NavDharmyug

It is 15th August, 67th Independence Day of India. It was a keenly awaited event mostly by marketers promising amazing Thailand on the long weekend day, which extends into Raksha Bandhan next week.  There is nothing much happy about this independence day as we are sorely made aware of how fickle this independence is. Last fortnight has been particularly bad for the country, with the soldiers losing their heads, in real term in border skirmishes and the political leadership running around, somersaulting like headless chicken. The country which perpetrated these skirmishes went ahead and passed a resolution condemning India, while Indian leadership keen to earn a legacy, dithered and then shame-faced shouted- Same to same from our side, like two kids thumbing the noses. The loss of human life in the middle of these two juvenile leadership, celebrating independence day one after another has become another statistics. The two nations having lost any sense of self-respect are c...

It is said that Whenever we exhale We are dead for a moment, We keep pulling back Life, Inhaling and believing  Life to be a continuum While forgetting That life is nothing  But a series of constant struggle Of a breath to inhale Until We can continue to do it no more And surrender  Before the yawning  Death, which looks  At our pre-ordained defeat And prevails With a laugh Which thunders through The bosom of the skies. Human mind, Prevaricates, belies and befools Ourselves  Until the truth shatters Our little, make-believe existence.  I know it will happen to me Someday, as to anyone else, And tired of struggle  I do not struggle to win I wait to embrace the  Eternal defeat, But I have sneaked in  A slight victory, slyly Unknownst to death  The Ethernal, The little girl Who will wink at death When in that moment of defeat.

There are books and there are books. There are books which you read, dreamy eyed, amid slothful slumbers, floating between various stages spread between consciousness and unconsciousness. But then, there are books which hit you hard out of your stupor, drags you out of a protective Utopian shell, churns your heart and makes you want to cry out the truth, you are suddenly exposed to. This Novel by the great Russian is one such book. Having read it and wept over the pages, it makes you want to wander around like Nietzsche's Madman with lantern in his hands. It exposes one with the sadness in this world which embraces the Earth in its grey dullness extending across the continuum. Right when you are so dispirited to jump off the cliff, you find an audacious and stubborn dawn struggling to break free at the farthest end of the gloomy dark sky. This gloom, the dark and the sudden light at the end is wherein lies the beauty of the book.  Typical of Dostoevsky, ...

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...

Honesty is a lightening that shines bright across the sky, as deadly, as sudden and as brutal. In a sudden flash, through raging squalls, suddenly the dead, dark Earth breathes into life for a moment as the white light spreads across its face with a sudden urgency. It is this feature which makes life worth living in spite of all its inherent bitterness, and which redeems any literature. The truth which slowly crawls across wonderfully and delicately crafted words, makes it alive, and the truth of life shines in the lightening of the honest penmanship, like a passive earth in the sudden lightening in a night rain.  Fyodor Dostoyevesky's "Notes from The Underground" is one such book. I started reading this book, a sad and lonely epoch of my life, thrown away from the family for a longish travel on work. It is untrue that when you are down and depressed, you want to read something bright and sunny to lift you up. At least for me it is untrue. When I am down and out, I ...