NavDharmyug

Photo Courtesy Gettyimages There was a Supreme Court directive which banned traditional bull racing festival Jallikattu in Tamilnadu. Today, as I write this, women groups are storming into a small temple in obscure town in Maharashtra. Media is in overdrive. Times Now seeks the rationale behind why women aren’t allowed in Sanctum Santorum of the temple. Yesterday they covered a Member of Parliament, sworn to the same constitution we celebrate today, who urged people to vote for their party, else they will lose their right to eat beef, which he posited, is a way of life for Muslims and Dalits. The rationale of it? Well, nobody would ask that. The same tribe which fights for the well-being of the animal also fights for converting the same animal into their dinner. But no, we don’t have it in us even to question such inept political positioning. Left, always boastful of being atheist, jumps in gleefully. The people who have no faith in religion, step in to modernize the religio...

Courtesy: Getty Images I recently in The Paris Review came across an interesting quote by great poet, by Robert Graves (1895-985). He says, “ Never use the word “audience.” The very idea of a public, unless a poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an “audience”: They're talking to a single person all the time…... All the so-called great artists were trying to talk to too many people. In a way, they were talking to nobody. ” I posted it on Google+, seeking the views of people. I got responses, some usual +1, I’d take it that they liked and agreed with the statement. But a dear friend, and wonderful poet Sum James , wrote that the words which are written for audience and is not something of an ante-thesis of poetry, as is seemingly contended here. It runs along. I would however, agree that the term audience here could be misleading. Every poem, I would agree with Sum James, is intended to an audience. Therein lies the reason for disagreement. ...

The year has just past by. Another year, another life, another sigh, another teardrop for the giant eye of the time. Many things can happen in an year. Lives can change- a country's life, an individual's life. How does one day differ from another? Does the tide turn, the Earth revolves in another direction? It is a psychological peg we devise to measure our journey. To measure how far we have traversed from where we started. Did we travel farther than others that we measure against? It sounds such narrow-minded to measure ourselves against others around us, but what other way do we have? This competition make us going, while in our heart of heart we know it will all end into nothing- cipher, a zero and only solace we will have, will be an unproven promise of afterlife. But as spaces around us reduce, shoulders rub against one another, we barely breathe, we sigh, long sighs, as if they would some day grow so big to swallow our whole lives. We need friends, camarad...

Courtesy: Getty Images It was Christmas night. It was a day of exuberance, of joy, of resurrection of faith. Happy delightful lights filled up the darkest crevices of night. The sounds of kids playing, the melody of sweet laughter, the Christmas carols running in looped consistency swallowed the dark sadness of a cold, December night. The air was full of warmth of close embraces which floated away, melting the freezing air. Beautiful people, dressed in lovely clothes, kids overdressed, men impeccably dressed, and women scantily dressed, wandered around in the air-conditioned interiors of the mall, trying hard not to bump into one another. Rameshwar felt tired. His eyes waded through the crowd to the opposite corner of the Atrium where some good looking and rich-looking women had set up stalls selling cakes and other things to eat. He had been there during the afternoon and the upturned brows of the exquisite ladies setting up those stalls and the prices mentioned made him qui...

“And today, with a computer, everybody is an intellectual. So I don’t think it has anything to do with someone’s profession or with someone’s social class. According to me, an intellectual is anyone who is creatively producing new knowledge. A peasant who understands that a new kind of graft can produce a new species of apples has at that moment produced an intellectual activity. Whereas the professor of philosophy who all his life repeats the same lecture on Heidegger doesn’t amount to an intellectual. Critical creativity—criticizing what we are doing or inventing better ways of doing it—is the only mark of the intellectual function .”- Umberto Eco There is much debate on intellectuals today in India. Many of them are troubled by what they call as shrinking space of dissent. The fact remains that while in the earlier days they were relegated to the unimportant pages of local newspapers, now they are celebrity in Television news where they rant about ‘Good, old days’ and curse ...

“ 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...

Literature helps us interpret and understand life. It helps us tolerate the aspects of life which escapes our understanding. There are words which refuse to be fossilized. There are timeless words which breathes even when buried under the dark layers of earth. That’s what we call classic, which in terms of relevance and wisdom stays untouched, unmoved, unblemished by the cruel winds of time. You sit down with them, slowly move the dust on the surface and a shining, tranquil, splendid emerald appears like a crystal ball holding all the answers to the myriad questions life throws at you. Today, we often do not have time and patience to read these classics unless you are a writer trying to learn the craft or a rare reader of refined interest. Accepted, it isn’t easy love to live with, for these words need much more than fleeting flirtation to spell out their meaning to you. They need deep dedication, a profound passion and as Nietzsche would say, “one has to be willing to wash his f...