nasoor hain kohna nasoor, Jazb hain unmein tere mere ajdaad ka khoon.                          – Sahir Ludhianvi (Maqabir- Graves, hisaar- Fortress, Mutlaq-ul-hukm- Sovereign, azmat- Greatness, sutoon- Pillars, Seena-e-dahar-The chest of the world, kohna- Ancient, Azdaad- Ancestors) The above couplet from Sahir’s famous Nazm, Taj Mahal, loosely translates as below: “These grand graves, and these high-walls of the majestic fortresses, Are the pillars of the brutal majesty of the sovereign dictators.   These gaping wounds are the ancient wounds on the breast of the world, Mingled with the ugly pus and the oozing bloods of our common ancestors.” In today’s world where the intellectual mind stands divided on communal lines with even daughters of noted Urdu poets like Munaw...

Solitude is an essential part of writing life. Writing is a lonely profession. One ought to step on this path if one is able to survive through the long, voluntary spells of solitude. We must not confuse loneliness with solitude. Loneliness throws one down the dark abyss; solitude is the pair of wings that intellect provides to lift the soul out of those depths.  The best of the art emerges out of a certain tranquility of mind, a quietude of being. It borrows wisdom from market-places, it derives truth from the people, but the truth which is visible to the writer, is often not visible to the very people from whose life he derives and distills it. What separates the characters of a story and its writer is the ability of the writer to pull himself back from life, to stand away and apart, to have a distinct vantage points, to watch it with an odd sense of detached empathy. The difference in this vantage point, from one writer to another is the reason stories written about th...

" To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history. " - Cicero Cicero, the unauthorized historian to record to history of Rome has put it so aptly. This necessity of history makes the past so relevant not only to our present, rather also to our future. Any decision, any idea, not pivoted in the lessons of past is essentially flawed. The decision, the idea and the action which follows through could be innovative, brave, new but it needs to have its reasons in the dark alleys of the history. It is a great advantage to Human beings that we have a sense of continuity from our times, our children's times to a history dating back to the first known human being who ever walked on this planet and told how his day went while sitting around the fire after a long hunt in the jungle.  Our history defines us as people. There ...

Intellectuals and scholars like the leaders, at times hold a place of such high reverence in one’s mind that any minor slip, any pettiness on their part, breaks the heart of those who had at one point of time, admired them. I was like most of the Nineties youth was always charmed by Arun Shourie, the Journalist-turned-politician. He, with over-sized half-shirts with pens prominently parked in his pocket was probably the first common man politicians in the post-emergency era, much before Kejriwal turned that uniform into a political attire of Twenty-first century. I was quite young when Shourie came into the political arena and like all young men was quite a fool and romantic. Like Arvind Kejriwal, Shourie moved about with the air of middle-class men, hiding carefully and successfully his background of affluence- like his having been schooled in the elite Modern School and St. Stephen’s in Delhi, and his stint in the world bank, much like Arvind Kejriwal who almost made one believe as...

Couplet-1 दोस्त ग़मख़्वारी   में मेरी , स ' अइ फरमाएंगे क्या ज़ख़्म के भरने तलक , नाख़ून न बढ़ जाएंगे क्या। ( ग़मख़्वारी- Nursing,  स ' अइ- Efforts,  नाख़ून- nails) Translation :  O dearest, your best efforts to nurse my soul, To my searing sadness, is no match; While my wounds heal,  u nknownst to thou, I grow cruel nails anew, Once again, ready to scratch. Interpretation : The solaces of companionship, of fleeting friendships are not sufficient enough to ease the haunting emptiness left by loss of love. There is some inherent pleasure in self-inflicted pain, embedded in love. While friends try to protect me, rescue me, my soul remains beyond repair, as I keep on going back into my melancholic, sad solitude, as if I derive some pleasure in this self-inflicted pain.   *************** Couplet-2 बेनियाज़ी हद से गुज़री , बंदापरवर कब तलक हम कहेंगे हाल- ए  - दिल और आप फरमाएंगे क्या। ( बेन...