NavDharmyug

I recently downloaded a new kindle e-book, and as has become pretty common these days, based on a review on New York Literary Review, which I have subscribed on Kindle. It is a book called "On Rereading" by Patricia Meyer Spacks, an author, hitherto unknownst to me, mostly on account of my own ignorance than the author's capability. While I find the book extremely interesting from what I have read so far as the author delve on an analysis of the books we read during the course of growing up and how our own interpretation of the book changes with the stage of life we are in. While the love ballads of Shakespeare might bring about a sense of aspirational objective for a young man to chase, the same read with one in the middle of a severe mid-life crises, beautiful as it may, will sound as an improbable dream, and a life missed out in compromises. The aspirational figure of Ayn Rand's Howard Roark, gives way to a world plagued with hard realism hammered on ...

Every milestone in life seems so critical and so absolute in it's impact over our life, till the time it is crossed, and so rapidly it finishes in value, that if we were to know of this beforehand it would change the entire outlook we have towards life. If we could anticipate our appreciation of the value of a milestone post facto, we would not be so stressed out about it, and if we could remember the value we place on the event before it happens, post facto, we will be able to savour the accomplishment for a longer time, with a sweet minty aftertaste in or love. Unfortunately, most of the time we slip on both the counts. When we are chasing a dream we put so much of value on it  that we forget to appreciate what we have. You can not belittle the milestone, cannot deprive it of the respect it ought to get in order to keep you moving towards it. What we need is an elusive and delicate balance which keeps the interest in the chase alive, but does not bear so heavy on your though...

As I landed in Delhi, after couple of days at home where I had travelled on work, weather had taken a different turn. It's been raining for last whole week, much to the surprised comfort of the inhabitants, bringing the mercury down. Trees are freshly washed, green, dense vegetation in the middle of the population bring back the memory from childhood. Why does even such benevolence of nature fails to bring any solace to my bereaved soul? nothing can bring peace to a man with a feeling of having failed himself. Explanations are hard to come by, and there is no buyer. It is very hard to live with an intellect which is brutal and unyielding even to the person who owns it. It makes one see through the deceptive ugliness and baseness of relationships around. One can not go through the ordeal of life without some amount of foolish assumption, protective blindness and romantic illusion. It becomes almost unbearable with these three life sustaining factors lost on the altar of intellectual...

The days of play school are over. Nonu, my little daughter, stepped finally into the the cold, uncaring world of adults. She had been going to a preparatory or more aptly a play school, saksham, close by for some time, but then out was what out claimed to be- a play school. It was a fairy tale world with a lot of colour on the walls of the school building, young teachers, evangelical about their work. It was fun, no work, school will begin at nine, but it was considered fairly alright to appear dreamy eyed on the school gates at ten, and join the spirited dance class. A lonely and embarrassingly struggle to put her into school, with almost twenty days of January gone into submitting documents and applications into an equal number of school yielded an even more embarrassing outcome, she could make it two three out of those twenty, st. Paul, st. Mary and dps international. We got her into st.Paul, her mother did not like the, clientele, can't think of better word, of it, dps was dec...

I have for the last quite a few posts almost manoeuvred out of the torrid path of politics and more accurately, avoided taking note of the way world around me changed each day. While the newspapers screamed through a self imposed deafness and isolation as I kept my being comfortably ensconced in the cocoon of an utopian Felicity, touched by the divine touch of the little human soul, my daughter. Truth has a may habit of slowly tickling your toes, before it finally nudges you out of the feigned slumber, and throws you on the floor so hard that the pretence is no longer bearable. So, wake up I did to find that baby Falak is dead, Ms. Padma Lakshmi's last beau finally got paternity right to his child, the Indian couple in Norway lose custody, live-in gains currency by an unusually generous Supreme Court and this week, divorce becomes easy. A debate on television had a gentleman with some fancy title of psychologist counsellor, was busy painting such a bleak picture that kids would ...

There are some lovely nuances of modern day schooling, a full-fledged graduation ceremony at the end of the session from Play school is one of them. This apart from the class tours which takes the kid to exotic places like the Rail Museum, and Nehru Park. It is wonderful and must be lovely for the child. I, for one from my school days remember faintly of one trip which we went to in Hasimara, where we went off to some forest reserve near by in class VII and the high point of the trip was a rhino sighting in the forest, while riding over an elephant, another one which I remember was in Kanpur in class V, the one with some taste of rebelliousness, when we went to a temple next to the school, one with a cemented water tank, where we went, bought some Masala and potato, bought some Eggplan to make vegetable on a single vessel that we could lay hand on, over the fire built over wood from broken school furniture, the Egg Plan, off course came from the Principal residence. I ...

While writhing under impact of the some recently released,  largely publicised, and poorly written books, most of which seemed to have been written in trifle hurry, using the sales pull of Indian mythology as a positioning plank, I had picked up this book with a great deal of apprehension, telling myself, No, no no, Do not Prejudge. What held my largely shaken belief in great modern english writing, with Shiva speaking in expletives, was the trust in  the inherent strength of the Mahabharat  (which the author refers to as Jaya, as it was then known) as a story and the lovely, innocent and almost religious taste like a sip of Darjeeling tea on a dew-laden, winter morning which my last book around the the great epic, left in my thoughts, "The Difficulty of Being Good" by Gurcharan Das, a scholarly masterpiece. Swinging between the worlds of extreme optimism and utter hopelessness, I picked up this book. The cynic ...