NavDharmyug

Eye of The Tiger I have been athletic but never sports oriented in my life. In between, I had faced my own sins of youth, arrogant decadence of all ills of youth- smoking, drinking, an incandescent  conscience and an unyielding spine,  aggravated further by constant strife between my refusal of all social judgments and an insistence by the world around me to judge me, nevertheless. It hit me, hit me hard. I went down with a feeling that I will never come back again. I remember those bleak days, fourteen years back, when every step taken would be precarious ringing with a hissing fear of death in its sound. I was hit by affairs of the heart, and with that I am not referring to my courtship which culminated with a marriage resulting in excommunication by the society and family. It was odd feeling. It was  unexpectedly  expected. I was told that was to happen, but being an only son, believed that warning from the parents to be hollow. Boy, solid it was, they ...

Of late, a video of teachers in villages and small towns in India went viral with teachers not knowing the spellings and basic general knowledge like the names of presidents and prime ministers so on and so forth. It invites many comments, acerbic, funny, condescending, demeaning. To me that whole video was so sad and heart-wrenching.  It is a sad commentary about our schooling. It is thought-provoking. What is the point of putting kids in school when they are neither equipped nor evolved enough  to be place for learning. They are not place for sharing of knowledge but rather a place where a kinship of ignorance is kindled. Teachers in most government schools in India are broken individuals who as a result of failed fate or abysmal aptitude couldn't do anything better but to teach.  They aren't overwhelming souls brimming with knowledge, but have dark gaping holes of ignorance churning with sadness inside. They are teachers since they couldn't be anything else. And it isn...

Is it not amazing that precisely at the time when you start believing in the childish notion of knowing all there is to know, like a bolt from the sky, awakening descends on you, as you suddenly find yourself,  ignorant, devoid of any knowledge. The good part is that this revelation is not particularly embarrassing or demeaning, rather you feel elevated and enlightened with the understanding of your own smallness. Reading "The Summing Up" by W. Somerset Maugham was one such moment of revelation. I am just through with getting my book of philosophical essays published, and while I would take all the praise which would come from friends with a pinch of salt and sincere humility, a little strike of wickedness, allowed me to secretly feel happy with the praise. But that was till I came across this book, which once I picked up and finished reading, left me dwarfed and happy at the same time, in the backdrop of the greatness of the author.  The book is autobio...

(This was first published on Hubpages) When Dreams were Young There used to be a time, when as they say, spring was in the walk and the dreams were young, when words would float in front of my notebook and land softly as today my toddler walks around in the room in the winters of Delhi..on the tip-toes. Dreams were beautiful and not yet impossible. Truth seemed to be an idea which lived and breathed next door and not a distant idea. Those were the times when an equitable limitation of resources cut across the social position and we all stood in front of each other, devoid of the fig leave of social backgrounds. Calls would be made through the public call booth across the road from the Hostel and with new mobile set was not a status defining instrument but only a flight of fantasy. In all our nakedness we shall be all be judged as friends or not by those around us, simply by the grandness of our dreams, our understanding of our ideals, and more importantly, by our ability t...

(Reproduced from Hubpages) The new year of the new decade has dawned in all its glory with delightful cold and somewhat shifty sun. The clouds of the gigantic corruption of past year and years does not seem to be getting dampened by the festive spirit of the X-mas followed by the New Year. The dirt seem to have risen so high that now it has reached the highest offices of  Justice  and I sit myself down with an attempt to understand what actually constitutes the noble and yet, elusive (and maybe, an impossible) idea called justice is. Is it something beyond revenge or is revenge good enough to be termed as Justice is the collective exercises it on behalf of the individual? Is justice something which pleases the most number in a society or can Justice in the extreme loneliness in the face of public opinion against its exercise?The fact is that the topic is so subjective and so skewed in the direction of numerical strength and it does not seem like justice any more. It is like...

(The Article was first published on Literary website: The AirshipDaily.com) Despite the seemingly formulaic success of modern bestsellers, one writer argues that the classics are where authors should look for inspiration. “Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon (Parnassus)” by Claude Lorraine, 1680 (via Wikipedia ) Pursuing a typical Indian middle-class dream of becoming an engineer, my exposure to classic literature during my adolescent years was dismal. It was only later in life that I came across those great names, attempting to school myself as a writer by reading Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Twain, Maugham, Bronte and others. I was awed by the beauty of what I discovered, which was hitherto hidden from me as a casual reader and occasional writer. But it was with trepidation that I read, with fear of their brilliant writing influencing my own. Books are now written according to calculated formulas of success defined by clever marketers. It is not a good moment to be influenced...

F. Scott Fitzgerald With his Daughter, Scottiee I was, of late, putting together an article on the letters of Francis Scott Fitzgerald or FSF. I have always been enamored by his writing. Fitzgerald had a daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, whom he lovingly addressed as Scottie or Scottina. Scottie was borne in October, 1921, soon after Fitzgerald married Zelda, the daughter of a Judge, riding on the success of his first book, This Side of the Paradise. Scott Fitzgerald’s later life was fraught with difficulties, financial and otherwise. He lived apart from Zelda who mostly lived out of hospitals, searching for the cure for her chronic depression. His later work could not replicate the early success of The Tales of the Jazz Age, and The Other Side of Paradise,  and his slip into abject poverty could not even be arrested by The Great Gatsby, which could get its due only after his sad death at the age of 44. He lived away Scottie, and wanted to teach her all that he coul...